General hints (FRED)

• Use the Y-axis and rotate most of your ships on one or more of the axes to give a more realistic feeling
  
  
• Use the Selection Lock if you have selected all the ships you want to rotate/move. This will make it sure you do not select an unwanted craft by chance.
  
• If you want a directive to appear only after a specified thing happens, you can use the event chaining in the following way:
  
  • Put all the conditionals to one event. Chain the next event(which is the actual directive) to the previous event with a delay of at least 1 second.
    
  • This will make it sure the event will not appear sooner then desired. This is especially useful if you want Command to order the desctruction/capture/inspection of a ship/subsystem.
    
• Use the designer's notes field to note down changes you want to do later.
  
• Learning and using Keyboard shortcuts makes your life easier.
  
• If you do not want a ship to open fire, simply use the turret-lock-all SEXP instead of disarming all the turrets manually.
  
• If you want to use a special, non-docking support ship, you have to make changes in the tables. You cannot simply place a Support ship and disallow all player orders.
  
• Always remove player orders for ship classes other than fighters or bombers. By default, the player can give orders to transports, freighers, cruisers etc. which can often deteriorate the mission. If you give the 'Attack my ship' order to a transport that is supposed to board and capture an other ship, it will not follow its default orders until the player-given orders are accomplished.
  
• If you do not want a ship destroyed, but you want to make its subsystems destroyable, use the ship-guardian SEXP!
• Increasing/decreasing the skill level of single turrets also affect the rate of fire. It is advised to increase the level of sentry guns by at least one rank
  
• Pressing TAB while having multiple ships selected changes the central point of rotation. If you start rotating, that ship will be the center of the circle your ships will be rotated around. The same is true for moving, the selected 'central' ship will be moving with the cursor.
  
• If you get lost on the grid, press SHIFT-Z. Or, zoom on any of the ships by selecting the fighter in the Selection Menu(H) and pressing ALT-Z
  
• Use the Selection Mode to make sure you will not make any changes in rotation/moves of ships unintentionally.
  
• Diversify the orders of wingmen by using the add-goal SEXP
  
• Diversify the mission by using variables. Variables can be used for randomising.
  
• Placing a waypoint into the centre of a jump node enables you to measure distances between any ships and the jump node. Have the waypoint and the jump node have the same co-ordinates for best precision. Technically, the engine measures the distance between the assigned ship(s) and the waypoint, but since the centre of the node and the waypoint are at the same position, practically, you can measure distance between ships and the jump node.
  
• Coloured text can be used in the Command briefing, but cannot be used in the Debriefing.
  
• An ideal mission length ranges between five and eleven minutes. It is not advised to make a mission longer, FreeSpace players are generally not used to flying for more than ten minutes.
• For better performance, use the wireframe view mode. The textured view mode eats up more memory and makes the mission editor run slower.
• If you want a ship just to suddenly appear, use the No Warp Effect feature in the arrival cue section of the Ship Editor. If the departure cue has the No Warp Effect set, then the ship will suddenly disappear. This is useful for nebula missions.
• Believe it or not, the EMP effect also works on AI-controlled ships. Heed this in mind while setting the nebula settings.
• Players usually start by increasing the throttle to maximum. Spare them from this and set the player's craft's speed 100% by default in the Initial Status options.
• In case one or more ships in a wing depart without the departure cue becoming true, the wing will not be considered departed. This means if you order one (or all) ships from Beta wing to leave the area and there is an event which becomes true if Beta wing has departed, the event will become incomplete until you restart the mission.
• The 'Neutral' IFF is hostile to the player under any circumstance. If you want The 'Hostile', 'Neutral' and 'Friendly' sides to attack each other, set the All teams at War Option in the Mission Specs Editor.
• You can manually set the player traitor but using the change-iff SEXP on the player's ship to make the player 'Neutral'. This way, both Friendly and Hostile sides will attack the player, but maintain hostility to each other, too. This does not really work when there is also a Neutral side.
• Never completely rely on the Protect Ship option in the Misc options in the Ship Editor. The AI may still attack those ships. Rather make that ship invulnerable. It looks daft, but this is the best solution to make the AI not lose the mission for the player by destroying any ships which are supposed captured or not destroyed. You can also use the change-iff to make the ship Friendly. It is a disadvantange that Hostiles will still attack that ship, so make it sure their initial orders engage them so much that they will not turn on the ship to be captured.

Using Fred with mods

• Note that FRED2 Open uses the same mod usage as FS2 Open, that is,

-mod mod1,mod2,mediavps where <mod1> is the name of the mod being played, <mod2> is the name of the mod that the mod being played depends on, and <mediavps> is where the Media VP files are put. See the wiki instructions Getting Started > Installing mods for fs2_open > Alternative method / more info for complete details. Also, I've heard (and FRED2 Open says) that you should run with the -fredhtl option. So, say you were creating a mod for the FreeSpace Port (for a mission during the Great War) You'd use something like the following, depending on where you installed FSPort and the Media VPs: (note the quotes) "\<whatever dir Fred is in>\FRED2_build_date_whatever.exe" -mod fsport,mediavps -fredhtl This would allow you to use FS1 weapons, ships, etc. Note you might not need mediavps if you use the mod.ini options mentioned in the installing mods wiki mentioned above, or if you weren't creating a mission for FS Open.

See also

Typical mistakes