[mobcdmoc3]

I'm not seeing any flags like those in the Meson Bomb table.

Should the sabotage-hull sexp have been a good workaround?

[mobcdmoc3]

Alright, I'm back with moar questions.

After sitting down and forcing myself to learn how to use variables, I came across a dilemma I'm not sure how to fix. So the idea is that I have the player jump out to another theatre of operations, which leads to another mission. I want the player and his/her wingman's ship/weapons to be copied over to the next mission.

Naturally, I pop open the event editor and add variables, five for each ship, being the ship, primary bank 1, primary bank 2, secondary bank 1 and 2. (Not using bombers, so no need for a bank 3 secondary)

Now the problem is modifying the variables to suit my needs. The only method I have to modify variables seems to be one event per variable, but with so many possible weapons to choose from, this could end up taking a really long time. Is there a way to work around this?

I thought of a few ways to dodge this, though I'm not exactly sure if they'd work...

- Lock down the player's loadout using the scramble fighters flag in the mission specs box

- Severely restrict number of weapons that the player can utilize and hope people don't complain

- Use a red-alert sexp, despite being told on the wiki that this sexp doesn't work and/or is evil

[karajorma]

*Ahem*

[mobcdmoc3]

I *think* I understand what I need to do, but I don't have an alternate ship class editor window that looks like the one as shown in that page.

I do have to do something with alternate ship classes, right?

[karajorma]

Nope, just use the weapons side of it. You'll need up to two variables per weapon. A string variable to hold the name and another numeric one to hold the number of them (for missiles and ballistic primaries).

If you set up Alpha 1 and 2 to have no weapons and then use your string variables as the Available Weapons Pool From Variable and then use the numeric variable in the Set Number from Variable you should find that on the loadout screen the game will automatically distribute the remaining weapons between Alpha 1 and Alpha 2.

[mobcdmoc3]

Alright, I'm back. I couldn't find any missions using the above variable technique to save mission data and whatnot, so I ended up messing around with the red alert mission stuffs because the variable stuffs ended up causing unhealthy amounts of confusion.
 
I can get friendly wings and whatnot to get their statuses to carry over, but when I try to do the same for a warship, it doesn't work. I used to have it where one warship would copy over, but not another, but then I did something and can't figure out how to get it back. In the time I did have with that version though, I was not able to determine why I was able to get this ship's status to carry over, but not another.

In the first mission, I tick off the 'Red Alert Carry Status' box, and in the following mission, check off the 'Red Alert Mission' box, but it doesn't seem to always work. The warships that do work though, work consistently. The ships in the first mission that are supposed to carry over, do not jump out. (Not sure if that means anything here)

I named the ships to match the ship they're supposed to copy over and copied their loadouts and whatnot. No results. Can anyone shed some light on this? Or better yet tell me how to get it to work 100% of the time?

(Before someone berates me using Red Alert stuff - BP seems to get it to work just fine, so why can't I?)

[MatthTheGeek]

It's not about getting red alerts to work, it's about the fact they can and will utterly corrupt your pilot file and that of people playing your campaign. That BP used them is irrelevant : there have been just as many bug reports regarding red alerts in BP as in any other campaign using red alerts.

Red alerts have been a buggy mess since retail. DON'T use them.

If you want example of missions saving ship data, look at any checkpointed mission in WiH. The technique used to make checkpoints in-mission is going to work just fine to keep data between two missions, since it uses campaign variables. Or use the checkpoint script that has been hanging around somewhere. IIRC the BtA demo uses it, so that's a good place to look at too.

[mjn.mixael]

Yeah, the BtA demo uses it. That script was actually written to replace Red Alerts.. we just recommissioned it as a checkpoint script. We'll also be using it for Red Alerts unless the Red Alert code gets fixed before we finish those missions.

[jg18]

Just wondering, will red alerts be automagically fixed in trunk when the new pilot code is merged in, or will it require code fixes elsewhere as well?

[niffiwan]

From my memories of looking through the Antipodes 8 thread, there have been a number of red alert bugs in the new pilot code.  I'm not sure if all of them have been fixed.

[CommanderDJ]

The pilot code might have helped somewhat, but the truth is that the Red Alert system simply needs a revamp.

[mobcdmoc3]

Alright - Found out what I need to do set up the variables after looking at WiH's checkpointed missions. I'm almost there - Just can't see the variables showing up in the second mission events editor that I need them for. Set up a campaign file - Nothing.

Also... I poked around a little and... Wtf is/does the AI class' BALLS OF STEELE' for/do?

[Droid803]

BALLS OF STEELE is a cheating AI class that has like doubled fire rates and whatnot XD

[mobcdmoc3]

0_o' Was it ever used? I don't ever recall seeing any ships firing at insane rates when I played.

Annnnnd - Nobody knows what I need to do to get the variables to work?

[niffiwan]

0_o' Was it ever used? I don't ever recall seeing any ships firing at insane rates when I played.

The Price of War (I think that's the name) - some of the GTVA Corvettes have BoS AI (probably the ones duking it out with the Akula)

And sorry - can't help with the variables stuff 

[Cyborg17]

I'm not 100% sure since I've never done it, but I think you just need to add the variables to the other mission, as well.  I don't think it happens automatically. (would be convenient if it did though)

[mjn.mixael]

Yes. Separate missions and the campaign editor are not smart enough to know what variables you added to missions. (How would you do this anyway? Like, how do you tell it to grab the variables from one set of missions and the load path but not another?)

You need to create the variables in all the missions/campaign editor when you need them. Then, when you are playing the campaign/missions, FSO will figure it out as long as the variables are Player Persistent or Campaign Persistent.

[mobcdmoc3]

Yes. Separate missions and the campaign editor are not smart enough to know what variables you added to missions. (How would you do this anyway? Like, how do you tell it to grab the variables from one set of missions and the load path but not another?)

You need to create the variables in all the missions/campaign editor when you need them. Then, when you are playing the campaign/missions, FSO will figure it out as long as the variables are Player Persistent or Campaign Persistent.

That worked, thanks!

-----------------------------------

Over the past couple days I've been messing around with the cutscene SEXPs, but to no avail. I just can't seem to get them to work. I can get some general functions to work, but anything that involves moving the camera or tracking a target, it completely messes up on me. Here's what I've done that causes it to break...

- I can set its position and get it to face a position where a few fighters are supposed to jump in no problem

- However, when I try to get the camera to track the ship coming out of subspace which is in view of the camera using the following

when
- has-arrived-delay
- set-camera target
-- Xi 1

The camera shoots to some arbitrary location in space, and then starts spinning around facing random parts in space, completely ignoring what I've told it to do. Can anyone shed any light on what I'm doing wrong? It's really wearing away at my patience

I've already made sure that no other SEXPs are interfering, so I'm fairly sure this one is causing problems. If someone really wants to poke around in it, I'll happily hand it over.

[mobcdmoc3]

Double posting for another question...

I seem to have run into a problem in which the AI simply doesn't respond to the 'play-dead' order. I ask them to play dead with a priority of 200%, and they decide that it's still ok to go shoot stuff. This problem seems to be only relevant to the fighters/bombers - Anything bigger than that responds to them just fine.

I've got a guess that this might have something to do with them being EMP'd, but I can't imagine a reason why this would cause them to act the way they should. To my understanding, EMP doesn't mess with orders - It just sends them gunning off against a new target. Could this be possibly overriding my order?

I tried turning all their AI to 'none' via SEXPs, but even then they didn't respond. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong based upon what I've provided?

[General Battuta]

Disable the EMP, see if you still have the problem. I'm pretty sure it's the EMP.