and I want to stop it!

The Nova Bible shďp resource section says:

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Crew: Number of crew members. Ships with 0 crew can't be boarded, nor can they capture any other ships.

And yet the 0-crew ship I'm flying is offered the opportunity to capture the ships it boards. The odds are long -- generally I get a 1% - 4% chance -- but it isn't 0%.

Meanwhile, Zacha Pedro says:

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The Crew field: This number field is simply the amount of crew members this ship has, which is mainly used for display in the ship info dialog and when capturing other ships, for computing the capture probability. 0-crew ships are a little special: they can only capture ships as escorts, and they can't be boarded. Be aware that putting too high values can overflow the capture formula when a ship with a too big crew attempts to capture a "crew of one" ship, making the former unable to capture the latter, so don't go over ~5000.

I'm hoping that ZP is right that 0-crew ships can only use captured ships as escorts -- testing that could require capturing 40 or more ships, and that's more than I'm up for. Here's the thing, though: what I want is a set-up that will let a certain ship in my TC board ships it disables, but not have any chance of capturing them as either fly-able ships or escorts (particularly in the case of a particular target ship, though it would be fine if this were true for all targets).

I think I can come up with an exploit that would use InherentGovt, onCapture, and some extra-nasty attacking ships to insure that any captured escorts were destroyed within a few jumps of the time they were acquired, but I'd rather be able to deny the player the ability to capture them in the first place, or have them self-destruct as soon as they were captured. Remember, though, that I do want to be able to board to plunder fuel, credits, ammo, and goods.

Any ideas?

Take the capture button out of the DITL/DLOG? The catch is that it would keep the player from capturing anything no matter what ship they are in.

Technically, the fact that it has zero crew means that it is either a creature, or somebody is flying it remotely. In either case you could capture a ship.

I don't know if this can be addressed via game with the exception of making every ship in every system in the game a përs instead of a düde and then granting the player a lethal bomb upon boarding them.

Perhaps if you'd give us a little background info on the ship in question, we could help you formulate a lore-based way to address the ship actually being able to capture others?

@nil-kimas, on Oct 7 2007, 04:39 PM, said in Crewless ship can capture escorts:

Take the capture button out of the DITL/DLOG? The catch is that it would keep the player from capturing anything no matter what ship they are in.

Clever! That would mean that no one could ever capture a ship in my TC under any circumstances. I might implement that for now if no other easy method comes up. Eventually, though, I expect I'll want to handle the problem via some other method to regain flexibility, and would have to change things.

@cosmic_nusiance, on Oct 7 2007, 04:51 PM, said in Crewless ship can capture escorts:

Technically, the fact that it has zero crew means that it is either a creature, or somebody is flying it remotely. In either case you could capture a ship.

??? Why would a creature or a remote vehicle necessarily be able to capture a ship?

@archon, on Oct 7 2007, 05:58 PM, said in Crewless ship can capture escorts:

I don't know if this can be addressed via game with the exception of making every ship in every system in the game a përs instead of a düde and then granting the player a lethal bomb upon boarding them.

Perhaps if you'd give us a little background info on the ship in question, we could help you formulate a lore-based way to address the ship actually being able to capture others?

Well, I don't want to give anything much up about my scenario. OK, I'll say this much: the player is playing a space-worthy creature at this point in the plot, and needs to be able to "harvest" other creatures to replenish resources and energy. Getting a lethal bomb upon boarding would nix the whole system. Getting a lethal bomb upon successful capture would be doable with the OnCapture field.... It wouldn't make much sense that you would blow up if you assigned the ship to be an escort, but it would preserve the gameplay challenge by preventing the player from getting the "unfair" advantage of having an armed escort. Given the benefit, I might be able to contrive an in-game explanation for such a senseless death.

Thanks! More?

@dr--trowel, on Oct 7 2007, 07:41 PM, said in Crewless ship can capture escorts:

??? Why would a creature or a remote vehicle necessarily be able to capture a ship?

Well, blow a hole in the hull and climb in. Of course, this would depend on relative sizes, but it would work.

You're making a TC? What's its name?

@zapp, on Oct 7 2007, 08:53 PM, said in Crewless ship can capture escorts:

You're making a TC? What's its name?

That Which Shall Not Be Named (Here) (Yet).

Only thing about the bomb is it makes strict play mean you have to remember not to try to capture...or else. OnCapture is, however, the only method I know of to prevent capture. (And also selectively allow it.) <cryptic grin>

In my noobish noobishness, I have no idea what a "lethal bomb" is. I have seen in the outfit area of Mission Computer, and have no clue what it is supposed to do. Hence, I ignor it, probly cutting out about 500 thousand differant possibilities in my plugs.

@0101181920, on Oct 7 2007, 11:46 PM, said in Crewless ship can capture escorts:

In my noobish noobishness, I have no idea what a "lethal bomb" is. I have seen in the outfit area of Mission Computer, and have no clue what it is supposed to do. Hence, I ignor it, probly cutting out about 500 thousand differant possibilities in my plugs.

It is an outfit that, when purchased, blows up the player's ship. It's usually sold as something else, e.g. a "poor quality" reactor that overloads, or it can be granted by a mission if a saboteur stows away aboard your ship.

With my mediocre knowledge of Nova mechanics, I'm going to try to decipher the meaning of Qaanol's post. Let's see OnCapture runs set expressions, which are :

abort, fail, or start a mission
grant or remove an outfit
move player to another system
change player's ship (various methods)
activate or de-activate ranks
play sounds
destroy or regenerate stellars
make player leave stellar
change ship name
explore system

So maybe he means that you can make the player just want not to capture ships like by changing the ship's name to "Toenail Clippings" or something if you capture it.

Anybody else see some possibilities? Knowing Qaanol, he won't tell us until we've gotten enough wrong answers that he takes pity on us.

Hmm, I'd say... hum. Make the OnCapture field give the player the ship he's supposed to have? Would that override the capture?

And give him 6 invisible escorts? That way he can't capture more?

Just throwing some ideas out there.

That could be, but I believe (not sure on this one) that OnCapture applies regardless of whether the ship is used as an escort or as your own ship.

@0101181920, on Oct 7 2007, 11:46 PM, said in Crewless ship can capture escorts:

In my noobish noobishness, I have no idea what a "lethal bomb" is. I have seen in the outfit area of Mission Computer, and have no clue what it is supposed to do. Hence, I ignor it, probly cutting out about 500 thousand differant possibilities in my plugs.

This is why we read the Nova Bible. A free copy comes with every copy of EVN -- just look in your EV Nova Folder!

@archon, on Oct 8 2007, 12:29 AM, said in Crewless ship can capture escorts:

Knowing Qaanol, he won't tell us until we've gotten enough wrong answers that he takes pity on us.

Qnowing Qaanol, he has more than one application for OnCapture in mind. And he'd be right... or should be.... See below.

@archon, on Oct 8 2007, 10:01 AM, said in Crewless ship can capture escorts:

That could be, but I believe (not sure on this one) that OnCapture applies regardless of whether the ship is used as an escort or as your own ship.

This is why we read Zacha Pedro's Plug-in Guides when the Bible doesn't cover things in sufficient detail. His shďp resource guide is quite clear:

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• The OnCapture field
  This text field (max of 254 chars) is a control bit SET expression. The expression will be evaluated whenever the player captures one of the ship in question, wether he uses it as its own ship or as an escort. "b8888" is put for some ships in the Nova scenario, to trigger nasty things when the player gets one such ship...

So I had the bright idea of using OnCapture to fling the player into a deadly stellar, but it seems that evaluating an Mxxx NCB in a ship's OnCapture field crashes Nova on my OS X Mac. Can anyone confirm?

(By the way, for anyone who was wondering: in Starfleet Adventures, the massive ill effects of ship capture start with OnCapture setting a bit, which then activates a misn that -- as far as I remember or can tell from examining the files -- doesn't activate until the player lands. I would prefer a solution that takes effect more immediately, while the player is still flying. I suppose Sxxx might be worth trying.... OK, wipe off those leering grins!)

@nil-kimas, on Oct 7 2007, 04:39 PM, said in Crewless ship can capture escorts:

Take the capture button out of the DITL/DLOG? The catch is that it would keep the player from capturing anything no matter what ship they are in.

I know that a lot of buttons have keyboard shortcuts so you don't have to click them. (e.g. "B" for buy in the trade center) I might be wrong, but I remember someone finding that even if a button is not in the interface, you can still access it with a keyboard shortcut.

Maybe remove the button and give a bomb for those who use the keyboard shortcut (whatever it is). Then change the button labels (or was it lables?) and the desc above it to read something like "Which way would you like to explode?"

Choose your poison. But really, OnCapture evaluating only at landing wouldn't exactly work... maybe make all ships have 0 crew, make them perses that have the linked mission on board that would give fuel but nothing else. Or was that already said?

Good input, people. All the same, I think I'll forego mucking with the boarding dialog after all.

I tried Sxxx-ing a misn that in turn Nxxx'd the player to a different system via OnAccept, and that too caused the Nova app to quit. So I looked again at bomb-planting. I hadn't realized that bomb outfs let you show a desc when the ship blows up. That makes all the difference, because it lets me explain what happened to the player.

Thanks for your efforts, everybody. As your reward, I will share with you the desc that now shows after you blow up:

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We're sorry, but the Interdimensional Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Icthyoid Lifeforms (ISPCIL) deems fly capture unacceptable, as it frequently leads to fish capture.

We hope you have enjoyed the preceding corrective experience.

Have a nice day!

Further explication and/or contextualization of that text will absolutely not be forthcoming at this time.

This post has been edited by Dr. Trowel : 08 October 2007 - 02:50 PM

Hahaha, I love it! Especially as a Comm. Studies major, given that the department's unofficial creed is "everything in context."

What you will need to remember, though, is that said bombs take a while to blow up, so a person could conceivably board and capture the ship, then land on a planet with no outfitter before the explosion, and then take off and get immediately blown to pieces with no way of getting an escape pod. Probably not a huge chance of that happening, but it's still a possibility.

I'm still puzzled as to why the nxxx string isn't working, or the sxxx to a mission with nxxx isn't. I use this expression in Anathema a few times and it works fine. The only real difference is that instead of the mission running nxxx on accept, it creates an invisible ship in the player's system with the ship objective "observe" and then runs nxxx on ShipDone. Perhaps the problem is that since the mission is scripted to start, the player doesn't actually "accept" the mission? Of course, since it takes about as long for the ships to appear in the system as it takes for the bomb to go off, it's really a non-solution.

I suppose the last thing to make sure of is that you have the system ResID right, but I'm sure you already thought of that.