[aldo_14]

But is it possible to allow the player to select their starting position (from a limited number of options) in a mission?  i.e. say you had an attack mission on a cargo depot, and wanted to allow the player to select which approach to take (such as a direct assault on guns vs infiltrating through a dense asteroid field, etc)

I know this would probably be a bugger to do, but I'm curious if it's possible.  No knowing FRED atall, I'm rather unsure what could be done; start off with a cutscene showing each start position from a 'camera' object, then use key input to select one and move the player ship there (with allies, etc, depending on the mision)?

[CP5670]

You could let the player's ship choice dictate where he starts and explain that in the briefing (for example, taking a Pegasus results in the infiltration option and taking a Herc II gives the assault option). I can't think of any other option though, since any events/sexps you put in (in the same mission) won't have any effect until the mission starts. If the mission is in a campaign, you could make two separate missions and make a branching point before them, so the player could choose it there, although you would then somehow have to explain the details of the mission before the briefing.

[Nuclear1]

The only other method I can think of beside CP's explanation would be to do a mission before that (such as taking off from whatever base the player is on) and having some trigger there determining where the player would start (e.g. press 1 for assault, 2 for stealth, etc.).

CP's is by far the best though.

[aldo_14]

You could let the player's ship choice dictate where he starts and explain that in the briefing (for example, taking a Pegasus results in the infiltration option and taking a Herc II gives the assault option). I can't think of any other option though, since any events/sexps you put in (in the same mission) won't have any effect until the mission starts. If the mission is in a campaign, you could make two separate missions and make a branching point before them, so the player could choose it there, although you would then somehow have to explain the details of the mission before the briefing.

Well, my thought (bearing in mind I know precisely sod all) was having the choice within the mission start - the prelude - using some form of cutscene-esque scripting (i.e. showing the routes) to allow a 'lull' to select the start position.  I'm not sure how feasible that sort of thing is, though; just wanted to make it clear I didn't have any expectation of doing this in the command brief stage.

As an aside, I'm envisaging this for 'free form' type missions, ala Starfox 64s' free range mode, where things aren't as tightly controlled as, say, scripting every firing of a beam battle, but something like x and y are targets, when y is destroyed, z jumps in & message a is played, etc (i.e. complexity via random interaction rather than scripting interesting chained events).

[Trivial Psychic]

Aldo might be onto something.  You select your ship and loadouts, then the mission starts with you departing from your carrier/destroyer and the messages say, if you want to attack from here, proceed to waypoint A. B for another attack method, and c for a third, all of which match up to nav markers.  Then, all you need is a series of distance check sexps that trigger a red-alert.  The campaign file would then have 3 different versions of the following mission, with the player starting from the different directions on the map in each one, and have red-alert flags for all relevant ships to preserve ship and loadout selection.

[karajorma]

You can do the above without the need for several missions actually. Just have the cutscene loop through the potential ways in and wait for the player to press the space bar. Once he does simply move the ship to the relevent position to begin the mission using the set-ship-position SEXP.