[KeldorKatarn]

As recently mentioned the AI behavior of protecting ships that are going to be disarmed or disabled forced us to declare every single capital ship in Saga as "capital"

This has one very bad result: We can no longer scan freighters, since huge ships cannot be scanned.

I question the entire fact that huge ships cannot be scanned. That's a very stupid hardcoded limitation. If I set "scannable" in FRED for that ship, then it should be scannable. Period. Getting
rid of that limitation won't affect retail missions at all, since in them, no such ship has that flag set.

It should be possible for a FREDer to make any ship scannable, no matter what it is. Hardcoding a limit is a very bad decision and I vote for getting rid of that, especially in the light of the AI behavior of not attacking ships that are getting disarmed, which might not be wanted in certain circumstances by mods, forcing them to declare the ship "huge".

[karajorma]

So you did something incredibly stupid instead of using the existing solution in FRED or coding in a sensible solution and it's backfired on you and given you another problem which can also be solved using features already FRED and yet you still complain about needing code changes?

For ****s sake, turn on Toggle Subsystem Scanning and don't come crying to us next time your stupid change of ship type explodes in your face.

[KeldorKatarn]

Do I even have to comment this response? What's wrong with you?

Edit: I just suggested a very easy to do change, which I'm totally willing to implement myself, to make mission design more flexible and easier to control for the FREDer and you jump at me like this.

[karajorma]

You suggested a change that already exists.

But more importantly you're only in this mess cause you completely ignored what I told you to do on the other thread (code a solution or simply unprotect the ship as soon as it's disarmed in an event) in favour of a solution that is both retarded and doomed to failure and then get annoyed when it fails to work.

It failed to work cause it was moronic. Change those freighters back to freighters or you'll spend the next three months dealing with issues caused by that idiotic change.

[Tolwyn]

You suggested a change that already exists.

But more importantly you're only in this mess cause you completely ignored what I told you to do on the other thread (code a solution or simply unprotect the ship as soon as it's disarmed in an event) in favour of a solution that is both retarded and doomed to failure and then get annoyed when it fails to work.

Fine. You can tell me how to give the disarm order and yet let friendly capital ships pound the target with heavy beam fire.

[karajorma]

I meant the one from this thread. There's already a flag that does what he wants and allows you to scan entire capships. toggle-subsystem-scanning.


But since you ask

when
-is-disarmed-delay
--1
--ship name
-unprotect-ship
--ship name

Like I said, that solution has existed since retail.

[Tolwyn]

That does not answer my question though.

I'd like to be able to disarm a capship AND have friendly capital ships attack it at the same time. From what I can see, this sexp unprotects the ship after it's been disarmed.

Now imagine following situation: a 1 vs 1 capital ship battle, Player orders his wing to disarm the enemy vessel. Friendly warship will stop firing at once.

[karajorma]

Use the order SEXP instead of is-disarmed-delay then. Or better yet, the newer Order SEXP I added a while back (I forget the name now).

[Tolwyn]

I beg your pardon?

Just to clarify - I do not issue any orders to capital ships besides using waypoints orders.
EDIT:

Okay, I could add something like this for each wing and for each capital ship using every-time-argument for wings. Call me a retard, but I do not like the look of this. And you probably need to take individual ships in each wing into account as well, since the player can issue an order to a single ship...

$Formula: ( every-time
   ( and
      ( not
         ( is-destroyed-delay 0 "Alpha 1" )
      )
      ( time-elapsed-last-order 0 "Alpha 1" )
   )
   ( unprotect-ship "Alpha 1" )
)
+Name: Event name
+Repeat Count: 1
+Interval: 1
+Team: 0

[karajorma]

when-argument (High repeat count, 1 second delay)
-any-of
--list of ships
-query-orders
--Alpha 1
--Disarm My Target
--0
--<Argument>
-Unprotect-Target
--<Argument>

Now I agree that isn't the nicest method and I've never had anything against a simple ships flag in order to avoid the problem. I just thought that the solution on this thread was far worse than the original problem.

[Aardwolf]

If a ship has orders to attack something, won't that override the 'protect' flag anyway? And, assuming that's the case, why not just tell them to attack it?

[Tolwyn]

Now I agree that isn't the nicest method and I've never had anything against a simple ships flag in order to avoid the problem. I just thought that the solution on this thread was far worse than the original problem.

Yeah - it is complicated. Our autopilot script isn't exactly simple either, but still ...

And once again, the swap of ship class was born out of necessity to circumvent the "ship protected" issue. So a simple flag, that disables this behavior for mods might be the best solution (I personally do not care whenever or not I can scan a ship bigger than a freighter as long as turrets work no matter what kind of orders player might issue )

[Goober5000]

I happen to agree that waiving the protect-ship rule in certain circumstances is a good idea.  But I'm not going to cater to KeldorKatarn's demands if he's going to act like this.

Locking the thread as we already have a Mantis ticket open.