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[Digganob]

I am planning on making a mod which would involve a special missile weapon that can pierce shields, asking more experience modders (I have no experience myself), is such a mechanic possible to implement? Would it require any special programming a rookie like me wouldn't know how to do immediately?

[Ruddygreat]

it does require programming but it's pretty easy (for a basic piercing effect), CombatEngineAPI.spawnEmpArcPierceShields() will summon an emp arc (like the ion beam or tachyon lance's) that pierces shields & deals damage centered around a nearby weapon / engine slot.

Alternatively (and much more complicatedly), you could use CombatEngineAPI.applyDamage() & some fancy maths to deal damage in the "correct" place on the enemy ship's hull, given the current projectile's trajectory.

either way you'll need an onHitEffect for your new weapon, the vanilla game has some simple examples that you can draw on for setting that up.

[Digganob]

it does require programming but it's pretty easy (for a basic piercing effect), CombatEngineAPI.spawnEmpArcPierceShields() will summon an emp arc (like the ion beam or tachyon lance's) that pierces shields & deals damage centered around a nearby weapon / engine slot.

Alternatively (and much more complicatedly), you could use CombatEngineAPI.applyDamage() & some fancy maths to deal damage in the "correct" place on the enemy ship's hull, given the current projectile's trajectory.

either way you'll need an onHitEffect for your new weapon, the vanilla game has some simple examples that you can draw on for setting that up.

Sounds like I could make a missile that practically pierces shields, but could I make one that actually looks like it pierces? Like, it just goes over the shield the same way a fighter does, but hits the hull?

[Amoebka]

One dirty way to do that is to run an every frame script that checks if the missile will collide with something shielded on its next frame. If it does, change its collision type to NONE and make it explode after N frames, where you calculate N based on the shield radius. You will have to decide how to handle glancing hits, where the missile would have connected with the shield, but not the ship behind it.

[Digganob]

One dirty way to do that is to run an every frame script that checks if the missile will collide with something shielded on its next frame. If it does, change its collision type to NONE and make it explode after N frames, where you calculate N based on the shield radius. You will have to decide how to handle glancing hits, where the missile would have connected with the shield, but not the ship behind it.

My, that does sound quite dirty. If I don't find a better way to do it, I think I'll just have to have an on-hit effect that applies to ship hull even if it hits the shields, as the first guy said. It might look odd but I suppose it would work for my purposes. Though, thank you for the suggestion, I might be able to work out something good from doing it that way.

[StargazerRJL]

Has anyone found a nice clean way to do this? I would love to make this possible for my Halo mod.

[Mephansteras]

Check out the StarFed mod. I'm pretty sure it's got some missiles in it that pierce shields. Especially since it's based off of FTL, where missiles piercing shields is one of their big advantages. It also has beams that pierce shields, if I recall.

I just checked and it does have the source for its systems just included with the mod, so you should be able to go in and see how it was done there.

[Wyvern]

There's also a shield-piercing projectile as a built-in weapon the Shadowyards mod's Mimir-class battlecruiser.

[float]

You could also take the “reinventing the wheel” approach, setting your projectiles’ collision class to NONE and writing your own ray (or circle if the projectile is slow enough) collision function.