This tutorial contains information on how to make missions with FRED2 for the TBP mod. If you want to make missions for the original Freespace 2, read data\freddocs\walkthrough.html. This is only used for the TBP mod.

Save this mission as Raider strike.fs2

There should be:
-Mission planning
-Stationary Object's
-Large Ship Movement's
-Objectives
-Fighters
-And Blah, blah check it out and you'll see

Planning Mission

Before opening FRED2 to build a mission, it is worth spending some time with a pencil and paper planning the mission. What forces are involved, and what are they trying to accomplish? What events will happen over the course of the mission?

Notice that the paper and pencil thing isn't necessary. Those like me don't plan missions before they are a small idea and then create it from their mind while making it.

On the other hand, you will inevitably make some changes as you build the mission. Perhaps you will discover that it is unbalanced (the same side always wins), or that it takes too long. These things can usually be fixed by changing the exact number and type of ships involved.

In this mission (single), Raider's attack an Orion-class outpost which is under construction. Alpha wing is on a usual patrol mission and the Nova, which has orders to protect the station, is too far away to reach it there in time. Needless to say that the outpost doesn't have any protection except you.

First part is arrival of the freighter which is pursued by two Raider wings, while Alpha is scrambled to assist the freighter Nova and assume it's course in order to secure the jump-gate.

Second part happens when 30% of the Raiders have been killed a Hyperion-class ship jumps in, heading towards station. Beta will be launched.

Stationary object's:

We start our mission either creating Alpha wing or placing large objects. Now we start with large objects.

It is wise to read first section's the Objects Editor and the Ship Editor, from freddoc, but it isn't necessary.

First open FRED2, then right click the mouse and select: New Object Type, Terran, EA Orion and place it at coordinates (0,0,0). You'll need to get the player away from that area, so drag the player's ship a few kilometers away. To add some realism in mission select Rotate from the Moving bar and axis XZ, them spin Orion around.

Add 3 more AI controlled fighters to Alpha wing (Starfury) and form wing from them (Ctrl+W).

Ship Name | Ship Class | Position | Special info
EAS Ross | EA Orion | 0,0,0 | Escort ship, Outpost Priority 80, Hull integrity 25
EAS Roswell | EA Nova | -850,50,330 | Escort ship, Priority 70

EAS Ross Outpost and EAS Roswell are both escort ships, so their hull strength will show up on the right side of the player's HUD.

Depending on your camera angle, the shipyard should now look something like this:

This is a good time to save the mission and test it out in FreeSpace 2. Save early and often!

Next you can add some cargo pods; their location doesn't matter, but here are examples (-550,0,-850) to (-500,0,-850) and second line of pod's (-550,0,-900) and so on.
Cargo can be anything like weapons, cable, metal, Quantium-40 etc.

Now let's place jump-gate and 2 freighter's:

Object Class Position Notes

Ship Name | Ship Class | Position | Special info
EAS Ontarion | EA Freighter 1 | (-280,580,-320) | nothing special
EAS Trade's Luck | EA Freighter 1 | (520,-95,-140) | nothing special
Jump-gate | 4x Jumpgate | (-2050,0,-4727) | Protected ship
|  | (-450,0,-4727) | (beam&normal),
|  | (-1250,-800,-4727) | Invulnerable,
|  | (-1250,800,-4727) | Hidden from sensors

Note: rotate jump-gate arrays so that they all point to center, for making it looking bit more better.

Raider pursue freighter: Part 1

Two wings of Zephyr's pursue EA freighter through jump-gate. Create a waypoint at (200,0,-700), name it Way1. And another at (-2640,0,-3420) name it Way2.

Ship Name | Ship Class | Position | Special info | Orders
Alpha | 4x Starfury | no matter | arrive hangar EAS Roswell | Attack anyship
Scorpion | 4xZephyr | inside jump-gate | Hostiles | Attack Turmoil
Libra | 4xZephyr | inside jump-gate | Hostiles | Attack Alpha
EAS Turmoil | EA freighter 1 | inside jump-gate | None | Waypoints-once: Way1

Save mission and try it. You'll notice that there are few things wrong:

-EAS Turmoil and Raider's are present right at the beginning of the mission.
-EAS Roswell stay still and it should be heading toward Way2

To fix these problem's we must use events, so go and check Events Editor (you know where).

Note: This can be done also with Ship arrival Cue.

Create this event:

Use this SEXP for the Arrival Cue on the EAS Turmoil and both Zephyr wing (put 2-4 sec as delay on the Zephyr's).

Then we add few more events:

With clear-goals and add-goal you can cancel orders of ships in middle of mission.
Now you can set your fighter as Invulnerable if you want.
Save and test it.

True Attack: Part 2

It takes approximately 2 min to EAS Roswell to reach jump-gate. So there are some empty time in there. So we have to wait some time, but when EAS Roswell has reached to jump-gate Hyperion and four wing of Zephyr's arrives near station.

Ship Name | Ship Class | Position | Special info | Orders
PS SuperNova | EA Hyperion | (-2760,500,640) | facing Ross outp. | Attack Ross outp.
Leo | 4xZephyr | around SuperNova | Hostiles | attack Anyship
Taurus | 4xZephyr | around SuperNova | Hostiles | attack Anyship
Virgo | 4xZephyr | no matter | Hostiles, arrive hangar SN(delay 10) | attack Anyship
Pisces | 4xZephyr | no matter | Hostiles, arrive hangar SN(delay 15) | attack Ross outp.
Beta | 4xStarfury | no matter | Arrive hangar EAS Roswell | Attack anyship

Notice Beta, Pisces and Virgo has more than one wave, each have two waves
(# of Waves 2). Set this from Wing editor (Shift+W).

Again those ships are there from the beginning, so let's change it.

And lets put it in PS SuperNova, Taurus, Pisces, Leo, Virgo and Beta Arrival Cue.

You can put some delay on it, if you want.

Lets make another event:

Extra: IF you have Tale of EAS Janus (or TBP R2) first campaign you can add beam weapons to EAS Roswell (Narn Laser). Just go to Roswell's weapons and set turrets 3&4 as Narn lasers and make following event:

Now EAS Roswell should fire with beams to PS SuperNova.

Lets take overview from our creation.

It should look like this depending from camera's angle:

Notice you can't see jump-gate from this angle. Now would be good time to save and test.

Extra: If you used beam weapons, let's make it little more interesting:

Because heavy usage of beam weapons they overheat just before destruction of SuperNova. But instead if you play with Medium we make it even more intresting:

Skill-Level-at-least makes stuff work only if Skill is set to Medium (on this case) or higher, this will not apply if you play easy or lower. < and hits-left makes stuff work when it has came lower of set rate, this is very usefull on lot things, just like on this or like damage messages etc. Rand selects randomly a number from low rate and high rate (low 28 & high 35 in this case), also very usefull to make things that always wont happen on precice second, this can be used on Event-is-true-delay SEXPs and various others, this is a profesional FREDer one favorite tools (at least mine). Beam-lock-all shuts beams down when Events requirments are done.

To make mission more harder we could make a Hydra wing of 4 Zephyrs (number of wings is on you decition. Remember to put some time delay between the wings) and set their orders as attack to Ross outpost. To do this set previous event to wings Arrival Cue. This will balance mission for expierenced pilots and same time keeps it playable for novice pilots.

Lets make one more event for Raider's once SuperNova is down they don't really have any reason to stay:

Put this to every Raider Depart Cue except PS SuperNova, Libra and Scorpion.

Objectives and Directives
Now lets make mission objectives. We need in this only one.

Then directives, like this:

Make more of these:
D02 is-goal-true-delay Primary1, text: Protect EAS Ross Outpost
D03 is-destroyed-delay PS SuperNova, text: Destroy PS SuperNova
D04 is-destroyed-delay Virgo, Taurus, Leo, Pisces, text: Intercept Raider's

Save and test the mission.

Messages

In the heat of combat, it's very hard to tell what's going on without radio messages. It's time to put those in.

Lets take the first one as example. Create new message and put in its name: "Raider's are coming". And then the message: "We need help here! We are pursued by Raider's." You can put there Ani file for adding some mood in that, put something like b5-logo_stellarcoma.ani (notice you must go hud directory to make this, it wont work in message properties), make copy from text close events and go there again, it will be gone you must do it again (cause unknown). Put it on EAS Turmoil arrive, like this:

In general, it will sometimes be necessary to create events just for sending messages. As it happens, all of the messages for this mission will be attached to existing events. (For each one, replace a do-nothing operator or use Add Operator.) A couple of the messages can be triggered by any of several events.
Here are the messages:

There are very few messages on this mission, since I didn't see it very essential, but still there must be few examples.

Message name | Text | Source | Event(s) | File (msg. image)
Hostiles! | Hyperion class ship has entered in system! It is firing at Ross base. Alpha wing engage! | EAS Roswell | Battle event | b5-James.ani
Mission completed | All Raider's has destroyed or depart and Ross base is still alive. Good job! | EAS Roswell | Return to base | b5-James.ani
Mission failed | Ross outpost has been destroyed. We lost this fight! | EAS Roswell | Mission failed | b5-James.ani

Final events

We make four last events like this:

With this we get two nice ending directives for success and failure.

Mission Specs

In Mission Specs input the mission name )in this case Ross Outpost; name isn't good this time) and as for music, let's say End Game. And finally and most importantly click mission as scramble.

Background

Here you can make background for mission. This time we make it very simple.

ITEM Pitch Bank Heading Scale

Item | Pitch | Bank | Heading | Scale
Colony | 52 | 145 | 290 | 7
Neb_grey1 | 196 | 314 | 299 | 5
Neb_mix3 | 321 | 23 | 12 | 3
Ambient_purple (Sun) | 232 | 21 | 249 | 2

Notice Scale is to put on Scale (x/y) and # divisions (x/y). Pitch is heigh, Bank is rotation and Heading is movement in X axel (so rotation around field). Scale is size of object.

Briefing

This briefing has only one stage. To add more you just click Add Stage.

Stages Text

Stage1: Today's $g Alpha wing is on patrol mission on $g Ross outpost construction site. $g EAS $g Roswell is here as refuel, so if something happens it will be there to assist.

To create icon select target and click Make Icon, you can change properties of icon image, ship class, etc.

In this mission we need two icons. One EAS Ross Outpost and EAS Roswell.

On outpost you must change ship class as EA Kestrel and select image Player fighter wing.

On Roswell you must change image to Freighter(no cargo).

Highlight them both and place them in good positions and Save View.

$g makes briefing text as green, with this is easy to point on text who is friend and who is foe. Other variations of $g are $r as red & $b as blue (more blue/grey).

Debriefing

This section tells if you achieved success or failed the mission. Number of stages is connected to number of mission objectives. We need 3 stages in this mission.

Stage Usage Text Recommendation Text

Stage | Usage | Text | Recommendation text
1 | is-goal- true-delay: Primary1 | EAS Ross outpost survived from Raider attack and is now under heavy protection. I doubt that Raider's try that again. Good Job. | None
2 | is-goal- false-delay: Primary1 | EAS Ross outpost was destroyed during the battle. Outpost.Now we must start from begin. Dismissed! | Protect EAS Ross at any cost
3 | is-goal- incomplete: Primary1 | You departed without authorization and that is unacceptable. | Wait authorization to depart

Save and guess what? Test.

Final modifications

Well this mission is almost done, just little more…

Now you can make some last moment modifications like:
-Put EAS Turmoil as escort ship priority 60
-Put PS SuperNova as escort ship priority 80
-Add some message or make voices for them
-Make extra hostile fighter squadron to ram with Ross Outpost
-Make Command briefing
-Add some more background
-Take off the Invulnerable

Well I guess that was all for this mission. Now you know how to make missions and use events and so on. Lets take last view for that mission:

As you see when you read the introducion it said a lot of things were to be changed, like once 30% of the Raider's first wave is down Hyperion arrives, but it arrived after Nova had reached its waypoint, so things wont always go or end like you planned on in the beginning. But this isn't always bad thing, it can improve mission and make it better than you even expected. So now go play this one last time and make more missions (and be sure to release 'em), because it cant hurt and its fun.

If you have something to ask for this mission or making mission or just other request from FRED2, contact to me, maker of this stupid tutorial:

Lady Rose
jutikka@hotmail.com