more cargo wingmen stuff + clydesdale

[jacs]

Now that the CommDockWithMe - command works basically, I started tractoring the cargo wingmen back in - and ran into a couple of new problems.

The first one I might be able to solve by myself: The distance between wingmen and the leader ship is based on the "Unit scale" of the ships - which works fine for an ox or a clydesdale, but anything smaller (like a mule) gets us some cozy nose rubbing between leader and wingmen. I would like to add a constant in aggressive.cpp so that the wingmen form up in a reasonable distance (for the tractor to work) even if the Unit scale is less than 2. (right now I simply changed the unit scale of a mule).

For the second problem I have to rely on some advice from a more competent person : the clydesdale seems unable to make a tractor beam (or a repulsor) work properly (or is it just me??) I outfitted it with a tractor enhancement and an autotracking, and put a tractor beam on that mount. It still wouldn't even scoop cargo floating around... . The beam seems to be just awfully slow - and useless. Does anybody have an idea?
The ox - well I guess it's a feature: it simply doesn't have anything to mount though it might be nice if it had at least one mount to tractor stuff in.

The third problem is the biggest one: what is a cargo wingman worth if it doesn't have any guns.. ?
I second the idea to put my fleet ships into the cargo bay but that's quite some work to program (did anybody consider renaming those my fleets ships so as to be able to own more than one of one kind?).
For a start: what if some special milspecs were ready for combat?
Quite obviously there would be problems with missiles and ammo (I guess they would be reloaded automatically but who pays for that - missiles for free?).

Any suggestions and help are really appreciated.

[jacs]

The Clydesdale ...

nice mount meant for missiles - it's so far below the cockpit, that any beam weapon doesn't autotrack the selected target. It simply aims way too low.

But when you buy it - hey it comes fully loaded with tons of cargo .
Anybody out there to point that out to the sales department of the merchant guild? Maybe they will eventually alter the Cargo_Import column of the Clydesdale.merchant (in their units.csv).

About that special mount - I really do believe the ox wants one as well.
BTW does anybody care about cargo wingmen?

[loki1950]

BTW does anybody care about cargo wingmen?

We all do but it seems that the devs have been overwhelmed by real life this summer but you should be getting some support in your endeavour soon.

Enjoy the Choice

[jacs]

Hi Loki
nice to hear
I didn't mean that question to sound impatient - I was aiming for comments not (only) from the devs but from all the rest out there - but I guess that's the wrong forum.

The question is: what ship configurations would you like to get as cargo wingmen... . The cost should be one of the major topics - I suggest to double the cost to pay for ammunition, fuel, repairs, (pilot...). That way, the ship would come with a "service contract". - If you have it's shot down right away - bad investment. If it survives forever - you're lucky.

But as I said, this should go into another forum like?? (If anybody has a perfect configuration, feel free to start that thread, I will join as soon as I get the .cpp tested).

Edit:
What could be answered here tough, does the core (devs) agree to add ready for combat ships?

[shadow_slicer]

I was working a bit on cargo wingmen in the summer when I had time. I modified the source code to allow you to load ships listed under "My Fleet" as cargo. Then you can use the already available commands to eject them and order them as wingmen. Then you can tractor them back in. It will even keep the damage they received during the fight.

I have tested all of that, and it worked the few times I've tried. I have been busy recently, and I have not had time to test everything fully. I am confident that the features work correctly, I just worry about side effects and I'm not sure if the way I'm handling tractoring ships will work correctly in multiplayer.

There are also a few issues due to limitations in the VS engine that I have not had time to fix. For instance VS only allows the player to own one ship of each type. Additionally I couldn't find a way to detect which tractored ships were previously in "My Fleet", so all ships you tractor in will be added to "My Fleet," unless there is already a ship of that type in "My Fleet". Thsi could lead to some strange behavior if you have a ship as cargo and the same type of ship from My Fleet as a cargo wingman. If you eject them both, be sure to tractor the ship from My Fleet in first, or it will lose your customizations.

I probably won't have time to test it further for another month. Additionally I still am not sure how to rearchitect VS to solve the engine issues.

Anyway, here's the patch for those that want cargo wingmen to work. It was made against svn version #12390, but there haven't been any code changes since then so it should still work. Note that for best results, you may also need to check that the wingmen commands have keybindings, and the tractor settings are such that you can actually tractor ships in once you eject them.

[programmerandrew]

Hi Loki
nice to hear
I didn't mean that question to sound impatient - I was aiming for comments not (only) from the devs but from all the rest out there - but I guess that's the wrong forum.

The question is: what ship configurations would you like to get as cargo wingmen... . The cost should be one of the major topics - I suggest to double the cost to pay for ammunition, fuel, repairs, (pilot...). That way, the ship would come with a "service contract". - If you have it's shot down right away - bad investment. If it survives forever - you're lucky.

But as I said, this should go into another forum like?? (If anybody has a perfect configuration, feel free to start that thread, I will join as soon as I get the .cpp tested).

Edit:
What could be answered here tough, does the core (devs) agree to add ready for combat ships?

I have noticed that the mule, or any other ship that has turrets, shoot if attacked. Also, I have noticed that if you hacked yourself Watson , the ships you fire work as a regular AI ship... Now if only I knew how to read the radar to see if cargo wingman works (BTW, I have 0.5.0 stable release).
Andrew

P.S. I figured this out by having a mule I ejected shooting at me when I accidentally bumped into it... Is there any way to fix this?

[loki1950]

Welcome programmerandrew there have been recent changes to the AI behaviour for wingmen and the tendency to shoot at everything has also been fixed this week actually this in svn so the stable version will not see it till the next release which should be not too far off as there is lots of new content data side and major changes with shader support as well as on going bug stomping.Have fun.

Enjoy the Choice