Some tweaks to Bineshi's "Unleashed" mod

Hi SRC,

You should be able to log onto the Torn Stars site now. I'd love to see what some of those stacked pods look like.

And I like the sound of a Player Cargo mod very much. Sounds very useful, and like it would add a lot of interesting gameplay to the game.

I am a little rusty with the way vanilla EOC is setting up ships, as currently in US we are using a custom loadout system, which is significantly different from vanilla. I still can't figure out what could have caused the Pinguin to behave the way you were describing.

Hi Cambragol,

I'll try to upload images to the TS/US site now, and then link them here.

I'm rethinking my desire to double the "under-spine" dockports of the Pinquin. I think that Bineshi's original intention was to have Pinguin able to simultaneously carry 5 REM fighters and the 5 AI Makwa wingmen. You could REM link to one of the fighters, launch and control both the 5 Makwas and the Pinguin as wingmen. He created special commands with their own keybindings to give commands to the Pinguin when operating a REM fighter.

I have the 10 underspine cargo ports working nicely (as for the Jafs version of the Pinguin), but it would look odd to dock REM fighters to these ports, as they are invisible and hang vertically out from the spine. In Bineshi's original Pinguin configuration, there were ports that resemble turret fighter ports flush to the underside of the Pinguin spine, and these could dock REM fighters or cargo.

The double pod stacking function doubles the capacity of the Pinguin, and that is probably enough for most purposes, so I think I'll migrate back to Bineshi's original configuration.

I'll put up some screen captures; they look pretty cool, (for which I claim no credit; the graphics of EoC are marvelous, and Bineshi did a lot of visual improvement as part of the Unleashed mod. I cannot praise his work enough).

I hope that this is an image of the Pinguin with some double-loaded pods

http://www.torn-stars.com/smfforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=484.0;attach=110;image

The "cargo_pod"s and the "containerpod" are docked on their bases; I have since moved the dockport to the side and added a second port opposite so that pods may be double stacked to them.

That didn't work; here are some urls to images uploaded to the Torn Stars/Unstable Space site:

a) The Pinguin in Act 0 with one Makwa drone and some double loaded cargo pods:

www.torn-stars.com/smfforum/inde ... =110;image

b) A hacked user-playable Venice freighter with a full double stacked load of cargo:

www.torn-stars.com/smfforum/inde ... =112;image

c) Cal's Spider Tug towing a long cargo pod train

www.torn-stars.com/smfforum/inde ... =114;image

d) Same ship and cargo, with a view from the rear

www.torn-stars.com/smfforum/inde ... =116;image

A further option for the Pinguin cargo bay/REM fighter hangar deck would be to have a mix of

a) the REM-fighter dockable "pinguin_port"s, which could each dock a single REM fighter or a single cargo pod (or 2 pods with pod stacking)

and

b) the dual side-by-side cargo-freight pods that could dock two pods side by side (four pods with stacking) as does the Jafs Pinguin or the standard City class freighter.

Since one can only pilot one REM fighter at a time, having the capacity to carry five of them makes sense only if you expect to lose several in the course of a single mission. And carrying more of them into battle than you expect to use also risks their loss from weapon impact damage if the Pinguin comes under attack. As they are expensive to build (15000 recycle units in Unleashed -- I also have Future Trader selected, but I don't think that affects the manufacturing costs), this does not seem a sensible thing. So perhaps one could reduce the REM fighter hangar deck to just 2 or 3 REM-fighter dockable "Pinguin_port"s and the rest of the lower spine could carry the double City-style cargo dockports.

I'll try a Pinguin configuration with 2 REM fighter ports and 3X2 cargo ports. That gives a backup REM fighter if one is destroyed during use, and gives 3 additional cargo ports for 6 additional pod capacity (using pod stacking) compared with the original Pinguin configuration. The total pod capacity (with pod stacking) of this configuration would be <s>18</s> 14 pods, compared with a notional maximum of 22 pods if all the lower-spine ports were double freight-cargo ports. This triples the original design cargo capacity of the Pinquin but preserves the ability to carry two REM fighters. I reckon that the REM fighters will not be used up in combat lightly, so this may be a good mix of cargo versus fighter capacity.

(added 3/19/2012) given the (invisible) character of the cargo ports under the spine of the City-class freighter and the Pinguin -- they hang down into the space below the spine and pods dock by sliding horizontally onto the invisible ports, one could devote just one of the 5 bays to REM fighters by putting a pair of back-to-back REM fighter ports (Bineshi called these "pinguin_port.ini") in one of the bays, able to dock two REM fighters, and then the remaining 4 bays could have double cargo ports for 4 x 2 (x 2 with pock stacking) = 16 total cargo bay capacity, and 18 total including the nose dockport.

And this raises the tantalizing possibility of filling the entire cargo bay with these opposed fighter dockports and turning the Pinguin into a medium capacity fighter carrier (15 fighters). One would want these to be AI controlled fighters rather than REM fighters.

It would (also) be very cool (not doable in EoC, I expect, but perhaps in US) to be able to configure the Pinguin's cargo/REM fighter hangar deck to choose the mix of REM fighter and cargo dockports per the mission requirements. I'll add this to the "to investigate list" for the EoC tweaks to Unleashed. That would be a neat upgrade to the Pinguin, to be able to adjust, within the game, the lower spine port mix.

Currently in US we have no REM fighters. However I don't think that would preclude using some of the functions you might need to achieve a configurable REM fighter loadout.