Idea for jumpdrive. Talking about ammunition

[Dongaio]

I have idea for new jumpdrive.
1) Ship can jump only on a straight line. If you are in Argon Prime, you can jump to Home of Light or Ore belt but if you want to jump to Red Light you should make 2 jumps because Argon Prime and Red Light are not on the straight line of sectors.
2) Bigger ships shold make jumping slower than small ships. You can make different jump-timers for different classes but it would be better to use ship's volume. Ships have volume that can be useful if ships could be a goods in the cargobay. It is useless value in original game but it is easy to edit value for every ship.

I discover some useful information about guns that use ammunition and bullet types.
There are many bullet types that wasn't use in original X2. I'll write a list of all bulle types that I know for now.

0. Standart bullet type. It uses by many common guns (like ire, PPC)
1. does not differ from the first type. It uses by P.A.C. gamma only.
2. Ray. it uses by K.E. and OL.
4. Tentacle. You can see that tentacle when ID missing any target but type 4 is a tentacle always.
8. it has AoE effect and works correct only with body ID 225 (PSG's bullet). If body ID doesn't have animation it can't damage any target. Animation must consist of three shots.
20. This type uses by ID.
32. Bullet like type 0 but damages shield and damages through a shield at the same time.
34. Ray that penetrates through a shield (does not damage shields)
36. tentacle that penetrates throgth a shild
40. Bullet like type 8 but damages shield and damages through a shield.
42. Ray that damages shield and damages through a shield
44. Bulllet like type 20 but penetrates through a shield
64. Bullet like type 0 but needs amunition.
66. Ray that needs in ammunition
68. Bullet like type 20 but needs amunition
72. Bullet like type 8 but needs amunition
96. Bullet that penetrates through a shield and needs amunition. It uses by mass driver.

As amunition you can use any goods that are in the file TWareT and they have MainType 16. I don't know how to to use any goods with different Maintype (all missiles, energy cells, ore, water etc.). Subtype of goods that use as amunition is a value №27 of string in the file TBullets.pck. If you use X2editor to look this file you can see that value as "volume". Massdriver's bullet has sybtype 50. If you change this value to 5 you'll get gun that shoots spacefles. If you change this value to 1, you'll get gun that shoots crystals. One item of any amunition contains 200 bullets and I don't know how to change this value without spesial soft (this soft makes game unstable so I don't use it in spite of that it has huge abilities). NPC's ships needs amunition to firing only in active sector so now I work on scripts that will give amunition to ship in active sector if ship wants to shoot. Also I work on some guns that shoots missiles. Amunintion is a box that produses by factory from missiles also I use crystals and quantum tubes as a linses for my lisers.

[Chris Gi]

Thank you for the information on the Bullets, this might be useful. To make things a little clearer, here is a nice little bit of information on those bullet types:
http://www.xwiki.chaos.net.nz/TBullets_file_%28X3%29

Look for the "Bullet flags" explanation. I don't think flag 256 will work on X2. But I'm sure flag 128 (Repair laser) will work (though I never tried it).

We already have an (more or less) elaborated concept of changes to the Jumpdrive.

Ship can jump only on a straight line.

Why this? I don't see any point in this restriction. Besides, if you use a 3d galaxy map, "straight lines" become a more or less artificial concept.

Bigger ships shold make jumping slower than small ships.

Very interesting concept. In vanilla X2, this can't be done. In Pandora, we can make this possible.
But instead of volume, I would prefer size, because it reflects the apparent (visual) size of a ship (and the game gives this value without the need to edit any file).

[Shadow dream]

some bullet types won't work correctly.
f.i if I give the PIK the bullet ID 8 it won't damage anything.
I got this phenomen once when I tested those settings.

I just did a new try-out with bullet ID 164 = Zigzag + Ignore shields + repair (following Chris' link). result: the laser does the zigzag, but it doesn't repair anything. it hurt the shields too.
basicly this thing works, but it doen't do what it should.

Shadow

[Dongaio]

As I have already said type 8 works correctly ONLY with bullet's body that has animation. In vanilla X2 only body with ID 225 has animation. Other body will looks nice but doesn't make any damage. That link are about X3 and some information could be incorrect for X2. Flag 128 is a common flag for most of guns like IRE and PPC. Only mass driver doesn't use this flag. To use repair laser you can try to set hull and shield damage below of zero. In addition repair laser must be instaled manually on the ships or by using some scripts. If you set for some ship as posible gun in all turrets only repair laser you'll see that NPC's ship will has empty gunslots. Olso I don't know how to teach NPC to use this kind of gun right. I didn't make any tests of repair laser but I'm afraid NPC will perceive repair as aggressive action.

P.S. I recommend to set lifetime for rays below 0,4 sec or some of this lasers makes lagging even powerful computers.

Thank you for that link, it makes some things really clearer.

[Graceburn]

So jumpdrives are going to be included in the mod now? I thought we were only having 2 included ingame?

[Shadow dream]

Chris has worked out the most complex solution for this: The player should be able to say, how he likes the Junpdrive. how much energy which shipclass needs, how far you can jump max.,... it's qute cool

Shadow