Topic: Can Romulans have fighters in SFC2/OP?

[Captain Pierce]

I know they have pseudo-fighters already, but I'm just wondering if you can tweak things to the point of having standard SFC2-style fighter groups...  got an idea for a ship, and it kind of needs to have fighters rather than PF's... 

[KOTH-KieranXC, Ret.]

Somehow the D2 guys figured it out, because we had Romulan carriers with fighters in GW5. You may want to try with somebody over there that was involved with the shiplist- I don't know who it was, offhand.

[FPF-DieHard]

yes, we did it on GW4, GW5, and SGO4 using donors

[Captain Pierce]

Any hints on how to accomplish this?  I was playing a bit with ShipEdit earlier tonite, but my lack of results there is what prompted me to post in the first place... 

[Corbomite]

DH is the leading expert, but it involves placing races that have fighters into the slots of races that don't and vice-versa. The order is very important as the game goes down the shiplist from top to bottom.

[Kid Carrson]

In our modified shiplists we have PF's for all of the races.  You could do the same type of thing for Romulans with fighters in reverse I believe.  How?

First, BACKUP whatever you already like.  Don't risk it!!!

Then, like someone already on this thread was saying: by using substitutions. 

First, create your Romulan carrier using (my favorite) ship edit.  You can put up to 6 fighters per slot in each of the 4 fighter bays (although this may be too much for an older machine to handle).

Second, find a donor race that has fighters (say Federation).  I'd pull up the shiplist with EXCEL, I then insert a row near the very top of the spec list in Excel.  Then I'd copy an exact duplicate of the romulan carrier line up to the new vacation line near the top.  Then I'd change the Romulan designation to the federation designation.  Then I also change the ship class to freighter (so that the Feds can't use the ship when selecting ships). 

Make sure you've made your romulan fighter in the fighterlist (it's a separate file distinct and different from the shiplist file). 

And you should be set to go!!!  We do multiplayer skirmishes mostly.  This technique works great for multiplayer and single player skirmishes. 

I can not comment on any issues for campaigns. 

Good luck and I hope this helps.

Kid Carrson   

[Captain Pierce]

Somebody remind me to read Kid's post again when I'm sober...    Thanks for the shout-out, dude... 

[Magnum357]

Hey Kid Carrson, could you use Orion Slots for substitution if you are using OP?

[Kid Carrson]

I believe that should also work fine.  The key is to put the duplicate copy near the top of the shiplist, and use a race or cartel that would have fighters. 

For mine, since I have PF's for all races, we have about 100 ships or so that do this trick, using the Gorn (a PF race) as the substitute.  So the first 100 or so lines have the duplicates at the top (with Gorn designated and the freighter designation).   

I hope this makes some sense.

KC R

[Rod ONeal]

I believe that should also work fine. The key is to put the duplicate copy near the top of the shiplist, and use a race or cartel that would have fighters.

For mine, since I have PF's for all races, we have about 100 ships or so that do this trick, using the Gorn (a PF race) as the substitute. So the first 100 or so lines have the duplicates at the top (with Gorn designated and the freighter designation).

I hope this makes some sense.

KC R

If I'm reading your tut correctly it'll cause all sorts of problems to the Gorn Shipyard for campaigns. You'll get the *copied* ships showing up for purchasing in your Gorn campaign and you won't get any of the real Gorn ships. Plus you need to list the PFs and the tenders in both the Gorn section and in the actual race that'll be using them.

Put the copied ships actually in the Gorn section. Not seperately at the top of the shiplist. You can't have Gorn (or any other race) in 2 seperate places in the shiplist for campaigns. The game will read the first group of Gorns only. It won't look further down the shiplist for more Gorn ships. Which, in this case, are the real Gorns.

List the copied ships as "Special" in the Gorn section. This will stop them from showing up as available for Gorns in campaigns.

To stop the copied ships from showing up as Gorns in Skirmish mode list them as some hull type that's nonplayable. I.E. Starbase, for example.

[Captain Pierce]

So, what I'm getting here is that it's A) the hell of a lot of work and B) not something that you're going to easily do if you download one ship that's supposed to be a Rom carrier (with another ship that's supposed to be a Rom fighter, of course).    Guess we'll go the PF route with this one, then...

Thanks to everyone for the help, though--much appreciated. 

[Kid Carrson]

Rod's the man on this topic. 

But Captain, I don't think it's really that hard to do for skirmishes (we don't do the campaigns, but have instead been working on our own little risk-like campaign map and strategy component for our LAN). 

It sounds like Rod clearly knows how to work the nuisances for campaigns. 

I am NOT a computer techie.  Heck, the veterans on this forum probably taught me half or more of what I know about computers!  Heck, I still use Windows 98SE on all of my firm's computers!!

You should give it a try!!  It might be alot of fun.  BUT Backup your regular shiplist (just in case).

KC

 

[starblazer]

Well Captain it looks like you have a plan partially envisioned. Maybe if you posted some pics of the romulan shuttle you would get more of a response. Hint, Hint. Oh, what am I saying I just love seeing pics. 

[Captain Pierce]

The original post was made to try and figure out what to do with a ship we had planned, but haven't yet begun on.

Many moons ago, there was a novel written called "Final Frontier."  (This was so long ago that it was before Star Trek V borrowed the name.    )  It's the story of the first mission of the USS Enterprise, under the command of Captain Robert April, and with First Officer George Kirk.    In the course of the action, the Enterprise took an unscheduled detour into Romulan space, where they encountered...

...the Swarm. 

The idea behind the Swarm was that it was a way to patrol space near the Romulan Homeworlds.  A Swarm is a group of six impulse-only "fighters" (although the implicaiton is that these are much more than fighters, as multiple decks are mentioned, and they even carry their own shuttlecraft) used for patrol duties; a warp-capable mothership carries multiple swarms (the impression I got was that it could carry at least 4 Swarms, but that's not really specified) to their patrol areas and drops them off. 

As described in the novel, the ship is largely impossible to a game, let alone real life:

Space hummed now.  Through it soared a gigantic winged craft, painted black as the space around it, but glossy and decorated with metallic painted feathers.  From one wing, one at a time, bunches of feathers began to detach, like shingles falling from a rooftop in strong wind.  Each bunch of feathers, once free of the bunch layered above it, became a ship.  Where only one side of feathers, one wing, had been showing as it rested layered uner the ship on top of it, each veseel now showed itself to be a small version of the mothership.  Like an organized molt, the Swarm of six patrol ships detached from the mothership which had delivered it to its patrol space at hyperlight speed.  Now capable of only sublight propulsion, the six would be alone in this interior space.

Clearly a Swarm of ships this large would be impractical in SFC.  Our idea was to either A) make the Swarm ships fighters, and launch them in groups of six, or B) make them PF's, and have the mothership carry only about 6.  The latter seems easiest to pull off in SFC... 

[Kid Carrson]

I really liked that book.  I Read it years and years ago.  Nice!!

Kid Carrson