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Author Topic: Restricting fighters to specific ships?  (Read 4619 times)

TrashMan

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Restricting fighters to specific ships?
« on: April 26, 2017, 12:41:40 AM »

Possbile?

Fighters now work more like weapons (with Ordinance Points), but they lack on thing weapon have - restrictions (mount size/type)

If I have a massive tactical bomber, I don't want a tiny escort carrier to be able to field these, yet, there is no way to curretnly restrict.
Any ship with a hangar an carry any fighter/bomber.
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Orikson

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Re: Restricting fighters to specific ships?
« Reply #1 on: April 26, 2017, 07:08:36 AM »

If you make the fighter an unchangeable build-in fighter, then yes, you can restrict that fighter to a ship only. More than one ship can have the same build-in fighter (though that'll be boring).

If you want the fighter to be uninstall able on specific ships... I doubt that's possible.
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TrashMan

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Re: Restricting fighters to specific ships?
« Reply #2 on: April 26, 2017, 10:21:35 AM »

If you make the fighter an unchangeable build-in fighter, then yes, you can restrict that fighter to a ship only. More than one ship can have the same build-in fighter (though that'll be boring).

If you want the fighter to be uninstall able on specific ships... I doubt that's possible.

Sheeeeeeeeet.

That's something for the future SS versions.
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DeltaV_11.2

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Re: Restricting fighters to specific ships?
« Reply #3 on: April 26, 2017, 06:11:52 PM »

I don't think you can restrict it in the refit screen. I think you could penalize using a certain wing on a carrier that's not suited for it, which might work to at least make it not useful.
« Last Edit: April 26, 2017, 06:15:48 PM by DeltaV_11.2 »
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xenoargh

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Re: Restricting fighters to specific ships?
« Reply #4 on: April 26, 2017, 10:28:46 PM »

You can control this with Wing size or OP costs; that's the best way to deal with the game-balance issues for now. 

But here we're touching on philosophical stuff a bit; there shouldn't be "massive" fighters, in the sense of being huge sprites to justify their huge weapons payloads, etc.; fighters are meant to be small, limited and finite assets that feel scaled correctly.
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TrashMan

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Re: Restricting fighters to specific ships?
« Reply #5 on: April 26, 2017, 11:03:00 PM »

You can control this with Wing size or OP costs; that's the best way to deal with the game-balance issues for now. 

But here we're touching on philosophical stuff a bit; there shouldn't be "massive" fighters, in the sense of being huge sprites to justify their huge weapons payloads, etc.; fighters are meant to be small, limited and finite assets that feel scaled correctly.

Sprite size is at best an aproximation. Only a tiny bit bigger bomber could easily be (lore-wise) twice as big.
Just take a look at planet scale and distances. Realistic? Nope.
Does anyone care? Not really.

And fighter/bomber size on a carrier will be limited by the carrier itself - hangar facilities, hangar doors/lifts, etc..
The US once used land bombers for a special mission and had them modified and launched from the biggest carrier they had. They barely managed to do it. The bombers had to stay top-side the entire time, since they couldn't get them in the hangar. A smaller carrier couldn't function at all with them.

Adding "size" to a wing would be all that's needed.
Ship_data.cvs wouldn't even have to change, since oyu already have ship size in two variables - mass and type (destroyer, cruiser, etc..)
size 1 - frigate
size 2 - destroyer
size 3 - cruiser
size 4 - battleship

So a size 3 fighter wing could be equipped on any carrier that's cruiser sized or smaller.
« Last Edit: April 26, 2017, 11:06:28 PM by TrashMan »
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xenoargh

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Re: Restricting fighters to specific ships?
« Reply #6 on: April 26, 2017, 11:09:20 PM »

That would be nice, sure.  But for now, that's what we've got available. 

On the size stuff, I think that there are definitely no-gos on sprite sizes; when fighter sprites are as big as Frigates, it just looks silly, imo.
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TrashMan

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Re: Restricting fighters to specific ships?
« Reply #7 on: April 27, 2017, 03:44:27 AM »

That would be nice, sure.  But for now, that's what we've got available. 

On the size stuff, I think that there are definitely no-gos on sprite sizes; when fighter sprites are as big as Frigates, it just looks silly, imo.

MY point is that sprite size does not correspond to actual scale, thus you don't need to make frigate-sized bombers for it to make sense. They can be the same size as other fighters, it doesn't really matter.
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Darloth

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Re: Restricting fighters to specific ships?
« Reply #8 on: April 27, 2017, 05:16:01 AM »

While you could do that fancy size system is it really needed, would it add much?

Right now all of the fighters we have seem like they can/should fit just fine on most of the carriers available.

Perhaps give fighters a hull mod Extra Large or something, which prevents them from being selected on any carrier without a matching Large Fighter Bays hullmod?

More to the point, could we somehow mod that in as a check right now?  I know hullmods can be incompatible with each other but I'm not sure that sort of thing is supported by weapons.... buuut, could you do the old Evedev trick of "This hullmod reduces the OP cost of extra-large fighters by 99%", and just have them cost 1800 OP to start with, 18 with the mod.
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TrashMan

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Re: Restricting fighters to specific ships?
« Reply #9 on: April 27, 2017, 05:23:00 AM »

Perhaps give fighters a hull mod Extra Large or something, which prevents them from being selected on any carrier without a matching Large Fighter Bays hullmod?

More to the point, could we somehow mod that in as a check right now?  I know hullmods can be incompatible with each other but I'm not sure that sort of thing is supported by weapons.... buuut, could you do the old Evedev trick of "This hullmod reduces the OP cost of extra-large fighters by 99%", and just have them cost 1800 OP to start with, 18 with the mod.

Damn, that's a brilliant way to do it too!
Minimal fancy coding needed!

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TrashMan

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Re: Restricting fighters to specific ships?
« Reply #10 on: April 28, 2017, 12:18:22 AM »

Soo..... anyone have the code Evdev used?
Not much of a coder myself, I need to have an example.
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Darloth

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Re: Restricting fighters to specific ships?
« Reply #11 on: April 28, 2017, 02:07:51 AM »

I have not done it myself, but I'm reasonably sure it -can- be done, because Heavy Ballistics Integration (a hull mod, admittedly one that's only in the API and not in the game as far as I can see) reduces the cost of large ballistic weapons by 10%.

There would be a good starting point.

You'd have to add a new dynamic stat, and then add code for the new hull mod / new fighters to look up that statistic and reduce their OP cost based on it.

Edit: I'm not actually sure fighter wings support OP cost reduction yet, but if they do (and they should eventually, right?) then this ought to work? Trying to work out how to only apply the reduction to wings with another hull mod.

Maybe if you could override FighterWingSpecAPI with a new version the game would call?  I'm not sure that is possible right now though, it may well be hardcoded to call that specific version, and we do not have the internal implementation to mess with.  Might indeed have to ask Alex to add a bit so fighter wing specifications can callback into the ship stats in the same way (or better, since it seems slightly hardcoded - I don't think you could make a weapon that's hull mod specific either right now.) than weapon specs do.
« Last Edit: April 28, 2017, 02:27:05 AM by Darloth »
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Wyvern

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Re: Restricting fighters to specific ships?
« Reply #12 on: April 28, 2017, 02:25:47 PM »

Closest thing I can come up with would be a fighter with some kind of fancy hull mod or ship system that checks what its mothership is and then changes its stats (or just flat out explodes) if it's not installed on an appropriate carrier.  Wouldn't prevent the player from installing the fighter LPC in the first place, though.
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.