Ripper Beams

[Omega]

They are in fact there. You need to turn off the “only latest” option in order to see them. They are in the same weapon family as the wave motion gun. The incinerator beam is the same way.

[Lisif Deoral]

For some reasons, ripper beams (and incinirator beams) are "made obsolete" by Wave Motion Guns. Switch off "only latest" view and you'll find the rippers.

P.S.: Good timing, Omega Next time we'll have to use the same words

[This message has been edited by Lisif (edited 09 June 2001).]

Thanks. I didn't think of that. I guess it was a dumb question.

[Alpha Kodiak]

This is frustrating in AI design, since ripper beams and WMGs have significantly different characteristics, but you can't tell the AI to use ripper beams or incinerator beams on a design once you have WMGs, and conversly, you can't tell the AI to use some other long range weapon until you have WMGs researched. At least unless someone else has figured out something I haven't.

[Droplede]

Anybody played with separating ripper and incinerator beams from the WMG research chain? It seems like a good idea, given their totally different ranges and reload rates. Perhaps creating a new base research area at the same level (and total eventual cost) as rippers, that then leads to WMGs?

Of course, it's a tech mod, so massive AI rejiggering would have to ensue. So maybe it's not worth it.

[Marty Ward]

You should be able to split them up fairly easily. I think the reason they don't show up at higher levels is because they all have the same family and weapons family numbers. These numbers determine what shows up as a component when using "only latest" and which weapons the aI puts on ships.
I think if these numbers were different for each weapon you could get the AI to include all the types of weapons.

[jc173]

I think Marty hit the nail on the head. Easiest thing to do is to give incinerator beams, ripper beams, and WMG's different family and weapon numbers. That way the WMG won't automatically replace the ripper beam when the AI decides to upgrade/build new designs. This would leave the research queues intact, all you would have to do is swap weapon numbers in the AI's design creation files. I suppose if you wanted to you could even design ships with a primary armament of ripper beams backed up by one or two WMG's which might be kind of interesting. I'm about 85% sure it should work just fine.

[This message has been edited by jc173 (edited 10 June 2001).]