[SCR] Ring of Fire - Stealth Lasertowers (v2.31 - 29.11.09)

[Aegyen]

I am thinking you guys are seeing the hotkey bug, try a new start and see if the hotkey setup is in interface, then..

Oops, wait a min.. or, the command slot used for RoF is in conflict with another script/mod... Didn't dawn on me till I went for coffee..
If either of you use xscriptor, it has a nice 'view conflicts' feature, that will show you what is in each command slot, and which mod is using that command slot (there can be multiples, but only one will have 'in use' beside it.)

I just recently went through my mod setup because I knew there were some conflicts. If you are lucky, maybe it is in conflict with one of Lucike's, and on his script threads, he shows you how, and exactly where, to change it...

[General_Failure]

*sigh* always forget you basically need to start over with a lot of mods. That's all it was, works now. Only the problem I have /now/ is the fact when I needed or could have used them, well I have to start over again... ha... cheat mode activate!

[kurush]

about 6 or 7 of my "stealth" laser tower suddenly unclocked after 2 or 3 RL days and probably about 20 hours in game. Stealth mode seems to be borked in AP. Did anybody try to push the limits with those laser towers? I wonder how many of them can the game engine handle, considering that each of them apparently is running a custom task script.
I am also wondering whether it is possible to remove this script package and keep the LTs.

[Aegyen]

I believe that he meant them to be 'stealth', to you. For FPS reasons, mostly. When this first came out, FPS was a problem in the first versions of TC, for a lot of people.

[wwdragon]

That's true; they are also stealth to enemies until they uncloak. You can setup some pretty interesting ambushes that way.

I've never seen them just stop working. I don't use stealth LT's though, ever. They always go around gates to Pirate & Xenon space as blockades... which are systems I don't personally visit.

As to removing them: Not going to work for stealth ones. Non stealth, it would if they revert to the default control scripts automatically; they are, after all, already placed.
They do use the ring of fire scripts as well, however, for OOS combat bump. I think it would just cause them to disapear or the game to bomb. :-s

[ptb_ptb]

Not directly related to this script, but could you make Advanced Satellites that are 'stealthy'? It makes the property list pretty much useless if you have 200 odd satellites spamming up the menu.

[DrBullwinkle]

Turn off satellite display on the options page (last tab of the property dialog).

[ptb_ptb]

Turn off satellite display on the options page (last tab of the property dialog).

Ooooh... Thanks a lot!

[bn]

There still seems to be a minor issue with placement and naming of East and West gate rings.

I appear to have version 231, downloaded just a week or two ago. The first gate I did was East, and the LTs were placed further east. After considerable pondering about why that might be desirable, I concluded that it was not, and changed Gate.displacement to a negative value. Which worked fine for E, and also on a North I did next... then failed on a South. I wasn't really paying much attention to the names, but eventually noticed that E and W were reversed.

My reading is that the displacement is intended to be a positive value, and that the addition/subtraction is simply reversed for E and W. In plugin.ring.of.fire there is essentially a case statement handling the four orientations at lines 87-102. The sequence of gates for indices 0-3 is NSWE. For those of you trying this at home, the simplest fix is to change line 95 to i == 3 and line 99 to i == 2. This resolves both the displacement and naming issues.

[Gazz]

I believe that he meant them to be 'stealth', to you. For FPS reasons, mostly. When this first came out, FPS was a problem in the first versions of TC, for a lot of people.

The main reason was that LT in Reunion/TC were weaksauce.
(due to a bug in their target acquisition, they hardly ever fired when OOS)

Sure, you could use 50 or 100 and that would eventually show some performance (OOS) but using mass quantities of such ships (and having all their combat scripts active) did indeed cause performance issues.
It also was extremely annoying to see 100 of your own "ships" in the sector list and having to scroll waaaaay down to see if there were enemies at all.

In AP, the bug that caused all this cascading madness was fixed... and LT got a major rebalance as well.
Now you don't need a lot of them any more and with only a handful, you can just as well dump them from the cargo bay and be done with it.

AP basically made this script pointless. =)

There still seems to be a minor issue with placement and naming of East and West gate rings.

Yeh, it's a bit messy.
This script still relies on the old convention of an "east gate" being the "east gate" and being entered from the west.
Whoever built some of the later sectors apparently didn't observe the old convention so the script gets confused.

ROF was my first "real" script and I often used anything that worked. The code is pretty grueling. =)
If I'd write something like that with what I know now, it certainly wouldn't be assuming any sector design conditions...

[bn]

I didn't mean it to sound like a complaint or criticism, I just wanted to put the information out to possibly save someone else the effort.

You have nothing to apologize for. Everyone starts somewhere, and just think where the rest of us would be if you hadn't? Besides, people have been having fun with this thing for years, and continue to do so.

I played a lot of TC and never bothered with LTs, but AP is so much improved that I figured I might as well try out the three I'd already paid for. Among other things, just for grins I did a death star (3-axis, 24 total) around a Xenon shipyard (slight hack to get them to recognize stations). Last night I tried some small clusters rather than rings, and the mod was great for that. I started with a "ring" of just two towers based on the gate, so I had one on each side a ways in front. Then in turn I selected each of those as the center of a new ring of 4, with a radius of just 250 (200 might have been okay). Doesn't matter OOS of course, but IS this seems to be much more effective against fighters. As soon as he picks one to target, he's looking at a group whose aiming gets easier as he does his attack run.

Sure, I could just dump 'em out and it would be pretty much the same, but it wouldn't look nearly as cool. Thanks.

[MonsterMod]

AP basically made this script pointless. =)

I have to disagree. I can see a use for this script due to the ease of laser tower deployment, and the stealth technology that reduces clutter/lag. I tested this with AP/XRM and ton of other mods, and the Zip version seems to be working (not the SPK though). The only problem I had was that the stealth version does not unstealth and attack alot of the time, while the non-stealth version works fine. It's a nice mod even if just using it to get a nice tower deployment around gates, instead of dumping them in a pile.

[SirDeathwalker]

Been playing with this and thought... "why not a globe deployment?"

a little difficult to set up concentric overlapping rings on the same point, but different axis.
(occasionally in multiple layers)

also a line formation (a line of LT's leading from a gate in-sector like a gauntlet, in 3-5 "rows")

but so far, they have set up and cloaked on schedule.... and apparently pirate response fleets don't like them very much...

[Ferenczy66]

Not sure what im doing wrong here....

Using AP with XRM

1. target gate
2. select 15 LTs,
3. 0 for smallest radius "around gate?"
4. Y for a "snap ring formation" to the gate

Problem: LTs are spead all around the gate, not in a circle like i would expect...at varying distances from the gate.

Help?

[Gazz]

I bet automatic collision avoidance is messing things up.
Use a larger radius.

[Ferenczy66]

probley means I should turn off "Bounce" also....yes?

Solved....

Had to be OOS and order my M7 to deploy them....works like a charm.

[Anuke]

Lt's are not uncloaking for what I am guessing is just spawned ships. Unfortunatly this makes them unrelyamble for defending against the pirates spawned by STO and some XRM and military response spawns. Is there any way to get the Lt.'s to see these types of enemies?

Thanks gazz

[Chaos Master]

I set up 36 cloaked LTs on the south gate in Atreus' Clouds and another 36 at the north gate of Farnham's Legend.
They work like a charm IS, but OOS they don't even decloak.

Running AP with XRM and a bunch of other mods.

/Edit:
hm, weird, they're not uncloaking at all anymore.
At least not for pirates...

/Edit2:
They just uncloaked IS for some Khaak that I lured into range.
But they'll happily ignore pirate ships ...

/Edit3:
did some further testing
when I spawn in Xenon or Kha'ak ships they uncloak and destroy them in less than a second IS and OOS
but Pirate 'patrols' just get ignored even though they appear red for me and are set to enemy in my global settings.
I haven't had any luck spawning in pirates though.
If I select pirates as the owner race, the ship turns out to be boron???
I checked the owner race of one of the ignored pirate ships though, and it says 'Pirate'

Since Pirates are the only reason I'm putting up towers in this location in the first place, this is kind of annoying

/Edit4:
figured out why scripted pirates turned out as other races, they're undercover.
Turned undercover off and they appear red, but LTs still don't uncloak.
Appears like they just ignore Pirates


/Edit5:

I now made a workaround, added the following after these two lines:


$flag = [Find.Enemy] | [Find.ForceUsePos]
$hostiles = find ship: sector=$sector class or type=Moveable Ship race=null flags=$flag refobj=[THIS] maxdist=$sensor.range maxnum=1 refpos=$scan.position

if $hostiles < 1
$flag = [Find.ForceUsePos] // what does that even do?
$hostiles = find ship: sector=$sector class or type=Moveable Ship race=Pirates flags=$flag refobj=[THIS] maxdist=$sensor.range maxnum=1 refpos=$scan.position
end

once the towers were updated by making them decloak and recloak with a xenon or kha'ak, they now kill pirates too.
It's not the best way to do it, since it hard-codes pirates as foes, but for me it works

/Edit6:

didn't test it correctly ...
still doesn't work


/Edit7:

finally got it to work...
didn't think you'd have to update the version number for the updates to take effect ....

also changed
'if $hostiles < 1' to 'if $hostiles == null'
dunno if it would work with the '< 1' version, but don't really care.

if anyone wants to mimic that workaround, don't forget to increase the version number in setup.ring.of.fire, that's the crucial one, but it doesn't appear with the other script files in the script editor because it starts with an s, not a p (that's why I always overlooked it )

pirates now getting fried as they should

[HoPLoN]

I set up 36 cloaked LTs on the south gate in Atreus' Clouds and another 36 at the north gate of Farnham's Legend.
They work like a charm IS, but OOS they don't even decloak.

Running AP with XRM and a bunch of other mods.

/Edit5:

I now made a workaround, added the following after these two lines:


$flag = [Find.Enemy] | [Find.ForceUsePos]
$hostiles = find ship: sector=$sector class or type=Moveable Ship race=null flags=$flag refobj=[THIS] maxdist=$sensor.range maxnum=1 refpos=$scan.position

if $hostiles < 1
$flag = [Find.ForceUsePos] // what does that even do?
$hostiles = find ship: sector=$sector class or type=Moveable Ship race=Pirates flags=$flag refobj=[THIS] maxdist=$sensor.range maxnum=1 refpos=$scan.position
end

once the towers were updated by making them decloak and recloak with a xenon or kha'ak, they now kill pirates too.
It's not the best way to do it, since it hard-codes pirates as foes, but for me it works

/Edit7:

finally got it to work...
didn't think you'd have to update the version number for the updates to take effect ....

also changed
'if $hostiles < 1' to 'if $hostiles != null'
dunno if it would work with the '< 1' version, but don't really care.

if anyone wants to mimic that workaround, don't forget to increase the version number in setup.ring.of.fire, that's the crucial one, but it doesn't appear with the other script files in the script editor because it starts with an s, not a p (that's why I always overlooked it )

pirates now getting fried as they should

I am running XRM with Ap , and have the same problem .

Which script exactly should I put these code lines ?
Can you give some more instructions ?

When you say to update you mean to change setup.ring.of.fire and write version 232 instead of 231 ?

sorry I dont know much about scripting :/

Thanks

[Chaos Master]

It eludes me why I didn't write which file to change

it's plugin.ring.of.fire.stealth

in lines 67 and 68 you have
$flag = [Find.Enemy] | [Find.ForceUsePos]
$hostiles = find ship: sector=$sector class or type=Moveable Ship race=null flags=$flag refobj=[THIS] maxdist=$sensor.range maxnum=1 refpos=$scan.position

after those two lines you add

if $hostiles == null
$flag = [Find.ForceUsePos]
$hostiles = find ship: sector=$sector class or type=Moveable Ship race=Pirates flags=$flag refobj=[THIS] maxdist=$sensor.range maxnum=1 refpos=$scan.position
end


and yes, you change the version number to 232 in all the plugin.ring.of.fire.--- scripts, and the setup.ring.of.fire one

if you're new to scripting it's gonna take you a while to find all those commands (can't just type em, have to select them from a convoluted list of commands)

If you don't get it to work, pm me again tomorrow and I can (somehow) send you the changed files.
Don't really have time today ...