Are you referring to a Battleship Encounter? Neffilim has sussed those out but instead of gunboats/cruisers get it to spawn fighters....

Its in the tutorials forum....

Hope that helps
Simmo

Yes, instead of its type being CAPITAL, it needs to be made a fighter class instead, then a loadout for this in the loadouts.ini, then let the NPC of the relevant factions know about it as well so that they use the 'fighter' (battleship pretending to be a fighter). Best explanation for this? Its in Wanderer Vs Leonharts thread, where Giskard posted it for me!

Thanks Chips, that helped a bit. But it brings up another question. If i do get it to work, theoretically, it will spawn the ship with every encounter no? How do I randomize the encounter so that the luxury liner only shows up, say 1 out of every 5 encounters or so?

___________________________________________

"In space, no-one can hear you scream!"

Well - as Giskard pointed out, if you made the base level of over 13 (ie 14 instead) then they won't spawn in encounters, but instead turn up in the missions...........not bad eh? Otherwise, have it as a higher level - notice you don't get the old wolfhound at manhatten.......

If you mean you want to see them at manhatten, i suppose that you have to create new encounters parameters - i don't think there is a setting anywhere that i have found which says 'Spawn these now, but that ship can wait till the next one!'. Its back to making new encounters for that - or appearing as a freighter (generally less frequent meetings with pirate freighters!)

Oh - the base level thing - its the d13 part in the NPCships.ini - this bit

loadout = MSN06_Nomad_Rhienland_Heavy_Fighter
level = d6 <------------this part here is what i am talking about
ship_archetype = rh_elite

Its to do with the base level (level of base - manhatten is level 1 or something) - Giskard points out that there aren't many bases at d13 - so if you have it above this they appear in missions only

Thanks for all the help so far Chips, but I have t more questions....

1. I made a separate encounter for the ship and a few fighter escorts using the battleship encounter as a reference. I set the location to Manhattan. However, the game crashes every time I try and leave the planet. Something is conflicting now. I was thinking that in order to track it down, I might need a debugger of some kind. Or else, maybe someone knows why it might be crashing????

2. How would I be able to get rid of the whole system of the encounters relying on character levels in order to determine their rate of appearance. I think its kinda stupid that lower level pirates wont show up in a random encounter once you are at too high of a level!!!!

Edited by - Strider - oTO on 26-09-2003 02:12:49

Strange, i have been a level 90 player at manhatten and been attacked by level one rogues and xenos. Its to do with the base you are at. The toughness of the base - or base 'level' that determines the class of fighters there. However - here is an example:-

comment = Pittsburg
sort = 17
toughness = 1 ;tougness of base - low
density = 9
repop_time = 10
max_battle_size = 6
encounter = area_defend, 1, 0.090000 ;area_defend, 1 ;level 1, low level
faction = li_p_grp, 0.680000
faction = co_me_grp, 0.320000
encounter = area_bh_defend, 1, 0.050000
faction = gd_bh_grp, 1.000000
encounter = area_assault, 1, 0.020000

Make it harder - play around here - you won't get low level corsairs as there just aren't any level 1 corsairs in the ini files - ie, when you look at the npcships.ini file - no corsair level d1 - see here:

[NPCShipArch
nickname = fc_c_co_fighter_d1-6
loadout = fc_c_co_fighter_loadout01
level = d6 ;d6 min for all of em
ship_archetype = co_fighter
pilot = pilot_corsair_med
state_graph = FIGHTER
npc_class = unlawful, class_fighter, d1, d2, d3, d4, d5, d6

Now i am not positive about this, as i have only just started really modding systems and therefore getting into this stuff!! However, this is my 'guess' here as too levels - Giskard, Wanderer and Victor would all be alot better at explaining than me!

But to find out yourself -make encounters appear to test this....firstly - comment out one or two from manhatten to make space - eg

encounter = area_defend, 1, 0.090000 ;area_defend, 1 ;level 1, low level
faction = li_p_grp, 0.680000
;faction = co_me_grp, 0.320000
;encounter = area_bh_defend, 1, 0.050000
;faction = gd_bh_grp, 1.000000
encounter = area_assault, 1, 0.020000

That means co_me_grp won't appear in a area_defend and bounty hunters won't appear either without actually deleting them (; means ignore what is behind it)
The add something like this:

encounter = area_scout, 6, 0.560000
faction = fc_c_grp, 1.000000

Which is stolen from good old London!
Don't forget this part:
faction_weight = fc_c_grp, 1

Now - check that you get corsairs there (adjust the chances to fit with manhat thouhg - so instead of 0.56 make it 0.05 or something (bh and me added together = 0.07 - should do then) so that you don't 'overpopulate' and hang at manhatten to see if they ever turn up. What level are they? 6? Check this by changing that value (once you know that they appear) down to 1 - do they appear, what level etc. That way you find out what causes the levels - its all exploration when learning this stuff! Try it out...find out, fiddle. THis will tell you if their levels go off of the d6 in the npcships. At this point you can start to create your own around and so on. Then fiddle fiddle fiddle!!!

Get any probs - give me a shout, will see what i can do. By the way, i haven't tried any of this stuff, am just guessing away with what i already know! LOL

Thats great! Thanks for the insight Chips. I still have to work on the crashing at Manhattan, but I think that might be because of overpopulation. I still need to try a few things. Thats probably the worst part about modding. Debugging a mod without a Debbug program means its all up to trial and error. This one might take a couple of hours to figure out!

YES!!!!!! I did it! Im not sure what was causing the crash, but a few tweaks here and there, and it worked beautifully. Too well actually. I almost crapped my pants when I took off from Manhattan, only to be greeted by 8 pirate Luxury Liners bent on my destruction........ Needs a bit more tweaking it seems

thanks again for all the help everyone.