FC Forums

Right, I'm about to add the aspects of fighters and other small craft to the central thread, but I'm going to run this through here first:

It has been said quite a few times that fighters will be modular, and I've been coming up with ideas as to what they could be.

Part one: modules

This is the most important part, there would b various bodies, for different roles and tech levels, and what other modules can be attached will be governed by this, so for example

Note, Tier (number) represents the different tech levels, Tier 1 is low tech, Tier 5 is high tech

Tier X fighter body: accepts all forms of Tier X and below fighter wings, cockpits, tails, engines and weapons

Tier Y bomber bodies: accepts all forms of Tier Y and below wings, cockpits, tails, defences (so things like a turret), engines and weapons (bomb bays would not be modules, and the payload would be determined by the body rather than another module).

Tier K gunship bodies: accepts all Tier K and below wing, cockpits, tails, turrets engines and weapons

Tier Z drop ship bodies: accepts all Tier Z and belowwings, cockpits, tails, engines and weapons for the higher tiers, again, max payload will be determined by body type, rather than by additional modules.

Now, some stuff about how you could arm a fighter/small craft

When the pilot is in the cockpit, they can access a menu, where they may place the fuel, weapons, ammo and other special features (e.g. Shield generators) this would be similar to what Flans mod does.

Now, each module will support additions, so, wing modules would support the primary weapons of the craft, so a Tier 1 wing would carry 1 weapon, a tier 2 wing 2 and so on, but for wing modules, both wings would not have to be the same, so you could have a T3 body, with a T2 left wing, and a T1 right wing.

Tail modules would contain anything like shield generators, or other utilities.

The cockpit would probably not control much, maybe some manoeuvring boosters or something.

The engine would not have any additions.

You would not be able to swap what modules your fighter uses mid flight, but you could swap what additions are installed on them.


Part 2: crafting

There are a few ways fighters could potentially be crafted, one is placing all of the modules like blocks in the world, another is placing the respective modules in a crafting grid, or they could be made in a similar fashion to ships, that is being made using a 3D crafting environment, where you can design the fighter and save it as a blueprint, and possibly preload it with weapons, then put the necessary materials in for it to be crafted.



Anyone have any extra ideas/ see any problems/ anything I've left out?

Prototype wrote:When the pilot is in the cockpit, they can access a menu, where they may place the fuel, weapons, ammo and other special features (e.g. Shield generators) this would be similar to what Flans mod does.

Not sure about this. Adding guns and shields to your fighter while you're sitting in the cockpit would be kinda weird. Flan's Mod doesn't let you do that; fuel and ammo are added that way but weaponry has to be built into the plane or tank when it's crafted, which is a feature I really like. I've been thinking about how fighters could work for a while, so I'll probably type it out completely when I'm at home and have time to do so.

maybe the pilot can activate/deactivate these instead, not too sure about that part.

Adding ammo in a screen similar to Flan's seems a bit...unclassy, as well. Something discussed in another thread was to just have a 'rearming' module that would put new ammo in fighters within a certain radius. Having a menu at all doesn't seem all that necessary, especially if a way could be found to add simple indicators to those cockpits you make. (like, green to red pixels for missile count, or something).

Tiel wrote:Adding ammo in a screen similar to Flan's seems a bit...unclassy, as well. Something discussed in another thread was to just have a 'rearming' module that would put new ammo in fighters within a certain radius. Having a menu at all doesn't seem all that necessary, especially if a way could be found to add simple indicators to those cockpits you make. (like, green to red pixels for missile count, or something).

Or, you manually add the ammo into a storage unit in the fighter, then either have an automatic reload module, or click a button to reload.

I think we should have a system like the Steves carts mod has, where you put modules on a specific hull and then assemble it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5wtGQzd ... 3BA45C3464

Well I don't like the waiting , feels unnecessary especially at the rate vessels will get blown up in the game. As I said before I suggest deciding the properties depending on items you put in a crafting gird like stuff. This is responsible for everything from armor to shield ratings and weapon mounts (so if you want for example you can put the shields in the wing ... it doesn't matter as long as you have enough place on the greed to do it. The model that is attached to the module will dictate the grid size.

Another idea to save the waiting is to save blueprints of fighters, so you can just bung the blueprint in and make the ship, rather than select everything from scratch.

Just like schematics in the shipyard ...

Well yeah but blueprints sounds cooler, at least for fighters, doesn't sound so good for ships.

How about holo-prints? That's a cool name.