if the middle is destroyed, the bottom disowns you

our current system also poses the problem that if the bottom is destroyed, when the middle reattaches, it'll look like the whole ship because the middle is the keycarried of the saucer. the bottom is the keycarried of the middle

I was playing around with trying to merge the mid and bottom weapons into one outfit and giving that to the saucer section, but then you can only launch the mid section and it doesn't launch the bottom section.

Is there any solutions?

Keep in a mind that this is a ship with 3 sections.

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(This message has been edited by kauthor (edited 11-23-2003).)

(This message has been edited by kauthor (edited 11-23-2003).)

Presuming you're attempting to create Voyager's "Prometheus", the only solution I ever devised was rendering the ship from such a perspective that the middle portion completely occludes the bottom.

Key carried was not implemented with a three-way separation in mind.

Edit: Alternately, you could have the "top" portion mount a combined "middle and bottom" with its own key carried flag that immediately separates when engaging hostiles. You would only have direct command over the middle portion, however.

-reg

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(This message has been edited by Regulus (edited 11-23-2003).)

What?! Could you please slow down and explain exactly what you are trying to do? If you came up with a more detailed description, mabey someone here would know how to fix it (propably not me - i havnt done much poking at strange ship graphics).
-Az

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Quote

Originally posted by Regulus:
Presuming you're attempting to create Voyager's "Prometheus", the only solution I ever devised was rendering the ship from such a perspective that the middle portion completely occludes the bottom.

Yea, but everything else is rendered in the 3/4 view, so it would look really out of place.

Quote

Originally posted by Regulus:
**Edit: Alternately, you could have the "top" portion mount a combined "middle and bottom" with its own key carried flag that immediately separates when engaging hostiles. You would only have direct command over the middle portion, however.
**

That's what the current setup is. It works okay, except for when the bottom or middle is destroyed. If the middle is destroyed, the bottom, since it belonged to the middle rather than you, decides it doesn't know you anymore (which is a little weird). If the bottom is destroyed, when you redock with the middle section, since the altenate frames of the saucer section are of the full ship to be used when its carrying the keycarried, it looks like the whole ship. If you make them both carried by the saucer section, when you launch the middle alone, the bottom disappears. Or if you launch the bottom alone, the ship still looks like its whole.

The only thing I can think of is devising a way to make the saucer launch both the middle and the bottom at the same time (although I have tried unsuccessfully to get this to work with outfits). And that would also pose a problem if the bottom is destroyed, because you can only have one keycarried, if your redocked with the middle (as keycarried), it would look like the whole ship was there. Could there be a way to not allow the bottom section to redock with the saucer if the middle is destroyed?

Thanks for the suggestions...keep 'em coming ;).

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Quote

Originally posted by Mazer Rackham:
**Have several different shďp resources with different shäns, switched around with NCBs.

**

How would you go about doing that? Is there a way using NCBs to change your ship when you launch a fighter (or keycarried)? I'm at a loss here.

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So...I guess the lack of responses either means no one knows how to do it, or its impossible?

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(This message has been edited by Pougan (edited 11-30-2003).)

I might know, but i dont have half a clue what you are trying to do.
-Az

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They're trying to solve the "Prometheus" Problem -- the ship from Star Trek Voyager that split into three pieces -- for a TNG-era mod of Starfleet Adventures. I did a furtive attempt at this, using nested KeyCarrieds, which worked fine -- the ship would split, then split again, but the third ship wouldn't act as an escort, and if the original split got restored to the player-piloted ship before the third ship linked to it, or if it got destroyed, the third piece would just fly off on its own... which sort of makes sense if it's destroyed, but not with the re-linking.

In fact, I never got it to relink properly once it split.

kauthor and Pougan have talked to pipeline about this, and he's confirmed the engine isn't quite up to the task and that the nested KeyCarrieds is the way to go, but it doesn't solve the A.I. behavior.

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Quote

Originally posted by UncleTwitchy:
They're trying to solve the "Prometheus" Problem -- the ship from Star Trek Voyager that split into three pieces -- for a TNG-era mod of Starfleet Adventures. I did a furtive attempt at this, using nested KeyCarrieds, which worked fine -- the ship would split, then split again, but the third ship wouldn't act as an escort, and if the original split got restored to the player-piloted ship before the third ship linked to it, or if it got destroyed, the third piece would just fly off on its own... which sort of makes sense if it's destroyed, but not with the re-linking.

nested carried ships have never acted as escorts below the top ship. They act as escorts to their parent ships, but not to you.

Matrix

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Quote

Originally posted by Azratax2:
I might know, but i dont have half a clue what you are trying to do.

Take a look (url="http://"http://www.shiporama.org/prometheus.htm")here(/url).

-reg

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"As a rule we believe as much as we can. We would believe everything if only we could."
~ William James

(This message has been edited by Regulus (edited 12-02-2003).)

Is It maybe possible to have it first split into say that top saucer part and the mid-bot part with you controlling the mid-bot section? Then have that new mid-bot ship able to split so you do the second split instead of the AI? Or is it not possible to split into a ship that you can then split again with you in controll of the second spliting ship?

OH!!! First the bottom splits off leaving you with the mid-top part which you then split so that you controll the saucer, if the middle is destroyed the saucer wouldn't be able to dock with the bottom anyways. Or reversed so the saucer comes off first and you end up in the bottom, whichever you prefer.

I suppose its not possible to give one ship two possibilities for redocking so that say if you were the middle you could dock with either the top or the bottom with different graphics.

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Yuch.

I've gone over it time and again, but I think you are going to have to suck this one up- something is going to be screwy sometimes. With the nested structure, you have the AI issues (which is an issue with any kind of nested fighters, as I learned from Robotech). If you had separate bays, even linked on the primary trigger so that they fired at the same time, you'll have problems with no mid-way graphics, Top+ Bottom or Top+Middle. I tried thinking up some outfit wizardry, but no luck there either.

Then I thought of doing it with some elaborate missions, and then I realized that that would be horrible as well, and not even worth testing. I think I could fix the graphics and AI abnormalities, if you don't mind your middle and bottom sections disappearing abruptly and hyperspacing into the system, or at best appearing randomly, and then not having them re-link but magically reappear on your ship.

So, take your pick. You can have two of the following: Correct AI, Correct Graphics, Correct Link/Unlink. You can't have all of them.

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~Charlie
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