[Japong]

Hey guys, I'm trying to set up a display at my computer store. We have a display PC with Freespace downloaded and installed on it, and because we want it to be something of an eye catch I wanted it constantly playing a mission, preferably a big battle that simply loops. 

I've done a little bit of dicking around in FRED (mainly making battles with gigantic groups of capital ships and watching them duke it out, like every newbie), but I can't figure out how to re-use the same ship. I can make new ships replace destroyed ships with an arrival cue and 'is-destroyed-delay', but they'll eventually run out.  What I want is for any ships that were destroyed to warp in again a few seconds later in their original positions, and then start moving towards the fray. The player will be invulnerable and flying a fighter somewhere in the middle of it all.

[GenericCorvette]

Put each capital ship into a wing and set the # of waves to a gigantic amount.

Quick Edit: I've managed to crash the game while doing something like this. Must have been all the debris floating around.

[Turey]

use the ship-create SEXP and some variables.

[Grizzly]

Make the mission go no (de)brief, then ad a campaign file that ensures that the next mission will be the same?

So you have this:

Mission A: No (de)briefing
Mission AA: Copy of A with different name, loops back to Mission A

Thanks to Axem with JAD 2 for the idea.

[BlueFlames]

Two thoughts....

First, you might consider just making a big battle with some random ships on each side flagged as invulnerable.  When you have time, you can restart the mission, but even if there's a long delay, while the explosions may cease, the battle will continue.

Second, I seem to recall that (presumably unauthorized) in-store video is one of about two things related to FreeSpace for which Interplay has sent out cease and desist letters.  I'm not trying to put you off of the idea, but rather let you know that Interplay has a bug up its arse about this kind of thing, so there may be consequences.