[diceman111]

In addition if you stick capships in a wing you can't name them. And while that doesn't look so bad on transports or freighters, facing 3 cruisers called cancer 1,2 and 3 just looks bad to me.

OK I might not be as an experienced FREDER but in missions I have played and done I must say that if you could put Cap ships in wings it would be easier to give orders and such but as karajorma says you cannot give them individual names and that I think is the most important argument for not having them in wings.


/Dice

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Can't give them names???  You mean you never used the alt-name field?  Works like a charm.  Wing name appears at the top and ship name appears right under it.  Only drawback is you don't get to see the ship class. 

[diceman111]

Can't give them names???  You mean you never used the alt-name field?  Works like a charm.  Wing name appears at the top and ship name appears right under it.  Only drawback is you don't get to see the ship class. 

Hmm ok never used that always wonder what alt name was have never had a need to use it thoug.....

[karajorma]

Can't give them names???  You mean you never used the alt-name field?  Works like a charm.  Wing name appears at the top and ship name appears right under it.  Only drawback is you don't get to see the ship class.

1) That's a pretty obvious reversal of the way round it should be.
2) You can't put the correct name on the escort list that way (And capships should always be on the escort list as far as I'm concerned).
3) The event log will refer to the ship by the wrong name
4) Any messages will have to be sent by #name instead of the real name or they'll appear with the wrong name. Even if you do this you won't get the targeting bracket around ship when it sends a message
5) If you are killed by that capship the wrong name will appear in the "You have been killed by..." message.


Now I know those are mostly nitpicks but for me I'd consider a mission sloppy if it had any of those errors in it unless they were unavoidable. Admittedly I've very picky about my FREDding and you might not care about any of those problems so it's completely up to you how you FRED your own mission.

I am after all the sort of person who gets really pissed off that the Belissarius shows up as Self Destructed in the mission log rather than Killed By Psamtik.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Well I would disagree on number 1.  I tend to like the wing name / ship name order.  Of course wing name / ship name / class would be nice but you can't do that.  You're probably right on the second one but I've never looked to see what appears.  If every capship should be in the list then what do you do when there are more than 5 caps?  Off to number 3 I rarely if ever look at the event log and I doubt most players do.  I totally agree with number 4.  I normally only use wings for enemy caps.  You don't get too many messages in shivan.  I don't think I would ever put a ship sending messages in a wing unless it's a fighter or bomber.  Of course in multi things like <any-wingman> don't work for messages where player ships are involved anyway so you are forced to use #name.  Lastly there's a "You have been killed by..." message?  If so must only be a single player thing because I haven't seen it since I started playing again. 

Out of all the missions I am working on I think there is only one that has a wing of 2 caps that are escort ships or are important to friendly goals.  It was the first mission I wrote and putting the ships in a wing was the only way to keep them from running into each other or dancing while still doing waypoints and attacking.  Pretty much all the cap wings are shivan and consist of cains, rakashakas, and liliths.  I also use "fake" wings to cut down on ship naming.  I don't think it's necessary for every small enemy cap or transport to have a name.    If it's important or a lone ship it gets named.  If not then in gets a wing designation even if it's not in a wing in FRED2.  All friendly caps get named.

[Trivial Psychic]

Can't give them names???  You mean you never used the alt-name field?  Works like a charm.  Wing name appears at the top and ship name appears right under it.  Only drawback is you don't get to see the ship class.

Um... alt-name changes the class name of the ship, not the actual ship name.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Yes it does but it does not say that anywhere on the hud.  If all you see is 2 names what is the difference?  I fyou have wing Viper with a ship that has alt-name Rattler it shows up like this

Viper 1
Rattler

If it's not in a Wing it shows up like this:

Rattler
GTD Orion

If it's in a "fake" wing it shows up like this.

Viper 1
GTD Orion

I actually like the first one.  If you read the reason for alt-name it is rather lame.  It's so you can't tell the class when you target a ship.  Like you can't see the picture of the target right below it.

[NGTM-1R]

I actually like the first one.  If you read the reason for alt-name it is rather lame.  It's so you can't tell the class when you target a ship.  Like you can't see the picture of the target right below it.

That's hardly the only reason. At least once in the Main Campaign it was used to change the designations to distingush NTF ships. (GTC to NTC, etc). There are any number of other things you can do with it.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Well I broke down and gave breaking up a 2 ship wing a try last night.  Took over 2 hours to change everything and add new orders and waypoints.   Thats without debugging it yet.   Now I see why I used wings.

It would be nice if there was a way to create a wing without changing the name of the ships.  This would only be an option if there was one wave.