How does Nova handle ammunition that does other things?

I was tossing around the idea of a cargo pod--something like a cargo drone that attaches to the hull of the player's ship and is spit out (in effect, a bay holding one ship); ostensibly this is possible with the nova engine; you could set the oütf's modtypes to both 2 and 3, ammunition and more cargo space. But I have no idea what would happen to the extra cargo space if you ejected the pod—and if it disappeared, or if the pod was destroyed, what would happen if the player had more cargo than fit in the default amount of cargo space that the player's ship could carry. Does anybody know how the Nova engine handles that kind of scenario, before I go in and start messing crap up?

This much I know: If a carried ship takes up mass, that mass will be freed when you launch the ship. I would assume that this applies to any additional properties of the outfit too but keep in mind that your ship's properties are only recalculated when you land or open the player info, so you won't lose the properties as soon as you launch the ship (if that makes any difference). Of course if you fill it with cargo, launch it then get it killed you'll simply end up with negative cargo space, retaining the cargo it was theoretically supposed to be carrying.

I have to ask though, what would be the point in a cargo pod you can release? This just doesn't seem useful within the realm of EV.

The idea came up because I was trying to think of practical solutions of adding cargo space to small ships--the idea of something you could attach to the hull of your ship seems to be an obvious solution that won't take up room from either free mass or cargo; but, practically, that solution should add significant weight to a small ship, making maneuvering harder; and therein lay the concept of a drone you could detach in case of emergency and then link up to again. I don't think there's actually a way to impair maneuvering while having the drone in its "bay," but I was just thinking about how it might work out, anyway; mostly I'm just trying to think of how that could work in Nova.

This post has been edited by Flawed : 14 November 2007 - 08:46 PM

Ah, I see. Yeah, nice idea and it could work if your ship's stats were recalculated when firing weapons but sadly they aren't. This has impeded a number of cool ideas people have had.