Topic: Drogues!

[Hexx]

Yes Scippy this is for you.

IIRC ages ago you had a server with drogues. (Day of the Eagle I believe)
How did you achieve this (specifically -again iirc the drogue was "attached" to the ship)

Did it work?
Were there issues with it?

Would have sent you a PM, but my outbox times out before anything gets sent, and although this does a take a bit, it does post.

(Ask Bonk for one little favour and he mucks my connections up...bastard.. undoubtedly he'll blame it on all the site I visited today.. but I know the truth )

[Barack Beard]

I think Scippy just made Pfs with no engines, just APR.

They worked fine.

[GDA-S'Cipio]

Yes Scippy this is for you.

IIRC ages ago you had a server with drogues. (Day of the Eagle I believe)
How did you achieve this (specifically -again iirc the drogue was "attached" to the ship)

Did it work?
Were there issues with it?

Chuut has it right:   I used pf without engines for the drogues, and an oversized t-bomb model for the model.  I pretty pulled the stats straight out of SFB.

As for "issues", there were a few minor "things", but nothing I'd call an issue.

1) In SFB, a drogue is towed by a special tractor tether that operates out of the shuttle bay.   There is no way to model this in SFC, so the players will have to use their main tractor to tow the drogue.  This works fine, but does mean that it is harder for them to anchor an enemy (or shove a firiend into a rock) since their tractor may often be occupied.

2) In SFB, towing small objects like drogues (or shuttles or fighters) does not slow down your ship.   In SFC it does, so those towing drogues will be a little slower.  Many often feel that the added firepower is worth it, however.   I especially enjoyed carrying a defensive drogue and simply dumping it out the hatch whenever I was about to be overwhelmed by a wave of drones or fighters; no towing needed for quick relief.

3) I didn't want all the AI ships to be having a drogue, but if you don't give each ship a "starter drogue" in the shiplist then they can't buy any in the shipyard.  To fix this, I gave each ship a "shuttle" as a placeholder in the fighter bay.  This worked out rather well, I thought, as it was neat watching the AI launch admin shuttles for a change.

4) Remember to give a drone control rating to any drogue with drones.  The Fed drone drogues couldn't fire any drones the first day, and that was a bit of an issue.  (For them, anyway.  The Roms saw no problem with it......)

5) I used drogues as a sweetener for mainline non-command ships.  I put them on the CA, but not the CC, and so on, and definitely not on drone or marine or assault or carrier variants.

If you want, I can try to dig up the old DOE shiplist so you can see how I added them in.   I'm sure I still have it somewhere. 

-S'Cipio