Well this is wierd

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by Arkcon:
I gotta get ready for work, but maybe I'll try engineless drones.

Oh foo, the drone hull also has a movement of one, same result.

Weird, engineless ships have zero movement

[geoschmo]

Arkcon, I played around a bit and you can get fighters with no movement by modding in an engine with -1 standard movement. And they have supply so they will fire. Unfortunately in my tests they seem to be subject to the same goofy sattelite launching script that clumps them all in one corner of the planet, so they won't really protect your planet entirely unless you have a tremendous number of them. I modded a smaller 5K fighter hull and put 800 on a planet and they only protected the planet on one side up to 3 deep, since you can't launch in Groups smaller than 5. You drones might do better since they launch in singles, but youd only get one shot and they would not be recovered after combat.

Also having no movement makes them extremely susecptable to longer range weapons on the other ships. Since they can't close the just sit there and get pasted without being able to fire back. Of course you could give them longer range weapons in a mod.

With the new mounts available in 1.78 you could even make a special class of fighter hull with sattelite type weapons. So your fighter/sats would launch during combat and be recovered at the end, and be in smaller Groups than sats typically are. That might have some uses in strategic combat games. But it won't really block access to your planet very effectively.

Geoschmo

[Arkcon]

Ah well, I was just playing around. Once I tried to mod a space station hull to be tiny. I dunno 80 kt or so. Called it a defence pod. Several of those would circle a planet, esp. with a sattelite group, and a spaceysrd base.

But you know what, I just put it in the text file, and it didn't show up. Maybe an extra blank line or the wrong position or something.

I guess I'm not cut out to be a modder

[Suicide Junkie]

Instead of modding in a -1 movement engine, just give the hull a zero-engine requirement, and a movement ability of -1. Add a quantum reactor ability to that sat-fighter hull, and you've got a sattelite. Or supply storage if you want limited ammo.

If you throw all those abilities into the hull, you don't have to worry about people abusing your fighter-sat components.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Instead of modding in a -1 movement engine, just give the hull a zero-engine requirement, and a movement ability of -1. Add a quantum reactor ability to that sat-fighter hull, and you've got a sattelite. Or supply storage if you want limited ammo.

If you throw all those abilities into the hull, you don't have to worry about people abusing your fighter-sat components.

By giving the hull a zero engine requirement I assume you mean changin the "uses engines" to false? Does that actually prevent you from putting engines on it? I wasn't sure.

Giving the hull a QR ability would make them like sats, but unfortunatly these fighter/sats could be fleeted with, unlike regular sats. It could give you a cheap and easy method of supplying your fleet for long durations. Simply keep one in storage on one of the ships and launch it and fleet with it whenever supplies get low. If you like this idea though that's not a bad thing to mod in. Just thought I'd point it out in case anybody didn't think of it.

Geoschmo

[Suicide Junkie]

Actually, the fleeting-with-fighters-for-resupply exploit was corrected in the latest patch, IIRC.

[geoschmo]

Really? Ok then. I knew the base fleet thing had been changed but didn't notice the fighter thing, I so rarely ever did that it didn't occur to me to test it.