[Ashura]

Hi, just wanted to ask, I looked in search and the wiki, but didn't really see any answers. Is there any way to pilot a capital ship and be able to fire the weapons on it, rather than autofiring everything? I'm on a mac btw, and just getting into fiddling with FS2, but I'd just like to know what I'm capable of. Many thanks!

[StratComm]

Not really.  If the weapons are forward facing then you can make up a capship that's sort of flyable, just make the beams/blobs/whatever gun slots instead of turrets.  As for making anything not facing directly forwards manual fire, that's out of the scope of what's possible right now.

[Vengence]

And about flying one, I would love to fly one even if I only have control of a single large forward cannon and leaving the rest to the turrets.

[Nuke]

you could always sexp a thing to bind keys to fire-turret commands. you can do mechwarrior-esc weapon groupings. with some really fancy sripting you could probibly tell em what to shoot. i brought up an idea for a command mode interface awhile back. it seemed to be a popular idea but out of the scope of the current possibilities. it would be wise to request it again once the new hud system and ui gets implemented.new systems would be programmable through pythion, and should open sume areas of game code to lesser able programmers (self included, i can barely debug a cat much less freespace) i forsee a point when modders start exchanging hud scripts and such.

[Dark RevenantX]

Three Steps:

1. You Try
2. You Fail
3. You Get Over It

[Vengence]

I wouldn't say fail. Fail possibly about controlling turrets but I believe it is possible to control a capital ship.

[Cobra]

Originally posted by Vengence
And about flying one, I would love to fly one even if I only have control of a single large forward cannon and leaving the rest to the turrets.

if you can figure out which turrets are which, you can bind the keys to them, like if you're on a deimos. IIRC, the main beam turrents are Turret01 and Turret02, so if you wanted to fire them both yourself, you bind fire-beam to Left Ctrl, with the appropriate turrets listed.

same goes for the flak or AAA beams.

ooh, i just gave myself an idea for my deimos mission... time to mess around with it!

[Ashura]

Can anyone help me out here?
I'm just fiddling with hippo's map as a learning experience (thanks), and all I can use is the text editor. Not sure if fred will work with VPC. So, I've put this argument into the events section:

$Formula: ( every-time
   ( Key-pressed q )
   ( fire-beam
   "Alpha 1"
   "turret01"
   "EAD Solan"
   "weapons"
   )
)
+Name: Beam1 (because of retail FRED)
+Repeat Count: 1
+Interval: 1
+Team: 0

I've increased the events# by 1, and this always crashes whenever I try to load the mission. I was trying to just get the beam to fire straight or whatever, but that didn't work either (and I had no idea how to). Any help would be appreciated, although I realize I'm severely limited in trying to do anything with only text editing. Thanks again.

[StratComm]

I still say the best way to do it would be to alter the POF to include firing points instead of forward turrets, and to place MGreens or whatever in the bank.  Then you pull the trigger and get a light show.  Plus, if you set the energy drain up properly, you've got a limiting factor on how quickly you can fire.

[Black Wolf]

Flying capships. Was thinking about this not long ago. Here's how you'd do it in an ideal world (assming Alpha 1 is flying a Leviathan (ideally, you'd have a custom designed cap for this). Here comes some complexish sexping.


What is needed

 - Is-targetted sexp - Prety obvious
 - get-object-relative-player-x/y/z - essentially, this would assume the player was 0,0,0, and that the X/Y/Z axes of thee players model were the absolute X/Y/Z axes, then return the values for that object along the players axes. In other words, this would allow us to define where a ship was in relation to the player (or even better, in relation to any other ship, for any possible future applications to non-player ships)
 - someone silly enough to do all this coding and sexping and testing and whatnotit

To fire the Main Beam (forward facing)

When
 - key-pressed
     - Left Ctrl
 - key-reset
     - Left Ctrl

When-argument
 - Any-of
     - GTC Galactica
     - GTC Pegasus
 - And
     - is-targeted
         -< argument >
     - facing
         -< argument >
         -90
     - key-pressed
         - Left Ctrl
 - Fire-Beam
     - Alpha 1
     - Turret01
     - < argument >

Repeat Count 9999
Interval TimeCharging time for the beam (30 secs I think on a Fenris)


To fire Anti fighter beams
Vastly more complicated

When
 - key-pressed
     - V
 - key-reset
     - V


When-argument
 - Any-of
     - Aries 1
     - Aries 2
     - Aries 3
     - Aries 4
     - Aries 5
     - Aries 6
     - Aries 7
     - Aries 8
     - Aries 9
     - Aries 10
     - Aries 11
     - Aries 12
     - Arjuna 1
     - Arjuna 2
     - Arjuna 3
     - Arjuna 4
     - Krishna 1
     - Krishna 2
     - Krishna 3
     - Krishna 4
 - And
     - is-targeted
         -< argument >
     - >
       - distance-ship-subsystem
           - < argument >
           - Alpha 1
           - Turret04
       -1500
     - >
         - get-object-relative-player-x
             - < argument >
         -1700
     - <
         - get-object-relative-player-x
             - < argument >
         - 200
     - <
         - get-object-relative-player-y
             - < argument >
         - -100
     - key-pressed
         - V
 - Fire-Beam
     - Alpha 1
     - Turret04
     - < argument >


Repeat Count 9999
Interval TimeCharging time for the beam (15 secs or so for AAAf)

Basically, what you're doing is this
 - The X coords make sure that the targetted ship is on the right hand side of your ship
 - The Y coords make sure it's below your ship
 - the distance from subsystem makes sure it's in range on the Y and Z axes

You'd need to do a similar, but X axis opposed one for turret06.

There, that's it. Full control over all your beams. Of course, that's in an ideal world where the coders can make the required sexps. In this world, you might need to go a different way. And yes, there is another way. It's nasty though, so 'll just explain it rather than writing it out.

Basically, you need to use -distance from subsystem to defne a series of baloons which would decide which beam to fire. ie. if te < argument > fighter was less than 1500m from turret 06, but more than 1500m from turret 04, then turret06 would fire at it.

I remember I thought there were going to be problems with that method though, and I've forgotten what they were. For all I know, that may work. TBH, I can't think of any reasons why it wouldn't, though I know I had one before. Worth a try though if you're interested in actually doing something like this.


What would be nice
 - Is-subsystem-targetted
 - Multiple < argument >'s per sexp.

If these were implemented, you could go like this

When-argument
 - Any-of
     - GTC Galactica
     - GTC Pegasus
 - Any-of
     - weapons
     - engine01
     - engine02
     - navigation
     - sensors
     - communication
     - turret01
     - turret02
     - turret03
     - turret04
     - turret05
     - turret06
     - turret07
 - And
     - is-targeted
         -< argument >
     - is-subsystem-targeted
         -< argument2 >
     - facing
         -< argument >
         -90
     - key-pressed
         - Left Ctrl
 - Fire-Beam
     - Alpha 1
     - Turret01
     - < argument >
     -

[Nuke]

id like a gunnery menu similat to the comm menu that lets you give orders to various turrets. you would have two lists, one that sorts guns by type and one that sorts guns by location. in other words you could order all flak guns to shoot down bombs or you could order all forward cannons to shoot at a criuser. what wee need is a command control interface so you can either fly a capship or command a battle or both at the same time. sorta like the b5 game that got canceled. it would be a proper interface, and not some funky hard to understand uber scripted mission.

[Falcon]

Or allow the player to jump in a turret and fire it himself. While his ship sat there or the AI controlled it for him. Actually it would be fun in multiplayer if players had the ability to control cap ships and had the option of sharing the ship so each could choose a position on the ship, kinda like Battlefield 2.

*goes back to playing BF2*

[StratComm]

Guys.  Think Derek Smart.  This is not what the FS engine or universe was EVER supposed to do.  Flying a capship is one thing (and it can be done decently well, with some hacks) but coding in feature support to manage capship weapons is an altogether different animal.  Freespace is a fighter sim.  It has always been and should always be a fighter sim.  Any other uses are just... wrong.

[Falcon]

Yes, but controlling a BFRed and using it as a slasher is way more fun.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Ashura
Can anyone help me out here?
I'm just fiddling with hippo's map as a learning experience (thanks), and all I can use is the text editor. Not sure if fred will work with VPC. So, I've put this argument into the events section:

$Formula: ( every-time
   ( Key-pressed q )
   ( fire-beam
   "Alpha 1"
   "turret01"
   "EAD Solan"
   "weapons"
   )
)
+Name: Beam1 (because of retail FRED)
+Repeat Count: 1
+Interval: 1
+Team: 0

I've increased the events# by 1, and this always crashes whenever I try to load the mission. I was trying to just get the beam to fire straight or whatever, but that didn't work either (and I had no idea how to). Any help would be appreciated, although I realize I'm severely limited in trying to do anything with only text editing. Thanks again.

What error do you get? It's much easier to troubleshoot if you tell me. Even easier if you post your edited version.

[Ashura]

Here's the uploaded file. Just search text for Beam1, should come up. Debug log isn't showing right, no errors there.

http://rapidshare.de/files/6502924/HippoSampleSCP.fs2.html

I'd rather it just fired straight, with no target, but no idea how to do that, so I based it on another function.

[Cobra]

well, you can make a seperate table entry and edit the main cannons to SGreens.