Strange fleet movements

Either a bug or an interesting discovery

I was working on the wingmen for the next version of EVN Paintball, and I am using a mďsn that grants escort ships as special mission ships. For some reason, they don't fly in the normal fleet formation. If they come within a certain proximity of my ship, they turn around, stop, and stick there in space around my ship, as if they're in a tractor beam or something. If I move my ship, they turn with me but stay where they were in relation to my ship.

In the mďsn resource, the ships are set to protect the player, the player's goal is to escort them, they jump in after a delay, and they are set to follow whatever system the player is in.

The shďp resource is set to an inherent govt that is xenophobic and always attacks the player, but in the düde for the mission, they are set to a different government that never attacks the player but is still xenophobic.

The ships are also extremely fast and maneuverable, if that has anything to do with it, although the AI can fly them perfectly well in other situations.

Any ideas about what could be causing this or how to fix it? :huh:

Edit: screenshot.
weirdfleet.jpg (32.78K)
Number of downloads: 41

This post has been edited by Nil'kimas : 10 June 2007 - 01:15 PM

you might consider attaching a copy of the plug (if the size is manageable) for others to test this out properly. Though I seem to remember that escorts from missions have always acted weird when in position...I dunno.

I seem to remember intertialess ships doing this when they acted as escorts. Are these ships intertialess?

No, they're not inertialess.

The plug-in itself is too big to upload, but I've prepared a small plug-in which, along with a copy of the original EVN Paintball, will demonstrate exactly what it's doing.

First, download EVNP 1.0 here, put it in your plug-ins folder, then download and install the attached file.

evnptest.zip (2.54K)
Number of downloads: 0

Create a new pilot and select the Red Team character, then land on the base, go into the mission BBS (labeled "Options") and star the "Test the game" mission.

Fly through the hypergate (you'll have to click the link rather than tabbing to it), land on the red base (lower left of the system), and take the "Hire escort" mission from the BBS (still labeled "Options"). Take off from the station and the escort will jump in.

Yes, I am aware that only the player will be able to fire a weapon and that the enemies don't work right, but that's just because I removed most of the resources from the plug-in to upload it here. The player's escorts should act identically to the way they did for me, except they won't fire any weapons.

I know I've seen this happen before. I can't remember when or where, but I know it happens. That doesn't help much, but if you think it is a major discovery...I'm just saying I"ve seen it befoe.

I've figured out what's causing it. The ships were planet-type. Apparently planet-type ships set the AI to act like planets. That also explains why the enemies didn't chase the player around.

An easy solution is simply to make everything non-planet-type, but this would screw up some things, like he fact that I wanted a regular paintball gun to be able to damage both enemy ships and stations. I really don't want to have to make a separate weapon for shooting stations.

I also thought about submunitioning every frame between a planet-type shot and a non-planet-type shot, effectively allowing it to hit both ships and stations. If I did this, would I have to make a separate wëap resource for each time it submunitions if I don't want the weapon to have unlimited range?