Cargo Wingmen - a development

Development directions, tasks, and features being actively implemented or pursued by the development team.
travists
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Re: Cargo Wingmen - a development

Post by travists »

As I was heading to bed a thought on making cargo wingmen work struck me, hope this makes sense.
Step 1: Add a “parented to” flag either to the savegame or ship.csv
Step 2: On saving replace child’s location with that of parent.
Step 3: Add a “load onto current ship” option, when applicable, to the buy/transport ship dialog.
I also came up with some questions this raised to me.
How do we handle launching your ships?
Can spare upgrades be loaded as cargo? (I think I saw something about this in the .config file.)
Can the buy and upgrade starship screens be modified for managing currently loaded ships?
Can the AI be tweaked or a new one written to follow missions?
TBeholder
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Re: Cargo Wingmen - a development

Post by TBeholder »

travists wrote:As I was heading to bed a thought on making cargo wingmen work struck me, hope this makes sense.
Step 1: Add a “parented to” flag either to the savegame or ship.csv
Step 2: On saving replace child’s location with that of parent.
(1), especially combined with tracking docks, is desirable, but unnecessary. Same old "docked to the nearest unit" would be enough for now, with preference to the ship's own flightgroup and checking sizes.
travists wrote:Step 3: Add a “load onto current ship” option, when applicable, to the buy/transport ship dialog.
And unload.
travists wrote:I also came up with some questions this raised to me.
How do we handle launching your ships?
Right now, probably the same way as pre-made interceptors? Only need some mechanism to put them into launch bays. Speaking of which, we'd like to treat interceptors in already used launch bays / Assisted Launch Systems as "docked" to service them. The best way to handle it cockpit-wise IMO is to handle launchables (both dock and ALS) as one more "weapon" type, shown below missile mounts, but cycled one-by-one.
travists wrote:Can spare upgrades be loaded as cargo? (I think I saw something about this in the .config file.)
I tested it back then, "physics/dockport_allows_ugrade_storage" does work - Upgrades appear in cargo screen much like launchable Ships, but we need to stop treating cargo on the carrier as synonimous for upgrades column. Possibly introducing "equip best from cargo" variable for backward compatibility.
travists wrote:Can the buy and upgrade starship screens be modified for managing currently loaded ships?
All we'd need for this is a bindable key to start walking the base interface of your current ship and then a Python function to return from the base interface into its cockpit if it's yours. The easy part: using "is the base my own?" check (already existing for the previous part) to set prices at 0, refuel from the base's own fuel and resolve repairs via the base's repairbot status.
"Two Eyes Good, Eleven Eyes Better." -Michele Carter
travists
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Re: Cargo Wingmen - a development

Post by travists »

A third and possibly fourth category to use internal space for? Hanger and flight operations storage (fuel, armor patches, upgrades, etc.) Glad my crawling into bed flash of inspiration wasn't completely off base. For a simple "step into the base that is your ship" solution we would need a way to upgrade a ship that is not your "current" ship. This would be nice for other applications as well. Say you just managed to get one ship back to port, you could have repair and upgrade replacement done on it without having to click buy then remember to "buy" your working ship back.
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