XWA Mission Creation Question

[LC La Forge]

I'll be real brief: in AlliED, does anyone know if there's any way to set a goal to be "destroy" some aspect of some vessel. For example, say you wanted to have destroying the communication array of some Mon Cal cruiser be a secondary objective. Is this possible? I've been playing around with Allied, and I can't seem to find anything that would allow me to do that.

Any hints, if known, would be great. :)

[Jagged Fel]

Yes, you can do this. Var1 is Attack Component. I think CommSys is #11.

[LC La Forge]

Var 1? Can you be a little more specific where in AlliED I would input that? Do you have a list of those components, as well?

[drazhar]

Yeah, i just looked in AllIED and i cannot see where you are talking about Jag, any updates?

Im guessing that you have a whole load of experience with AllIED, any chance you could perhaps produce some kind of additional manual for it, or at the very least tell us how you figured out the various little commadns! :)

[Jagged Fel]

That's how you cycle through components. The label changes depending on the number.

[LC La Forge]

Right, I understand the attacking order. But what if I wanted to make a mission goal 'destroy shield generator on CRS Freedom'? Is that possible?

[Jagged Fel]

That I don't know. I've never seen mention of it anywhere.

[LC La Forge]

Hmm, bugger. That sucks, would add a nice touch. Did you have a schematic of the XWA mission file handy I could go over?

[Jagged Fel]

Yeah, it's posted on the IDMR site, Resources.

[LC La Forge]

I thought so, I'll have to browse through that. Otherwise, I came up with a workaround at 2AM this morning, maybe that'll hold some promise. :P

[drazhar]

La Forge, dont hog the secrets, share with the class! :)

Its ages since i attempted an XWA mission, i'm interested in looking at that beta mission Jag commented on as having an author with a good sense of multi-area combat

[LC La Forge]

Okay, here's what I'm thinking. Say you want a goal to be to destroy the shield generator on CRS Liberty. The player needs to do this, obviously, but it's not exclusive. So, set another flight group, like a tug or something dumb, with the same order ("destroy shield generator"), and set its attack speed to 1 and its distance at 99KM or something huge. This way, it'll never actually enter the battle. Heck, toss it in a different, dummy region if you want (not sure if that'll work). Make the 2nd order after that attack order to be self-destruct or hyper out or something (not sure if self-destruct would work).

Now, we have the following from Jag's reference:

0C Completed mission

Set the Flight Group or Global goal to "Flight Group TUG <name> completes mission". Once the shield generator is toast, the tug should hyper out or self-destruct or whatever. This will complete its mission and trigger the completion of the goal for the player. In theory. :P

I'm putting together an XWA battle in my head (real work to come after finals), and I'll test this idea then. Anyone see any issues with this? Jag, Mar?

Oh, Admiral MAR, you won't get this battle until my other mission gets flown a second time, fixed up if needed, and submitted. So. :P

[Mike Mar]

I know. :p

[Jagged Fel]

LaFo: I've never actually used the component aspect, so I don't know exactly what will happen when that part blows. In theory that should work fine, but I'd try to hide the extra ship in a different region so the player doesn't feel compelled to take 10 hours to fly out and blow up a stupid TUG :P

That also makes the mission look cleaner, when you start playing with dummy craft it's easy to get messy and confusing for the player if you're not careful.

Don't forget to change the Order strings so they make sense.

[LC La Forge]

Jag: Right. As a I said before, I would make Region 4 the dummy region for the dummy craft. Maybe I'll stick Fel as the cargo or something. ;) And yes, I will change the string. 'TUG Fel Goes Boomski has completed its mission' is not as descriptive as 'you've destroyed the shield generator!'. :P