I was playing around with various options in the ship resources whilst playing with missions, and I seem to have noticed that the "Cloak while docked" option does not work... Or at least, it is not working in the method I assumed it to work in (cloak while hovering around a planet/station). Has anyone here gotten it to work?

If you are curious, I was trying to start a (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/cgi-bin/ubb/postdisplay.cgi?forum=Forum9&topic;=005031")mission while in space(/url), which would have special ships uncloak from random locations after the mission was accepted, and attack the player. That didn't work, the ships would only appear if they are set to jump in after a delay or to appear randomly cloak. In both of those cases, however, the ships jumped in after a short delay, regardless of the setting. Anything else set there would not occur until the player left and reentered the system, either via hyperspace or via landing.

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(edit: proofreading good...)

(This message has been edited by SpacePirate (edited 01-18-2004).)

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Originally posted by SpacePirate:
**I was playing around with various options in the ship resources whilst playing with missions, and I seem to have noticed that the "Cloak while docked" option does not work... Or at least, it is not working in the method I assumed it to work in (cloak while hovering around a planet/station). Has anyone here gotten it to work?

If you are curious, I was trying to start a mission while in space, which would have special ships uncloak from random locations after the mission was accepted, and attack the player. That didn't work, the ships would only appear if they are set to jump in after a delay or to appear randomly cloak. In both of those cases, however, the ships jumped in after a short delay, regardless of the setting. Anything else set there would not occur until the player left and reentered the system, either via hyperspace or via landing.

**

Hmmmm Havnt tried. If some other people confirm your bug observation, email it off to mrxak to have him forward it to the beta listso it can be fixed for 1.0.8. Does it work if the mission starts while onthe ground?
-Az

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Originally posted by Azratax2:
**Hmmmm Havnt tried. If some other people confirm your bug observation, email it off to mrxak to have him forward it to the beta listso it can be fixed for 1.0.8. Does it work if the mission starts while onthe ground?
-Az

**

Well, this is actually two bug reports in one topic. The first is the major bug of ships not cloaking whilst docked. This is standard engine behavior, no little tricks were added. This should be easy to confirm.

The second is that starting a mission while in space, a non-standard, unsupported method of doing so, only creates special ships when they are set to jump in or if they are set to appear randomly, cloaked. The "bug" for this is that both behaviors cause the special ships to jump into the system, as opposed to the latter setting's expected behavior.

Actually, after testing a bit, the 'appear randomly, cloaked' option does not work as expected, even in standard missions... The ships still jump in, uncloaked. They should already be in the system, cloaked.

However, the other ship behaviors (appear above spob 1, 2, 3, or 4, or appear randomly) while used in my method are not entirely unexpected, Nova will not create the ships until the player leaves and reenters the system (and then works as advertised). The following is more of a suggestion for an engine revision: it would be pretty cool if the ships would appear to launch from spob 1, 2, 3, or 4, or if they were to uncloak from random locations, as if they were there all along. The only behavior without a reasonable explanation would be to just appear randomly; they would seemingly be created from thin air. This is not likely to be implemented, though it would be fairly cool. (Imagine missions to take over a planet, with defense fleets that launch from the planet, or having reinforcements launch from the planets surface...)

Another revision I'd like to see, while I am on that topic, is that I believe that multiple special/aux ships that are set to "jump into the system after a short delay" should fly in formation, as if they were a fleet. They currently fly in an unorganized group, as they all jump in from the same location, towards the same target, and are all from a similar government (three prerequisites for having a fleet in real life, imo). This would be moot if Matt implemented fleets in missions, however.

~ SpacePirate

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(This message has been edited by SpacePirate (edited 01-18-2004).)

I imagine that "Cloak while docked" flag is set so that the player can dock without uncloaking. I don't think it was meant for the AI.

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I haven't noticed any problems with the cloaking engine. The one thing I haven't tried is the player being able to dock while cloaked but I don't believe this is possible regardless since there is no outfit to support such. But my ai ships both dock cloaked as well as jump while cloaked. The only way I've been able to tell that they were there is by watching the radar blips. Course then there are those ships that have no radar signature and you never know they're there until they uncloak to attack something. More in regards to your specific problem with ships always jumping in, I think it has more to do with being in the same system as the ship when the mission starts. I'd imagine that the only way for the random location setting to work would be when you enter a system. Since the system conditions are loaded when you enter a system (or leave a spob), the special ship isn't a part of that system so to compensate when the mission is started, the engine causes the ship to jump in regardless of settings. I don't think it's really a bug - just experiencing the limits of the engine. My guess is that if you were to accept the mission while on a spob and then left, the cloaked ship would appear as it should.

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Originally posted by Kame:
I haven't noticed any problems with the cloaking engine. The one thing I haven't tried is the player being able to dock while cloaked but I don't believe this is possible regardless since there is no outfit to support such. But my ai ships both dock cloaked as well as jump while cloaked.

Do yours dock cloaked? Mine do not for some reason, unless they have been set to cloak while just flying. If all I have is cloak while docked, or some other combination causing them not to cloak during normal operation, they do not. Of course, if someone could confirm this, I could be wrong.

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Originally posted by Katana:
**I imagine that "Cloak while docked" flag is set so that the player can dock without uncloaking. I don't think it was meant for the AI.

**

That may be the case... I'll try it out later, unless someone else gets to it first.

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Also posted by Kame:
**More in regards to your specific problem with ships always jumping in, I think it has more to do with being in the same system as the ship when the mission starts. I'd imagine that the only way for the random location setting to work would be when you enter a system. Since the system conditions are loaded when you enter a system (or leave a spob), the special ship isn't a part of that system so to compensate when the mission is started, the engine causes the ship to jump in regardless of settings. I don't think it's really a bug - just experiencing the limits of the engine. My guess is that if you were to accept the mission while on a spob and then left, the cloaked ship would appear as it should.

**

Yeah, I am aware of that, but I also made a test to see if it worked when you left the planet, and it again didn't work. The Bible and NovaTools mark this as a specific ability, to start in random locations in the sytem while cloaked. They don't. So, as I said above, I did try to accept the mission on the spob, and it still refused to work. :frown:

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So just to reiterate, I believe the cloak while docked option is intended for AI ships only. There is no feature of the cloak outfit to allow the player to dock while cloaked.

I ran a little test to check the cloaking flags of the ships and what I've found is that all except "cloak when hyperspacing" are dependant upon another fields - specifically "cloak while just flying." It seems that only those two fields can be used independantly of any other cloak flags. The hyperspace cloak is completely independent of any other cloak flags. The other cloak flags seem to be dependent on the "cloak while just flying" flag. When this flag is checked all the other cloak flags appear to behave correctly. The one problem I noticed was that when "cloak... when hyperspacing, while just flying, when docked, won't uncloak until close" where all checked the ship would uncloak when it left the spob end flew to the jump radius, where it would cloak again to leave. Otherwise you'd never know it was in the system as there wasn't even a radar signature - but this could have just been due to the 1.1 version Polaris cloak organ I tested with.

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What cloaking device you use shouldn't matter... There seems to be something screwy here.

~ SpacePirate

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The second is that starting a mission while in space, a non-standard, unsupported method of doing so,

Hold up. Is it possible to have a mission that just starts, out of the blue, without the player landing or communicating with someone? That would be really helpful for a certain mission I'll need to include in my Firefly TC....

(Specifically, the ship abrupty breaks down with no warning.)

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Yes, but it requires you to have certain missions in advance. You can have random crons start missions (so you could have a ship breakdown mission conceivably), but you'll have to activate it somehow (probably via another cron or an invisible mission). However, I don't know too much about this, so maybe someone else can clarify.

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It is certainly possible.

As UE mentioned, the easiest way is probably to start it with a crön resource. However, that mission will be shown as soon as you either enter (or perhaps exit) a system, not in the middle of a system.

What I am doing is using another mission, and a special ship. The special ship goal is to view see the ship, and, using the onShipDone field, I start the mission. That will seemingly cause a mission to appear out of nowhere. In cases like you mentioned, the ship should be either a single, translucent black pixel, or a ship disguised as a normal ship. If you use nested randomization, you can make it appear even more random.

Just remember that you have to start the invisible mission somewhere, with perhaps a 10% chance of visibility or so.

~ SpacePirate

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