Assistance and ideas needed!

The question of creating a mechanism by which a ship's energy can be recharged by a device which produces energy thingies (=the energy blobs produced when a ship dies) under controlled circumstances has come up before in the forums.

A year or so ago I put a little (admitedly not very much!) effort into producing such a device. My efforts didn't produce any workable results. Now I am about to try again, with more determination.

Basically I am aiming for a base and/or tanker vessel which will produce energy blobs once a friendly ship (and not an enemy) comes within a certain range of it. It needs to work without any intervention by the player who will be directing battle, or some other very important task. It also needs to be scenario-independant, so a tanker can be popped into any plug on a whim.

Has anyone any research done on this which may point me in the right direction? Or suggestions. One way might be to build an "in flight refuler weapon" into friendly ships, but this would use up a weapon slot which I would prefer not to do, though it does prevent the enemy from getting "our" fuel. I did get this to work, but only partly, and it didn't work properly. It also wasn't scenario-independant, and it crashed my Mac!

Perhaps there are half a dozzen working models out there already. I would also like to avoid re-inventing something that has been done already...
Suggestions, discussions, tips

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Oh, so it is another bug hunt then...

Maby somthing that uses up -energy or thetanker being equiped with a launch bay that launches ships that fly towards you then when thay hit you thay eather die (relicing energy) or expire altering the total energy of your ship.

(Sorry about the spelling)

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"Time is only a guide
line"

I'd suggest creating an Arrive action that can be added to any ship that needs to be refueled, with the event "Set Target, me" and Owner Same. Then, give the tanker an arrive action of Alter Energy (with Owner Same).

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• CCS Sacred Promise (DE H c-3)
o SCS Pillar of Autumn
Our conviction is like an arrow already in flight.
Your life will only last until it reaches you.

Thanks 9024, but that idea doesn't work. I tried every combination of it, with the added intention of making the launched ship invisible and very short-lived. Can't get it to work.

A gun that shoots Energy Blobs kind of works, but not usefully. (It'll re-fuel your enemies ok, but not your own ships! Unless you're near an enemy target when the blobs appear over the enemy and will refuel your ships, as I said, not useful, amusing though...)

Pallas' I will try your approach, but it involves modifying the ships themselves which I'd like to avoid if I can. (I mean it won't kill me to modify the ships, but I'd rather steer away from that direction!!)

Thanks guys.
Will report back.

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Oh, so it is another bug hunt then...

Well, it's not a major alteration to the ships. You just have one action, standard throughout, and have to point the ships there. It's not something where you have to actually think about the changes you're making.

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• CCS Sacred Promise (DE H c-3)
o SCS Pillar of Autumn
Our conviction is like an arrow already in flight.
Your life will only last until it reaches you.

Er, yes! Erm, where exactly is the "Set Target, me" event, now that we come to mention it...?
I spent a little while (read 48 hours, no sleep, lots of coffee!!) at it over the weekend and ended up relatively quickly with ships that refuel themselves, very efficiently I might add, when they complete any set action. I am missing something here.

(What I achieved previously (I looked up my old Ares experiments here) was a workable solution, but with scenario based actions).

Yeah, you're right, its not too much to alter the ships' actions. I'll go with it.

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Oh, so it is another bug hunt then...