Mjn answered most of these, but just for clarification...
- I've got a convoy of transports different ship types flying in formation that have been assigned to follow some waypoints into a node, but I'm not sure if the way I'm working them will get them to depart in the desired manner. They're in a wing, and each ship has been assigned an individual waypoint to maintain the formation they're in.
Unless your convoy is made up of fighters and bombers, I would advise not assigning them to a wing. The AI for fighters works well with wings, since fighter AI was designed for wings, but transports are clunky and probably will crash into eachother while undergoing wing formation. Especially if you are using different ship types in the same wing. I suggest a seperate waypoint path and seperate waypoint orders for each transport in your convoy. It might be a little bit more work in FRED but it looks a lot cleaner in the game.
You seem to be uncomfortable with getting around in FRED. This should help you place those waypoint paths in the right locations. Open FRED, go to the bar at the top, select help -> help topics -> then look at the menu to the left and select toolbar. You will see an explaination of all the basic FRED camera and ship placement commands. Not specifically the lock axis buttons. You can use these buttons to ensure you place waypoints so that your convoy ships will be runing parallel to one another. Another useful command is to right click a ship and select 'position and orientation' from the drop down menu.
So I go to the wing editor and get try to set up their departure conditions.
OP are-waypoints-done-delay
Lambda
Waypoint 3 --> Is there any way for me to get something like 'when this wing has completed their waypoints then depart?'
0 -> Not exactly sure what this means - Delay time(seconds) until they actually depart?You're in the right place if you want the entire wing to depart after a specific waypoint order. However, I suggest disbanding the wing (select all ships and press Ctrl + D) and assigning each ship to its own waypoint path.
You're on the right track to do this, but for individual ships use the ships editor. (In general ensure wing orders never overlap ship orders try to use one or the other) After placing a ship and a waypoint path select the ship. Go into the ships editor and click the 'initial orders' tab and select 'Waypoints Once' as one order, then select the waypoint you want the ship to go to on the right. The waypoint path can be a single waypoint, in which case the ship will steer directly to that point. If the path has more than one waypoint, the ship will fly to the points on that path 1 ... 2... and so on in that order.
Now once you have done that go to the ship's departure event. are-waypoints-done checks if the ship you specified has completed a waypoint order on the path you specified. Delay (seconds) is the time since that ship has completed that order. A delay of 0 is good if you want that ship to depart right as it completes moving through its waypoint path.
You should be able to select entire waypoint paths in the third line of your departure sexp. Are all of your waypoints linked up in a path?
- Is there any way to reset the camera position to the default new mission position? I seem to have gotten it at some obscure angle without being able to put myself back 
Alt Z is your crutch (used to be mine): use the number pad (4,8,2,6) to point the camera where you need, select the group of ships and press Alt Z. You really want to understand camera controlls to save time and
More info about it is in help topics.
Edit: Consider also going to 'speed' at the top of the Fred menu and setting a faster rotation and movement speed for your FRED camera. Makes things much smoother.
Edit2: Also, as a suggestion, go to 'view' and check show ship models. Uncheck show ship outlines. This makes FRED run faster in some cases, especially with missions that have lots of ships.
- And lastly - I was taking a look at Singh's preexisting backgrounds and found one that I like, but I haven't been able to figure out how to input them without doing it all manually. I took a look at a couple more and imported them from a .fs2 file, but that seems to be the only way I can put in nebulas.I don't entirely understand what you mean by this. FRED requires the background artwork to be in a specific location in your freespace2 folder in order for FRED to be able to see it in the backgrounds editor. You might want to make a mod folder, or just add files to your freespace2 folder. Let me know if you want to make a mod folder because that's a whole lot of explaining right there.
Sorry if I overexplained things or anything of that sort, it's quite late and i'm mad.
