Here's one (perhaps tricky). How about the ability to update or replace some information? For example, at the beginning of FS1, there are no shields right, so no ship, weapon, or intel entry (except that GTI Riviera reference in the MX-50 description) should mention them. Later, when shields become known, you might want description data to include them. ML-16 does little shield dammage, so its tech entry should indicate this, but not until shields are known. To accomplish this, you'd have multiple tech entry descriptions, one of which would be flagged as default. The default one gives initial data, and the other entries would give more recent data and a sexp would tell the game to switch to the next entry for the ML-16. As soon as shields becomes known, the campaign designer would use the sexp and suddenly the tech entry says that the weapon is all but useless against shields. Then, perhaps by the time the Prometheus becomes available, a third tech description would say that the ML-16 is completely obsolete and relegated to training and private security. The same thing could work for intel entries, indicating that we first know little of the Shivans, then later we know some more about their strategies and can deduce their objectives, and so on. It allows the player to remain up-to-date, especially on campaigns that cover long periods of time, such as S:AH.
What do you think?
