Docking ports question

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Song
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Is there any way to coax the engine into forcing a ship to take a certain docking port? I had the idea for a shipyard with large docking bays for handling big ships (antares, Aquila, Scarab, Mikeno, etc), and smaller bays built into the outside of those area for the smaller ships, like wolfens and Hammerheads. But it'll look pretty silly if the hammerhead takes the vast docking bay with a whole bunch of loading and serviving gantries, and the Scarab or Mikeno takes a tiny little airlock by the defense turret on the outside of the bay.

I'll make a crude little diagram here, hopefully the spacing won't get removed when it posts....

Code: Select all

  Docking bays indicated by: x   
Bays on arms are on the OUTSIDE of the arm, bays on the round bit in the middle are basically signifying the entire inside of the main docks.
                                                                      x|    |x
                                                                      x|Main|x
                                                                      x|Dock|x
                                                              -x--x--x-/--x--\-x--x--x-
                                                            Main Dock x|######|x Main Dock    
                                                              -x--x--x-\--x--/-x--x--x-
                                                                      x|Main|x
                                                                      x|Dock|x
                                                                      x|    |x 


 
As you can see (Use your imagination!), the station has 4 large bays, with gantries/arms/whatevers on each side of the bay. On the outside of each large dock are 3 docking ports for smaller craft.....a Mike will fit very nice and snugly into one of the big bays, but really WON'T fit on the side-bays. I don't *think* there's anything I can try toforce it to go form the right one....but has anyone else got any possible way I might be wrong?

(I'm fine if it's not possible, I'm still on concept work rather than actively adding it. Also, ASCII diagrams are sucky to make.)
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Star Weaver
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I'm pretty sure also that doing it with one station is impossible as is, but: Could you:
  • Create an invisible pseudo-station in the center as an attachment to the main station (e.g. like how the commonwealth gun turrets are made)
  • Give the pseudo-station the 4 large ports (either deny player docking here or forward to other station like st. k ring does)
  • Give the main station the small prots
  • Shunt large ships to dock at the pseudo?
It's the last point that I'm REALLY not sure about, of course, the others are almost easy.
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Star Weaver
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After bantering about it a bit in chat, RPC put up a request for various docking XML features to make docking large ships and complex stations more realistic:

http://wiki.neurohack.com/transcendence/trac/ticket/790

I do wonder though, if having a <NPCWantsToDock> event that can receive the requesting ship, and which can return true, nil, or a station to dock at instead (possibly paired with a docking port number?) could be fun, for someone who wants to take something like St. Katherines and load-balance the separate station sections ...
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Song
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Wouldn't it be another possibility to allow the "naming" of docks with a custom tag? So you give a slot, for example, a "Mothership" attribute.....which would mean that any ship with that attribute would prioritise docking at that port, and other ships would prioritise OTHER ports over it.
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christian
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something like the code than enhancement devices uses to work!?
enhancementCriteria=""
.............
could be.....
Docks:
ShipPortCriteria="small"

Player:
DockingPortCriteria="small"
shanejfilomena
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Shrike wrote:Wouldn't it be another possibility to allow the "naming" of docks with a custom tag? So you give a slot, for example, a "Mothership" attribute.....which would mean that any ship with that attribute would prioritise docking at that port, and other ships would prioritise OTHER ports over it.

this is a great idea : the main "problem" is many ships do not carry attribs other then " generic class".
So you would have to re-write the game ships to have attribs your docking orders allow : Hornets used to be Military I think someone mentioned : today they make great private / escape/ service craft.
so I think what you need here is a list of ships , atrributes for them : see if the list get the green light so that those doing .xml can avoid over- writing ships just to give them tags like Freighters : generic class, Corporate. ( if you kill a freighter it is a Crime , run as a Commonwealth crime but they are actually Corporate and the player should be prosecuted that way. )
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Amariithynar
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shane, i think that's actually because shipping is the lifeblood of any gov't, and if you cut into it then you're indirectly attacking the gov't. After all, who is to say that the freighter you hit isn't carrying merch and/or supplies for the Commonwealth, not just Corporate stuff? :D
shanejfilomena
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Amariithynar wrote:shane, i think that's actually because shipping is the lifeblood of any gov't, and if you cut into it then you're indirectly attacking the gov't. After all, who is to say that the freighter you hit isn't carrying merch and/or supplies for the Commonwealth, not just Corporate stuff? :D
You are correct: in many ways the freighters, my favorite ships :) , are doing all the work for "everybody" : the Ares even have freighters, the black market depends on the T-Class transports : WHAT I would like to see is , while the T-Class does provide for many "other" factions in the system, Dwarg and Ventari do not have a shipping system : the Ranx do not have one, the Fleet barely has anything when even the Earth Fleets have constant support ships.....

However, back to the point : the crime codes for Corporate are for stations : while Piracy covers only a Corporate ship ( freighter ) ; If you kill off Ronin by the Dozen your Not a Pirate........

I just think the crime code for Corporate/ government should be expanded : and in ...think it was LeRogue that I did that... I tried to expand it , but maybe a little too much.....but It is just something that always bothered me.
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christian
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shanejfilomena wrote:...
However, back to the point : the crime codes for Corporate are for stations : while Piracy covers only a Corporate ship ( freighter ) ; If you kill off Ronin by the Dozen your Not a Pirate........

I just think the crime code for Corporate/ government should be expanded : and in ...think it was LeRogue that I did that... I tried to expand it , but maybe a little too much.....but It is just something that always bothered me.
... I'm working (slowly) on the NewSorvereings mods to implement something like that, the player 'll be chased by Avengers(heavyGun ships\Gun ships\Cruisers\...) IF the player kill any ally ship ....
shanejfilomena
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in LeRogue you just get fined, jailed or : worse : you get to fly the Miner :)
Flying Irresponsibly In Eridani......

I don't like to kill pirates in cold blood ..I do it.. but I don't like it..
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