[Nuke]

i was thinking about doing a carrier, but im concerned that freespace's ai  would not generate the apropriate behavior. would it be possible to have a ship class flag for carriers. ships marked as carriers would have the ability to launch all its fighters at once, from multiple fighterbays. if the behaviour could be set up with sexps then a flag would be pointless.

[Liberator]

Well, an additional AI behavior would be for it to try and manuver away from hostile warships.

There are only so many launch bays, even on a carrier, the effect you're looking for could be simulated by using sexps.

[Knight Templar]

And so could staying away from enemies.

[SadisticSid]

You can launch as many ships at once as there are fighterbay paths, I don't think any code changes are needed.

[Starman01]

But unfortunately you can't control for sure, from
which fighterbay they should launch. The carriers over at
wc-saga have normally two fighterbay-subsystems,
but the AI use them them in their own will.

For example, fighters should launch always in the front, so in front
is fighterbay01, with Path01-06, and on the back is fighterbay02 with
path07-12 (sometimes only 4 paths for the backward bay).

Now it seems, that for launch or landing procedures the AI takes
normally the nearest free flightpath. But sometimes, it uses the others,
and I haven't figured out why, this is really driving me crazy. The
"correct" flightpaths are nearer and are not blocked or used anway.

Just a example : I have a carrier, which launches its fighters from
the front as it should be, when the ship isn't moving .

But in a mission, where the ship is moving (about 20 Kps, or
whatever the measure is about), 2 wings are launching on the front
and a few minutes later, the third wing is launching from the back,
and I don't  know why. Could have something to do with the fact,
that most  enemys are also on the back of the carrier, but I'm not
sure.

It would be absolutly great, if you guys could make a update to FRED,
so that you can select (in the wing-edit and ship-edit windows)not
only the carrier, but also the subsystem (fighterbay of course) where
they should launch from.

But on the other hand, a flag "carrier" would also be a solution, if
you can change the code so, that really the first, nearest and unused
flightpath is used.

@Nuke: For your use just make sure, that every fighterbay has
flightpaths, and then you can launch as many fighters, as
flightpath's are available (as sadistic sid already mentioned). The
Rest is dependend to the arrival-scripts of the ships/wings.

[Nuke]

my carier i would design would be a high speed forward launch shian carrier with about 6 fighterbays. id like to be able to launch a 6 ship wing, with each ship comming out of a different bay. if implemented, ships with the "carrier" flag would catapult launch their fighters in which the ships exit the bay a about double its max speed (much like a ship coming out of subspace).

[Starman01]

Well, in that case it should work, when you give each hole a single
flightpath, and make the fighterbay-subsystem a little bigger. After
all it is just a cube displayed when targeting the subsystems.
Just remind, that you must add the subsystem "fighterbay01" to the
path's.

I never tried something similar, but it think it will work that way.
I'm not sure however, if the flightpath must be inside the fighterbay-
cube, but I don't think so. You need to try it.

The catapult-launch-thing will require some code-change, so I leave
this answer to the coders

[StratComm]

I think the problem with launch bay paths is that the code treats launches as originating from specific launch paths (named $bayxx rather than the more generic $pathxx) rather than associating bays and paths together properly.  I think I can get a fighter to launch from a ship with no fighterbay but correct paths, while I know for a fact that you cannot launch fighters from a ship with a fighterbay subsystem and no paths.  I don't know for sure, but fixing this sounds like a lot of code changing.

[Setekh]

A whole new ship AI? I think, even if this required a code change, it would be a bit excessive. Just go nuts with SEXPs.

[Carl]

just give it one of the more cowardly AIs. it should stay away from trouble as long as you don't tell it to engage.

And it does need of fighterbays. just give it one or two big hangars. right, zeronet?

[Goober5000]

It's probably pretty straightforward to add some feature that tells a ship which bay to depart from.  We might add that in sometime shortly after 3.6.

[StratComm]

Hey Carl, you mean like this?


And Goober, the sooner this is done properly, the better.  I've been meaning to see if this can be done for some time.

[Starman01]

Originally posted by Goober5000
It's probably pretty straightforward to add some feature that tells a
 ship which bay to depart from.  We might add that in sometime shortly
 after 3.6.

If you could really do this, that would be awesome,  and the whole
WC-Saga will be gratefull .

But it is also important to add this feature for the landing procedure.
If this really requires a new shipclass, I don't think so. Main problem
is only the way the AI uses the flight-paths. THose Catapult-launch
would be a nice addition though.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

[HellToupee]

so in the wing commander saga will the player dock with the ship ir just flyin into the bay?

[Starman01]

Originally posted by HellToupee
so in the wing commander saga will the player dock with the ship ir
just flyin into the bay?

I use an SEXP, that after the goals are finished player have to fly inside the hangar, and then the mission ends when a limit-distance
to the fighterbay-subsystem is reached (just like in the original games)

The other wings are doing the same. As you may now, only a few
wing-commander fighters have jumpdrives and so they are depended
to a  carrier.

[Nuke]

i would love to have real carrier landings. it would be cool if you actually had to fly the flight path specified in the carrier's model. the path's points would be displayed to the player's hud. you would have to line up along the path and fly the waypoints. when you reach a certain point, ai should take over and switch you to an external camera, then you see your ship fly into the carrier. but it sounds like of coding to me.