How to add an attachment point to a non fleet model.
In some cases you may want to add the ability to launch and recover your own ship or some other non fleet ship like the Delta Glider or ShuttleA.
It’s really quite simple to do but it isn’t without problems.
First the two problems you may encounter.
The ship already has child points defined.
This is problematic but can be over come. For example the Firefly shuttles already have attachment points to attach to the Firefly. The problem is that they are not Battlestar friendly. The way around it is to define another point in the config file. That’s the easy part. The hard part is figuring which point is the proper one to use in the scenario file. There are two ways to figure it out. The first is just trial and error. The second is to setup an approach and allow the Battlestar to auto attach you. You can then check the current scenario to see what number the attachment point is.
The second problem is just figuring out where to put the point. Basiclly unless you use a tool to find the X, Y, and Z location you will just have to wing it with trial and error.
There is one other issue you will encounter and that is the speed at which the Battlestar launches a ship. You can easily setup the DragonFly to attach but it just doesn’t have the power to overcome the launch velocity.
Last but not least is that you will only be able to launch your ship from the Battlestar as the focus ship. To add the remote launch used by my ships requires DLL programming.
Ok you know the issues and still want to set it up.
You can attach and launch just about any ship with a child attach point but you can only auto attach ships coded with the proper attachment ID. There are 3 types of attachment points IDs for the 3 different locations within the launch bay. For lack of anything better I have called them Viper, Raptor and Colonial One points.
The Viper points are the Viper launch tubes and have an attachment ID of VAP.
The Raptor points are the two points behind the big bay doors and are coded APR.
The Colonial One is at the front of the bay and is coded APC.
There is also a hierarchy of sorts for the auto attach function. VAP can attach to any bay point, APR to the Raptor and Colonial One points and APC only to the Colonial One point.
There is also 8 other attach points called "Whiskers" used to transport non-FTL ships.
Whiskers are coded APW.
Ok lets add attach and capture to the Delta Glider.
Open up the DeltaGlider.cfg file. Don’t ask me why or where it is because if you don’t know then you shouldn’t be messing with it. Think of this as a test.
Add this block of code to the config file.
BEGIN_ATTACHMENT
P 0 -2.5 4 0 0 -1 0 1 0 APR
END_ATTACHMENT
That’s it folks. Simple as baking a cake. That is if you bake with a text editor.
Just for the curious. I used APR as the ID because the DG is just a tad to wide in the wings for the Viper launch tubes.
Here are some other examples. (provided by tgep)
For Vipers, use this.
BEGIN_ATTACHMENT
P 0 -2.5 4 0 0 -1 0 1 0 VAP
END_ATTACHMENT
For Raptor shuttle bays, use this.
BEGIN_ATTACHMENT
P 0 -2.5 4 0 0 -1 0 1 0 APR
END_ATTACHMENT
For realy long ships, use this one.
BEGIN_ATTACHMENT
P 0 -2.5 4 0 0 -1 0 1 0 APC
END_ATTACHMENT
For anything too big to fit inside, use this.
BEGIN_ATTACHMENT
P 0 -2.5 4 0 0 -1 0 1 0 APW
END_ATTACHMENT
