[ShadowGorrath]

Any help on how to do that? I want to have random explosions appear in the background/far away, and to have them be looped: to appear quickly, and then appear after some time again and again.

[NGTM-1R]

It might be simpler/better to have actual ships out there, y'know. If they're reasonably far out it won't matter so much.

(I recall a shipyard attack I set up once that had your combat, one around the main station 7km out, and another battle at a destroyer and docking ring 15km out...)

[TrashMan]

You have that special-explosions SEXP..

Make a few of them, each on a different coordiante and have them repeat many times with a reasonable interval.


You can also use a animated background...or simplified far-away battle models (simple texture, low-poly with only beam turrets)

[FUBAR-BDHR]

I thought about doing this before.  Was thinking of making a simple mission of the actual BOE battle in the distance then taking a screenshot and converting it to a background object itself.  Add just a few ships way off in the distance for live fire effects along with special explosions at random coordinates in that area of space. 

[Vidmaster]

You have that special-explosions SEXP..
Make a few of them, each on a different coordiante and have them repeat many times with a reasonable interval.

I use this in FH 2261 along with ships that move and shoot all over the place (took some time to script), used set-speed-events to improve their moving speeds. And occasionally, a ship blows up BUT only if the player can see it (using the training sexps).
What makes this mission so much overkill is that there is not only the massive background battle but a massive actual battle too, with capships everywhere. A pity that 3.6.9 doesn't support many ships.

[Snail]

FS2 can support one ****load of ships if your computer can handle it, actually.

[Vidmaster]

not this ****load, believe me. Have you seen the B5 episode "into the fire"  ?

[NGTM-1R]

's only a trio of Omegas and fighter screens...of course, I forget what the fighter complement of an Omega is, 24 or 36...

[eliex]

Computer system report: CRASH

[Vidmaster]

's only a trio of Omegas and fighter screens...of course, I forget what the fighter complement of an Omega is, 24 or 36...

no, into the fire has the army of light, the Vorlon Fleet, the Shadow Fleet, both planet killers and the first ones facing off against each other     Wrong episode dude.

[NGTM-1R]

's only a trio of Omegas and fighter screens...of course, I forget what the fighter complement of an Omega is, 24 or 36...

no, into the fire has the army of light, the Vorlon Fleet, the Shadow Fleet, both planet killers and the first ones facing off against each other     Wrong episode dude.

This is what happens when you don't have the room on your HD for all of it.

Besides, I assumed you had more sanity than to attempt that.

[Al Tarket]

the fred ship count is the limit, i actually did a boe mission before however even as i hit the limit with at least 40 cap ships and many many fighters, it did many weird errors i removed one ship and it was all fine.
(i have found the inspiration i need for the 3rd mission in my b5 demo campaign).

i dont see much point in a background battle, unless its a feel of being in a big fight against your enemy.

besides this "into the fire" mission, the shadow fleet in the b5 mod doesn't have that cloud with the superstructure inside more or less rendering this mission fiction and not canon, so pretty much irrelevant imo.

[Vidmaster]

you'll be surprised      I thought my previous works had convinced people that I am able to do some pretty innoative stuff sometimes...

[Androgeos Exeunt]

I made an unfinished mission last time in fred2, and because there were so many ships in it, I crashed the whole program whenever I tried to add a large ship in.

Is the ship limit in fred2_open still the same as fred2?

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Depends on what build you are using.  Recent 3.6.10 builds support more ships. 

[blackhole]

It really wouldn't be hard to just request a larger ship limit. If the FRED2_open programmers were so inclined, they could make it an unsigned longlong max, which would let you support up to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 (18 quintillion).

Not that any computer system in the foreseeable future could handle that

[karajorma]

Parse_Objects is already dynamic so you can have as many of them as you like in a mission. The problem is that Ships[] isn't. And if you fancy editing all 300+ references to MAX_SHIPS, be my guest.


Then again, you only said it wasn't hard to request a higher ships limit. Which is true. Similarly it's not hard for the SCP to insult who ever asks and say no.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Depends on what build you are using.  Recent 3.6.10 builds support more ships. 

Drat. I'm still using fred2_open 3.6.9.

[Snail]

fred2_open 3.6.10 doesn't work for me. At all.

[blackhole]

Parse_Objects is already dynamic so you can have as many of them as you like in a mission. The problem is that Ships[] isn't. And if you fancy editing all 300+ references to MAX_SHIPS, be my guest.

There's 177, actually.