Mission Bits

If you make a mission set a mission bit that is already set, will anything bad happen?

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"You all look like happy campers to me. In fact, you are happy campers. You always have been happy campers. As far as I'm concerned, you'll always be happy campers."

-Dan Quayle on a 1990 state trip to Samolia

I dont think it would, but whats the point? If the bit is already set then why do you need to set it again? The only reason i could think of would be to make multiple ways to get the same thing with. I'm going to go experiment with this and see what i can come up with. I'll post more on it later.

Sounds pretty cool though.

Jol'Jvic's right. You can have 2 missions set the same bit, but if one of them is after the other, what's the point? If, however, they're in different campaigns, it can be a good feature. Just make sure that if you do that you don't use that same mission bit to continue the campaigns or all of a sudden you'll be able to do a campaign starting from the middle.

(Oh, jeez, Maridian, that's news.)

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Three years and my pizza still isn't here.

Maybe I should call.

Actually, this is a very important feature of good EV/EVO mission writing. Here are some examples

Cycling missions:
You have a mission which becomes available at a particular moment in the plot. You want the player to do it at least once before he or she goes on to the next. After that, the player might want to do it again for financial reasons.

Multi-thread rejoin:
Your player can take either route or both routes to a certain point. Each thread ends with the mission bit being set, allowing the player on to the next section.

Excluding another path:
There are a variety of choices which prevent a player from going down one path (eg, joining the pirates, fusion-bombing a developing world, joining the guerillas). Each one of them sets a bit which is required not to be set for the path you are excluding. It doesn't really matter how many of the bad things they do, as long as they do one. You might think that you could accomplish this with legal status, but in fact the player can quite easily up his or her status by fighting the pirate fleets that follow him or her into systems if he or she has escorts.

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M A R T I N • T U R N E R