escort mod for playership idea

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relanat
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One mod I would like to see is one that lets the playership fly in formation with the ship it is escorting.

So if you were escorting a Scarab, Aurochs, or EI freighter you could somehow set the playership to fly 10ls off to the side and hold formation without the player having to constantly adjust speed and heading. With the more manoeuvrable playerships it can be quite tedious constantly changing speed and direction to stay near the freighter.

This could happen until either thrusting or turning the playership cancelled it and the player then resumes control.

Anyone know if this is possible or if there is already a mod that does this?
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digdug
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We do have functions to change speed and direction of the playership. This should be easy to implement, basically the mod just has to match the current speed and direction of the escorted ship. An event can keep that updated and stop the event if the player manually change the direction or speed.

I can see one flaw with the mod, that on top of my head I wouldn't know how to resolve: if the playership is hit by a momentum weapon that change the speed, the event would stop.
JohnBWatson
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A one time 'match speed' ability would be sufficient, IMO. The vast majority of the time, that's all that's really needed.
shanejfilomena
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hold on there, IF the Playership is escorting a target then that target is vulnerable to attack : therefore the Playership must be ready to fight at all times.

While, in older versions, an auto-pilot like this would have been nice, the newer versions with more challenging encounters during escort missions makes taking the controls away from the player a little questionable.

I do think escorting can be pretty boring sometimes ,
but boring security work where the target gets in and out safely is a good thing.
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relanat
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I had a quick play with this.
None of the shpOrder functions appear to work with the playership unfortunately.

Code: Select all

shpOrder gPlayership 'escort theFreighter
would have been good. But doesn't work (unless my code was bad).

Otherwise getting the playership to match the speed and direction of the freighter would work but cumulative errors as the freighter makes small turns to follow course could end up with the playership slowly wandering away. Not sure about that. Possibly some way of resetting where the playership should be would be needed.

JBW's idea about matching speed is a good one. This would remove the need for a lot of the fiddly little thrusts needed. Plus it's probably within my ability! When I get some free time I'll have a go at that. Thanks everyone.
Stupid code. Do what I want, not what I typed in!
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