Your browser does not seem to support JavaScript. As a result, your viewing experience will be diminished, and you have been placed in read-only mode.
Please download a browser that supports JavaScript, or enable it if it's disabled (i.e. NoScript).
Here, I will discuss two situations that may be of use to developers, and two possible workarounds. If you see something wrong, feel free to correct me.
1. Timed Mission
Scenario : You want to make a mission in which you must destroy or otherwise fulfil goal A within X time after jumping into a particular system. In other words, you want Mission A to be completed within X time, otherwise Mission A is aborted and Mission B is triggered.
Possible Applications : Destroy Battlefleet before reinforcements are able to arrive. Stay in system observing vessel for twelve seconds before departing. Etc.
Proposed Solution :
If Mission A is the original mission, and Goal A is the goal that must be fulfilled within X number of seconds, otherwise Mission C is triggered, create a hidden Mission B in which the player's objective is to destroy the SpecialShip. Also create a new SpecialShip. This ship should be extremely fast, the sprite should be very small, and it should have negative armor regeneration. If possible, it should also be untargetable and cloaked. The government settings should make it neutral towards as many ships as possible. It should not try to attack, but rather fly around aimlessly out of the way and invisible to the player. Possibly toying around with 0 values for turn/acceleration/etc may make your task easier (there was a thread on this earlier).
Have Mission A start. At the same time, auto-start Mission B. When the player jumps into the system to fulfil goal A, Mission B's SpecialShip should be there. ASSUMING THAT SHIPS WILL EVENTUALLY AUTOMATICALLY DESTRUCT IF THEY HAVE NEGATIVE ARMOR REGENERATION, you can set Mission B to abort Mission A and start Mission C if the goal is fulfilled (the SpecialShip destructs). ASSUMING THAT THE ABOVE IS TRUE, you should also be able to play around with regen values to alter this 'timer'. When the SpecialShip destructs, Mission A will fail and you can make the player enter Mission C.
I'm not sure how well this would work if the player left the system and came back later, though.
1. Selective Ramscoop
Scenario : You want to make an outfit which only works in certain areas of the galactic map.
Possible Applications : Fuelscoops that only work in a nebula. Many possible applications.
Proposed Solution : A repeating series of missions, toggled on or off by each other, should allow you to set up such a system. For example, you could have hidden missions that are always active that deal with observing SpecialShips in a system just within a nebula. Those missions would grant the player the outfit, deactivate themselves, and activate another complementary set of hidden missions that dealt with observing SpecialShips in systems just outside a nebula that 'deactivated' the outfit by removing it. You could be creative- make the SpecialShips nebular clouds and display text stating 'sensors have detected nebular gas- activating ramscoop', for example.
Something dealing with nebulas might work as well. I'm not sure.
Questions? Comments? Want to add to this? Have these already been stated, and I'm just another person rehashing old, tired ideas?
------------------ Retribution: An Upcoming Plug-in for EVN. Visit the (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/ubb/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number;=20&SUBMIT;=Go")Chronicles(/url) today! Be sure to read the short story ' (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/cgi-bin/ubb/newsdisplay.cgi?action=topics &number;=20&forum;=*EV/EVO+chronicles&DaysPrune;=100&article;=000262&startpoint;=")Fiery Descent(/url)'! (url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")Sephil Saga(/url): An upcoming TC, visit the web page today.| | | Both the best and the worst plug-in editor for Windows! (url="http://"http://www.aznt.com/EVN/EVNEW")EVNEW(/url)!
(This message has been edited by UE_Research & Development (edited 04-03-2004).)
Interesting.
Do you think this could be used to do something like the following:
Enter a system. There's another ship there-----could be special, could be not. But its a particular govt's ship for certain.
If you wait for the other ship to hyper out before you leave, everything's fine. If you hyper out first, the other ship starts chasing an attacking you.
Think that might be doable somehow? I'm trying to figure out how to simulate a certain situation seen in the Firefly pilot, "Serenity".
------------------
Those are cool. If you include multi-jump stuff in a plug, the second one would become trickier using the method you described, since they can get so far away in on jump. Hmm.... I'm thinking about some way to have special ships in the nebula set bits onObserve, and make a cron remove the outfit if the right bits aren't set. Maybe we can combine this with the timed stuff: specialships are just in nebula, spawned by a cyclic mission (aborts after one day, resetting the observed bit). When the timer fires (after the player has had a chance to "observe" the nebula ship if it exists)... No, this won't exactly work. How about those cyclic missions, spawning observable specialships, which are terminated by a cron after a day, resetting the bit. An earlier cron looks to see if the bit is set, and kills the outfit if it isn't. This way you lose the outfit one jump after you leave the nebula (which could bring you back in...) or when you land. (bigger problem) You'd have to have a mission set the bit when you land in the nebula, and have different variants of the whole thing depending on how long it takes you to jump....
Ah, too much bother over something so little. Multi-jumps just aren't easily compatible with this scheme. Still, it's a good idea. I like workarounds; they give me something interesting to think about.
------------------ Join the Ambrosia Seti@home team! (url="http://"http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/stats/team/team_41611.html")http://setiathome.ss...team_41611.html(/url)
Lindley: Sounds intriguing, but I'm not sure how you would pull it off. Someone probably has a better grasp of the engine than I do, and might be able to help you on that count.
I might try the first idea especially in a mission- destroy warfleet A within 2 minutes of entering system, otherwise warfleet B jumps in and makes your life miserable. Sounds fun.
Well, if you time the ship and figure out how long it stays around before it jumps, then you could set a timer for that time. If the timer doesn't expire, a new mission is started (with a cron) where the ship chases you. If the timer does expire, a bit is set to protect you from the cron. The drawback of this system is that the ship might take a varying amount of time to hyper: if you start blasting it, it'll probably stay around to fight you.
I have thought about 1. before. The only issue i have heard rumors about is that it MAY be that things with negative armor regen only start eating thier own hull after they get hit with something that brings thier current armor below thier maximum. Can someone test if this works?
2. isnt a bad idea, but as has been said, theres a problem with multijumps, and multiple enterances to the nebula (the 16 mission limit would soon become a problem, if my idea of how you do this is accurate) -Az
------------------ It is here. EVNEW Public Beta (url="http://"http://www.aznt.com/EVN/EVNEW")www.aznt.com/EVN/EVNEW(/url) Stuffit is a piece of .sit.
For the second work-around, couldn't an ncb also be set OnShipDone (observe) which would make a cron eligible to run, with duration of 1 and !oxxx OnEnd? (Edit: I suppose the cron would also have to !bxxx the ncb in it's availability field). I haven't tested this, but it should work, and would eliminate a multi-jump complication.
Edit 2: The more I think about this, the more solutions I come up with. In any event, the multi-jump problem can be overcome by using a cron, in some way, shape, or form. ------------------
(This message has been edited by slouch (edited 04-08-2004).)