Topic: Ancient Era Mod released

[Corbomite]

You know Tar, you could probably put the drone contol rating in the Strings file to to show up in the refit field and not have to forgo the crew quantity at all. Just a thought.

Are these mine laying fighters in the shiplist or fighter list?

[TarMinyatur]

The mine-laying fighters are in ftrlist.txt.

Thanks for the tip about putting drone control in the refit description. I guess I could fit a "Double Drone Control" description in there...and preserve the crew info.

[Corbomite]

I'm a litte confused then. Where does the mine come from? I have put ADD on fighters and never seen them lay a mine, or did I miss something?

I'm not sure how many characters the refit field will take, but you could always abbreviate it like DrC12 or something.

[TarMinyatur]

Corbomite, I've been trying to figure out how I did it the past hour...I stumbled across this feature when I was trying to simulate a Web device years ago. (A high hitpoint fighter dropping many mines can act as a psuedo-web.)

The mine is completely unexpected! I believe I set fighter's weapon to "1 ADD6 ALL". The ADD_6 column is inactive and empty. I chased the web-fighter and it dropped several mines.

The game version may have been EAW 2.036 or CE 2.6.6.0.

Have you ever seen a fighter use an ADD in SFC? I suppose PF's can use them, but they are ships, not shuttles. 

[Corbomite]

The mine is completely unexpected! I believe I set fighter's weapon to "1 ADD6 ALL". The ADD_6 column is inactive and empty. I chased the web-fighter and it dropped several mines.

Have you ever seen a fighter use an ADD in SFC? I suppose PF's can use them, but they are ships, not shuttles.

Yes, my Borg polyhedron fighters use an ADD6 just fine in OP. I believe that your problem (or strangely beneficial mistake) is that you are giving a firing arc to the ADD when it doesn't need one. They are not drones and have a default 360° firing arc. The arc column is for the number of reloads the ADD has and the ADD6/12 columns are to tell the ship/ftrlists how many units are installed. Without that entry the game doesn't know there are ADD on board (at least not entirely). Is there an unlimited number of mines on these things or do they run out eventually? Neat find in any case. I have a minelayer probe with some robot fighters that emerge. It might be a hoot to give the fighters mines too!

[TarMinyatur]

The supply of mines was at least 6 and perhaps unlimited.

Corbomite, can you activate fighter-based ADDs in EAW? I doubt I was using Orion Pirates to build mine-laying fighters, but I could have been using OP.

When AMDs became hit-and-runnable (in 2.005?), didn't the ADD_6 and ADD_12 columns become obsolete? I'm  sure that ADDs work properly if the ADD_n columns are blank in shiplist.txt. It may work differently for ftrlist.txt...
 

[Corbomite]

Corbomite, can you activate fighter-based ADDs in EAW? I doubt I was using Orion Pirates to build mine-laying fighters, but I could have been using OP.

I don't have EAW installed anymore so I can't say either way, but the ship and fighter lists are the same in both so I don't see why not.

When AMDs became hit-and-runnable (in 2.005?), didn't the ADD_6 and ADD_12 columns become obsolete? I'm  sure that ADDs work properly if the ADD_n columns are blank in shiplist.txt. It may work differently for ftrlist.txt...

I'm not sure I see the correlation, but the ADD6/12 columns are filled out in OP and if what you say is true Taldren would have been able to delete those entire columns without a detrimental effect, yet they went ahead and filled them out.

[TarMinyatur]

Well, I just tested CE. The arc of an ADD6 on a ship is irrelevant. I tried "ALL", "RH", "3", "1", and "0". The Antidrone Device always gets 2 reloads. The RH arc was not enforced, although the MFD displayed the 180 degree arc. I also removed the entry in the ADD_6 column. It made no difference -- I think it's no longer referenced.

Mine-laying shuttles might be a quirk found only in EAW. Going to download EAW now.

[Corbomite]

Make sure you are not confusing reloads with total ammo. The ADD starts loaded. A 1 in the ARC column should give it two total magazines, a 2 three total etc. I'm pretty sure Firesoul tested all this out for OP+ otherwise he wouldn't have messed with it at all, but it may be wrong for all we know. Leaving it blank may assume one reload.

[TarMinyatur]

Interesting. I'll check out the relationship between ammo and ADD arc again. So a "4" would be needed to get triple reloads? Perhaps the minimum reloads for an ADD is two. I've never seen anything but a 12 in the reloads box in the AMD panel at the start of a game.

I was able to get fighters to drop mines in Orion Pirates today. They didn't drop more than one mine. My memory of seeing them do this in modded EAW/CE may be false.

[Corbomite]

I've never seen anything but a 12 in the reloads box in the AMD panel at the start of a game.

If you were looking at an ADD12 that would be correct, assuming one reload. Of course the thing might actually be displaying total ammo. Looks like some testing is required to find out just what is going on.

I was able to get fighters to drop mines in Orion Pirates today. They didn't drop more than one mine. My memory of seeing them do this in modded EAW/CE may be false.

Was this using the method you outlined before?

[Corbomite]

I just looked at an ADD6 with one and two reloads and you're right, the display always reads 12 in the reloads section, so either reloads are hard set and adding more is irrelevant or the extra don't show up until the counter runs down. I'll have to do some counting later when I get the time.

[TarMinyatur]

I tried setting the ADD arc to "4" and this didn't increase the ammo supply. The AMD panel's display of "reloads = 12" didn't reset to 12 after the first 6 rounds were fired. I'm thinking the ADD6 is hard-coded to have exactly 2 reloads. Similar to how fighters always have 2 ECM and 2 ECCM, regardless of the entries in ftrlist.txt.

I've been attempting to reproduce the mine-laying fighters in OP. I had a tractor beam on my own fighter when it dropped a mine. The mine didn't activate until the fighter left the "hex". There were also enemy fighters on the map. No unexpected mines in other situations thus far. When I figure out the precise conditions, I'll reportthem.

What surprised me tonight was the deactivation of my tractor beam (which was holding a shuttle) when my far away target cloaked. My tractors should not turn off if my target cloaks! If I target a ship that has already cloaked, the tractors aren't deactivated. Going to test CE now... Ok, this bug isn't present in CE. Good.

[Corbomite]

It's not just the ADD6. I looked at an ADD12 and it has 24 reloads regardless as well. I could have sworn FS tested this, but I may be wrong. He may have just assumed. I never really paid much attention to ADD because I never relied entirely on it for PD aganst drones and fighters. To me it was just a bonus.

[Corbomite]

Tested a F-FFB that said it had one reload and it had two for a total of three magazines. I guess it is hard coded. I wonder where people got the impression that it was changeable because I remember much discussion about back in the day.

[TarMinyatur]

Yeah. I thought the very late refits got triple reloads (48 shots per ADD12!)...I can see how that might spark debate.

[TarMinyatur]

Here's the version for SFC 2.672.

A couple of experimental ships were unintentionally included in this version. I've fixed the ancientshiplist.txt. If you find a H-C or a X-Test, download the archive again or delete them from your shiplist. The H-C carrier can crash the game because its fighters aren't in the ftrlist.txt.