I am sure this has been brought up before. I however am too lazy to go grave-digging.

Is there a way to evaluate a control bit string upon firing a weapon? This could be easily used to swap ships in mid-flight, so you could fly your own carried escort.

I was thinking a cron could continuously monitor an ammo-type outf. When the weapon is fired, the ammo goes to zero, and the cron activates.

I was looking at crons, and I am guessing that even with the "continuous, iterative cron entry" flag checked on, EVN would only check this once each game day. So it might activate when taking off from a planet, or when coming out of hyperspace, but that doesn't help you to swap ships in mid-flight.

Any other ideas? Or is this officially completely impossible?

I realize that saving the outf information from the "mother ship" is its own set of problems. I am only interested here in whether a control bit string could be evaluated mid-flight, upon firing a weapon.

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Who's the what now?

You would do it with the ActivateOn or whatever field. This has nothing to do with iterative cron entry/exit, that would evaluate the OnStart/OnEnd string.

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The programmer's code of entomology: there's always another bug.
Windows users: stop asking for plugins. (url="http://"http://www.aznt.com/EVN/EVNEW/")Make one yourself.(/url)
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I see. When does EVN evaluate the EnableOn field? Is it continuously, while you are flying around? Or is it only when a new "day" happens (i.e. when you take off from a planet or jump to a new system)?

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Who's the what now?

The only in-flight bit set I'm aware of is the mission OnShipDone. I don't see any way of connecting that to a weapon firing though.

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"The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%." — Douglas Adams

Hmmm. There is also the OnAbort control bit string. You wouldn't fire a weapon, but you could have a mission you abort.

It would be interesting to see what happens when your ship is changed mid-flight like that. I think I'll try it.

Of course, this is somewhat impractical for an actual plug-in. It would just be a little too corny and convoluted for the average person.

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Who's the what now?

Success! Using the OnAbort field changes your ship mid-flight, without moving you around or changing your orientation. Now how can you do something like that with the fire button?

(Edit): This sure is a one-person topic thread...

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Who's the what now?

(This message has been edited by Nutter (edited 04-21-2004).)

Well here's one way:
Have a mission create a special invisible ship with no shield and one point of armor, the goal being to destroy the ship and set a bit OnShipDone.
Have your weapon explode instantly, silently and invisibly causing one point of mass damage with maximum blast radius before submunitioning into the weapon you really want. When you fire it it will instantly destroy the special ship and set the bit. Assuming all other ships in the system have their shields up it won't bother any of them.

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"The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%." — Douglas Adams

You could have the ship set to be hostile and follow you around firing a damageless, short-range weapon at you. Then, have a weapon that induces, as Guy said, an invisable, silent explosion that destroys the ship without (hopefully) harming anyone else. How about that?

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The programmer's code of entomology: there's always another bug.
Windows users: stop asking for plugins. (url="http://"http://www.aznt.com/EVN/EVNEW/")Make one yourself.(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")Sephil Saga Website(/url)
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But how would you keep your previous ship in-game? Assuming you were a fighter departing your carrier, it wouldn't make sense to have the carrier just disappear.

Because you could somehow cause the invisible ship's evalution to reveal a spöb with the carrier's graphics that you could dock at, which would then immediately Qxxx you in the carrier again and hide it. Uxxx (un-destroy spö might work for this - you could multiple-instance a copy of the Carrier spöb in every s˙st with its "DeadType" set to an invisible graphic. However, you'd have to pre-set the location in the s˙st - it wouldn't have any relation to which you chose to launch your fighter.

Maybe you could have a quote string (another Qxxx) activate when you change ships, saying something to the effect of "Fighters away, Captain. Retreating to staging area."

-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 04-22-2004).)

Well that sounds like the best you can do if you want to be able to reclaim the Carrier, but would Qxxx still show a string if you weren't landed anywhere?
If you were happy to keep the fighter as your own you could start a mission with the Carrier as a special ship. This way you would get support from the Carrier in battle, although it would still have to start from the specific location of a stellar in the system (either that or a completely random location).

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"The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%." — Douglas Adams

Yeah. Qxxx is actually used more often for displaying strings than kicking someone off a planet. "Absquatulate" was a bit of a contrivance - "Quote" makes more sense.

Anyway, I got really inspired after replying to this thread and went and implemented it myself with a UE Carrier in the EVO>EVN port. It's working pretty slickly right now, except for one thing - I cannot for the life of me get the Uxxx and Yxxx operators to work, or the "starts destroyed" flag. I thought these were all fixed back in 1.0.3, but I'd never tried to actually use them until now. Is there something I'm overlooking?

-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

Quote

Originally posted by orcaloverbri9:
You could have the ship set to be hostile and follow you around firing a damageless, short-range weapon at you. Then, have a weapon that induces, as Guy said, an invisable, silent explosion that destroys the ship without (hopefully) harming anyone else. How about that?

That's pretty good, I hadn't thought to do it that way. How do you keep the ship from getting itself killed accidentally (i.e. with other weapons)?

Quote

Originally posted by Regulus:
...you could somehow cause the invisible ship's evalution to reveal a spöb with the carrier's graphics that you could dock at, which would then immediately Qxxx you in the carrier again and hide it. Uxxx (un-destroy spö might work for this - you could multiple-instance a copy of the Carrier spöb in every s˙st with its "DeadType" set to an invisible graphic. However, you'd have to pre-set the location in the s˙st - it wouldn't have any relation to which you chose to launch your fighter.

Actually, I was thinking something more along the line of launching a fighter, which looks like the carrier-ship but has zero speed. It looks like you can assign multiple weapons to the same outf.

So the first weapon would destroy the SpecialShip, triggering the control bit string. This changes your ship type to the desired ship. The second weapon would launch a fighter that looks just like the carrier-ship but with zero speed. Then to dock back with the carrier-ship... ?

I guess Regulus' idea is the best. As far as the Yxxx and Uxxx operators, your guess is as good as mine.

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Who's the what now?

Quote

Originally posted by Nutter:
That's pretty good, I hadn't thought to do it that way. How do you keep the ship from getting itself killed accidentally (i.e. with other weapons)?

Set the weapon to be a planet-type weapon, and the ship to be a planet-type ship.

Assuming planets in Nova have more than 1 armor, you should be fine near them.

Sort of off-topic:

Quote

Or is this officially completely impossible?

Nothing is impossible with ncb's.

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The programmer's code of entomology: there's always another bug.
Windows users: stop asking for plugins. (url="http://"http://www.aznt.com/EVN/EVNEW/")Make one yourself.(/url)
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(This message has been edited by orcaloverbri9 (edited 04-22-2004).)

Quote

Originally posted by Nutter:
How do you keep the ship from getting itself killed accidentally (i.e. with other weapons)?

I gave it enormous shields and a big recharge value, but only 1 armor unit - then set the trigger weapon to do a miniscule amount of armor damage and bypass shields. As long as there are no other shield-bypassing weapons in the scenario it'll be flawless, and even if there are a few you might not have problems.

Quote

Actually, I was thinking something more along the line of launching a fighter, which looks like the carrier-ship but has zero speed. It looks like you can assign multiple weapons to the same outf.

Not exactly. "The only restriction on ModType2-4 is that you shouldn’t use it for weapons or ammo (modtypes 1 or 3)." Also, you can't assign multiple weapons to the same trigger except with submunitions, and I don't think fighters work that way.

Quote

So the first weapon would destroy the SpecialShip, triggering the control bit string. This changes your ship type to the desired ship. The second weapon would launch a fighter that looks just like the carrier-ship but with zero speed.

So what about in between destroying the trigger (carrier transmogrifies into fighter) and firing the weapon (carrier retreats)? It just "dissappears" from the game for a bit?

Quote

As far as the Yxxx and Uxxx operators, your guess is as good as mine.

In that case, I'll just post what I've done so far. You need to install this with the (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/vftp/dl-redirect.pl/mac_evnova_override.sit?path=evn/essentials&file;=mac_evnova_override.sit")EVO>EVN(/url) port, and start a new character using the "Test Pilot" type.

(url="http://"http://pages.slc.edu/~pfarago/wingleader.sitx")(Download)(/url)

Some Notes:
• There's a new outfit called an "AF-37 Pilot Certification". That's the trigger weapon. You get one automatically with the Test Pilot chär.
• Launch the first four fighters regularly, then use the "Deploy Self" weapon for the last one. Your carrier will go off in a random direction. It doesn't show up on radar because it's actually a submunition of the deployment trigger.
• The business with the Yxxx and Uxxx operators still doesn't work. The rendevouz point never reverts to its "destroyed" state, even though it's flagged to start off that way.
• For some reason, the chär always spawns you without fighters. I'm using five G139 flags to make up for it.
• When you dock with the rendevouz point to return to your carrier, I use another G139 flag to give you the ship you were just piloting back. Other deployed fighters remain your escorts.

Any insight into the Yxxx/Uxxx bug would be vastly appreciated.

-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

Quote

Originally posted by Regulus:
**I gave it enormous shields and a big recharge value, but only 1 armor unit - then set the trigger weapon to do a miniscule amount of armor damage and bypass shields. As long as there are no other shield-bypassing weapons in the scenario it'll be flawless, and even if there are a few you might not have problems.
**

You'd probably be safer with the planet-type method. Other ships may still get upset if you take 1 point of armor off them.

Quote

**
• Launch the first four fighters regularly, then use the "Deploy Self" weapon for the last one. Your carrier will go off in a random direction. It doesn't show up on radar because it's actually a submunition of the deployment trigger.
**

So the carrier is actually a weapon sprite? Does it have any speed?

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"The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%." — Douglas Adams

Quote

Originally posted by Guy:
You'd probably be safer with the planet-type method. Other ships may still get upset if you take 1 point of armor off them.

I tried the planet method. It didn't work. And the AI ships don't mind.

Quote

So the carrier is actually a weapon sprite? Does it have any speed?

It has the same speed as a carrier (150) for the first 300 ticks, then submunitions into a freeflight rocket that accelerates to 1500 to simulate hyperspace. In theory, you then lose track of it, and find that the previously hidden "Rendevouz Point" spöb has re-generated to the system's west. This doesn't work currently, for reasons I explained.

-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

Quote

Originally posted by Regulus:
**I tried the planet method. It didn't work.
**

What? How come?

Quote

**It has the same speed as a carrier (150) for the first 300 ticks, then submunitions into a freeflight rocket that accelerates to 1500 to simulate hyperspace. In theory, you then lose track of it, and find that the previously hidden "Rendevouz Point" spöb has re-generated to the system's west. This doesn't work currently, for reasons I explained.
**

Well it sounds good in theory, though it would have been cool to be able to dock back with the carrier as a spob.
You could say that the orginal carrier was lost somehow and they had to get a replacement (to account for all your old outfits not being restored).

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"The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%." — Douglas Adams

Quote

Originally posted by Guy:
What? How come?

Maybe you should download the plug-in and try it out. Right now it works. Change the wëap type to planet, and the trigger ship type to planet and it doesn't anymore.

Quote

Well it sounds good in theory, though it would have been cool to be able to dock back with the carrier as a spob.

Well, you can, as soon as we figure out what's wrong with the U and Y operators...

Quote

You could say that the orginal carrier was lost somehow and they had to get a replacement (to account for all your old outfits not being restored).

Just thought: What happens when you recall the fighters after switching ships?

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"The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%." — Douglas Adams

They behave themselves just fine.

You know, it's actually pretty badass to lead a wing of five UE fighters. EVN's escort formations are actually very well suited to it. Give it a try, you'll have fun.

-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