[AV8R]

Ok, so I'm messing around with my first mission and adding more ships and such and it seems to be working ok - even without using a lot of SEXP language. But, alas, it seems I'm going to have to add some SEXP somewhere to make it all work right.

There are few things I'm trying to figure out without much success and maybe someone can steer me in the right direction:

1) When I enter the mission with the Sathanas already in system making its way to the jump node, even before I take a shot I get the fanfare music and mission complete message. How do I get the mission complete message to appear after the Sathanas is destroyed? (I know it has something do to with adding some SEXP language to the Mission Objective editor, but I can't figure out what to put there). Along with that, how do I get the objective to appear as it usually does on screen during the mission?

2) How do I get the attack corvettes and the Sathanas to appear as mission craft (showing hull integrity of each ship) in the usual place on the right side of the screen during the mission?

3) Sometimes, even though given specific attack orders in the Initial Orders box of the Wing Editor, my bomber wing will just meander around (or move away from) the Sathanas until I order them to attack while in game. Do I need to raise the priority level to something above 50?

Any guidance is most appreciated. But please, keep it simple - I am a total noob at this and I really don't grasp SEXP at all just yet. What ever needs to be edited in, I would prefer to use the built in Editors (Event, Mission Objective, etc) so I can better understand how they work... and work together.

[Lorric]

Hi.

1) Yes, you need to use an SEXP with the objective in the objective editor.

- Use is-destroyed-delay (it's the top option in objectives)

- Use 0 for the number (so it will trigger immediately on destruction of the sathanas, it should be 0 by default.)

- Change the ship below 0 to the sathanas if the objective is the destruction of the sathanas.

EDIT: Oh yes, and you wanted it to appear as a directive.

You want to create the same SEXP in the Events editor. Then you see where it says directive text in the bottom left of the window? Type what you want the directive to be there (eg. Destroy the Sathanas) You should see the blue dot next to the event turn into a red dot after this to mark it out as a directive.

2) You want the in the escort list, yes? Go to the ship editor. Choose the ship you want. Click the Misc tab. Tick the escort ship box. The priority is for deciding what order they're listed in. The highest priority escort listed ship will be at the top of the list, and so on.

3) This puzzles me, as I only have a limited amount of experience with FRED. However, I've never used a priority lower than 50 before. If it's lower than 50 you could try raising it. IIRC, you can go as high as 89. You can go higher than 89 but doing so will put the priority of those orders above new orders from the player.

[AV8R]

Ok, well all of that was pretty straight forward - thanks for being as descriptive as possible with your reply. Now that I'm getting used to the various Editor dialog boxes I'm having less trouble finding what I want - but obviously there are just certain things you have to know about SEXP to get FRED to do what you want.

I'm going to test the changes you provided, thanks for your help... I'm sure I'll need more later.   

[AV8R]

That all worked very well, thank you. A couple of things I discovered:

a) You need to put Escort List entries in reverse order (the higher the number the higher on the list - I thought 1 was highest, but nope, it's the lowest).

b) Not having the primary objective complete show at beginning of the mission makes the bombers behave properly. Maybe they got confused because the objective was marked complete before they arrived even though the Sathanas was still there? Maybe.

A couple of other questions:

1) What's the difference between primary objective complete and mission complete? Are they mutually exclusive or one in the same?

2) How do I get all of the ships to jump as soon as the Sathanas' hull integrity reaches 0%? Some of the corvettes end up getting destroyed by debris while waiting around for the Sathanas to blow up instead of leaving when the hull integrity reaches 0%.

I'm sure that will require some fun editing in the Event Editor, but I'm willing to try.

[Lorric]

Ah good. You're welcome.

1) Yes, it's the same for the priorities for orders. Higher number = higher priority.

2) Heh. Who knows. Someone probably does actually, but I don't.

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, but you can have more than one primary objective, and missions can be completed without completing the primary objective, like if you're scripted to fail the primary objective. You would still complete the mission even though the primary objective failed.

Go to the wing edit. Pick a wing you want to depart. See how you've got arrival on the left and departure on the right? Use the same SEXP you've been using on the right side in the box where it says "cue:" above it. You might want to add a delay since the Sathanas takes a while to explode.

[AV8R]

That's the problem I was trying to fix by having the corvettes jump out before the Sathanas actually explodes: If the corvettes wait around until after the Sathanas explodes into many huge chunks of debris, then some of the corvettes invariably get hit by said debris and die before they can jump out.

I want the corvettes to leave as soon as the hull integrity of the Sathanas reaches 0% (when the initial small explosions start occurring around the Sathanas hull). The actual break-up explosion doesn't usually occur until about 15-20 seconds after the hull reaches 0% so it's a perfect time to get the corvettes the hell out of there before being pummeled to death by huge chunks of flaming Sathanas debris.

I guess it depends on this: Does the FRED/game engine mark the Sathanas as being officially "destroyed" when the hull integrity reaches 0 or when the explosions have stopped and it's in many flaming pieces?

In case it's the latter above, would it be better to use the Event/Goal variable "is-event-true-delay" for the Sathanas reaching 0% as a Departure Cue instead of waiting for the "destroyed" flag to be true?

[Lorric]

It is deemed destroyed as soon as the hull reaches 0. So now that I understand what you want, don't put a delay. They should jump as soon as the Sathanas hits 0% hull.

[AV8R]

Awesome, I'll see how this plays out. Thanks again for your help!   

[Lorric]

You're welcome.

Good luck with your project.

EDIT: Oh, and if it's not a wing but a single ship you want to depart, it works the same way with the ship editor.