Requesting Veteran Developer Assistance

I figured I should stop hijacking IT's thread. Basically, my problem is this;

I am trying to make my ships come with an invisible shuttle bay (IE, the player doesn't actually have a bay, just a shuttle) with a shuttle functioning as an escape ship as an important integral feature. You would think this would work fairly painlessly. However, I'm experiencing some truly bizarre problems that are making it a herculean task.

1st problem: Under no circumstances is it possible to make a ship start with ammunition for a carried ship bay. THIS problem by itself could be circumvented in a wide variety of ways. However, the second problem makes this circumvention impossible;

2nd problem : If I Gxxx the player a shuttle in any way , or if the player buys a ship with a shuttle, which is SUPPOSE to work, it does not, ever, under any circumstances, eject. Ever. The ONLY way I can get the shuttle to eject is by buying it myself. And I cannot eject manually-the ONLY way I can eject the shuttle, when I have a functioning one, is by killing myself, or being killed by others. Command-X does not work.

These are some of the strangest errors I have ever seen. I need the help of some serious plugin wizards. If you need more information, please don't hesitate to ask.

When I was trying to create a test plug for EV Firefly that added the Firefly shuttles to Serenity, I ran into this same problem. I didn't want the shuttlebay to show up in the secondary weapons, so I did exactly what you're describing, to no avail. I even attempted to grant the bay and simply give it a null description, but it either didn't work at all or would show up as a blank field under secondary weapons. I also discovered that carried ships will refuse to launch if set to be unsellable.

Ultimately, the only solution I came to was simply to use it as a standard carried fighter and live with it in the secondary weapons list labelled "shuttlebay." The upside of this is that you could actually use the shuttle as a decoy in a fight sometimes, like to get a pirate off your back. Give it just a weak little pop gun, justified as for shooting basic space junk out of the way for emergency purposes.

Shlimazel, something about the engine of EVN makes it so you can't ever eject unless your ship is disabled or breaking up. That's normal, nothing weird about that.

As far as ships not ejecting when the ship carrying them came with them, I've never seen that, even if the parent ship doesn't have a launch bay for the carried ship. This is very odd, indeed.

@DarthKev
There are commands that allow you to force-eject and force self-destruct.

I don’t have time to test things right now, but does it work with other besides the shuttle? If so, I expect the issue is related to RID 128 only, in which case the solution is obvious.

QUOTE (king_of_manticores @ Jun 1 2010, 06:21 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

@DarthKev
There are commands that allow you to force-eject and force self-destruct.

I know that. But force-ejecting doesn't work unless your ship is disabled or breaking up, that's what I said. Of course you can't auto-eject when your ship is in perfect working order. How thick do you think I am?

Aha! Further testing reveals the answer-while you cannot autoeject, if you manually eject while destructing, it works. I think the answer is connected somehow to the ship not having an autoeject function due to not having the outfit.

Alright. Apparently it's working normally now. In conclusion; everything works normally if you buy the ship, apparently, but if you start in the ship it won't work at all.

This post has been edited by Shlimazel : 03 June 2010 - 11:46 AM

Alright, then here's an idea for starting the player in a large ship with launch bays/escape ships without forcing the player to go buy it. Start them in a simple shuttle and have them start the game by landing on a stellar. It can be as simple as Levo or as complex as Rauther. Upon landing a mission will start that gives the player the ship you really want them to start in. NCB ship changes are treated as purchases except the player spends no credits. You can explain the shuttle bit at the beginning as heading over to the planet/moon/station to rendezvous with the 'real' start ship.

This post has been edited by DarthKev : 03 June 2010 - 05:58 PM

Hmm. That just might work. I might have to try and test it.

Note that gxxx'ing the player an escape ship shouldn't work, I tested at length.