Anchor Drones

Okay. Think armoured, self-sustaining tractor beams. They're dropped in the path of a defenseless fleet, and they will hold the ships in place so the pirates can do their thing.
Its a fighter, with one weapon the gravity which does armor point of damage but can't destroy. It also ionizes heavily. Of course, it works fine.

The problem, is the AI thinks they're average fighters, and launches them WAY away from the targets, making the little drones nothing but a waste of weapon space.

If there any way to make the AI fire a fighter closer to its target? Or get a similiar effect?
Maybe with pers' or spobs... shrug

Any ideas?

I'm going to assume that these armored tractor beams are supposed to have no movement.

Only thing I can think of is to try to make the "bay" a short-range weapon that submunitions into the fighter. Actually that's a terrible idea. I've never head of anybody trying to make a fighter a submunition but I'm going to assume it doesn't work very well. Plus that would make them impossible to recall, I think.

You may be better off with that as player-only weapon.

@archon, on Jan 23 2008, 08:04 PM, said in Help with an outfit.:

I'm going to assume that these armored tractor beams are supposed to have no movement.

Only thing I can think of is to try to make the "bay" a short-range weapon that submunitions into the fighter. Actually that's a terrible idea. I've never head of anybody trying to make a fighter a submunition but I'm going to assume it doesn't work very well. Plus that would make them impossible to recall, I think.

You may be better off with that as player-only weapon.

Unfortunately you can't have something submunition into a fighter at all. If I remember Guy's post correctly, the weapon will play the fighter launching sound whenever the submunition is supposed to start, but nothing will happen after that.

The only way that I can think of to "fix" your problem would be to give your drones an incredible range so that dropping them causes the effects you're looking for and forces the player to specifically target them...the AI itself is pretty much set with the exception of a few flags that toggle specific behaviors. I have never seen the AI hesitate to use carried fighters...they always seem to launch them immediately. Someone else may have advice for you, however.

I am imagining a few solutions.

First, if you give the AI ships a weapon that when fired stops all other weapons from firing, would that weapon keep a fighter from being launched as well? If so, then perhaps you can use that weapon, which is invisible, silent, and does no damage but does have a long range and long reload time. Make it use ammo, and give the AI ships only a few shots, to correspond roughly to the amount of time needed for said ship to get within the virtual range of the anchor drone weapon. Ideally, only once the token weapon's ammo is used up could the anchor drones be fired then.

Second, could you justify using a "delivery craft" with very high velocity/acceleration that would actually be the thing that deploys the anchor drones? If so, then the AI ship would fire off its "delivery craft", a fighter equipped with the anchor drone bay. This would probably lead to the first anchor drone just sitting nearby your ship. However, depending on how you tweaked the reload of the bay and the speed/acceleration of the delivery craft, the rest would be deployed in range of the target fleet. The problem with this is that I think that fighters of fighters become "feral" if their mother craft is destroyed, i.e. if the delivery craft is targeted and shot, the anchor craft could very well stop fighting or even attack you if an errant shot hit them. Maybe that would be a realistic effect though...

Third, give the beams a long range, and justify it in-game.

Let us know if you find a solution.

Werhner

The first solution could work, but would probably fail more often than not and would also open up the ships to serious exploitation. The second is probably a long shot, since 1) the fighters carrying the tractor drones would probably drop them as soon as they can (e.g. right away), and the fighters could also be called back to the bay to reload, then drop another drone.

Why not just give the fighters movement abilities?

Does the AI recognize range with fighter bays? I figured range was ignored, but I know that the AI doesn't use a weapon if the enemy ship is out of range, so perhaps if there was a range set for the fighter bays then the AI wouldn't use them until they got close.

I have no idea, though, if the AI will use range with fighter bays.

I'm pretty sure they just launch fighters whenever. The "range" of a fighter bay launch is however long it takes for the fighter to gain self-control after launch, so there's no reason for the AI to restrict itself by that number.

I'd suggest something similar to Werhner's second idea but rather than having the delivery craft be able to directly launch the drone, give it a dummy weapon of appropriate range which will kill the parent and force it to 'escape' into the drone.

That's a really cool idea... Make the effect like a missile (fighter that cant be targeted, vulnerable to PD) that when in range, activates and becomes the anchor. I like it. Plus, it could be really cool with ship animations... I'm exited.
Thanks everyone, + guy