Yet another series of questions

[Phlagm]

I have a number of questions:

1) Is it possible to create a fleet via a quest action later, and not by STAR FLET beforehand? I wanted to create a fleet that would appear suddenly in the game after a certain event. I was looking at the brood2 quest but how can I get the fleet to appear at just any random star? SUMN doesn't seem to work (I wondered if you'd be able to summon enemy ships) Also, if you can make a fleet move to a random star, can you get them to go instantaneously? If I give all the ships hyperdrives, will that do it?

2) Is is possible to get a third party ship to travel in an infinite loop? Example: lets say I wanted a ship to go back and forth between two planets. I could put him on the first and tell him to attack the 2nd, but then what? Will he actually attack the 2nd or just go there? And is there any way to send him back once he arrives? If so, is there any way to send him to a third location, and then back to the start? (I was thinking that it might be possible to reINIT the ship over and over upon its arrival at the starting point and thus set up a two-location trip, but I have yet to try it).

3) Here's my final issue: It seems that YSNO buttons won't work if a quest is displayed on a planet's default popup exploration screen. Unfortunately, if you force the quest popup out of that window, it just obscures the planet screen (which is a bit annoying because the fact that this quest takes place on the planet is somewhat relevant). Is there a way to a) make the display appear in its own window below by default, or even more preferably b) get YSNO buttons to work in that window?

That's all for now. I'll make 20 posts tomorrow as I figure out the limitations of the system and work to circumvent them

Thanks

-Jeremy

[Fingers]

Should be able to do #1 by using the "noinit" flag in the STAR and then the INIT command to initialize that star later. The noinit causes that particular STAR block not to be initialized in the beginning of the game so the fleet won't be created. Then when you use the INIT command it'll find a random star that can be used for a quest, then set up whatever the STAR block says.

I have not tested this with stars that are on the map. It may break if there are no stars that are unexplored and without fleets. Moving alien fleets with hyperdrives or folding are also untested.

I don't think there's a way to do #2.

#3 is just the way the game works, sorry... The planet window is just not set up to do branching, that's why the DISP exist.

[Phlagm]

Oh cool, thanks for all the info. I can start the fleet off the map, and I'll try the hyperdrive thing. The #3 isn't a big deal, I was just wanting to make events that would explore some of the places you find, and in that case it's prettier if you can see the planet.

[Phlagm]

Followup to part 1. The only way I can think of to get the fleet to move to a specific location is if I make it a homeworld of some race that doesn't matter (say damocles). And then set the fleet to "attack damocles"

I'm about to try this with a regular fleet, as the hyerdrive fleet never showed up (but that may be due to other things). But there's still a problem I've encountered, if I set the planet to damocles's homeworld, it has three free items (which is not what I want).

Also, is there a way to check if a race exists before making a quest involving them? I would like to make a Tan Ru main quest, but I need their homeworld to be there, or else I need to make it. Is there a way to check to see if that race has a homeworld present already? If not, I can make a workaround for this particular problem.

And one more question, is there a way to trigger a quest upon a return exploration of a same planet? Will "explore" go off a second time? I'm thinking that it won't and that's why I cant get one of my quests to evaluate.

[blargue]

Just a hunch but I've noticed that in the new babylon mod some of the quests involving returning to homebase seem to reset the exploration status of the planet. For example, when you pick up the telepath homebase (can't remember the name of it) turns back to white, indicating that you have to go there. Again, I'm no good at this stuff but it strikes me that that might be what you're looking for... just a guess.

[Phlagm]

Ooo thanks. I'll check that when I get back