Well, i've got something..


Seems i've got a new job for people to do, they can transport fighters to and from bases! The ship itself is a shield generator which can be mounted and unmounted at bases. I'm thinking of having a single destination from one base. There's not too many ships that would fit ok, but it looks pretty good.





Edited by - M-A-C-E_166 on 4/19/2006 10:41:56 AM

Wow Mace! That is insane! I'd like to know how you did it - did you just give the shield generator a different cmp? - If so, which HP did you attach it to? Looks Awesome.

What's your favorite letter?
Mine is the squiggly! (erm, tilde)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
/()_()
/(o.0)
+(___)o

I've just finished going through 30 ships and am going to add them as commodities. Still not entirely sure of the cost yet but, it looks really good. I might even make up a new shipclass just for these so i can control whats being carried where.
To do it, i copied the origina ships (and a few others) to a custom folder and moved the HpMount to the above and to the front then in the shield ini i told it to mount to the HpMount and there you go.. It is still a shield of 1 capacity, 0 recharge and it does generate this info still. But i've used the ship icons from the goods and the ids_name and info1 from shiparch.
I'm going to add the cargo pods too with each of them a different commodity. Might even try with a few solars too..
(edit) I won't do to many pics, but here's another one:


Edited by - M-A-C-E_166 on 4/19/2006 1:52:21 PM

Now that is friggin hilariously good. I love it, kudos!

And please, do more pics as you do more items

Edited by - Chips on 4/19/2006 3:34:09 PM

Well the only problem I see is that if the ship is destoryed the person transporting the ships won't lose anything, am I right? Still that's pretty cool, I'll have to try that for fun sometime.
Someone could make a really really really huge transport ships for Battleships and other large objects.

QuEsTiOn AsKeR
Last Hope MOD

Got a few more for you:










I've done just about all of the original ships and a couple of added ones. Does anyone know how to get cargo pods mountable that give you the cargo hold benefits? I've set up some extra hardpoint links to cover both large cargo pods and the smaller ones.

Edited by - M-A-C-E_166 on 4/19/2006 5:56:02 PM

Mace, I bow before your expertise at modding. I probably just didn't read it right, but your explanation of how you accomplished attaching the ship to the transport as a shield somewhat confused me. Perhaps you could be a little more detailed? Keep up the excellent, awesome work!

Mace,
When will this MOD come out?

@M-A-C-E i have studied these things pretty closely and i can say with confidence that there is no hold increasing property in the cargopod coding, they are simply props - sadly they can't auto attach to a players ship with a commodity like NPCs, although possibly that could be fixed in the EXE or DLLs

also, theres no need to duplicate the ships is there?why not just use the same files in the same location and save some space?

The mod should be ou fairly soon, say the next week or so. Its been 18 monhs in coming and i am the only person doing it its called frontierspace (check the new mod announcements).Frontier Space Ver1.0
You could, possibly use the same ship cmps that are existing but i've moved the HpMount to abouve the front of the ship so it fits better. Seeing as how the cmps are tiny compared to an 85 Mb mod its hardly worth messing around too much.
Its basically, from st_equip.ini:
[ShieldGenerator
nickname = Cargopod_dragon
ids_name = 237027
ids_info = 66556
DA_archetype = ships\Frontier\cargopod_ships\ku_elite\ku_elite.cmp<-copied one
material_library = ships\kusari\ku_playerships.mat<--existing
HP_child = HpMount<--Thats the one i'm using
hit_pts = 3600<--Keeping it the same as the ship
..
hp_type = hp_freighter_shield_special_10<--My custom class

Then, st_goods.ini
[Good
nickname = Cargopod_dragon
equipment = Cargopod_dragon
category = equipment
price = 5000<--I'm still working on the prices and economy side of things
item_icon = Equipment\models\commodities\nn_icons\ku_elite.3db
combinable = false
ids_name = 237027<--from shiparch
ids_info = 66556<--from shiparch, info1
DA_archetype = ships\Frontier\cargopod_ships\ku_elite\ku_elite.cmp
material_library = ships\kusari\ku_playerships.mat

Then lastly, in shiparch:
[Ship
..
nickname = player_ge_large_transport
..
mission_property = can_use_large_moors<-large moors are disabled for all solars, so only dockable at planets. All of the npcs use med_moors.
type = FREIGHTER<-it behaves funny otherwise
DA_archetype = SHIPS\Frontier\UTILITY\TRANSPORT_LARGE\transport_large.cmp
material_library = ships\utility\utility_transport.mat
..
hp_type = hp_freighter_shield_special_10, HpCargo01, HpCargo02, HpCargo03, HpCargo04
..

Well, i planned to release the mod in the next few days. But, seeing as i have started this i'm going to make sure that i've done this as well as possible. The best way i know is to create several new ship_classes that function the same as transports. So for npcs i'll have a liberty ship courier encounter with several overlapping loadouts. For players its going to be linked to my long range courier system where a load of commodities have a single destination. You buy the good at 200% of its base value and transport to the location to get paid. There's only a few ships that can carry these things so it isn't going to be a major part of the mod. Thanks for the interest.


Edited by - M-A-C-E_166 on 4/19/2006 10:17:01 PM

I've put he first load into the game as a unique ship class. There are liberty ships being transported throughout liberty.
Got the first npc pics, they are big (1024x768) so i'll link em instead:
In game NPC pic
In game NPC pic2
(edit)
Just noticed i put up the wrong pic, duh!

Edited by - M-A-C-E_166 on 4/22/2006 7:23:10 PM

One balance issue to keep in mind with including cargo pods into the economy: even though cargo is traditionally lost when you die (or ejected if you've got some player looting rigged up), cargo pods such as these are mounted directly to your ship and so are recovered the moment you die and respawn. If you trading system hinges upon the risk of potentially losing a full load of expensive cargo, cargo pods would provide a safe way to circumvent the risk entirely, thus screwing up the intended trade balance. This was a problem I was faced with a while back and I still haven't come up with a satisfactory solution.

I think it should be ok, i don't allow even the very big transports to carry very much and these goods will be more of an addition to the cargo hold rather than the main purpose. I'm planning to have commodities like heavy manufacture machinery and habitat components things that could require specialist transporting. I'm pretty hard on the player and tend to make them work as least as hard they can cope with.
I think it will be pretty funny though, imagine you are carrying a module with fugitives from the house government where its been added to the scanning list. You can't manually jetison the cargo pod and you would be in a very expensive but very vulnerable transport. You'd be holding your breath just hoping that they don't catch you.

Good grief what a mess.. Its still working, but its been a real effort.
First, having two different entries for the fighters meant that there were clashes with the archetype, so it was mounting on to the old HpMount and not the changed on, meaning it looked all wrong. So, i modift all of the entries for the original ships and a bunch of others and planned to use the HpCloak hardpoint. After half an hours work, it went wrong... And then i came up with the ten times easier way of simply rotating the transports HpCargo01 hardpoints 180 degrees. They all work as before and now its pretty much perfect, but it has been a real nightmare. I just know somewhere there's going to be a hidden crash from some ship thats had its shiparch entries changed.
Well, i've done liberty and went for having 12 loadouts for transp, large transp and train. I've renamed the ships for these encounters so they have a unique name. Then gave liberty millitary their own loadouts so there's a definite corp and millitary difference. Apart from all of the mistakes i've made it hasn't been too bad.