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Author Topic: Phase messes with weapon triggers  (Read 2266 times)

Schwartz

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Phase messes with weapon triggers
« on: December 01, 2014, 12:39:43 PM »

Example: Put a few antimatter blasters on a phase frigate and run a simulation. If phase cloaking and de-cloaking happens very close to firing (if you're a twitchy kind of solo player, this happens a lot), it can occur that the phase-switch overrides firing of the guns. However, they'll still run through their whole cooldown period without having fired a shot.
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Alex

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Re: Phase messes with weapon triggers
« Reply #1 on: December 01, 2014, 01:46:25 PM »

Phasing interrupts the gun firing, so it goes to the cooldown phase. I don't think putting in special rules around this would be a good idea; the same sort of thing should happen if you interrupt firing by venting, for example. It doesn't have to be particularly close to the firing of the gun, btw, just any time during the charge-up phase.
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Dark.Revenant

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Re: Phase messes with weapon triggers
« Reply #2 on: December 01, 2014, 03:29:17 PM »

In a similar vein: if you try firing a charge-up weapon (particularly charge-up burst beams, like the Deva CAS in Shadowyards) while you are teleporting (even in the OUT phase, while the ship is fading in) the weapon will use up all of its flux, enter a partial cooldown state, and fire nothing.  Very annoying, especially since you're not actually interrupting the weapon; you're trying to fire it after moving in for the kill.  This might happen with unphasing as well, but I haven't tested that.
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Schwartz

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Re: Phase messes with weapon triggers
« Reply #3 on: December 01, 2014, 06:49:57 PM »

Sure, the explanation makes sense. But it's not really a fun mechanic, it just effectively gimps you for clicking at the wrong time. If it's just a measure to make sure you don't exploit phase too much, then by all means extend the no-fire period a bit more before and after phasing. But giving us a cooldown for not really doing anything, that's just weird. Antimatter Blaster is the worst offender here because it takes so damn long to reload.

Also: If you have two Antimatter Blasters and they're set to alternating, it can happen that you click very fast, switch back and forth between them but never actually fire, even though one of the two is readied up. It might have something to do with this weapon 'warmup' as well.
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Alex

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Re: Phase messes with weapon triggers
« Reply #4 on: December 01, 2014, 07:40:47 PM »

In a similar vein: if you try firing a charge-up weapon (particularly charge-up burst beams, like the Deva CAS in Shadowyards) while you are teleporting (even in the OUT phase, while the ship is fading in) the weapon will use up all of its flux, enter a partial cooldown state, and fire nothing.  Very annoying, especially since you're not actually interrupting the weapon; you're trying to fire it after moving in for the kill.  This might happen with unphasing as well, but I haven't tested that.

Ahh, that's actually a bug specifically with beam weapons. It'd also use up weapon ammo very rapidly without firing anything. Fixed.

Sure, the explanation makes sense. But it's not really a fun mechanic, it just effectively gimps you for clicking at the wrong time. If it's just a measure to make sure you don't exploit phase too much, then by all means extend the no-fire period a bit more before and after phasing. But giving us a cooldown for not really doing anything, that's just weird. Antimatter Blaster is the worst offender here because it takes so damn long to reload.

Lots of things punish you for clicking at the wrong time, no? I think this works out - you start firing a weapon like the AM blaster, you're committed for about half a second until it fires, but you can abort at the cost of wasting the cooldown on it. That's of course subjective/arguable, but definitely not a bug, so not arguable here :)


Also: If you have two Antimatter Blasters and they're set to alternating, it can happen that you click very fast, switch back and forth between them but never actually fire, even though one of the two is readied up. It might have something to do with this weapon 'warmup' as well.

Fairly sure that this happens only when they're on cooldown - it'll keep switching when you click, but it won't fire because they can't fire. Or are you seeing a case where you can skip ready-to-fire AM blasters by clicking quickly? I can't seem to reproduce that.
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Schwartz

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Re: Phase messes with weapon triggers
« Reply #5 on: December 01, 2014, 07:48:21 PM »

Yes, the latter. I'll try it again some more, but I'm pretty sure it has happened before.

Anyway, about the cooldown thing - fair enough. ;)
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