Blockades

No news

It's me again.

Is there a way to prevent blockading AI ships from chasing the player, so that he/she cannot do a Not the Nine O'clock news maneuver? The blockading force would stay near the planet/station and force the player to fight his/her way through.

Does selecting intercepter mode do the trick, or is more necessary?

Thanks

I believe I may have a solution (of sorts) for you.

AI Swarming behavior causes ships of the same government to try to form a single cluster.

A "Lead" ship is selected from the present ships that are flagged for the 'Swarming' behavior. The ship selected as the leader will pursue the enemy as normal. All other ships with 'Swarming' behavior will travel to the 'Leader'.

When the enemy comes within close range of the swarm ships, they will try to attack. The idea is probably that the swarm ships will be clustering around the Leader when they encounter the enemy.

The Leader is selected by picking the swarm ship with the lowest RID among the swarm., So, a ship with RID 130 and 'Swarming Behavior' flagged will be the Leader of all ships with RID's 131 and higher, but if a swarm ship with RID 128 enters the system, it will become the swarm leader.

To force a blockade of ships to stay near the planet, you force the Swarm Lead ship to stay near the planet.

Using Missions, it is possible to spawn a ship directly on top of the first through fourth planets in a system. You would use this to spawn the Swarm Leader directly over the planet you wish for it to blockade. This designated Swarm Lead ship will need to have a Max Speed of 0, it will need to have 'Swarming Behavior' checked (as will all ships in the blockading fleet), and it will need to have a lower RID than any other ship in the fleet. The ships of the blockade fleet will follow their Swarm Lead round, and the Anchored Swarm Lead I've described will be unable to chase the player around (or move at all ) because it has a Top Speed of 0.

One issue you may face in implementing this is that if the Anchored Swarm Lead is killed, then a different ship in the fleet will be selected as Swarm Lead, and the fleet will follow that ship around.

You could actually work with that, and have the Anchored Swarm Lead be some heavy armed / armored platform as the main target, and use another trick to make the rest of the fleet run away when the platform is killed.

This post has been edited by Eugene Chin : 05 August 2009 - 01:23 AM

This is...disturbingly useful.

Especially combined with the "make ships flee" trick. I was wondering if there was a way to stop ships leaving defense platforms all alone...

giggles evilly

That's great; exactly what I wanted to know. Thank you.

Could one have a number of fleets swarm several different "platforms", surrounding a planet, by labeling them as different but allied governments?

Or

Perhaps just one big one on top of the planet. If the lead ship/platform were given sufficient shields and armor to make it nearly indestructible, the pilot would have to destroy all the swarming ships. The lead ship/platform could only fire a set number of missiles, and the pilot could then land, after destroying the fleet, as the lead ship no longer has any means to attack.

That would do the trick, I think.

As an alternative method of keeping the "anchor" ship from being destroyed (and also from getting in the way), you could simply make it untargetable and invisible - that is, have its animation consiste of nothing but a single black pixel in both its sprite and mask. Everything else would be just as Eugene Chin said.

I never knew that about swarming behavior though! That has to be the most useful thing I've read on these forums in years! Of course, now I'm going to have to go through the Hypothetical TC and move every ship and shan up one, which is going to be a pain, but completely worth it!

I don't know about the multiple swarming platforms question, but I'd guess it would work. As would the limited missiles platform as an alternative to the invisible, unarmed anchor.

Again, Thanks. That answers my question, and gives me a few ideas.

Eugene Chin, you are truly skilled.

QUOTE (Archon @ Aug 5 2009, 11:18 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm going to have to go through the Hypothetical TC and move every ship and shan up one, which is going to be a pain, but completely worth it!

ConText -> Open in spreadsheet program -> Select ID numbers -> Cut -> Paste

That'll handle the resource IDs themselves. Good luck if you have lots of set or test expressions to parse though.

This is now the best thread ever. Thanks!

Wow. Thanks for the tip, I've been trying to make this work! This deserves a spot in the EV Nova tricks.

QUOTE

The Leader is selected by picking the swarm ship with the lowest RID among the swarm., So, a ship with RID 130 and 'Swarming Behavior' flagged will be the Leader of all ships with RID's 131 and higher, but if a swarm ship with RID 128 enters the system, it will become the swarm leader.

Is the resource ID you mean the RID of the shïp resource or the düde resource?

For selecting swarm leader? The RID of the shïp.

Thank you.