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moving ship docks

The general place to discuss MOD''ing Freelancer!

Post Thu Nov 16, 2006 4:22 pm

moving ship docks

could you dock with a moving ship or make ships move? and can you actually forever destroy bases like weapons platforms?

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Post Thu Nov 16, 2006 4:32 pm

Lancer, it dont work w/e you do ^^, take it from me, ive tried, tried agen and failed so many times, in short, no it dont mate sorry >.<

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Post Thu Nov 16, 2006 5:14 pm

ah
1. stations can't move, on their own - i believe the server can move them around though, but haven't tried it
2. make ships move? you mean teleporting players? flhook can do that
3. you can destroy weapon platforms etc! but- they have to be mounted on another solar object as cargopods. so an invisible station would have a solid model attached, which could be blown up to prevent anyone from acessing the station to dock, while leaving the actual dockpoints intact so spawning players don't crash it. lots of possibilities here, like using multiple docking stations w/ landing pads or bays that can be destroyed.

Post Fri Nov 17, 2006 10:12 am

In a rather bizzare concept on docking with movable ships....
(making a player ship dockable)
I've come up with an idea.
It's more a matter of going into FORMATION with the ship in question.
The trick is getting past its shield, hitbox and sur file.
If you put a player ship in without a sur file, the problem becomes elementary.
Okay...say, we want fighters to "dock" in another players "carrier"...
1st, we're gonna have to change something within the formations..something that would have to relate specifically to that "dockable" player carrier.
(Perhaps, set the formation parameters at close tolerances) So, when a fighter clicks on "join formation", it's gonna get so close to the carrier that it dissappears within the hull. (players within the hull of the carrier will see though the hull of the carrier since that's the backside of the mat file) HOWEVER...the carrier is gonna have to drop it's shield long enough for the fighter to form up (quasi-dock). In a timed move, the "carrier" ejects a piece of cargo...the shield comes down and the fighter can "dock". (In actuality, its really in formation as the "carrier" flys around)
EXCEPTION: Unless you just don't use a shield on the carrier, but have VERY BIG HULL points. But ships inside the carrier will not be protected by the carrier shield.
The weapon hard points will make up a quasi envelope as the ship passes through areas of interest. Formed fighters will go along for the ride while in formation with the carrier. (REMEMBER: in MP, the formations look skewed until you get into cruise). As the carrier goes into cruise, so will the fighters. Just looks funny. But, you'll get your player carrier formation with the capability to launch player fighters.
To launch...
the carrier has to drop its shield again, then the fighters click on "Freeflight" to launch. They'll most likely scatter in all 6 directions though the carrier hull...but, hey....you got fighter launch.

WARNING: Fighters in formation (dock) with the carrier:
When that carrier shield goes down from hostile fire, those fighters are vulnerable to hits. SO, beware the Sunslayer torpedo!

So, there you have it. It's a radical idea...but I think it might work.

Post Fri Nov 17, 2006 8:17 pm

pretty interesting - i suppose if it was a open-decked carrier it could very well work, in that it would give the illusion of launching NPCs to defend itself. however, you'd also have them firing from the flight deck (duck! lol) - possibly that could be fixed with fixed unmovable guns, and of course manipulating the pilot population to hold group formation most of the time, but to abandon it completely in combat.

it wouldn't fool players into thinking of it as 'landed' though, since you can't jump out, refuel and quickly down a sidewinder fang. also, the problem of getting players to formup right on the surface might be quite difficult, as opposed to a formation of NPCs which have static ones. yes FL has some real capability (particularly on a newer system, where it can take advantage of larger textures) and flexibility (LODranges finally cracked, destructible parts are easy to implement, and XML has made coding a breeze) but some things like getting players docked on other players or NPCs require actual program instructions in the EXE and DLL files that simply aren't there (at least not yet)

so, if you can hack the game to include that feature yeah it would be useful but if not it would still be a cool addition to NPC patrols

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