Escape Ships

I've been trying to make a përs that uses an escape ship instead of a pod. To stop it launching the ship in battle I give it the ship as ammo, but with no bay to launch it. I've tried various combinations of values, but I can't get it to launch the ship when it's destroyed. Does anyone see what's going wrong?

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MU* addict
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I think that there's some flag that needs to be checked. It's been a while, but it's probably similar to/ a combination of/ not even related to any one of the following:

1. The escape ship needs to have the "Use as escape ship" flag checked.
2. The carrying ship needs to have an escape pod also.
3. The carrying ship needs to have a bay for the escape ship.

Other than that, I don't really know.

Matrix

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"Nothing is fool-proof to a sufficiently talented fool."

An AI ship will only use an escape Ship instead of an escape Pod if it has both the launcher and the ammunition.

As I understand it, Nova Wëap Resources have a flag somewhere (Flags2: 0x0100) that will prevent an AI ship from using a particular weapon. If you set this flag on a fighter bay weapon, the AI will never use it as a weapon. Even if you give the përs a launcher / bay, this fighter will not be launched as a fighter, and should be available as an escape ship.

But, I could be wrong.

Quote

Originally posted by Eugene Chin:
**An AI ship will only use an escape Ship instead of an escape Pod if it has both the launcher and the ammunition.

As I understand it, Nova Wëap Resources have a flag somewhere (Flags2: 0x0100) that will prevent an AI ship from using a particular weapon. If you set this flag on a fighter bay weapon, the AI will never use it as a weapon. Even if you give the përs a launcher / bay, this fighter will not be launched as a fighter, and should be available as an escape ship.

But, I could be wrong.**

Well, I've been trying out everything that's been suggested, but none of it seems to work. When I set the flag on the bay the AI doesn't use it in battle, but it won't use it to escape either. Can anyone else get this to work?

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MU* addict
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I'm not sure, but it's entirely possible the AI won't use escape ships. There's no point, as the pods are just to look pretty, and changing the ship type for a pers might not (actually almost certainly isn't) within the capabilities of the engine.

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I think a good way to test if they'll use escape ships at all is to give them one, a bay for it, an auto eject, and then give yourself a ridiculously huge ray gun to blow them up with before they could launch anything at you.

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Originally posted by SNM:
**I'm not sure, but it's entirely possible the AI won't use escape ships. There's no point, as the pods are just to look pretty, and changing the ship type for a pers might not (actually almost certainly isn't) within the capabilities of the engine.

**

AI does use escape ships, but only if it has some in the bays. I have blown up Pirate Carriers and I have seen them eject in Pirate T-heads or Vipers in the Gefjon system before, but most of the time all their ships are launched/dead. Perhaps if you gave the escape ship no weapons then maybe it will not launch them as a weapon and instead use them as intended.

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Not all who wander are lost.

Quote

Originally posted by Kelsan:
**I've been trying to make a përs that uses an escape ship instead of a pod. To stop it launching the ship in battle I give it the ship as ammo, but with no bay to launch it. I've tried various combinations of values, but I can't get it to launch the ship when it's destroyed. Does anyone see what's going wrong?

**

Having an escape ship problem? Does the escape ship keep fighting or escape? Are you keeping the Escape pod, or replacing it with an escape ship?
Well it had to happen sooner or later, some of the EV Super Nova ships use Escape ships.

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If you do something right the first time you will not have to do it again, if you don't you will have to do it over again.

(This message has been edited by NSA man (edited 01-29-2003).)

Quote

Originally posted by P-Psycho:
**AI does use escape ships, but only if it has some in the bays. I have blown up Pirate Carriers and I have seen them eject in Pirate T-heads or Vipers in the Gefjon system before, but most of the time all their ships are launched/dead. Perhaps if you gave the escape ship no weapons then maybe it will not launch them as a weapon and instead use them as intended.
**

That might work, but it would really defeat the point of making it in the first place. I want the përs to escape in his custom-made ship and continue to fight the player, which obviously isn't possible if it hasn't got any weapons. Could someone make an example plugin and email it to me so I can make one myself?

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MU* addict
telnet:firstage.net:23
Web:www.firstage.net

Quote

Originally posted by Eugene Chin:
**An AI ship will only use an escape Ship instead of an escape Pod if it has both the launcher and the ammunition.

As I understand it, Nova Wëap Resources have a flag somewhere (Flags2: 0x0100) that will prevent an AI ship from using a particular weapon. If you set this flag on a fighter bay weapon, the AI will never use it as a weapon. Even if you give the përs a launcher / bay, this fighter will not be launched as a fighter, and should be available as an escape ship.

But, I could be wrong.**

You're wrong. If the escape ship has weapons, the AI will launch it as though it were a fighter in combat. It might do so even if it doesn't have weapons -- I haven't tested it yet.

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Quote

Originally posted by Eugene Chin:
**An AI ship will only use an escape Ship instead of an escape Pod if it has both the launcher and the ammunition.

As I understand it, Nova Wëap Resources have a flag somewhere (Flags2: 0x0100) that will prevent an AI ship from using a particular weapon. If you set this flag on a fighter bay weapon, the AI will never use it as a weapon. Even if you give the përs a launcher / bay, this fighter will not be launched as a fighter, and should be available as an escape ship.

But, I could be wrong.**

I have seen the flags for "AI's won't use" either in the weap resource or the outfit resource, not sure where but I think that means the AI won't use AT ALL if checked so that wouldn't help much.

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I'm pretty sure the AI will launch it even if it has no weapons. After all, it shouldnt know if the ship has weapons or not, just that it has a fighter in a bay and can deploy it.

The AI really seems to just blindly deploy all it's fighters while shooting you with almost everything it's got.

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agrees with Githon
You could conciebly just give it a really long launch time (like minutes); it may be that when using a fighter as an escape ship it ignores such things.

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