Flying your carried fighter

I'm about fifteen minutes away from finishing a proof-of-concept Neb goaded me into creating for a plug-in that allows you to depart your carrier-class ship in a fighter and lead a squadron into combat, then get back onboard your carrier and recall your fighters for repairs (A followup on this thread from last year). It even kills your fighter's sensors if the command ship dies while you're away, which is an especially neat effect.

However, I remain completely stymied by one issue. When applying Hxxx (Or Cxxx/Exxx) in gameplay to switch ships, the new ship receives the same shield/armor values that you had while in the first. In this case, I'm switching from a UE Carrier (Shields 1500/Armor 800) to a UE Fighter (150/50). What I need to do is subtract 1350 shields and 750 armor at the same moment the Hxxx takes place. I thought of a few ways to do this:

1.) Gxxx a shield/armor mod outfit with a negative value - doesn't appear to work at all.

2.) Cause an invisible ship to fire a shot that submunitions into a -1350 shield hit and a -750 pass-through-shields armor hit. The problem with this is that if the carrier has taken practically any damage at all, then the fighter will be destroyed almost immediately. Also, there is a substantial lag time (~2 seconds) using this method, while one waits for the invisible ship to hyper into the system.

So... any thoughts?

-reg

OK, listen and hear me out. Have you tried opening your ship info dialog box? There was some other problem with changing outfits mid-flight by aborting missions and losing/gaining outfits. The solution was that they had to open the player dialogue box, and we came up with that its impossible to force that box open.

EDIT: See this thread

This post has been edited by zapp : 17 April 2005 - 12:36 PM

zapp, on Apr 17 2005, 10:31 AM, said:

OK, listen and hear me out. Have you tried opening your ship info dialog box? There was some other problem with changing outfits mid-flight by aborting missions and losing/gaining outfits. The solution was that they had to open the player dialogue box, and we came up with that its impossible to force that box open.

EDIT: See this thread
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I have, and it doesn't work, even after adding a negative shield/armor outfit. Sorry.

Also, on an unrelated note, non-lethal bombs seem to have no/negative effect on greater-than-100% shields. After setting one off on my ship, it took twelve 100-damage weapons to take out what should have been 1000 shields. :blink:

PS. Regulus: Did you figure out the problem with the Yxxx/Uxxx?

This post has been edited by Edwards : 17 April 2005 - 01:02 PM

zapp, on Apr 17 2005, 12:31 PM, said:

The solution was that they had to open the player dialogue box, and we came up with that its impossible to force that box open.

See this thread
View Post

Yes, I posted in that thread. It doesn't work. I think the problem is that shield/armor mods only add or remove capacity , but the game "remembers" the actual values from your previous ship regardless.

Edwards, on Apr 17 2005, 12:57 PM, said:

PS. Regulus: Did you figure out the problem with the Yxxx/Uxxx?
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No, I gave up on it after Guy came up with a better means of getting the effect I wanted (the disabled ship with ShipGoal 6/rescue, which can't provide long range support but behaves generally like one would expect a ship to, rather than a gussied-up spöb ).

(Edit: Credit where due)

-reg

This post has been edited by Regulus : 17 April 2005 - 01:18 PM

The shields can be taken out instantly by a device with huge negative regen, then quickly removed. Is the shield value recapped every time a day changes, or is it just reset to 100 when you land?

(/edit glad to be an inspiration. Working out bugs like this is why we are obligated to get a working version down first :-P)

Ill think about it... this is a wierd problem. Very interesting.

This post has been edited by NebuchadnezzaR : 18 April 2005 - 09:01 PM

Gxxx the player two outfits: one shield regenerator with negative regen, and one armor regenerator with negative regen. Immediately after, take the items away, then grant the player two new items: one shield regenerator with high regen, and one armor regenerator with high regen.

This will first knock out the player's shields and armor, then bring it back up to full again. But, I'm not sure what's to stop the armor negative regen from disabling you.

But, from some fun experience, I found that when you blow up a ship, its explosion will never disable a ship, and instead it will leave a ship with 1 more armor point than their disabling status, if the target ship was in a weak enough state already.

Requiem, on Apr 19 2005, 12:28 AM, said:

But, from some fun experience, I found that when you blow up a ship, its explosion will never disable a ship, and instead it will leave a ship with 1 more armor point than their disabling status, if the target ship was in a weak enough state already.
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I actually remember seeing that happen, I believe in EV, though, not Nova. A pirate boarded, then blew up, a trader and was disabled by the trader's explosion. I then boarded the pirate.

This post has been edited by erikthered : 19 April 2005 - 12:44 AM

I hate to break it to you guys, but negative shield/armor regeneration is one of the thing that just plain doesn't work. The same goes for negative weapon damage, if you're interested.

And the exploding-ships-can-never-disable-or-destroy feature was added in one of the early updates to prevent the player from using the "Leviathan Armegeddon" tactic, which was capable of destroying even Matt Burch.
It might even be possible to use that feature for dropping your shields properly, but I can't think of any way to limit the area the ship-blast covers.

Edwards, on Apr 19 2005, 12:58 AM, said:

And the exploding-ships-can-never-disable-or-destroy feature was added in one of the early updates to prevent the player from using the "Leviathan Armegeddon" tactic, which was capable of destroying even Matt Burch.
It might even be possible to use that feature for dropping your shields properly, but I can't think of any way to limit the area the ship-blast covers.
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Is this limited to Nova? And by "Leviathan Armageddon" do you mean the destruction of multiple Leviathans simultaneously? It would be kind of cool to see what would happen if Matt's ship was blown up...(imagines blinding flash that melts retinas and cracks LCD, resulting in blindness and a big mess)

Edwards, on Apr 18 2005, 09:58 PM, said:

I hate to break it to you guys, but negative shield/armor regeneration is one of the thing that just plain doesn't work. The same goes for negative weapon damage, if you're interested.
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Really? I thought I saw things here saying that it did work... You could grant the insane regen outfits first, have an invisible ship with a high powered invisible weapon attack you, then hyper out, making your shields go down, but the regen outfits kept you up.

has just remembered something
WAIT! What about the Krypt Minda attack? looks in EVNEW

;Krypt mind attack
ModType1: Faster shield recharge -20
ModType2: Fuel Scoop -12
ModType3: More shield capacity -50
ModType4: Faster armor recharge -10

If this didn't work the way it was supposed to with the Dev team in Beta phase, I think they would have pointed this out to Mr. Burch.

This post has been edited by Requiem : 19 April 2005 - 02:35 AM

Isn't Krypt Mind Attack granted on a planet during the Vell-os string? The problem is getting this to work in space...

-reg

Nope, I believe the Krypt Mind Attack is granted when you fly around in K-### space. I think this is done with special Krypt Pods and missions, which give the player the outfit OnShipDone., but I can't be quite sure.

Yeah, the krypt attack is done with a mission to observe the krypt ships, and the Gxxx is put in the onshipdone field.

Negative shield regen outfits definately work.

Negative shield regen in the ship rescource itself doesnt, because it is treated as a "-1 ignore this field" sorta value. In the outfit modvals, theres no reason to check for that.

This post has been edited by NebuchadnezzaR : 19 April 2005 - 12:32 PM

Requiem, on Apr 19 2005, 12:33 AM, said:

WAIT! What about the Krypt Minda attack? looks in EVNEW

;Krypt mind attack
ModType1: Faster shield recharge -20
ModType2: Fuel Scoop -12
ModType3: More shield capacity -50
ModType4: Faster armor recharge -10

Well, I just made the Krypt Mind Attack outfit puchasable, and put it on a shuttle. In the time it took my fuel to go down to zero, my armor didn't change at all. Using an outfit that had a much higher negative recharge rate, there was still no effect. Sorry.

Requiem, on Apr 19 2005, 12:33 AM, said:

If this didn't work the way it was supposed to with the Dev team in Beta phase, I think they would have pointed this out to Mr. Burch.

How would they know if it wasn't working? Those numbers are smaller than the shield/armor recharge rates of the Polaris ships, so all they'd do is lower how fast your shields and armor regenerate, which is very hard to determine.

Edwards

PS. Does anyone know who wrote the dësc for the Krypt Mind Attack outfit? It's great.

Oh... huh... I never knew that.

Here's my best attempt to brute-force my way through the problem, and it's not very pretty.

Stage 1 : Player fires weapon, killing invisible target drone generated by Mission 1 and triggering OnShipDone. Hxxx player into a special fighter type with shield and armor levels identical to the carrier he was transferred out of. Gxxx a sheild and armor recharge mod to fully and immediately repair the player's shields. Sxxx Mission 2.

Effect: Player is now flying a fighter garunteed to have full carrier-level shields. He will also be invulnerable until we remove this outfit.

Stage 2 : Mission 2 summons a drone which immediately self-destructs, and triggers OnShipDone. Dxxx the recharge outfit granted in Stage 1. Hxxx the player into the real fighter type, with fighter-level armor and shields. Sxxx Mission 3.

Effect: After ~2 seconds lag (for drone to hyperspace in), player has full carrier level shields in a normal fighter, and is no longer invulnerable.

Stage 3 : Mission 3 summons a drone which attacks the player, removing the appropriate amount of shields/armor.

Effect: After ~2 seconds lag, player has a fighter with fighter level shields.

-----

Problems:

*Lag time while waiting for drones to enter system is considerable.

*The attack drone from Stage 3 is not easy to remove from gameplay, and may agitate the members of your fighter wing.

*One or both of the Stage 3 attack drone's missiles could miss.

*Any damage incurred during the lag between Stages 2 and 3 will probably result in the destruction of the fighter when Stage 3 activates, in a delayed response.

*Obnoxious resource usage - we're going from three missions (watch for launch, watch for recall, return aboard) to five, plus more to get the carrier back up and running afterwards.

-----

C'mon, guys, I know we're better than this. Anyone else got something?

-reg

So how do you get back into your mothership?

Regulus, on Apr 19 2005, 08:06 PM, said:

-----

Problems:

(1) *Lag time while waiting for drones to enter system is considerable.

(2) *The attack drone from Stage 3 is not easy to remove from gameplay, and may agitate the members of your fighter wing.

(3) *One or both of the Stage 3 attack drone's missiles could miss.

(4) *Any damage incurred during the lag between Stages 2 and 3 will probably result in the destruction of the fighter when Stage 3 activates, in a delayed response.

(5)*Obnoxious resource usage - we're going from three missions (watch for launch, watch for recall, return aboard) to five, plus more to get the carrier back up and running afterwards.

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1. Explain it away, say it's your damage control computer recalibrating itself after you change ships.

2. make the second missile use ammo type -999, or put 2 launhcers that use -999 ammo on it and set to fire simultainiously

3. give them lightning turning and accel with
0 chance of jamming and pass over all non-target objects (asteroids, other ships, bla bla bla)

4. set the misiles to not be able to destroy and make instant disable, give the ship an outf wich makes instant shield/armor regen and then goes away (via mission script or whatever)

5. no way around that i can see, sorry.

Couldn't you, in the same mission, do a Gxxx then Dxxx? This removes the 2 seconds of invulnerability and the extra misn. If outfit xxx has a high enough regen, then it should instantly recharge you, and if my assumption that Nova reads from left to right, and not all simultaneously, then it should work. But, I'm probably wrong.

As for the ship that attacks you, have it fire two unguided projectiles. First one excludes all weapons, and has a high reload. This should cause it to fire first. It will then immediately submunition into the armor or shield missile. Said missile, as Edwin said, should have insane maneuverability and tracking, so as to avoid misses. The second shot from the ship will fire once the first weapon goes into reload. So, this shot detonates as soon as it fires, and has a small blast radius that destroys the firing ship. The projectile then subs into the other missile.

Is there any other way to get a ship to appear in a system at a summoned time?

Also, I too am curious to know as to how you get back into the carrier...

Edwin|, on Apr 20 2005, 12:20 AM, said:

2. make the second missile use ammo type -999, or put 2 launhcers that use -999 ammo on it and set to fire simultainiouslyView Post

Unfortunately, AmmoType -999 will destroy the firing ship without generating a weapon sprite at all.

Requiem, on Apr 20 2005, 02:18 AM, said:

So, this shot detonates as soon as it fires, and has a small blast radius that destroys the firing ship.View Post

This could work.

Requiem, on Apr 20 2005, 02:18 AM, said:

Is there any other way to get a ship to appear in a system at a summoned time?
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Yes, using NebuchadnezzaR's Method. However, unless there's some way of getting the trigger ship to spawn inside the system, I don't think the ~2 second jump delay can be overcome. (This is, as far as I know, only possible with a përs-offered mission.)

Additionally, I think Stages 2 and 3 can be combined. The attack drone's ShipGoal can be 4 (Observe) which will trigger the Dxxx and Hxxx strings a scant moment before the missile impacts. Unfortunately, this might precludes the use of a cloaking drone, which means it will appear on the radar.

I will experiment this weekend.

-reg