[Raapys]

I'm trying to create my first real mission using FRED, but I I've run into a strange problem.

I've a wing of fighters which supposedly are 'docked' in a capital ship. I then have an event which launch them, and some other events to give them orders a few seconds after launch, ordering one at a time to go to their own waypoint.

The orders that are given to each individual fighter of that wing are to first clear all orders, then for #4 to set course to his waypoint, then #3, #2 and lastly #1, with a 1 second delay between each, and a unique waypoint for all of them.

Unfortunately, only #1 does as he's told. The others form up around him, while he goes about flying to his waypoint. There's no orders at all, not for the wing, not for the individual fighters, telling them to follow him.

I first thought it had something to do with #1 being leader, so I switched leader to #2, but it was still only #1 who did as he was told, and the others followed him still.
I haven't been able to find a solution yet. I even tried recreating the wing, but no luck.

[karajorma]

Odd. I can't think what you might have done wrong here. If you post up a picture of the Events you're using or write them down in the

-when
-A
-Do-B

style then maybe I can puzzle this one out a little better. (Best of all is to post the mission of course).

Another hint is to try making the fighters friendly (if they aren't already) and then selecting them in game and looking at what their orders are (Friendly ships will display their current order above the target box).

If you notice that they're set to guard fighter 1 or something it will tell you something


Have you looked into the FRED Academy BTW

[Raapys]

Well, it basically goes like this:

when event x is true
clear goals for this ship
add goal->this ship->ai-waypoints-once this ship's waypoint, 89 priority

One of those for all 4 ships, the 3 after the first one is chained, 1 second delay.
None of the ships are given any wing or individual orders, except for these events.

So, what basically happens is:

Event trigger the wing's launch from the capital ship. They just fly in rings for a little while, even when they get orders to move to their waypoint. When ship #1 gets the order to move to the waypoint(he's the last of the trigger-events), then suddenly all of them move with him.

Now, they're all friendly, so I've already checked that they do, in fact, get their orders. For some reason, however, they seem completely locked in formation with #1.
It should be noted that a couple of times I tested #1 went ahead to his waypoint and the others didn't follow. Instead(!) they took up formation around *me*.

Now, when they get the order to guard the capital ship a little while later, they seem to behave normally again.
With this in mind, I tried to set their initial orders to guard the capital ship, before triggering the waypoint events. Still no luck, however.

[karajorma]

Add a message to each event (no comm ani) and see if you get all 4 played. I'm betting that something is wrong with the chain.

Is ship 1 the first ship on the chain by any chance?

[Raapys]

Ship 1's orders are the last event on the chain. The chain works fine, I tried as you said to create 1 message playing off in each of the events, and all messages played on time.
And as I mentioned, when I target the fighters in question their 'orders' are correct; Go to waypoint.

I just tried giving everyone *except* #1 orders to go to their waypoints, and told #1 to stay still.
None of the 3 other ships would do as told, instead they just mingled around #1, while he was 'standing still'.
Their orders even said 'Waypoint'.

[karajorma]

I think I'll need to see the mission. E-mail it to karajorma@REMOVETHISbitSOIDon'TGETSPAM.excite.com and I'll take a look.

[Slasher]

Have you checked the "No Dynamic Goals" box under the Misc. options in the Ships Editor for each of the fighters?  You might try to see if that makes a difference.  If it doesn't, make sure you uncheck it.

[Raapys]

Tried the dynamic goals, didn't make it work.

I've sent you the mission kara.
It's my first, so don't mind the unexperienced setup The event box is a mess, but the ones you should be interested in is at the bottom.

I've sent two table files with it, Ships and weapons.tbl. They include a new ship class based on an existing one, which is used in the mission, and the balance thingies I did to the Shadow, Vorlon and Minbari ships earlier.

It's supposed to be the start of the Great War campaign I was thinking of.

Oh, you can give orders to some of the asteriods I recently added, forgot to fix it before I sent the file.

[karajorma]

I won't be able to playtest the mission for a couple of hours still so in the mean time a couple of suggestions you might want to try yourself.

1) Try increasing the time between Duma appearing and them being given orders by a couple more seconds. Or better yet changing the trigger for the Duma 4 Orders SEXP to

When
-has-arrived-delay
--Duma 4
--1

So that you can be absolutely certain that the ship is present in the mission when you're giving it orders.

2) Remove the clear-goals. I doubt they're the problem but they probably aren't needed anyway as unless the player has given them an order they shouldn't have any goals at that point anyway.

[Raapys]

Mhm, tried it all. No luck what so ever.

I read a post, while looking for answers to similar problems, dated 2001 or something. It was about the AI, and the improvements that should be made to it.
One guy mentioned that the ships should be made to fly together, to remove some of the bumping-into-each-other problems. I'm not sure if this ever was implemented..?

Anyways, what I do see when playing is that all ships in that wing performs the same maneuvers, at basically the same time. That lead me to believe that the feature possibly was implemented, and that that's what's happening to that wing.
Because they actually disobey direct orders to move to the waypoint, and instead just follows #1 around like a bunch of birds in formation, regardless of which sequence I give them orders, who's the leader, etc.

[karajorma]

I tried the mission but it kept kicking me out after only a few seconds. I think you've got a rogue end-mission present somewhere.

[Raapys]

Sure you're not just moving too far away from the capital ship the first few minutes? You should get a message telling you to return, once you're a certain distance away from the ship.

[karajorma]

I'm getting kicked out and seeing the no debriefing message as soon as I attempt to close in on the enemy base. I'll try lurking around near the caps though.

[karajorma]

Hmmm. I've taken a good look at the mission and I must admit that I'm stumped. Duma don't appear to be getting orders from anywhere else that would cause this odd behaviour as far as I can see.

I'll  test this a little further to check if it is indeed a bug by writing a mission of my own.

On the other hand I don't see why you want the ships to go to seperate waypoints in the first place. It doesn't seem to advance the story any.

While I'm here I'll point out a couple of other flaws I spotted (This is the sort of thing I do for the FRED Academy. Point out mistakes so you can make your missions better).

1) Don't use the enter key when you're making briefings, debriefings or message to word wrap (it's okay for making paragraphs in the first two though). In messages however you shouldn't use it at all as it causes the game to over write the message the second the next one comes in. The game will automatically word wrap for you so just let it do that.

2) You're over using end-mission. I've spotted a couple of places where it is used just because the wrong ship is destroyed. The player should have a choice when to end a mission unless you're red alerting to another mission or something like that. If the player has screwed up by letting something get destroyed let him decide whether or not to restart.

3) Select all your drakh ships and give them an alt name of Unknown. Although their names are shown as unknown their class appears immediately underneath as DK Raider.

Apart from that the mission shows potential

[Raapys]

Thanks for the advice!

The reason I wanted them to go to the waypoints was mostly for it to look cool. You know how, in the show, fighters often move into certain formations, then stop, waiting for the enemy. As you said, though, it's not a must-have, so I guess I'll just take the easy way out on that one.

As for ending the mission when the wrong ship is destroyed, it's mostly because I was annoyed at the game's way of handling friendly fire. It let's you actually destroy one or two fighters or so, before making them hostile to yourself. And since I couldn't find any trigger to check if the player was firing on friendly ships, I couldn't think of much else to do.
That's why I decided to end it with a "traitor" debriefing if the ships was destroyed before a certain time, rather than just let the mission go on. Suppose I can just make all ships hostile to the player, though, and let the rest of the mission fall away.

[karajorma]

Ah. The game shouldn't actually let you do that. I'm surprised it's letting you to be honest.

[Raapys]

Yah. On a sidenote, how can I get sun-free nebulas? Even extensive searching didn't really turn up the answer I was looking for. If I just leave the 'sun' field empty, then I still get a sun. Same thing if I just use an ambient thingy.