Carrier Launch System Help

[jstenholt]

What are some of the clever tricks you have come up with to create functional, automatic drone launch systems? I'm currently attempting to design one that is fully hands off and RP friendly, but have hit a bit of a puzzle. Looking for inspiration to help me solve this.

• I've got a hangar full of bays for small-ish sized fighters, 20x15x5, each fighter has it's own bay and there are two rows of six bays pointing inwards to the center of the hangar.

• The centerline of the hangar is just a rail that all the bays feed into, it moves to the front of the hangar and then uses pickup rails to simulate an elevator that brings the drone down one level to the launch tube.

• A door at the top of the elevator closes once the drone reaches the launch tube, and once the door fully closes it triggers the door at the end of the tube to open.

• The launch tube door uses a timer to close after the drone launches, and then the elevator airlock door opens once the launch tube door closes.

So the system looks and works great for single fighters, but when trying to launch multiple fighters, the hangar backs up instantly and becomes unusable. I've tried many things to get the system functional, but because area triggers and activation gates do not work with docked entities I've had no success.

Basically, I need a way to generate a NOT signal any time there is a drone in the process of being launched. That not signal needs to set the rail speed controller in the main hangar to zero.

Let me know how you would solve this, willing to let you see the WiP on NASS or where ever is convenient.

 

[Sen OTS Tier]

An activation module at the beginning of the launch rail to set the speed to zero, and one at the end to restart it should work, if I'm understanding your system correctly.

 

[KiloZulu]

Sounds like you need an activation module at each fighter bay and on the launch rail, with some AND's tying them all together. So, if the launch rail is clear (not active) AND the first fighter has launched, then send the next fighter to launch. If the launch rail is clear AND both of those fighters have launched, then send the next fighter, and so on. I don't think you would need any timers or area triggers for such a setup...
[doublepost=1477439459,1477439226][/doublepost]Launching has always been easy, imho. Recovery has always been a bear for me. Drones always seem to get confused about where they should land.

 

[jstenholt]

Yeah, I've not even thought about how I'm going to do retrieval. It'll be an enormous ass-ache. I'll see if an activator at each end will work, but that seems like it would be super easy to get tripped up and go all cattywampus.

 

[Crusade]

an activator under each rail along the area you want to generate the NOT signal. feed all of the activation modules to an OR gate, then put the OR gate into a NOT to get your desired signal. Should work perfectly.

 

[Panpiper]

I am wanting to build a carrier of sorts, more a jump tender really, something that can move a fleet of destroyers, not so much fighters. I have a 4000 mass ship I am quite fond of and would like to be able to bring somewhere between 8 and 24 of them along with me when I go hunting. (Pirate stations on my server spawn a small fleet almost instantly upon being attacked and then rapidly summon more. The carrier that I will obviously pilot will have a beam/cannon array for rapidly downing turrets and then penetrating to a station's particulars. I want to keep it relatively small aside from a large jump drive system, so internal housing of the fleet is quite out of the question.)

What I am thinking of is to simply have docking rails and such spaced around it so that the docked ships look like they are essentially flying in close formation. I am hoping to keep them very circumspect so they are effectively invisible when the fleet is not docked.

I presume I do not need to use pickup rails and shootout rails for this, just stick a rail basic out in space around my ship and (maybe?) a pickup point block. (Are these optional?) Is there any advantage given my wide open arrangement to surrounding the rail basic with four (or more) pickup point blocks?

Is there some tutorial available that would explain to me the essential logic of wiring things up? My understanding of logic systems is 'extremely limited'. I have a hard time following the construction of simple clocks. My brain is getting old.

 

[jstenholt]

an activator under each rail along the area you want to generate the NOT signal. feed all of the activation modules to an OR gate, then put the OR gate into a NOT to get your desired signal. Should work perfectly.

Yeah, but I use pickup rails for the elevator, and can't put activators on them.

 

[NightFury76]

Ok two questions here.
I'll answer pans first.
Just place a pick up point at around the inner pair of ships when they are in formation idle. Run a line of green rail running back because as each ship docks the others will reform closer.

Speed the rail up or even do vertical to get the ships out of the way sooner. And manually turn off the rail speed when all is loaded to stop the colliding.

Then just have a launch switch to turn the first drones loaded free rail forward to send it to the red rail.

Ok to the op's question

Stop any more ships launching (run their launch button through an and for each ship bay) every 'and' takes an input from a lock out.

So lockouts are a flip flip with the on(set) button through an and which takes a not of the flipflop, the off(reset) button through an and which takes the output of the flipflop too.

So set the lockout when any (or gate) launch signal is sent and then only reset the lockout when the delay to close the outter launch tube doors has fired

 

[Lukwan]

Well then...you might like this. :D

The original design is not mine but the fancy anti-jamming cct is my contribution to the system.

Self-Regulating Drone-Rail

 

[jstenholt]

I finally got it, had a bit of a hard time because of being unable to play activators in mid air, and instead just timed part of the setup to get everything working. I also added a fun system to make things a little more reliable. I divided the centerline rail into segments, and made it so that a ship on one segment prevents the ship behind it from advancing. Thanks for the input, friends.

 

[Valck]

Yeah, but I use pickup rails for the elevator, and can't put activators on them.

You can C-V rails to logic, they don't have to be adjacent anymore, although it's a pain to set up for more than a handful of blocks.
Also currently c-v'ed activation modules don't work as intended, they never reset when something undocks/moves away; buttons inherently don't have that problem. If you don't want to wait until activation module/rail integration is fixed, you can try and work around these issues.

 

[Scypio]

I finally got it, had a bit of a hard time because of being unable to play activators in mid air, and instead just timed part of the setup to get everything working. I also added a fun system to make things a little more reliable. I divided the centerline rail into segments, and made it so that a ship on one segment prevents the ship behind it from advancing. Thanks for the input, friends.

And if one of the drones is missing ? (for example)

 

[jstenholt]

And if one of the drones is missing ? (for example)

I have set it up so that the drones near the end of the line will move up seamlessly if there is an empty spot in line. Took a fair bit of work.

Also, Valck I can't even believe I forgot about that. Maybe I'll retool the system to make it 100% foolproof. That should work with pickups too, yeah?

 

[Valck]

Valck I can't even believe I forgot about that. Maybe I'll retool the system to make it 100% foolproof. That should work with pickups too, yeah?

It definitely works with pickup rails. In fact I haven't tested it on basic rails, but I'd expect them to work just the same.

 

[KiloZulu]

an activator under each rail along the area you want to generate the NOT signal. feed all of the activation modules to an OR gate, then put the OR gate into a NOT to get your desired signal. Should work perfectly.

It might save space and time to attach an activator to the first and last rail along the path, with a flip/flop connected to both. That way, the first activator turns on the flip/flop, which then will stay on until the last rail is passed over.

 

[NightFury76]

Until two docked ships trigger the first activator and the system gets out of wack. A simple flip flop is not enough in this case. See my description of a lockout above