I have a torpedo bomber. It has a defensive laser with these stats:
description = “A low power defensive turret for fighters. The power savings comes from using energy cartridges, the down side is limited ammo.”
fire_interval = 60
salvo_size = 200
salvo_interval = 100000
The idea is fighters without infinite ammo.
I have a torpedo with a 100 interval, salvo size of 2, and salvo_interval of 999999. The idea is 2 shots of this powerful weapon only.
They work fine in game, but the “reload” bars always start the game with ALL fighters showing not ready to shoot. Once the defensive laser fires, it reloads quickly for its 200 shots, but until it fires the first time, the bar is black. Ditto the torpedo. They fire, but the bar turns white virtually as it fires.
I know the game randomizes reload state, but it’s really confusing. Is this an artifact of “salvo” vs regular fire interval?
If I recall from some of my rapid-salvo weapons, the bar stays black for the duration of salvo_interval, only charging up white during fire_interval. The net result is, as you say, a bar that stays black until an instant before the gun fires (assuming a short fire_interval like you have specified). Probably the best “vanilla” example to watch for this effect would be the Tribe’s Howitzer or Autocannon.
Off the top of my head, it sounds like the randomization is just plunking all your weapons down square in the middle of the salvo_interval (pretty likely with such a long interval, unfortunately).
Odd, though, since ALL the fighter start with all bars black, for both the laser and torpedo. Then virtually all of them actually fire as far as I can tell.
If it was truely random, out of 2 squadrons I think I’d be lucky to have one fighter shoot a torpedo (average time remaining on the salvo_interval would be 999,999/2 ms.
Even the 100,000ms interval I’d not expect all of them to fire, and they all do.
It’s not critical, but I wanted to see the reload state for testing…