what makes them stay

I've always had this problem, even back in EVO, of how to get a failed mission to stay with you until you reach the destination so that the failtext can appear. No matter what I do the mission disappears the moment it fails - adding failtexts and timelimits and cargo - nothing works! Other people have mentioned similar frustrations, or even the opposite (missions never disappear immediately), but no one seems to have an answer. I've often suspected a bug - works only for some people or something like that.
So the big question is: What is it that decides whether or not a mission disappears the moment it fails?

This would help Inferno a large amount too.

When the CanAbort flag is set, any mission that fails or is aborted will end immediately.
If the CanAbort flag is not set then when a mission fails a dot will appear in the mission info dialog as a prefix to the failed mission until the pilot lands at either the TravelStel (if there's no ReturnStel specified) or lands at the ReturnStel. The mission fail text dësc will then be displayed.
So you have to decide whether you want to allow the pilot to abort the mission and not see any fail text or don't allow any abort (or jettison) and have the fail text appear.
I didn't test for fail if scanned conditions, only timeouts and cargo jettison. Your mileage may vary.

(tested on EV:N v1.0.8)

Wow, it works! That's, uh, a rather odd - not to mention inconvenient - way to make it happen. Can we suggest to the beta list that this be changed to depend on whether or not a fail text is specified?

Guy, on Apr 29 2005, 03:37 PM, said:

Can we suggest to the beta list that this be changed to depend on whether or not a fail text is specified?View Post

This isn't going to happen because feature changes are not a bug fix and only bug fixes will ever be made and feature changes are never going to be made.
This behavior is consistent with the definition of CanAbort and we'll just have to live with it.

And what exactly is the definition of CanAbort?

Hey. You can read the Nova Bible definition as well as I can. All I'm doing is representing to you what the company line is. To wit: No changes other than bug fixes are ever going to be made to Nova. If you don't like that I suggest that you take it up with Matt Burch, not me.

Nice find arturo. I think I could probably use that myself for some fancy tricks.

Yup. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Keep in mind that there are a multitude of outcomes to any given mission:

Success (the usually desired result)

Or failure due to ...
the timelimit being exceeded
the cargo (if any) being jettisoned by player (if CanAbort is set)
the player's ship being boarded (if that flag is set)
the player's ship being disabled or destroyed (if that flag is set)
the Fxxxx operator

Or the mission is aborted by ...
the user (if CanAbort is set)
an auto-abort
the Axxxx operator

And according to Matt Burch himself there are differences (see this thread) in how the mission outcomes are determined based on how the mission ends, so you may be in for some surprises.

This post has been edited by Arturo : 30 April 2005 - 01:04 AM

Arturo, on Apr 30 2005, 04:28 AM, said:

Hey. You can read the Nova Bible definition as well as I can. All I'm doing is representing to you what the company line is. To wit: No changes other than bug fixes are ever going to be made to Nova. If you don't like that I suggest that you take it up with Matt Burch, not me.
View Post

Yes, but this is all the bible says:

CanAbort        0    This mission can't be aborted by the player
                1    This mission can be aborted by the player

This post has been edited by Guy : 30 April 2005 - 01:44 AM

Just a few other failures:

Destroying a special ship with a goal other than observe, destroy, or chase.

Neb:
Ah yes. Thanks. I should have used my notes instead of relying on my (obviously faulty) memory. Although what usually happens to me is that some NPC ship comes along and destroys the SpecialShip before I get a chance to complete the mission goal.

Guy:
OK, let's say that you send a Nova game-engine bug report to help@ambrosiasw.com. Your first problem will be to convince them that this is indeed a bug and not a feature enhancement request. And one could reasonably argue that not displaying any existing FailText dësc whenever a mission fails is an error that can be classified as a bug. However the next hurdle would be to come up with a method that allows immediate mission termination on failure combined with displaying any specified FailText. Can't add any new flags to the mission resource because that would be an enhancement. So the fairly obvious solution is to display FailText whenever a valid dësc RID appears in the FailText parameter. The problem then becomes where is that FailText going to be displayed? If CanAbort has been set then there is no longer any AvailStel or ReturnStel to land at. So that means the FailText would have to be displayed in space if CanAbort is set. So if you can sell the idea that this kind of a change is a bug fix, go for it.

Gee, I was only curious as to what made you say that the behavior is consistent with the definition of CanAbort.

But I thought the solution was fairly simple. If a failtext has not been specified, abort the mission immediately. Otherwise let it stay until you return to returnstel or wherever and display the failtext, leaving canabort out of the equation entirely.