Topic: shields question

[Don Karnage]

i was looking in sfc folder and i did not find the map for the rings, so is there anyone who know where is the shields map?


thanks

[Roychipoqua_Mace]

Do you mean the file that has the shield colors? It's fx1.BMP in the Textures folder. The top two rows are for shields.

 I will see if I can find some new textures of it at Battleclinic, some of the textures there are edited, so there are differently shaped, different color shields.

[Don Karnage]

thanks, someone was asking how to get rid of the shields, so the shield will not be visible.

[Panzergranate]

It would be kind of handy not to have downed shields instantly visible to a hostile player unless they bother to scan you.

In SFB the shield strengths of the target vessels are not apparent unless on scans or probes the target and this is kind of annoying in SFC.

Also mines rings...... they give away the mines, which defeats the object of leaving mines littering the battlefield in the ifrst place.

In SFB you're either spending out power points looking for mines or you're blindly running into the things.

Why on Earth did they come up with the "Tale Tale" red rings in SFC anyway?? (Blue ones for NSMs!!)

If anything needs turning off it's the mine rings!!

[Don Karnage]

well with the ring you see where is the mine, if you don't see it then you might not have see the mine and run into it.

[Panzergranate]

Which is what happens in SFB if you're not expecting mines.

IN SFC I can see mines at impossible ranges for SFB detection.

The whole advantage of X-ships in SFB was that they could detect mines in such a way, whilst oridinary ships, unless fitted with Special Sensors, couldn't.

 

[Pestalence_XC]

TO get rid of HUD that shows shields, press F9, you will lose shields and mine rings, distance to target, target speed, etc...

You also lose this for both yourself and the enemy.. but you can just look at your enemy silhouette under your ship on the left control panel.. it too shows shield strength of enemy.

You can also edit the files in the textures folder for the shields to be transparent as well as mines.. however I don't think BMP files allow for that, maybe just a black color... however there is no way to alter the silhouette showing the enemy weapons and shields or even your own.. those are contained in the sprites.q3 file...

BUT remember, if you edit the texture files, ONLY YOU CAN SEE THE CHANGES YOU MAKE.. if your shields are black or transparent, your enemy will still be able to see shields just fine and there is no way to CRC check that.. so if you make a Mod, just remember that the other players can just restore the altered texture files back to the originals to regain the visual effects, thus making the Mod moot... Your enemy will have a clear tactical advantage over you because they can quickly see your shield strength and keep hitting the weakest easily where you will have to keep refering the the silhouette. And since the textures have absolutely no effect on playability or balance and is not considered a cheat at all... just personal preference.. texture files do not get checked for tampering.. as such.. alter them at your own risk. Not all players will want to have those files modded and can easily change them back to defaults.. just keep that in mind.


 

[Don Karnage]

1: its not for me
2: i don't play on line

someone on you tube was asking if there was a ways to get rid of the rings shields, i did tell him of  F9, F10, F11.

[marstone]

Which is what happens in SFB if you're not expecting mines.

IN SFC I can see mines at impossible ranges for SFB detection.

The whole advantage of X-ships in SFB was that they could detect mines in such a way, whilst oridinary ships, unless fitted with Special Sensors, couldn't.

 

Well, this is true and also not true.  In SFB, if a mine is layed by transporter, it is know to all as the transporter beam is detectable and shows the location the mine was layed (the reason in SFB you had transporter bombs, the mines, and dummy mines, basicly a blob of material that doesn't do anything.  For deception).  Now if you laid a mine by dropping it from the shuttle bay (pressing the m button) it is laid hidden to everyone.  A reason not to follow right up the pipe of a ship, you never know if they drop a mine on you.

[Panzergranate]

I always lay transporter bombs as mines with the M button and I'm a dab hand at dumping a mine right into following ships and fighters.

Nuclear Space Mines, usually dropped by the Romulans in SFC 1, show up as blue rings only to the dropping player. These are only dropped by the M button and don't show up on the tactical displays for a count, only in the ship's spec file.

The trick is to drop mines whilst turning as this generally keeps the open aft shield away from the followiing enemy.

It's a shame that FMSE doesn't allow for pre-deployed mines unless one has created something like a Kzinti / Mirak Drone Mine in the spec file.

[marstone]

I always lay transporter bombs as mines with the M button and I'm a dab hand at dumping a mine right into following ships and fighters.

Nuclear Space Mines, usually dropped by the Romulans in SFC 1, show up as blue rings only to the dropping player. These are only dropped by the M button and don't show up on the tactical displays for a count, only in the ship's spec file.

The trick is to drop mines whilst turning as this generally keeps the open aft shield away from the followiing enemy.

It's a shame that FMSE doesn't allow for pre-deployed mines unless one has created something like a Kzinti / Mirak Drone Mine in the spec file.

Now, I would like to see the rings turned off on the mines that are not layed by transporter.  With the exception that on your own screen they be ringed so you can avoid them yourself if you double back, since your ship would keep track of the location of them.

[Panzergranate]

The blue ones only show up to the dropping player, not anyone else, but only the R-WB  carries them, if I remember right and then only two.

I would have liked to have seen Mine Sweeper Beam available in SFC. X-ships are supposed to be able to simulate MSB with Special Sensors but are the only ships allowed to do so.

I like the description of some SFB auxilary mine sweeping vessels which basically have a reinforced forward shield and just hope for the best as they plough blindly through mine fields!!

I converted a Fed large freighter to the SFB spec and tried it out...... the third mine hit screws it!!

[marstone]

The blue ones only show up to the dropping player, not anyone else, but only the R-WB  carries them, if I remember right and then only two.

I would have liked to have seen Mine Sweeper Beam available in SFC. X-ships are supposed to be able to simulate MSB with Special Sensors but are the only ships allowed to do so.

I like the description of some SFB auxilary mine sweeping vessels which basically have a reinforced forward shield and just hope for the best as they plough blindly through mine fields!!

I converted a Fed large freighter to the SFB spec and tried it out...... the third mine hit screws it!!

Well, actually, they are suppose to fly up **slowly** to the minefield.  Grab a mine in tractors and then phaser them to death.  The heavy shields is in case you blow one up (by accident of course), keeps you from being killed outright (shielding is strong anough for one 35 point mine).

But SFC doesn't have minefields, or the way to detect them from SFB (being within a short range [I believe it is 10 hexes] of something like 3 mines from a field you detect you are near a field.  Then you have more work to find the individual mines)

[Panzergranate]

We use pre-laid mines in our LAN campaigns, er..... well those f**king sneaky Kzinti players do since we started using FMSE to set the battle scenarios.

Not the "Bang" mines, just and a few Kzinti Drone Mines.

These are anchored, tractor their victims and dump out Drones.

Due to the amount of explosive force of these things, blasting one whilst tractored has dire risks.

Despite our efforts as Klingon players, we still occasionally end up with a ship caught by one. They are fatal for smaller vessels like PFs and freighters.

If you want to see some fast mine laying in the middle of a defencive battle, I'm a dab hand at rapidly deploying mines from a Klingon Mine Laying Freighter!! Takes a lot of fancy flying, transporter laying and M keying to surround a starbase / planet / object of strtegic value with 50 mines in a game..... and under fire sometimes too!!

Laying mine belts and then repairing them has proven to be the best method of defeating Kzinti Drone barrages aimed at starbases. They expend more than half their Drone racks dealing with the mine barrier.

Meanwhile they have to deal with the other Klingon players.

I must admit that seeing a wall of mines pinging away with the red rings does look formidable.

I'm surprised that SFC never had any of the mine sweeper variants or mine layer variants from the various SFB races in the game??

Anyone else bothered to add in mine sweepers and mine layers into the shiplist??

[Don Karnage]

can you record you're battle and if yes can it be view with sfc ?

[I, Mudd.]

Panzergranate;

I am continally bemused by the inventive nature of your LAN games and your players; and I would also love to hear/see more of what you guys are up to ...

If I may textually express an overused, although completely relevant, turn of phrase ...

:arched-eyebrow:

... Fascinating.



JM.

[Corbomite]

You also lose this for both yourself and the enemy.. but you can just look at your enemy silhouette under your ship on the left control panel.. it too shows shield strength of enemy.

This is true, however that display follows the Tactical Intelligence protocols and will give you information by range like it is supposed to.

[Don Karnage]

yea, but if you only wanted to remove the visible shields from the game without losing the rest of the info like the distance of the enemy ships.

by removing the image of it, will that work and will that cause problem to the game if its missing?

[Roychipoqua_Mace]

Deleting the image might cause problems, but you could just cut out the shield parts of the texture. I tested this (attached) file with SFC2 and it made the shields invisible, but still kept everything else from "F10" mode like distance and volleyinfo. I couldn't upload it as a .bmp, so if you want to try it ingame, just save it as a .bmp.

[Don Karnage]

thanks, i will try it and post that info.
still have cats in front of key board.