Champs, that's not a "dummy question". Actually, it's a very practical question! Unfortunately, the answer is:

1. There is probably a camera position/angle setting in the Interface folders that controls this behavior.

2. I very much doubt you can have it change for different ship sizes.

Another, alternate approach, which Aldebaran is pioneering for the next version of Free Worlds (and which I will be happily "borrowing" ideas from, for the shipyards in stock FL that I have added ShipDealers to) is to have a special ShipDealer THN/CMP that positions the ships in a way where you can see them, even if they're very large. I've actually gotten about half of a very fancy "docking clamp" design done for a Room that could be used as a ShipDealer for very large vessels, but it's not done (and unfortunately, it probably won't get done for weeks to come- I have too much else going on right now). But, when it's completed, all but the most ridiculously oversized ships will fit in the Room with ease- the only catch being that it'll require changes to the HpMount positions, which in turn will make the stock FL rooms, which were designed for very small ships... not work. I've been thinking a lot about these issues, but there's no good way around it- if a mod wants to support uber-huge ships, then every Equipment Dealer, Ship Dealer, and Landing area needs to be re-done, modified, etc., depending on the scales of things. Kind've a pain, really, but necessary...

Thx alot for your quick response Argh ...
i work with Aldebran .. but made a specidic THN for see into the shipdealer room this capship... i don't love this idea personnally ...
i will tried to find where it store this information view and i will see what i could do ... maybe we can find one solution to introduce instead the turret view for this box ... instead a fix distance view ....
but here we needs some very good developper ....

it's a call to every developper !!!

The ship dealer is a model with hard points, you might be able to find a camera hardpoint in there and move it.

Before every one jumps in here, and I see where CzW is coming from with his query, lets not confuse the two points here (before the less experienced start coming out with ideas and confusing the matter):

When capships are in a shipdealer, we have two very seperate issues to do with size at the moment. The first is the model in the physical room itself. What Argh has mentioned is that I have found a way to solve that problem for the next freeworlds and that is a simple fix with camera angles, camera distance and have the right room model to support it in THN (I am having a strange background and object fading bug though with some of the new THN's that occurs after 30 seconds (every just suddenly goes all funny). I think that might be an anomolous light problem though in the ambi file).

What CzW is looking for is a solution to when you open the window up for buying a new ship and select a ship, the central window's camera angle is positioned inside of the model itself for large capital ships. Sorry CzW, I don't think there will be a way to load up one ship CMP for the dealer screen and another for the actual ship (not without an indepth exe hack anyway). What we need to do is find where the camera angle is defined for the shipdealer, but with my experiences of THN's, I can tell you that particular camera angle is not in the THN Script. It has to be defined elsewhere. If we can find where it is defined, it will then be a matter of working out if the value is universal (i.e. one value defines the angle for ALL shipdealers) or individual (camera angle for the central window is defined per shipdealer). If it is the later, problem solved. If it is the former, then we have a catch 22 situation. We can either expand it to see the capital ships but it means we will never see a fighter again in that window (because they will be too small) or we just resolve to keeping it the same size and have to put up with the capital ship being bigger than the window.

The big question is, where is that camera angle defined.

Freeworlds Mod Developer
Author of Modular Station

'There is no Good nor Evil in the universe, just perceptions and circumstances.'

I am pretty sure it's a "catch 22".

And that, folks, is why I would like to pursue my idea of a "docking tower", where HpMounts would be on the front center of ships, instead of somewhere at the bottom.

This would solve a very large number of current problems:

1. It would make it possible for even the largest and most awkward ships to dock with just about anything, without circling around, etc., which is a side effect of the current problems we have with HpMounts.

2. It would allow for Rooms to fit ships of any size, without adjusting the Room.

3. It would allow for visual consistancy.

Best yet... if the Rooms were basically designed with generic "docking points" on a very tall (we're talking 200 units or so, to handle even gigantic ships) tower, then we could either use a featureless backdrop (to create the illusion of a floor), create a really dramatic distance effect (i.e., put the floor down at -200+ units, and put buildings, etc. down there) or ... hmmm ... we could make a special alpha-mapped and glow-textured "force field" that would be slightly opaque, so that we could place things on / around the ship at "ground level" without it seeming too strange (at least, in a sci-fi context, heh) for "interior rooms". The idea here, of course, is to have Rooms that are giant in scale, fit ships properly, etc.

I can build the CMPs (and I have some kewl ideas about making them fully modular, so that people could build custom CityScapes really easily)... but I really would like some assistance from someone with THN animation experience to make a landing sequence...