Conditions
are a major part of XWA missions and appear on several pages of the editor,
but using them and setting them is always basically the same. Conditions
are used for 2 purposes:
-
To define
a state/event which will trigger
other events such as FGs arriving, departing, or changing orders.
-
To define
the Goals which
the Player must achieve in order to complete the mission and win bonus
points.
..
Conditions have the general
form:
|
[Proportion]
of [Class]
[Index]
must [State/Event]
|
where
| Proportion |
is usually expressed as
a Percentage such as 100%, 75% etc., but has other options such as "At
least one" or "All Player craft". It also defines the distance in proximity
orders, but at this stage I'm not quite sure exactly what the units are.
.. |
| Class |
is the group of Craft or
Objects in the mission which the Condition depends on. The Class
may be defined by characteristics such as Flight Group, Ship Type, Team
or IFF, but you may also group them together in any combination you define
yourself, using Global
Groups or
Global
Units.
.. |
| Index |
defines which instance of
the Class you are referring to, e.g.:
Flight Group Alpha
Ship Type X-Wings
Craft with Orders Attack
Targets
.. |
| State/Event |
defines the state the Class
must be in, or the Event that must happen to it, in order for the condition
to evaluate to true.
e.g. must be destroyed
In XWA, this definition may
itself require a Class/index pair
e.g. must arrive in Region
# 2
There are two special
values for this parameter:
Always
true: the condition will always evaluate to true.
Never
true: the condition will always evaluate to false.
With these 2 values, the
settings for the rest of the condition are irrelevant.
|
There are 3 forms in which
conditions are used:
| Double
Condition |
Two conditions combined
by an And / Or
operator such that:
Condition 1 AND
Condition 2: will evaluate to true only if both conditions
are true.
Condition 1 OR Condition
2: will evaluate to true if either condition is true.
You
must be careful with the Always true and Never true values.
If
either Condition has the value "Never true" when using an AND
operator, the whole Condition can NEVER become true.
If
either Condition has the value "Always true" when using an OR
operator, the whole Condition will be true as soon as the mission starts.
|
| Quad
Condition |
Two double conditions
combined by an And / Or
operator.
.. |
| FG
Goal |
This special case consists
of only one condition, where the Class and Index cannot be altered as they
are defined by the FG to which the FG Goal belongs. |
Shown here is the interface
for editing Conditions in AlliED.
The top four drop boxes correspond
to the Proportion,
Class,
Index
and State/Event
elements
of the condition. The fifth dropbox is used for certain conditions such
as "Arrive in Region #" and proximity orders.
Below
them are the text of each Condition and their And/Or operators, grouped
into Double Conditions. To edit any Condition simply click on its text
with the mouse. Its text will become highlighted and it will be loaded
into the drop boxes for editing.
Conditions may be stored
and reused using the Condition Clipboard.
To add the currently displayed
condition to the Clipboard use the 
button beside the dropboxes. To access the clipboard double-click
on the text of the condition. This will bring up the Clipboard with a list
of all stored Conditions. Select the one you want and press Use,
or double-click the selection to close the window at the same time.
Clipboard data will be automatically
loaded and saved in your AlliED directory.
(Note that conditions which
include Flight Groups will vary when using them in different missions,
as they are simply indexes into the FG list.) |
|
