Replicators

I've been experimenting with replicating ships, and I've run into a few problems. I made a cargo drone clone and gave it a fighter bay that launched copies of itself, which would in turn have copies, and so on. The problem is, no matter what I do I can't make them launch more than two levels of fighters, and after they launch the second they immediately recall them. What's going wrong here?

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My guess would be it's an engine limitation, related to the limit on the number of ships in a system.

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Quote

Originally posted by Kelsan:
**I've been experimenting with replicating ships, and I've run into a few problems. I made a cargo drone clone and gave it a fighter bay that launched copies of itself, which would in turn have copies, and so on. The problem is, no matter what I do I can't make them launch more than two levels of fighters, and after they launch the second they immediately recall them. What's going wrong here?

**

How many drones do each of them launch?

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Quote

Originally posted by simon:
**My guess would be it's an engine limitation, related to the limit on the number of ships in a system.

**

Not engine limitation, system limitation. MCB wrote the limit for your safety - if not, crash crash crash!
Many of the limitations are basically so the system can handle the game. you don't want 4000 ships on your screen.

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Not engine limitation, system limitation. MCB wrote the limit for your safety - if not, crash crash crash!

So I was right in that it's something hard coded - only 2 levels? Or can you get more ships if you run EV:N on a better system?

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Originally posted by simon:
**So I was right in that it's something hard coded - only 2 levels? Or can you get more ships if you run EV:N on a better system?

**

There's a max of I think 64 ships in a system.

Matrix

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I thought of doing that in a plugin but then I didn't implement because, as Mantaray says:

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You don't want 4000 ships on your screen

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Originally posted by P-Psycho:
**How many drones do each of them launch?
**

Two. This is why I don't think it's caused by the ships-in-system limit.

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Quote

Originally posted by Kelsan:
**I've been experimenting with replicating ships, and I've run into a few problems. I made a cargo drone clone and gave it a fighter bay that launched copies of itself, which would in turn have copies, and so on. The problem is, no matter what I do I can't make them launch more than two levels of fighters, and after they launch the second they immediately recall them. What's going wrong here?
**

I made a similar thing way back in the days of EV. It was a ship that looked like the alien weapons that would track you (little red sparkle balls). I also ran into the two level thing. If I remember correctly, it's almost as though the newly spawned ships 'forget' whose side they are on. If their parent is being attacked, their child will attack, however.

It's a minor limitation, in my view. It makes for nice adaptive ships. Why fill the screen with a bunch of ships when they're not needed.

Note: It's fun to have self-spawning ships with weak weapons but fast shield rechanges. They get attacked but not killed, so their offspring attack, and so on. In no time you get the max number of ships in the system, swarming around the target.

-STH

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I made a cheat in EV where a hawk launched Mantas, and the mantas launched the hawk and so on. It kept working ultill the in system limit hit.

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Originally posted by Captin' Stardust:
**I made a cheat in EV where a hawk launched Mantas, and the mantas launched the hawk and so on. It kept working ultill the in system limit hit.

**

This could be a way around the limitations: Make 2 copies of the ship, and have each launch the other.

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My (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/parrypmp")website(/url), hosted by (url="http://"http://www.evula.org")EVula(/url).
"I'm desperately trying to figure out why kamikaze pilots wore helmets." -- David Edison
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