Allows a ship to beam from planet to foreign ship directly
Cross beam plugin for Planets Nu.
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Summary
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Lets you beam cargo and fuel from your planet to an ally's ship in one easy step.
Why do you need this?
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Planets do not have the ability to beam cargo from the surface directly to an ally's ship. An ally's ship can pick up cargo using the beam-up missions, but this is limited:
i) you can only beam up one cargo type (NDTMS) per turn,
ii) you cannot beam up clans,
iii) it is an all-or-nothing process,
iv) you need to know the planet's fcode,
v) you cannot use another mission that turn.
A common solution to this problem is to have one of your ships in orbit act as a transport hub - You beam cargo from the planet to your ship, and then beam the cargo from your ship to your ally's ship. This is a two-stage process.
You may also need to empty your cargo before starting this process, and reload after you are done.
This process is acceptable if your ship has enough cargo space to move the entire load in one go, but what if the cargo you want to beam is larger than your ship's cargo space? You are forced to repeat this process many many times, which can be a very laborious process.
An extreme example of this is wanting to load an ally's LDSF (1200kt cargo) with your NFC (2kt cargo). Normally you would have to repeat the two-stage beam process a whopping 600 times! In practice most players would simply refuse to do this much work and instead fall back to using the more limited beam-up missions, or delay until a larger ship arrives to help out.
This plugin solves that problem...
This plugin adds a new "Cross Beam" button to your ships, but only when the ship is over a planet you own and when a foreign ship is present. I.e. only when it might be needed.
Pressing the Cross Beam button opens a standard looking cargo transfer window that lets you move as much cargo as you want in one easy step.
Notes:
1) Each of your ships can still only beam to one foreign ship per turn.
2) If you beam more cargo/fuel than the other ship can hold, the excess is returned to your ship. If your ship cannot hold all the returned cargo/fuel then some is lost.
3) You cannot transport fighters, torpedos or megacredits with this method. Instead use btf, btt, btm fcodes.
4) You cannot beam to Horwasp ships / pods.
I recommend using this plugin with my ShipInfo plugin so that you can see what cargo you are transporting.
Screenshot guide:
Bottom left - The "Cross Beam" button is shown since foreign ships are present.
Top left - The planet we are beaming from.
Top right - The foreign ship we are beaming to.
