posted 05-09-2000 07:38 AM               

-While designing a mission, you all had once a problem that you finally solved using a TRICK, or an nice idea you realised using a TRICK. Quote here a short resume and the famous TRICK you used, so other Fred users can profit of your experience. What do you think?

-Here's mine. In a mission, a Dragon had to play the role of a recon unit to make a report on present GTVA forces, so the Shivans could deploy their forces in consequence.

-The problem was to make this fighter fly from ship to ship and give the impression that it was counting your fleet. But no way you can set a waypoint path to do this, 'cause you didn't know where those ships were supposed to be after a while. And still, you want this fighter to evade player while doing its mission.

-Solution: First, remove any weapon from the fighter. I used the add-goal operator with AIchase, then "when < distance Dragon-ship 500 clear-goals. The dragon begin by ATTACKING the ship, and when close to 500 meters from the ship, it will then ignore it and lead for the following. Etc... Until it reached the order to jump out. Well, for details (like speed, evading alpha, repeating operation for each ship...) I trust you know how to handle it.

-There's many applications for this. I think someone already found it, or that you will laugh at me, but, well... I had to begin somewhere

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Does it breath? KILL IT!

posted 05-09-2000 01:43 PM            

If you want to have a ship deploying mines use the faustus it has a docking bay and it could pass for a minelayer. set a series of waypoints and let some cargo containers undock just alter the special explosion and you're all set. you could also change the pof file to the one the asteroids use so u could lay a minefield masked in a asteroid belt.

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Don’t ignore hidden desires
Pay attention you’re playing with fire
Silence must be heard, noise should be observed

posted 05-09-2000 01:45 PM               

If you ever want to make a wing of ships which FRED2 doesn't normally allow to be formed into wings (support ships, for example), just create the wing out of any other ship type, then change them back using the ship editor.

PS-- Oh yeah, FRED2 will give you a warning when you load/save a mission where you've done this, but FS2 doesn't have any problem with it.

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--ZylonBane

posted 05-09-2000 03:04 PM               

This isn't a really hard trick, but maybe people don't know it. If you want a ship to self-destruct but don't want its hitpoints to rapidly drop down like it normally does, and instead want it to blow up right away, just use the sabatoge-subsystem SEXP and have it damage the hull 101%. Then it blows up right away.

posted 05-10-2000 10:17 PM               

Anyone have any good tricks for checking when a stealth ship is too close to a hostile ship and can be seen? My problem is that the AI is pretty good at ignoring the effects of the stealth mode.

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FreeSpace Coordinator, Descent Chronicles

posted 05-10-2000 10:19 PM               

If your capital ships are too strong or too weak, try changing the angle and facing of the ship. Some ships have a powerful frontal firing arc (Deimos), but others are better off firing from a side angle.

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FreeSpace Coordinator, Descent Chronicles

posted 05-10-2000 10:22 PM               

Ever have a problem when an escort ship is too weak and you can't keep it from dying when lowering the AI, changing initial orders, and changing weapons?

Use the repair sexp (set-subsytem-strength) in an event with a repeater and a delay. During a mission, few people will notice that the ship may be gaining 1 hull every 10 seconds...especially if the ship is in combat and getting hammered. Over time, you can make a big difference in the ship's survivability.

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FreeSpace Coordinator, Descent Chronicles

posted 05-10-2000 10:29 PM               

The problem with that is it doesn't look like it's repairing it. If the repairee ship doesn't come under attack for awhile, make it invulnerable and arm the repair ships with SAAAs. Then use SEXPs to have the repair ships fire-beam on the ship they're repairing. Then it really looks like they're repairing it! Make sure you have them break off once you have to protect it so it can be vulnerable again.

posted 05-11-2000 09:47 AM               

It'd probably be easier just to use the SAAA instead of hacking the weapons.tbl file.

Oh yeah, I now have 502 posts!

posted 05-11-2000 08:05 PM               

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FreeSpace Coordinator, Descent Chronicles

posted 05-12-2000 12:23 AM               

The problems with the targetting laser are threefold:

1) It only fires as long as the fire button is held down. This means that if you use fire-beam to fire it, you only see a very brief flash.

2) Like the Mjolnir beam, it only fires straight ahead.

3) If you put it on a non-fighter ship, the beam is emitted from the ship's approximate center instead of the appropriate turret.

posted 05-12-2000 08:11 AM               

quote:

---

Whatever FireSplat said, I think it's wrong. Sorry FS.

---

I guess the laser is a beam cannon, isn't it? It's like type 4 or something.

You could get around the short firing time by setting the event to fire 99999 times at an interval time of 1. It would look weird, but would be better.

It would probably just be easier to use an SAAA, though.

posted 05-13-2000 08:53 AM            

When you're creating a mission and set the messages you can choose anyone but yourself to be the sender. This can be annoying because if you have selected a wingman to send a message and the wingman is dead the message gets send by command. Also since you are the squad leader it would be logical if you were involved with communication. So how can you fix this:

When selecting a sender choose command and edit it to this:

#Alpha 1 (or anything you want just as long as you use # to start with).

This isn't really a trick since it is mentioned by the sexp explanation but I only noticed it a few hours ago and I doubt that I’m the only one who never noticed it.

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Don’t ignore hidden desires
Pay attention you’re playing with fire
Silence must be heard, noise should be observed

posted 05-13-2000 05:32 PM               

Say you have a mission where a cap ship gets disabled and you dock another ship to repair it. Well, I forgot to undock the repair ship before sending it home. The repair ship carried the cap ship right through subspace!

posted 05-13-2000 07:03 PM               

Try this little experiment. Create a large cap (Hatchet, Orion, whatever...) and check its Kamkikaze box. Then create a Sathanas, also set to Kamikaze, and set it up so after a few seconds it will warp in and collide with the other ship. Then load it up and watch the fireworks! (word of advice-- you might want to watch from very, very far away)

posted 05-15-2000 04:44 AM               

-I don't know for you but I always had troubles balancing a beam fight between capships, espacially when they don't have the same power. How can you be sure to have them fight quite equally?

-Hint: have the two ships fight toghether, with nothing around, and quote how many beams it take for the strongest to take out the weakest. Then go back in Fred2

-Protect the weakest ship from its opponent beams, play the mission again, and now quote how many time it takes to the weakest to take out the strongest.

-Come back in fred2 and divide this time you quoted by the number of beams ect... For exemple let's pretend Ship A used 7 beams to crush its opponent and Ship B took out Ship A in 2 minutes and 20 seconds (140 seconds). you will obtain 20.

-Now create an event for the strongest ship, using "fire-beam" on the weakest, and give it a repeat count of 7 (the necessary number of beam shot) and ab interval time of 20. There you go! Of course it's approximative, but this can be useful if you run in such troubles.

posted 05-18-2000 06:36 PM               

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"I can live with being a pawn if the game makes sense"
-Alpha 2

posted 05-19-2000 12:31 AM               

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FreeSpace Coordinator, Descent Chronicles

posted 05-19-2000 01:40 PM               

You can simulate a tractor beam by doing the following.

Set up four GTT Argos in front of the ship you want to tow. Set up five waypoints (one for each Argo and one for the tow ship) that are on the same X,Y plane but have a different Z coordinate (or same Z,Y and diff X coordinate). Have them each go to their waypoints and cap the speed at something like 20.

Now for the fun part. Setup an event for each transport as follows.

When
-is-destroyed-delay
--Transport1
-Modify Varible
--shipsleft
---shipsleft
---(-)
---1

Then make an event as follows:

When
-=
--shipsleft
--3
-cap-waypoint-speed
-18

And so on. For each transport that is destroyed, decrease the speed. Don't forget to set your varible with the same initial value as the number of transports you start out with.

Also, if you want to, you can create a beam that does 0 damage, has no impact explosion, and lasts for an un-Godly amount of time for a visible representation of the tractor. Mount it on the rear of your transport and have it fire at your target ship.

FRED! It's fun and exciting!

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Nathan "Dynamo" Hoying

posted 05-19-2000 02:44 PM               

I have one. Have you ever been making a mission and find out for scripted parts of it without any action that it starts playing the "doing nothing" music? Not very exciting, is it?

Well, to fix that, just have a hostile Ptah or Pegasus (so you can't see it), with no arrival message, warp in, and immediately warp out. This will cause FS2 to start playing battle music again. This works great for watching a transport dock with a mysterious ship so it keeps the tension up.

posted 05-19-2000 02:48 PM               

code:

---

Event Name
  -When
    - <   (less than)
      - Distance
        - Alpha 1
        - TSC 2 1
      - 100 
    - repair-subsystem
      - Alpha 1  (you will have to use edit data finction)
      - Hull
      - 100

---

you may want to use a repeat count with a 60 second interval so they don't camp

you also might want to repair the individual subsystems while you are at it too.

posted 05-20-2000 11:54 PM               

Obviously, I have a problem here. I have no way of knowing when the squadron is reloaded, nor how long it will take. I can't have the player wait around for several minutes before calling the Red Alert.

The solution to this problem lies in the SEXP "key-pressed". I have an event labelled "Point," where Alpha 1 is ordered to take point in the nebula -- as soon as he jumps, everyone else follows. So my SEXP appears as follows:

* Red Alert
-- when
---- and
------ key-pressed
-------- Alt-J
-------- 3
------ is-event-true-delay
-------- Point
---- red-alert

Keep in mind that Alt-J is not "pressed" until the player is unable to abort the subspace jump. Hence, a delay of three seconds will show the player just entering subspace, and then the Red Alert is activated.

************
The second problem I had with this mission is that it takes place near the original Knossos. As such, I want it to have a familiar background. Quite simply, I HATE making backgrounds.

However, if one opens up the .FS2 file using, say, a TEXT EDITOR, one sees that the mission specs are easy to read. I simply cracked open the original Volition Knossos mission, and copied the backgrounds into my own mission. It looks very nice.

************
In another mission in my campaign, you are to do reconnaisance on a Ravana-class destroyer. You're flying a Pegasus in the nebula, and no enemy fighters arrive in-system until five minutes have passed. The player gets bonus points if he survives without being detected.

To avoid being detected, he cannot attack (key-pressed "Left Ctrl" and key-pressed "Spacebar", in case you were wondering), and he cannot get within a kilometer of any enemy fighter. The problem is that the distance SEXP goes by "all hostile", "specific wing", or "specific ship".

My SEXP goes something like this:
* Unprotect Alpha
-- when
---- or
------ or
-------- key-pressed
---------- Left Ctrl
-------- key-pressed
---------- Spacebar
------ less than
-------- distance
---------- Alpha 1
---------- {any hostile}
-------- 1000
---- unprotect-ship
------ Alpha 1

NOW for the part that requires a bit of creative thinking. I set the Ravana's faction to "neutral", since neutral will not attack hostile targets. But hostile will attack neutral. So I set the Ravana to be protected and beam-protected. Now the fighters ignore the Ravana.

************
I came across a second problem, when I wanted the fighters to guard the Ravana. FRED2 gives me that wonderful error "assigned to guard opposite team." I don't want that to show up every time I want to save, so I set up a group of waypoint paths, and assigned the fighters to follow it.

Then, just so the player knows that he's been found, I added a load of SEXPs to the "Unprotect Alpha 1" event. Essentially, they tell the fighter wings to get medieval on Alpha 1.

************

Disclaimer: I haven't fully tested these missions, so something might go screwy. But it all looks fine to me.

posted 05-21-2000 04:05 PM               

You can also use the keypress sexp in an event to allow the player to trigger things in a mission. In one user mission I'm playing around with, the player deploys a series of objects as "mines" that are triggered to arrive when the player presses a special key and is within a certain distance of where the object will arrive.

In a FS1 mission, the mission designer had a special cargo container rigged to destruct if you pressed the Y key. You were supposed to protect the container, but destroy it if the enemy was going to capture it. The enemy attacked the cargo transport and then sent in cargo transports of their own to capture it. You could either fight off the enemy cargo transports until base sent you another transport to pick it up, or you could self-destruct the container and go home.

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FreeSpace Coordinator, Descent Chronicles

posted 05-22-2000 09:01 AM               

You can increase the firepower of a ship by making it fire two (maybe more) beams at the same time with THE SAME TURRET.
Create an event

_true (or whatever)
___Beam-free-all
___killer ship

And another

_When
___is-event-true-delay
____<whatever>
____0
_fire-beam
____killer ship
____<the concerned turret>
____victim ship

Make this event have a consequent amount of repeat time and the appropriate interval.

Create at least two "victims" so you can see it correctly.

Now, if you run your mission, you will see two beams fired from the same turret, at the same time and/or with a tiny delay, because from one part, the turret is EXPLICITELY ordered to fire at a ship, and on the other hand it's allowed to fire wherever it "wants".

It's very impressive. I had it work for a Lilith that had to take care of a Deimos and a Demon. The Lilith pulverised the two ships in no time.

Use it carefully, anyway

posted 05-26-2000 11:54 PM               

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FreeSpace Coordinator, Descent Chronicles

posted 06-02-2000 07:17 AM               

If you "melt" two models in Fred2, and play the mission, you will see the models exactly as you set them, "melted", without any complaining from Fred2 or FS2.

Better, if you target one of the object, SURPRISE!!: they DON'T suffer any damage (they should be in a collision status, but they're not. Don't ask me why). Guess what you can do with that

Be careful, however. The objects are still considered as dinstincts, so don't "melt" too many, or you'll have huge slowdowns.

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Does it breath? KILL IT!