Okay, so with the new carriers around for Cobras, Anacondas, and so on, I'm a little confused as to how you're supposed to use it, or in fact use multiple ships at all? Are they all just meant to be used by you but alternating, or do you get pilots and can give them commands? I asked about this before but am still unclear on how it all works beyond your own single solitary ship.
Also, the ship dealer screen shows the carriers full of vessels, but obviously we're talking about a "bare" ship that can attach the ships you want.
Would it be possible to have a carrier than can carry a mix of ships in some kind of modular fashion? For example, an Anaconda on one side, 2 Cobra Is on the other side, and an Adder on the top?
I sort of see Norby's current Carrier as an early proof-of-concept work, intended for later expansion. Certainly the potential for a Commander to own multiple ships now exists in 1.80, but there are a number of practical problems associated with this. Where do you store them? If you want a particular ship from your 'stable', do you have to travel to the system where it's located? Do you get someone to fly it to you? And so on. (there are lots of other ramifications, when you start thinking things through)
The idea of the Carrier is more that you can take your ships with you, so they're all there, wherever you are. There are still quite a lot of practical issues to sort out, but the solution at least makes things more manageable.
Norby isn't the first to think along these lines.. JazHaz had a (somewhat) similar project in mind, about a year ago, in regard to which, I did a little preliminary work for him, but he eventually decided it was beyond his scripting abilities to produce.
What you're dreaming of will happen, but it will take quite a bit more work and discussion to hammer out the details, and to make a solid job of things.
Most games have some sort of paddling-pool-and-water-wings beginning to ease you in: Oolite takes the rather more Darwinian approach of heaving you straight into the ocean, often with a brick or two in your pockets for luck. ~ Disembodied
the ship dealer screen shows the carriers full of vessels
This is a bug, you will be able to buy empty ones only.
mossfoot wrote:
Would it be possible to have a carrier than can carry a mix of ships in some kind of modular fashion? For example, an Anaconda on one side, 2 Cobra Is on the other side, and an Adder on the top?
Yes, this is the long-term goal, but first I will finish the scripting of ship switching and escort AIs. These are working at me but there are some bugs what I would like to fix before release. The fashion comes later (deck size limits and carried ships in external view).
Diziet Sma wrote:
you can take your ships with you, so they're all there, wherever you are.
Yes, your escorts are always with you and you can deploy them very fast from the open decks if needed, much faster than through a standard dock, so you can use your Torus Drive safely. Hired Guns is similar but the hired escorts need some time to catch up with you which seems to be especially long if you run into the middle of a pirate group.
Would it be possible to have a carrier than can carry a mix of ships in some kind of modular fashion? For example, an Anaconda on one side, 2 Cobra Is on the other side, and an Adder on the top?
Yes, this is the long-term goal, but first I will finish the scripting of ship switching and escort AIs. These are working at me but there are some bugs what I would like to fix before release. The fashion comes later (deck size limits and carried ships in external view).
While you're at it, you might want to sort out that oversized bounding-box problem the Carrier model has. At present, it's at least three times the size of the actual ship.. (nine times, really, when you consider the cubic volume) This causes several problems in-game, as Oolite uses the bounding box to calculate the size of the ship. It also affects things like launching missiles and correctly positioning escort ships, (and I believe also NPC aiming, and missile detonation calculations). It also results in my getting a target lock a good 200 metres before the ship even crosses my sights!
Since the model is centred correctly, I can only assume that there's some stray unseen vertexes or polys positioned well away from the model that haven't been deleted, causing the BB to be so far out from the ship..
The green target reticle lines actually indicate the size of the bounding box.
Most games have some sort of paddling-pool-and-water-wings beginning to ease you in: Oolite takes the rather more Darwinian approach of heaving you straight into the ocean, often with a brick or two in your pockets for luck. ~ Disembodied
Indeed. That does need to be tweaked. These carriers are great for flavor and background right now, but I'm really looking forward to seeing their full potential realized - as well as ways to essentially have a small fleet flying with you
