New Mod: Light Carrier Playership

[FAD]

This mod has been a WIP that extends several years of trials and errors, in hopes to bring forth a fully functional carrier playership capable of launching as well as docking a sortie of fighter drone wingmen.
Through extensive coding and tests, this as well as a plethora of 'goodies' has yielded a fruition beyond my initial expectations. As some of you may know, I have not had internet access for nearly the past two years. During this time, I have continued to work on my mods through the resources of T.99c. I've noticed that there are a couple mods out there that also have carriers and fighters. While I have not seen their resources, I assure you that any simularities between those mods and mine are completely coincidental. In these past few days since I've been back online, I've taken the liberty to update this mod to the latest release of T1.06a.
In its first debut to the public, I hope you enjoy playing it.

What you get:

* An Aurochs-class playership that has been refitted to a Light Carrier ship; The carrier has 8 armor segments, 8 device slots and DOES NOT start with functional fighters. However, there is a 50% chance that you may get an upgrade in your cargo hold that will support the fighters at game start.

* Three levels of fighter drones; Rookie, Veteran and Elite, each having their own Hanger Bay that, when installed on your carrier will then become accessible and ready for use. While you can get a Rookie Hanger Bay fairly easily, the other two Hanger Bays will have to be earned in order to unlock them.

* A Light Carrier Scout Launcher; This is a Hanger Bay upgrade that will enable you to launch a reconnaisance scout that is capable of doing extensive recon missions. The Carrier may monitor the scout's progress via the Map.

* A Hanger Bay Manufacturing Facility; This facility is the backbone of your small task force. Here you will be able to buy, repair and upgrade Hanger Bays, as well as replace lost fighter squadrons/scouts. It is possible to find these facilities in various solar systems, however, quantity may be very limited. Each facility actually produces said products, thereby assuring you'll be able to purchase/replace hanger bays for your carrier.

Logistics and Fundamentals:

* Once a Hanger Bay has been installed on your carrier, you may then launch the sortie. However, only one launch per Hanger Bay class is permitted (simply for the fact that each Hanger Bay can support a limited amount of fighters). Installing more than one class of Hanger Bay is a waste of money, while installing one of each three classes of Hanger Bays is permissable, allowing you to launch up to three individual sorties, simutaniously.

* Each sortie has one leader per fighter class. This leader will control its squadron, report to the carrier of the squadrons remaining fuel/flight time as well as remaining ammunition. You may give orders to each squadron via communicating to said squadron's leader. Each squadron will automatically return and dock with the carrier should their fuel or ammunition become depleated or too low.

* Observe and utilize all the 'special' commands via the C key per sortie. Additional 'squadron' vanilla commands are accessable via the Q key. (this feature was intentionally left vague in order for you to discover them on your own).

* A replacement fighter per each class is automatically granted in the event one gets destroyed during a mission. The player will be charged for the replacement and auto-deducted from her account. The replacement fighter will not be ready until the preceeding launch has been initiated. Careless operations and orders given to your squadron may very well put your account in the negetivity to where you'll owe credits, so choose wisely the order(s) you give to your squadron(s). In the event that you lose your squadron leader, you have also lost that entire squadron and you must then find a Hanger Bay Manufacturing Facility in order to get a complete replacement of that fighter class.

* There is a timed limit between launch sequences. This is to allow the service drone crews to prepare all the fighters (refuel and restock ammo, as well as make any repairs) for their next launch. In essence, you'll get 20 real minutes of flight time and 5 real minutes between launch sequences. (the scout has 5 real minutes of flight time and 3 real minutes between launch sequences--so be sure to send it on a recon mission as soon as it's launched, so it can take full advantage of its limited fuel supply).

* Variating Load-outs; Aside from the standard equipment per each fighter, the service drone crews may at times, slip in an additional piece of hardware or even an enhancement on any given fighter...depending on their moods in between launch sequences.

* Don't be surprised to see on occasions while a squadron is on a mission, that it may do a "Squadron to Carrier Fly-Over". The squadron leader drone realizes the importance of its Carriers safety.

* All Hanger Bays are designed specifically for the Aurochs-class Light Carrier playership and will not function on any other playership. The Light Carrier Scout Launcher requires both the Aurochs-class Light Carrier playership and any installed Hanger Bay in order to function.

This mod was intended to be fun as well as challenging and hopefully, completely bug free! While I have done extensive play testings--all of which have had no crash issues, some may have eluded me. So please report any bugs or whatever issues you may find, here in this post. I will do my best to be prompt at resolving them.

Player level rating: M/E (Moderate to Expert--Rookie/n00bs may find this mod to be a little intimidating)

http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=978

[RPC]

Nice FAD... I can't wait to try it out
My Nerefir was supposed to be a carrier too... I guess you beat me to it.

[Ttech]

Very cool, my nexts play though I should try this out.

[RPC]

Can you change the sovereign of the fighters to &svPlayer; ?
I just realized that I could "accidentally" destroy a station and my Dynamic Systems mod won't recognize the player's wingmen as the culprit. Thanks. Nice job with this mod, I can see the care and effort put into this

[FAD]

Can you change the sovereign of the fighters to &svPlayer; ?
I just realized that I could "accidentally" destroy a station and my Dynamic Systems mod won't recognize the player's wingmen as the culprit. Thanks. Nice job with this mod, I can see the care and effort put into this

I think George had hard coded wingmen to act in that manner, because we were having issues with the Huari back when they first changed from enemy to friendly with the player, they would still attack our wingmen.
I'm not sure if you can change their sovereign to &svPlayer, but you can try it.

Code: Select all

            (block (AlphaLeader)
	             (setq AlphaLeader 
                        (sysCreateShip 
					&scAurochsFighter1;
					(objGetPos gSource)
                             &svCommonwealth; 
                              "fleet"
                                    )
                              )
 

Open up the XML and scroll down to where the Hanger Bays are at, then change svCommonwealth to svPlayer, save and start a new game. See what happens?

[Star Weaver]

Hi! As I was noting on xelerus, there seems to be two copies of the XML, with the same extension unid, in the zipfile, and they differ in weapons restrictions. The zip as extracted causes Trans to abort. I'm not sure which one is intended to be used. Thanks!