BEAM mod 2.01b(incl.13 c. ships)[UPDATED:21.5.2005]Dloadable

[xalien]

The BIRE looks really weird now. The fist shot is like projectile but then it turns into something beam-like and drains energy really fast. Don't know if it inflicts damage though.
Also, mamba's and Dragon's turrets arent exactly front-facing. Mamba's turret is facing downwards, Dragon's - upwards, which means untill I've installed AEGIS it's slow turning graviton beams were a real pain when needed to shoot something in front of you. Now it works perfectly, but at what price . Although I'm gonna transfer it to M2 when I'll get one so no big loss here.

[ShadowX]

x2alien:
It seems I forgot to change BIRE back to normal after using it as a test subject for new weapons
This will be most definetily fixed.

Mamba's turret should face downward, it's intentional because there were no better position for it and I thought it might be good thing to face it somewhere else than front/up/down/right/left/rear.

Dragon's turret, if turret is defined as gun ports and cockpit, is facing both front and upwards. Gun port points straight ahead while cockpit is positioned upwards because, again, there was no better place. Cockpit is the reason why targeting reticle faces upwards and not forward.
Alternative solution for this would be to change their places: cockpit straight ahead and gunport upwards, this would make targeting reticle face forward as a default. Downside of this method is that IMO it doesn't look as good when Dragon fires it's beams from it's "nose" as it is when it fires from it's frontmost part.

When using Dragon it's good to use it's range for advantage: Alpha Graviton beams start targeting enemy when they are about 5km away, this should be enough for it to blast away enemies before they get to you. Slowing down when targeting helps a little.



It seems that it would be better if this mod would have support for new ships, incase anyone wants to add them and play the mod with them. So v 2.01b will have 190 unused ship slots: 30 M1 class and 20 for every other classes. They are marked as "unused M1", "unused M2"... in the script editor.

[xeon_1]

shadow X wouldn't it by beter if the holocaust beam was the main gun of the ship and that what is now the main gun would by for the turret

[ShadowX]

Version 2.01b is downloadable now! Hope it's more bug free than the first one
Also reduced range of IRE/PAC/HEPT.

shadow X wouldn't it by beter if the holocaust beam was the main gun of the ship and that what is now the main gun would by for the turret

It actually was main gun first(before first dl), however, there were couple of reasons to change it to turret:

-targeting would be late, since bridge is about 2 km behind front turret gunport and game measures targeting from the cockpit.
-beam trajectory would be awful: when not using any targeting aids, there is a fixed targeting point in about 3-4 km away at the location of targeting reticle. holocaust beam would fire upwards in high angle and it's usefulness without targeting aids would be lost.

Even current main guns are firing a bit upwards of the desired direction since bridge is so high. If bridge would be in the middle of the ship, they would fire at a desired direction. And they will also cross at the 3-4 km mark.

When using single gunport it's best to put the cockpit at nearest possible location and towards same direction.

Current holocaust beam also fires a bit upwards(very little) without targeting aids, because cockpit is a bit higher than gunport.

This same problem applies to Dragon too(default targeting direction), as you probably have noticed.

I hope that X3 has some way to define the default targeting point/direction.



EDIT:

V 2.01b does not require restart, just overwrite old files and it's good to go.


EDIT2:

I forgot to mention that new ship slots are in following order in TShips(from top to down after normal ship slots):
M1,M2,M6,TL,TS,TP,M3,M4,M5

[BDStyle]

hi shadowx.. I am just tracking down an issue i have with my sound in game.

I have the age old problem of not hearing voices in game wether its cut scene or realtime.

I have exausted all the FAQ fix's apart from a reinstall of windows.

Anyway the point is before i go fooking up my pc on more 'alternative' fixs could you just confirm u haven't modded the voices out. Otherwise its down to my codecs after i recently installed mediaplayer classic and i can't sort it.

[ShadowX]

BDStyle:

I can confirm that I haven't done any modding on voices, only sounds I have modded are beam ambient sounds and they should not have any effect on voices(voices work fine in my game new or loaded).

Most games use nowadays wave-drivers for sound, voice and music(before music was usually controlled by midi-driver) so if one works, all should work.

Some errors I could think of:
1. Sound card drivers are old.
2. Sound card settings don't allow enough overlapping sounds(you can't change this in all sound cards I guess, but then it shouldn't be a problem).
3. Sound card codecs are old.
(This is most likely NOT the problem but: 4. Voices are turned of from the game settings)

It's all I can think for now.

Hope this helps...at least a bit

[BDStyle]

cheers bud.. seems its a problem somewhere i can't find. Its the only program i can see on my rig thats effected though however all settings etc are set to correct settings and i've installed the game many times..... ah well no more computer voices for me....and no more mi-ton YAY.

Cheers for clearing up the prob though

[BDStyle]

ok 2 new problems i've found for you

the orrinoco's cockpit view is messed up. The outside world is obscurred by parts of the hull.

I scripted in the khaak x with a holocaust beam and couldn't get the beam installed.. may just be me being stupid though lol. Oh and it has no sounds for its weapons fire.

[ShadowX]

When you install Holocaust beam, you must use install command since Holocaust beam is kinda extra weapon(uses Khaak endfight weapon slot in tbullets&tlasers). Lasertower weapon(one before endfight) slot is the last slot for manually installable weapons. You can't even manually uninstall Holocaust beam when it's installed.

Here is an example code for creating KhaakX and installing Holocaust beam:

Code: Select all

001   $khaakx =  create ship: type=Khaak X owner=Player addto=Argon Prime x=5000 y=5000 z=5000 
002   $a = $khaakx -> install 1 units of Holocaust Beam 
003   return null 

Holocaust beam seems to use regular Khaak Kyon beam sounds, I'll change it to those fs2 sounds that graviton beams are using in the next update. It's a shame that those beam sounds cannot modified to sound as far as they do in fs2, which is, about 2km away. Beam sounds can be heard when you fire them(if gunports are near the turret) or if someone shoots at you.


When I was looking for alternatives as new pirate cockpit and didn't find any good solution, I decided to overlap objects to find new forms and came up with the current model. It actually has 2 parts one inside other and other one is the actual cockpit. This causes those two stripes in side windows to show up. At first I though that it isn't very good them showing up, but then again, it actually doesn't have too much negative effects on targeting so I decided to leave it like that...and the outer look was good.
If I have had a 3d modelling program and skills to use it I would have removed those stripes as soon as possible.

[BDStyle]

ahh so thats how u created the ships. Well np's. As for the holocaust cheers for clearing that up

[Deleted User]

Help! when you download v2 you can't extract it!!!
whats happening??

[ShadowX]

Help! when you download v2 you can't extract it!!!
whats happening??

Checked the download and it works fine on me. It is archived with Winzip 9.0 and I used maximum compression. If you have older version or different extraction utility it might not work. You can get free evaluation version of WinZip 9.0 from their homepage: http://www.winzip.com.

[carrier]

is it just me, or does anyone else has numerous readtextXXX entrys in the ship warf in argon prime? i tried buying one, and hey, I got a flying box - well... not exactly my prefered ship design...
this happend on a clean install of x2 1.4 with just the last official bonus plugin pack installed and beam mod2 enabled

[ShadowX]

carrier:
Tested couple of times with story/without story and didn't find any readtextxxx:s in Argon Prime ship warf.
I have bonus pack installed without gunnery crews. This mod doesn't alter any argon ships or stations currently.

This is quite odd also because I haven't added anything on any the wharfs/shipyards/factories.

Were those readtextxxx:s in addition of normal ships sold?

[carrier]

I have complete bonus pack installed. There are 32 entries, replacing the standard loadout nearly completely, eg. Xenon J, Split Mamba,... Argon ships are; Centaur, Express and Mercury in the 3 different sizes (s,m,l). The ships with names work fine. All other entries are readtextxxx:s.
I´m surprised of this too. Just couldn´t imagine you letting such a flaw slip through testing, what´s more without there being a script in your mod.
So, most probably, something went wrong on my system. I will reinstall X2 and test the mod without any additional plugins - only vanilla X2 V1.4 and beam mod 2.

[carrier]

well.. I reinstalled X2... once again.... and now all behaves as it should.
looks like this incident will be a case for "unsolved mysteries"

I´ll do some testing later, now i have to earn some money.
i´m sorry if I have stirred some trouble.

[ShadowX]

well.. I reinstalled X2... once again.... and now all behaves as it should.
looks like this incident will be a case for "unsolved mysteries"

I´ll do some testing later, now i have to earn some money.
i´m sorry if I have stirred some trouble.

No probs m8!

It's good that you got it working

[quintis vindex]

YESS!!!


This is EXACTLY the kind of Mod I was looking for. When I think of Capital Ships and Lasers I think of BEAMS, on big, powerful, hard to destroy by small craft. Not shooting little balls of energy and are easily killed by small fighters a fraction fo this cost.

WILL DOWNLOAD IMMEDIATELY AND START A NEW GAME,

THANKS!!

Edit:

Just saw that the last post was months ago,,, hope it still works lol.

[BDStyle]

yes this mod still works lol.. in fact i have a save game running this on my second x2 install.

MMMM beamy goodness. As a general hint don't go thinking capital ships are easy when you are in an m3. Death comes quickly

[quintis vindex]

yes this mod still works lol.. in fact i have a save game running this on my second x2 install.

MMMM beamy goodness. As a general hint don't go thinking capital ships are easy when you are in an m3. Death comes quickly

As it should.

This will probably interfere very much with the Plot though I perhaps I will run one game standardly for the plot and the other game for This one (I suspect I wont go back to the standard game after I get a taste of the beams l )