[Solatar]

Especially those damn "avoid the sentries" missions.

...it's almost cheating.

[Nuke]

i thought of a real cool tac map for use with capship missions, essentially a large 1/3 screen radar which would show ship icons (which would be generated on the fly). essentially a large radar but with icons showing what each ship (exaggerated scale of course) is and its orientation. targeting could be done via point and click. you could use drag and drop to assign ships to turrets or banks of turrets to attack. it would be cool but its of code and ive very little time.

[Al Tarket]

if such a map gets the nod, i would like it to look something like this... however it might not to be everyones taste.



its very basic, however if your use your creative magic it can become something far better.

[Retsof]

What's with all the lines?  I'd go for more of a sphere, (as long as this paused the game) that you could rotate with the mouse so you could get a good feel for where everything is.

[chief1983]

Those are the three planes, with the white dot in the middle being yourself.  The other small white lines indicate relative distance above or below the horizontal plane for each other object.  I've seen a map similar to that before although I can't remember where.  Homeworld used something like that when moving in sensors mode.

[Galemp]

This would be best with my radar icons.

[Colonol Dekker]

Well if the <Autobot voice> CODE MASTERS</Autobot voice> can work out how to mimic production and resources, FS will become an RTS.

[chief1983]

Actually those aren't required for an RTS, just strategizing in real time.  If you were giving orders to all the AI units, and not really participating so much yourself, it'd essentially be an RTS.

[MP-Ryan]

What I have long wanted in this game is the ability to monitor multiple objects in targeting brackets so they're easily visible on the HUD while using the targeting function only to go after ships you're actually doing something with.  For example, it would be nice to be able to keep a lock on friendly escort capships so you get the distance and direction indicator while you're chasing down fighters/bombers attacking them.

Think that's possible?

[Solatar]

It's possible to target a wing of fighters all at once by assigning the wing a hotkey, then targeting the wing. The leader is target normally while the rest of the members are targeted in white brackets like asteroids. You can't target other things at the same time though.

It's not exactly what you want, but it might hold you over until something better gets implemented, if it does.

[WMCoolmon]

How would you know which offscreen bracket was what with multiple escort ships?

[MP-Ryan]

How would you know which offscreen bracket was what with multiple escort ships?

Wouldn't really matter.  I'm thinking something along the lines of the brackets for asteroids - you get the distance information but not much else.  It'd be purely for situational awareness and orientation.  It's oddly easy to lose track of your capships when in a fighter furball.

At any rate, it would quickly allow you to orient to other ships present in mission.  Even if you did it solely for the escort list vessels (e.g. if a vessel appears in the escort list then you have continuous monitoring of its relative position and distance from you).

[DarthWang]

Well my idea for the map was based on the one in TIE Fighter, I think some of these ideas are interesting but not what I had originally asked for. Some of them are close, though.

[Fabian]

Not right off the bat. I found that TARGET_SHIP_IGNORE_FLAGS is used by a variety of functions, but there doesn't seem to be a universal is_this_thing_targetable_from_here() function that I can slap in.

Probably not too hard to do, but more involved than I want to get right now (esp. with the code freeze going on). If someone's got plans for this in their mod, put it in the features request thread (or if you really really want it in the next release, put it in mantis.)

ai/aicode.cpp:

object_is_targetable is the function you want.

or if that is not exported, you can also use:

ship_is_visible_by_team(target, viewer)

or

awacs_get_level(target, viewer) > 1.0f;

Those are also used by the standard radar code.

Best Wishes,

Fabian