Fighter to Ship Docking

@daid really, but anyone else who feels they know an answer.

I'm going over a mental mission run in the planning stages and envisioning that some crew are not going to have an awful lot to do. So I want to re-task them to other things. For example, weapons might not get used a lot on some of missions I'm conceptualizing.

I'm not sure how I can include the extra 1 person items on a normal 5/6 crew ship but one of the things I did think was that I might be able to launch fighters from a ship (if large enough, say the freighter), now as the GM I can create a ship, move it to the right location and simply have the crew switch over but I was thinking about ship termination. I'd quite like the ability for the player press 'dock' 'undock' even if it doesn't have the same facilities as usual but I can't seem to find anything.

Additionally, thinking of other things to do, is it possible to create damage to specific parts of the ship? Blow out a conduit or something?

Comments

  • The most recent release (2018.11.16) has two carriers added as player ships. I wrote a mission script (Carriers and Turrets) specifically for these carrier ship types. Two smaller ships are also spawned and dock with the carrier. The carrier ship type is comparatively weak, but is has a high speed drive (Benedict: jump, Kiriya: warp). The idea is that the carrier travels to the destination while the other two smaller ships (which don't have warp or jump) are docked. The smaller ships undock at the destination.

    You might be able to modify this paradigm a bit and have your crew aboard the carrier while traveling long distances and then have some transfer to the smaller ship and others remain aboard the carrier for combat or other encounters or mission points. They may still have to ESC to switch out to the ship selection screen to transfer from ship to ship.

    One thing I noticed, though, the carrier cannot dock with a station, even though the EE engine tries to have it dock, it just acts strangely. Consequently, it cannot have hull damage repaired. It needs protection and the engineer has to manage power carefully.

    Something I've done when I had one additional crew member was to divide engineering into damage control and power management. That may not suit your needs but it's an option.
  • I was basically thinking of using the Carrier type as the basis for the Arrowsnare, primarily as it would give Weapons or any other unused area something to do in the meantime.

    Otherwise a suggestion to Daid, might be to have stations be able to work on 'other' stuff that would provide a boost later. Say working on making the torpedoes better or actually manufacturing new ones by shifting components around the screen. Something like that.

    I don't mind the escaping from ship to ship.

    I wonder if the GM can restore stuff magically? That'd get round the glitch...
  • A GM button could be written in the script to perform a particular task (like restoration)
  • While you can transfer players to a different ship, instead of this being manual, with the functions PlayerSpaceship:transferPlayersAtPositionToShip and PlayerSpaceship:transferPlayersToShip, combined with PlayerSpaceship:addCustomButton you could have players transfer between the fighters and main ship without going trough the ship selection menu.

    However, you cannot change their active station. So it might not be as you want it.
  • Nope XD But it's a step in the right direction. Really I need to find ways to divide up the consoles a little in case of missions where a given station might have very little to do. This inquiry was mostly about possibly an easy fix to the situation and while it can be managed it comes with the side effect of breaking immersion. Not too problematic but still.

    So we can script a gm button to inflict damage on a ship? That'd potentially give damage control something to work on.

    Daid, while you're here, is it theoretically possible to allocate more crew to a particular station to possibly increase it's effectiveness? For example Science?
  • There is a dedicated database console which is currently a subset of science. So, after a target has been initially scanned a different crew member could look up the characteristics of the scanned target in the database and disseminate that information while the "primary scanning" science officer either scans another target or starts a secondary scan on the enemy target.

    Alas, two people cannot scan using two instances of the science console.

    By the way, the main screen can be switched to a science-like overview with the middle mouse button or with the "Q" key. This can be a nice alternative to taking science as a secondary to give an overview since this view won't have science scans hiding the bits in the middle
  • Thanks Xansta, I'll keep thinking
  • Multiple people can take the same station and work with it. But that can result in confusion.

    The reason this is possible was that you can takes all the stations with less people, and time-share a station between people. For example have weapons and science also take engineering as a part time job.
  • Yeah I'm beginning to think limiting my crew size and doing that might be the better option.
  • If you have enough people, run two ships
  • edited November 2018
    That's certainly a potential too and I'd be more than happy to do that :). The more Captains the better in my book.
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