Well after much contemplation, testing and recoding I have finally decided to go with naval fleet waypoint and ship positioning as described below. This will not only cover carrier fleet scenarios for PF but will also replace the existing static “Attack Shipping” scenarios already in Mission Mate. The user may place naval waypoints any where on the map (sea portions only) in exactly the same way as is currently used for placing flight group waypoints. I have made the naval waypoint icons distinguishable from the flight group waypoint icons by colour and marking. (See screen shot below).
With waypoints placed the user may then right click over any naval waypoint icon to invoke the naval properties window. (See screen shot below).
When the naval properties window appears it will display the one compulsory ship icon in the centre of the screen (Generic Carrier by default). This may not be deleted or moved but its type may be changed and represents the first naval waypoint as placed on the map screen. Also visible are the plane icons at the top of the window, one for each active flight group currently selected. (See screen shot below).
I have included a grid option, which helps to get a feel for distance when placing or moving shipping positions. (See screen shot below).
Additional shipping may be added (maximum of 10) at any time by right clicking to invoke a pop up menu offering a list of shipping choices. (See screen shot below).
Once the user has selected the desired ship, a ship icon representing the ship type (carrier or other) will float on the mouse pointer until the desired position on the screen has been selected. Each ship may be moved to a new location simply by clicking and dragging. Ship types may be changed by right clicking over a ship icon, then selecting a new description from a pop up menu. The result is a quick and easy way to layout shipping patterns to get your desired result. (See screen shot below).
NOTE: It is possible to suppress the visibility for labels, plane icons and the grid or any combination of these. The screen shot below has these all suppressed so as to make it clearer to display the shipping pattern.
Results as seen in game.
Flight group take off, landing and attack assignments, are made by simply dragging the plane icon over the ship icon. When this is done a line showing the link between the two will appear making it easy to see the relationships. The user may at any time change the assignment by dragging the plane icon over a different ship icon, which will form the new relationship.
In the screen shot below all the player groups are taking off and landing on carriers and 3 of the 4 AI groups are attacking shipping. As you can see it is easy to assign different take off points for different flight groups.
Ok, that's it for now. There's still plenty of work to go yet and I will post some more updates when they're ready.
Cheers, CS.
