UCGO for Missile re-load

[HTKsos]

Somewhere on this board someone asked about reloading missiles on a fighter. Since they are attachments and would have to be added with scn editor/attachment mangler, it didn't seem practical.. Now the Starhunter ships do have a reload key, and that makes sense, as there are probably a lot of missiles hanging around waiting to be loaded below decks.

UCGO has it's "refuel" capability, and any resource you can name can be used... so here is the idea...
 A resource cargo holding Missiles is marked as a missile resource.
 or a ship marked as a "gas station" for said resource

the cargo can be consumed and the missile vessel called into existence and attached at the time.
different resource types can stand for different missile types... just use the code.

Seems like a better use for UCGO than camping. 

[Captain Rodolphus]

Again I waited lol....    I like the idea.  The only thing that shoots a hole in it for me is that UCGO uses a different attach system and the missiles might go pancake on us.  For a easy example take a empty QJSkid  and attach a UMMU to it.  He goes flat as a pancake.  So using the UCGO for reload might not work.  However Jon and I are working on something right now and I won't divulge exactly what, but it could be used to reload the weapons on your craft of choice.  I'll have to play with it from that angle.  But with ship's like the Raider we wanted the realization of after you fire them you would have to land or go to a support craft to reload.  But that might work better for what I have in mind.  Keep in mind you can have many many attach points to your ships and I added att's to my fighter craft so I could fly in formation with them and then use the remote ship control with the remote key to fire off the other ships weapons. 

[HTKsos]

I wasn't suggesting using the UCGO's for the missiles. I was talking about the "resource function"  that was meant for gas stations or air stations, or whatever.  but make Missile stations instead. additionally you could use Missile crates sitting on the ground or floating around in free fall to re-arm.  Most fighters do not have the space to carry 1x1x1 cubes anyway.

here is an example chunk of code (kind of from Dan's Documentation, which fails to document this function that well.)

Code: [Select]

int SnagMissiles (double dEmptyHardpoints, double dReloadRadius= 1000)
{
if(dEmptyHardpoints<1)
{
strcpy(SendCargHudMessage(),"YOu are fully Armed!");
return 1;
}
double dStationreloaded = GetRessourceFromStationMineOrFactory("QJSEEKrld", dEmptyHardpoints, dReloadRadius); 
if(dStationreloaded  <0)
{
double dEatenMissiles = EatCloserCargoByType("Missile", dEmptyHardpoints);
if(dEatenMissiles <0)
{
strcpy(SendCargHudMessage(),"no Missiles found for reload");
return 1;
}
}
// refill
Rearm(dEatenMissiles);
sprintf(SendCargHudMessage(),"%.2f missiles loaded",dEatenMissiles );}

[Jon]

I haven't really looked into the UCGO stuff much but would this allow multiple missiles in one crate?
How would they attach to the ship?
Is it automatic when the cargo is deployed?
Is there coding in the ship that would need to be done to load them?
What happens to the missiles left behind if there are not enough points to attach them to?

I guess I could understand deploying the missile cargo and then using some sort of attachment manager to attach the missiles.

It's an interesting idea.

Another idea that would only work with RTF ships is to only allow a reload when docked to another ship or station or when landed.

I'm looking at coding a pop-up panel for missile control and I think I could program in a reload function but it would only be usable with RTF ships.
I use thrusters to store the state of the QTD and FTL drives and I also use one to store the amount of reloads you could have. Every time you reload the thruster gets incremented and when it is maxed out you will no longer be able to reload. The only way to reset the reload count would be to dock or land.

Another idea would be to have missile packs. Rather than having a ship custom designed to hold and launch missiles we could have a missile pack which is really a small ship attached to yours that you fire missiles from. You could reload a pack or just abandon it in favor of a fresh pack.   

 

[HTKsos]

I haven't really looked into the UCGO stuff much but would this allow multiple missiles in one crate?
How would they attach to the ship?
Is it automatic when the cargo is deployed?
Is there coding in the ship that would need to be done to load them?
What happens to the missiles left behind if there are not enough points to attach them to?

I guess I could understand deploying the missile cargo and then using some sort of attachment manager to attach the missiles.

The Re-arm function would pop the missile vessels onto the hardpoint AP's.

It's an interesting idea.

Another idea that would only work with RTF ships is to only allow a reload when docked to another ship or station or when landed.

I'm looking at coding a pop-up panel for missile control and I think I could program in a reload function but it would only be usable with RTF ships.
I use thrusters to store the state of the QTD and FTL drives and I also use one to store the amount of reloads you could have. Every time you reload the thruster gets incremented and when it is maxed out you will no longer be able to reload. The only way to reset the reload count would be to dock or land.

I never thought of using a thruster for a counter like that... 

Another idea would be to have missile packs. Rather than having a ship custom designed to hold and launch missiles we could have a missile pack which is really a small ship attached to yours that you fire missiles from. You could reload a pack or just abandon it in favor of a fresh pack.

That Idea sounds best, that way you can have various launch behaviors, pass on vessel ID's for targeting, and use a com-code, similar to the launch-land com system. Could be expanded to a more modular system