It’s still possible to kill Captain Hector in EV: Nova. The real, hard-coded Captain Hector. Two different ways to kill her, in fact. Both involve plug-ins. <cryptic grin>

I'm gonna guess one way makes a ship with 0 shields and armour, so when she spawns in it she dies. The other makes a ship with a weapon that destroys the parent ship when fired, so if she spawns in that ship and attacks, she dies.

Only two ways I can think of.

@darthkev, on 06 April 2011 - 07:28 PM, said in CPT Hector's Back?:

The other makes a ship with a weapon that destroys the parent ship when fired, so if she spawns in that ship and attacks, she dies.

Ooh, clever. Just tested and it works. That makes 3 ways to kill Hector.

This post has been edited by Qaanol : 06 April 2011 - 10:00 PM

@darthkev, on 06 April 2011 - 07:28 PM, said in CPT Hector's Back?:

I'm gonna guess one way makes a ship with 0 shields and armour, so when she spawns in it she dies.

That option doesn't work. Hector has absurdly high shield/armor values in any ship. Needs to be a weapon that ignores such things, such as a self-destruct weapon.

@Qaanol: Hector stops showing up after you register the game. How do you use plugins (need to register) and get hector to show up?

Would a weapon which dealt 32767 armor damage and ignores shields work?

Or is the other method simply implementing a cap'n hector përs without the invincible flag...

This post has been edited by LNSU : 07 April 2011 - 09:18 AM

I just discovered how to make Captain Hector non-hostile.

@lnsu, on 07 April 2011 - 09:18 AM, said in CPT Hector's Back?:

Hector has absurdly high shield/armor values is immune to projectiles and damage in any ship.

Fixed.

@lnsu, on 07 April 2011 - 09:18 AM, said in CPT Hector's Back?:

Hector stops showing up after you register the game. How do you use plugins (need to register) and get hector to show up?

<cryptic grin>

@lnsu, on 07 April 2011 - 09:18 AM, said in CPT Hector's Back?:

Would a weapon which dealt 32767 armor damage and ignores shields work?

No.

@lnsu, on 07 April 2011 - 09:18 AM, said in CPT Hector's Back?:

Or is the other method simply implementing a cap'n hector përs without the invincible flag...

No.

Deadly spobs?

Just a question, but as far as Captain Hector being able to select varying ships as per the designation of a plug-in, would it be possible to make a plug in that triggers a silent mission when ever the player acquires a ship over a certain rating to give him/her a stronger ship, and then de-activate said mission, or trigger a new one to return the ship to the standard Starbridge when a lower rating is received? Or would that require an individual mission for each ship? Or is it just plain impossible?

@g-spark, on 11 April 2011 - 12:37 AM, said in CPT Hector's Back?:

Just a question, but as far as Captain Hector being able to select varying ships as per the designation of a plug-in, would it be possible to make a plug in that triggers a silent mission when ever the player acquires a ship over a certain rating to give him/her a stronger ship, and then de-activate said mission, or trigger a new one to return the ship to the standard Starbridge when a lower rating is received? Or would that require an individual mission for each ship? Or is it just plain impossible?

It's quite possible, and it doesn't even need a silent mission!

All you need to do is code a few bits to be turned on by the purchase of a ship (unfortunately, you have to do this for every ship that puts Hector in a ship other than his default ship), and several PERSs for Captain Hector. You see, the PERS resource has an Active On bit field that dictates when a given PERS can appear. For his default ship PERS, you would use

Active On:  !b0

... and for a PERS that he switches to when the player has a battlecruiser, you would use

Active On: b0

You then put

OnPurchase: b0
OnCapture: b0

... into SHIP resources that are meant as battlecruisers.

WARNING: This is meant as an example. This exact code won't work in the standard Nova scenario because the bits I'm using here are taken.

Now, if you wanted to have Hector switch ships when the player's combat rating increased beyond a certain level, you would need to code a MISN resource to create a silent mission that is only available at or above a given combat rating.

You need to use a Contribute bit on each ship. Then you need an invisible mission for each Contribute bit you use. So you might have 3 levels, Small, Medium, and Large, each with its own Contribute bit and mission. A Contribute bit is the only way to accurately check what ship the player is flying. One potential issue is that the invisible mission cannot fire if the player already has 16 missions active.