[ALP] Imperial Laboratories: Automated Carrier Software 1.1 14/3/10

[zibafu]

I seem to be having an issue with this, maybe its meant to be like this but I am not sure.

as soon as my ships have the drone softwares installed, or mebbe its as soon as some fighters have been built , they can no longer move ? It seems a bit bizzare that this should happen, afterall a carrier should be able to move, is this normal ?

Also on another note is it possible to add an attack all function to the commands, it seems a bit awkward ordering your drones to attack single targets, specially if a fleet were to drop by and attack my stations, itd be much better to be able to then tell drones to attack everything, sit back and watch an epic battle

[LV]

take a look at the carrier when it launches and look for the script carrier.wait.for.docked, let me know if this is running

attack all, yes can do

[zibafu]

wil check it out, can you do attack all ? all I see is attack target and err launch all wings I believe it was as well as launch all m3 wings/m4 wings/m5 wings

which was interesting last night as they didnt launch from my carrier and I lost it a pirate carrack appeared in system so I thought hmm heres an excellent test for it, told the fighters to attack target via the drone commands and.... nothing happened, they stayed docked, told them to launch all fighters and only 1 launched out of 15, was quite frustrating, luckily this game isnt like eve so I can just quit and reload when I lose a ship bwahaha

[adecoy]

do i still need EMP if i am using the plugin manager to run this mod?

i have heard that using the plugin manager and emp at the same time causes problems

EDIT: ok i have made a few drone ships, and i am wondering, how do i order them to do other things besides attack target, can i order them to protect me, or protect the carrier?

[adecoy]

how do i get the software to show up properly in the pirate base menu? currently its just shown ZA_EMP_BLANK_CUSTOM18_5 and 12_9

also, any eta on that attack all option?

[LV]

i'm re-writing this plugin at the moment (also breaking it) i'm also trying to work out why the emp is losing it's text definitions as above

[adecoy]

well, im not shure, but i am using both the plugin manager and the emp download, could that be what causes the emp ware problem? i heard somewhere that im not supposed to use both, but i was not sure so i downloaded it anyways

[LV]

well i just re-installed the plugin manager and removed emp and the wares no longer existed so my guess is no

the wierd thing is i should just be able to load the text again to fix but that doesn't work

[Armegeddon]

Found a bug in the current release.
I told a carrier to start production of all types, with a TL in range to act as a supply. Instead of taking silicon from the TL, it was adding it. Started with 160ish sil and by time rest of stuff ran out, had over 2200.

[LV]

nearly finished the next version, ta for that i'll fix

[lamoyja]

Quick question on how to properly use this. This seems to be useable on the Hyperion. I was taking a 'test drive' by creating the hyperion using the cheat package.

I added the materials on the ship, and it produced the two ships.

Now, my question is this:

I turned the split enemy, put on god mode. However, the wings would not auto deploy when I was attacking a nearby split ship. Is it timed to release them slowly? I had all the "deploy wings" options checked.

Is there a way to have a hotkey to force a launch and attack on current target?

[LV]

I'm re-building on and off now, i had a good build but then decided to code in m6-m2 protection as well which now needs testing.

I'm also testing the deploy code as it's a touch erratic at the moment

[adecoy]

I'm re-building on and off now, i had a good build but then decided to code in m6-m2 protection as well which now needs testing.

I'm also testing the deploy code as it's a touch erratic at the moment

how goes the progress? looking forward to the next version

[LV]

1.1 uploaded


bugs fixed

New for 1.1


Ships are created depending of the race your creating them in.

e.g.

Your in argon prime, your ships will all be argon variants

random ships will only be used when the sector owner has no ships of that class or the ship your flying is made by a race that has no ships e.g. Aran


Also this plugin now has the ability to create M2/6/7/8 ships (not M1)

The new combat interface Allows you to define what type of emeny to attack and also stations


Please try to break it , there is a possibility i may have left some debug stuff in there and i've also guessed at the amount of wares needed to create big ships, i think the amounts may be a touch too low, please be honest


enjoy

DL via first post

[Troubleshooter11]

These changes sound nice, im gonna make a test copy of TC to give this a spin.

Upfront, i have to say i personally would have preferred to have the race of the drones determined by the carrier's race.

IE: Argon Colossus creates Disco's, Buster's and Nova's.

[Gazz]

I still think it should be renamed to something like
"Automated Carrier Software".

Carriers become something like wind-up toys. Keep 'em supplied and they do all the annoying and messy bits themselves.

"Drone software" really sounds too small-scale and weak.

Actually, a carrier could also produce/stock a small number of real drones™.
It's the same system so *shrug*.
That would make the MARS users happy and these can be launched to cover the retreat of the real fighters (or the carrier) when trying to disengage from a fight.

[Troubleshooter11]

I still think it should be renamed to something like
"Automated Carrier Software".

Carriers become something like wind-up toys. Keep 'em supplied and they do all the annoying and messy bits themselves.

"Drone software" really sounds too small-scale and weak.

Actually, a carrier could also produce/stock a small number of real drones™.
It's the same system so *shrug*.
That would make the MARS users happy and these can be launched to cover the retreat of the real fighters (or the carrier) when trying to disengage from a fight.

If you ask me, carriers should have the ability to build fully functional fighters if supplied by raw materials (energy, ore, silicon).

To keep it balanced, they should be stripped of their anti-capital ship weapons. Right now carriers are already fulfilling a hybrid role because of their weapon selection and lack of fighter compliment (especially AI carriers often seem to have but a small token wing of fighters).

Just my 2 cents.

[Ragemaster9999]

Hey LV, i know this is an older script, but is there any hope of further development or a similar script that I may have overlooked.

Its a really good script, it removes the micro of purchasing lots of fighters and equipping them.. and of course removes a large amount of frusteration to see a 5 mil heavy fighter do something stupid like crash into a wall and die when attempting to land in combat due to flaw in the AI

Two questions, can this work with carrier command scripts like codea/or arnarkis defense? Second question, how can I change the price on the carrier command software to something more usable, for docking net and the other software. 100+ mil is a fair price for a carrier perhaps, but my military transports with 4 fighters is not a safe investment for 100 mil worth of software.

Thanks for the response, I love the concept but I havnt been able to accurately test it due to some insane prices, and I try to avoid cheat scripting when i can.

[narhiril]

If you ask me, carriers should have the ability to build fully functional fighters if supplied by raw materials (energy, ore, silicon).

To keep it balanced, they should be stripped of their anti-capital ship weapons. Right now carriers are already fulfilling a hybrid role because of their weapon selection and lack of fighter compliment (especially AI carriers often seem to have but a small token wing of fighters).

Just my 2 cents.

The major flaw I see here is that carrier storage space is already quite limited without a chunk of enormous silicon wafers in it. With drones and drone building, the TL becomes a more effective M1 than an actual M1, which may appeal to some people, but to me it seems a bit silly.

A typical carrier has 6-10k worth of cargo space. With weapons, shields, and jump energy, the amount of space for silicon is quite limited, even though docking space is 40-60. An average-sized TL has maybe 5-15 dock slots, but somewhere around 50-80k cargo space. Considering that drones do not use docking slots, the only advantage the M1 has is superior main weaponry, which it isn't designed to rely on anyway.

The problem, from my point of view, is that drone carrier TLs are vastly superior to fighter carrier M1s simply because M1s are far too costly and taxing to maintain. This problem is made even more obvious by turret scripts like MARS, which are very good at blowing up fighters. The problem seems to be most easily solved by making the replacement of fighters more simple, but allowing carriers to build fighters is impractical due to cargo space constraints. The drone carrier should still be easier and cheaper to maintain, but not by the order of magnitude where it makes the M1 obsolete.




TL;DR:

I would love to see a ~100m credit station that can build ships (using resources that approximate to the ship's value) with preset loadouts to replace fallen fighters without the need to buy and individually equip each and every one - basically a drone factory that, for a greater cost, builds actual fighters according to a template vessel (perhaps a docked fighter with a template code name like "$template") instead of inventory-based drones.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to script this.

[Ragemaster9999]

I reread my wall of text I just wrote and decided it was not very coherent or comprehndible , and thus detracted from the thread, and so it is no longer so. I wrote a more articulated post, on the next page.

my apoligies