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| Ships | Options |
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Arrival | Departure | FG Goals | Orders | Jump |
| While the Datapad provides the interface for editing Message and Team Goal parameters as described in those sections, its main use is to edit the parameters of Flight Groups. |
| "Ships" Page |
| FG Waves | The total successive Waves of
the FG in the mission. All ships in a FG must leave or be destroyed before
the next Wave can arrive. .. |
| FG Size | The number
of Ships in the FG. The maximum FG size for XWA to function correctly
is 6.
.. |
| FG Ship Type | The list shows all of the Ships
and objects available in the game. If you select "backdrop", the Cargo
area will change to reflect the values specific to backdrops.
.. |
| FG Name | This can be up to
20 characters. You can either select the box and edit the text there,
or choose a Name from the drop down list. The list can be customized with
your own set of frequently used Names. .. |
| Team | By default, all craft on the
same team are friendly, and all craft on other teams are enemies.
However, you can be set multiple Teams to be friendly using the Allied
Teams box on the Teams page.
You must make sure enemy craft are on a different Team to the Player craft, otherwise you will get a "You have attacked a friendly craft" message if you attack them. A player
must be on Team 1 in order to be able to hyper jump. |
| Player | Here you assign the Pilot of
the Ship to be either A.I. or Player (or one of up to 8 Players for multiplay
missions). Player FGs which are not taken by a human player when the game is played will be assigned to AI unless the "Only if Player Craft" option is selected on the Arrival page. .. |
| Ship # | This is the number of the Ship
within the formation that the Player will fly. There
seems to be no way to give the player ship number 1 unless there is only
one ship in the FG. .. |
| Global Group | This is a way to group together
multiple FGs for the purpose of referring to them in Conditions or as
Targets e.g. if you have a convoy made up of different Ship types in different
FGs, you could set them all to Global Group 1 and have Conditions such
as "50% of Global Group 1 must be identified", or give FGs Orders such
as "Attack Targets: Global Group 1". .. |
| Global Unit | Also used to Group
together different FGs and can be used as above, with the difference that
the group you define becomes a "custom flight group", in that all FGs
with the same (non-zero) Global Unit number will be numbered and treated
by the game as though they are in the same FG.
This is also the only way to
have more than 1 human Player in the same FG; by creating a different
FG for each Player and setting them all the same Global Unit number.
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| Status 1 and 2 | These parameters alter the state
of the ship to give it specific advantages/disadvantages. There a couple of useful "cheats" you can use while testing your missions i.e. "Invincible" or "Infinite Weapons". . |
| A.I. | Sets the level
of Artificial Intelligence of the FG when not being controlled by a Player.
. |
| IFF | (Identification Friend or Foe)
This does not actually determine
whether a FG is friendly or not (that is determined by its Team setting)
just what color it appears in your sensors. . |
| Color | The color of the
markings on the ships, with values: Red, Gold, Blue, Green. TIE craft lag behind in the color list by one, with values: <none>, Red, Gold, Blue, unless it's a melee where I think the colors are the same for all ship types. . |
| Radio | This determines which FGs are
in Radio contact with each other. You can select contacts by individual
Player or Individual Team. . |
| Formation | There are
32 different formations to choose from. The 'Single Point' option is not
really a formation; it means that all Ships will occupy the same point
in space and is included if anyone wants to use it for special effects.
'Single Point' formation will crash the game
if used for player FGs. . |
| View Forms | Clicking the 'View Forms' button
will bring up a window to display the
X-Y, X-Z and Y-Z view of the currently selected Formation. You can cycle
through them and hit 'Use'
to select the current Formation.
There is an option in the FG
Formation display to show the formation only for the
current FG size. |
| Spacing | I'm not not sure
what the units stand for but this determines the distance between ships
in a FG.. .. |
| Missile
Counter Beam |
These are the Weapons with which the craft will be armed. |
| Cargo | The Cargo you define here is
what will be seen in the CMD display when this FG is identified. NOTE:
The cargo of ships on the same Team will always be known to that Team,
unless they are give then status of "Not Identified". Likewise, the cargo
of enemy ships will be unknown unless they are given then status of "Already
Identified".
The Default cargo is what all craft in this FG will have, however you may have one craft (the "Special" Ship) which will contain the defined Special cargo. The Special Ship can either be chosen at random by the game if the Randomize box is checked, or you can specify by number one of the Ships in the FG to be the Special ship Special Cargo seems to work
differently in XWA. The specification of Special cargo may be in the
strings of the Mission parameters. |
| Auto-link | This is an option designed to
speed up the editing of FGs.
With this option on, when you choose the FG's Team, that Team's matching IFF will be assigned automatically. Also if you choose a Ship type with a default IFF (e.g. TIE fighter - Imperial ) it will automatically set the IFF and the Team that has been defined as having that IFF. The IFFs used to "Autolink" are set on the Teams Page. This feature can be overridden
by turning off the autolink for a particular FG, or the Autolink feature
can be turned off globally from the Preferences
page. |
| Start Region |  Use
these buttons on the Ship Page to select the region the FG begins the
mission in. (This can also be set in the WP
toolbox) |
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