starfighters

posted on February 9th, 2011, 3:42 pm

How exactly does FO deal with flight ops for fighters?

posted on February 9th, 2011, 7:37 pm

Well, in brief, fighters in FO use the ignoreuserinterface = 1 line, so users do not control them.  They do not stop moving, they do not bump into objects, and they do not clear fog.  They can be targeted and destroyed, and they can shoot other things, but they do it automatically.  When ships like these are 'replaced' onto the map by a ship using the replacementmode = 3 line(I think) they will circle around and protect the ship that 'replaced' them.  They should also attack the ships target so when you move to attack a ship, the fighters will swarm that ship, and when its destroyed, go back and circle your ship again.

You can now customize different things like when the carrier is destroyed, you can specify other ships that may act as a temporary carrier for the fighters, and you can also state how many fighters a ship can have at a time.  Thats pretty much it. 

posted on February 9th, 2011, 7:42 pm

Pretty cool, huh?

posted on February 9th, 2011, 7:46 pm

I think so.

posted on February 9th, 2011, 8:01 pm

Ok is there a hard limit on the number of fighters a ship can have? Can a ship have more then 1 type of fighter? Can they be organised into squadrons? How do you land them, rearm, and replace squadron losses?

posted on February 9th, 2011, 8:06 pm

Ships can have multiple fighter types; a mod already exists to add 2 other types to the Avalon. Federation Fighter Pack

They don't land, they just keep flying around and more lanch when some have been killed, endlessly launching more until a certain limit is reached.

posted on February 9th, 2011, 8:12 pm

Ok is there a hard limit on the number of fighters a ship can have?

If you want a hundred you can have a hundred. Basically what your system can handle I believe.

Can a ship have more then 1 type of fighter?

Star Trek Armada II: Fleet Operations - Federation Fighter Pack (FO 3.1.5)

Can they be organised into squadrons?

Don't think so though i'd wait and see what the devs say...they might have this already planned for future releases afterall.

How do you land them, rearm, and replace squadron losses?

Done automatically with existing FO coding.

posted on February 9th, 2011, 8:14 pm

Pretty cool, huh?

Hell yeah! Between the fighter code and the "unitorpedo" class label you could easily mod in the newest Fed dreadnaught - the Utterly Ridiculous class, it uses squadrons of Monsoons as fighters and fires Sabres as torpedoes!

[Anonymous]

posted on February 9th, 2011, 9:29 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on February 9th, 2011, 9:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ok is there a hard limit on the number of fighters a ship can have? Can a ship have more then 1 type of fighter? Can they be organised into squadrons? How do you land them, rearm, and replace squadron losses?

Yeah, there can be a limit if you want, or there can be no limit.  that depends on you.  the ship can have as many different fighter wings as you want,  and you limit them by the weapon that you use to replace them onto the map.  this weapon can be automated(it fires to a set delay), you can make it fire when there is an enemy ship, and then they go away after a while, or you can launch them manually.  it all depends on you. 

There is really no easy way to re-arm the ships, but the ships will be replaced as soon as you want.  you can specify a delay, and as soon as a fighter is destroyed, one will take its place after the delay, ect.


If you really wanted to have fighters-re armed, Ii suppose you could have a machine gun type weapon that took 1 special energy per shot, and have as many shots as you wanted in special energy on the ship, and the only way to recharge the energy was if you got the fighters near the carrier, which had a very short range energy recharger... 

You could try that I suppose, but I don't know if you can make just any weapon use special energy.   It would be cool to find out if that works because, IMO a2 needs a good fighter mod that is centered around just fighters, and done correctly.  In a2 past, fighters were built via a building ship, and they would just act like other ships.  Now we can have launched fighter wings, ect that should be made into a good mod.


Also, another cool tip is if you take out that line I mentioned in the fighters odf, the ignoreuserinterface line, the fighters will, by default, circle your carrier and fire on its target, but in addition, you can select and control them and tell them to do whatever you want like regular ships.  They will still fly in circles around ships, and basically be the same as they were before, the only difference is that you can select them and order them yourself.

FO has a lot of untouched fighter possibilities. 


Edit:

Can they be organised into squadrons?

I just thought of a way you could make a squad of fighters!   I can explain if you want,(I would prefer via pm because I think I'm gonna use this in my BSG mod now ) but it could get a bit technical,(with FO code anyway) and is purely theoretical at the moment.  I am fairly certain it would work, but I also wouldn't want to put up a long winded explanation about something you didn't care about.

posted on February 9th, 2011, 9:37 pm

FO has a lot of untouched fighter possibilities. 

arent u touching them with your bsg mod?

posted on February 9th, 2011, 9:40 pm

arent u touching them with your bsg mod?

Why yes, yes I am. TUN as well, however a lot of the features are new to this patch and I have yet to include them in my mod.  I don't know about sigma.  It is at the top of my to do list though, along with a couple other things, but hopefully will be in very soon.

posted on February 9th, 2011, 9:41 pm

very soon? 

how much sooner is that than "soon (TM)"?

posted on February 9th, 2011, 9:43 pm

yeah, beta release has been 'soon' for a couple months now.   I keep finding things I can improve and add and it just keeps eating up my time.  But yeah, it will be in there 'very soon.'  I plan on adding the fighter things within the next week as I have some free time opening up.

posted on February 9th, 2011, 10:08 pm

long winded explanation please. Imagine you are seting up an Imperial Stardestroyer. Thats 2 Tie squadrons, 2 Tie/In squadrons, 2 Tie bomber squadrons, 1 Starwing gunboat squadron, 6 Assult transports, and 12 stormtrooper transports.

posted on February 9th, 2011, 10:23 pm

Specialenergycost is a base weapon command, so it can be used for every single weapon classlabel

By squadron, do you mean you want to control the ships via the Imperial Stardestroyer (like Avalons or B5's in FO), or just have different ships being produced by the SD and selected and controlled by the player? Also, how do you want the squadrons to come out, etc. Automatically, by button - more information