Weapons of area effect and chain reaction

[Karibu]

It came into my mind that has anybody tried to mod weapons which would cause area effect like nuclear explosions, which would damage the target ship and all ships in adjacent squares. It would be nice to have 9 ships in one shot

Also I was thinking modification to computer virus. Normal virus destroys a computer of one ship. However, in real life computer viruses use the infected machine as a platform to spread themselves more. I would like to have a computer virus, which would hit a ship and continue nearby ships until it wears out or ships run out.

For example computer virus 3 makes 60 damage and it is 3 times more than it would need. All the rest damage goes for nothing. Why not use 20 damage to first ship it hits, 20 to next and 20 to Last ship. Three ships all together. Of course, it would spread only ships in adjacent squares in the infected ship and only if their shields are down. This technology could add 3 more levels into computer virus technology (name could be Spreading computer virus or Enhaced computer virus).

However, I think you can't mod anything this complicated, can you?

[spoon]

Originally posted by Karibu:
However, I think you can't mod anything this complicated, can you?

Nope. That would require new code.

[Ed Kolis]

Yeah, I've always wanted to mod in the Little Doctor from Ender's Game

Maybe in SE5... since it will use a modified Starfury combat engine, I'd imagine it wouldn't be hard when the time comes for some beta tester or another to convince Aaron to use the mines' AoE code (really a shrapnel explosion) on certain torpedoes, but we'll just have to wait

[Phoenix-D]

Wait, the Starfury mines are AoE?

[Suicide Junkie]

The Starfury mines are more like a proximity fuse than an area effect. They still only damage one ship, but don't have to come into contact with your hull.

[Paul1980au]

Yep because there are to be no new patches for SE4 it will have to go on the to do list for SE5.

[Ed Kolis]

Oops... sorry! I thought when they detonated they fired a spray of bolts in a radius around them... Must have been some idea floating around the beta forums before mines were actually implemented. Shows you how much I actually play SF .. or maybe how useless mines are in the game

[Lord_Shleepy]

Originally posted by Karibu:
... For example computer virus 3 makes 60 damage and it is 3 times more than it would need. All the rest damage goes for nothing. Why not use 20 damage to first ship it hits, 20 to next and 20 to Last ship. Three ships all together. Of course, it would spread only ships in adjacent squares in the infected ship and only if their shields are down. This technology could add 3 more levels into computer virus technology (name could be Spreading computer virus or Enhaced computer virus).

There is a round-about way that you might create the same effect. You could always mod the component to be smaller and do less damage. For example, you could make a computer virus that was only 10kt and does only 20 damage and thereby replace the single large weapon with three small ones...and fire at three separate ships within a small radius. Yes...it's not pretty...but one could Imagine(tm) that the virus was spreading from ship to ship. That is where all the fun lies in these sorts of games anyway, imho - without taking a few imaginative liberties you're just moving little colored blobs around on a screen and balancing out spreadsheets full of numbers.