I've been trying to modify the misn "138 Delivery to <DST>" that is offered from various Polaris Sprite pers (clear star 255 etc.) to complete their cargo delivery misn for them. I'm somewhat a perfectionist and it always bothered me that on accepting, the cargo would just appear in my holds (with no teleporters in this universe). I've currently set it so the pers "becomes a mission ship when the mission is accepted"
and the misn has "pick up cargo: when boarding special ship"
-special ships: # of ships 1
-dude ID 276
-in system: initial system
-player's goal: rescue
-ship behavior: normal
-place ships: randomly

Everything worked great. The pers would become a waiting ship on accepting the misn, on boarding, they would transfer the cargo and I would do the misn. The one thing is that if I returned to the system I met them in, that pers would always be there disabled and if i boarded them, it would say i picked up the cargo even if i already had it. If they were destroyed when i re-entered the system and i had not re-boarded them, the misn would fail. I could just leave it as such and try to avoid going to the same system before I finish the misn, but i'd much prefer to have that mess fixed, especially if i include it in a plug that I'll release.

So the question is: is there a way i could make the pers ship "go about its business" and not keep showing up as a disabled ship upon system reentry? Or some other way I could make it so the player needs to board the misn ship in order to have the cargo transfered?

many thanks

The explanation they always gave was that it was transferred by some 'cargo pod' too small to even be visible on screen, but your idea might be a nice twist on the gameplay mechanics. Perhaps you could use NCB operators to arrange it so that when you achieve the objective of boarding the ship, the original mission is aborted, and a new one – the actual delivery mission – is begun?

I thought about that. I might give it a try. I was concerned there may be no way to carry over the first accepted mission details (x cargo to x system) to the second mission activated upon boarding. I could circumvent this by simply having the first misn offer no specifics on the cargo and system, but that would not be ideal. I'll see what i can do when i find time.
thanks

This post has been edited by Skylark : 16 January 2010 - 05:40 PM

Well.. I couldn't figure out a way for a misn to auto-activated after the initial misn and carry over the original cargo quantity and destination - not if I want to leave the misn specs as randomly selected quantity, type and destination. I also found out that there are a handful of other similar misns and dozens and dozens of pers who they are offered from who would all need to be edited to change something like this. I am settling for an OnAccept STR that runs a message explaining that cargo pods have been received and such.

When faced with insurmountable confusion and complexity in any situation, opt for the 'easy way out'. That sounds about right.