plugin idea, any takers?

This theoretical plug for EV Nova would allow the player to outfit their escorts in the same manner as they can outfit their own ship, and they would also be able to name the escorts. Each bayful of escorts would be outfitted the same way, but the individual ships could have different names. I always have disliked the current escort upgrading method, and have wished that I could have more control over the outfits.

Is this possible, and does anyone want to make it?

No it's not possible without rewriting the engine. Though it's something I've always wanted.

AI's don't use outfits. So the only it's possible is an engine rewrite. Which won't happen any time soon. If ever.

It's possible, guys, but only in a TC, never in the stock scenario (too many ship types already).

Yours to figure it out.

I know a way, too. It's probably the same as yours, Pace, based on what you said.

Oh crap.

It's possible, if you only have about 10 ships and 5 different outfits in the game.

Yah, I'm thinking a very long series of different upgrades, and the player simply upgrades the ship until they get the one they like. It might take a while, though, since you need to land for each upgrade to take effect.

@belthazar, on Jul 27 2006, 06:59 PM, said in EVN Escort Outfitter:

Yah, I'm thinking a very long series of different upgrades, and the player simply upgrades the ship until they get the one they like. It might take a while, though, since you need to land for each upgrade to take effect.

Wow, that's surprisingly simple. I like. Just include the upgrade sequence in the hire desc and the player will have no problems. You wouldn't need to have one for every possible configuration, just a bunch of useful ones maxed out for a particular purpose. And make sure they're in order of increasing cost.

Nice thinking, Belthazar.

But the more I think of it, however, it springs to mind that the most realistic way of emulating the outfitter's effect on an escort would be by actually far more complicated, i.e. scrapping out the hired/captured escorts (for that, use 0 crews, have all "hire chance" at 0% and perhaps play around with the DITL for ship boarding and for the bar-based hiring system), and having mďsn-based escorts. The escort outfits in the outfitter would be blank outfits aborting the mďsn in question, and each mďsn has a bunch of outfits only available while it's still activated (and not failed).

This means that to make a realistic emulation of custom outfitting, you'd need loads of mďsn slots (one per escort type, i.e. each outfitting upgrade is represented that leads to way too many combinations), oütf slots (one set of outfits per mďsn/escort type ), as many shďps as mďsns. And that's the minimum I can think of

Man, what a heavy load of work, even if it's for one ship with 10 outfit possibilities

So yes, it is easier to stick to the method of long upgrading (still tedious but far less), easier still to forget the idea

( unless someone has a better way of implementing the idea?)

Best regards,

Peter @ ARPIA

I'm wondering.. The pilot buys a ship, upgrades it, and then captures another ship to use as the main ship... The first ship becomes an escort, but does it keep the upgrades?

EDIT: Also, I've noticed that no one has addressed the option of naming the escorts.

This post has been edited by pruelva : 27 July 2006 - 10:49 AM

All escorts revert to the stock of their variant. So if you had a Mod C Starbridge with 300 Ion Cannons and then captured and used a different ship as your own, it would loose the IPCs.

And you can't name escorts without renaming the ship resource. So if you wanted, you could, say copy the ships you want as escorts into new resources, make them hireable, and change their names.