Sanity check for CW fortress missions?

Fossaman · Mon Nov 16, 2009 7:37 am

So I've got a commonwealth fortress.
I have a stargate.
I have another stargate maybe 200ls away.
The commonwealth fortress is at least 800-1000ls away. Maybe more. A loooong ways, at any rate.
I have an 'intercept convoy' mission.

This does not work very well. I can't reach either stargate before the target has come and gone. The fortress ought to know my top speed. They ought to know about when the convoy is gonna get here. Why the heck are they sending me out if there's no chance of an intercept?

I'd like to see some code to prevent this from happening, whether it's a 'no missions available' result, or the timer for the convoy arriving is just bumped up based on distance from fortress to stargate.

On a larger scale, what are commonwealth fortresses supposed to be doing? From the missions available, it seems they're a highway-patrol sort of thing. So what's a fortress doing that far from a stargate anyway? If it were near a cluster of other stations I could see it being reasonable, but it's just off by itself away from everything else in the system. That could probably use a sanity check as well.

Aeonic · Mon Nov 16, 2009 7:52 am

I've had the same problem which is one reason I'm hesitant to take missions with a slow ship, unless it has been upgraded to a fast ship.

Wurmish · Mon Nov 16, 2009 2:12 pm

I have the same issue with CSCs sometimes... Except quite the opposite when starting out missions for them. I had a CSC and a gate not 25 ls away... and all the missions I could get were 'intercept and destroy scouts before any can leave'.

... Yyyyyyeah. With my current weaponry and even with the CSC and Centurions helping, 2 to 4 would always slip through to the conveniently placed gate.

Mon Nov 16, 2009 2:16 pm

cscs do this too with the ares convoy and scout missions...
the all need this fixed...

Tue Nov 17, 2009 4:39 am

I've also had a CSC spawn literally on the same screen as an Ares Shipyard. Guess what happened.

But in the freighter, the timer is rarely long enough for convoy interceptions to be possible if gates are close.....so perhaps insert a few lines that get the ship speed, the distance to the gates, and then performs a calculation based on those values for what missions are offered/what delays there are before a convoy arrives.

Tue Nov 17, 2009 5:04 am

Shrike wrote:I've also had a CSC spawn literally on the same screen as an Ares Shipyard. Guess what happened.

I get that all the time

Fossaman · Tue Nov 17, 2009 5:31 am

I had that happen once, only it was just far enough away that I could get there and blow up the shipyard and its guards before the CSC died. I was pretty excited.

Tue Nov 17, 2009 5:58 am

unless you almost never get that far or play much, i am really surprised that its only happened once each to you. i get this at least once every two playthroughs that get to the cscs.

many were just debug playthroughs, and i had a rather high .99c pre-rigel mortality rate due to running out of fuel

Tue Nov 17, 2009 7:13 am

Wolfy wrote:unless you almost never get that far or play much, i am really surprised that its only happened once each to you. i get this at least once every two playthroughs that get to the cscs.

many were just debug playthroughs, and i had a rather high .99c pre-rigel mortality rate due to running out of fuel

I've had CSCs not turn up...probbly through dying. In many cases, I can't take the Antarctica mission.....

CSCs should NOT spawn near Ares bases. It makes no sense...they are effectively mobile fortresses, from which ships like the Centurion and the Britannia classes can defend Human space, and attack the Ares.

.....the guns on CSCs are not offensive. If they were, they'd have Fusionfires and M5s....not TEV-9s. And they wouldn't be carriers....they'd be..well...huge versions of the Aquila. As they are, they are as actual Aircraft carriers are: VERY strong at indirect attacks with the craft on board (or they would be, if the comonwealth had decent fighters and an attack craft that isn't an aquila).....and very weak if directly attacked by a strong force.

So a CSC appearing RIGHT next to a commune, shipyard or whatever.....does NOT make sense....

Fossaman · Tue Nov 17, 2009 9:23 am

No, it hasn't happened just once. It's happened a bunch of times, but I've never thought it so special as to make a note of each time it occurred. The incident I was referring to happened on my most recent complete playthrough.

Happy?