starfighters

posted on February 9th, 2011, 10:35 pm

Well considering scope and scale fighters would launch in either full squadron(12) ir half squadron(6) groups of individual ships. I would like to be able to give the squadrons orders like sicing the the Tie/Ins on incomming fighters while sending the bombers to get the attacking mothership.

how do you want the squadrons to come out, etc. Automatically, by button

Is there a way to have both depending on the ships agro and independence setings? It would also be nice if the AI could make use of the setup.

posted on February 9th, 2011, 11:28 pm

Hm, I'm not exactly sure how to get your particular desired effect, but you can always simulate it by setting those selectable ships to separate teamed groups (aka, one to '1' another to '2'). If  you want it all automated and unselectable, yet still controllable in 'squads', you'll need different ships launching separate fighters (to receive the carrier's orders, which are the only vessels you are controlling).

To get fighters and bombers to attack the mothership or enemy fighters at different rates, you could always mess around with attackpower and intrinsicvalue to get the desired effect

Launching in groups is nice and easy to code - there's not limitation on how many ships you can have pop out at once

Likewise, I think that if you made fighters launch automatically, and had a button controlled fighter launch, with a limit in total number of fighters per carrier, that would give you both methods. In other words, if you wait long enough, the cap is auto-filled, but if you want fighters fast, you just use the button.

I believe that Adm. Zaxxon's new carrier system has the fighters selectable, yet also controllable by the mother carrier (I may be mistaken). The special weapon and autonomy settings however are not used - you could always suggest something for that route to the team however

To get the AI to use such a weapon you'd have to set the AI delays and cycles - so it won't use them like a human, but will trigger them every so often.

posted on February 10th, 2011, 12:03 am

Well if its an auto weapon won't the AI's ship just launch when it gets in a fight?

posted on February 10th, 2011, 12:10 am

If I understand the mechanics properly, it launches according to two rules (both of which can be found on the replaceweapon section on the guide).

The first is setting the weapon to activate immediately after it transfers to AI command (aka, after it is built). The second is setting a delay on that command (which is measured in seconds after reverting to command).

posted on February 10th, 2011, 12:33 am

good news is the fighters shouldn't need to go in the AIP file 

posted on February 10th, 2011, 1:57 am

Yep, no AIP.  To answer your question, thinking about an imperial star destroyer, obviously the ships you launch would act differently.  In the case of fighters, I would probably choose to launch them automatically, or whenever a ship targets an enemy(with a large delay between launches of course.).  I would also launch them in squads of 5 or so.  To do this, my 'idea' was that you could have the capitalship only actually launch one fighter, say a tie-advanced, which would instantly replace 5 other fighters.  When you do this, the Advanced tie would be the squad leader which you could order around, but the regular ties, the ones it replaced, could be autonomous. It would appear to the user that they all launched at once from the capitalship,(or however you wanted) but actually the advanced tie, the one you controlled, would be the only one that came from the carrier.  The other ties would follow the advanced tie around, and attack its target, and if it was destroyed the other ties could move to protect or take orders from whatever other ship you wanted.  Think of it as drones guarding a F22 only the drones are F22's also.  You could have the ISD support maybe 2 squads, around 12 fighters, and have them launch however you wanted.  If you had them auto launch, they could circle and protect your main carrier until you told them to do something, in which case they would follow and protect their squad leaders.  The leader doesn't have to be a tie advanced either.  You could make it just another Tie for effect.  Gameplay would be similar to that of Homeworld 1/2, or Empire at war.

  For the other ships, since they are specialized for specific situations, I would have them launch via button and circle either around a user specified point, or just your ship.

for shuttles and the like, I would give them normal physics so they could stop moving, but fighters I would always give fighter physics.

Thats not really the long winded part, but it is a good, brief summary.  There would be a lot of little things you would have to do to ensure that the fighters acted properly, and a lot you could customize with the way the fighters were launched ect. but that is the basic idea.

posted on February 10th, 2011, 2:05 am

It would also be nice if the AI could make use of the setup.

Oh, and if you made them auto launch the AI could use them too.  I could show you how to make it at least appear that the AI is using the weapons that weren't.

posted on February 10th, 2011, 2:43 am

So when you do this it is just the flight leader that leave the carrier. That fighter then auto spwns the rest of the flight. That sounds very promising

posted on February 10th, 2011, 2:52 am

well, as soon as the leader is spawn, it would instantly spawn the rest of its squad, only once.  They could only be replaced if the squad leader was killed and a new squad was launched.  It would appear that all the fighters came from the carrier, and with the replacementpositions line you can specify the placement of the ships when they spawn, so it would appear, if you wanted, that they all came out one after the other.

If you made it so the squad fighters were spawn only once, without a loop, then if they were destroyed, they would stay gone until the entire squad was destroyed(or the leader) and then they would be replaced back at the carrier.  The remaining fighters, if any, would then be directed to the nearest squad leader, or other specified ship that could accept support fighters.

posted on February 10th, 2011, 9:56 am

Interesting approach to do fighter squads. Once you have a prototype running, I'm sure Dominus will want to interview you for a modding-guide page
The whole fighter feature is more or less a modding community feature *cough - sigma - cough* not much fighter action in StarTrek, sadly.. well.. yet!

posted on February 10th, 2011, 10:19 am

Well, I played Empire at war and the fighters were sometimes the only thing that rescued me from a devastating defeat (its pretty much the worst balanced game so far).

But the idea, to launch squadrons with a certain purpose is pretty nice. One squadron got the ability, to snipe out a subsystem, another one got the special ability to fire a ion-cannon-something, to wipe out shields and the last is for cracking up the hull.

Every squadron may have 3 or 4 fighters... That would be cool for the federation Avalon. I think, it really lacks something punchy, so that it is worth the 50 supplies and ressources you spend on.

It may not be good all alone (the dominion fighter carrier is), but the fighters itself should be the main weapon of this ship. Rushing into large fleets, take out subsystems by "mini-critical-shots" and be happy about your fedroll :-)

The Avalon already got this utterly cheap officer ability "secondary pulse shot" where I think, it is "wat"?

Give the fighters to every rankup one more fighter and at officer rank, give the fighters a special, like critical shot/cover fire/active point defense...

posted on February 10th, 2011, 12:46 pm

well, as soon as the leader is spawn, it would instantly spawn the rest of its squad, only once.  They could only be replaced if the squad leader was killed and a new squad was launched.  It would appear that all the fighters came from the carrier, and with the replacementpositions line you can specify the placement of the ships when they spawn, so it would appear, if you wanted, that they all came out one after the other.

If you made it so the squad fighters were spawn only once, without a loop, then if they were destroyed, they would stay gone until the entire squad was destroyed(or the leader) and then they would be replaced back at the carrier.  The remaining fighters, if any, would then be directed to the nearest squad leader, or other specified ship that could accept support fighters.

Could even have the leader as a buildable squad.

posted on February 10th, 2011, 1:34 pm

Can you limit the numbers of certain fighters by ship? By this I mean each ship only launch so many of on but stil launch so many of another? Example the ISD fighter wing. She could only launch 2, 2, 2,1, 6, and 12. but another ISD can also do this at the same time.

posted on February 10th, 2011, 2:57 pm

Yep, you limit the ships fighter wing for a specific group in the odf used to replace them onto the map.

posted on February 10th, 2011, 4:37 pm

I have a feeling these beasties are going to be a biger pain to code the my physics first were, but the pay off if it works will be huge