I'm wrapping up my first attempt at a plug-in (a short ten mission scenario meant to replace the "tutorial missions" in the default game), and as I hammer out the bugs I keep running into a persistant problem that I'm not certain how to fix:

Early in the scenario, I assign to the player a new ship, which already has a name (assigned by using a "Txxx" bitset at the beginning of the third mission). While this works fine in giving the new ship a name, it seems to interact oddly with the "<SN>" wildcard character in mission descriptions. Whenever I try to refer to the player's ship with the <SN> wildcard, I end up with "(error)" as the "ship name" ("(error)", of course, is not the ship's correct name). Now, while I can certainly fix this in my missions by typing out the ship name rather than using the wildcard, I am trying to make the plug compatible with long-term playing, and I don't want players that keep the custom ship they earn at the end of my scenario to have to face this problem throughout the rest of their campaign.

I've looked through the Bible to no avail, and I tried using similar settings to those used when you gain the Unrelenting in the Pirate thread, but my problem persists. Any suggestions?

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- Dao

If you don't give the ship a new name with Txxx does ithe <SN> tag work alright

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"The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%." — Douglas Adams

<SN> is for any special ship name, not the player's ship
<PSN> is for teh player's ship name. Which is the one changed by Txxx

From the Nova Bible

Whenever Nova displays a desc resource related to a mission, such as the
initial mission description (desc ID 4000-4255) or one of the special mission
briefings (e.g. CompText and QuickBrief) it performs one other special operation
on the text. It searches through the text and replaces a few special "wildcard"
symbols with pertinent mission information. This is extremely useful in setting
up mission briefings that include random information that wouldn't be known when
the description is written. These special symbols and their expansions are:

<DSY> The name of the destination system
<DST> The name of the destination stellar
<RSY> The name of the return system
<RST> The name of the return stellar
<CT> The name of the type of cargo to be carried
<CQ> The quantity of cargo to be carried
<DL> The date of the mission deadline, if any
<PAY> Absolute value of mission pay (does nothing if the mission pay
isn't monetary)
<REG> Who Nova is registered to, or "UNREGISTERED"
<PN> The player's name
<PNN> The player's nickname. If no nickname was specified, Nova will use
the player's full name here instead.
<PSN> The player's ship's name
<PST> The player's ship type (comes from the resource name of the player's
ship type's shďp resource)
<PRK> The ConvName of the highest-weighted active rank resource. If none
is found, this will be replaced with "captain".
<SRK> The ShortName of the highest-weighted active rank resource. If none
is found, this will be replaced with "captain".
<PRKnnn> Same as <PRK>, but only for ranks affiliated with government ID nnn.
Note that you can only do this once per description, or bad things
might happen.
<SRKnnn> Same as <SRK>, but only for ranks affiliated with government ID nnn.
Note that you can only do this once per description, or bad things
might happen.
<RRK> The full name of the most recently activated rank resource. Note
that it's best to only use this in a mission briefing where you
know that you've just given the player a rank, because otherwise
bad things could happen. (e.g. the most recently activated rank
pointer isn't cached between game sessions)
<OSN> The offering ship name (only works when offering a mission from a
ship)
<SN> Special ship name (Note: Nova will screw up if you use this in the
initial mission description, as it doesn't pick the special ship
names until you actually accept the mission.)

Quote

Originally posted by Akodo Makama:
**< SN> is for any special ship name, not the player's ship
<PSN> is for teh player's ship name. Which is the one changed by Txxx
**

Ah! Well, that explains it. I had read the excerpt from the Bible detailing wildcard tags and their usage, but I must have missed the <PSN> tag. That should fix my immediate problem, and I'm going to assume that wildcards in the other game missions will use the <PSN> tag.

Actually, why assume? I'll just go check a few. Thanks for your help.

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- Dao