[TrashMan]

Allright.. I have 2-3 missions where the goal is to protect a station (in one way or another), and I set the events like this:

when
 -and-in-sequence
     +- has-arrived-delay
      |          - 5
      |          - Warspite
      |
      +-not
         - is-destroyed-delay
         - 0
         - Oceanic

- send victory message


Now the Warspite comes at the end of the mission and I tried to THEN check it  the station is stil ltehre.
But the misssion allways fails immediately.


A second problem I have is a directive that won't show.

I have one blank event (when true do nothing) nad the directive event linked to it. this event goes:
if-event-true-delay
    - initial chatter
    - 10
- do nothing

your task is to listen to the wing leader. he talk, and once he's done talking and giving you orders, the event is compltete, but the directive shows up then..not at the very start of the mission..



question 3:
When making nebula mission, what do you think is hte best way to hide ships from the player - by using primitive sensors on the player (and setting a short range) or by making some ships invisible on radar untill a certain distance?

[Black Wolf]

And in sequence is rubbish. Don't use it. And on its own should do the job.

Beyond that I'm confused. If you want to delay your directives from popping up, make a dummy event with has-time-elapsed or whatever and chain your directive to it.

As for number 3, go with distance from waypoints and then have the ships arrive without subspace animations.

[Nuclear1]

Question 1: BW's right. I can't remember the last time I used and-in-sequence. Using 'and' in your case is perfectly workable.

Question 2: Is this supposed to appear at the start of the mission? If this is the case, then you don't need a dummy event. Just set the directive on its own, and it will show up at the beginning of the mission. Only use chained events for directives that have to appear after a certain message or event (i.e. shortly after 'X' jumps in, Command orders you to take out its beam cannons; after Command gives the order, the directive pops up from a chained event).

Black Wolf is right here, but I just gave a simpler suggestion.

Question 3: What Black Wolf said. Having a ship appear without a warp effect does the same job as having invisible to radar, except that the ship isn't in the area until it is detected. If you're looking for a ship to simply disappear, use "ship-vanish".

[karajorma]

While and-in-sequence is a SEXP I also avoid like the plague (perhaps unfairly) the reason the above SEXP isn't working is your own fault Trashman (it's a mistake I've made a couple of times myself in fact).

The problem with using not >> -is-destroyed-delay is that when you start the mission the game will think "Is the Oceanic destroyed?" The answer is obviously no so the event is evaluating to true immediately and your and-in-sequence is always going to be in the wrong order.

When using not >> is-destroyed-delay you must always have another SEXP present in the event that sets a time to check if the ship is still alive.

Black Wolf is correct though. A simple And is more than enough for what you want in this case.

[TrashMan]

Thnks guys..

About the third question - hte mission has you scouting the nebula and comin upon a derilict ship.
Now normally, you can target it in the nebula regardless of distance.

I'm currenlty using primitive sensors (as there are other ships out tehre too - shivan ones) to give the illusion of really short detection range in the nebula.

[Nuclear1]

How far out does the player detect the derelict? If you don't want the player detecting it too far out, just have it arrive (without warp effect) a short distance in front of the player (still out of sensor range, though). If you simply want low detection range, just set the "Range" number under the Background Editor to a low number (say, 1250 or 1500).

[TrashMan]

the range thing I know and it works fine..

I have other problems - I tried what you told me - didn't work.

The directive "listen to Alpha Leader" still appears AFTER he finishes talking insted at the mission beginning.

And the objective still show up as failed when the mission starts on the "protect the station" issue..

Darn!

[Nuclear1]

For the directive issue: Could you take a screenshot of the Events Editor? It might help if we could see what you're doing.

As for the objective, try copying this exactly:

Code: [Select]


--when
---and
----has-arrived-delay
-----Warspite
-----5 (or whichever delay)
----not
-----is-destroyed-delay
------Oceanic
------0
---send-message
----#Wherever
----High
----Victory Message


Try that. I'm also sure that that would work. I'm still stumped on the nebula thing though.

The only other reasons I can find for the objective going true at the beginning are:
[list=A]

• The objective is set to "true", and not the victory event. (Take a look; it's stupid, but I've had it happen more than once myself)
• The objective is set to go off at an event closer to the beginning. Again, it's crazy, but take a look anyway.
• The objective, though not the event, is still using "not destroyed" as its cue alone (or with the "in sequence" code).
[/code]

Then again, I'll let someone with a little more experience speak here... :doubt:

EDIT:

[offtopic] Now that I think of it, has anyone ever found reason for setting the message priority to something other than "High"?

[karajorma]

IIRC low priority messages aren't sent if the ship that is supposed to send them has been destroyed.

[TrashMan]

Now that I think of it, has anyone ever found reason for setting the message priority to something other than "High"?

I did. I use medium on some less important messages, since I want the more important ones (important chatter, warnings) to allways show before the less important ones (like idle chatter)

Oh..here's hte screen

[TrashMan]

WEll, mission 07R works fine now (with the protect station directive), but mission 01T still doesn't

I'll do some more testing..

Oh, b.t.w. - I found a VERY annying issue. A transport is supposed to deliver a cargo container (bomb) near oceanic station, and after it departs the bomb is supposed to go off.
I set the container with a special exploion (a big one) and a self-destruct trigget.

However, the destroying takes forever!!! the container rotates there wiht 0 hull for half an hour before it finalyl decides to blow up!

[karajorma]

Set it to kamikazi before you blow it up.

[Nuclear1]

Ha, figured it out.

Apparently, FRED doesn't like having directives set to when events themselves return true, but there is a solution. Do you have anything happening after Alpha leader is done talking (ie ship arrives, waypoints done, etc.)? Try setting the directive to that, rather than "event-true-delay".

Here I have Beta arriving at about the same time that Alpha leader is done talking, and so the event returns true. If all else fails, you could use an SJD "dummy" out in the background and use this same coding.

Example:

[TrashMan]

Everything works now! Whoa!

Two more  mission are down. If I keep this up, my campaign will be done soon!

[Nuclear1]

Glad to hear it.