Is this modification possible.

[Goumindong]

Originally Posted by Trucidation

Sorry guys, was out this weekend, missed this thread.

@Guomindong: you don't want to edit AI.ini because those are global parameters. Well, unless you want to make global changes You were correct, explosion radius for each missile is inside Rockets.xml. However, you must look at the detonator's radius instead of the one for the missile. Each missile has a definition and a detonation, that's how they work. For easy stuff like damage and radius you just edit the detonation. You can refer to this post here or the other posts in that thread.

I was working on some "bowling ball" missiles which bump a ship far away instead of inflicting much damage, but it got funny and weird when you kick capital ships away lol.

Yea, that doesn't work. The parameter you are referencing for each missile is NOT explosion radius. The parameter you are referencing is the distance from the target that the missile will detonate.

E.G. The explosion_distance on LRM's is between 1.5 and 5. The explosion distance on a MIRV cluster is 20. Yes, this parameter is on the detonator

MIRV clusters do not deal damage in a radius >10 times larger than LRMs. Rather they explode >10 times further away from their target to release their payload.

This is how rockets work

From Modules:

This describes where it pulls descriptions, how the module fits into the module slots, cost, acceptable range of fire, angle of fire, etc

<HomingRocket name="LRM2">
		<short_name>#M_Name_LRM2</short_name>
		<hint>#M_Hint_LRM2</hint>
		<short_desc>#M_SDesc_LRM2</short_desc>
		<long_desc>#M_LDesc_LRM2</long_desc>
		<mesh_name>Rl_lrm2</mesh_name>
		<flat_image>missile_LRM2</flat_image>
		<hit_points>10000</hit_points>
		<mass>5</mass>
		<disable_trade/>
		<cost>350</cost>
		<technology/>
		<attach_type/>
		<recharge_time>6</recharge_time>
		<viewing_angle>20</viewing_angle>
		<dispersion>1</dispersion>
		<min_distance>20</min_distance>
		<max_distance>450</max_distance>
		<max_rocket_count>2</max_rocket_count>
		<seeking_time>3</seeking_time>
		<RocketParams>
			<rocket_name>LRM2_M</rocket_name>
			<seeker_name>Seeker_B</seeker_name>
			<detonator_name>ALR_det</detonator_name>
		</RocketParams>

The three last refer to things in the rockets.xml. Each one has a different function. Caracas defines the creation of the missile itself, seeker the quality of its seeking, and detonator the type of explosion.

From Rockets

	<RocketCarcass name="LRM2_M">
		<short_name>#M_Name_LRM2</short_name>
		<hint>#M_Hint_LRM2</hint>
		<short_desc/>
		<long_desc>#M_Hint_LRM2</long_desc>
		<mesh_name>small_rocket</mesh_name>
		<flat_image/>
		<hit_points>10</hit_points>
		<mass>50</mass>
		<disable_trade/>
		<cost/>
		<technology/>
		<EPR>0.05</EPR>
		<explosion_script>rocket_explosion</explosion_script>
		<work_sound/>
		<silence/>
		<max_speed>35</max_speed>
		<steering_power>0.3</steering_power>
	</RocketCarcass>

This above is the carcass, it includes speed, steering power, hit points(in case it is caught in an explosion) and mass


And

	<DistanceDetonator name="ALR_det">
		<time_to_live>35</time_to_live>
		<damage>200</damage>
		<explosion_distance>1.5</explosion_distance>
	</DistanceDetonator>

This is the explosion itself. It contains damage, how long the rocket will go before it explodes (I.E. real range) and the distance to the target that it will explode at.

Explosion distance is NOT the size of the explosion. Testing this is easier. Set that value to 20, watch as no missile you launch does any damage. Now change it back to 1.5 and then change damage to 2000. Watch as any missile you launch destroys multiple wings.

The size of the explosion is entirely determined by the damage of the explosion.

This is why you can modify SRMs to be MIRVs. Because each individual missile would do a small amount of damage and so the entire explosion would not be large.

Otherwise, if you say, increase the damage of all SRMs by a factor of 3, you will get missiles that do huge amounts of damage with huge AoE. This is what i was trying to avoid. The AoE.

and

	<HomingSeeker name="Seeker_B">
		<accuracy>3</accuracy>
		<anti_jammer>20</anti_jammer>
	</HomingSeeker>

Which defines how accurate your homing is and how resistant to anti-missile systems.

In general you can mix and match any of these to create a missile you want. You can also change the detonator type to ImpactDetonator but that is not recommended (it works just fine) since that makes missiles that are shot down explode on their own.

This is both very strong (enemies that shoot missiles at you when you have active Anti-Missile up generally tend to explode very fast) but very bad. Enemies that are close to you and shoot missiles will have the anti-missile blow you both up.


Such, if you want to modify the radius of damage from the explosion you have to do it through AI.ini or some other method which I have not encountered yet.

The only question is what the other two parameters at the end of the tack in ai.ini do. Rastix says they do nothing. Looking over ai.ini again i tend to believe him (since i see text after semi-colons)