My Carrier Attempt and a Noob's request for help

[Blaidd42]

Hi all, first time on the forum. I've been working on a carrier based on Battlestar Galactica, it's still very much work in progress but i think it's looking good so far. Opinions welcome, but my main reason for posting is that i've been driven mad today trying to find what's colliding with the starboard hangar. The left withdraws fine but something on the hangar is preventing the right one from moving at all.
If anyone is feeling kind/brave enough to take a look and let me know where i've obviously overlooked a dozen times cos i've been staring at it too much. That would be much appreciated

(fingers crossed i've uploaded the right thing)

 

[SmilingDemon]

on both gangways to the hangar there is a cross bar blocking the path and something in the back gangway is blocking the rest of the way

 

[Blaidd42]

aha! i thought i'd caught all the overshot lengths from filling the inside edge hull. Thanks so much!

 

[terra mining corp.]

Blaidd42 looking great so far,let us know how it turns out.

 

[Sgtwisky]

The hangers moving out to launch drones is a pretty sweet idea. Donno if that was form the series/movie or if you came up with it. But I can imagine it being a very cool touch.

Overall your carrier looks pretty good. Glad others were able to help you figure out where things were getting stuck. and seeing that no one else said it... Welcome to the forums ! :D

 

[Blaidd42]

The hangers moving out to launch drones is a pretty sweet idea. Donno if that was form the series/movie or if you came up with it. But I can imagine it being a very cool touch.

The extending hangars is a feature of the ship in the series. I thought it would be an interesting challenge and it certainly has been that.

Overall your carrier looks pretty good. Glad others were able to help you figure out where things were getting stuck. and seeing that no one else said it... Welcome to the forums ! :D

Thanks!
I've gotten a bit further now, although still only one polished hangar to show off.
In the show the fighters launched from the side while the hangars were closed for combat, then later the hangars would be opened to let them land, Since drones use the same point for launch and return, and can happily reverse up the tight launch tubes, i figured i'd just leave the fighters to the side tubes and have the hangars extend to release bombers (x3 per side) i've got on sequential rails linked to autopickup behind and shootout rails in front.
I also added an extending docking port to the top side, being the only place i could find to conveniently fit one in.

Some new pics for everyone:


Todo:
-Fixing launch logic problems at the moment (or more specifically the return)
-Building the starboard hangar to match the port
-filling in the gangways and gaps
-Wedging any remaining systems and rooms in
-The remainder of the flak turrets
-Finishing aesthetic touches

 

[Mork2]

I'll warn you now and save you a bit of time if your planning on using fleet commands. Hopefully this is a bug but it might not be. The carrier return command will work only if the pickup returns are on the mothership and not on a docked entity. So if the pickup rails are on extendable docked platforms the drones won't return to their respective pickup rails.

 

[Blaidd42]

Bollocks. Hmmm....
Any idea if setting docked entities as the mothership would work? If so i could have a fleet per hangar side. Otherwise, i might have to just polish the frame a bit before shelving her and keeping fingers crossed for helpful fleet AI updates

 

[Groovrider]

Can you put the pick up points on the mothership and have them lead onto the rails of the docked racks?

 

[Mork2]

Can you put the pick up points on the mothership and have them lead onto the rails of the docked racks?

Didn't work for me when I tried.

I did use manual docking for a docked drone rack which then used a shoot out rail to lined up with a pickup point on the mothership for loading drones in. If I remember correctly my attempt to use shootout rails on the mothership to move stuff to a docked ship resulted in the 4 or 5 second redock timer and the drone sailing past the pickup. If you can stop your drone in the area of the pickup for 5 seconds that might work but you probably want a way to do that without collisions.

In the end, for now, I have just assumed any drone on a docked rack would have to be manually returned....since the carrier return command doesn't work for them. For my drone bays on the mothership in the end I made a rack where each bay had its own return rail and made a template I could copy and paste in.

One wrinkle is that you may jettision the drone rack and it might allow you to fleet and return the drones... You then have to pickup your drone bay again. During some testing I got sick of the drones knocking my test ship around so I docked it to a station and found that I couldn't recall them. I then undocked the test bed and managed to recall the drones. Might have had to add the drone rack to fleet again, I'm not certain. If you could then you could put a pickup on the mothership for the drone bay disable it, jettision the bay. Hope the drones don't move it when they return then activate the pickup rejoining the drone rack.

 

[Madman198237]

Docked entities cannot collect drones even if they are the mothership. Hopefully fleets will get fixed soon.

 

[Zekester81]

Can you put the pick up points on the mothership and have them lead onto the rails of the docked racks?

Didn't work for me when I tried.

You'd have to have a shootout rail aimed at the pickup point on the hangar to get it to work. Try your pickup point on the main ship, direct to a shootout rail that lines up with a pickup point on the attached hangar. The problem is that carrier recall would probably be broken because it hits a pickup point that is not on the carrier last, though it just *might* work. Use rail speed controllers to slow the launch down so it isn't moving at full speed when it hits the hangar pickup point. It can work, I've done it with cargo pods.

I had to slow the pod's travel on the original pickup so that it had time to get over the docking thing, then it shot it out the back at a slower speed to hit the main ship's pickup.

Example: I wasn't using fleet AI to do this however, but flying up and using the ship to dock them.

Spoiler: vid

 

[Dire Venom]

Docked entities cannot collect drones even if they are the mothership. Hopefully fleets will get fixed soon.

Welp there goes all my plans :/
Thanks for letting us know