while working on the RS successor "Oolite Shipyards Extension" I noticed that this could be a possibility to create a real role for the military.
My idea goes as such:
1. As I (will) have all Oolite ships in one go, I could create specific versions for the military via like_ship (both police and military scan class) and reintegrate those ships already military capable into that scheme.
2. I give those new naval variants of existing ships the prefix "Navy", i.e. "Navy Tiger Mark I" etc.
3. I add two roles to those ships: The until now defunct "military" and a subclass of that (i.e. "militarymedium", "militarybig", "militarycarrier" and "militaryflagship"). So they can now be called by a script according to where they shall appear in the future.
4. If there was a MilitaryAI for such ships, which could be modelled similar to the standard police AI`s, according to tech level, industry and form of government different types of ships might go on military patrols and thereby de facto constitute a visible navy.
Do I overlook something? Is that actually possible to do?
And if yes, are there people out there who would like to write one or two (perhaps different one for the four military subtypes I propose)?
@matt634: Interested, perhaps?
L
Give this AI to the Main ship in the convoy and set up the smaller ships as escorts. They'll then hang on the wing of the big ship and when the big ship spots a target, they'll all attack as a group. I wrote it for the Special Ships added to the Geteve system when in the Assassins plot Geteve is over-run by a Thargoid invasion force. Its used by the Navy BattleBots, Navy Asps, GalCop Special Branch Asps and the Navy BattleBot Control Drones. Its desgined as a general Thargoid killer AI so should be fine. It's pretty brave and never runs whilst bugs remain in scanner range. You might want to tweek it slighly so some patrol from planet to w/p (heading out from the station) and some patrol the other way, but the AI should be basically ok.