Ambrosia Garden Archive
    • Making Ships that Cannot Jump


      Has this been discussed before?

      Hi All,

      Apparently I've been posting in the wrong place for a while now.

      I'll spare any unnecessary details... after these two statements....

      I want to make a ship that cannot jump, i.e., a ship with only sub-light velocity capability. This can be done simply by setting the ship's fuel level to 0. However, such a ship can simply purchase batteries, or the equivalent, and then has the ability to jump. I don't want it to be able to do that.

      If possible, I'd like to make a 'jumping' outfit. The idea being that the jumpless ship would first purchase the 'jumping' outfit and perhaps get 100 points of fuel with it. Then it would be able to buy fuel tanks after that point.

      Has this been discussed before and how is it accomplished?

      Thanks for your help!

      -Rocky

    • SeattleLightning, on Jan 4 2005, 12:59 AM, said:

      Hi All,

      Apparently I've been posting in the wrong place for a while now.

      I'll spare any unnecessary details... after these two statements....

      I want to make a ship that cannot jump, i.e., a ship with only sub-light velocity capability. This can be done simply by setting the ship's fuel level to 0. However, such a ship can simply purchase batteries, or the equivalent, and then has the ability to jump. I don't want it to be able to do that.

      If possible, I'd like to make a 'jumping' outfit. The idea being that the jumpless ship would first purchase the 'jumping' outfit and perhaps get 100 points of fuel with it. Then it would be able to buy fuel tanks after that point.

      Has this been discussed before and how is it accomplished?

      Thanks for your help!

      -Rocky
      View Post

      Assuming you're using the Nova engine...
      I suppose you could set a Require bit on all fuel tank-type outfits in your scenario, and matching Contribute bits on all ships that CAN jump on their own so they can buy it normally. The jumpdrive outfit for the sublight ship can then also have the same Contribute bit checked, allowing it to buy fuel tanks as long as it has a jumpdrive.

      To prevent abuse, it might also be wise to prevent buying/selling of the jumpdrive if the player has one or more fuel tanks.

    • Try this post. It was pretty recent too.

    • Thanks Amneth, your suggestion worked great.

      I thought I knew what I was doing with all of this, I can see I have much yet to learn.

      So right now I have it so that in order to buy fuel you have to have a jump drive. Every ship in the game except a few non-jump capable start with a jump drive anyway. The few that don't have zero fuel to start with. Those ships can buy a jump drive, and then they can buy fuel. The jump drive is not sellable.

      I notice that when you try to sell a fighter bay, the game will stop you if you have any fighters left. I assume this is intrinsic to the hard programming of the fighter bay outfit. What I'd like to do is have the jump drive be sellable, but require that you first sell all fuel tanks in order to sell it. Do you think there is a way to do this?

    • I'd just point out that if you wanted non-jumping ships to still have some afterburner energy, you could set their fuel to 99.

    • SeattleLightning, on Jan 5 2005, 01:38 PM, said:

      I notice that when you try to sell a fighter bay, the game will stop you if you have any fighters left. I assume this is intrinsic to the hard programming of the fighter bay outfit.View Post

      No this isn't: the behavior you describe can work for any weapon, provided it is set to have its max amount of ammunition (it's a flag in the wëap resource) proportional to the number of launchers, and this flag is set for all fighter bays (this quite makes sense). Of course, that doesn't help you since this is reserved to weapons...

    • SeattleLightning, on Jan 5 2005, 07:38 AM, said:

      Thanks Amneth, your suggestion worked great.

      I thought I knew what I was doing with all of this, I can see I have much yet to learn.

      So right now I have it so that in order to buy fuel you have to have a jump drive. Every ship in the game except a few non-jump capable start with a jump drive anyway. The few that don't have zero fuel to start with. Those ships can buy a jump drive, and then they can buy fuel. The jump drive is not sellable.

      I notice that when you try to sell a fighter bay, the game will stop you if you have any fighters left. I assume this is intrinsic to the hard programming of the fighter bay outfit. What I'd like to do is have the jump drive be sellable, but require that you first sell all fuel tanks in order to sell it. Do you think there is a way to do this?
      View Post

      Try setting the Availability field to require that the player have no outfits of the fuel tank type. Depending on another flag, this might make it disappear entirely once the player has fuel, so it would probably be best to keep the item shown even when it can't be bought/sold. Only problem I can think of there is spöbs that can buy anything off your ship, like Sirrusa...

    • You could simply make the jumping outfit correspond to a no-jump outfit, and make them mutually exclusive (i.e. buying the jumping outfit causes the non-jump outfit to be taken away, selling it causes the reverse). To do this, simply create a hyperspace distance modifier outfit and set it to the maximum (32767, I think , but am not sure; somebody, please confirm or deny). I'm assuming you know how to set up the bits so that you can't sell it and can only get rid of it by buying a jump-drive.

      This way, the player could buy fuel to their heart's content, but would be unable to jump.

    • The Neo Frenchmen, on Jan 13 2005, 01:57 PM, said:

      ... create a hyperspace distance modifier outfit and set it to the maximum (32767, I think , but am not sure; somebody, please confirm or deny).
      View Post

      In my experience, a value of 12000 is enough to cover the whole system. After going that far out (Less, actually), the system wraps around, and the player is still not far enough out to jump.

    • Are you taking into account the diagonal distance to the corner of the system? Or is the system circular rather than rectangular?

    • I'm pretty sure it's circular.

    • I'd bet a thousand credits that it's exactly like in Maelstrom - just with a much bigger rectangle (or maybe square). 12000 is probably enough even for the diagonal, if you don't think so, then 18000 (more than sqrt(2)*(12000+1000)-1000) is enough - the limit of the integer the ModVal field is 32767.

    • I'd do it with invisible missions and associated outfits that either crank the minimum jump distance way up or zero your fuel (ship class dependant if necessary).

      Quote

      I notice that when you try to sell a fighter bay, the game will stop you if you have any fighters left. I assume this is intrinsic to the hard programming of the fighter bay outfit. What I'd like to do is have the jump drive be sellable, but require that you first sell all fuel tanks in order to sell it. Do you think there is a way to do this?

      Make the jump drive have contribute bits and the fuel tanks require them.