Is this even possible?

one fighter bay, different fighter ships

I'm trying to create an outfit in mission computer that can act as a bay to carry ships, but I want to be able to launch different ships from one bay. Is this possible to do at all, or do i need to create a different bay for each type of ship I want to carry?

You can make an outfit that, when bought, gives you the ability to carry Fighter X and Fighter Y (in whatever quantity you wish). You cannot (to the best of my knowledge) make a bay that will let you carry Fighter X or Fighter Y. (Actually, you can, but you'd only be able to buy one or the other type of fighter, regardless of how many bays you bought.) So depending on which you mean, yes or no.

This post has been edited by Archon : 10 May 2009 - 04:01 PM

QUOTE (Archon @ May 10 2009, 02:00 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You can make an outfit that, when bought, gives you the ability to carry Fighter X and Fighter Y (in whatever quantity you wish). You cannot (to the best of my knowledge) make a bay that will let you carry Fighter X or Fighter Y. (Actually, you can, but you'd only be able to buy one or the other type of fighter, regardless of how many bays you bought.) So depending on which you mean, yes or no.

I do want to carry fighter X Fighter Y, and Fighter Z if possible. I know that you can set resource flags to give an outfit more than one effect, but Mission Computer seems to not let me set more than one weapon.

You're right on both counts; you can give an outfit up to four effects, but the Nova engine will only acknowledge the Weapon or Ammunition effect if it's in the first of the four slots, hence MC only lets you put it there.

What you'll need to do is make several different bays. Say bays 128, 129, and 130. Then, make bays 129 and 130 invisible (so give them 9999 tech level and check "cannot be sold.") Finally, put the following string into the On Purchase field for Bay 128: "g128 g129 g130" (sans the quotation marks). What this does is tell Nova that when you buy bay 128, you should also make it give the player bays 129 and 130. You also have to tell it to grant itself because of a bug in the engine. Then, put the string "d128 d129 d130" in the On Sell field, which means that when you sell 128, it will delete all 3.

Now, the only time that you may run into trouble is in something like the following scenario: I buy 2 bays, fill bays 129 and 130 with fighters, then sell one of the bays. I now have two times the number of fighters for bays 129 and 130 that I should be able to own. Nova will let this happen without giving the "you must sell X more fighters before you can sell this bay" because you're not really selling bays 129 and 130; they're just being deleted. For that reason, to ensure the bays won't be exploited, you should make bay 128 also delete a number of fighters for bays 129 and 130 equal to the number of fighters a ship can hold per bay. So if I can hold 4 of fighter 131 per bay 129 I own and 3 of fighter 132 per bay 130, then you should add "d131 d131 d131 d131 d132 d132 d132" to the On Sell field for bay 129.

I know that may sound a bit confusing, but it's quite simple once you get the hang of it.

I'm pretty sure somebody did something like this. I remember it coming up in the topics about hot-swappable fighter bays. The one where fighter load-outs were swapped in mid-flight. I can't remember who came up with it though.

Mid flight? That's pretty impressive. All I can think of off the top of my head for that is resorting to my usual mission-abort strategy.

Found it. It was Desprez. He even posted about it and other stuff in the Cool Nova Hacks thread here.

Edit: but of course the link to his proof-of-concept plug no longer works. Maybe somebody has a copy?

This post has been edited by Qaanol : 10 May 2009 - 07:55 PM

Oh I see; it lets you change fighter configurations at outfitters. I thought you meant while in flight (different interpretations of the phrase "on-the-fly" I guess ).

It would be great if someone had a copy of that plug. I'm sure we could get the same thing to work, but it would be nice to see how he did it.

I remembered it wrong. The changing-outfits-in-flight thing was also discovered by Desprez, and is linked from that same post in Cool Hacks. But I knew it existed! And if it does what he says it does, then it has the solution to the original question from this topic. Even if no one has a copy though, I think the thread I linked (Revamping the mechanics of EVO, Fighter Loadouts - A tough problem) has Desprez's description of how the plug-in works.

I'll have to dig through it at some time during which I don't feel like I'm coming down with the flu (note that I'm not actually, I just feel like that when I miss a dosage of my meds).

I may have to make use of a strategy or two from those posts though.

I'm pretty sure Desprez had some other nifty discoveries. Browsing through the topics he started won't disappoint you.

Wow, and if Qaanol thinks a Nova tweak is nifty, you know it's worthwhile!