Carriers

Carrier holding traders and escorts

External view of a fulfilled default deck

There is a Carrier below the fleet

Fulfilled XL deck

Exotic ships on XL deck

A low-cost Carrier

Double cargo with effective escort fleet

An average configuration (NPC only)

A strong pirate fleet (NPC only)

GalCop fleet (NPC only)

Build up your escort fleet on the decks of a Carrier and jump into any escort ship to do your fighting inside a fast and agile ship.

Requires EscortDeck and Ship Storage Helper, recommends EscortPack OXP.

Description

The hull of a Carrier can hold up to 10 escort ships and barely fit into a standard 64m x 192m x 250m dock together with the carried ships. You can check your escorts in external views by pressing the "v" key.

Please select the configuration of your Escort Deck by purchasing either the default (for trading and salvaging) or the XL equipment (for combat).

Escort Deck equipment

Prime this equipment to launch and call back your escorts.

The default configuration allow 9 ships on board: 2 big traders (Anaconda), 2 ships up to Cobra Mark III and 5 escort ships: 1 heavy (Asp), 2 small (Gecko) and 2 mini (Adder). Practical for salvaging more derelict ships in the same time: if you like to earn money with a Towbar then a Carrier is especially useful for you.

Top decks (1.-2.): a large space on the front and another over the middle engine. Can hold ships with less than 130m width, 35m height, 95m length and 800t mass up to Cobra Mark III.

Center deck (3.): on the neck for a heavy escort up to Asp (65x29x95m and 130t), so Krait and Cobra Mark III can't fit. This deck is lifted over the others a bit to avoid collisions with big Anacondas in main decks or long Fer-De-Lances in front or aft top decks.

Aft side decks (4.-5.): hold small escorts over side engines (65x17x65m and 40t): Adder, Gecko or Sidewinder.

Main decks (6.-7.): the largest space on the sides can hold a pair of large trader ships up to 90x64x170m and 800t mass: Anaconda, Boa or Python. Anaconda and larger ships will not launch automatically at red alert - not so good fighters, better if not send them into the combat if not forced by hand. Heavy escorts (Asp) can fit also but if you want more escorts than all other decks can hold then you can change your configutation to the traderless XL Deck (see below).

Good trader ships which can fit into the main decks: D.T.T. Atlas, D.T.T. Cyclops, Python Class Cruiser, Python ET Special. Large fighter-traders fit here: Granite Python from EscortPack and the very fast and agile Vector.

Forward decks (8-9): on front for two Adders and other mini ships up to 39x15x65m and 30t mass. You can use these as additional shields on your Carrier if not launched.

For more details please read the documentation of EscortDeck OXP.

Escort Deck XL equipment

The combat configuration of Carriers can hold 10 fighters: 2 ships up to Cobra Mark III on the top and 8 escorts: 4 heavy (Asp) within the main decks, 2 wide (Krait) over the engines and 2 mini (Adder) on front to give fearsome firepower into your hands. Most pirate groups will flee insantly after you released your fleet.

Carriers with Turrets OXP

Short-range turrets affixed to Carriers are a big help in close defense. Requires Carriers OXP.

Jump into an escort ship

You can jump into and launch a carried escort ship if you change the mode of Escort Deck from "avoid to sit into a selected escort" to "allow" the same option. First prime the deck with 'Shift+N', then press mode key (b) until this message will be displayed after step over your escorts. Press activate (n) to show "allow" instead of "avoid", then select an usable (non-salvage) escort ship landed on your deck with 'b' and use the 'n' key to launch yourself within the selected ship.

You can launch in playable ships only (has player role and view positions in shipdata.plist and defined in shipyard.plist at least with chance=0), otherwise the ship will be launched without you. EscortDeck will try to replace the -trader and -pirate suffixes in dataKeys and use the -player variant if available, but in other cases you must make playable by hand in the ship's OXP.

When you are not in the Carrier you still can check your wingmen by MFD and command them to attack a target by locking it and delivering a laser hit.

For landing you must hold your ident lock (using 'r') on your Carrier to get landing clearance, then approach within 500m and less than 100m/s speed difference to start the landing sequence. You will be transferred into the bridge of Carrier after the docking tunnel.

FLYING ESCORTS IS CURRENTLY EXPERIMENTAL! For example do not dock into a station while you are in an escort, nor enter into a wormhole, go back into your Carrier first.

Other Activities

Warning: informations below this point are unfinished, if there are scripted parts of these then in alpha state so probably contain bugs and missing features.

Instant launch

The top front landing position will acts as a command bridge: if your ship is landed on the first pad then you will be able to steer the Carrier and launch yourself immediately without going through the undocking tunnel. In this case the Carrier is a very large detachable escort deck under the Commander's ship.

Trading

You will be able to use the cargo capacity of traders on your deck. If you have 6 Cobra Mark I on board then your total cargo capacity is 110t, but you will not see this in one piece. You will be able to switch between your ships when you are in a dock but you will see one cargo bay only at a time.

If you want a really big trader ship then collect a pair of Anacondas into your carrier.

Fuel

Carriers has normal tanks only but will transfer fuel from the carried ships to keep over 6 ly, and will refuel the ship selected by the Commander before launch until there are any fuel in other ships on board.

Hyperspace

The Commander can open a wormhole if he want to travel into another system and all ships in the fleet will jump into.

Norby's Adios

Have fun, Fleet Commander! :)

Generic Gubbins

Instructions

Do not unzip the .oxz file, just move into the AddOns folder of your Oolite installation.

There is a savegame in the package, copy into your oolite-saves directory if you want an instant test flight.

License

The 3D model is derived from HammerHead in Aquatics OXP, thanks to Thargoid and P.A. Groove.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License version 4.0. If you are re-using any piece of this OXP, please let me know by sending an e-mail to norbylite at gmail.com.

Changelog

2015.01.20. v0.9  Sit into feature is fixed and enabled by default.
2015.01.11. v0.8  Use Escort Deck equipment to launch and call back escorts.
                  XL deck can hold 10 escorts.
                  Test version of the "sit into an escort ship" feature.
                  Pitch and yaw rates of Carriers are changed from 0.3 to 0.5.
2014.06.20. v0.7  Center deck is lifted over others to fit more ship types up to Asp.
2014.06.19. v0.6  Moray is fit into the center deck due to the narrow aft.
                  Fixed shader filename, thanks to Stormrider.
2014.06.19. v0.5  Front Adder decks added.
2014.06.18. v0.4  Top front deck is upgraded to hold a large ship.
                  Fixed a typo in vertex file name.
2014.06.17. v0.3  Narrower head on Carriers to fit Anaconda in straight.
2014.06.16. v0.2  Anaconda and Fer-De-Lance Carrier models added.
2014.06.15. v0.1  First ship models.

Downloads

• Carriers v0.9 (downloaded 3132 times). Requires EscortDeck and Ship Storage Helper, recommends EscortPack OXP.

• Carriers with turrets v1.0 (downloaded 2094 times). Short range turrets applied on Carriers, requested by zdoofop.

Old versions:

• Carriers v0.8 (downloaded 279 times).
• Carriers v0.7 (downloaded 1619 times).
• Carriers v0.6 (downloaded 219 times).
• Carriers v0.5 (downloaded 225 times).
• Carriers v0.4 (downloaded 241 times).
• Carriers v0.3 (downloaded 230 times).
• Carriers v0.2 (downloaded 240 times).
• Carriers v0.1 (downloaded 253 times).

Quick Facts

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Version	Released	License	Features	Category	Author(s)	Feedback
0.9	2015-01-20	CC BY-NC-SA 4	More ships on board	Ships OXPs	Norby	BB-Link