Ship Docking Suggestion

posted on July 26th, 2009, 12:27 am

A year after A2 was released, a great, but sadly short-lived and rare, game called O.R.B. - Offworld Resource Base was released by Strategy First (see the site and some screenshots here). Anyways, one of the features I loved most about the game was the ability to dock smaller ships within larger ones. And this was true docking, mind you, where the fighter/support ship docked inside your massive carrier/starbase remained in play and available to launch at any time. While docked, it was repaired/re-armed. Is it possible to do this in FO at some point: docking ships without any replaceweapons? So that I can finally have that awesome carrier I've always wanted...

posted on July 26th, 2009, 12:47 am

That would be awesome.

posted on July 26th, 2009, 11:05 pm

I've already kind of got it worked out: each ship is assigned a docking class in its .odf. There are a number of different classes, broken down (real-world distinction only, the game doesn't care) into dockable ships and carriers. Dockable ships would have a docking class number (let's say 1-6), which determines what classes of carrier they can dock in. Then there are 3 or 4 classes of carriers: small, medium, large, and possibly starbase. It works in the following fashion: Carriers cannot dock inside other carriers, for a start. Small carriers can only dock class 1 and 2 ships, while medium carriers can dock classes 3 and 4 as well, and so on. Is this possible at some point? It would really add to realism, if you ask me.

posted on July 26th, 2009, 11:13 pm

That was a truly amazing feature... the game wasnt the best one out there tho... even if it looked cool.

posted on July 27th, 2009, 1:12 am

wow, as long as the coding could get done, that would be really cool.

[CanadianBorg]

posted on July 27th, 2009, 1:34 am

Last edited by CanadianBorg on July 27th, 2009, 1:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

That was a truly amazing feature... the game wasnt the best one out there tho... even if it looked cool.

Oh, you've played it? That makes you the first person I've met who has without me telling them about it.  And, as for me, it was one of the best sci-fi RTS games out there, especially for the period.

posted on July 27th, 2009, 1:51 am

I've played O.R.B. got it thru Stardock Central ages ago.  Found it to be kinda similar to Homeworld in looks and play, and while it seems like a good game, I never really got into it... maybe one day I will pick it up again tho.
Homeworld 2 has a working and effective docking system as well, where fighters and corvettes could dock (and be forced to remain docked) with carriers, shipyards and the mothership, and some mods out there even allow frigates to dock with the shipyard and mothership in the same way.  While docked the ships get repaired and squadrons get their losses replaced.

It would be very nice if we could get a similar feature in A2/FO.  Would make the fighters and carriers more useful.

posted on July 27th, 2009, 2:59 am

There's something similar in Supreme Commander: you could load land units on an air transport to ferry them across maps, or you could load air units on a carrier to protect them until needed. It's one of the few things ins upreme commander that's less than cusomizable, as you can't make new types of transports (say a land transport that can ferry non-amphibious units across water). That would be cool to see...

posted on July 27th, 2009, 8:09 am

Hey cooooool, theres someone else out there, who playes O.R.B.

The idea to implement something like that is really coll, though I have no idea if something like that can be done at all.

I would also live to see the unit/map size ratio in FO but i think that's impossible *gg*

posted on July 30th, 2009, 1:20 am

The idea to implement something like that is really coll, though I have no idea if something like that can be done at all.

Errrm... Maybe you hadn't noticed, but 99% of the stuff that FO has done is stuff the original developers wouldn't have dreamed about. Besides, based on what I've seen, basically nothing is impossible for these guys.

posted on July 31st, 2009, 12:52 pm

Well, thats true. Nevertheless it souds as a diffikult task that probably needs a load of hardcoded stuff. This cannot be done by simple replaceweapons and odf commands. If there is one to solve that issue, that these devs are.

posted on July 31st, 2009, 4:28 pm

the docking sounds similar to what you can do with ships in homeworld. sounds interesting. i'll think about it if it is possible at all

posted on July 31st, 2009, 4:43 pm

Well, I'm willing to bet that it's possible to make a "down-and-dirty" version of it by exploiting the glitch that makes a vessel stick to the shipyard unless fired upon, or you decommision the shipyard.  That would open up new possibilities for the Avalon...  >:D :fish:

posted on August 6th, 2009, 5:29 am

Docking would be cool. There's a system like that in the "X" Series games. each and every ship in the game was persistent throughout the whole game and as had a unique registry number to reflect it. Most of them could dock with starbases and (I think) some ships too. You could dock the ship yourself if you wanted, though there was always asmall risk of colliding with another ship if traffic was bad enough.

posted on August 8th, 2009, 10:15 pm

Docking would be cool. There's a system like that in the "X" Series games. each and every ship in the game was persistent throughout the whole game and as had a unique registry number to reflect it. Most of them could dock with starbases and (I think) some ships too. You could dock the ship yourself if you wanted, though there was always asmall risk of colliding with another ship if traffic was bad enough.

Yeah, I remember that. That was cool, especially the bit with the persistent ships... The programming requirements for that, and especially the AI for the ships, must be extraordinary.