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[shoi]

Download for 0.97 - NOT save compatible with versions of ArmaA prior to v3.1

Changelog

Mod Requirements:
LazyLib
MagicLib

By Government Monkey
Recommended:
GraphicsLib
Machina Void Shipyards - for more strikecraft
PAGSM
Other mods featuring Strikecraft:
Gundam UC Mod - Outdated[?]
DIABLE ARMAAONICS
UNSC Strikecraft

I. Summary:

At first this mod was primarily centered around a framework allowing playable fighters. The objective was simulate the behavior of normal fighters as closely as possible while still making them viable for normal gameplay. At this points it's expanded a bit beyond that,adding a few weapons as well as a hullmod that assigns characters that gradually level up over time to your fighter wings and a few playable mechs/fighters. It does -NOT-make any fighter playable. If you are looking for that functionality, i'd reccommend RAT

STRIKECRAFT
Strikecraft blur the line between frigates and fighters. Generally glass cannons, they possess many of the advantages fighters have, while benefiting from skills that affect frigates. However, they are extremely vulnerable to enemy interceptors as well as point defenses, have poor shielding(if any), and rely on carriers to be used effectively.



WINGS WITH ~PERSONALITY~

The WINGCOM Suite allows you to build an elite squadron of strikecraft pilots serving under an officer that improve and gain skills over time.




Eventually, they can even be promotoed into fully-fledged Officers!



These squadrons are highly customizable. Squadron names, character portraits, and even callsigns can all be modified!

Radio chatter appears from them in combat, and they will even chat amongst themselves.

• Multiple fighter wings with that yield a Ground Support Bonus when equipped to carriers
• Fourteen pilotable mechs, and three pilotable fighters
• One new star system + market

(Some) Pilotable craft examples:

Xyphos - AA
One of the most advanced fighters available within the Sector. The support oriented Ion Beam has been swapped out for an Ion Pulser. Two range-boosting sensor drones combined with it's attached Xyphos wing and still functional PD capabilities make the AA variant a powerful escort, as well as extremely dangerous.

Aleste - Strikecraft

Laser Sword included.

Einhänder - Strikecraft

For the angst-filled protagonist.
System: Offense Mode

Dramatically reduces firerate and disables defense systems, but drastically increases weapon damage

Leynos - Strikecraft

This is Red Leader, over.
System: Amalgamate Feed

Increases the performance of all wing members based off the number that are still active.

Garegga - Frigate

Gameplay - HELMUT
Fighter-b-gone.
Altagrave - Destroyer


Vaguely humanoid destroyer with a PD oriented Burst laser built into the head, and a very bursty arm weapon that can be further enhanced for burstiness with expanded magazines.

Mounts: 1x Small Universal, 1x Small Hybrid, 1x Medium Synergy
Modules: 2x Leg Modules, 1x Backpack Module(System: Low-Grade EMP Emitter)

System: KARMA

Redirects tracking missiles against enemies, and absorbs projectiles for a scaling buff to Weapon Rate of Fire as well as a Weapon Flux Cost Reduction. Once the karma gauge is maxed an explosion is triggered that damages any enemies within 300 su and generates kinetic projectiles that home in on the target.

and more...

[close]

PAQ - Potentially Asked Questions

Spoiler

ship_data.csv:
-What does the fake_fighter tag do?
This tag is mostly for modder use. It's purpose is if modders want to distinguish actual fighters from the ones this mod adds for weapon effect/AI purposes

-What does the independent_of_carrier tag do?
Some ships had this tag for testing purposes, but it's a fighter wing only tag that has no effect

-What does the no_wingcom_docking tag do?
This tag isn't used currently

-What does the strikecraft_medium tag do?
This tag prevents strikecraft from landing on destroyers.

-What does the strikecraft_large tag do?
This tag prevents strikecraft from landing on destroyers and cruisers.

-What does the armaa_traveldrive do?
This simulates the "travel drive" of base fighters, with a reduced max speed. It's main purpose is simulating strikecraft launching from ships directly when applicable.

.ship stuffs:
-What's Landing Override?
This was used initially to manually enable landing before targeting was an option. It's only still around for save compat

-What's the difference between armaa_strikeCraftFrig and strikeCraft?
armaa_strikeCraftFrig changes hullsize to frigate, while strikeCraft hullmod contains the core functionality for strikecraft (in other words, strikeCraftFrig is just an addon combined with strikeCraft that changes hullsize)

-How do I make built-in fighters land/do not land on the strikecraft?
Fighters will never land on strikecraft, and there currently isnt anyway for them to be able to.

General:
-How do I make my strikecraft be able/not be able to land on carriers?
Strikecraft can always land on at least one form of ship with a bay by either targetting a valid ship or activating autopilot,  depending on the tags used. There currently isnt any way to prevent them from landing completely.

-How do I make my strikecraft always/never deploy from carriers?
Strikecraft will always try to deploy from a carrier if using armaa_travelDrive. To have them never deploy, use the standard travel drive.

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Mod Compatibility

Spoiler

- If you are one of the nerds that has a HullSize for any combat effects, you can easily avert any NPEs by checking the hullsize of the variant instead of the ship itself. This is the approach vanilla uses, so the mod operates under that assumption. You can also use this if you need to distinguish the ships from actual fighters for any reason.
- For edge cases, Einhänder uses a fake_fighter tag to identify it's nature. This idea was devised by MesoTroniK to resolve some targeting and fuze logic bugs with several THI scripted weapons and how they interact with frigates that setHullSize to fighter via script at all times, instead of most of the time, for the future THI update. If you want to ensure certain abilities and weapons affect Einhander or any ship like it properly, you can simply add a condition checking for this tag. For that reason, if you do make a ship similar to it, it'd be a good idea to add the "fake_fighter" tag to the pertinent vessels in ship_data.csv! Here is an example snippet of how you'd use it:)

Code

    public static boolean isFighterOrDrone(ShipAPI ship)
    {
        return ship.isFighter() || ship.isDrone() || isFakeFighter(ship);

    }

    public static boolean isFakeFighter(ShipAPI ship)
    {
        return ship.getHullSpec().hasTag("fake_fighter");
    }

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Known Issues:

What's Next:

- idk lol

Credits
maritumix - Music
MesoTroniK Consult, some SFX
Tartiflette - Initial mech script
Harupea - Initial Docking System
Nia Tahl - Scripting, trail patterns
Dark.Revenant - Scripting
Avanitia, Randall, Phantasia, Karleen, Finn, Unit9461,TheSoldier,Caymon Joestar, Selkie - Feedback / Testing
Some of these may be modifications of the original work.

[BigBeans]

I like this.

[Zygorg]

Daam son, this is awesome!

[shoi]

Thanks guys, there was a bug with a misplaced gfx file, I reupload the file and should have fixed it.

[Chairman Suryasari]

Kazeron really put their limit into the test

[PyroFuzz]

More robit suits! Yeesss!

[MesoTroniK]

Evening Shoi, this is a fun little mod you got here but there is a fairly serious issue with it but I can tell you how to fix it

Your "pilotable mech fighter", is a frigate where you are changing the collision class to FIGHTER via script. This soft breaks a lot of different code in other mods (and vanilla too). Things that look at ship classification, especially various AIs and random other things in general too many to list really. Will think that fighter is a frigate... Which yea will cause issues.

What I would reccomend doing instead is using this:

Code

void setHullSize(HullSize hullSize);

Then this fighter will actually be a fighter so to speak, one that is still piloted. And various code in vanilla and other mods will treat it as such rather than thinking it is a frigate.

[shoi]

Hey Meso, thanks for the feedback!

Originally I set the hullsize to fighter like you suggested via script, because I wanted it to be affected by things such as that funky fighter nerf from Kadur Remnant, carrier buffs, etc, and the various other effects like that, but I ran into a bunch of issues doing this:

- No visible HUD status bar (the one that hovers over ships)

- AI would often times ignore the ship and prioritize defending against anything bigger instead, even though threat-wise it'd be better flickering shields against the 'fighter'. for AI fighters this isn't an issue since they're pretty dumb, but it felt almost exploity under player control

- AI controlled versions could not be commanded, appearing only as green blips on the command screen, and only taking action when enemies got close

- Ships with fighter hullsize crash the game when retreating

With MagicLib I could have easily addressed the first issue, and just nerfed weapons for the second, but the last two points discouraged me from pursuing that route. Since the fighter hulls disappear from the command screen,changing flagships meant you couldn't swap back to it, otherwise I could have possibly circumvented it with some scripting, and from what I gleaned from alex, the last issue is pretty much unavoidable. So while switching hullsize was what I would have prepared, it doesn't seem possible without bringing about even bigger issues.

I've done a lot of playtesting, and outside of ship systems that should affect it logically not actually doing so, I haven't had any game-breaking issues besides AI doing weird things with collissions since they still see it as a frigate, and thats mostly on the part of the einhander refusing to pass through ships. I don't know if there's any alternative I could pursue to address those points, though.

[MesoTroniK]

Literally game breaking issues? No, but soft breaks? All over the place. Just in my mods, there are well over ten scripts that look at hull sizes and will react incorrectly to that mech.

Add in scripts I have helped other mods with that are based on similar code, and that figure will multiply 3 to 5x. Add in other mods that do entirely their own stuff and probably many hundreds of scripts. Never will it straight up break things or crash, but you will get missiles targeting it, or not targeting it when they should not, ship systems activating for it, or not activating for it when they when they should not, certain ship system effects influencing it, or not influencing it when they should not, custom autofire AIs firing at it, or not firing at it when they should not, God knows what else I could list many many things. Even just autofire tags in vanilla like ones like lets say for example strike,use_vs_frigates, and who knows what else. This is fractal madness, and breaking a fundamental assumption both the game itself makes and many mods where a frigate is a frigate and a fighter is a fighter and having one that is so to speak both under the hood will indeed soft break many many things

[shoi]

Hmm, do you happen to have an example of something that would give that type of behavior, as I haven't seen anything out of the ordinary during playtests.

The mech is slightly smaller than a kite, and I'd argue that small ships like it and the hound would also break fundamental assumptions, particularly in the usage of strike weapons against it. Not sure how the addition of fighter collision would change that.

[MesoTroniK]

OK can give one really simple and low hanging fruit example off the top of my head that is even easy to test and observe.

The Apsis LRT Launcher weapon in Tiandong Heavy Industries (and a bunch of other missile AIs...), will not ever target fighters unless no ships are within sensor range as that missile (and others...) have a snowball's chance in Hell of hitting a target that agile and of that size. Well, it will target your mech, and be useless doing so.

Edit: Might as well list another within the same mod...
The Muscle LRM Launcher, missile will never target nor MIRV for fighters unless no ships are within sensor range.

There are others in my mods, some actually of even more severe undesirable results, but they become increasingly esoteric. And that is just my mods...


Double edit: Blargh, and here it is breaking a weapon with a custom scripted proximity fuze.
https://youtu.be/3wpERIdZSMo

[Unnamed_Shadow]

Would be really cool if this evolves into a full Faction Mod.

Creating a rival to Diable Avionics with different objectives, or perhaps and ally for Diable Avionics (considering how many enemies they have on a Nexerelin run)

[shoi]

OK can give one really simple and low hanging fruit example off the top of my head that is even easy to test and observe.

Oof, yikes.
I was going to sleep on this but I couldnt stop thinking about it. I have an idea on how I can swap the hullsize to fighter to prevent that kind of weirdness and address the issues I ran into while doing so, and it's partially working. If I can figure out some logic to detect when it's in the retreat radius, I think I also have a workaround to prevent the crash-on-retreat..so looking into that as well.

Thanks for showing me this!

EDIT: Okay, I think I figured out how to fix it. The ship's now fully considered  fighter, except in 2 edge cases:

1. Command UI is open
2. Ship is in its retreat radius

Doing this should prevent a lot of the weirdness with scripted AI without causing any crashes, but i'll need to test it a bit to be certain.

Would be really cool if this evolves into a full Faction Mod.

Creating a rival to Diable Avionics with different objectives, or perhaps and ally for Diable Avionics (considering how many enemies they have on a Nexerelin run)

I can't really comment on anything about DA atm, but if I ever expand the company, it will probably be in a nonstandard setup as oppossed to how other factions operate.

[MesoTroniK]

And thank you for working on the issues Shoi!

It sounds like you did your best that is possible within the current version of SS, while still retaining your design goals. It still messing up during retreat when past said border is a tiny edge case. While the command UI is open if also not paused, is a fairly common occurrence but little can be done about that.

What I would recommend you do? Is just say asi es la vida (such is life) for now, with those two edge case problems remaining. And then ask Alex for some stuff to *truly* fix it for the next version of SS.
- Making it not crash if a frigate that is haxed to be a "fighter" retreats.
- Some sort of ship hint, or API hook you can call within a script to make it so that it shows the HUD status bar for a "fighter" and also allow a "fighter" to be treated like a ship in the command screen.

With stuff like that, it would allow something like this to work perfectly all the time instead of most of the time. He would probably do the first point if asked, and hopefully on the second as well! Just make to explain in good detail why you want this along with the requests

Hell, if all that happened? I could see doing myself some pilotable fighters heh. On a final side note? You have a *lot* of redundant files in your mod, ones that could also potentially cause issues. I think you have "Copy dependent libraries" checked (or whatever the equivalents are in IDEs that are not NetBeans). You should turn that off.

[Gezzaman]

This looks amazing,  keep it up!