I've noticed something. In the last month I've noticed a sudden upsurge in the quality and quantity of the FREDding for TBP. Both yourself and Megadoomer have impressed me by using variables for some pretty interesting FREDding. I've got no idea where you're both learning to use variables (and in megadoomer's case the new argument conditionals) but seeing as how I know many FREDders who have been in the community for years and are scared of them I'm very happy to see it. Keep it up
Anyway getting back to the topic. I'm a little confused by your problem. Are you telling me that when you have
When
- =
-- 0
-- 0
-do-nothing
you are actually unable to change that into
When
- =
--
variable-name{0} -- 0
-do-nothing
Cause doing so is as simple as right clicking on the top 0 choosing replace variable and selecting the variable off of the list.
If you're doing that and it's grayed out or something you're probably dealing with a bug and should upgrade your version of FRED. Actually you should do that anyway. 3.6.5 is 3 days less than a year old and there are many features that are missing from it that an inventive FREDder like yourself would find very useful. For instance this event
every time
- <
-- distance
--- <any hostile>
--- Gamma 1
-- Stealth-Range(x) [x descirbes to current value of the variable]
- unportect-ship
-- Gamma 1
- add-goal (y-times) [for every fighter wing and other craft able to chase fighters]
-- <hostile craft/wing> [fill in any name]
-- ai-chase
--- Gamma 1
--- 89
Would become
every time
argument
every-of
Enemy Wing 1
Enemy Wing 2
Enemy Wing 3 {etc}- <
-- distance
--- <any hostile>
--- Gamma 1
-- Stealth-Range(x) [x descirbes to current value of the variable]
- unportect-ship
-- Gamma 1
- add-goal
-- < argument >
-- ai-chase
--- Gamma 1
--- 89 You now have only one copy of the add goal SEXP instead of having to do tedious cutting and pasting for all the enemy wings. If you decide to change the behaviour you'd only have to change it in one place.
One further word of warning. I haven't tested this so I don't know if it will happen but if you start getting odd behaviour from the enemy wings it's because they're being given new orders 70 times a second cause of your use of every-time and a trigger that will come true that often. If that turns up post here (cause I'm interested in knowing now that I've thought of it) and if you can't solve the problem I'll tell you what I'd do