Technicalities with Research

posted on March 21st, 2013, 6:43 pm

Hello there,

I was hoping maybe someone can tell me how I can make a research 'remove' a ship from the build-able list like as if its outdated or out of production?

For example,

Shipyard 1 can build the following before researching "Pod 8":
- Constitution Refit
- Miranda
- Centaur

Shipyard 1 can build the following after researching "Pod 8":
- Excelsior
- Miranda
- Centaur

posted on March 21st, 2013, 7:46 pm

I was given an idea that might work by SquireJames because what your kind of wanting to do in theory would work pretty well in my STA2_Generational Mod. Of course no further information to SquireJames' suggestion and my inquiries about it were ever answered.

Here's the idea though:

Squire James
posted on Thu Feb 28, 2013 10:02 am

"Regarding having ships become obsolete, I haven't tried this myself, but could you use the same functionality as research pods?

For example, take a Constitution. When you get the right research to get a Refit version, the build button changes to a Refit version and ergo you (as the player) can't build originals any more.

The AI has no such limitations, since it doesn't use build buttons etc.

As I said, haven't tried it, but worth a shot

I of course posted this about SquireJames' idea because I actually really like the idea:

@SquireJames: I could see about the idea for ships functioning as research pods (believe your thinking like "Upgrade Pods" in stock A2, like the Upgrade Station) when being built for their build buttons at least for the Constitution-class as a trial idea. I'm not sure how to implement it though. For certain ships that I didn't care if the AI upgrades to (like in my mods case Refits) I use the "Replace Weapon" coding for the upgrade thanks to the Patch Project 1.2.5 Patch, this I at least know still works in FleetOps.

How would your idea affect the AI? I still want the AI to get to the Constitution-class Refit (sticking with the example). It sounds like it'd still have to be listed in a shipyard for the AI in that form.

I don't fully understand the idea or how a shipyard could have a secondary build menu. In a way that would save on the number of shipyards as well by having for example the ENT Era (2151 - 2161) and the TOS Era in one shipyard as the main build set, then a secondary build menu taking on the ships of the TMP Era and the TLE (The Lost Era). Then pickup away from this "Advancing Idea" for the stock shipyards and on, that way the campaign missions aren't affected by the "Generational Concept".

I actually really like this idea and hope that it could be implemented for both the FleetOps version and the stock version of the STA2_Generational Mod.

Pretty much I wanted to know how that idea would affect the AI and how one would go about implementing such an idea. I know my suggestion doesn't fully fit your idea but with the idea of a secondary build menu within a shipyard, you could build the Constitution-class Refit and eventually it would get to the secondary build menu and thus replaced by the Excelsior-class. To get such a thing to work, you'd have to use the FleetCaps in FleetOps to do it. This means you'd have a certain number of Constitution-class starships built, when it hits the FleetCap number the build button in theory (using SquireJames' idea) would switch over to the Excelsior-class build button and then wouldn't be able to be built until the conditions for the Excelsior-class in the tech1 (Techtree) were met (I'm guessing your your Research Pod 8 is the Excelsior-class starship's entry point?).

Of course this means you'd have to be able to use FleetCaps in your mod and also more information would be needed on how to get SquireJames' idea to work.

posted on March 21st, 2013, 8:12 pm

You can do this via buildItemXAvailability: http://guide.fleetops.net/guide/modding ... t/producer

posted on March 21st, 2013, 10:21 pm

You can do this via buildItemXAvailability: http://guide.fleetops.net/guide/modding ... t/producer

So... does this allow for multiple stages? Like lets say the parent is a Constitution TOS version, then there is a TMP refit, and then a TNG refit? Could you give me an example?

posted on March 21st, 2013, 10:28 pm

I could use an example as well since, I actually did ask a question about this sometime ago for the purpose of knowing if it was possible and if it would be like a research setup for research stations.