CIWS - possible or not?

[Fokker]

Alright, so I was playing around trying to get some CIWS (Close-In Weapon System) gun emplacements on the test frigate for the HW2 DYRL TC. The goal, of course, is to have several CIWS emplacements to take out incoming ordnance - mainly big missiles.

However, this isn't working at all. I have not yet been able to get the guns to fire on incoming missiles (even new custom missiles).

Is it possible to create a true CIWS gun that fires on incoming missiles, or is it hardcoded that missiles cannot be attacked?

(I still have some testing to do, however, to check a few things... been juggling HW2 dev work with actual on-the-side freelance work...)

[Luapo]

I don't know the exact details, but it has been said that the ship in question shooting down the missiles needs to have the minelaying ability.

[Uranium - 235]

I'm interested too. I set the guns to be able to target munitons, set the missile from 'unattackable' to 'muniton', and really nothing that I can see happened. Anyone with a solution gets to be my friend for a day.

[Supernova]

process for making missiles "targetable"

Change the attack family in the *.miss file from, unattackable to say, munition or something (familylist.lua allows you to see what families you can put in there, and you can add new ones if you want).

Add the minelayer ability to the ships you wish to be able to shoot down missiles.

Make a weapon that has both, shootatsorroundings, and shootatsecondaries enabled, information can be found on the HW2 wiki (which is found here (http://hw2.tproc.org/wiki/KarosGraveyard) )

load up hw2, pray you made no mistakes, and then, once hw2 crashes, find out what your mistake was by checking the hw2.log file, and hope you solve it.

Sorry this is a really poor explanation, when I have the time, er with luck maybe friday night, I can write up a few anti-missile weapons systems and ships for example.

[Uranium - 235]

Out of curiosity what the hell does a minelayer have to do with anything? I've never ever built a minelayer (Namely beacuse they're LAME) so...

Oh here's something he forgot ;) In your .ship file, for say I want to give my carrier REAL UTLIMATE POWER...

addAbility(NewShipType,"CanAttack",1,1,0,0,0.35,1,"Fighter, Corvette, Frigate, SmallCapitalShip, BigCapitalShip, Utility","JustShoot")


Add "Munition" somewhere in there. You'll probably want it to be the first item on the list (highest priority). This should, if it doesn't already, allow the carrier to freely target missiles.

[Retroboy]

One other quick note in case you're thinking of working with other projectiles - some Relicker noted that projectiles (such as laser shots) are not in any way targetable or damageable in the game. You may be able to have anti-missile fire apparently, but cannot have anti-shot capability.

-- Retro

[FluxX]

You can have a shield interception of bullets however :) ...

But, they don't acctually intercept, just affect hit percentage.

The bullets are just GFX and so have no hardpoints ect to target.

[Ta_erog]

Another problem I have been haveing is getting beams to hit missiles . . for whatever reason only bursts kill missiles. :wtf2: And t he minelayer thing realliy is strange but it works.

Look here for a working anti-missile ship (the defence ship for want of a better name at the moment) Feel free to use it, and don't forget the Weapon files.

Hw2 Fleet engagement MOD 0.51 Beta (http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=311626#post311626)

[varis]

There are many mods with working anti-missile defenses. SNL Station has both the missile defense corvette and also the GCV that is able to do anti-missile defense.

The minelayer ability stems from the fact that Relic often made the units as one-shot special items. They needed the Minelayer units to have an ability to sweep clear minefields, therefore they have a gun that is able to shoot at munitions, and the munitions attack family. I bet mines are even attackable by default, missiles aren't. And they used the minelayer ability as an indicator that the unit indeed should do this kind of stuff - no problems as it was the only unit that needed this behaviour.

You could have destroyable gunshots, but your gun needs to be a missile weapon. For example the Pop gun on my Siege cruiser is really a rocket-style weapon, the pop missile is not attackable though.

If you have trouble, you could try Munition as the only family in the CanAttack thing. BTW if you get a proper howto written for this put it in wiki, lots of people have been asking for this and we have multiple threads on the same subject.

[Ta_erog]

Also, it is quite possable to change the Missile's attack famly to "missile". This allows you to truely target ONLY missiles or only the missiles you want to target.

[Supernova]

Originally posted by Ta_erog
Also, it is quite possable to change the Missile's attack famly to "missile". This allows you to truely target ONLY missiles or only the missiles you want to target.

make sure to edit your familylist.lua file and add the missile attack family, or else you'll get an express trip to the desktop lol

[Langy]

Question: With the minelayer ability, is there a way to make it so the ship isn't actually able to launch mines? Such as not having any mine weapons on the ship or somesuch? I'm currently having some major computer problems and don't have access to any of my HW2 stuff so I can't find out for myself...

[wraith]

I haven't had any luck with pulsars shooting down missiles. I think it is because even with accuracy set to 1 that it still doesn't register a hit.

With the minesweeper burst, the burst that destroys the missile appears to be generated by the miss event rather than the hit event.

I have tried a sphere burst on a pulsar(on a miss event) but this doesn't work. There appears to be a deployment time on the sphere burst as though still attached to a projectile rather than light speed depoloyment off the pulsar.

[Supernova]

hmmm.........

In hw1, the effect files were fired (if animated, such as ion beams etc) every 1/16th of a second.

Now thats a tiny amount of time, but, I believe that when the pulsar files it automatically is registered as a hit, and then 1/16th or so seconds later, it fires the effect and thats just enough time to miss.

Try making the missile UBER slow, and see if it'll hit, also, try attaching a battle cruiser hod to a very slow firing missile and see if it'll hit.

[Ta_erog]

It really might not have a full colision mesh (like the other Projectiles). . that's why only area effect is the only thing that can damage it. . . .

[wraith]

Is there any way of creating a full collision mesh? Is is a part of the HOD?
Am I correct in assuming that it takes the same physical dimensions as the actual model it is atached to?

[Ta_erog]

Yup, people can do it . . .
we should check it first . . but it seems to make sense.

[Fokker]

My CIWS emplacements are now fully functional (well, I still need to do new effects for them), and have no problem responding to incoming waves of RMS-1 missiles at a velocity of around 800 m/s or more, or waves of Starstrikes, which travel at around 1200 m/s or so.

So no problems with so-called "fast" missiles. The ones in HW2 already are "uber-slow", actually; they only travel b/t 300 and 600 m/s (Mach 1 in atmosphere is 340 m/s, so they're not even doing teh equivalent of Mach 2)
:p

[Ta_erog]

1. what sort of CIWS emplacements?
2. Are you useing bursts?
3. If you are not useing bursts, how did you get it to work?? :blink:

[Fokker]

On a related note - does anyone know how to fix the wierd movements which manifest themselves when you have high-velocity missiles? Is there some "limit" that was in mind for HW2 (i.e., some number which they didn't expect to exceed so if you go above it they start acting up)?


As to the CIWS emplacements:

They are Phalanx-stlyle gatlings mounted in fast-tracking turrets - no bursts, just long streams of bullets. Hehe...

Basically I just set 'em up with the special capabilities outlined here: minelayer ability on the ship, added munition into attack priority list for the ship, made the guns shootAtSecondaries and shootAtSurroundings, as well as making the guns trackOutOfArc, UseVelocityPred, and have very high turn rates for the turrets and a very high ROF.

[wraith]

What rate of fire are you using? What accuracy have you set the CIWS to? Finally, does the stream explode the missile at the beginning/middle or randomly along the the streams length?

I have been using a destroyer as my test bed and have a reasonably high fire rate for the pulsar and they track (whilst firing) from the maximum range of the turrets all the way to the hull. I have never hit a missile. It is quite frustrating ;)

[Ta_erog]

wraith - my results too

and the reason I asked Fokker is because if you are hitting t hem with normal projectiles they should be able to be hit by anything. (ie can be hit)

Thus there is no reason why instant hit and/or accuracy=1 weapons should ever miss them.

But, it seems there is some more going on here . . what I don't know . .

[Fokker]

Hmmm... my CIWS emplacements on player-controlled ships seem to no longer be functioning. CPU ships have no problem taking out waves of incoming missiles. I'll see about getting those working now...

I've also discovered teh problem with high-velocity missiles - the rotation maximum velocity was too high, causing problems.

[Supernova]

make sure to press 'F4' :)

[Fokker]

Found the problem - well, not specifically yet, but it has something to do with how ships pick targets and attack commands.

Basically, ships set on agressive tactics will use their CIWS emplacements for defense and their missile batteries for offense if I leave them alone or give them move orders; however, if I issue attack orders, they will no longer utilize the CIWS guns and will only use their anti-ship missile launchers (right now the test ships are armed only with launchers and CIWS emplacements)

Also, the CIWS guns usually destroy the missiles before the visible rounds actually hit them ,though I think this is only an effect discrepancy.

[wraith]

I think that the problem with the pulsars is the instanthit option. Fokkers use of the bullets is correct. Substituting the bullet for instant hit allow the CIWS to hit the targeted missiles. The problem with this is that you lose the beam effect even though I specified the laser file. What you get is a glowing blue bullet, quite nice but not what I was after.

I also found that my CIWS won't fire at missiles aimed at another ship. This is related to Fokkers problem, I haven't tried to sought them out yet.

[wraith]

Does anybody know what the protocol is for the instanthit function and how it might vary from the bullet profile?