Modding the VoidExpanse

[Lurler]

Mass of the ship does affect acceleration. Since we are using real physics it simply works as you'd expect in reality - more massive objects require more energy to be pumped into to give them momentum. Basically normal inertia.

As for your formulas - everything is exactly right

[Hammish]

Awesome.

NEXT QUICK QUESTION: How does the damage calculation for beams go?  From what I can tell, the damage listed is per second.  So...

If I set a beam to 50 damage, 1s duration, it'll do 50 damage over 1s.
If I set a beam to 50 damage, 2s duration, it'll do 100 damage over 2s (50 DPS).

So how much damage will the beam do if I set it to 50 damage, 0.5s?  I'm not sure if it'll do 50 in half the time, or just 25 and waste the rest.

Edit: I think I figured out what my issue was.  I made a pulse laser and forgot to set projectile type to 1, so it was trying to calc it as a per-shot weapon. >.>

[Lurler]

Yes, the beam damage is per second. The duration doesn't matter in this case.
Armor also works per second in case of beam weapons.

[Hammish]

Good to know on the armor.  I had suspected, but y'know.

And just means a bit more math for me, on any beam under 1.0 duration, really.  For instance, on the pulse lasers I wanted them to do 50 over 0.5 sec, so I set the damage to 100 and voila, issue solved!

[Hammish]

Next odd question for when you guys have a second or two.

For beam weapons, does duration_prepare and duration_complete actually affect damage numbers, or do they just impact the visual effect of the beam?

[Lurler]

Yes, these are only for visual effects.

[Hammish]

Just the answer I was hoping for.  You can make some cool wobbly pulse lasers by using the grow/shrink look of them.

[Hammish]

QOTD: Is it possible to adjust character level higher than 1 when creating a new character?

I ask this merely for the purposes of creating test characters.  It's a pain to either level a character and hunt down the stuff I want to test/experiment on or temporarily drop the usable levels on items/skills down to 1.

[Lurler]

Hm. IIRC - no

But you can use cheat command in SP that would make you into an almost top level character.
Here's how: (/pwn)

[FlessenGreendart]

Haha, brilliant command!

That'll come in handy when testing ships. On that note, do you have an add hull command? As it is at the moment, I'm having to drop the price of the hull, and throw in a civillian flag

[Lurler]

Yes, there are a lot of different commands available, all of them are listed in our wiki here - http://wiki.atomictorch.com/Main_Page

[FlessenGreendart]

Brilliant, thanks for that, that'll make test a lot easier!

[Hammish]

That is indeed awesome and a huge help.  All of it.

And my question for the day (it's been a while!):  Is there any way to set the Z-layer for weapon effects?  I've noticed they always seem to draw under the ship, at least the ones I do, and that looks odd for weapon fire coming from top-mounted turrets.

[Lurler]

Well, when you define weapon position you can set any Z value. Then the fire will be coming our of that position on the ship. As with other weapons that are already in the game. It is defined in the weapon slots of a ship. A particular XYZ position.

[Hammish]

Right, that I get, but even for weapons that are mounted on the top, some of my effects seem to appear drawn under the ship.

Example: the energy hardpoint on the Shuttle is coords -0.227;0.000;-0.203, so from the cockpit it's toward the back and elevated slightly.  Should be well above the centerline of the ship (since it's a roof-mounted turret).  But if I fire a non-beam projectile from it, the projectile isn't visible until it move out from the location occupied by the ship; for all intents and purposes the shot appears to be either inside or under the ship, instead of originating above it.

Not a huge priority for you guys, it just looks a little jarring to me now that I've noticed it.  For smaller, darker shots it barely even registers but you can see the effect clearly if you use a slow-moving missile projectile or a brighter sprite.