[TopAce]

I don't know how possible it would be to do this, but can you make it possible for the FREDers to set secondary or tertiary arrival and departure points in case the primary departure/arrival condition cannot happen?

[Blaise Russel]

SEXP it.

[karajorma]

I think he means arrival points (in space) as opposed to arrival times. As far as I know that can't be done in FRED.

However I do have a somewhat sneaky idea on how you could do it. Make an invisible cube and make it stealthy. Then put it in the mission and make the ships appear near it. If you want to change the arrival point simply move the cube

[TopAce]

*sighs*

NO! Ok, forget it. Requesting is no use by default.

[karajorma]

Hey. Don't throw a temper tantrum. It's a good suggestion.

It would be somewhat hard to implement though as far as I can see. Maybe using a new SEXP to override the default warp location might work though.

What I suggested is a workaround you can use if the SCP don't give us this feature.

[TopAce]

Here is an ICQ conversation I had with karajorma. It will help you digest my request.

...
TopAce (09:27 PM) :
Arrival-
-Location: Near ship - 1500 meters - GTD Aquitaine.
If the Aquitaine is destroyed/departed, there should be an alternative arrival point, for example Near ship - Alpha 1.
This might be valid for a friendly fighter wing.
karajorma (09:28 PM) :
Yeah. Now look at my suggestion. By moving the invisible cube next to Alpha 1 you could do exactly that. I understood your suggestion perfectly. Hell I even agree with it
karajorma (09:30 PM) :
The problem is that it would be hard to set up alternative arrival points in the ships editor. That's why I suggested a SEXP might be an idea
TopAce (09:30 PM) :
It wouldn't work if you want a wing to arrive from a destroyer all the way.
Primary arrival location: Fighter bay GTD Aquitiane
Secondary arrival location: Fighter bay: GTD Bastion.
karajorma (09:30 PM) :
A SEXP would work fine
TopAce (09:30 PM) :
let's see the response of a coder

[Flaser]

Use a variable set it to rundom.

Create separate ships and use if variable = ... to set which ships to appear.

Using invisible characters in ship designation you can fake that you FREDded multiple arrival points for the same ships.

[karajorma]

Yeah. You can SEXP it but TopAces suggestion does have merit.

While you can fake it with wings called Delta, "Delta " and "Delta  " each time you add more work for yourself. You now have to check which wing arrived and if it was destroyed every time you want to use one of the three wings.

Having the ability to simply use Delta wing for all three arrivals would make FREDding much easier.

[magatsu1]

I tried using "near ship" but IIRC that usually means the ship arrives facing the target ship, which can ruin the effect

[StratComm]

How about a set-ship-position SEXP before arrival?  I don't know if it'd work, but in theory it could do what you're wanting it to.  The only place you'd have a problem with that is departures; if you want gamma to enter the fighterbay of BigShip 1, but BigShip 1 is dead and so they should dock with BigShip 2 rather than warping out.  Seems reasonable enough for me.  Would a set-arrival-mode and set-depart-mode sexp be in order?

[magatsu1]

I'd just use "or" for that myself

[StratComm]

Docking location (or arrival/departure in general), at least the last time I checked, wasn't an or-able setting.  Click on a radio button, select an element out of a drop down list.

[magatsu1]

Heh, I posted that without checking so you're probably right. I'd expect having  dummy event(s) and then linking the departure cue to that should work though. Again, I haven't checked this though.

[karajorma]

It's not the cue that's the problem mag. It's the location. And that's set from a dropdown list. There's no way to apply a SEXP to it. You have four choices. Hyperspace, docking bay or  in front of/near ship.

If the ship you wanted a wing to launch from is destroyed then tough luck. You won't see that wing.

[StratComm]

It's not a matter of telling a ship when to depart, that is indeed easy.  Just a sequence of logical conditions.  The problem is that the arrival and departure location  and type are selected in a very fixed way, and they can't be changed once the mission has started.  I could be misinterpreting TopAce's post, but I think this is what he is looking for.

[karajorma]

Nope. You're bang on Strat.

[magatsu1]

Originally posted by karajorma
It's not the cue that's the problem mag. It's the location. And that's set from a dropdown list. There's no way to apply a SEXP to it. You have four choices. Hyperspace, docking bay or  in front of/near ship.

If the ship you wanted a wing to launch from is destroyed then tough luck. You won't see that wing.

Ah, right yeah.Bit of a botch, but I'd be inclined to have back up wings ie; if Delta's mothership is destroyed before they can launch then Zeta can take their place.

Pretty crappy short term fix though

[Hippo]

Actually, I've had wings arrive from hyperspace when the ship they were supposed to come from the docking bay of is destroyed... Once or twice at least... (that i remember at least...)

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Hippo
Actually, I've had wings arrive from hyperspace when the ship they were supposed to come from the docking bay of is destroyed... Once or twice at least... (that i remember at least...)

Which would ruin a mission in which the only two destroyers in system are present already.

[Sesquipedalian]

One can fix that last problem by including a check in the wing's arrival cue to see whether the mothership has been destroyed.

However, if you then give the player a directive regarding that wing (e.g. Destroy Virgo), and the mothership is destroyed between the first and last waves of the wing, the directive might flake out and not evaluate properly.  Percent-ships-destroyed might be useful in such a situation.