Changing ships then changing back

Let's say, hypothetically, that I'm working on this plug-in that is a subsidiary of a certain quasi-TC-type-thing. Now, let's suppose that there's this mission where I want your ship to change to, say, hypothetically, a PVIV, so that you can infiltrate a hypothetical Pirate base in the hypothetical North of Federation space. But what, there's, hypothetically, MORE! I also want the ship to get changed back to the exact one it was before, outfits and all. It's a quick, hypothetical, infiltrator mission, because your ship is way to conspicuous. How would one go about doing this?

Note: delete all the hypothetically's except the first one and it'll all make sense.

I... don't think you could do that. To my knowledge, there's no variable to store what outfits you had other than what's in your pilot file... Hm.. Unless you can directly access and modify what you've got there, then I don't think it's possible. But I could be wrong.

Nope. Someone (Slouch?) made some 'Ship Hanger' plugs for the EV/O ports which allowed you to store your ship, which only worked because of the low number of possible ships and outfits available. In Nova it is impossible, though if your 'quasi-TC-type-thing' has a low number of ships and outfits then theoretically it might be possible.

It's true that this is impossible.

That said...
If you use Cxxx instead of Exxx or Hxxx, you can hang onto all your outfits throughout. If you know (down to 5 or so, say) which ships the player might have when they take on this mission (and if I'm reading your hypotheticals correctly, I bet you can do that), you can use some control bits to keep track of that, and restore the proper ship afterwards. Thus the player ends up with the same ship and same outfits as before, looks like a PVIV during the mission. Admittedly, they still have all the badass outfits and such while looking like a PVIV. You could probably write your way around that, though. Call it a new variation on sensor-distortion and cloaking technology, which allows you to temporarily disguise your (insert huge, attention grabbing, behemoth of a ship here) as just another pirate.

Ok, it's closer to a kludge than a hack. But it would work.

Technically it is possible, but it woul involve using practically all of the mission bits and would be extremely messy and probably buggy. I'd get around it by making you an expected guest who is on the run and steals a <PST>, or at least so they think.

I like Otter's idea, using Cxxx and then writing it off as a new appearance-distorting technology.

Yeah, but how would you achieve keeping the same stats for the ship? Sure, you can give it no free mass and stuff like that, but as far as turning and speed goes... well, I guess you wouldn't want your speed and agility to give yourself away, haha.

Of course. All part of the illusion.

Since you are infiltrating a pirate base, it makes sense that you could just keep your original ship, put on a pirate hat, eye patch, hack off a leg (hey, if you did it with some futuristic technology you would probably be able to surgically reattach it later), and replace it with a wooden (or duranium?) stick. Then make up some story that you're really a pirate and you captured the ship from <insert player's name here>. When the pirate leader asks what happened to the PVIV that you're supposed to be flying, just say it blew up.

It's not like pirates only fly their custom modded ships like a real government would, so you could do this without sacrificing any story element.

This post has been edited by Nil'kimas : 11 September 2007 - 03:38 PM

@nil-kimas, on Sep 11 2007, 04:38 PM, said in Changing ships then changing back:

Since you are infiltrating a pirate base, it makes sense that you could just keep your original ship, put on a pirate hat, eye patch, hack off a leg (hey, if you did it with some futuristic technology you would probably be able to surgically reattach it later), and replace it with a wooden (or duranium?) stick. Then make up some story that you're really a pirate and you captured the ship from <insert player's name here>. When the pirate leader asks what happened to the PVIV that you're supposed to be flying, just say it blew up.

It's not like pirates only fly their custom modded ships like a real government would, so you could do this without sacrificing any story element.

That's kinda what I said...
Pretend you stole it/captured it/won it in a crap shoot/etc.

@guy, on Sep 10 2007, 11:10 PM, said in Changing ships then changing back:

Nope. Someone (Slouch?) made some 'Ship Hanger' plugs for the EV/O ports which allowed you to store your ship, which only worked because of the low number of possible ships and outfits available. In Nova it is impossible, though if your 'quasi-TC-type-thing' has a low number of ships and outfits then theoretically it might be possible.

I believe it was EVC, not EVO

I'm pretty sure it was both, hence "EV/O ports".

@guy, on Sep 11 2007, 10:37 PM, said in Changing ships then changing back:

I'm pretty sure it was both, hence "EV/O ports".

It was both, and it was slouch -- one of the EV experts who posts rarely, but always with quality. Here are the ship hanger plugs for the ports: EVC, EVO (for Guy's port). zapp, if you study those plugs you should be able to figure out whether it's feasible to do in your project.

EDIT: If you search the 'boards for posts by slouch that contain the word "hanger," you might find more info on the technique.

EDIT (AGAIN): As much as I think hangar solutions are whizz-bang cool, I've actually always thought that it would be interesting to play a storyline in which the player was occasionally required to switch to specific ship types -- by buying them or capturing them -- in order to continue the story. In the pursuit of whatever drives the plot, the players would be forced to "stay loose," being willing to give up whatever dear deathwagon they had constructed in order to move toward the goal.

Without a hangar available, a story like that could re-introduce money worries into a game in which raking in the dough can get far too easy for experienced players. Time constraints could be used so that, each time a ship change was required, the player would have to make tough choices about outfitting, too (do I go to the port where I can upgrade my turret, or to the one where I can get an engine tune-up?). You just need a good "pull" to get the player to make the sacrifice of changing his or her ship: a promise that somewhere down the road there's a fancy outfit, an exciting battle, or an emotionally rewarding plot development.

Anyway, that's what I might do. It's got the added advantage of being much simpler technically, too.

This post has been edited by Dr. Trowel : 11 September 2007 - 10:38 PM

Ah, there we go. Sadly, I suspect the EVO Ship Hanger won't be compatible with v1.0.3 of the port.

#$%@! Why not? Is it a problem with the engine or something?

It can be done... within certain limitations. The greatest limiting factor is the number of crons required to accomodate each non-persistent outfit item. It takes 3 crons for each item, plus an additional 7 control crons. So, if your scenario has 168 or fewer non-persistent outfit items, it could work. Of course... that would leave you with 1 cron for the rest of your scenario... and that's just to accomodate a single ship in storage...

... still interested?

This post has been edited by slouch : 12 September 2007 - 04:48 PM

I thought I was...

No, it's just Ship Hanger was made prior to 1.0.3 and then 1.0.3 made significant changes.

Ah.

Appearance distorting technology it is, then! Anything can be explained away with some ingenuity.