Staggered firing advance cannons

[Kitty Soldier]

Heya! i been trying (like many) to create advance cannon turrets with multiple advance cannons inside. for both aesthetic purposes, and creating more of a stream than a shotgun effect, i was wondering if there is any way to reliably stagger multi firepiece turrets. anything is alright, be it vanilla game mechanics that i have overlooked, Lua (i have not dived into programming in From the Depths, so im not sure what features and limits there are to it) or even a mod that allows for such a function

so far, i tried setting a fire delay with the slider. this goes alright for the first volley of bullets... but of course, because it delays every single bullet, rather than the time between pressing the fire button and the cannon actually responding to it, the cannons simply fall out of sync (can anyone tell me what the purpose of this is? its basically similair to the RPM slider, only requiring less calculation to use)

i tried to google this, and this problem goes back several years, with not thread so far offering a reliable solution. some suggest using a Local Weapon Controller for every gun barrel, and then setting each firing range slightly longer or shorter than the next, causing each cannon to start firing slightly later or sooner than the last. this is difficult to do, as the game sees the turret assembly as one piece. not even mentioning that it doesnt lok quite as clean ;3

others suggest both a fire delay on the extra fire pieces, and a fire delay on the Local Weapon Controller. this is both a hard thing to set up (why did they use rounds per second instead of rounds per minute >w<) and only allows the computer to reliably shoot multi fire piece turrets... and so far, i havent been able to set it up.
and when i did attempt it on a AA dual chaingun turret, and setting the RPS on the local weapon controller to 1 round per second, it did fire a round per second... from both turrets... once again, this is because as far as i can see, either the game or the local weapon controller sees the turret as one piece

so far, thats the only solutions i could find, with nothing being reliable, or from this year even... there has to be a solution to this

am i overlooking something in the mechanics? is there a simple piece of lua code that can do this? is there a mod to add this mechanic to the game? please tell! <3

[dragonsphotoworks]

Hmm only thing i could think of would drasticly increase size of turret... And would make harder to target probably...

Is when build a multi gun turret is make each barrel its own gun? As in Build a "turret" add one gun piece to it but no ammo. So doesnt shoot. Have it aim at targets like normal. Then build a sperate turret inside.

Hmm how to say better.... basicially turret armor you see is one turret and all does is move for optical use. Then build a tower inside with a T on top. Build it inside aromered section. Then for each barrel you wanted make it its own turret and gun system?
So fake turret for looks that turns...
And internal but seprate gun turrets to shoot.

So if want 4 barrels. place one horizonal movement turret for armor ad gun piece so will "aim" but no ammo so no wierd shoots. Then inside hidden would be 4 more turrets with own fireing piece. Then place some ACB blocks to fire each in series?

I have zero idea how would work out or if possible. But just off top of my head one thing i thought of. Small turrets would be impossible i think. But for large or huge ones MIGHT work. As have 1 ACB per "gun" and then one to control all the blocks? Might need LUA? i havent touched much into ACB so dont know their limits.

But ya this idea would be a pain in.... to do but only way i personnal could think of. Hopefully some one be better idea comes soon hehehe

[Kitty Soldier]

So, if i understand correctly, your idea is to have every barrel be fake, but since its on the same turret, they would all aim anyway. The Local Weapon Controller doesnt care if the gun is loaded or not. So the idea here is that every barrel is fake, and there are four more cannons on the inside? Whats the difference between a firing piece inside the turret than to one sticking out?

Your idea however sounds creative, and i havent seen that solution over all the forum posts and discussions i have been through :3. But it also sounds like it would make turrets either huge, or complex, and thus not really fiable for smaller or compacter turrets where space is in short supply

-----------------

I was thinking ACB too, especially because in the devtest, they added many improvenements to them, so im not sure if they have a solution. I am gonna try after work! But still... This isnt a complicated problem that affects a handful of people, and this isnt a recent problem... Yet i dont see a ton of discussion on it! I feel like there is a solution to it, but that im just being a dummy, and looking straight over it >~<

Do developers talk on the steam forum? Can i ask one of the devs or moderators if there is such an solution coming with future updates? :3

[dragonsphotoworks]

No i didnt come across correctly. And i forget devs name "i deal with a few on bunch of games so im bad with names hehe but.."

1. Ya i have seen him speak. i was gone for over year and came back i think 2 weeks ago now. BUT in past i was able talk to dev by emails. He helped me with my game alot. This gonna sound clisha "misspelled lol" but best spot be on official forums. I dont have link but should be pinned.

Ok what i ment for turret is only ONE false turret. Think of "Turret" as two pieces.
1. Piece is the outter body of turret. "when you look at turret what you would see but not includeing the barrels.

2. The turret is 2 pieces. One is the guns and their parts. And one is the outter shell.

heres a bad step by step...
1. Decide were want turret lol
2. Place a turret block. on that just some thing so the AI sees it as a gun or whatever and Turns it to face enemys.
3. from that build a few blocks to make a horiszontal beam HALF the size want finial turret to be. Then make outter armor for turret.

NOW :-)
Build the guns :-)
1. 2 turrets or "4 turrets if want them wide"
2. if want 2x2 then place a building block "nonweapon" next to each gun turret. and build up a few block till get to hight want next 2 turrets if doing 2x2

3. now build each gun as if was own turret. With a ACB for each of course. Now need a LUA block probably.. In LUA would need it to fire in turn each gun barrel. By sending command to turret So might be able to skip ACB for each gun.

So basicially your have a tree with 4 seperate guns "turrets" inside of a rotating box.


Will clip if dont limite rotation of the guns and armor sections. And probably not best way by far. Only other way i can think of is to make the guns side by side same way and have them not aim up or down and armor whole thing like a bunker. By leave in a row or two of blocks out.

thats only way presonnaly i can come up with. 2nd way doesnt use a turret block for the armor so as long as guns only swing side to side and not up and down. They wouldnt clip.

Looking back the steps i wrote backwards. Build guns FIRST then build armor to fit. Lot easier fit armor to guns then guns to armor.

Also one way to lower size of visual turret is build most of the guns actual parts inside of the ship. leave a gap around the turret pieces in the deck. "will be hidden by aromor section" But would still need ship with the room to fit. This would work at all for miniguns and small turrets. More for main naval guns. Like on destroyer maybe cruiser and up. "real world sizes i mean".

Also if build this way then find better... only need delete the turret block and deck clean again :-)

[dragonsphotoworks]

Thinking about it.... Im betting LUA alone could do it with out all the extra work. Go to official forums and ask about LUA. If it can name each fireing peice differently. Could get some one make a simple LUA block for you to use.They use them to auto make aircraft and subs. So im sure it could easily handle what you want with out the extra headache my way would cause.

If not then my way only one i can think of and i admit it sucks hehe

[Kitty Soldier]

Ill see about using Lua to do what i wish, as its probably easier to use with my existting designs, rather than having to build turrets from scratch again. Still thanks for tryibg to help me! Ill pop the same question on the from the depth forum

Also as for emailing the developer... I think they are far too busy nowadays to ponder about my minor problem, especially because the community is so large! Im sure there is a solution somewhere withou having to ask for it to be officially implemented!

[mellow]

okay so for example a cannon with 3 firing pieces, spaced one block apart:

put an acb on each firing piece, with input: activate every 3 seconds
affected: weapon systems - fire weapons

affect range: 2

then an acb behind it, with settings:
input: activate when altitude less than 2600 (or just anything to turn it on)
affected: acbs - turn acb on

affect range: 3
affect delay: 1

have all the acbs off, then turn on the acb behind the first firing piece acb, and itl fire in sync forever, 1 second between shots.

so you want the input on the firing piece acb "activate every 3 seconds" the seconds has to be long enough for all the barrels to fire.

for the other acbs, the "affect delay" is how long between each cannon shooting.


but then you can use something like "if enemy less than input" on an acb to turn the first acb on, then turn all the acbs off when your done. but if you turn it off the on again, it will get out of sync. (i think the input time doesnt reset back to 0 when it turns off)

idk if theres a way to reset that or not without just replacing th acbs, but ya.

also, i guess the acb wont shoot a cannon if it has a firing delay on it, would have been allot easier if it did tbh.

[Kitty Soldier]

Thanks for your answer, Mellow! Thats the most reliable system i have heard so far. Ill see if i can do that in the devtest tonight... Maybe one of the improvements of the ACB makes it so you dont have to reset it after each time!

Thank you so much! ^~^ will keep you guys informed if any other methods pop up in my search!

[mellow]

Originally posted by Kitty Soldier:

Thanks for your answer, Mellow! Thats the most reliable system i have heard so far. Ill see if i can do that in the devtest tonight... Maybe one of the improvements of the ACB makes it so you dont have to reset it after each time!

Thank you so much! ^~^ will keep you guys informed if any other methods pop up in my search!

np c:

[dragonsphotoworks]

Hehe told ya some one would have easier option then mine. Glad they gave you more ideas.

[Kitty Soldier]

yeah, there are other options.... currently im looking into programming something in LUA to do this for me~