[T-Man]

Had another of my "idea i think works but i'm a programming n00b" moments, and wanted to put it up for a coder to have a look at and, if they like it, see if its feasible.

The thought is to have a new dock point you assign to some ships with a certain name ("SupportBay1" for example) on some larger ships (like a strut on a cruiser, for example). This has a proximity trigger that when entered brings up a message saying "press R to resupply" or the like. When the player presses, his controls lock and his fighter falls under control of an AI similar to the support ship's, with its objective being to dock with the bay in question. When it does so, the ship resupplies as if docked to a support ship, then is released and falls back under player control. The player can abort the process at any time ( ending AI control and instantly releasng him if he's docked) by pressing the R key. If implimentation is successfull, a code could then potentially be added to tell AIs to try and use these before calling in a support ship.

I had pre-FS1 campaigns like TVWP or pirate/rebels mainly in mind for this, giving them the ability to resupply without having to have support ships, but it could also be used to create larger, heavier armed support ships that can actually remain in a combat zone, or to give appropriately designed cruisers/carriers the ability to resupply escorting strike craft quickly. Multiple bays would theoretically allow multiple resupplies too. In this form there's the player disadvantage that your exposed during dock, but some ships could have more animated docking areas with opening and closing doors to shield players.

I saw at least one project that would benefit from something similar to this; Starlancer: Sol War (a mod rebuilding Starlancer in the FS-Open engine, i don't know if any of their team come to HLP). A modified form would allow the Nanny ship to be implimented (by having the docking point 'floating' invisibly in the middle of the bay.

So yeah, just my usual insane conceptual ramblings. Cheers for your time.

[General Battuta]

You could definitely fake this in FRED right now, and pretty convincingly. (If you give an AI fighter a dock order and specify a dockpoint, will it do so?)

[The E]

Yeah, this should be doable using existing abilities and mechanics.

[T-Man]

You could definitely fake this in FRED right now, and pretty convincingly.

That's probably true (i've only really played with FRED and SEXPs up to "decent retail mission" standards, not their more complex capabilities). My only concern with a SEXP-based version is that you've got to mnaually set it up in every mission you want it in so there's more to potentially have to bugfix, and (in retail at least) i used to find that after a certain number of SEXPs my mission would become ustable and crash all the time, so my aim is always to minimise SEXPs.

My hope was that if it (and other repetitive systems, like the in-mission jumping) are easy to SEXP, maybe they could be written as "prefab SEXPs" of some kind (like a function in VB/C++ coding) where you just call it and assign it the input values in some fashion.

[The E]

Well, the sexp system has been revamped to be much, much more stable and efficient, so even large missions shouldn't crash due to too many sexps.
And really, with stuff like any-of and other argument-based conditions, it's pretty easy to write a generic sexp that you can pretty much drop into a mission.

Now, the concept of a "sexp library" of sorts is certainly interesting, but probably rather hard to pull off.

[General Battuta]

(in retail at least) i used to find that after a certain number of SEXPs my mission would become ustable and crash all the time, so my aim is always to minimise SEXPs

You definitely don't need to do this any more.

I'm not averse to any kind of code-side system, but ultimately I feel like SEXP control over these types of systems is generally more powerful, at the cost of a little more complexity. Moving a module from mission to mission is generally as simple as copy-paste in Notepad as long as you get all the associated variables; then you've got to change a few argument names.

I'd definitely be up for a library.

[Black Wolf]

Make the sexp, open the mission in notepad, copy the sexp, then put it up on a "Prefab sexps" page on the wiki so everyone can use it.

Incidentally though, excellent idea. I'm going to go try that right now.

Hmm, turns out you need to edit that ojecttypes.tbl to make fighters accept the AI Dock command. Still going.

[EDIT]Even with an objecttypes tbm giving dock order to fighters, it's all greyed out. Which is odd. But I'm tried, I'll keep going tomorrow.

[T-Man]

Now, the concept of a "sexp library" of sorts is certainly interesting, but probably rather hard to pull off.

I've heard somewhere that it's possible to FRED in notepad or something like that if you know what your doing, so i was thinking of advanced FREDers like that for a basic form; have the prefabs in basic code format so they can just copy and paste in. An actual GUI-interfaced system inside FRED would probably take quite a bit of work.

EDIT: QED. Beat me to it Battuta and Black Wolf.

[Reprobator]

I've already done it in fred last year, the only two problem i had was :
-When you order the ai to dock with a fighter fred complains that only support ship may dock (i fake it by making a new tbm with the same ship but set as support ship)
-I don't remind having seen a reloading sexp, i was able to reload with sexp's pre selected weapons, wich force the player to use certains weapon.

[headdie]

on a related point can we have an option in fred where by a fredder can switch between the support ship docking with the fighter like in retail and the fighter docking with the support ship when using the rearm comm option (AI would have to take over control of th eplayer craft until rearm procedure finishes)