[Grug]

I'm just wondering, if its plausible to have alpha 1 be able to dock ingame to something other than the designated support ship.
That or a certain zone, say pre-determined in the pof, where alpha1 can fly into and recieve normal resupply ship stuff.

Preferablly the former.

So rather than always having to jump out, or have to rely on the support ship. You could engage an auto dock thingy, where alpha 1's ship will dock with a ship, and can recieve re-armaments / repairs, and then undock and go back to work.
Or have it so you can link Fred-flags to it, so that Alpha could dock with a ship and end the mission accordingly.

I could live with a seperate docking path being designated for alpha1 only use even.
Being able to begin a mission docked, and the controls being locked until the ship reaches the end of the docking path would add a bit more variety into the game, and enable certain mods to be more realistic...

Another thing, can we overide certain call commands?
Say if I tell beta squad to depart, rather than jump out, is there a way to make them dock with a designated ship rather than jump?

[WMCoolmon]

use-player-ai sounds like what you're thinking of. Plus some SEXPs to replenish the player ship's hull.

[Grug]

Can you disable the players controls however?

So the player 'is-key-pressed' something and then they lose control of the ship (but can abort) as it flies in docks and undocks with a support cruiser say.

What about squad mates doing the same thing?
Rather than the support ship going to them, they go to it.

[karajorma]

I've not tried player-use-ai yet but from everything I understand about it it would do pretty much what you say. You'd have to manually check for the player pressing ESC to stop it though.

AI could be handled in exactly the same way except that you'd just give them orders to dock.

[Grug]

If this is true, how come I've never heard of this before?

...lol.

Second thoughts don't answer that question.

But in a couple months time, when I get around to testing it, and it doesn't work.

Look out.

[StratComm]

AI's always been able to depart into the hangerbay of a capital ship in-mission.  That's a vanilla feature, and was used in "proving grounds" when Delta departs.  The rest of this can be SEXP'd easily enough, it just may take a little more work on the FREDing end of things than I'd like.

[karajorma]

Hmmmm. I gave this a quick try and I couldn't figure out how you can get fighters to dock to a capship. FRED just wouldn't let me do it.

I can of course simply make it so that the player has to fly to and stay near a certain subsystem bit that would be harder to do on a moving ship and would probably me to have a moving waypoint for it to work with AI ships.

I'm Sure the docking restrictions have been relaxed so I should have been able to get this to work. What was I doing wrong?

[NGTM-1R]

Player-use-AI

Player wing depart setting under the proper conditions.

Player wing depart at capital ship fighterbay.

[karajorma]

That's easy. I meant actually docking to a docking point not ending the missing by landing in the hanger bay.

 Grug wants to use this to rearm ships. You don't want them jumping out every time you want to rearm them

[Grug]

Aye. Thanks for testing it for me.
I'm not much of a fredder after all...

The main reason I ask is because it would be a handy thing to do in TAP, at least once anyway. (The re-arm with large ship in mission thing anyway)

Most missions in TAP would require Alpha squad to be undocking from a capital ship / dock ship. Which can be done, just by having them flying away from the entry port. (but would be nice to have the docking ai as well)

A depart to capital ship order would be handy too, but could be done with say alt-r (return to mothership/carrier) then end mission.

But can, c-2-3(all)-0, call all fighter wings to depart make them dock rather than jump?

Oh and does giving a beam a negative damage value give a healing effect?

[Goober5000]

Fighters aren't allowed to dock to capships.  It's restricted in the code.

I might as well remove the restrictions on ships docking to other ships.  I see no reason why to keep them around.

[Mad Bomber]

Twould be good, Goob. Ships that carry fighters externally (now that it's possible) will need their fighters to be able to initiate docking and undocking.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Goober5000
I might as well remove the restrictions on ships docking to other ships.  I see no reason why to keep them around.

I think that's the third or fourth time I've heard an SCP programmer say that. Which is probably why I thought it had been done