mission help

Good afternoon,

Firstly thank you to everyone for your help with my previous posts. I haven't had a chance to try then out yet but hopefully I will be able to soon.

Anyway this matter is related to a mission I'm planning. What I want to happen is you have to go and board a ship, download data and leave. But I want it so after you get the data some enemy ships jump in and attack you.

The problem is that I have to use the special ship option for the disabled ship so as to get mission text during the cargo loading and I can't see anyway to do it with Aux ships.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can achieve this?

Thanks again!

Geoff

My suggestion would be to make a second, invisible mission that is started by the first mission when the player completes the Special Ship objective, in this case boarding. The invisible mission will simply have hostile ships jump into the system, nothing more. The invisible mission would then be aborted when the player finished the main mission.

It seems to me as if you want to duplicate the effect of boarding a pirate 'trapper' vessel. Might look up that mission in the EV Stock data, and see how they did it, and you can do it the same way. At least, that's how I would go about it.

@darthkev, on 24 August 2011 - 04:07 PM, said in mission help:

The invisible mission would then be aborted when the player finished the main mission.

Couldn’t it even be auto-aborting, like the bait ship missions Mr Kerensky has already mentioned?

hmm very interesting idea, I had forgotten about those missions. The only problem is I have no idea how to set it up. I took at look at the mission (ID 133) but no where is there does it show how to link it. It in fact doesn't even list the derelict ship. So if i was going to do it this way then how would I link the 2 missions? Does it just start on any disabled ship type? Also why does it list "available to ship type" as 127?

I do like the idea of the auto abort. Honestly I didn't even know that option existed but I must of looked at it at least 100 times

This post has been edited by Arringfray : 25 August 2011 - 06:26 AM

Those missions aren’t an exact match for what you want, because the derelict ship is a përs rather than mission-generated. The model for what you’ve described is similar, but not identical.

Create your attack-download-leave mission, with its special ship being the target. Then create another mission, whose special ships are the attackers, and make it auto-aborting. Finally, in the first mission’s OnShipDone NCB field, enter the command to start your second mission.

If it’s set up right, then when you board the ship and complete its objective, the second mission will start, causing the attackers to jump in, and then auto-abort itself (just as happens with the bait ships).

Quote

Also why does it list "available to ship type" as 127?

This sounds like a -1 (i.e. a blank field) being mistaken for a resource index: index 0 is resource ID 128, so -1 would mean ID 127, if such a thing were possible. Is it MissionComputer that’s giving you this, or another editor?

Ahh ok I get it! In the on ship done I can just create a bit such as s192 (192 being the mission ID for the attacking ships,) and then it should start the other mission.

I'll give that a try when I get home, thanks a lot everyone for the help! That opens up so many opportunities for other missions now! Such as an attack force gets sent in and then when destroyed, the second wave comes.

I'll let you know how it works out.

and I'm using EVNEW at the moment as I'm at work and I only have a windows machine here. At home is where I do most of the editing and there I use my powermac and mission computer. I like mission computer way more then EVNEW. Not that I'm trying to suck up or anything

There was one other thing I was trying to figure out. I have a planet that has a fee to land on it. I was wondering if there was a way to make a rank that would allow the player to land on the planet and not have to pay the fee.

This post has been edited by Arringfray : 25 August 2011 - 12:09 PM

I don't think you can simply negate landing fees like that. You'd have to simulate the effect by having two types of the planet; one with the fee and one without. Then make two version of the system it's in—one with the fee-planet and the other with the free-planet—and have the fee-system show up normally, and then be replaced by the free-system when the player acquires the rank.

Now, another option would be to give the player a rank with a daily salary that would cover the landing fee. The only problem is, in the long run, the player could make some decent money on the side via that rank, so I wouldn't advise it.

Oh wait, I just had an idea. You could come close to negating a landing fee by having an invisible, auto-aborting mission start automatically upon landing that pays the player an amount identical to the landing fee. Then when the player takes off they get their money back. You could restrict the mission to only be offered when the player has the desired rank via con/req bits. There is a small problem in that the player wouldn't get the mission if they have already hit EVN's limit on active missions (if memory serves that limit is 16), however I myself believe most players don't hit that limit very often.

Thanks for the help with the mission guys, that worked perfectly.

Also thanks for the ideas for the negated landing fee as well DarthKev. I had hoped that it would just be an easy "doesn't pay fees" option or something but oh well. I think I'll just create a duplicate world with no fee; probably the easiest way.