Some thoughts on Ship changing

[Aury]

Here it is! The moment we've all been waiting for.. for 7 years ever since 0.7 came out. Ok, well, granted, most of us were not around at the time (even some of our most senior active members, like Betel, were not around when 0.7 was first released to the public).

Now, given the ability to change ships all of a sudden, I'm not going to be surprised at all once the "buy a ship at a CW shipyard or metropolis station" comes out or "custom shipyard using dvelnk6 graphics" comes out or the "buy a CSC!" mod is released. These are all thinks I'm quite sure will be released relatively soon after 1.02 or 1.03 and ship changing are released.

I'm personally excited for the implications as to graphical ship upgrading and my wyvera living ship project (http://xelerus.de/index.php?s=mod&id=673)! Possibly even modifying balance in TX2 to allow for real ship changing (along with the new ability to properly alpha-strike!)

Now, as to the matter of balance, there's something I've been warning about for a long time, ever since the plans to eventually implement ship changing were ever put into place; that vanilla transcendence's balance (at least for the non-post-heretic Part 1) would make ship changing either a novelty (perhaps even disadvantageous) or overpowered, based on the method by which its done, and the options that are available to the player.

I'll probably explain more in posts to come, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on it, and what sorts of mods you'd like to see and/or make!

[george moromisato]

I agree that ship changing will affect balance in the pre-Heretic game.

My current plan is to add it only post-Heretic until we can better understand the balance implications (and for that, I have no doubt that mods will lead the way).

From a technical perspective, this is the way ship changing will work:

1. There is a new function (plyChangeShip) that takes an ship object as a parameter. The ship object must be of a calls that has <PlayerSettings>.

2. The function will transfer all data variables stored on the ship as well as any wingmen and autons.

3. After the change, every type (not object) will get the event <OnGlobalPlayerChangedShips>. gPlayerShip will be the new ship and aOldPlayerShip will be the old ship.

[alterecco]

That seems very promising George... can't wait!

[SparcMan]

I wonder if it will be possible to have ship types that fire more than one primary weapon at once. Maybe have 3 different shooting modes: Single (fires only the selected weapon) Cross-link (fires both weapons together at the max reload of each) and Chain-link (fires each weapon once in sequence and repeats - great for two or more weapons with slow reload rates).

[Darth Saber]

George,

Would it be possible in later versions for a player to fix a ship which they have previously destroyed, and then transfer their weapons, devices, and cargo into the "new" ship? Example:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You have docked at the wreck of a [Huari Destroyer]. What do you want to do?"

A. Repair
B. Loot
C. Scuttle
D. Undock

"A." "After many hours of labor, you have managed to repair the [Huari Destroyer]. What do you want to do?"

A. Return to your ship
B. Transfer all weapons, devices, and cargo to the Huari Destroyer
C. Undock
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As far as balancing goes, you could make it a requirement that the player have x amount of materials in their cargo hold in order to effect the repairs. For instance, the player might be required to have 100 tons of titanium for the hull, or a spare device such as a shield, reactor, or drive.

Also, it might be nice to have a used ship lot, where the player could tow the newly repaired ship to, and have a scenario where you would dock, talk to a dealer, and he / she would fly out to the ship, look it over, and give you an estimate based upon the level and rarity of the ship, its installed devices, and even have an option on whether or not to include the cargo on board in the final purchase price.

Anyhow, just some suggestions for your consideration, George.

[Bobby]

along with the new ability to properly alpha-strike!

That sounds great! Are we looking at firing all weapons at their maximum fire rate? binding a non-launcher to the launcher trigger?


some uses I can see for ship changing:
1. escape pod, probably for a larger ship, if it gets blown up it spawns a small ship and launches away from the main ship, allowing the still alive player to purchase another, or get blown up by pirates, whichever comes first.
2. player controlled guided missiles. the player gets put in direct control of the missile and flies it to the target, then blows it up.
3. remote controlling other ships, like using an auton to scout ahead in dangerous territory
4. restoring wrecks and flying them (or maybe capturing emp'd ships, possibly mission oriented since you need to dock and drop off some soldiers)
5. cargo shuttles or unmanned fighters for use on super-freighters
6. speaking of 5, how about renting a freighter like it's a u-haul truck?


Does the ondestroy event occur before gPlayerShip is affected or insurance is triggered? can the ondestroy of a guided missile-ship for example switch back to the old player ship? It would be stupid for insurance to bring back a deceased unmanned missile with a 20 second fuel tank...

[alterecco]

2. player controlled guided missiles. the player gets put in direct control of the missile and flies it to the target, then blows it up.
3. remote controlling other ships, like using an auton to scout ahead in dangerous territory

Those are good ideas. A problem I can think of though is that the destruction of the playership will trigger EndGame, unless a mechanism is added to avoid it. Perhaps some hackery with OnDamage or OnDestroy could switch the player to an invisible ship before destroying, but it would be horribly hackish. Having a built in control would be better

[Aury]

Those are brilliant ideas bobby!

[Prophet]

I'm all for capturing ships using hostile boarding maneuvers!

As, alterecco pointed out, the game ends when the playership is destroyed, so perhaps there should be some check if the player has other ships available they are transferred there rather than endGame? Maybe that should be covered by the insurance or at least the option be available?

As for balance issues pre-Heretic, there's no way to enforce mods maintain balance so I won't consider them at this time. Having the other two starting ships be made available for sale would be a great idea and giving the option to have the old ship be installed with an auton controller and keep it's equipment or transfer the equipment and scrap the hull. I don't believe a ship can exist without a full set of armor.

Restoring wrecks has many problems plaguing it as the wreck is a station that does not remember what it was before it was killed. There is a bug on the tracker for this. There are hackish ways around it but it's a major endeavor to have this in vanilla and would be brutishly unbalanced.


One quick question for George, If a virtual shipclass holds <PlayerSettings> and that event handler is applied to a ship without playerSettings, will that be supported? In which case, nearly all of the suggestions on this thread are instantly possible.

[Aury]

Neat ideas, but swapping ships in the event of game-overs needs the following situations to really be believable. Suddenly having your giant battleship go *poof* onto the battlefield when your puny fighter got destroyed because you were using the fighter for fun or something is NOT very believable.
1) you have an escape capable ship on board your current vessel (ie, a small fighter, shuttle, or escape pod)
2) your current ship has been impounded by some authorities or other; you can either pay off the impoundment fines or borrow one of your other ships till you can pay off the fines (if you even choose to do so)

[george moromisato]

I have not tried it, but you can probably use the <OnDestroyCheck> event to swap to a different ship when the player ship is destroyed.

You can probably also use the <OnGlobalResurrect> event.

[Atarlost]

Neat ideas, but swapping ships in the event of game-overs needs the following situations to really be believable. Suddenly having your giant battleship go *poof* onto the battlefield when your puny fighter got destroyed because you were using the fighter for fun or something is NOT very believable.
1) you have an escape capable ship on board your current vessel (ie, a small fighter, shuttle, or escape pod)
2) your current ship has been impounded by some authorities or other; you can either pay off the impoundment fines or borrow one of your other ships till you can pay off the fines (if you even choose to do so)

Actually, the auto-swap-on-death is needed for remotely piloted drones. That's probably the least gamebreaky application of ship swapping.

[Ttech]

@ boarding - if you destroy a ship what bout if its not completly damanged you can swap ships. Could be useful for more powerful enemies

Grand Theft Auto- Transcendence

[Aury]

Neat ideas, but swapping ships in the event of game-overs needs the following situations to really be believable. Suddenly having your giant battleship go *poof* onto the battlefield when your puny fighter got destroyed because you were using the fighter for fun or something is NOT very believable.
1) you have an escape capable ship on board your current vessel (ie, a small fighter, shuttle, or escape pod)
2) your current ship has been impounded by some authorities or other; you can either pay off the impoundment fines or borrow one of your other ships till you can pay off the fines (if you even choose to do so)

Actually, the auto-swap-on-death is needed for remotely piloted drones. That's probably the least gamebreaky application of ship swapping.

Oh yeah, but that's because the player isn't actually in the drones.

[Song]

Heh. "This is a pilot controlled missile. it is capable of destroying anything in one hit, but you will invariably die, because you are sitting in it when it goes off.".