Staged Mission Property "Allow Join"

[CptTrips]

I would like a property added to the mission definition panel that would specify whether that mission should be human selectable. 
Some missions may only be intended as background or filler AI and the designer may prefer that not be human populated.  I may have missions for background AI that has a very long roll delay and people would simply think there was a bug.  I can name the missions "DON'T SELECT ME!" but that is a kludge.  A property would be more elegant.  Ones marked as such should not show up in the Staged Mission setup dialog offline or on the populated mission dialog in a Custom Arena.

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CptTrips

[hitech]

Mission or route or flight?

HiTech

[CptTrips]

Mission or route or flight?

HiTech

I was originally thinking Mission, as I could simply lump all my background AI in to routes and flights in the "AI Only" Mission. 

Thinking on it further, maybe it would be better to place it at the flight level.  It would be a finer grain of control,  and more flexibility, and I could still simply uncheck "Allow Join" all the flights of a "AI Only" mission.

Maybe if it is put on the flight  level, a right click menu on route and mission tree items "Mark all flights unjoinable" as a short-cut.   

[edit]  But if there are no joinable flights in a Mission, it should be excluded automatically.  It would be rude to let them select a mission from the combobox, but not find any flights to join.   

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CptTrips

[hitech]

Just checking to make sure you understand only 2 missions can run at a time, so you are suggesting all AI only one side. Nothing wrong with this, just making sure you understand.

HiTech

[CptTrips]

Just checking to make sure you understand only 2 missions can run at a time, so you are suggesting all AI only one side. Nothing wrong with this, just making sure you understand.

HiTech

Oh, no I didn't.  Good to know. 

In my particular case, one side would be fully AI, but that may not fit all cases.

I think you were right about putting it on the flight level.  That gives you the flexibility to handle all cases.  I can have a mission that is full AI, or a mix of human and AI.  And it would still prevent player from selecting a flight that was intended to be only AI.

So I guess what you were getting at is if one of the missions is full AI it still needs to be in the combobox?  Maybe if one sides mission has no human-flyable flights, the radio-button for that side "Fly As:" is disabled , so the user is not led to believe they can find a flight to join on that side?


[edit]  In a perfect would, I guess you would even be able to mark which flight positions are man-able.  I still have the problem of wanting them to only fly position 2 instead of 1.  So I have to name the flight "Player choose position 2!"  So all the positions in that flight show that text and hopefully they get the hint.      

[hitech]

Oh, no I didn't.  Good to know. 

In my particular case, one side would be fully AI, but that may not fit all cases.

I think you were right about putting it on the flight level.  That gives you the flexibility to handle all cases.  I can have a mission that is full AI, or a mix of human and AI.  And it would still prevent player from selecting a flight that was intended to be only AI.

So I guess what you were getting at is if one of the missions is full AI it still needs to be in the combobox?  Maybe if one sides mission has no human-flyable flights, the radio-button for that side "Fly As:" is disabled , so the user is not led to believe they can find a flight to join on that side?


[edit]  In a perfect would, I guess you would even be able to mark which flight positions are man-able.  I still have the problem of wanting them to only fly position 2 instead of 1.  So I have to name the flight "Player choose position 2!"  So all the positions in that flight show that text and hopefully they get the hint.   

The reason for not position 1 is that it gives you a very easy way of knowing where to fly.

HiTech

[CptTrips]

Exactly, but right now they can choose position 1 when I don't want them too.

That can be cool for some mission but not for others.  It would be nice for the designer to be able to control that.
Some mission, the flight has to be at a certain place at a certain time for the story to work.  Others are more free-form and it would be ok for the player to lead. And in those cases, it's kinda cool to lead and watch them follow you around.


Maybe the trick would be to have ANOTHER property on flight "Human can lead".   

So maybe the flight would have:
"Allow Human to Join"
"Allow Human to Lead"

You could cover every case with those two bools.