Let's say, hypothetically, that I have a problem. Hypothetically, the mission requires you to enter a system and observe a large group of disabled ships. The problem is that the mission completes as soon as you enter the system, and the On Ship Completion desc appears while the screen is still almost completely white. In a manner of speaking, I could use some help, fellow masters of the plugin.

Try making it a STR# instead of a text block by setting the onshipcomplete to qxxx where xxx is the STR# ID.

That didn't work at all; thanks, though. See, I need to stop the desc for when the Ship Objective completes from appearing until after the white glow is gone. I thought about having a gimmick where On Ship Objective Completion causes you to get a mission with the objective of killing a ship that dies automatically, but that isn't working for some reason.

The blank screen is something I only noticed recently while testing some new SFA missions. It seems (from what I discovered) that you need to have "jump in after a delay" marked for the ships to observe, otherwise Nova stalls.

Hypothetically is my word!

The thing is, he needs to delay the observation of disabled ships. Unfortunately, the 'Observe' missions were altered to be this way several patches ago, because of errors it caused in gameplay.

You could add a different sort of delay, though. With a total of three missions, you could add a random delay to the completion of the mission. Let's call them Missions 'xxA', 'xxB' and 'xxC'.

xxA: This is the mission the player is given at the start. It has a briefing and a quick-brief text, but no other text (It won't need it).
In the OnShipDone field, you put "SxxB AxxA" to abort A and start B.

xxB: This mission summons a ship (Just any random freighter will do) to hyper into the system after a short delay. The mission goal is "Observe," and in this one's OnShipDone is "AxxB SxxB SxxC R(AxxC) R(AxxC)." This will re-invoke B, and give a 25% chance of invoking C each time B is invoked.

xxC: This mission, like B, summons a ship to observe that hyper's in after a short delay. Again, the mission goal is 'Observe.' This mission, however, is the one that you turn in. In C's OnAccept field is "AxxB" to prevent B from running forever. C also has whatever ending text your mission originally had.

(Edit) Alternatively, for B, you could have the mission goal be "Drive Ships Off," and watch that nameless freighter goes about its business in the system before departing (Being "Driven Off"). The OnShipDone here would be "AxxB SxxC," since the delay is already more than long enough. To top it off, if you like, C could summon some sort of rescue ship, come to aid the disabled ships you're observing.

This post has been edited by Eugene Chin : 15 September 2007 - 08:49 PM

Maybe I'm not understanding the problem.

Why can't you just have the "warp in after delay" flagged?
Disabled ships can warp in just like any other ship (they just don't warp out)

@desprez, on Sep 15 2007, 11:16 PM, said in Trouble with a mission <Hypothetically>:

Maybe I'm not understanding the problem.

Why can't you just have the "warp in after delay" flagged?
Disabled ships can warp in just like any other ship (they just don't warp out)

Well, if the ships are supposed to be disabled, having them warp in might be sorta... incongruous.

Another way you -might- be able to do this, depending on your situation, is to have the disabled ships be Aux. ships, and the 'real' special ship is Ye Olde Randome Freightere, which warps in after a delay, as normal.
Reasons you might not want to do this:
1. The system the mission sends the player to isn't supposed to have any random ships passing through it.
2. The disabled ships need to have some special name(s). (Since special ships can have a STR# containing their names, and aux. ships can't).

My 2˘.

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Well, if the ships are supposed to be disabled, having them warp in might be sorta... incongruous.

Hah! Exactly.

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Another way you -might- be able to do this, depending on your situation, is to have the disabled ships be Aux. ships, and the 'real' special ship is Ye Olde Randome Freightere, which warps in after a delay, as normal.
Reasons you might not want to do this:
1. The system the mission sends the player to isn't supposed to have any random ships passing through it.
2. The disabled ships need to have some special name(s). (Since special ships can have a STR# containing their names, and aux. ships can't).

Yeah, this is the solution that I thought of AFTER I got off of my computer :rolleyes:. I'll just have an invisible ship jump into the system instead of a random freighter.

The invisible ship didn't work, so I ended up doing exactly what Otter said. It worked well, thanks! My problem is no more.