Lifeboats

[The Wanderer]

I noticed that there is a file for Procyon Lifeboats and now I have an insatiable curiosity to find out what they look like. I tried to make one playable to that end, but when I try to select it to add it to my fleet I get "Loading Ship Data" and the game freezes indefinately. I set "Is Lifeboat" to False and "Availible in Multiplayer" to True. Is there something that I am missing?

On a similar note; is there a way to make ships of all nations drop Lifeboats in skirmishes? I love the mechanic in the Campaign, and while the Victory Points are useless in Skirmishes, I think it would be a cool (and slighly more realistic) mechanic. I have no idea how to go about that.

[Robotic Rampage]

Lifeboats cannot drop in skirmishes where the player selects the fleet. However they can be dropped in historical maps and for NPC ships. Those are set in the world files with:

00000003 Action List
{
Type String 'Set Lifeboat Creation State'
Group Name String 'pirate 1'
Boolean String 'TRUE'
}

But this is what they look like: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1179716141

[The Wanderer]

Thank you for the reply and the screenshot. I knew it would have outrigs! What about skirmishes with NPC fleets (I play in single player)? Though, based on what has to be edited, I would guess no.

[The Wanderer]

I have looked in a lot of the world files, and I cannot find the section you quoted. Nothing like it exists in my world files. The only mission that has that section is "Pirate Convoy Raid", none of the historical or skirmish maps have it. Is there a way I can add it? If so, how?

[Robotic Rampage]

They're not in the world files at the moment. You have to add in the above section. Usually you can add it right below where it defines the music. Once its in, you have to find the ship group you want the lifeboats to apply to, and make one of these sections for each ship group.

[The Wanderer]

Ah, fun. I will do my best to figure it out. Cheers!

[Robotic Rampage]

There's something I don't understand about the Procyon lifeboat:

I remember seeing the Procyon lifeboat from my childhood. I remember seeing it in Mission 12 and knew what it looked like long before I started looking at the gamefiles.

Yet somehow, not only has no one ever seen these things, but they're apparently NOT in Mission 12... which has me scratching my head as to how I knew what they look like, despite them not appearing in-game...

[The Wanderer]

Perhaps you had an earlier version of the game. Mission 12 is where I would have expected to see them as well. The only Prcoyon vessels destroyed before that are ironclads, and I doubt (based on the story) that they would drop lifeboats.

I tried following your intstructions and broke the level. I tried it on "Ambush" and made a section for all four fleets. Do I need to renumber the action? If so, how do I know what to renumber it? As is, the only change I made from what you posted was the fleet name.

[Robotic Rampage]

Did you increase "NumActions Int" for the group?

[The Wanderer]

No, I did not.

[Robotic Rampage]

Basically actions are divided into groups. With that line and number being how many actions are in the group. If you increase that number by 1, that should be a step in the right direction.