Docking computer on fighters?

[Vatharian]

Today, I felt the mighty power of my CPU being sucked by 260 Novas desperately trying to dock to my two argon M1s. I left X2 for 3 hours on SETA x10, and when I came back around 30 M3s were still circling around carriers.

My 1600 MHz Duron begged for mercy...

The most frustrating part is that EVERY Nova is equipped with docking computer, so by definition, it should dock (disappear) automatically from around 3-5 kms away from carrier.

To avoid this situation again, I looked into a way to actually force using docking computer on fighters. After playing some time with msci handbook, I discovered, that docking computer is a dummy device, that cannot be triggered inside script.

Now, I'm trying to find a way to just teleport fighters to dock, but it still has two drawbacks:
I have to manually teleport every ship.
If I were able to script a command for all fighters, they could "telefrag" temselves inside the dock.

Is there any ready solution to this, or a script (that I had to miss, sadly)...?

[Duendote]

I had the same problem once, I ended up changing ships and left the sector. when I checked on my ship out of sector all the M3's were in it. I don't know why it did this it just did.
Also my game tends to slow down with alot of ships in the sector. I tend to do a lot of remote commands while I sit in a sector that has very few shis, say an undiscovered sector.

[Tw122le]

Are you using the Telcat option from the last Bonus pack? thought it was meant to cover this? Don't use that version of bonus pack myself and hardly ever bother with fleet manouveres due to slow-down.

[Harlock776]

Some of the best fighting a carrier can do is from another sector. If you want to for example take out a pirate base with fighters from your carrier then position your carrier in a nearby sector and launch fighters and tell them to attack that pirate base in the next sector. best thing to do is sit near the gate that the fighters will have to travel through to get to that pirate base so that when they return they will hopefully dock before the next one pops through the gate. Also this way once the battle is over you can simply exit your carrier in a small jump capable ship and exit the sector and let all those fighters dock OOS so they will just disappear into the ship all at once and you can jump back in and dock and get going.

Placing your carrier in the right sector is very important vs flying around in a destroyer because your carrier is usually bigger than most other objects in any sector and flying around is more difficult. You don't want to be attacked while in your carrier either since it will mean fighters launching for defense and you stuck with the docking tasks eventually. If your going to attack other capships while in your carrier then keep an escort group or battle group of destroyers with you so they can do most of the attacking while you can manage fighter attacks. Even just one or two split pythons flying escort for your carrier can keep any attacking enemy fighters and hornet missiles away from your carrier. You could also use M6 but they don't have as many turrets as a destroyer has.

[Duendote]

good solid advice Harlock. I never really used my destroyers as escort ships, I tend to run around in an M3 or m6 killing some pirates here and there, but I tend to take 1 m1 and have him jump sector to sector following me when I want to take out pirate bases or clear xenon sectors. I think strategy is one of the biggest helps and the fun of the game.
Back to the issue of docking ships--- isn't it true that the game draws only the sector that you are in. Anything out of sector is done mathematically, meaning less computer slow down, ships perform more according to spec so forth. It is easier for ships to dock cause it doesn't have to draw them doing so?

[Vatharian]

I hoped OOS docking wasn't only solution... I agree on importancy of carrier placement, but I don't see any need for escort for M1. Especially, since it means managing even more ships. In my case, when I operate on two Colossuses any additional ship I usually tend to break the formations.
Beside that, in case of danger to M1, in OOS situation it's mere seconds to depoly fighters, inside sector it's matter of accelerating into the jumpgate / jumping out. To be honest, even fully equipped M1 is a mere QUARTER of cost of its fighter load. AI-tuned Osprey costs around 2.3M. Loading 130 of them inside Argon M1 is friggin' 300M! So actually I'm more concerned about keeping fighters in one piece - which means - don't enter fight zone with docked fighters.

At this point I'd like to point out, that game lacks a class of ship that could be called sub-carrier. Example of such ship would be standard carrier-class from Battlecruiser 3000AD - heavily shielded (4x125?), heavily loadable (3000-4000 cargo space?), fast (350 m/s ?), but very lightely armed ship (two one-slot turrets - fron/aft?), able to carry 5-10 M5-M3/TS/TP, and able to dock same stations like a M6. Actually, M6 is a slightely bigger heavy fighter. Being able to carry only M5 ship is a pity... In my entire fleet I keep only one M6 - as a personal flagship, but I tend to keep it out of fight - it's way too fragile. Also feeding it with energy cells is a pain in the ass - if there weren't transport freight option I'd dump this ship instantly.

But back to topic. I tried to write a script that teleported ships into the dock, but amount of computational power needed for perfect teleport is enermous, so once again - cpu kills.

Teleporting into 0, 0, 0 of M1 just makes 'bang' - telefrag

Is there any msci command to 'disappear' a ship and put it in target carrier's dock bay?

Best what I managed to do is a script that lines up fighters and causes them to fly in one by one - in very shirt time intevals. Of course carrier can't move (how to teporarily disable ship's movement ability?), but it's painfully slow, for now... Later I'll probably release it somewhere.

[edit] TelCat doesn't seem to work for me. [/edit]

[Harlock776]

Yes it's true the game only draws the sector you are in since you can't see anything else outside of that sector anyways unless you have an advanced satellite in another sector but even then it only draws when you are there just an overhead view. Thats why battles are so different when your out of sector because it's all left up to math equations kinda like those ancient dice rolling rpg games from the 70's and 80's lol.

I have a light carrier class for the argons it's called the durango class in me mod and it only has four turrets and only two of those have four guns each while the other two have only two guns per. She has good shielding and has good speed but can only hold 35 fighters/TS/TP and works great for a first carrier on the cheap or as a ship ferry that can pick up a load of newly purchased TS or fighters without having to divert and unload a heavy carrier or use a TL with limited docking.

M6 is too small to dock anything bigger than an M5 and I once thought about making some or all M1 ships capable of docking an M6 but it wouldn't work out right. M6 is probably best for sector patrol though since they have have just enough shielding to last for many battles with pirates and khaaka.