Has anyone tried this?

[DOCa Cola]

posted on February 9th, 2012, 8:58 pm

Last edited by DOCa Cola on February 12th, 2012, 3:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I was thinking last night and had this off the wall idea. On of the problems with player carriers is airwing size. For trek ships this is not such a problem but other unis li SW, B5, or WC have real carriers with airwings of 100 or more fighters in several squadrons. Anyway to the point. I had a new idea on how to do an abuse free player controled lunch system.  The system is based on "researching" the fighters instead of building them. FO lets you ,in theory, build anything; even a fully functional ship as a pod. So the question is if I where to set up the airwing as a "reseach list" where each squadron is built as a pod would thoughs fighters actually be able to flyaway from the carrier and be independent?

posted on February 9th, 2012, 9:33 pm

This is already done to a point with the ranking system, carriers can host more fighters as they level up. The federation carrier i think caps out at 6 or 8 fighters once it reaches veteran. in theory you could simply spread the fighter wing growth across multiple ship levels or just make a button...

posted on February 9th, 2012, 10:01 pm

I'm not sure I understand the idea fully:

Is your idea to make squadrons that are commandable, but at the same time to also allow them to operate independently? Or is there also another component to this?

If the former, then you can already do this with some ODF management.

First, you have your fighter carrier. It replaceWeapon spawns Fighter type A. Fighter type A has the fighter carrier as its supply class (that way it can follow it). Fighter type A is controllable.

Second, Fighter type A replaceWeappon spawns Fighter type B. Fighter type B has Fighter type A as its supply class (that way it follows Fighter type A). Fighter type B is uncontrollable (ignoreInterface = 1)

Consequently, you have your Fighter type A's be controllable, and your Fighter type B's be uncontrollable. Thus, you have fighter squads that are controllable.

posted on February 9th, 2012, 10:16 pm

I'm not sure I understood either.

What I read made it sound like instead of 'building' the squadron, you "research" it instead. But I'm not sure what the difference is. If you research it, and it creates fighters, than you've built them.

But if I understood it at all, I think he wants to implement a research ability, perhaps onboard the actual ship itself?

So a carrier "researches" fighter squadrons. Instead of building them automatically, or generating them upon rank up or over time. So you can manually research a set of five squadrons over and over. ? ? ? ? ?

I actually don't know what to make of it though.

posted on February 9th, 2012, 10:19 pm

Ah I see: well, yup, of course you could make your fighter carrier build the Fighter type A. The carrier's classlabel would just need to be that of a Shipyard then

posted on February 10th, 2012, 12:28 am

The problem with building fighters off the carrier is that any limits placed on a specific class of fighter for balance is implamented fleet wide not on an individual ship basis. Research pods however are built only once per station until destroied. This means that "researching" the fighters comes with builtin limiting factors. What I need to know is that if the fighters are built as "pods" will they still be usable as fighters.

posted on February 10th, 2012, 12:35 am

Ah I see, that's exactly why a replaceWeapon is used in FO (because then you can assign how many concurrent children are supported or use energy etc).

As far as I know, pods are automatically connected to the craft that builds them: I have heard rumors that they don't have to be, but I am not sure how to verify those .

What you can do is simulate the Fighters building by doing the following:

Your fighter carrier builds an invisible pod/craft onto itself. That pod/craft in turn auto spawns a fighter immediately upon completion.

posted on February 10th, 2012, 2:41 am

Thought about that but it creates another problem of having to remove the pod somehow to get a new squadron.  You see I want the player to have absolute controle over launch orders without leaving a door open for abusing powerful fighter types.

posted on February 10th, 2012, 6:32 am

Yikes: I take it you want to see the actual build bar too, and not just have there be a minimum amount of button-visible reset time for a replaceweapon (mimicking build-time)?

I can't think of a clean or dirty way of accomplishing that build bar unfortunately  . Maybe somebody else has better ideas.

I'll inquire about the pod mobility concept in the meantime: it's an interesting idea that's been brought up by various people over the years, but I never talked to Doca about it yet .

posted on February 10th, 2012, 1:42 pm

Yeah, that would be cool if you could build a pod on your ship that was a fighter which could fly around, however I don't think it is possible.  I don't even think you can build a pod and have your "research station" move after it is built.  I have tried in stock to build stations an fighters off of a research station but I don't know how it would work in FO.

What you could do is simply make each fighter group belong to its own capfile and make it so the button to launch them disappears until they are all dead.   Then, the fighter group could be controllable however you want.  All individually or as groups like EAW. 

posted on February 10th, 2012, 5:37 pm

Yes, you can make your researchStation move after constructing a pod

posted on February 10th, 2012, 5:56 pm

will the pod stay attached and move with the station?

posted on February 10th, 2012, 6:01 pm

Yup: I haven't found a way to make the pod move independently.

posted on February 11th, 2012, 7:57 am

Yikes: I take it you want to see the actual build bar too, and not just have there be a minimum amount of button-visible reset time for a replaceweapon (mimicking build-time)?

I can't think of a clean or dirty way of accomplishing that build bar unfortunately  . Maybe somebody else has better ideas.

I'll inquire about the pod mobility concept in the meantime: it's an interesting idea that's been brought up by various people over the years, but I never talked to Doca about it yet .

Thats kind of the point. Built items can only have their numbers regulated fleet wide. I I put a limit of 5 Bomber squadrons, that 5 for the whole fleet, not 5 pre carrier. If I don't limit them the player can make all bombers and never use the lighter fighters.  When you research somthing you can only do it once per station till the pod get poped. 

Yup: I haven't found a way to make the pod move independently.

Have you tried just building a ship as the pod like a Saber or Galaxy? I mean it should just be be changing on line on a station odf right?

[Dominus_Noctis]

posted on February 11th, 2012, 9:01 am

Last edited by Dominus_Noctis on February 11th, 2012, 9:03 am, edited 1 time in total.

The reason I mentioned that is because with a replaceWeapon you can indeed already regulate it on a per carrier basis, rather than a fleet basis .

I assume when you mean "just building a ship as the pod like a Saber or Galaxy" that it would have the carrier be a shipyard and building the fighter as a pod: unfortunately to do that successfully as I understand it, destroyMeWithResearchStation must be false (otherwise the pod blows up immediately) - which isn't really a problem - except that the pod can be built any number of times provided it doesn't belong to a fleet cap file....

Were you thinking of something different to implement this?