Have the mission be offered by the përs ship, and flag it to replace the special ship with the përs.

You can make the përs appear under specific circumstances if required by setting it to appear in certain systems a fixed percent of the time, and only appear if a certain logical string evaluates to true.

If you want the mission to be offered from a planet, just include something in the description to the effect of “Go to XYZ system and hail the <përs name>, then <whatever else>”.

If the përs cannot be hailed, make a special copy of it that can be hailed, use that for the mission, and set the normal version to not appear when the mission is going.

If you really really don’t want the përs to be hailed nor boarded nor disabled, then I think you’re going to have to make a shïp that’s identical to the përs (this is what EV Override did for the mission to hunt down The Nadir—there is a shïp called The Nadir, which incidentally with a purchase price of 40,000,000 credits is the most expensive in EVO, meaning if you capture it you can kit out your ship to achieve the highest possible trade-in value in EVO) and stick it in a düde that never appears except for the mission.

Yeah, LNSU's suggestions were about the methods I thought I'd have to use (I'm going to have to wait till after I get my coffee before I try to understand everything Qaanol said :p).

The mission just has the player flying from one planet to another, accompanied by Admiral McPherson; the next mission in the string will have the player defending a planet from a Voinian attack, with McPherson's help. For that second mission, I guess I'll have to go with what Qaanol said about a përs that appears in the system once the right bit string is set, and then doesn't appear again after that one time. I don't like the düde solution for the first mission, but I guess it'll have to do...

QUOTE (Male_Valkyrie @ Dec 16 2010, 11:36 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yeah, LNSU's suggestions were about the methods I thought I'd have to use (I'm going to have to wait till after I get my coffee before I try to understand everything Qaanol said :p).

The mission just has the player flying from one planet to another, accompanied by Admiral McPherson; the next mission in the string will have the player defending a planet from a Voinian attack, with McPherson's help. For that second mission, I guess I'll have to go with what Qaanol said about a përs that appears in the system once the right bit string is set, and then doesn't appear again after that one time. I don't like the düde solution for the first mission, but I guess it'll have to do...

Well, you can use Qaanol's method for both options. Problem is in the first mission, the përs might stick around, but it won't behave as an escort and follow the player like you could do with a düde.

In the second mission you could have the përs show up and attack the enemy, if the përs was inclined to do so. However, it may be better to again use the düde and set it to escort/defend the player so that it sticks around and kills the mission-critical enemies reliably instead of relying on the friends/enemies set in the përs.

Qaanol's method works, but its more complicated to enforce the behavior I assume you want.

This post has been edited by LNSU : 16 December 2010 - 12:07 PM

Well the përs will be friendly towards the player and unfriendly towards the Voinians, so that'd definitely work for the second mission. In fact it might be necessary, seeing as the Voinians are going to win this battle hands-down, and I don't want McPherson's ship to be destroyed; it needs to be preternaturally strong, just so it can survive.

Would be a problem for the first mission, that's true... guess I'll either go with a mix-and-match, or just let the player imagine that McPherson is following him, without ever actually seeing him. That sounds easier, actually.

QUOTE (Male_Valkyrie @ Dec 16 2010, 12:31 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well the përs will be friendly towards the player and unfriendly towards the Voinians, so that'd definitely work for the second mission. In fact it might be necessary, seeing as the Voinians are going to win this battle hands-down, and I don't want McPherson's ship to be destroyed; it needs to be preternaturally strong, just so it can survive.

Would be a problem for the first mission, that's true... guess I'll either go with a mix-and-match, or just let the player imagine that McPherson is following him, without ever actually seeing him. That sounds easier, actually.

Well, you can always use some Handwavium and write in the mission desc for the first mission that McPherson is currently in system <x> and will meet the player in system <y>, but needs to take a different route. Or a düde.

You could give said düde a ship with maximum armor, and armor recharge. It won't die that way, but it will appear to take damage (shields). You run into the problem with an effectively invincible friendly ship that if it doesn't run out of ammo, it will, over time, wipe out however large a fleet you throw at it. The invincible përs will also have this issue, so either option runs into the same issue: Ending the battle mission assuming its supposed to be a voinian victory.

You either need a specific target to be destroyed, as in a kill-this-voinian-priority mission, or a "hidden" mission where the player has to protect a friendly ship and when that ship is destroyed (voinians kill it) the OnFail field can trigger some stuff, or you could use an "Observe Ship" criteria so the player jumps in, sees the fleet-of-doom bearing down upon him, events are triggered, and player runs away.

All depends on how you want to play it. Might not be a bad idea to make a few voinian ships "invincible" (maximum armor and armor recharge) so that even players with a customized super-ship or a couple cheat plugs can't "beat" the mission by decimating the voinian fleet.

The handwavium is probably exactly what I'll do. As for the invincible përs ruining my intentions regarding the Voinians, I'll probably just set McPherson to retreat when his shields drop below a fairly high mark (his ship isn't invincible in any case, just pretty tough). I'm not worried about the Voinians losing this battle; at this point in the game, they're far superior to anything Humanity has.

Ok, but what is mission completion criteria? If its "defend x", it will not work if the player has some sort of super-ship and kills all the voinians before x can die. Don't underestimate the tendency of players to outfight the AI against drastic odds.

The actual mission objective is hidden from the player; the stated objective is to defeat the Voinians in the system, but it's assumed he'll lose, so the actual objective is to get out of the system and to a safe planet.

And yes, I know people like Qaanol exist, but I'm relatively positive that it's literally impossible to defeat the Voinians early in the game without some kind of cheat plug-in; the available ships simply don't have the firepower or protective technology for it, no matter how good a pilot the player is. I admit this'll probably be frustrating to the player at first, but things balance out fairly quickly.

Oh. Are the Voinians in the system where the mission was initially offered (ie “Defend X”?) If so, just set the Voinian ships to be the AuxShips. Then have the mission offered from a planet and use a düde with a shïp indistinguishable from the desired përs as the SpecialShip, with goal of escorting and AI of “protect player”. You can even set the düde to “won’t attack player, safe from player fire”.

And on the off chance that the actual përs might appear and the player would see two of the ships, just set a bit OnStart and clear the bit OnFail/OnAbort/OnSuccess, that prevents the përs from appearing.

If the Voinians are in a different system, and you still want the player to visit that system, you’ll need those ships to be the SpecialShips with goal of Observe. You could put the düde that looks like the përs as the AuxShip, but then you can’t have a goal of escort. So, in that case, where you want both an Observe and an Escort goal, you will need to have two missions concurrently. That may be a problem if it’s possible for the player to have 15 active missions already, in which case they could not start both new missions. To prevent that, you’d need to have some dummy mission already active. Then when the Escort mission is accepted, it aborts the dummy mission and starts the Observe mission.

Really the only time you would want to actually include the përs is if you want the mission to be offered from a ship in space.

Thanks for the advice, LNSU and Qaanol.

I think I finally got it set up correctly. The player accepts the mission from Earth, flies to the destination system (unaccompanied by McPherson, who just says he'll meet the player there). At the destination system the player is given a mission which includes a number of Voinians hypering in, as special ships, and also sets a bit which forces the përs to appear in the system as well (completion of the mission sets a bit which prohibits that përs from reappearing). Means having a couple different copies of the përs, but that's fine, as none of them can appear at the same time as any of the others.

Is it possible for two or more different mission to, upon their respective completions, set the same bit without it causing problems?

Say I have a mission in one string which sets a bit starting a crön, at the end of which another bit is set making something available to the player. Can I have another mission (in a different string but still theoretically accessible to the player while in the first string) which either starts the same crön, or sets the same bit the crön does at its end?

QUOTE (Male_Valkyrie @ Dec 16 2010, 11:35 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Is it possible for two or more different mission to, upon their respective completions, set the same bit without it causing problems?

Say I have a mission in one string which sets a bit starting a crön, at the end of which another bit is set making something available to the player. Can I have another mission (in a different string but still theoretically accessible to the player while in the first string) which either starts the same crön, or sets the same bit the crön does at its end?

There's nothing wrong with that. The problem may be if you try to set a bit that's already set, but that should cause no issues IIRC. Test it before you use it - make a plug with two missions, both set the same bit, and an outfit that requires that bit to be bought. Run one mission, run the other mission, and see what happens.

Well, doesn't seem to cause problems, though I suppose further testing will be necessary to make sure setting the bit twice wouldn't start the same crön twice, or something similar.

This might be a moot point, though, as I realized I want to handle the entire situation a bit (pun intended) differently. Might come up in the future, though, so for posterity's sake I'll record my findings.

Actually, if setting that bit allows the crön to activate, then that crön will continue to activate any time it's not already active. You'll need to reset the bit after the crön has done everything it's supposed to (you could actually just have the crön reset the bit itself). However, if another mission activates the same bit, that crön will activate again.

Be careful with cröns, they are a bit finicky sometimes.