[Snail]

My Wiki account is banned, so no. Would have been nice to add tricks to the wiki (pretty much like scripts), post the links here and then discuss them.

Maybe we could appeal for an unbanning.

[Scourge of Ages]

FSO recognizes MAX_SUPPORT_SHIPS_PER_TEAM support ships for each team.  A support ship (any ship with the "support" flag), is considered valid if it is not dying, departing, ordered to warp out, or actively repairing/rearming.

This intrigues me also. Where would I find this "MAX_SUPPORT_SHIPS_PER_TEAM" thing? Is it a table, or a FRED thing?
I tried searching, but the wiki search sucks just as much as the forum search.

[The E]

It's a hardcoded engine constant. Only way to change it is by editing the code.

[Droid803]

So...why isn't it set higher?
Does increasing it have some unforseen consequences?

[The E]

Well, according to other coders, getting one support ship to work reliably was hard enough.

[karajorma]

I can see bumping it having serious issues in multiplayer. Especially in TvT where support ships didn't used to work reliably even in retail.

[ssmit132]

It's not so much a secret as a kludgy little kludge. You'll need to use some nested when-arguments to ship-create new support ships when the 'regular' support ships arrive. Give those ship-created ships orders to guard the 'real' support ship and they'll follow it around. As soon as the first support ship docks with a target, they'll abruptly start accepting any pending orders.

What happens if you have a bunch of support ships in the mission at the start and you try this?

[Iss Mneur]

It's not so much a secret as a kludgy little kludge. You'll need to use some nested when-arguments to ship-create new support ships when the 'regular' support ships arrive. Give those ship-created ships orders to guard the 'real' support ship and they'll follow it around. As soon as the first support ship docks with a target, they'll abruptly start accepting any pending orders.

What happens if you have a bunch of support ships in the mission at the start and you try this?

It shouldn't make a difference when the support ships are created, they are all considered equal to one that was called in.

[Scotty]

Is it possible to actually use the support ship in ...But Hate the Traitor?  If yes, has anyone timed it so that they're being rearmed when the IFF changes?  How would that work?

[Iss Mneur]

Is it possible to actually use the support ship in ...But Hate the Traitor?  If yes, has anyone timed it so that they're being rearmed when the IFF changes?  How would that work?

IIRC you don't get a support ship on any of the SOC missions.

IFF is checked by the find support ship code (so you will only get a support ship of the same team).  If you changed IFF after you called a support ship, I don't know, I don't recall the code checking again to see if you have changed teams, so I suppose the support ship would just repair you as if you where on the same team.

[Scotty]

In the mission ...But Hate the Traitor, one of the NTF squadrons jumps in with a Hygeia support ship (the only place you can get the kill for one in retail).  Question was:

1) is it possible to use said support ship?
2) if above is yes, what happens if it turns hostile while you're in the middle of rearming?

[Iss Mneur]

In the mission ...But Hate the Traitor, one of the NTF squadrons jumps in with a Hygeia support ship (the only place you can get the kill for one in retail).  Question was:

1) is it possible to use said support ship?
2) if above is yes, what happens if it turns hostile while you're in the middle of rearming?

Try it? Personally, I never noticed that their was a support ship that jumped in with them.

To reiterate:
1) If you are on the same team as the support ship, then yes.
2) As far as I can tell and if I am recalling the code correctly, it will just rearm/repair as normal. The docking part of rearm/repair is no different than any other docking process in FSO.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

I wonder if support ships are disabled in that mission.  Retail had issues with a support ship arriving if one was already present in mission. 

[General Battuta]

It's not so much a secret as a kludgy little kludge. You'll need to use some nested when-arguments to ship-create new support ships when the 'regular' support ships arrive. Give those ship-created ships orders to guard the 'real' support ship and they'll follow it around. As soon as the first support ship docks with a target, they'll abruptly start accepting any pending orders.

What happens if you have a bunch of support ships in the mission at the start and you try this?

Should also work fine.

[ssmit132]

2) if above is yes, what happens if it turns hostile while you're in the middle of rearming?

2) As far as I can tell and if I am recalling the code correctly, it will just rearm/repair as normal. The docking part of rearm/repair is no different than any other docking process in FSO.

I believe it will just rearm/repair you as normal, since I accidentally triggered this in JAD2 (unfortunately I didn't get to actually get rearmed as I died first).

EDIT: Managed to get rearmed by the turned-hostile support ship:


But, not unreasonably, I cannot call that or any other support ship after my IFF is changed:

[General Battuta]

So while we're on the topic of support ships, I wanted to give people some advice.

Have you ever been irritated because you can't perform FRED actions on support ships? Say you're setting up a tense, weapons-tight ceasefire, and if a single fighter shoots even once, the whole thing breaks. It's working like a charm except FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUU the enemy just wasted your support ship, which wasn't affected by the ship-protect you were using!

Similarly, what if you want to get the support ship to leave? Or make it stealth? Or give it armor?

Well, you can't select it as an argument for these SEXPs, because it's not on the mission ship list. But what you CAN do is create a when-argument using 'any-of', and then manually add the arguments 'Support 1', 'Support 2', 'Support 3' and so on.

Then set the event trigger as 'when has-arrived-delay <argument>', and perform whatever actions you like (stealth, armor, AI orders) on 'argument'.

You can also use this to perform FRED operations on ships created by Ship-Create, but that's a little more complex, and a topic for next time.

[Scourge of Ages]

Useful! 

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Hmm... In that kind of situation I just put the support ship in the mission manually, and check "Disallow support ships" in Shift-N.
In tough battle missions, I put in another one in case the first one is destroyed.

But Battuta's way is definitely more elegant.

[General Battuta]

Man I have something I want to write about but I do feel it'd spoil WiH R2 to a degree.  It's such a cool technique though and I'm guessing 79% of FREDders are not aware of it.

[karajorma]

Feel free to send me a PM and I'll see if I can think of a similar example that doesn't have spoilers.