Fix carriers

[JohnBWatson]

Multiple carriers are present in the game, including the CSCs, the Charon frigates, Marauder Raid Platforms, and the ICS. However, despite the class's common presence, its implementation at present works on a rather glitch - susceptible system of kludges. To improve both robustness and gameplay, here is a simple suggestion to resolve this:

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Have all carriers contain the ships they are capable of deploying. These should be treated as items that, upon destruction, are converted to their equipment and placed in the cargo hold. Traits should include a variable for effective range, and, if they exceed that range when deployed, they should cancel their current mission.

When spawning ships for any reason, a new method should be used. This method would take the ship's type and an order as input, as well as an optional Boolean that determines whether it gates on mission complete rather than returning to its mothership, which defaults to false, and another optional boolean to ignore effective range when assigning a mission. When the mission of the ships(serve player as wingman, attack target, guard target, etc) is complete or no longer applicable, they will return to the carrier, disappear, and add their virtual item to the cargo hold.

When spawning ships for a mission, have the carrier spawn that many ships through the above method. If it lacks the correct number, either add them to the hold before the mission or do not assign the mission.

When spawning ships for defensive combat purposes, check the number of escorts, and, if it is below the ideal number, spawn more.

When spawning ships for offensive combat purposes, treat the carrier capability as a tracking, omnidirectional launcher, with the range being the ship's effective range.

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Thoughts?

[Aury]

Why use items in a hold? Its far easier to just use (objSetData carrier 'numCraft_typeBlah N) (objGetData carrier 'numCraft_typeBlah)

Working with actual items is a real pain often.

[JohnBWatson]

Why use items in a hold? Its far easier to just use (objSetData carrier 'numCraft_typeBlah N) (objGetData carrier 'numCraft_typeBlah)

Working with actual items is a real pain often.

I'll admit I don't know the source code as well as most.

What you described, under my basic understanding, would indeed work better.

[PM]

Items are most useful when the ships can have varying equipment and types, such as customized autons. If carrier only uses stock ships, a simple number to keep track of is better.

[JohnBWatson]

Items are most useful when the ships can have varying equipment and types, such as customized autons. If carrier only uses stock ships, a simple number to keep track of is better.

I think that might work: give each carrier a list of shipBay variables. shipBay would consist of a ship class, an effective range, a number indicating how many are available within the carrier right now, a number indicating how much time to wait between launches, a string indicating whether they are deployed to attack capital ships, gunships, both, or neither, and how many of them the carrier should try to maintain as guards at any given time(if they're not used for offense and the number maintained as guards is set to zero, they'll only be used when the carrier is specifically told to do so, like the Britannia).

Sample CSC setup:

Code: Select all

1 shipBay that starts with 60 Centurions. Effective range equal to 160 ls. Wait 2 seconds between launches. Attack targets without internal HP. Maintain 10 as escorts.

1 shipBay that starts with 20 Centurion Xs. Effective range equal to 240 ls. Wait 2 seconds between launches. Attack targets with and without internal HP. Maintain 2 as escorts.

1 shipBay that starts with 10 Britannias. Effective range equal to 240 ls. Wait 3 seconds between launches. Attack only targets with internal HP. Do not maintain any as escorts.

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

I don't think it's necessary to dismantle carried ships to their constituent equipment items when a carrier is destroyed. From a gameplay perspective the equipment carried by spacebourne gunships isn't valuable or rare enough to be appreciated. Moreover, the player doesn't know exactly how many gunships were carried by the carrier and some carrier classes (like CSCs) are expected to be operating below full complement. The default player assumption would be that a carrier has already launched its entire complement when it gets destroyed.

For flavor purposes it would be good to see CSCs that are about to be destroyed spawn a couple of gunships and a transport or two which attempt to flee and gate out, maybe carrying a few goodies with them.

[JohnBWatson]

I don't think it's necessary to dismantle carried ships to their constituent equipment items when a carrier is destroyed. From a gameplay perspective the equipment carried by spacebourne gunships isn't valuable or rare enough to be appreciated.

I'd imagine that deconstructing the gunship complements would take wreck chance into account. I'd say that, on the basis that it'd add immersion and wouldn't be too hard to code, as well as the fact that like items stack, it's worth doing.

Moreover, the player doesn't know exactly how many gunships were carried by the carrier and some carrier classes (like CSCs) are expected to be operating below full complement. The default player assumption would be that a carrier has already launched its entire complement when it gets destroyed.

That brings up another question for any experienced modders. Is there a way of checking a ship or station's remaining health/armor? It'd be neat for ammo - based or carrier ships to get a bit more liberal with their limited resources whenever they're on the verge of destruction.

For flavor purposes it would be good to see CSCs that are about to be destroyed spawn a couple of gunships and a transport or two which attempt to flee and gate out, maybe carrying a few goodies with them.

I can see this being integrated using this setup. On destruction, take up to 10 Centurions and a Brit, depending on how many remain, and start spawning them along with a few Aurochs from the wreck with orders to gate.

[shanejfilomena]

That brings up another question for any experienced modders. Is there a way of checking a ship or station's remaining health/armor? It'd be neat for ammo - based or carrier ships to get a bit more liberal with their limited resources whenever they're on the verge of destruction.

For flavor purposes it would be good to see CSCs that are about to be destroyed spawn a couple of gunships and a transport or two which attempt to flee and gate out, maybe carrying a few goodies with them.

I can see this being integrated using this setup. On destruction, take up to 10 Centurions and a Brit, depending on how many remain, and start spawning them along with a few Aurochs from the wreck with orders to gate.

ok : VisibleDamage : used for ships to seek repair could be used here

As for spawning Escape Pods ( ships ) that's DySy ( http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=929 ) : I use it alot on stations , but using it on Cap Ships is also cool.
( if I see escape pods hitting the gate, I know there is a destroyed station I can loot, I just retrace the path of the escaping pods to find the station )

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

You can see from the CSC dockscreen that elevators are used to get Centurions onto the flight deck. I imagine that elevators would probably be out of commission on a destroyed CSC, so logically escapee gunships should only spawn when the CSC is at low health rather than after destruction. IDK where/how Aurochs dock. This probably isn't a big deal either way though.

It would be cool if there were some way for the player to deliberately target the elevators/hangars on a big carrier or shipyard to prevent or delay ship spawning.

[JohnBWatson]

It would be cool if there were some way for the player to deliberately target the elevators/hangars on a big carrier or shipyard to prevent or delay ship spawning.

Treating carrier bays similarly to installed weapons might work there. Hitting a capital ship at a certain angle disables its weaponry.