Well, I've already tried the and-in-sequence thing for something else in the same mission and it still only works if the distance check hasn't been fulfilled before. I've got an event that is supposed to trigger when the player gets within a close range of any one of a number of objects (I'm using a when-argument rather than a whole bunch of "or" instances), but not until after another event has triggered. If the distance factor has already been fulfilled by the time the hook event has triggered, then it will simply refuse to trigger that event because it was achieved BEFORE the hook event rather than after it.
I won't be able to chain the events per se, as my mission has two similar player choice sequences. If the player approaches ship A, then it fires off a chain of messages, objectives, and other actions. It the player approaches ship B, then it fires off another chain, similar to the other but tailored to the different ship targeted. I can't "chain" it off a single event, but I have added in an is-event-true-delay to each branch trigger, linking off to the last event before one of the sequences can fire. I haven't tested it with this in yet.
We'll see.