detectable weapon fire for cosmetic reasons

[alaricdragon]

There needs to be a way to use the Starmade logic system to check to see if a weapon is 'charging'.
This would allow you to make cool effects with lights and the rail system. For example, having a mini gun type weapon 'spin' while it fires. (Without having it spin all the time) or having a turret have some cool reload animation. (using rails and lights) (and ONLY when the weapon is reloading/charging )

Thoughts?

 

[klawxx]

There needs to be a way to use the Starmade logic system to check to see if a weapon is 'charging'.
This would allow you to make cool effects with lights and the rail system. For example, having a mini gun type weapon 'spin' while it fires. (Without having it spin all the time) or having a turret have some cool reload animation. (using rails and lights) (and ONLY when the weapon is reloading/charging )

Thoughts?

I've heard that weapons fired by logic are doing no damage at this moment. I will test as soon as I can, but fixing that could be a start if its true...

 

[Captain Fortius]

Many systems already have logic outputs.

Weapons can take logic input.

I'd have made the weapon computers output a true signal when they fire. That would be such an easy - and completely expected- thing to do.

The hard part comes after that.

Using logic to give your guns recoil animations via rails would require a further change;
The damnable rail speeds would need to be boosted 5-10 times to their current value. (they're a pain anyway, regardless of what I'm using them for)

In my experiments with logic enhanced weapons I found that even a four-part recoil mechanism - gun on a rail on a rail on a rail - is still moving way too slowly to provide the desired effect.
Same with rotary cannons; rotors can't turn as fast as a 100% cannon-cannon weapon can shoot.

And then there's the problem of a logic triggered weapon not being able to aim, or be used by the AI.
Then the turrets don't work with rail mounted weapons, unless you have a player control them.
Or give the turret a small built-in weapon, but it never turns quite completely towards it's target, so the rail mounted weapon will never score a hit. In case that weapon is not logic triggered, the AI still can't use it, because if there's more than one enemies present, you can rest assured it'll want to aim at a different one than it's parent turret is aming at.

 

[OfficialCoding]

I've heard that weapons fired by logic are doing no damage at this moment. I will test as soon as I can, but fixing that could be a start if its true...

Nope i tested and they deal damage

 

[klawxx]

Nope i tested and they deal damage

Cool! Good info. Thanks.

 

[Lord Daro]

Nope i tested and they deal damage

That's not qiute what I got. With the current setup most weapons fire continuous for as longs as the connected logic block is ON. They deal normal damage to shields but with my setups only the first shot after logic got changed to ON has been able to damage actual blocks.

I do have the offical release installed though. So, maybe it has been fixed in later dev builds.

 

[NeonSturm]

This would be entirely possible if weapon computers have an on/off state.
EDIT: They also on/off themselves when AI controlls the ship/weapon instead of a player via hotbar.

They are set to on when the player fires the weapons or they are toggled on by logic.
They are set to off when a player releases the weapon fire or disabled by logic.

_____________________________________________
But you can also emulate it with logic-buttons in your hotkey list.

I also like to have a "weapon security button".
You may only fire non-lethal weapons (like ion or mining beams).
If you want to fire lethal weapons, one condition must be met:

1. Your shield/ship suffering damage in the last 60 seconds from an entity in the rough firing direction.
   • (currently you can only detect a discharged shield)
2. The target is hostile because the player or faction is.
3. You shoot in the general direction of an AI-ship. Not NPC (with crew), but AI plus marked as drone/missile/etc.
   • (currently impossible to check. Perhaps one day we can detect nearby hostiles via logic to automatically toggle warn-lights on)
4. Firing is manually enabled by pressing a special key or using a special logic-button in your hotkey-list.
   • (currently possible, when you re-route all your weapon-fire actions over logic-buttons. But it's difficult to display charge-state)

All of these conditions toggle the security system off.
It automatically toggles on when you don't use weapons for 20 seconds.

 

[alaricdragon]

Looking at the replies to this post, lots of people are talking about how you can fire weapons with logic, (example: a button linked to a cannon computer) I know this is possible, and that people have even done it in the past. What I'm talking about is making this automatic, so you still control your weapons with your weapons, but you can use logic to make cool effects as you fire weapons.

How this differs from logic controlled weapons is simple;
1) AI and turrets can use this animation, (Instead of only players)
2) You can see and use your weapon the way you normally do. (example looking at the charge of your weapon)

At this time you cant even get your other ships to have fancy lights turn on when they fire there cannons. Yes, there are ways to detect if there is an enemy around with some logic magic i don't understand, but that's not the same thing.

 

[Captain Fortius]

I was saying that detecting that signal is the easy part. Actually using it for something would be the hard part, as the current AI would need to be taught quite a few tricks to do anything with a weapon that's made of two or more docked entities.

But I do agree, it'd be cool if it worked.