I really want to say that I've seen that kind of "smearing" behavior before in Vista or XP, but I don't remember. That problem sounds familiar. I'm talking about the old school retail FRED more than the improved FSOpen one, though.
So when I create a new event in the Event Viewer it gives me:
New Event
when
true
do-nothing
So I should replace that with:
New Event
when
Sathanas reaches Jump Node 0
Jump out
It can't be that simple.
For that case specifically, you already found that Departure Cues can do this and that would be the preferable solution. If you wanted to express this in an Event, however, it would look like this:
Sathanas Departure
when
are-waypoints-done-delay //(right-click on "true" and Replace Operator -> Objectives -> are-waypoints-done-delay)
Sathanas //(right-click, select the Sathanas)
Waypoint1 //(right-click, select the name of the waypoint you want this to happen at)
0 //(optional: right-click and replace with the time delay, in seconds, between the Sathanas reaching the waypoint and making this event true)
add-goal //(right-click on "do-nothing" and Replace Operator -> Change -> add-goal)
Sathanas //(right-click, select the Sathanas)
ai-warp-out //(right-click on "ai_chase," which is the default, and Replace Operator -> Ai goals -> ai-warp-out)
89 //(priority of this order - leave it at 89 since you really want this to happen)
As you probably saw if you did the above example, the "if" parts of your "if-then" conditional are kind of scattered, but are mostly located in Objectives, Status and Events/Goals. The "then" parts are mostly located in Change. The different sub-menus become relevant or grayed-out as needed. For example, Ai Goals is only relevant when you're doing something related to changing the goals, such as the add-goal command.
So yes, the end result is almost "that simple," but remembering where the different commands are located is just something you have to get used to through practice. It eventually becomes second nature. Most events are constructed along these lines, and get combined with stuff in the Logical menu (and, or, not, etc) as needed to form more complex conditional statements.
Now, let's say for a moment that you had two Sathanas (Sathanases?) and wanted them to warp out. Using the above sexp, you can right-click on the "when" and do Add Operator -> Change -> add-goal. This adds another add-goal which you can fill in however you want. Now, your event does two things when the waypoints are done. It's like saying, "If this is true, then do that and that."
