Would it be possible to have a planet have different defense fleets for a spob without making multiple versions of it? I know this can't be done via the spob itself and probably not in the flet resourse. Can it be done via crons, bits, or something else?

@joshtigerheart, on Feb 1 2007, 07:17 PM, said in Variable Defense Fleets:

Would it be possible to have a planet have different defense fleets for a spob without making multiple versions of it? I know this can't be done via the spob itself and probably not in the flet resourse. Can it be done via crons, bits, or something else?

Well, it's nothing to do with the flet resource, as the field points to a dude, not a fleet.

One thing you could do is use the AppearOn field in the ship resource. In conjunction with a dude resource built in the right way, and some bit setting by crons (or whatever else), this could be used to change the composition of a defence fleet quite radically.

For example, you would have a dude called Planet Alpha Defence, which pointed to two ship resources 'Fighter' and 'Cruiser' which were duplicates of the 'real' resources for those ship (but were unpurchasable, and had the right AppearOn settings). Then you would have a story-line where Planet Alpha becomes the headquarters of the 9th Fleet (but is otherwise unchanged, so no need for Visibility use). Before the change, you would get a defence fleet of fighters, after of cruisers.

(Edit: I would just note that this is a fairly resource intensive solution for - imo - a fairly trivial effect. (Also I should note that this is of course untested.) Doing this for one planet should be fine, but doing it for dozens, or hundreds - unless they all had the same change at the same time - would be impractical.)

So, yes, you can certainly change the composition. Changing the number of ships in the defence fleet or the size of the waves they come in … I don't think you could do that without using Visibility.

What's the particular application you have in mind here?

This post has been edited by pac : 01 February 2007 - 03:16 PM

This would be much easier in EVO since it allows mission bits directly within the dude resources to control which ships appear.

What if you created a special "Defender Cruiser" which is identical to a normal cruiser except it launches, say, 5 other cruisers. Ideally, it would actually be an invisible ship that somehow dies after its carried ships are destroyed, but I'm not sure how that would happen. The "Defender Cruiser" idea has a few problems, like you could get massive numbers of ships if the player kept killing the Defender Cruiser first, and, if s/he were near enough, s/he would see the cruisers launching, and could possibly kill the Defender Cruiser before it launches its posse. Just an idea. It would allow you to change the number of defenders, however.

D'oh! I forgot I had posted this. Darn you Real Life™ and your memory erasure beams!

Thanks for the info. And as per pac's question, this was for CTC and would be done on likely one to three spobs, since thats about how many there are. I was wanting a big bad fighter to appear if the player was a fighter, big bad medium ship if the player was a medium ship, and a big bad battleship if the player was a capital ship. Defense fleet would be a misnomer in CTC, since it'd just be one really powerful ship.

@joshtigerheart, on Feb 3 2007, 06:17 PM, said in Variable Defense Fleets:

Thanks for the info. And as per pac's question, this was for CTC and would be done on likely one to three spobs, since thats about how many there are. I was wanting a big bad fighter to appear if the player was a fighter, big bad medium ship if the player was a medium ship, and a big bad battleship if the player was a capital ship. Defense fleet would be a misnomer in CTC, since it'd just be one really powerful ship.

Hmm, yeah, I think you could do this (kind of) based on missions which change a bit based on the inherent AI of the player's ship (set under AvailShipType). The problem would be that the inherent AI categories do not correspond to the ones you want to use. A 'medium ship' might be an AI 2 freighter, but fighters and warships should both be AI 3 warships.

But I don't know anything about CTC. Maybe changing the signification of inherent AIs is no problem, and you can use them for whatever you please.

@pac, on Feb 3 2007, 04:54 PM, said in Variable Defense Fleets:

Hmm, yeah, I think you could do this (kind of) based on missions which change a bit based on the inherent AI of the player's ship (set under AvailShipType). The problem would be that the inherent AI categories do not correspond to the ones you want to use. A 'medium ship' might be an AI 2 freighter, but fighters and warships should both be AI 3 warships.

But I don't know anything about CTC. Maybe changing the signification of inherent AIs is no problem, and you can use them for whatever you please.

Well, he could do it on a ship-by-ship basis rather than an AI type-by-AI type basis.

@orcaloverbri9, on Feb 5 2007, 03:09 AM, said in Variable Defense Fleets:

Well, he could do it on a ship-by-ship basis rather than an AI type-by-AI type basis.

Well, of course - but, assuming a significant number of ships, that would be a massive waste of missions. And if there's ever going to be a shortage of any resource, it's probably going to be missions.

But I notice that AvailShipType can use inherent govt. If that was used creatively (there are always spare government resources), you could do it quite precisely with a lot fewer missions.

Well, that shouldn't be a problem, CTC has an insignificant number of ships. Planned to be nine flyable ships. There'll be variants, but only available to the A.I, and have zero crew. Capturing them would seriously mess up the balance.

Thanks for the help, now I just need to implement this...