XR / X4 - are powering-up beams possible in game engine

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mr.WHO
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XR / X4 - are powering-up beams possible in game engine

Post by mr.WHO » Sat, 19. Aug 17, 09:05

Currently in X-Rebirth we have Plasma/Jet weapons, that are not enirely beam like (but they are still cool in their own way).

I wonder if XR/X4 engine is capable of having powering up/ powering down beams like in Freespace?
Here are the examples (ship in the center):

https://youtu.be/dIN9D6iU_94?t=6m23s

https://youtu.be/wDH82rjouf0?t=35s

Basically it looks like that:
- before firing the beam has to "charge up"
- beam fire in continous stream
- beam "charge down"


I also wonder what are technical limitations behind beams? If I remember correctly in X3 game engine beams weren't good weapons, beause they cause significant FPS drop.

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Post by Athraku » Sat, 19. Aug 17, 10:16

I'm sure it could be even added to X3.

Will they?, I'm not sure how much it would add to the game or if it would just turn the game into X-Star trek

Any reason besides it looks cool?
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Post by RAVEN.myst » Sat, 19. Aug 17, 10:27

Athraku wrote:Any reason besides it looks cool?
Variety. Different tactical options/approaches, each with advantages and disadvantages. More varied play styles accommodated. More creativity supported/facilitated.

And, of course, aesthetics ("looks cool") :D
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Athraku
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Post by Athraku » Sat, 19. Aug 17, 11:01

Not sure it would offer any tactical option unless you could choose if the ship was going to charge weapons or fire before fully charged and I don't see that happening.

More than likely just adding a bit of flare and variety to the existing weapons and since it felt like we got less variety with X Rebirth compared to X-3/AP as far as weapon types and ship load outs it wouldn't be a bad thing. :)
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Post by thrangar » Sat, 19. Aug 17, 20:14

Athraku wrote:Not sure it would offer any tactical option unless you could choose if the ship was going to charge weapons or fire before fully charged and I don't see that happening.

More than likely just adding a bit of flare and variety to the existing weapons and since it felt like we got less variety with X Rebirth compared to X-3/AP as far as weapon types and ship load outs it wouldn't be a bad thing. :)

I see this as big advantage to defence of sector, a large ship that just jumped in is going to have to recharge while a ship sitting in sector will be ready fatser...I guess it depends on how much damage...still on the surface it looks like Raven has a point or 2

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Post by Alan Phipps » Sat, 19. Aug 17, 20:57

It could be an interesting tactic if you could use a powering-up scene to assist in targeting and fast-attacking a powerful weapon site before it even fired. I'm reminded of the original Independence Day film missions against the powering up city-killers of the big alien invasion ships as an OTT example.
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Post by Athraku » Sat, 19. Aug 17, 22:46

Alan Phipps wrote:It could be an interesting tactic if you could use a powering-up scene to assist in targeting and fast-attacking a powerful weapon site before it even fired. I'm reminded of the original Independence Day film missions against the powering up city-killers of the big alien invasion ships as an OTT example.

Yes but I would think that would be likely how that weapon behaves every time it's fired and not changed to give a tactical advantage so then is just used for a look more than say... Charging for aiming at large targets while for small target it just fires an uncharged round instead, increasing its rate of fire at the cost of damage.... saying that it would be an interesting weapon if it behaved like that. :o
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Post by Rei Ayanami » Sun, 20. Aug 17, 00:10

Athraku wrote:Any reason besides it looks cool?
As a player who highly enjoyed the Freespace series, i can say that the few seconds when you distinctively hear an enemy cruiser loudly charging up its large beam weapons and you, sitting in your puny little fighter, think "please don't aim at me, please don't aim at me, please don't aim at me" are some of the most exiting moments i had in space combat games, not to mention the "oh, sh*t!" adrenaline rush when it actually fires at you but it misses by a few cm.
Or when your quad is assigned to actually destroy these beam weapons before they can shoot down another capital vessel, you'll pray for every second they take longer to charge up while your torpedoes/bombs are on the way to destroy them.

In short : Compared to instant-firing beams, timed charge-up beams often provide more exiting combat experiences.

However, that doesn't mean that every beam weapon, or even every weapon in general, needs charge-up time. Freespace for example had some beam weapons that were weaker in damage, had no charge-up time and were for shooting down fast fighters.

And of course, not every weapon should be a beam weapon, that would be boring :roll: I love beam weapons, but there are some games that way overdo it and only focus on beam weapons, which isn't that great.
mr.WHO wrote:I also wonder what are technical limitations behind beams? If I remember correctly in X3 game engine beams weren't good weapons, beause they cause significant FPS drop.
Programming-wise it shouldn't be that hard.
Basically you'd have to give a weapon component different attributes, like
- A Weapon state attribute : idle, powering_up, firing, cooling_down
- A Weapon Timer : a floating point number that handles the charging-up time, fire duration and cooldown duration of the weapon
and then a few functions to handle the different states and firing command when the ai or player wants to fire the weapon.

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Post by Sandalpocalypse » Sun, 20. Aug 17, 05:31

there's already charging weapons in the game, i doubt it would be difficult for egosoft.
Irrational factors are clearly at work.

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Post by Tolmos » Wed, 23. Aug 17, 06:35

Yea, the engine already has support for the actual mechanic, just not in beam weapon form. When you manually control the Point Singularity Projector turrets, you can choose how much you want to charge them before firing.

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Post by Sparky Sparkycorp » Wed, 23. Aug 17, 08:53

Tolmos wrote:Yea, the engine already has support for the actual mechanic, just not in beam weapon form. When you manually control the Point Singularity Projector turrets, you can choose how much you want to charge them before firing.
Devs have said that X4 is being built with XR as the engine starting point. Whilst capital ship weapon charging could in principle be a part of X4, X3 turret abilities don't confirm that possibility.

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Post by spankahontis » Sat, 26. Aug 17, 00:56

Alan Phipps wrote:It could be an interesting tactic if you could use a powering-up scene to assist in targeting and fast-attacking a powerful weapon site before it even fired. I'm reminded of the original Independence Day film missions against the powering up city-killers of the big alien invasion ships as an OTT example.

That would be a cool option, you can order Defence Officers to charge up the weapons.
Plus side it would do a ton of base damage and surrounding da,age.
The Negative side it takes time and by then an enemy ship could take out the turret with a missile strike.

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