Basic Operations and Ship Functions in XvTED v1.1

It isn't as hard as some people think to make XvT missions. Hopefully, once you've finished reading through this, you will be able to make a basic mission, and even go into some advanced stuff if you're familiar with the program. Completion of this course means that you can build missions for your squad, or even your fleet if you're really good. This course is longer and slightly more complicated than the X-Wing course, and you must make sure you have everything. The software you need for this course is X-Wing vs TIE Fighter (obviously) and XvTED v1.1 by Troy Dangerfield. This is the premier mission editor for XvT and it is what we will be using throughout this course. If you want, more advanced skills can be developed in the Advanced Mission Design course.

At the end of each section, you will be prompted to make a mission or add to the mission what you have learnt during that lesson. By the end of the course you should have a mission which covers all the basic requirements for an XvT mission. The course is split into different lessons:

1. Lesson 1 - Flight groups
2. Lesson 2 - Global Goals
3. Lesson 3 - .lst files
4. Lesson 4 - The Map
5. Graduation Requirements

Lesson 1 - Flight Groups

NOTE: This lesson is very long and contains most of what you will need to know, so practical applications will be placed in multiple places throughout this lesson.

Flight groups (FGs) are the most important aspect of a mission. They are the fighters, the starships, the mines, even asteroids. If you have used X-ED, then you probably think the FG section is fairly short. Believe me, it isn't. It has eight sections, most of which are vital to the mission. We're going to start with the "Ship" section.

Start XvTED and choose "Training, 1 player, Rebel IFF". On the left of the screen, you should see a black box. This is the FG list. It shows every object in the mission. On the right are the variables for the selected FG. The important thing to note here, and the main difference to X-ED, is that IFF DOES NOT DETERMINE YOUR ENEMY. The FG's Team determines who you are fighting for and against. There is an option that automatically links a ship to its usual Team and IFF, eg TIE fighters are automatically put on the Imperial Team and have an Imperial IFF (an air force acronym, meaning Identify Friend or Foe). Once you have chosen which Team a FG is on, you can edit its variables. We'll leave Global Unit and Global Group for now. You can change its AI (intelligence) and shield/missile levels to suit you, as well as its IFF (make this the same as the Team if it's not already) and what missiles and defences it has.

Practical: Create a flight group named X-W Academy with 2 waves of 3 ships. Give it normal shields and concussion missiles, with Officer AI. Make sure it is on the Rebel team with Rebel IFF.

"Options" will be covered in the Advanced course, so we'll move on to "Arrival". Up the top are two boxes. These determine how the FG will arrive. The second box, "Alternative",. is only applicable if the first box is marked as Mothership and an alternative is necessary, eg the mothership is destroyed. The box below it contains the conditions that determine if and when the FG arrives. If, say, you wanted a TRN to arrive once a CRV had been disabled, you would select the TRN and write "100% of CRV Something must be disabled" in the conditions. You can also delay this slightly to make it more realistic, instead of the FG arriving the second the event happens.

Practical: Create a FG called FRG Home and make it arrive 1 minute after your ship ie. after the mission begins. Create a FG named GUN Mu, giving them proton torpedoes, and make them arrive 30 seconds after FRG Home.

The "Departure" page is very similar to the "Arrival" page, with a few small exceptions. The Via and Alternative boxes, as well as the condition box, all work the same way except they make the FG leave the area. The box below determines when individual craft will bail out, for example if they are at 50% hull they return to their mothership. The non-fighter explosion time is not really necessary, so we'll leave that.

Practical: Make X-W Academy head back to FRG Home once they are down to 25% hull.

FG Goals is also useless, because of the Global Goals section. So, we'll move on to making your ships DO something. The "Orders" section is where you tell the FGs exactly what to do. Unlike X-Wing, the FGs in XvT can have up to four orders which they do consecutively. FGs can also attack multiple FGs at once using the Attack command. In the "Editing Orders" box, there is a huge list of all the orders available to FGs. Some can only be used on starships (these will have SShip in front of them), and some are for all craft. The most common will be Attack Targets and the SS Patrol commands. A brief description of each order is displayed once it is selected. If applicable, you can also specify Targets for the FG. Orders like Attack Targets and Board to Capture, etc use these Targets. "Description" is simply what you see the FG's role as in the briefing, eg X-W Red: Hvy Attack. "Throttle" should generally only be changed for capital ships if you want them to stay in one place, ie change the throttle to zero. "Speed" adjusts the FG's max speed. That will also be left for the Advanced course. The four blue boxes are the orders. These should change when you create the orders as shown above. XvT executes these in consecutive order, so place them in chronologically (from first order to last).

Practical: Give orders for X-W Academy to attack GUN Mu, and for GUN Mu to attack the FRG Home. Tell the FRG Home to Patrol and Attack the GUNs.

"Waypoints" is fairly easy. Unless you can picture exactly what you want in your mind, don't mess around with all the numbers here. Just highlight the waypoints you want each FG to use. These should include Start 1 and Hyperspace if the FG is hyperspace capable. For patrols, select however many waypoints you want it to go. The Practical section of this will be included in the Map section. For now, just select 3 waypoints for FRG Home.

Lesson 2 - Global Goals

The "Global Goals" section is what you see when you press G in the game. It is where you set what to do in the mission, and what to do to complete the mission. Remember, to successfully complete a mission, only the Primary goals must be completed. Primary goals work the same way as the Arrival and Departure conditions do. The basic formula is this:

(amount) of (FG or other) (name of FG or other) must (do or be something)

With the Prevent section, you must specify the opposite of what you want to happen. So, if you wanted a FG to survive, you would say "must be destroyed" here. This is all explained again in the program itself. Secondary goals are purely bonus goals, such as all the enemy fighters being destroyed. You can allocate bonus points to be awarded if players get these goals.

Practical: The Rebel team must destroy all the GUNs, and the FRG Home must survive.

Lesson 3 - .LST files

Okay, so you've made a half decent mission. Now, we have to add it to the .lst files so you can play it. This should be explained to you already during the Undergrad training, but I'll go through it again anyway. When you're sending this mission out to the pilots, you should also send instructions as to which mission it should be put under. So, for each mission, you should include the following info in a text file:

//
[Name of ITOD]
//
(number of mission, must be different for each mission)
missionfile.tie
Name of mission

That way, there will be no confusion about the mission. Again, you should have learnt this stuff in the Academy, but just quickly...

[Name of ITOD] is the name of the series of missions that you are creating, eg Rebel Operation: Quick Strike.
The number often confuses people, but it doesn't have to. It doesn't matter what the number is, just so long as it is unique in that .lst file, that is the number is not listed twice in the file.
The mission file name is simply whatever you saved the mission as. Easy.
The name of the mission is just a couple of words describing the mission, like "Attack on Imperial ISD".

The slashes are used to separate the battles, so make sure there are two before and after each battle heading as shown in the example.

Lesson 4 - The Map

The map is where you decide the starting points and waypoints for all your FGs. It's incredibly easy, simply drag the FGs to where you want them to start. Depending on what your settings are in "Preferences", you can change the waypoint positions the same way. Each waypoint should have the distance from the last point and the time it takes the FG, flying at the throttle set earlier, to get there. As a general rule of thumb, a craft flying at 100 MGLT (the unit of speed in the Star Wars universe) will cover 1 km in 10 seconds. The thin red lines are 1 km apart, and the thick lines are 5 km apart. This should give you a good idea where to put your FGs in relation to each other. This is very useful for ships trying to escape to a hyperspace point and capital ships patrolling.

The buttons up the top mostly control the view of the map, and you won't need to use most of them. Some, however, are important.
The three buttons on the extreme left show which view is chosen. The default is X-Y (top) view, but you can change it to a side view (X-Z and Y-Z).
The small button that has .WP on it brings up the waypoints for the selected FG. This means you can select waypoints for a FG without having to constantly go out of the map, then move them accordingly.
All WPs and Current WPs determines whether you see the waypoints for all FGs or only the selected ones. This won't affect the waypoints themselves.
The sliding bar on the right adjusts the zoom. 32 is generally a good zoom to keep it at, but you can change it to suit you. Try to keep the mission in perspective. The buttons above it change the auto-centre function; this automatically centres the map according to which button is chosen.

Practical: Set the FRG Home to a 4 point patrol. Place the GUNs and X-W Academy 5 km away from each other, and the GUNs 10 km away from the FRG.