is it possible....

dorrus

is it possible to confisticate a player's ship, making planetary departure impossible unless they accept a mission in which they hitch a ride to other places? im planning to make a mission string in which you start out as a rookie trainee with no ship and some fortune inherited from a parent.

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orcaloverbri9

Make the player be in a ship that has no fuel, no acceleration, no top speed, no turning, etc., forcing him/her to land or just sit there all day.

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Masamune

Not in any conventional sense. The best you can do is what Orca suggested, which makes it so that for all practical purposes they can't leave the planet. This could be improved slightly if you make a special ship for the player to have during this time, such as an "Observation Platform" or something similar, which would reasonably go into space but not be able to move around.

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Dr. Trowel

There's a Nova Control Bit operator that will let your "Observation Platform" (or "You are Here" dot?) move between spobs, as if you had teleported or hitched a ride. You write a misn (or cron, etc) that activates the NCB, and poof, there you are. This is used in the misn that takes you to Our Spiel, I think.

Hopefully the NCB will put you close enough to your destination spob that you'll be able to land on it without using engines -- not having tried, I don't know.

(This message has been edited by Dr. Trowel (edited 07-28-2004).)

PBoat101

Quote

Originally posted by Dr. Trowel:
**There's a Nova Control Bit operator that will let your "Observation Platform" (or "You are Here" dot?) move between spobs, as if you had teleported or hitched a ride. You write a misn (or cron, etc) that activates the NCB, and poof, there you are. This is used in the misn that takes you to Our Spiel, I think.

Hopefully the NCB will put you close enough to your destination spob that you'll be able to land on it without using engines -- not having tried, I don't know.

**

Mxxx will take the player to center of system xxx (0,0). That's fine for systems with a planet at the center, but otherwise, you could get stuck.

EDIT: Scratch that. It actually moves you on top of the first stellar in the system (NavDef1).

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"If A equals success, then the formula is A=X+Y+Z, where X is work, Y is play, and Z is keep your mouth shut." - Albert Einstein

(This message has been edited by PBoat101 (edited 07-28-2004).)

getcrack4me

Ok, this is going to be a "crazy" idea, but it might work.

The previous posters have the right idea with a ship that has no speed, accel, etc.

Now here's my idea:

Departure Planet has no gravity.

Arrival Planet has gravity and drags your ship towards it.

Tricky part:

Once you land on Arrival Planet you have to change the system so that Arrival Planet no longer has gravity and the new Arrival Planet does have gravity.

Anyone have concrete ideas?

PS: Make the Non-Player (AI) travel in ships immune to gravity or else you're gonna have some funny fly trap effect.

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(This message has been edited by getcrack4me (edited 07-29-2004).)

PBoat101

Quote

Originally posted by getcrack4me:
**Ok, this is going to be a "crazy" idea, but it might work.

The previous posters have the right idea with a ship that has no speed, accel, etc.

Now here's my idea:

Departure Planet has no gravity.

Arrival Planet has gravity and drags your ship towards it.

Tricky part:

Once you land on Arrival Planet you have to change the system so that Arrival Planet no longer has gravity and the new Arrival Planet does have gravity.

Anyone have concrete ideas?

PS: Make the Non-Player (AI) travel in ships immune to gravity or else you're gonna have some funny fly trap effect.

**

Well, as I said before, Mxxx moves you on top of the planet anyway, so gravity is not necessary in systems with only one planet. And you would encounter some serious problems in systems with multiple planets even with gravity. How would you know which planet the player wants to land on? You would have to give gravity to every planet, which would not produce the intended behavior at all, since the player is being pulled by multiple planets at once.

A better solution might be to have the mission place an AI ship over the desired destination. Once the player appears over the first planet, the AI ship, which would be immobile and armed only with a tractor beam, would fire, moving the player over to the destination. To keep it from being attacked, you could make it cloak and have the beam fire while cloaked. You'd have a tough time explaining how that can happen if the player has no ship, but it is the best workaround I can see.

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"If A equals success, then the formula is A=X+Y+Z, where X is work, Y is play, and Z is keep your mouth shut." - Albert Einstein

SpacePirate

Then you'd still have the klaxxon to deal with. I know it's not a major thing, but it is a fairly large annoyance in my BGM plugs.

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getcrack4me

Quote

Originally posted by PBoat101:
**Well, as I said before, Mxxx moves you on top of the planet anyway, so gravity is not necessary in systems with only one planet.
**

Well that's the thing...I don't know if dorrus want's interplanetary travel or interstellar travel. If it's just one system and he has to travel to other planets then that's why Mxxx wouldn't be cool (as you said also).

Quote

Originally posted by PBoat101:
**

And you would encounter some serious problems in systems with multiple planets even with gravity. How would you know which planet the player wants to land on?

**

This would be decided when he lands on the planet and decides his/her new destination, and thus giving gravity to the new destination spöb and turning off gravity to the current spöb (which is why I said this was the tricky part).

Quote

Originally posted by PBoat101:
**

You would have to give gravity to every planet, which would not produce the intended behavior at all, since the player is being pulled by multiple planets at once.

**

Not all the planets will have gravity. See above.

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Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne

(This message has been edited by getcrack4me (edited 07-30-2004).)

PBoat101

Yes, that would work, but then you would have to have several different copies of each system in which you want possible destinations. For example, say you have a system with three planets. You would need the standard copy, with no gravity, and then three copies, one for each planet. This may not seem like much, but when you add up many different systems, it becomes quite a lot. You now have that many systems gone and unable to be used again, limiting the map size of your TC (which I assume is what dorrus is trying to do).

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"If A equals success, then the formula is A=X+Y+Z, where X is work, Y is play, and Z is keep your mouth shut." - Albert Einstein

Guest_l dragon_*

I think "your ship" should be like a shuttle that you are renting. it can slowly move around but has no fuel then you can get to the planet easier after you teleport there

EV for EVer

You could make all ships not buyable until a certain mission bit is set. That mission bit will be set when the player gets his license. The player will start with a taxi shuttle that has no fuel so it can not jump. You could have missions in the mission computer that move you from system with the Mxxx operator. When the player gets his license you could use the Kxxx operator to give him a licensed ship captain rank and the Hxxx operator to give him a normal shuttle. Also when he gets his licence the mission bit is set that allows him to buy ships.