Shipmaking Q&A

[Snopel]

hi sorry this is most likey a nooby question but how do you make a ship engage enemys if the weapons arn't in range. i have a ship that uses ship deplyer to spawn a fighter but i want the fighter to start flying for the enemy when is created so you don't have to tell them to or when there an ai(me and my friends are doing a destroy the mothership tournement and the mothership will be an enemy and all of our ships will be allied so we need them to go for the enemy at the start

[Bad Boy]

Son Tzu: Unless I'm mistaken (and I'm almost certain I'm not), the answer is unfortunately no. I think it was left unchangeable because of sprite rotation or something, but I may just be pulling that bit out of my ass.

Snopel: I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, but to make ship deployers work at longer ranges, change their range. I recommend 5000+ if you want to be sure of full map engagement. Note that ships spawned by you with the ship deployer will not automatically charge the enemy, you'd have to spawn whatever uses the deployer as an ally.
For your other question, press the question mark in the bottom of the sandbox screen, then game options, toggle ai controller. Alternatively you can change the max ai range (in the same area I believe) to whatever distance you want the ships to become aware of each other at.

[Snopel]

thank you so much!!!! inever knew about the question mark also i miss-worded it all i wanted was to make an ally ship attack the enemy like that. =P

[Orelius]

Which doodad is used to create engine glows, like the ones in Anna's ships? In other words, how do you make a white circle with a colored gradient?

[LactoseTolerant]

Which doodad is used to create engine glows, like the ones in Anna's ships? In other words, how do you make a white circle with a colored gradient?

It's linked to and explained in the FAQ

No need to thank me .

[Orelius]

Sorry for not stating this at first, but that's not my problem. Thing is, I can't find a way to make a glow with the center white, whenever I try, the entire sprite becomes the color.

[Rugdumph]

I believe the most common way to get that is to layer a smaller white copy of the glow sprite above the coloured one.

[Anna]

With both sprites set to additive blending. That part is important.

[Rugdumph]

Oh whoops, yes of course in additive, that was a stupid thing to forget.

[DysonFleetYards]

Hi all.
How do I get a weapon to remain stationary, and only fire at ships directly in front of it?
Many of my designs have a stationary cannon {think Robotech\Macross), but when I set the firing arc to one, and slow down the turning speed, the beam ends up spinning around ._.

[Anna]

You might have the deviation set too high. Setting up weapons that only fire directly forward is sort of tricky, though, as they're finnicky about acquiring targets. If you can put up an .sb4 file I'll see if I can get a stationary, fixed, forward-firing weapon working for you.

[DysonFleetYards]

Ah, thank you!
Could I apply these settings or clone the weapon after for the same effect?
And didn't you make a guide? O_o

[Anna]

So I open up that ship in Shipmaker.



... Are you trolling me?

[DysonFleetYards]

No Sir.
It's a big ship and I was building it from the front back, like I always do, and since it's symmetrical, I can just mirror it mostly, except for the central parts.
I've been designing ships in MSpaint since win95, and I've even done a bit of 3D work.
Designing Starships has been my hobby since I was a kid, with lego's and such.
Alssooo
Is it possible to attach a stationary turret to a large turntable, but have secondary moving turrets flanking the main stationary. Like flak guns surrounding a large railgun?
This is going to be a problem with my medium size gauss cannons\railguns, since they are mounted on large turntables, like those found at trainyards.

[Arcalane]

I do not think you quite grasp the gravity of how fucked up that picture is. You clearly haven't grasped how the parenting system in BSF works, and your ship is nothing but a horrendous mess of massively stretched sections and turrets.

Before you even try building large ships in BSF, work on smaller projects. Do not run before you can walk. Right now, you're barely crawling by the looks of things.