We were just now talking on IRC about what the reason for having the distinction between stations and ships might be.
With the addition of a few attributes and functions to ships, there is nothing a ship can't do that a station can do. The benefit would be having working overlays, player controlled stations, shields on stations and a unified object interface.
So, stations would just be ships with a fixed="true" attribute or something similar.
Now, the real question. Is there something serious in the engine preventing such a change? I think there would be pretty large community support for the change.
Ships as stations (or, deprecate stations)
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Arisaya
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I second this motion. (since I was at dinner while this was going on)
a "fixed=true" would be AWESOME (mostly because it would solve a number of problems with some player-ploppable turrets)
Even if it's fixed, it should still be allowed to rotate if rotationcount=/=1
If rotationcount=1, then well, it can only be in that one rotation to begin with.
And for the AI section, just put in a "turret" and "station" ai's, where turret faces the target, and station uses its swiveling weapons; if it has a tracking weapon, it will fire it, regardless
a "fixed=true" would be AWESOME (mostly because it would solve a number of problems with some player-ploppable turrets)
Even if it's fixed, it should still be allowed to rotate if rotationcount=/=1
If rotationcount=1, then well, it can only be in that one rotation to begin with.
And for the AI section, just put in a "turret" and "station" ai's, where turret faces the target, and station uses its swiveling weapons; if it has a tracking weapon, it will fire it, regardless
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No need. Ares Sentries are ships and work perfectly well as turrets.Wolfy wrote:And for the AI section, just put in a "turret" and "station" ai's, where turret faces the target, and station uses its swiveling weapons; if it has a tracking weapon, it will fire it, regardless
You might try maxspeed=0 for turret-autons BTW.
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Arisaya
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Oh, they work perfectly fine... unless they are player-owned and part of the auton structure/command system then they do weird things, like becomming unhooked and flying around in the system, but stick in relative position oto the player.Atarlost wrote:No need. Ares Sentries are ships and work perfectly well as turrets.Wolfy wrote:And for the AI section, just put in a "turret" and "station" ai's, where turret faces the target, and station uses its swiveling weapons; if it has a tracking weapon, it will fire it, regardless
You might try maxspeed=0 for turret-autons BTW.
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How about not putting them in the auton structure? Do they actually need to be autons rather than autonomous ships in the player sovereign?Wolfy wrote:Oh, they work perfectly fine... unless they are player-owned and part of the auton structure/command system then they do weird things, like becomming unhooked and flying around in the system, but stick in relative position oto the player.Atarlost wrote:No need. Ares Sentries are ships and work perfectly well as turrets.Wolfy wrote:And for the AI section, just put in a "turret" and "station" ai's, where turret faces the target, and station uses its swiveling weapons; if it has a tracking weapon, it will fire it, regardless
You might try maxspeed=0 for turret-autons BTW.
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Arisaya
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Bumpity bump.
This is a great idea, and I really think it should be put in. Because station structure is so limited compared to what we can do with ships.
This is a great idea, and I really think it should be put in. Because station structure is so limited compared to what we can do with ships.
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Arisaya
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alterecco wrote:George, any comments on this.
The need for overlays on stations keeps on coming up, and this would be a nice way of fixing that.
Yes, a discussion on a weapon I designed not working on stations because of this prompted the bumping of this thread 
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george moromisato
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I think the best approach is to make a list of all the things that you want for stations and submit them to the Trac (please list each item separately).
Make sure you mark the priority properly--I try to fix blockers/major bugs first.
In general, I've been trying to use the Trac as my list of things to do.
If you want to rearrange my priorities, then I have a couple of suggestions:
1. I'm lazy, so I fix easy bugs sooner than hard ones. If you ask for something hard like, "stations should have all the properties of ships" them I'm likely to defer it until I have a large enough block of time to do that. On the other hand, if you ask for "support OnDamageArmor on stations" then that's a lot easier--I'm likely to do that in 1.03 or 1.04. The best idea is to break up really hard problems into smaller pieces.
2. Everything is a trade-off. If you want something fixed now, then something else will get defered. I pay attention to the priority field. Whatever you put there is my indication of how important it is to you. Feel free to re-prioritize any bugs you like (assuming the owner of the bug agrees).
3. The Milestone field is my way of (roughly) scheduling when a ticket is going to get fixed. If you don't like the schedule (e.g., if I scheduled something for "Indefinite Future") then feel free to change the Milestone back to "Not Scheduled" with an explanation of why you think the bug is important. [Again, remember that this will then bump off some other bug to later.]
Hope that helps!
Make sure you mark the priority properly--I try to fix blockers/major bugs first.
In general, I've been trying to use the Trac as my list of things to do.
If you want to rearrange my priorities, then I have a couple of suggestions:
1. I'm lazy, so I fix easy bugs sooner than hard ones. If you ask for something hard like, "stations should have all the properties of ships" them I'm likely to defer it until I have a large enough block of time to do that. On the other hand, if you ask for "support OnDamageArmor on stations" then that's a lot easier--I'm likely to do that in 1.03 or 1.04. The best idea is to break up really hard problems into smaller pieces.
2. Everything is a trade-off. If you want something fixed now, then something else will get defered. I pay attention to the priority field. Whatever you put there is my indication of how important it is to you. Feel free to re-prioritize any bugs you like (assuming the owner of the bug agrees).
3. The Milestone field is my way of (roughly) scheduling when a ticket is going to get fixed. If you don't like the schedule (e.g., if I scheduled something for "Indefinite Future") then feel free to change the Milestone back to "Not Scheduled" with an explanation of why you think the bug is important. [Again, remember that this will then bump off some other bug to later.]
Hope that helps!
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Arisaya
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Thanks for the info george!
I made ticket 395 on this.
Also I th... 1.04?
I think I'm /really/ liking the new development cycle. (more frequent releases are great for modders!)
I made ticket 395 on this.
Also I th... 1.04?
I think I'm /really/ liking the new development cycle. (more frequent releases are great for modders!)
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Another station feature that would be nice on ships would be docking screens.
If live ships (as in "not wrecks") were dockable it would open up whole new possibilities:
1. Friendly Scavengers: no longer must you fear them grabbing your loot while you're busy ferrying your full cargo load to the nearest station. Buy it back at "reasonable" prices instead of having to blast them to bits first.
2. Resupply from military frigates during deep space commonwealth missions
3. Interact with trader freighters and smuggler T31 armored transports for unexpected bartering opportunities
and so on...
If live ships (as in "not wrecks") were dockable it would open up whole new possibilities:
1. Friendly Scavengers: no longer must you fear them grabbing your loot while you're busy ferrying your full cargo load to the nearest station. Buy it back at "reasonable" prices instead of having to blast them to bits first.
2. Resupply from military frigates during deep space commonwealth missions
3. Interact with trader freighters and smuggler T31 armored transports for unexpected bartering opportunities
and so on...