Perhaps, it could be sexp controlled, elminiating the need for additional drop tab menus. Have force-arrive-path and force-depart-path sexps which would be used at the start of a mission, like linking it to an event which comes true imidiately upon mission start. The sexps would need to be able to handle single ships or wings, but only one object/wing per sexp... you can't list multipe ships or wings in the same sexp. Each sexp would require 3 arguments, the name of the ship or wing that is departing or arriving, the name of the ship that has the fighterbay(s) that that ship/wing is departing/arriving at, and the path that should be used. This would require the mission designer to have more specific knowledge of the path names, but if possible, have FRED be able to at least retrieve the path names from the model, but have the user required to know which one is which. When it comes to wings departing, the wing leader would take the path indicated, and then every other ship would take those paths that come after it. If there are more fighters than paths above the one specified in the sexp, then the successive fighters would restart from that path and continue.
Example, a wing of 6 fighters is departing from a twin-bay Orion, with 4 paths per bay. Paths 1 through 4 are on the right bay, while 5 through 8 are on the left bay. You want Gamma wing to exit from the Orion's left bay.
Event:
Gamma Arrvial
-when
--true
--force-arrive-path
---Gamma
---Orion
---bay-05
When Gamma's arrival time comes, Gamma 1 will arrive from bay-05 path, Gamma 2 will arrive from bay-06 path, Gamma 3 will arrive from bay-07 path, Gamma 4 will arrive from bay-08 path, then Gamma 5 will arrive from bay-05 path just behind Gamma 1, and Gamma 6 will arrive from bay-06 path just behind Gamma 2.
Since I'm no coder, I can't begin to try to work out how to code this, but hopefully this description will give ideas to someone who is a skilled coder, and lead to a solution.
Later!
