I was doing some experiments with NovaTools, and duplicated the Darts and Dart Bay at ID#s outside the NOVA outf range in order to work on my own fighter bay. I also created a new weapon resource.
Unfortunatly, now I can LAUNCH the ships, but they won't go back in. It doesn't matter what I do to the bay or ships, they won't go in.
Please help.
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"In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others." Andre Maurois
I too have had some troubles with fighters (actually a single "fighter") and mine didn't dock either. I assumed that it was traveling too fast or its acceleration was causing it to fly past to quick, but I haven't tried changing such things yet. I don't think that this will help you, but maybe this indicates some sort of bug? Somebody may have an answer.
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"What goes up must come down, unless it reaches Escape Velocity and flies off to Palshife to join the Rebellion."
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I think this has to do with fighters that have several different varients (like the Viper and Lighting). I think if a fighter bay uses a fighter that has multiple varients, the fighters will only be able to return to the hanger if you use the fighter varient with the lowest resource id as the ammo.
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After some other peoples' experiments, they concluded that Nova uses (somehow, for some reason) the ship's sprites to determine what kind it is when docking. In other words, two fighters with same sprites = not work properly.
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"Insert witty quote here." - Thomas Castiglione
Okay, but that doesn't explain my problem. My fighter doesn't use sprites already in the game. It's a new ship with new graphics. I think it might be speed and acceleration, but some fighters in Nova are certainly faster than mine.
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"What goes up must come down, unless it reaches Escape Velocity and flies off to Palshife to join the Rebellion."
(url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl/TheChallenge101.sea.bin?path=evn/plugins&file;=TheChallenge101.sea.bin")The Challenge(/url): A deadly test of skill and power (new version 1.0.2 coming soon)
(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/mrxak/Haikus/haikus.html")The Haiku Archive(/url): Collected Works of the Rabid Haiku Generator
My fighter used the hyperoid sprite...
I also tried making it launch lux liners, but still same issue. I did NOT have a seperate Luxury Liner Bay at the time 
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"In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others." Andre Maurois
Standard shuttles will dock as well as standard Lightnings but not Wild Geese lightnings...
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Hmmm.... I don't know about all that, I should try to make a fighter bay for the lightning and put it in a plug. I did make a laviathan have 4 pirate thunderhead bays and it worked just fine. Accually better than fine 
(edit: Blasted short term memory)
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(This message has been edited by Meaker VI (edited 05-05-2002).)
I beat my head against the wall for quite a while when I was making the Scalpel Bay for the Doomsday plugin.
If the ship that you're using for a fighter doesn't have the "escape ship" flag set, it won't be able to dock when you recall it.
Gul Banana is right that the sprites for the fighter ship have something to do with it. When I was experimenting, I tried changing the Scalpel graphics from the Striker to the Manta to see if that might have any effect; what I would find is that I could recall the ships, but as they docked they'd change from Scalpels to Mantas! What I ultimately found worked was not only making a new shan for the ship, but also copying all the picts and rleds and rle8s under new resource IDs. If you grab a copy of Doomsday 1.5 and open it up, you'll see what I did.
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It appears that AnubisTTP may be right about the lowest ID number.
I had created a plug to make Manta Bays and Mantas available in the Federation to see how they performed. I had used the Manta Nil'kimas as ammo, and discovered that it wouldn't dock.
After reading this, I went and exchanged the Nil'kimas and the standard Manta in the plug, standard Manta ID315 and Nil'kimas ID161, and reset the bay to use 161 as its standard ammo.
Started up, bought a Manta Bay and six Mantas, spaced out and launched my fighters, and then recalled them. They docked immediately without problem.
When I had tried to dock them in the previous setup, they just swung from side to side of my starbridge, but wouldn't dock, even after 11 minutes of swinging by my watch.
Incidentally, while I am nattering, does anybody else feel as I do that the mass of a fighter bay should be set high enough that only large ships willing to convert some cargo space could manage to buy them. When you carry fighters in your ship, you not only have to have space for the fighters, but in reality you would also need extra space for fuel, for maintenance crew, for the fighter pilots, etc. Seems to me that smaller ships should not be able to carry them, only larger ships like carriers.
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