Squadrons?

@joshtigerheart, on Nov 8 2007, 05:37 PM, said in Squadrons?:

You could just reason out somewhere in the plug why sometimes the whole squad dies. Just say something like an occasional lucky shot will take out a whole squad through large explosions, exploding fighters crashing into squadmates, or whatever excuses you need. After all, something as devastating as a Hellhound or EMP Torpedo probably would only kill one member of a squad every time.

That's actually what I'm doing. My pseudo-science is that shield generators can be 'linked' and that in close proximity, the resulting field is significantly stronger than normal. The drawback is that, as close together as they have to be for it to work, when one blows up the other two can't escape the blast and debris. So they're "three musketeers" squadrons, all for one and one for all. Or at least that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. :rolleyes:

@shlimazel, on Nov 8 2007, 07:28 PM, said in Squadrons?:

I like this idea. I read about it before on EVN.net, but it is cool to see it be revived here. The nice thing about it is that it allows you to have 'squadrons' which don't take up loads of resources on screen.

Er, I haven't read the whole topic yet, but have you considered making the squadrons inertialess? That way their maneuvering won't look as odd as it would if you left their inertia intact.

I think what I've come up with looks ok. I should have something for people to download soon, so you'll be able to judge my attempt at GIMP editing for yourselves. The thing I find that makes them look a little odd, is that they always keep perfect distance from one another. Giving them some degree of "float" to make it look more natural is something I'd like to do, but beyond my beginner image manipulation skills.

Here's what I've got done so far: Squadrons.zip

I haven't read up on Mac/Windows conversion yet - this is a Windows .rez file.

I still need to create missions to introduce the new stuff, and there is no ReadMe yet. Also, I realized the Phoenix and Anaconda should probably be done at the same time (for balance reasons), so I didn't do the Phoenix yet.

You can find Civilian squadron bays and modified light blasters in the same places you'd see medium blasters (tech level 5). The new pirate bays have the same settings (tech level, scan mask, etc.) as the existing pirate viper bay. Fed and Rebel viper bays and the Firebird bay have the same Availability bits as do the normal fighter bays for those factions.

My image editing is not the greatest, so go easy on me there. I thought I got a little better at it as I went along, but it's still all just images from the game cobbled together.

Please post comments!

Use the link in the post above to get an updated version of the plug. Here's what I've added/changed:

• You may now buy, hire, and capture any squadron.

• A few common dudes and fleets now have a chance of creating/including a squadron.

• The Strength value of squadrons has been adjusted (2x a solo fighter of the same type).

Still hoping for comments. :mellow: I know there's not a lot to comment on, but...are the squadron rleDs ok at least?

I unfortunately don't have the time at the moment to play this and try it out, but I have downloaded the file and pulled up the rlëd's in MissionComputer. I think they look great!

The only real way for you to be able to create the "float" aspect would be to make the ships rotate around a fixed point, ideally at the same angle at which you're viewing the ships.

Think of it like this: Currently your ships could be viewed as a triangle that moves through space but doesn't actually ever turn. It's similar to what it would look like if you put in a ship with one frame that could move through space freely but you only ever see the one side of it. The next step up, so to speak, would involve making the triangle turn as it moved, so that it would always have a front and a back. Imagine a starbridge flying around in Nova, but instead of seeing the starbridge you instead see your three squadron ships, one where the nose of the starbridge would be, the other two at either end of the starbridge's wings. The final step would be to take your rotating triangle and tilt it away from you, so that instead of looking straight down on top of it, you look at it from an angle, in this case the same angle that all of the Nova ships are currently tilted.

The best way to accomplish the latter would probably be to have a way of rendering the squadron of ships all at once and pretty much starting from scratch. The middle step would be more easily doable (and would give the squadrons a leader, even), but would still be a hassle with just normal copy/paste work, I think.

And please, don't let all of this discourage you in any way. I think what you've done so far is quite fantastic! This idea is actually something I had never heard of before and it's absolutely brilliant. Congrats to you for doing something with it. I'm looking forward to more testing whenever I get back to my computer in a couple weeks.