After seeing Eugene Chin's topic about fleet dissemination, I began thinking. Way too much. I wondered if it would be possible for the engine to support this idea: While playing Nova, you come across a Manticore fighting a Civ. Valkyrie. The Manticore wins, obviously, and captures the ship. That Valkyrie is now under the control of the Manticore, isn't it? You decide to attack that Manticore, because of the large profit you could reap from pirating it, and after you capture it, that Valkyrie is still attacking you. Anyone who has taken logic will realize this is odd, because the Valkyrie was the Manticore's escort, so it should, logically, be part of your fleet now. Right? As stated before, the moron AI doesn't seem to be able to register that the Valkyrie was protecting the Manticore, which is now your escort, so shouldn't that Valkyrie be protecting you, or at least your Manticore escort? I had a plan to impliment this idea, but I really have no clue as to the more advanced methods of modding. It wouldn't be impossible for me to think it up; I wouldn't be able to understand my own plan. Is there any developer out there who could help me make sense of my own idea :huh:?

This post has been edited by Anaxagoras : 02 November 2004 - 10:44 PM

Game-wise, you're right... the valkyrie should be under your control...

Realistically... you're wrong.

1 - Manticore takes over Valkyrie with a regiment of troops,
2 - You take over Manticore,
3 - Manticore Troops on Valkyrie are unnafected by take-over of the Manticore
4 - Valkyrie wants revenge for the loss of their comrades on the Manticore.

Actually...

Troops on Valkyrie fear for own safety, know you could kill them before they escape the system.
This would mean that you technically would have them under your control, but in the event of a fight, they'd grab their chances at freedom pretty quickly, so they'd probably have a Wimpy Trader AI type.

I suppose it depends on the race... if you go star trek, a klingon Manticore taking over a Valkyrie... forget about insta-capture of the Valkyrie but a ferengi Manticore taking over a Valkyrie would provide a nice escort after the take over of the Manticore.

Pirates usually have a "take and get out" attitude... but when provoked, they usually have a vengeful attitude.

In any case, this argument won't get you any closer to the answers you seek. Personally, I don't know of a method to accomplish what you desire, but I don't exactly spend alot of weeks trying to reach the limits of the Nova engine like some people here...

I hope you get your answer soon,
Eric.

I'd always thought of it as that you would kill off the majority of the crew, and replace them with crew from your own ship, thus explaining why it was so hard to capture ships when you have much less crew than another ship. While it is still potentially possible to do so, it's not very likely.

~ SP

What you want are AI changes, which can't be done.

This scenario would (in real life) depend on how taking over a ship occured. If the Valkyrie crew was replaced by some guys from the manticore, then yes, it would most likely stay with the manticore, since they are former crewmates. If the takeover was more of a, "escort me or die" situation where the original crew was left intact, then obviously the Valk would bail and run, since the party that caused it harm is no longer a danger to it...unless you order your newly captured manticore to attack.

Of course none of this matters since Nova is not real life. At least for most of us... And like UE says, you would have to change the AI of the game itself, which would be a code thing I assume. And if you can make the game do that, it might just take control of your computer and shoot fire from the disk drives and make you submit to serving it. Oh wait, that sounds kind of like a Windows machine...

Nope, we can't do changes to the game engine, which means one of the things we can't change is AI. Although one of the genious programmers around here might figure out a complicated workaround...

I meant the programmers could make the change in the AI. Couldn't they?

Matt Burch said no more features. Only bug fixes in future versions of Nova.

I know he is done with features, but it would be possible if he had the desire right?