Reinforcements from the planet?

I'm trying to orchestrate a space battle in which, after the initial wave of defenders is defeated, a new wave is launched from the planet. Since dominate works this way, I'd think the engine could support it.

However, as far as I can tell, Sxxx'ing a new mission OnShipDone won't bring in new mission ships unless they're meant to jump in after a delay. No ships will magically appear from the planet, so far as I can tell.

Is there a way around this? Something using crons, perhaps? (I haven't taken the time to figure those out.)

On a semi-related note, is there any way to make a text box pop up just after entering a system----but long enough after entering the system that it's visible? The white hyperspace flash makes it unreadable if you do an Observe mission on a ship already in the system, and waiting for one to jump in takes too long in my case.

This post has been edited by Lindley : 20 December 2007 - 10:43 PM

For the semi-related note, what if you had an invisible (read: one pixel) ship with 0/0 shields and armor and a ~3 second death delay? Have the ship appear in the target system, and make the box appear using the Destroy Ship mission. Change the death delay to change the delay time.

I think someone proposed using this trick to pull off some neat timer effects. Not sure if anything came from that, though.

Worth a shot. I'll try it.

If I can get my text box to pop up before the player knows what's in the system, there won't be a need to launch the defense fleet after a delay.

Thought of something else puzzling. How would one grant the player, say, 1000 rounds for a weapon? Obviously Gxxx'ing 1000 times is out.

Make the weapon use ammo at end of burst with a burst count of 1000?

@guy, on Dec 21 2007, 04:17 AM, said in Reinforcements from the planet?:

Make the weapon use ammo at end of burst with a burst count of 1000?

That's an option if it works, but I'd prefer it not to so drastically change the dynamics of the weapon. I'm wondering if I could make a cron fire 1000 times or something.....

Make every ship come with 1000 dummy outfits and use an iterative to cron to replace them with the ammo.

Hmm. That's an idea. Can I somehow keep the dummy from cluttering up the "player has" list with commas?

Isn't there an outfit flag that prevents the outfit from showing up in the items list?

(Darn, I should really get out my old copy of the EVDB...could come in handy in the near future ;).)

@ue_research---development, on Dec 21 2007, 03:56 AM, said in Reinforcements from the planet?:

For the semi-related note, what if you had an invisible (read: one pixel) ship with 0/0 shields and armor and a ~3 second death delay? Have the ship appear in the target system, and make the box appear using the Destroy Ship mission. Change the death delay to change the delay time.

I think someone proposed using this trick to pull off some neat timer effects. Not sure if anything came from that, though.

It seems to work, more or less, for longer death delays (at least 2 frames). 0 and 1 cause the ship never to die, apparently. Unfortunately, even 2 isn't any faster at triggering the mission objective than waiting for a ship to jump in would be. Still somewhat useful.

If you leave the name fields blank the outfit won't show up at all in your player info.

@guy, on Dec 21 2007, 06:47 AM, said in Reinforcements from the planet?:

If you leave the name fields blank the outfit won't show up at all in your player info.

Not sure if this affects you or not, but a ship's weapons fields (not outfits) will show up regardless.