Here, I will discuss two situations that may be of use to developers, and two possible workarounds. If you see something wrong, feel free to correct me.
1. Timed Mission
Scenario : You want to make a mission in which you must destroy or otherwise fulfil goal A within X time after jumping into a particular system. In other words, you want Mission A to be completed within X time, otherwise Mission A is aborted and Mission B is triggered.
Possible Applications : Destroy Battlefleet before reinforcements are able to arrive. Stay in system observing vessel for twelve seconds before departing. Etc.
Proposed Solution :
If Mission A is the original mission, and Goal A is the goal that must be fulfilled within X number of seconds, otherwise Mission C is triggered, create a hidden Mission B in which the player's objective is to destroy the SpecialShip. Also create a new SpecialShip. This ship should be extremely fast, the sprite should be very small, and it should have negative armor regeneration. If possible, it should also be untargetable and cloaked. The government settings should make it neutral towards as many ships as possible. It should not try to attack, but rather fly around aimlessly out of the way and invisible to the player. Possibly toying around with 0 values for turn/acceleration/etc may make your task easier (there was a thread on this earlier).
Have Mission A start. At the same time, auto-start Mission B. When the player jumps into the system to fulfil goal A, Mission B's SpecialShip should be there. ASSUMING THAT SHIPS WILL EVENTUALLY AUTOMATICALLY DESTRUCT IF THEY HAVE NEGATIVE ARMOR REGENERATION, you can set Mission B to abort Mission A and start Mission C if the goal is fulfilled (the SpecialShip destructs). ASSUMING THAT THE ABOVE IS TRUE, you should also be able to play around with regen values to alter this 'timer'. When the SpecialShip destructs, Mission A will fail and you can make the player enter Mission C.
I'm not sure how well this would work if the player left the system and came back later, though.
1. Selective Ramscoop
Scenario : You want to make an outfit which only works in certain areas of the galactic map.
Possible Applications : Fuelscoops that only work in a nebula. Many possible applications.
Proposed Solution : A repeating series of missions, toggled on or off by each other, should allow you to set up such a system. For example, you could have hidden missions that are always active that deal with observing SpecialShips in a system just within a nebula. Those missions would grant the player the outfit, deactivate themselves, and activate another complementary set of hidden missions that dealt with observing SpecialShips in systems just outside a nebula that 'deactivated' the outfit by removing it. You could be creative- make the SpecialShips nebular clouds and display text stating 'sensors have detected nebular gas- activating ramscoop', for example.
Something dealing with nebulas might work as well. I'm not sure.
Questions? Comments? Want to add to this? Have these already been stated, and I'm just another person rehashing old, tired ideas?
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(This message has been edited by UE_Research & Development (edited 04-03-2004).)
