(@Adoxa) EngClass: parenting Power Plants / Engines to ship parts (CollisionGroups)
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I have recently been playing around with purchasable Power Plants using Adoxa’s EngClass plugin. My goal was to add a power plant booster of sorts that could be destroyed by killing a ship CollisionGroup, so I parented the hardpoint to the ship part. This turned out to not work, as the power plant would remain on my ship, although it disappears from my equipment window as the hardpoint does go missing.
I asked someone with a slightly better understanding of the game’s inner workings to have a look, and he concluded that EngClass actually attaches the extra powerplant to the ship’s Bay, or root, and the hardpoint it is placed on is basically purely cosmetic. This means that it’s impossible to use conventional ‘hardpoint destruction’ methods like collision groups and fuses to destroy one.
Could Engines/Power Plants be attached to the hardpoint specified, allowing them to be ‘conventionally’ destroyed?
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For engines you do not need this. They effectively work by the HpEngine hardpoints. If you lose every single collision group with HpEngine until you have no more, the engine stops working.
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Alright, I have a new request as I’ve learned linked_equip in CollisionGroups can be used to damage types of equipment on CollisionGroup destruction, including the “Power” type.
Would it be possible to make the game read and “respect” hit_pts for “power”-type equipment? That way, doing a specific amount of damage could destroy a specific piece of equipment while not destroying the main powerplant. Right now, doing any damage at all to “power” objects destroys every powerplant present on the ship.
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My solution - attach shieldgen with constant power draw to your collision group. Power effect of this shieldgen will be deactivated after loosing of collision group.
Main problem for me - it’s working for ship at once. You need to buy shieldgen again after repair of collision group.
I did this trick in my survival mission. At the start of mission you have limited power. After N seconds you’ll got full power of your ship.
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There are other implications from using shield draw as a power management mechanic. If any code or hooks looks at powercores for capacity and related stats, they now need to consider that shields can remove negative power - which I assume this something most people do not consider in their calculations.
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We’re currently using a negative power draw shield generator as a workaround, yes. It’s not elegant and a little bit unintuitive for players, as they’ll get the audio notification “Shield Destroyed” when the collision group bites the dust. Doesn’t help that a major other collision group governs the actual shield of these ships, making it so players may get confused and think they lost their actual shield when instead they lost a portion of their powercore recharge.
