Pick Up a Cargo Pod

Hey all. At the start of my plugin I want the player to start with a ship that is an Intra-Stellar Jolly Boat, which can't jump. The first few missions I want the player to get involve taking a cargo-pod to the planet's surface. Now, the way I want this to work is that I want the player to get a hail from a ship, accept the mission, and then have a disabled ship (cargo pod) appear which needs to be boarded. After boarding the ship. the player gets a "cargo pod" outfit, which is weightless but slows the ship down a bit. Now, I have two questions. First off, how can I have the pod appear in the system after the player accepts the mission, and second, can I equip the cargo pod without the starting a ghost mission after the player boards the pod?

O.o sounds interesting. Mb you could try having a ship named "cargo pog" (like the little battery dudes u can only get as an escort) jump in and have it hail you saying it neads help, kinda like those other ships that need gas, so u hail them, they disable you bored em, loose some fool and get money. sorta like that though it would just disable and u would get the object. hope that made some sence :mellow:

This post has been edited by LoneWolf : 11 January 2007 - 07:19 PM

The goal is to have a cargo-carrier ship (call it a leviathan, for example) makes the hail. You accept, and one cargo pod (the ones carried by terrapins, sort of a segment of a ring) appears as a disabled ship. Then your ship, which, in this example looks like a terrapin without the cargo pod goes and boards the cargo pod. The cargo pod dies, and you fly towards the planet. Ideally, I could add in an animation of the pod held by the ship, but this may not work.

Okay, when Mission "A" is accepted from the offer ship it starts Mission "B". Mission A's only purpose is to appear in the mission info dialog as a reference to the player and to start mission B. Mission B makes the cargo pod appear as a special ship who's goal is to be boarded. Mission B aborts itself through the on ship done field and starts Mission "C" which spawns a invisible ship that destroys the cargo pod and after that is used to give the player his reward and end Mission A when the player lands on the planet.

I hope that all makes sense.

The problem is that the only way to make mission ships spawn in-system is to have them jump in after a short delay. Which would not look good. Here's another idea but I don't if it will work or not: The carrier ship is a pers from whom you accept Link Mission A. Have a second pers ship in the system (the pod) with a cloaking device and Link Mission B and the flag checked to replace pers with special ship. Mission A will start Mission B when accepted and hopefully this will trigger the cloaked pod to be replaced with a disabled pod. When the pod is boarded Mission B auto-aborts, returning it to the pers (like the 'refuel a ship' missions in Nova) who will cloak again. Of course there a problems with this method too - it may be difficult getting both perses to always appear in the same system together, let alone right next to each other.

This post has been edited by Guy : 12 January 2007 - 07:46 PM

Well, I think I'm only going to have it work that way for the first mission, so I could have them appear automatically until the first mission bit is set, and then have the pers not appear.

How about just picking up the cargo pod directly from the Leviathan? It would be pretty much identical to the 'refuel a ship' missions except you pick up a cargo pod instead of losing some fuel. OnShipDone you could swap the player's ship for a version showing the cargo pod being held.

This post has been edited by Guy : 14 January 2007 - 12:22 AM

Hmm...That's a good idea. And really simplifies things. Thanks.