[procdrone]

This is already possible through SEXP's, check out Axem's excellent tutorials!

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Tutorial_-_In-Mission_Jumps

Doing this is too easy.

[Aardwolf]

Relevant to in-system jumps:

"Limbo" (as discussed on page 2) was never in trunk, was it? I remember somebody had a branch which did it, but it's been so long...

[Goober5000]

Limbo was in trunk briefly, but removed as it violated a number of assumptions prevalent throughout the codebase.

[Admiral MS]

I would like to have a limbo feature but I don't really see how to implement it without breaking things. It may be possible by using a combination of disabling the rendering of the ship (no idea what issues this can cause) and disabling collision detection, locking weapons, stopping ai (of the ship and any orders targeting said ship) and making it untargetable + invulnerable.

[z64555]

*cough* limbo can be supported by sectors *cough*

[Aardwolf]

@z: Sectors? That's not a thing that exists yet, is it?

@Goober: How was it implemented? Was it treated as a special case of a departed ship, or a ship that has yet to arrive, or what?

@Admiral MS: That sounds needlessly complicated to me. Idunno.

[z64555]

No, sectors have not yet been implemented, but is a desired feature for FringeSpace, Fate of the Galaxy, and others.

[Goober5000]

@Goober: How was it implemented? Was it treated as a special case of a departed ship, or a ship that has yet to arrive, or what?

As I recall, it was handled using a ship flag: SF_DEPARTED_TO_LIMBO.  The problem is that a ship flag isn't sufficient unless you override dozens and perhaps hundreds of cases.  And before anyone volunteers to do exactly that, a) you're not going to find every case, especially the hidden edge cases; and b) even if you did, the code base would become too polluted to maintain.

The best way to handle ships in limbo is the same way it's been done since X-Wing: give two ships the same display name, while keeping their unique identifiers distinct.

[Admiral MS]

The best way to handle ships in limbo is the same way it's been done since X-Wing: give two ships the same display name, while keeping their unique identifiers distinct.

Which is no solution for the RTS script as they are effectively random player issued tactical jumps. Fred never liked created ships anyway and anticipating the name of the ship is also impossible. Also the player ship is able to jump which can never be replaced.
The current implementation in the script does most of the stuff I already mentioned but I don't know of any way to disable colission detection and to switch off rendering. Ships get moved far away for the duration of the jump but that's not a really a good solution. Maybe I can code some scripting functions to cover colissions and rendering.

[chief1983]

A new way to turn off collisions I think is in code review right now, from FUBAR.  I updated the patch recently but it needs more scrutinization on how I managed one of the merge conflicts.  I think this had to do with an initial collision state but if there's no sexp yet it should be easy to add with alter ship flag, I believe.