Concerning launchers that require no ammo

[berelinde]

Now why would you want to do that? There are plenty of times you *do* want to shoot normal projectiles with the bow.

I don't know which bow you're talking about. But not with this one. It fires multiple magic missiles at the target and I'm pretty sure it was not intended to be used with arrows. And then I have a crossbow that works like a flamethrower, firing Aganazzar's Scorcher at opponents. Which would probably take care of your troll problem.

 

Oh, I was just talking about bows in general. I wasn't talking about your... what do you call it, anyway?

[Guest Ecoris]

Short bow of Gesen +4:

 

"this weapon draws energy from another plane, firing spears of lightning instead of arrows, and therefore never requiring ammunition of any kind."

 

How do we even know that the bow is capable of firing normal arrows?

 

Tasheron's bow +3:

 

"The thin, frayed string of this bow appears unusable, but when it is drawn a solid but invisible arrow becomes tangible.

[...]

Note: avoid equipping normal arrows on your character, else the bow will fire these instead of the phantom arrows."

 

Is the note just left by the game makers because they discovered their own bug?

 

 

Firetooth +4:

 

"Firetooth has no need for ammunition"

 

Firetooth +5: (oddly, the description below does not appear on firetooth +4)

 

"Firetooth will only fire its own enchanted missiles, so there is no need for ammunition.

[...]

Automatically shoots +2 fire bolts"

 

 

Sling of Everard +5:

 

"The bullets produced by this sling are always considered to be of +5 enchantment when determining what they can hit.

Equipped Ability: does not require bullets"

 

 

How shall one interpret the above. "no need for ammunition", "does not require ammunition" does not imply that ammunition can't be used, just that it's not necessary. However "will only fire it's own enchanted missiles" is quite clear to me.

 

While it may not be possible to make any acceptable corrections I still feel that we should discuss this. As I see it the first questions is:

Should these weapons even allow the use of normal ammunition? E.g. Gesen bow fires "spears" of lightning. Is it even possible to use it as a normal bow if one wanted to, or does its construction prevent that?

Tasheron's bow says that "The thin, frayed string of this bow appears unusable". It fires invisible phantom arrows. Can this bow be used in any other way??

And what about the sling of Everard. It produces bullets. Is it possible to fit two bullets into it?

 

As I see it, the use of normal missiles should not be allowed with these weapons. If that's not possible damages should not stack. The fact that damages from 'created' and equipped missiles stack is not intentional and clearly a bug. They are simply way too overpowered; it makes no sense if that's intentional.

 

I really think you should consider whether or not it's possible to correct this behaviour in one way or the other; either disabling the use of normal ammo for these weapons or allowing normal missiles but making the damages non-cumulative.

[cmorgan]

There really is nothing to be done about the way ammuntion and launchers stack, I'm afraid ... If there's an integer bonus or an attached effect, it stacks - which is necessary for composite long bows to give +1 to hit, and for any magic bows to give a damage bonus. The ugly hacks that are possible to trick the engine out of working in the usual way come with severe disadvantages and would be worse bugs than what's there already...

 

This is all hardcoded; there's really not much we can do with ammunition-optional items.

 

While it may not be possible to make any acceptable corrections I still feel that we should discuss this.

erm... pretty clear... not sure how to continue discussion on this portion of the topic - unfortunately, there are things that even the coolest codewarriors around just simply cannot do without breaking the IE engine. That's why some folks are working on GemRB.

 

Miloch, I like your idea as an idea - I would also script in random questions from the readme files to activate content, and I have a strong feeling that The Bigg would code WeiDU to erase the harddrive of folks who didn't answer correctly (RTFM is his personal mantra, with good reason ). Unfortunately (or fortunately) that brings to mind the old teacher saying: "School would be great, if it weren't for the kids!". We can't successfully support a player experience by punishing ignorance - we have the internet forums for that . So, good creative idea to extrapolate on, but not a good idea from the "supporting players" standpoint.

 

devSin, Nythrun, et al; just as a clarification/summation question, what would specifically be broken if the damage was made non-stackable, so that folks can see clearly the tradeoff between fixing this behavior and leaving it alone? (I know you both have stated several problems, but perhaps a summative post...)

[devSin]

devSin, Nythrun, et al; just as a clarification/summation question, what would specifically be broken if the damage was made non-stackable, so that folks can see clearly the tradeoff between fixing this behavior and leaving it alone? (I know you both have stated several problems, but perhaps a summative post...)

I doubt it would break anything.

 

It's not that we don't agree or wouldn't want to do this; it's that we cannot do this. There simply isn't any sufficient method to disallow ammunition when certain launchers are equipped. There are some issues that just can't be fixed by altering the game's data files, and this is one of those issues.

[cmorgan]

And there we have it!

[Meddle.]

heh, maybe im lacking in imagination, but

 

i will never use 'generic' arrows with a bow that forms its own 'invisible but solid' arrows, unless i can do manyshot, and this is not the case in bg, and which have a string not suitable for propelling those 'generic' arrows.

 

i will never user 'generic' arrows with a bow which fires micro-lightnings and 'supersonic shockwaves', if thats what gesen's bow is about, with +2 missile damage. from how the inventory .bam looks, i doubt its possible to set proper grip on the shaft and the string.

 

i will never use 'generic' bolts with a crossbow which is not a product of some gond-worshipping engineering genius, burinig bolts with oil or smth, but rather neat magical device, with a huge possibility of not having a bolt channel on it.

[Miloch]

Would it be possible to add an effect (maybe #197 (0xc5) Spell: Bounce Projectile [197]) that reflects any arrows used with ammoless bows back at the user? A nifty and not-so-subtle way of saying, "RTFM - this bow requires no ammo."

You also have to add the effect to every creature that you want to protect (i.e. COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~^.+\.cre$~ ~OMGwehavetopatchsixthousandcreatures~)

Nooo that's not what I had in mind. I was thinking the effect could be applied only to the ammoless launchers, so that any 'real' ammo used will not affect the target, but the user instead. But I guess the effect doesn't work that way? Could such an effect be created?

We can't successfully support a player experience by punishing ignorance...

Sure we can.

...we have the internet forums for that

And those as well (some forums more than others).

 

Besides, whoever uses such an ammoless launcher with ammo will get the hint quickly enough. Small price to pay for not having to reload. It's not even nearly like a cursed item, and it's more to prevent abuse than punish ignorance. But if the Great Wise Modders say it can't be done, then I guess I'll just have to nerf these items even more heavily to account for the potential imbalance.

[devSin]

Nooo that's not what I had in mind. I was thinking the effect could be applied only to the ammoless launchers, so that any 'real' ammo used will not affect the target, but the user instead. But I guess the effect doesn't work that way? Could such an effect be created?

No.

[Nythrun]

You can try EXTEND_BOTTOM ing baldur[25]?.bcs with something like

IF
 HasItemEquipedReal("bow15",Player1)
 OR(4)
HasItemSlot(Player1,SLOT_AMMO0)
HasItemSlot(Player1,SLOT_AMMO1)
HasItemSlot(Player1,SLOT_AMMO2)
HasItemSlot(Player1,SLOT_AMMO3)
THEN
 RESPONSE #100
ActionOverride("Player1",DropItem("bow15"))
END

IF
 HasItemEquipedReal("bow19",Player1)
 OR(4)
HasItemSlot(Player1,SLOT_AMMO0)
HasItemSlot(Player1,SLOT_AMMO1)
HasItemSlot(Player1,SLOT_AMMO2)
HasItemSlot(Player1,SLOT_AMMO3)
THEN
 RESPONSE #100
ActionOverride("Player1",DropItem("bow19"))
END

 

repeated for every Phantom Launcher and then repeated for Players2-6; it's about the least laggy thing I can think of.

 

I wouldn't use a mod that did this though, it's too easy to stutter the game with this kind of scripting no matter how swift your computer is.

 

If you just want to avoid damage stacking, use dice

 

 

 

Correct. Don't tell Baronius!

 

Too late, Baronius sees all from his throne in Mordor. Changing something and not changing something are equally tweaks; implementing David Gaider confirmed omissions is a tweak; the only thing that's not a tweak is copy/pasting Extremist's SoA fixpack into a ToB fixpack under a line that reads // fixes from TS.

[CamDawg]

Yeah, this a very frustratingly hardcoded area of the engine. We could stop the double damage of Tansheron's + arrows by removing the damage of Tansheron's, but then you'd get zero damage when using it without ammo. There's also no way to prevent items like these from having ammo equipped without some horrible, worse-than-the-original-issue hack. I'll be adding this to the 'unfixable' docs.

 

The one actionable item--bag(s) of plenty applying strength bonuses--is fixed. I'm moving this to archived fixes, even though we only addressed one of the many issues brought up.

 

Again, we can do this without bashing folks... amusing though it may be.

[Miloch]

The one actionable item--bag(s) of plenty applying strength bonuses--is fixed.

I think there was another actionable item; namely, to correct certain incorrect descriptions like the following:

Firetooth +5

Firetooth will only fire its own enchanted missiles, so there is no need for ammunition.

Obviously, it also (regrettably) can fire other missiles, including enchanted ones, so I would suggest removing the "only."

[CamDawg]

The line has now been changed as well.

[Guest Terai]

Maybe I'm stupid but wouldn't it be able to make it a throwing and returning weapon like some axes are? Well, if the weapon that you're making is supposed not to require ANY ammution that is.

[Nythrun]

Sorry, no. Throwing axes don't take an amunition type and are treated a little differently by the engine.