but the mother ship remains forever

I am trying to make a phoenix, the bird which is reborn from its ashes. To do this I am using a an escape ship which is the same as the original ship. It works perfectly except for one detail; the mother ship never explodes, or even begins to explode. Instead when I die it says escaping in Phoenix, I escape in a new ship, and then the mother ship sits there. It has no explosions, it does not move, on the map it is a grey dot. This wouldn't be too irritating except that the Phoenix dies quickly, so in just a few minutes of combat (it has weak weapons) the max ships has been reached and I get stuck in place, dying, but not dead.
Here is all the information I think is relevant in the shďp resource, please ask if more is needed.
Death Delay is 5
Explode 1 is -1
Explode 2 is 2
Escape ships is checked
AI is 3
Weapons: type 108 (the launcher) count 0 ammo 1
I also added a turreted railgun for provoking ships to destroy me
Items: 59 (Auto-Eject)
Escape Pod Count: I have tried both 1 and 0, neither makes a difference.
A similar question; would it be possible for the 'reborn' ship to retain all of my outfits?
I also found that a blank (empty) death delay will result in a ship that never dies but instead spends eternity dying, riddled with fiery explosions. Could be useful for a plug-in where you are banished to Hell.

Thank you all

This post has been edited by Klepsacovic : 07 March 2005 - 09:53 PM

Try increasing the death delay to at least 15.

Really small numbers for this have caused problems for me in the past.

I remember a similar phenomenon when playing Frozen Heart. There were these little grey dots on the radar but when I went there I couldn't see anything on the main display. Shooting around the area my shots eventually collided with a really small piece of nothing and the impact moved it around. No matter how much I shot it though it never died.

I'm not sure how EVNEW works, but in all the mac editors any field left blank will default to 0 or something when you close it. Open the plug again - is the field still blank?

Death delays at (Or near) 0 prevent the ship from going through its final explosion. It appears to remain there, and absorb shots like a piece of debris.

Yes, I was experimenting with this just the other day, and seemed to find the same answer.

I must say, Klepsacovic, I think that's a really cool idea. I would have never thought to do that. I look forward to seeing that and whatever else you may be working on! (Sorry, I have no advice, but that's OK because everybody else has already solved your problem.)

And Eugene, I like your icon!

(Fnoigy then explodes with immense positive complimentary energy, killing millions.)

Thank you very much. This should also help with a problem I had in Various Advanced Devices 3. I really should just use an acronym for that. VAD3, sounds very official.
I suppose a longer death delay would look better anyway for a phoenix, more flames to obscure the old body.
(Edit) It works. Thank you (/Edit) Is there any way to add a delay to the auto-eject? That could help with the emerging from flames effect.

This post has been edited by Klepsacovic : 08 March 2005 - 06:21 PM

Fnoigy, I am honored. If you want I have made a few other plug-ins. They are called Various Advanced Devices. There are three of them, avoid number two, it had too many bugs and incomplete ideas. And don't worry about having no advice, if you spend enough time here you will absorb knowledge and helpfulness by osmosis. Once it reaches a high enough concentration it will spontaneously turn into advice.

Once I have the necessary graphics I will upgrade the stats on the Phoenix to make it strong enough that you won't need to upgrade it, but instead it will grow through missions... I think I have a plug-in idea, I desperately need to teach myself how to write missions in Nova.
Once I have written the missions, would anyone be kind enough to create the graphics necessary for a fully grown phoenix and a newborn, pitiful looking one?
I could also use beta testers as I have finished the first mission, my first ever for Nova.
cheers for self More missions should follow as I think of ideas and find time.

This post has been edited by Klepsacovic : 09 March 2005 - 05:20 PM

Hm, I once played with the idea of creating a ship that burns forever. However, the problem is that if a ship dies in Nova, it is automatically disabled.
It would be better to create a fire as animation in sequence and include it into the ship sprite.