[bomb3rman]

Hey guys, it's me again 

So I have a mission with a checkpoint in the middle. After loading the checkpoint/ or the first fights are done, the support ship jumps in (and is really needed to repair players hull or the rest of the mission gets really hard).

Gamma wing is flying the same ships as Alpha wing (player) and is needed to fly these, but there seems to be a problem: The support ship can't manage to dock with Gamma and my Alpha wingmen! It flies around it, while the nose of wingmens/gamma's ship is always pointing towards the support ship/rotating around its axis so that support can't reach the path to dock. This is very time consuming and if the player doesn't manage to call in the ship for himself BEFORE gamma, he probably won't be able to get rearmed and healed. I don't want to make the time to reload too long or it would disturb the story of the mission.

Long story, short question: Since Gamma is protected, they don't really need to reload/heal them. Is there a way to forbid Gamma (and maybe everyine else who flies this ship) to call in the support ship? I tried setting Gamma to immobile, ai-stay-still, ai-play-dead. Nothing seems to work and I don't know why. Oddly, this seems to work with Beta and Delta (another ship model). Could the ship model be the problem, maybe with the docking path? It' the Leto-A (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/GTF_Leto-A.

Any help would be appreciated...

[Spoon]

The docking path definitely looks like an issue, vertex 1 of its docking path is a wooping 500 meters above its docking point, and is at a massive 1000 radius.
Try editing the docking path, to something a bit more sane. See if that solves it (I assume that it will).

Additionally you could try the set-support-ship sexp (Change -> Other) and allow for more than 1 support ship to be in the mission space at once.

[bomb3rman]

THX for the reply!

This looks logical. Since I have no idea about editing ships, can I do this with pcs2 (this I have)...? And more important: HOW do I do this  ?

[Spoon]

Yes, it's really easy to do!

Open the model in pcs2, expand the paths part, there should only be $path01 on the leto model. Select Vertex 1, then on the right side of the program, there's radius, and position. Now start adjusting these numbers until you've got a good result. (You can also hold CTRL and left or right mouse button to drag the path along an axis with the mouse)
The ship docking will start from vertex 1, then work its way down to the list, then connect with the docking point. So a shorter, more streamlined pathway for it to follow, tends to result in faster docking times.

For example:

This is a docking path setup, that I've found to work pretty well.

[bomb3rman]

Hey. I tried to rework the dock path, using one from a ship that is working well. But still it doesn't work. The Leto-A still points its nose at the Support ship all the time, so that the support ship is forced to fly in circles around it, not being able to dock/find the entry for the docking path... Is there something I've forgotten? Maybe I have to disable some kind of "pointing at Support while docking"?

[Spoon]

That's pretty odd indeed. I can't really think of a solution...
Have you tried clearing their orders before issueing the play-dead order?

[bomb3rman]

I also tested it in another mission with the Leto-A and a support ship. It's the same, it must be a problem with the model...

Just... forget what I wrote. Not only the model, the modder too is doing stupid things. I did what you told me and just saved the model within my fs2 backup folder, not the real one... So no wonder there were no changes ingame... 

It's working, thanks!

[Spoon]

  I think we've all been there at least once.
Good to hear its working