How to Add Damaging Storms

[Suicide Junkie]

1) Create two new races;
- Natural Phenomena 1
- Natural Phenomena 2
They should be enemies with everyone, including each other.
2) Create an asteroid-shaped satellite for use by the new races. It should have a single, unique slot. The sat should be given an inconspicuous name, like "Storm Asteroid".
3) Create a component for that unique slot which provides tons of hitpoints, regeneration and a beam weapon that looks somewhat like a lightning bolt.
4) Seed certain nebulae with these sats. One race above the xy plane, and one below.

The storm asteroids will zap any ships entering the damaging storm, and when no ships are nearby they will zap each other for ambiance!

[General Woundwort]

This brings up a question - I know that there is a limit to the number of races that have system map slots (8), but is there any other built-in limit on the number of races?

[Phoenix-D]

I added a ninth with no problem, so you can definitely go over the number of map slots.

EDIT: the problem here is that PD will fire on these. It'd be better to give them a custom type (if possible) or make them a base. That and they'll show up on radar.

[ October 27, 2003, 18:41: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

[General Woundwort]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
I added a ninth with no problem, so you can definitely go over the number of map slots. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Excellent. This will make things much more interesting in the Triangle Mod... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[Mephisto]

Cool!

[atari_eric]

Any pictures?

[Ed Kolis]

Wouldn't this make nebulas targetable again, like in early betas? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

[Phoenix-D]

It would make the firing objects targetable. OTOH, MM did say he was planning on implimenting cloaking. Depending on how that works out, you might just be able to cloak them.

[Suicide Junkie]

You can always name them "Asteroid".
And with a huge regeneration rate, you won't be able to damage them.

[Suicide Junkie]

Um... I don't know what you're talking about there, but these little storm asteroid lightning generators will be little bitty things off the plane of combat. Nothing worth targetting will be hidden by them, and odds are you won't be able to click them anyways due to their size and location.

And you certainly don't want the player ramming them.

[Ed Kolis]

Yeah, but the point is, then you wouldn't be able to target anything on the other side of a nebula - you'd always end up targeting the individual nebula components instead, which was a pain! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

And cloaking a nebula wouldn't help either - then you just couldn't see it! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

[KRNVR]

On the other hand, if you _could_ target the rocks, and destroy them with a 'mining laser' or such, their 'cargo' of 'storm asteroid crystals' might make a cool trade good. Especially if the TCN paid a good price, but the Amonkrie considered it contraband...

Thanks, Aaron.