[Black Wolf]

One criticism I remember reading about FS1 was that if you knew where a previous wing's wave had warped in, it was relatively easy to go back to that spot once the first wing had been destroyed and blast away at the arriving wave. I recently ran across that in my current mission - since I knew where the bombers were coming from to attack my Hatshepsut, I knew where I had to go to stop them.

What I'd like to see is a little "Scatter Warp" Checkbox, and possibly an entry box for a degree to scatter it by in the wings and/or ships editor. Essentially, it would define a sphere (or box if it's easier to just add/subtact a random amount to/from the ships X/Y/Z co-ords) of the radius you input where the various waves would arrive. It wouldn't break Backwards compatability, and it'd add a little bit more of a challenge to predicting the arrival point of hostiles.

So yeah. That's my idea. Rip it to shreds.

[FireCrack]

I fully concur, it shall not be ripped at all.

[phatosealpha]

I imagine it would be a lot of trouble to implement as a general use flag in the launcher.  You define the sphere, but you'd probably need a lot of code to make sure the new warp point isn't anywhere it shouldn't be - inside a capship, for instance.

Might work as a FRED SEXP, I believe that's what they're called, but 5'll get you 10 one of the SEXP masters will show up and say 'you can already do that with SEXPs X, Y, and Z".

[Grug]

Hmm that's a good idea BW.

[Goober5000]

This could be added as an option in the wing/ship editor.  "Scatter Warp Distance: X" and it'd move the ships up to X away from the warpin point.

[Trivial Psychic]

...such as the "arrive near ship" option.

[karajorma]

Sounds like a reasonable idea. I've generally used the near ship>>Alpha 1 in those cases where I needed something like this but I'm sure there are occassions where this could be useful as an alternative to this.

Goober do we need a new box on the ship editor? Wouldn't it just be possible to just enable the distance box?

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by phatosealpha
I imagine it would be a lot of trouble to implement as a general use flag in the launcher.  You define the sphere, but you'd probably need a lot of code to make sure the new warp point isn't anywhere it shouldn't be - inside a capship, for instance.

It wouldn't work as a launcher flag, because, as you say, the possibility of having ships warp in inside other ships exists, but if you put in the ship/wing editor you wouldn't need to code stuff like that in IMO - you'd just need to have the FREDder be careful enough to not put his fighters in a position where it becomes possible for stuff like that to happen.

Originally posted by phatosealpha
Might work as a FRED SEXP, I believe that's what they're called, but 5'll get you 10 one of the SEXP masters will show up and say 'you can already do that with SEXPs X, Y, and Z".

AFAIK, you can't. I was experimenting with it before I posted the request - you can't shift a ships position before it arrives in mission, so you can't alter it's warpin location.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Black Wolf
It wouldn't work as a launcher flag, because, as you say, the possibility of having ships warp in inside other ships exists, but if you put in the ship/wing editor you wouldn't need to code stuff like that in IMO - you'd just need to have the FREDder be careful enough to not put his fighters in a position where it becomes possible for stuff like that to happen.  

I don't see why even that would be a problem. I've been using near ship as an arrival cue for years and I've never once seen a ship arrive anywhere except open space. Hopefully it's possible to just reuse the code that handles that.

[Prophet]

Why would there be need for SCP?

Place a nav or some invisible object somewhere and have your ships arrive near that.
The thing you want is already there!

[karajorma]

You can't use nav or waypoint with near ship. FRED won't let you. I do agree that allowing near ship >> Waypoint x would be another way of handling the problem and might even be simpler to code though.

But actually you're right. This is possible now. Plant a Pharos beacon, texture it invisible using the texture replacement system and then tell the wings to arrive near it. Hadn't thought of that one before.

Seems like a lot of hassle for something that would be a feature I'd be telling every mission designer to use though. If Goober adds this I'd instantly make sure that every wing in any campaign I'm working on uses it so if it's simple to code a feature that allows you to randomise hyperspace warp in's without using an extra object (either an invisible ship or a waypoint)  it should be added.

[Setekh]

Both perceptive points. I think kara's final point is the clincher: everyone will be wanting to use this, and if it's not that difficult, it's definitely worth hardcoding in there as an option to simply tick, rather than 'hack' into the mission.

[Zarax]

Err... Isn't that present in the wing arrival options since vanilla FS?

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by Zarax
Err... Isn't that present in the wing arrival options since vanilla FS?

No

[Zarax]

Originally posted by Black Wolf


No

What about the arrival point near capship/node/object option?

It does exactly that to me, i've used that thing dozen times to have enemy ships arrive at a certain distance but always in different places...

[karajorma]

But what if there is no capship near where the point you want the craft to arrive at?

I've already mentioned the near-ship arrival cue. This isn't quite the same thing. Sure you can use near-ship>>Alpha 1 a lot but that isn't always what you want.

Sometimes you want to be able to say "I want enemy bombers to appear to the left of this capship".  The only way to do that is to use hyperspace and if you do that the possibility exists that the player can notice exactly were the entry point is and camp there.

As I said before if this feature was implemented it would immediately become standard practice to give all incoming wings a 100 or 200m hyper entry area. You definately can't do that with retail.

[Prophet]

Originally posted by karajorma
You can't use nav or waypoint with near ship. FRED won't let you.

Yeah. Didn't remember that. But I knew it.

And karajorma... The way I see it. That my way and yours have only one difference. I have a invisible object and ships arrive around it. You have to specify a bubble in space and have your ships arrive in there... Is there really that much difference?


BTW. The wings arrive in a very tight formation. What do they do before jump? Spend 15 minutes to manouver their ships in to a tight blob before going to war? There should be a way to specify the distance between the arriving ships, so that one infyrno wouldn't take them out...

[Goober5000]

The difference is that "Near ship" is the surface of a sphere, whereas this would be the volume of a sphere.

It shouldn't be hard to change "Near ship" to "Near ship, wing, or waypoint".  And after doing that, the next step is to make "Within X distance of ship, wing, or waypoint" which is what this would be.

[Prophet]

Originally posted by Goober5000
The difference is that "Near ship" is the surface of a sphere, whereas this would be the volume of a sphere.

Every FREDder knows that before they are born, thank you very much...

But can you honestly tell the difference when you are shooting those pesky nephilim to bits? First wing comes here, another a X meters X way... Sure, in FRED it seems like a big deal. But in the game it certainly isn't noticeable.

If you must micro-manage, then let us add min-max values to the near-ship cue. Yes?

[karajorma]

No. As I explained before using near ship doesn't offer quite the same level of control.

If you want to keep putting in invisible ships and using near-ship for every single wing in the game then you do that. I'd rather have this.