Paper TC Update

Well, it looks like my feasibility tests for "flying the carried fighter" were incomplete.

Right now, it works, but there an issue when your fighter dies, and you are ejected.
See, your carrier does indeed go rogue - that's not the problem. The problem is that he stays in the system and won't warp out.
You have a mission that you abort to call for the carrier to warp in. (It's disabled, and you dock with it, and this will reset you to be able to hop into a new fighter) But things look real odd when neutral carriers start to populate the system.

They don't warp out presumably because they have 0 speed and 0 accell. And I can't give them any positive number or they will follow you at your full speed when they are launched. (looks like you launching out of it) With 0s, they stay put, and you can fly back to them to dock and re-arm, change fighters, etc.

Now I might be able to pull some trickery with your fighter self-destructing on launch, and you "escaping" into the fighter you've chosen to fly. In this case I can give the carrier normal speed and accell, and he'll warp out eventually, if I can make sure he doesn't try to visit any stellars first. (Tips, here?)
But launching out of an "escape ship" seems to give you a random drain on your shields and armor, and I'm not sure how I'm going time the replenishing of these.

Then you always interface with a disabled carrier if you want to re-arm, change fighters, etc.

This leads to my second problem, which has a couple of different angles to it.
Re-arming at the carrier.
If I make the carrier weak, there are going to be some shield/armor issues when you dock with it when you're near death. Any shield or armor mods attached to the carrier outfit are going to take a moment to kick in - and I'm not sure they are working properly. This can cause some unrealistic deaths.
If I make the carrier strong, then the player can just sit in it, and let it's defenses take out the enemy.

Neither of these situations is very good, and I'm not sure of the best compromises to pull this off.

At any rate, if a good solution isn't found, the "fly the fighter" idea may be scrapped.

Erm... How do I get a fighter bay weap to self destruct you?
Since -999 in ammo type is going to override the ship type.

Have it sub-munition into a carried fighter? Or do things get sticky at that point and Nova decides it's time to kill you anyway?

@jacabyte, on Mar 9 2008, 03:23 AM, said in Paper TC Update:

Have it sub-munition into a carried fighter? Or do things get sticky at that point and Nova decides it's time to kill you anyway?

Can't sub-munition beams or carried ships.

Regardless, I gave myself a test self-destruct weapon, and there are a whole host of new problems.

1. Rogue carried ships get no government (not even #128) This may make it hard to prevent them from landing at supposedly hostile stellars.
2. I can make it so the the player has nothing else to to but fire a self-destructing weap after launching, but this is clunky.
3. Somehow, I'm getting an limit as to how many time I can loop through the missions.
   After getting in the fighter, launching, dying and escaping, calling the carrier, docking, (loop) getting a new fighter, launching, dying and escaping, calling carrier... now you can't dock anymore. EDIT: Never mind, I got this part working.

This post has been edited by Desprez : 08 March 2008 - 11:13 PM

So... I guess firing a carried ship and then having that sub-munition into something that kills you won't work, will it?

For the first problem, what about making the carrier self-destruct when you eject? You could give it an explosion that looks like it "warps out".

or this (more feasible):

Maybe make an invisible mission that fails when the player is disabled, triggering another invisible mission which causes an invisible ship to warp (make it the player's goal to protect this ship) in that is enemies with the carrier's govt but friendly to everyone else, and kill the carrier with a 32767-damage invisible weap which also makes the ship self-destruct, so that the mission fails and knocks itself off the roster. The first mission would be started when the player calls in the carrier.

I'm not sure how well this would work, and I have no time to test it. The 16-mission limit comes to mind. If the player has too many missions accepted already, it could cause this to not work and the system to fill with neutral carriers.

Sometimes I wish it were possible to permanently reserve mission slots for invisible missions to do stuff like this.

A couple things.

1. Failed missions don't leave the roster.
2. Fighter bay weapons can't self-destruct you.

Last I checked, giving a ship 0 armor when it is a carried ship doesn't kill it. So I'm not sure how to kill the carrier when you launch it.
When I eject from my fighter the carrier becomes neutral, so it can be killed by an invisible ship, but it gets no government, so I can't give it allies and enemies.
Maybe the kill ship is xenophobic but allies with all specific govts?

But regardless, That's still a lot of steps to launch your fighter.

1. Abort a mission to "prepare it"
2. Launch yourself
3. Then fire a weapon to self-destruct, thus ejecting you into the actual fighter.

Hmmm. Maybe the launching could actually be the self-destruct, and the explosion a warp effect of some kind? I dunno if that's convincing.

Here's another problem that I just thought of too.
I planned to have other friendly ships in the area (other fighter groups). If you eject, will they become neutral too?

I tested this partially.

In a TC-in-progress, a gave myself a shuttle with a bay with a fighter as an escape ship and an auto-eject. If the friendly ships (not the guys who I told to destroy me in ShipBehaviour) are set as AuxShips, and are natural enemies of the mission ships, they fight normally.

If the friendlies are triggered by another mission as MissionShips, and they are set to "protect the player", they will act as mission escorts after the player ejects into the fighter.

The only change in ejecting to a fighter appears to be the change of ships mid-game.