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i know nothing about modding
but i was wondering if it was possible to make capital ships and frigates "drive-able", i mean that you can jump inside and drive them

and even have seats for gunners


take for example that new map where you fight as rebels or empire inside a star destroyer, there is a nice bridge, its very well done.
so imagine if you could stand where darth vader stands in the movies and press "E" (or your custom enter/exit button) and slowly turn that gigantic star destroyer.
or sit on one of those computers and shoot a turbolaser.

wouldn't that be great?

I can't be sure, but I think that would be heavily lag inducing. However, it's very possible, the simplest way being to switch a ship model to the capital ship model in it's .odf. However, before you even try that, read all the documentations, and THEN start modding.

It is impossible to fly a capital ship, because then the command posts and spawn points and vehicle spawns and capture/control regions would stay still and just sit there in space.

And that's not to mention the fact that capital ships have four separate meshes.

It is possible to rig a frigate, however, to be flyable.

I believe there's a topic on making ships pilotable somewhere. However, motherships, like the ISD are never made that way because the physics don't allow for it (units move independently of the ship, if memory serves), you can't move things like regions, or spawn paths, and the fact that the large ships are actually several separate models placed next to one another. If it were an empty, solid, ship (no CPs, no other units inside, all one model), it may be doable and might play out ok.

I should also mention you could move ships using ZE animation, where you could link multiple objects so they move as one. Although you can't control the ship ingame, it could provide the illusion of ships trying to maneuver.

Entering a heavy turbolaser turret wouldn't be too difficult to do, since it's just turret, like any other in the game. In fact, that's the easiest of your suggestions. It should be as simple as a quick odf edit, and making the linkage to a turret chair in ZE.

ok, so capital ships can't be moved

so, what if we make a hge change in space battles?
what if now, not only fighters and bombers dogfight in space, but also frigates
is it possible to make the space maps dimension bigger?
so that we could place two or three more frigates and have more space to manuver

Frigates are doable.

Changing the size of a space map can be done via the lua command SetWorldExtents(). Things like this I'm pretty sure are covered somewhere in the docs. Make sure you look those over, as it will eliminate a lot of basic questions.

Let it be mentioned that you'd have to scale the frigate down - otherwise good luck trying to fit it in a hanger.

Good point, you cannot "enter" the frigate if it is in space. You may be able to make it so it is like a remote turret like the wookie uses, or something similar to that you would just have to make it so you go to a command chair on the main ship. Or have it so it is selfpiloted but chances are it will just crash into things.

Yeah, frag has a good solution to that. You could put the bridge somewhere out of site and then you hop in the chair and remote control the ship. Perhaps you could place the bridge inside of the frigate itself and have a spawnpoint inside of the bridge, then you could auto force the player/unit into the seat when they spawn. (I forget, did we ever figure out how to do that?)

But I have a gut feeling that vehicles of that size will have some issues relative to how it is controlled. Vehicles in SWBF2 weren't meant to be that size and from experience, if it wasn't intended to be used that way, there will probably be some difficulties associated with it. Maybe memory pool or 'control' problems. I dunno.

trainmaster611 wrote:Perhaps you could place the bridge inside of the frigate itself and have a spawnpoint inside of the bridge,

I don't think that you can move spawn points, so you'd be creating the same problem you have with the capital ships. Also, if you force a unit inside a vehicle, I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter where they spawn.

To throw a further monkey wrench in the thinking gears, you may want to take into account that the frigates are outside the landing regions. I'm not sure if that matters any, but there might be some complications involving getting into vehicles outside landing regions. For one thing, you can only enter a vehicle if it is in a landing region, right? And the frigate is outside one, ergo it ought to be impossible. But it has no pilot, so there is a vacancy that you could fill in the pilot's seat, and anyway without a pilot it's not going anywhere. Assuming you can get into the pilot's chair of a frigate, there is a further thing to ponder: landing regions make it impossible to land outside them. Does that mean you can't take off outside them either?

Fiodis wrote:Does that mean you can't take off outside them either?

No.

Ok, thanks. There's the other things to consider.

And something else: you won't be able to get out of it, since the landing regions are inside hangers and there's no way that thing's fitting in a hanger.

do you remember the death star dogfight map?
that where, as a rebel, you spawn on Yavin IV, jumped into an x-wing and when you get high enough you are "teleported" to the deathstar
may be we could do the same as the modder of that map
and build a landing zone in one planet, where frigates spawn next to the edge of a platform
like in this picture

http://lh6.ggpht.com/quedificiles/R9l_q ... umb%5B4%5D

and when you get the frigate to some heigh in the sky you are teleported to space and start a fight there

may be the enemy stays the same as in default space maps
i mean:
"a star destroyers attacks corellia, the corellian space command lunches their frigates to attack the incoming enemy"


and for the frigates, i was thinking how many seats should they have? it depends on how many turrets, maybe 3? one armed with a heavy laser to strike the enemy shields and parts and two anti aircraft laser to defend from bombers and fighters

I should note that a landing region doesn't have to be inside a hangar bay. It's a region, so you can put it virtually anywhere. All you really need is an object the ship can land on. wilkos has the right idea here. The degree of realism displayed is basically a matter of desire.

The number of seats and what weapons they have is up to you, so long as it stays within the game's limitations. If I remember correctly, the max is 5 positions, pilot included. Keep in mind any turrets would need to be modeled on, if they are to move with the ship, since turrets as used in the stock game are individual models. Barring that, you can have weapons fire from the frigate's own hardpoints, if I'm thinking through this correctly.

Frisbeetarian wrote:I don't think that you can move spawn points

You can't, but you can be forced spawn at any matrix (basically any object, unit, or region).

I'll toss out that the Dogfighting Death Star map didn't use teleports to get from the "planet" to the Trench.

But yeah, the degree of realism is up to the modder. I just think that realism is fairly important, unless you completely junk it and go Dann_Boeing style.

What I was thinking of when I posted that was that one could set it so you were forced into a frigate that was sitting in space, on invisible geometry. It may not exactly seem realistic, but it wouldn't be entirely disruptive, either.

I was reading this yesterday and got a crazy idea about making a pilot-able capital ship.

You'd make a series of turrets with LUA weapons and when you fire those weapons it plays an animation (the kind made in ZE) that moves all the ship's parts and vehicle spawn and all.
Of course, you can't move spawn nodes with the anim. So you'd make a command walker with the geometry of a CP and use that instead.

Of course, you can't move spawn nodes with the anim.

exactly why it won't work