[Bob-san]

Hey! I was wondering if anyone had figured out a way to incorperate a player to have real-time control of capital ships...

Examples?

You and your crew are stationed on a capital ship. Two wings of enemy Loki jump in, and seal your fighter-bays. Your mission is to defend your ship. You become a gunner, and have control over a flak gun.

Another example...

You were recently promoted to Admiral, and you want to fly something other then a fighter in your missions. You are in control of a Orion Class destroyer. You are able to maneuver it, and give commands VIA wingman control on who to fire on for each side of the Destroyer.


Anyone figured out how to do this? I really want to command a Orion-class Destroyer with the ability to complete a mission without having to program a Cap Ship's routines in FRED.

[Snail]

Err... Ask DarkRevantX I think he figured a way to fire an Aeolus' beam cannons at targetted ships... And there's a mission where you control a Deimos, but in that you can't control individual turrets.

[Bob-san]

Hmm okay. I find the scripts a bit sketchy for the AI control of a cap-ship.

I remember last time I did that played the mission where you have to capture Bosch's ship (which was from the asteroid installation), toward the end... there were two NTF cruisers and I think 2 to 4 Loki wings... the VC cap ship warps in and the two NTF cruisers turn to fact it. The cruisers head toward the destroyer, and engage it. Before either are destroyed, they are too close to continue their cource, and split to each side of it.

I wonder if I someone could program a co-op mission for like 4 pplz total... 1 who navigates and can fire on ships forward. The second can control the left side and top. The third can control the right side and bottom. The fourth can have control of the missile launcher.

I'll ask him... I know on one of the Perseus missions I had control over a transport, and I remember messing up the mission when I told it to dock to the NTF cruiser... LOL...

[Gunteen6]

yeah that would suck

[Nuke]

i thought about scripting a bridge simulator, but it would be a major undertaking. youd need to model a bridge. you could probibly use cameras and do some code to allow you to move around the bridge sort of fps style, with some very simply designed boundries. enough to move about various stations you could probibly use the mouse to move about the bridge. if anyone can get render targets to work well enough, use that for station panels. at the helm station the joystick would work, or you can set a course from the nav panel. tactical panel would be used to assing targets to different turrets, gunner stations would allow direct control over turrets. some of this can actually be done now, if you got of time to code.

[Unknown Target]

...Or you could just mod Bridge Commander. Either or.

[Mefustae]

Indeed, just use another engine better suited to the task, rather than contorting the current engine into something that would most likely end up a hackjob.

[Nuke]

im just saying its possible. im not saying it should be done.

[Bob-san]

Hmm, interesting ideas on how to do it. I rather want to keep the FS2 engine, the upgrades FS2_Open engine is fine too. I just don't want to do a Freespace 2 port to another game...

I'll prolly make it my first endevour with FRED.

I was wondering if anyone knows how to mount automatic cannon turret scripts on your "bomber" (which is actually a cap ship) (such as the cannon on the Ursa? IDR if the Ursa bomber has a turret on it).

If we can mount multiable automatic turret scipts, we should be able to replicate a player-controlled Cap Ship with limited auto-fire options...

Another thing... Maybe we can make the control of the beams go between fighter/bomber and capital ships... a fast-targeting clone of the harpoon with a much shorter wait to lock. That could be the fighter/bomber script for up-front cannons. Maybe clone a Helios locking-ablility and make that the large Cap Ship beam.

We could mount multiables of each beam, by setting htem up as primary weapons... or cloning hornets into beams, and using them so they come out of 4 different areas, meeting on a single area.

[S-99]

You know what, just try out that flyable deimos mission first. That mission lets you turn on and off your beams, and the rest was targetting hostiles and letting the turret ai do the rest. It worked very perfectly, piloting the deimos was a little on the slow end, i would have rather controlled a leviathen. But the deimos worked really well when you put in 3rd person or just left in the in first person view. But 3rd person was the ****, you could which of your turrets were firing or getting damaged. I don't see the need for a bridge ever anyway, nor the need to control and individual turret. Unless someone did something sweet like script a mission where you control a flak turret on the sobek in the mission where the knossos got blown up, and of course have the sobek fly around the field a bit(otherwise it'd be boring), but that would be fun.  But no, you do not want to control an orion, controlling the deimos was almost a no no with it's horrible maneuverability. That's why a leviathen or fenris is a better choice. Also another thing when piloting the deimos, is you really get to see how much better, and how powerful the ship is when you fly it. And that's without modifying it's weapons

[Bob-san]

I'm thinking of another type of mission, actually...

Perhaps I have to control a corvette defending my fleet... maybe trying to defend a terran copy of the Lucifer... while in subspace, with about a total of 10 wings of fighters or bombers... i think it could work if i modded the weapons to fire behind me...

EDIT: What mission do you fly the Deimos? Is it retail or part of a campaign?

[Mars]

The Hades is a Terran copy of the Lucifer

[Snail]

I'm thinking of another type of mission, actually...

Perhaps I have to control a corvette defending my fleet... maybe trying to defend a terran copy of the Lucifer... while in subspace, with about a total of 10 wings of fighters or bombers... i think it could work if i modded the weapons to fire behind me...

EDIT: What mission do you fly the Deimos? Is it retail or part of a campaign?

The Hades is an attempt to make a Terran Luci. And if you're using FSO, making the weapons fire behind you is easy. Simply make a model with a backwards firing point, and then create the table as normal. Then add "gun convergence" to the $flags. It's really good for making mine-type effects.

And the Deimos mission is (or was) a user-created mission. I believe it is gone, after the HLP revamp I don't think anybody can find it anymore. It WAS on the missions page of the old HLP.

EDIT: I found it! See attached.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Colonol Dekker]

Its called War.xip and its on the main bpage, If not i'll find a link.

[NGTM-1R]

The real reason for it being easier in 3rd-person is it makes it much more easy to see where they are in relation to your firearcs.

I ended up flying a Volition Bravos once in Casualities of War due to a bug. The big sail structure is annoying, but just roll a little, let the heavy flaks go to work on incoming fighters...it made the mission much easier.

On the other hand the Bravos, being darn near invincible, is a bit of a special case.

[Colonol Dekker]

RE: Earlier post, cant find it, or a link in this forum, although i remember it being posted a few weeks back.

Aeolus is the most fun cruiser to fly......

[Bob-san]

I DLed the mission...

When I get a full-install I'm probably going to "modify" the ship table to make me fly the Colossus every time... should be fun and insane to fly that through EVERY mission... quite easy too... lol.

I'll prolly mod it to fly a bigger Cap Ship each time... start with something small and then go bigger...

IS there a string to add shields to cap ships? I would rather like to modify the hard-level version to add shields on cruisers... toughen up the cruisers and then try to fly again... lol

[Snail]

Is my link working?

[Bob-san]

Your link worked, Snail... however I will have to hold off on playing the mission due to the fact that my game's build is 1.20 OEM (the Colossus version)... basically a limited version not supporting single-missions... I will have to install Freespace over Colossus... hopefully that will delete the FS2C limitations... if not I will have to delete Colossus and install FS2... if these don't work I will simply have to destroy the universe... ^^

[Colonol Dekker]

Is my link working?

Something of mine, In a sig....................I, am complete  [tears of joy]