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I have played Nova (and Override, and Escape Velocity) for quite a while now, and am looking at making plugins for Nova. I tried this with mission computer a while ago, and had some degree of success, though I didn't make much. I'm trying again now, and wanted to start with a (so I thought) fairly simply one, with a civilian viper bay. I can't seem to make it work however. Can anyone give me step by step instructions for adding a fighter bay (any kind) with a new type of fighter to the game?

Welcome to the boards, Odie! Enjoy your stay here, there is a lot to enjoy.

Out of all the weapons, you have probably picked the most complicated one to make. However, here are the step-by-step directions. I use mission computer, but it should be fairly similar if you are using EVNEW now.

1. Create the ship you want to make a bay of. (N/A in this case)
2. Create a new wëap, called whatever you want your bay to be. Set its guidance type to carried ship.
3. In the top right corner, it should come up with a place to choose the ship type. Pick whatever the carried ship is. On EVNEW it will be something to do with the ammo field, I would imagine.
4. Set the reload time, ammo count, shot speed, duration, and exit point to whatever you want. Doesn't effect the process, just how fast the bay launches, etc.
5. Create a new öutf, called something like "Ship; carried" Anything you type after a semicolon will not be shown in the outfitter, it is just for your reference. This öutf will be the ammo for the bay.
6. Set the Type of the öutf to 'Ammunition' and then select your Bay as the weapon.
7. Create another öutf, called 'Ship Bay' or whatever. This will be the actual outfit that you buy. Set its type to weapon and select your Bay as the weapon.

Your bay is now ready for action. Hope that helps you out!

If you still don't get it, open up one of the nova data files and look at how they did it there.

EDIT: Beaten by Qaanol. Typing out those step-by-step directions took a while.

This post has been edited by Jalisurr : 01 April 2009 - 09:04 PM

Hello and welcome to the forums.

To make a fighter bay work you need two outfits and a weapon, set up properly. The easiest way to learn how is to look at the way it's done in the stock game. Make a new plugin, copy a fighter bay weapon, its associated outfit, and the outfit for the associated fighter from Nova Data 4 and paste them into your plugin.

To make it work properly, you'll need to change the type of ship launched by the bay, and the type of ammo used by the weapon. Look at the Nova Bible to see exactly how to do that.

QUOTE (Qaanol @ Apr 1 2009, 10:03 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hello and welcome to the forums.

To make a fighter bay work you need two outfits and a weapon, set up properly. The easiest way to learn how is to look at the way it's done in the stock game. Make a new plugin, copy a fighter bay weapon, its associated outfit, and the outfit for the associated fighter from Nova Data 4 and paste them into your plugin.

To make it work properly, you'll need to change the type of ship launched by the bay, and the type of ammo used by the weapon. Look at the Nova Bible to see exactly how to do that.

That is basically what I tried, however, when I used the plug, I couldn't launch the fighters (they weren't showing up in my secondary weapons slot), and yes, I did purchase them, and the launch bay. Also, how do I limit it to 4 fighters per bay? I've done my best to NOT look at the Nova bible for sanity reasons:) I started to a while back, and it almost blew out my brain.

Jalisurr:
Welcome to the boards, Odie! Enjoy your stay here, there is a lot to enjoy.

Out of all the weapons, you have probably picked the most complicated one to make. However, here are the step-by-step directions. I use mission computer, but it should be fairly similar if you are using EVNEW now.

Thank you for the welcome:) I'm actually using mission computer at the moment. I'll give it another try, because from what you both said, it sounds like I did it right :huh: . Also, how do I do multiple quotes?

This post has been edited by Odie : 02 April 2009 - 01:19 PM

For limiting to 4 fighters per bay, go into the wëap (not öutf, that's important) resource and look for the "Max Ammo" field. Set it to 4, and you'll only be able to buy 4 ammo (fighter) per weapon (bay).

You could, alternatively, set the max outfits for the ammo ship to 4, but this presents the interesting dilemma of that you could capture fighters and have more than four. Sometimes it's a cool effect, other times, it's just annoying.

QUOTE (Odie @ Apr 2 2009, 11:17 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

how do I do multiple quotes?

Click the little "+ quote" button by the bottom of all the posts you want to quote, then click the "Add Reply" button at the bottom of the page.

Ah, thank you. Well, wish me luck. opens mission computer

QUOTE (krugeruwsp @ Apr 2 2009, 09:44 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You could, alternatively, set the max outfits for the ammo ship to 4…

This only works if the max bays is set to 1. Otherwise, you could have, say, 8 bays, but still only 4 fighters max.

Urk. Well, I made the plug. It didn't work, and it did something really strange. I fly a pirate starbridge, which doesn't have much space. I had made the most out of my limited space, which means I had 0 tons left. When I put the pluggin in, my space shot up to 73 tons. What happened?!?!?

I'm going to assume that the outfits you added had the same Resource ID as some of stock Nova's outfits. This would mean that the stock outfits would be "overwritten" by what you added. So say for example you had 3 light blasters (ResID 128) and in your plug you made a Raven Bay and gave it the ResID 128, suddenly your Starbridge would be launching Ravens (well not really, because it would need ammo to, but you get the idea). So I'm going to assume that you overwrote an outfit that your ship has with something that takes up less space, which would result in you getting a bunch of phantom tonnage.

I'd tell you what the first free outfit ResID is, but I'm doing a huge render at the moment and want to keep resource usage to a bare minimum, but I'm sure some other kind soul would lend you a hand!

I asked for free resource numbers in my thread; OUTF IDs should be safe at 500.

Should be is not the same as for sure. Go into the Nova Data files and look at the resource numbers. I believe you'll find weapons in Nova Data 4, but I am not sure about that off the top of my head.

Grr. So thats what happened. Turns out, it also replaced my medium blasters with illegal ones. Well, I'll just try again. Oh btw, how can I get a outfiter picture for the viper? I want to just use the shipyard info picture but it won't work

I am not sure if Mission Computer is any different from EVNEW in this respect, but I believe you can just copy the resource ID for the PICT and paste it to the resource ID you want. I am assuming you are recycling in-game resources, not importing your own? Otherwise, you'll need to import the picture you want.

Oh! That might explain my problem. I'll try that.

Okay, I just fought with mission computer again, and made sure the recources numbers weren't overlapping. For some reason, I cannot purchase my fighter bay. I have the money..... oh wait. Let me try something.

Edit:
Aha! I just needed to purchase a fighter bay license. Funny, it didn't tell me I needed to. Did I do something wrong there? Also, I still cannot get the pictures for the outfits. Can I have step by step instructions for that? I'm trying to take a picture from nova graphics and use it for the viper outfit picture.

This post has been edited by Odie : 03 April 2009 - 08:28 PM

The "requires XYZ license" tag is actually part of the outfit description, so it won't tell you you need that unless you tell it to tell you. (:blink:)

For the pic, the resource for an outfit's picture is always the outfit's ID +2872 (so the first outfit, 128, will have the PICT resource 3000). I believe that most editors also have a way of indicating what description/picture resources to use for each outfit, but since I really only use MissionComputer, I'm not positive on that.

Can you give me a actual copy-past example of that picture-name thing from mission computer? Or, if possible, take a picture of the window I'm supposed to plug it into? I'm fairly sure that I already tried that without any luck.

Alright, using mission computer:

1. Go into Nova Graphics 1 (outfit pictures)
2. Copy the one you want
3. Paste it into your plug
4. Check which resource ID your outfit has
5. Change the ID of your pasted PICT to (ID of outfit + 5,872 (not 2,872 as Archon said))
6. To double check that it worked, open up your outfit and click the 'Edit 200x200 Picture' button. The correct picture should appear.

Hope that helps!