station size

[Blazar]

I've made a combat station which is very large in size. In tactisype
 SHIPCLASS 180
   Name "cls_stat_CombatStation"     
SHIPTYPE 108
   Name "styp_ep4_human_modul_Station"

But the enemy ships stay out of weapons range around 20K and they do not attack.

I have put RangeBehav 2 2, to try to solve it. But it didn't work

I gave it another class > ballteship with velocity 0. But the same problem.

Is there a way to let the ships battle as usuall?
Or is this a limit in Nexus.
I've looked at a thread:
http://arparso.de/nexus/forum/index.php/topic,139.0.html

But do not know if his is the real answer to this subject.

Can the ships come closer to the stations? So change the parameters of the ships?
Another way is to extend the range of the weapons of the station?

I've looked at the manual as well but can't find a solution.

[The Old Dragon]

For the most part, stations in the original game were equipped with 'fort shields' which keep enemy ships well out of firing range. The 20k you mention seems about right for this, so I'd recommend looking at what the station's equipped with.

Siege lasers are the only stock weapon that has that kind of range, I think.

[Blazar]

But when i change the class to
SHIPCLASS 18
   Name "cls_Battleship_spec"

and the type to

SHIPTYPE 51
   Name "styp_ep2_Rome_Battleship"

They still keep away from the station.

So if i would change everything to lets say frigate, then the other ships should get closer? Because i want to be able to have close combat as well. Lets say hull damaging weapons like the gg's.

[The Old Dragon]

Another Nexus oddity. Not too sure what's causing it, can you post or attach your mission script & tacticstypes?
 

[Blazar]

It is just a simple skirmisher mission. So this is from the tactistype.ini.

<script src="http://pastebin.com/embed_js.php?i=rqn06qAJ"></script>

In Pastebin:
Mesh "station\\delta_station" > not in tacticstype > Mesh "station\delta_station"
GUIIcon "icons\\e_battle" > not in tacticstype > GUIIcon "icons\e_battle" 
I don't know why there's dubbel backslash in pastebin, while in tactictstype there only one backslash.

In this case i've made the station a battleship and set velocity to 0 instead of 100.
In order to try to have close combat. Or that all the ships/stations can be within all weapons range <5K.

But the result is the same when it is a station class as described earlier.

To summarize: is there a way to have close combat between large ships/stations and other ships (large and small ones).

So that all the ships/stattions can use all or at least most of their weapons.

[Mularac]

That is odd indeed, I've been working with stations this very week in a new mod I'm working with and the ships moved as closely to the station as the fort shield let them (to which I actually have question: how do you make enemy ships (or your own for that matter) get through a hostile fort shield?)

Try and use my DefaultAI, it's the one I've been using.

[Blazar]

1. How big are you're stations?  Because the delta station i'am talking about is quite larger then the fort shield itself!
2. In the case of making the station to a battleship the ohter ships don't come close either!
3. What do you mean with;  use my DefaultAI ?
4. I was also wondering about making an enemy ship go through the fort shield. I think that's hardcoded in the engine and not possible??

In general: is there a way for example to make a frigate move to within 100 meters of a large batlleship enemy or friendly with the F2 command???

[Mularac]

1) I'm using stock Nexus stations, mostly: cls_gorg_Main_Station, cls_stat_BattleStation, cls_stat_CombatStation and cls_gorg_Ast_station.
2) Not a clue. Probably a bug in your AI code.
3) http://arparso.de/nexus/forum/index.php/topic,222.msg1569.html#msg1569
4) I don't know how, but I remember you being able to do that in the nexus campaign.

There is, but it's not easy.
First, you have to issue the ShipGoRound command, then keep an eye out so that the ship doesn't go through the other's hull.

[Blazar]

ad1. okay, that's clear
ad2.Is not a bug.It is that i've changed the shipclass and type from station to battleship in tactistype myself, in order to see the effect.
ad3. i'll check it out.
ad4. i thought that you could not. my mistake.

[Mularac]

Can we see your AI code?

[Blazar]

You're defaultAI is realy nice. But it doesn't work in this case.
The distance remains the same.

[Blazar]

Yep, here it is.

[Mularac]

got anything we can test out?

[Blazar]

I seems that i've got the answer. After trying everything out, the only option is to downszie the station.
With every 10% decrease in size the distance/range also decreases with 10%.
I've decreased the size incrementally untill the ships are in weapons range.
The model is just one that i've increased in size with 300%, which was too much.

[The Old Dragon]

So it appears to be your models own bounding box was causing the issue? What a pain. As Mularac said, the 'ShipGoRound();' command should help with that but it would also mean that ships would disappear within the station

As far as I can tell, only friendly (maybe neutral as well) ships can pass through a stations active fort shield. The only way that I can see you getting a hostile ship through would be to write a small script that would turn the ship in question into the stations race (therefore making it friendly) so that it can pass through the shield. Once inside, the script would then change the ships race back to it's original.

[Mularac]

That is very odd... I specifically remember whole battles developing inside a station's fort shield.... guess they were already within the radius of the shield when it was rised... weird...

[The Old Dragon]

There is one specific mission in the original campaign where you have to defend against a gorg attack (not too sure if you have a station or support ship that provides the fort shield) . By the time the shield comes up, one or two gorgs are within the shield and you get a warning of "Foxes in the hen house!" over the comms.

[Mularac]

ahhh yeah, that must be it.
Well, if you ask me the idea to keep hostile ships from entering a fort shield and letting friendly ones is stupid. I mean, what separates a hostile ship from a friendly one? An IFF flag? But that's not easily fixable, I'm afraid, since the transition between being outside to being inside is not instantaneous...

I'll see what I can do about letting fighters/bombers/gunboats in, though.

[Arparso]

I think this has to do with how collisions are handled by Nexus... or rather, how they are avoided. Nexus seems to use a simple bounding-sphere approach: imagine a sphere around each model, fully enclosing the whole model and a "safety margin" around it.

When navigating through space, ships try to avoid entering the bounding spheres of other ships. If you've got a really big ship or station, the bounding sphere will become so huge, that hostiles will never enter firing distance, (cause they're changing course before that to avoid a collision).

Don't know how to work around it. I think you could disable collision checking for an object, but that'll quickly look odd with ships passing through each other.