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[Archive] Rdav's Fleet Command ~Alpha Pack~

Rdav’s Fleet Command 100% vanilla
Control an entire fleet of intelligent ships effortlessly from your mothership.

NOTE: This version is no longer working and has been superseded by my MKII script! please see my workshop for the latest vastly improved version of this code!

check out this link for the AI fleet used in the video!


This script gives players the ability to command and control an entire fleet using an intuitive and easy to use LCD menu, commanding intelligent AI ships in advanced on-mass manoeuvres and tactics that were previously unheard of in space engineers, attack bases and ships with frigate and fighter support, watching ships slug it out while fighters and bombers roll and dive in between, launch, dock, and command fleets of massive quantity,

This is a vanilla blueprint Pack of pre-assembled components, Fighter, Frigate, and mothership, Simply paste or weld these modules onto a ship and follow the in-game setup tutorial on the LCD screens to instantly convert a ship to an automated fighting machine, that will automatically assign itself to a squadron, and follow commands after being connected to a mothership.

This is an Early Alpha version, not nearly feature complete or bug-free, it contains the core mechanics, and experimental versions of AI using the limited access us in-game scripters do, despite that, even in its current state it’s sure as hell fun to use, and the final version will be using the same setup, so if it works with it now, it will work with every new version of the script I release/update.

see the top of the page for a tutorial video showing basic setup!





This is a massive project, and even in its current state has required over two months of work to get it to the state it is now, as such expect bugs, bugs will usually be of two categories, ship collisions, or the script ‘crashes’ and no longer works, it will say ‘exception during…etc’ in the p-block.

As stated earlier this is in early Alpha, and is continuing to be improved and optimised, bug reports of the latter type are more than welcome, just leave it in the discussions section and I’ll get right on it, along with any potential improvements you can think of! (just check that there is nothing in the ‘known bugs’ section before you do.)

Nothing this script does can crash your game, it’s purely 100% vanilla, although given I am still working on the enemy scanning function, I highly suggest you use this with a sensor range or radar mod, Also I highly recommend you first use this in a damage-disabled world! The script has been known to shoot fighter-craft out of motherships at quite some velocity, so be careful where you put your exit paths.

Finally: DOCK ALL YOUR SHIPS BEFORE YOU RELOAD THE WORLD, this is necessary or upon reload cross-grid communication can’t be re-established, and you will have to manually re-dock every ship.

Also worth mentioning DO NOT DISCONNECT SHIPS MANUALLY WITH 'P' the script undocks automatically, and undocking prematurely might confuse the poor drones, I'm looking for a fix, but I haven't yet pinned down a cause.





The script will automatically assign squadrons to any ships that you connect to the mothership that currently have a version of the script running.
Squadrons start at 0 and go to 9 for a total of 10 squadrons, with 0-3 being fighter-class squadrons of a maximum capacity of 5, 4-7 are frigate class squadrons, and 8, and 9, are cruiser class. (WIP cruiser-class just placeholders currently)

The script uses an intuitive LCD menu for command coordination, simply select a squadron and select the command you want to use, commands come in three categories:

Go-To,
a squadron will fly in formation to the specified coordinates, these can be automatically generated, from a list, or input through the GPS panel

Attack,
if you at any point have detected an enemy on sensors then you will have its coordinates here, simply select the coordinates to attack

Dock,
a squadron will go 100m from its assigned connectors, and attempt to dock. In a straight line to the connector, orientation of the connector on the mothership tells which way the ship should land (eg possible to dock through launch tubes, control docking orientation etc)

All Follow Me,
Every squadron that does not have ‘Dock’ as it’s command will assume formation around the mothership, matching course, velocity and heading

Also not included here is the AI’s own logic, for example AI will automatically attack enemies within 1500m of its idling position, if the enemy runs away, it will then return to its idling position, also if the command of a ship is anything apart from ‘dock’ or ‘blank’ (blank= initial state when you first load the script), it will automatically start the launch sequence, connector will disengage, and the thrusters pointing away from the connector will fire, launching the ship 100m from the ship, then engage rear thrusters and fly to location.





The fighting systems use an advanced system of enemy tracking and location, if a player owned sensor, on ANY of the ships in the fleet detect an enemy grid, it will be permanently logged and stored, and the script will keep updates on its location. This requires a player to get a vanilla player owned sensor within 50m range INITIALLY, it’s a one-time thing, after that there is nothing the enemy grid can do to lose track, and very easy to achieve if every ship in your fleet has a maxed out sensor set to detect enemy grids.
Sensors for detecting must be called "RFC" or have "RFC" in their name,

The ‘attack’ menu can become quite cluttered with many enemies at once, I’m working on solutions to this, and enemy tracking and detection is currently my number one thing to redo on the list, I know it’s buggy at the moment, but it works.

Some Example Fairly Simple Tactics I've Found:

~The Mothership Retreat~
Set fighters to idle 1500m above the mothership and frigates 1500m below, move the mothership past the enemy at high speed, once you have lock, and the enemy starts chasing the mothership, order all squadrons to attack the enemy, they will come in from the enemies exposed rear and destroy any exposed engines and critical components

~The Fleet Bash~
Set the entire fleet to follow the mothership, follow in and lock at point blank range, getting everything to attack at once for devastating firepower

~The Scout Run~
Fly past an enemy with a small scout squadron outfitted with sensors to get lock on a target, then move in frigates to draw enemy fire, when the enemies point defense is low bring in new fighter and bomber squadrons overhead to finish any fleeing enemies off

~The Fighter Screen~
Establish a lock on an enemy using a sensor squadron, order vast numbers of fightercraft in to screen the enemy and distract large ship turrets while you order in the rest of your fleet to do some damage,

Big thanks to J.DHorx for letting me use his ships for the script, and for continuing feedback on some elements of the script, check out his workshop for some more great ships!:
http://sp.zhabite.com/id/jdhorx/myworkshopfiles/?appid=244850