[Help/Advice] Creating Ships and Sending them to War

[ThePrivateer]

So, I'm back at work on Hell's Trinity and want to have a very simple little event, which would be:
A station creates several other ships and sends them off to fight a random enemy Station in the system.

I don't think this should be to hard, but as my experience with Trans LISP is almost, but not quite, entirely zero, I need some advice. I noticed RPC wants to do a similar thing, but I'm not doing this on a sovereign level and all I want is the ships to just fly straight to the enemy and attack. I want to make it clear that I will be custom making these ships so that they are designed to die. I dont' expect any ships to survive the suicide mission, but if they do, I want them to return home to the station that made them.

Is this hard? I assume it's achievable, but was hoping someone around here could give me some basic coding and/or advice. This would help lots!

[Aury]

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(block Nil
     (setq theShip (sysCreateShip &scMyShip; (objGetPosition gSource) &svMySov;))
     (setq theTarget (sysFindObject gSource "[[criteria]]"))
     (shpOrder theShip 'attack theTarget)
     (shpOrder theShip 'barrelRoll)
     (shpOrder theShip 'gaurd gSource)
)

That's a simple script + command queue that spawns a ship at the position of the station, finds another space obj according to criteria you can set, and then queues the orders to Attack the target, Do a Barrel Roll, and then Guard the station (which involves returning to the station).

Thats just a little sample of what you can do with it, obviously you can get more complex by spawning more ships, or even assigning them to a wing leader, etc. Though you'd have to take into account more things with those situations..


(the barrelRoll part was a joke btw, that's not actually a valid order)

[Drako Slyith]

You can also have this code in the station:

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<Construction maxConstruction="however many of the following choices you want" constructionRate="Typically around 400-500, depends" >
<Table>
  <Ship chance="number" count="number" class="&scShipClass" orders="attacknearestenemy"/>
</Table>
</Construction>

That makes a ship of that type every so often then tells them to attack the nearest enemy. I find it useful for that kind of thing. The code is in an Ares Shipyard if you want to look for yourself.

[Aury]

That would cause them to go after ships though :/

The fact you can define target parameters in here makes it a good deal more powerful.

[Drako Slyith]

That's true I guess. Perhaps in some future release George could include in the ship field

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orders="attack" targetCriteria="criteria"

Then you wouldn't have to do the scripting.

[ThePrivateer]

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(block Nil
     (setq theShip (sysCreateShip &scMyShip; (objGetPosition gSource) &svMySov;))
     (setq theTarget (sysFindObject gSource "[[criteria]]"))
     (shpOrder theShip 'attack theTarget)
     (shpOrder theShip 'barrelRoll)
     (shpOrder theShip 'gaurd gSource)
)

That's a simple script + command queue that spawns a ship at the position of the station, finds another space obj according to criteria you can set, and then queues the orders to Attack the target, Do a Barrel Roll, and then Guard the station (which involves returning to the station).

Thats just a little sample of what you can do with it, obviously you can get more complex by spawning more ships, or even assigning them to a wing leader, etc. Though you'd have to take into account more things with those situations..


(the barrelRoll part was a joke btw, that's not actually a valid order)

Thanks Wolfy...this could be a silly question but where does this go? <Events>, right?

And what 'Criteria' would an Ares Outpost be?

Thanks in advance!

[Aury]

You would want.... I think "aNTE +ares" - that /should/ select the closest living alive ares station, if T=station. I'm pretty sure it does.

[Prophet]

In your station you'll need two events:

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<Events>
  <OnCreate>
    ;; start a timer that runs every 100 secs to send out ships
    (sysAddObjRecurringTimerEvent 1500 gSource 'Attack)
  </OnCreate>
  <Attack>
    ;; spawn code goes here
  </Attack>
</Events>

As for finding an appropriate target:

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(setq target (random (sysFindObject nil "tA+AresMajor")))

Will find a random station with the attribute AresMajor
NOTE: if no valid target exists the ships will either pile up (frozen with no orders) or simply gate out, so I would reccomend you check for a target BEFORE spawning the ship

[Aury]

Oh, the attribute for ares stations is AresMajor? >.> I mus'tve changed it in TSB.

[Drako Slyith]

"Ares" is for all ares stations, "AresMajor" is for shipyards and Communes.

[ThePrivateer]

OKay, thanks for all the help so far guys, but I have a problem.

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<Events>
		<OnCreate>
   		(sysAddObjRecurringTimerEvent 1500 gSource 'Attack)
		</OnCreate>
		<Attack>
		(block Nil
     (setq theShip (sysCreateShip &scCenturionX; (objGetPosition gSource) &svCommonwealth;))
     (setq theTarget (sysFindObject gSource "tA+HellAresOutpost"))
     (shpOrder theShip 'attack theTarget)
     (shpOrder theShip 'guard gSource)
)
		</Attack>
</Events>

That's what I have. The Centurion is being created at a completely unrelated station from where the <Event> is in. It is being created at the center of the sun and then flying straight to the Commonwealth Station where the coding is. Without attacking or doing anything.

I'm guessing something (setq theShip (sysCreateShip &scCenturionX; (objGetPosition gSource) &svCommonwealth;)) here is going wrong?

BTW "HellAresOutpost" is one of the Attributes my Ares stations have -- they are modded Ares Stations from the Vanilla game.

[RPC]

I might have found it.

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<Events>
      <OnCreate>
         (sysAddObjRecurringTimerEvent 1500 gSource 'Attack)
		 (sysAddObjRecurringTimerEvent 100 gplayership "Success")<-- example from Xelerus
      </OnCreate>
      <Attack>
      (block Nil
		 (setq theShip (sysCreateShip &scCenturionX; (objGetPosition gSource) &svCommonwealth;))
		 (setq theTarget (sysFindObject gSource "tA+HellAresOutpost"))
		 (shpOrder theShip 'attack theTarget)
		 (shpOrder theShip 'guard gSource)
			)
      </Attack>
</Events>

Basically 'Attack needs to be "Attack" based off of the Xelerus example.

[ThePrivateer]

still not working RPC...I can't make heads or tails of it. Now with your coding, the ships aren't even being created!

edit:

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<Events>
      <OnCreate>
	  (block Nil
       (sysAddObjRecurringTimerEvent 100 gSource 'Attack)
       (sysAddObjRecurringTimerEvent 100 gplayership "Success")
	   )
      </OnCreate>
      <Attack>
      (block Nil
       (setq theShip (sysCreateShip &scCenturionX; (objGetPosition gSource) &svCommonwealth;))
       (setq theTarget (sysFindObject gSource "tA+HellAresOutpost"))
       (shpOrder theShip 'attack theTarget)
       (shpOrder theShip 'guard gSource)
         )
      </Attack>
</Events>

Ships spawning now, but at the sun still.

[RPC]

Privateer: Don't add

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(sysAddObjRecurringTimerEvent 100 gplayership "Success")

. It was just the example I got off of Xelerus. The only change I made was to add the "" around the event. The reason why it didn't work the 1st time was because the <-- should have been <!--whatever I said --> so that Trans would ignore it.

[ThePrivateer]

Privateer: Don't add

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(sysAddObjRecurringTimerEvent 100 gplayership "Success")

. It was just the example I got off of Xelerus. The only change I made was to add the "" around the event.

Doesn't change a thing - the Ships still spawn at the center of the sun and fly straight to this station. Without doing anything else. Just to check, I have these attributes for my Ares Station:

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attributes=			"enemy,envAir,envEarth,envFire,envWater,populated,HellAresOutpost,ares"

I have to go for the night anyway -- if anyone solves it please post and I'll check it out in the morning. Thanks to everyone for helping out!