Topic: Hidden mines, detection, minelayers+captor mines, and counter-ambushes!

[NuclearWessels]

Funny, every semester around exam-marking time I get a burst of energy for mission editing, and the mines thread awhile back got me thinking ...

(I) Hidden mines (visible only to the host)

Lots of us have experienced the missions with ghost terrain - asteroids visible only to the host, resulting in surprise explosions and other fun effects.  Well, now we can turn that into a feature.

In the scripts, we can generate a hidden minefield, and use terrain objects to reveal their position to the host.  (Probably the Organian or a pulsar - something that doesn't ordinarily interact with ships.)  Note that this would be visible ONLY to the host (it's that or everyone), so if you're flying with a wing you might want to warn them before they smack that big ol' NSM.

When a ship gets within range of the mine we simulate the explosion by creating and immediately self destructing a small object (and removing the terrain object).   I'm thinking we just use the N-PUCK since it has an explosion strength of 25 and is otherwise pretty harmless.  Alternatively, we could actually add a MINE object to the shiplist and let the admins pick an explosion strength.

We can also set things up so that a ship can detect mines based on how close they are, how slow they are traveling, and whether or not they've got their "deep scan" on -- if a mine becomes detected outside detonation range we can simply have the MINE or BOX or PUCK or whatever generated at that position visible to everyone, and folks can take it out with their weapons from a safe distance.

The downside is that there is overhead in keeping track of everyone's distance from each of the mines, so I'm betting we wouldn't want more than a half-dozen or so in a mission to keep lag down.

Captor mines and Minelayers

If additional mine types were added to the shiplist we could these as well (e.g. each race has two shiplist mine entries, X-NSM and X-CAPT where the captor version has a couple of phasers or drone racks or whatever and no movement capability)
 
Actually I'm pretty sure Cleavan or Chuut or Scippy or Corbo or ??? suggested this awhile back, but we could also emulate a small number of captor mines on a ship or minelayer by creating 0-speed fighters with appropriate armament and giving the minelayer fighter bays with the beasties.  Of course, these would be visible when laid and the minelayer could only drop four per mission.  Admins could decide on whether non-minelayers were allowed to carry these in fighter bays (server rule).

Counter-ambush

As an experiment with this stuff, I'm playing with the ambush mission so that once in awhile the ambushee is actually sitting safely in the middle of a minefield, possibly with AI reinforcement waiting to pop in as well.   I might actually put the ambushee inside an FRD at the beginning once in awhile also ... just tinkering with ideas there.

Holler if you've got more ideas!
dave

[GDA-Agave]

NICE!!!   

Oh, the beautifully, evil thoughts coming to mind.   Thanks for the update Dave.    Keep us informed of your progress.   I for one would LOVE to see this implemented in future servers.   Spicy game elements like this is what makes the game truly enjoyable!!

Least we all forget, missions known as "EvilDave" missions were given that name for a reason.   

<S>

[Strat]

We can also set things up so that a ship can detect mines based on how close they are, how slow they are traveling, and whether or not they've got their "deep scan" on -- if a mine becomes detected outside detonation range we can simply have the MINE or BOX or PUCK or whatever generated at that position visible to everyone, and folks can take it out with their weapons from a safe distance.

The downside is that there is overhead in keeping track of everyone's distance from each of the mines, so I'm betting we wouldn't want more than a half-dozen or so in a mission to keep lag down.

Maybe we could make it so that scout ships had a valuable role with this.  Ships somehow spcifially biased with increased range in detecting mines in the field.

If the mines were powerful enough, and you could know when to expect a mission of this type, a player taking a scout ship for themselves or thier team would not be a bad idea...  It'd also be a good target to kill >

Whhops, there goes your mine detector

Just a thought.

[NuclearWessels]

I definitely like the ideas with scouts - give them and minelayers an advantage in both detection and sweeping. 

Right now the code itself is driving me a little batty - everything works smoothly up to the point of detonation -  the minefield indicator shows up ok for one team but not the other, the minefields are detected and the mines pop up ok ... but at the last second the mines they no go BOOM! 

Hey Bonk, have you ever run across a situation where you just can't make a ship explode?
Take a look at this (inside a test to see if mship has classtype "N-PUCK")
            
fMissionInfo->mDisplayMessage( pship->mGetTeam(), "...it is a match for destruction...");
mship->mSetSystemHealthFromOrig( kNoWeaponHardPoint, 0.0f, kFalse );
mship->mDestroyShip();
mship->mDestroyShipSilently();

I get the message ok, so it recognizes it's SUPPOSED to blow the damn thing up, but no boom!  Any one of those last three lines should be sufficient ... arrrrrrrgghhhh ... I hate it when I'm missing something stooopid!

OK, off to the scripters forum (grumble gnash argh!)

dave

[Strat]

Never done scripting, just thought:

Are the pucks unable to explode?  I don't think they were designed for that in the hockey game were they?

[NuclearWessels]

I wondered about that after posting as well, so tried a couple of other ships instead - same problem.  It's obviously just time for a beer

dave

[Riskyllama]

tried looking at the "models test" script? it blows stuff up.

[KAT Chuut-Ritt]

 Note that this would be visible ONLY to the host (it's that or everyone), so if you're flying with a wing you might want to warn them before they smack that big ol' NSM.

informing your wingman.....what a silly notion   

 

We can also set things up so that a ship can detect mines based on how close they are, how slow they are traveling, and whether or not they've got their "deep scan" on -- if a mine becomes detected outside detonation range we can simply have the MINE or BOX or PUCK or whatever generated at that position visible to everyone, and folks can take it out with their weapons from a safe distance.

Be interesting if we could have it so only certain ships could detect them, like scouts and minesweepers.  Don't know if that is possible.  If it co9uldn't be done by ship class, I wonder if it could be done through a system.  You mentioned Deep Scan, but perhaps we could do it through a system that not all ships would have then use donors to the shiplist for the special task ships.  for example, having a minesweeper donated from the orion or Romulan  lists that revealed mines when cloaked at a certain range.  The cloaking cost would represent the power needed for the intensive scanning. 

.


 
Counter-ambush

As an experiment with this stuff, I'm playing with the ambush mission so that once in awhile the ambushee is actually sitting safely in the middle of a minefield, possibly with AI reinforcement waiting to pop in as well.   I might actually put the ambushee inside an FRD at the beginning once in awhile also ... just tinkering with ideas there.

the ambushee could also be surrounded by fighter or pf escorts at the mission start, nothing too OTT just enough to give a cushion while his systems came online.