Ships editor
This lets you alter the properties of one or more ships. To edit several ships at once, mark them before opening the ship editor. (This is useful if you want to change all of the ships in a wing.) To edit a single ship, either select it ahead of time, use the Select Ship pull-down menu within the Ships editor, or use the Prev and Next buttons within the editor.

Many of these options can be set for entire wings as well as for individual ships. Given a choice, use the Wings editor; if nothing else, this gives fewer things to fix if you change your mind.

Select Ship	Lets you select a particular ship.
Ship Name	The name of the ship.
Ship Class	Class of the ship.
AI Class	How smart the ship's crew is, for nonplayer ships. Does anyone know what "coward" or "none" do?
Team	Which side the ship is on. Hostile is the team the Shivans are on in the main campaign. Hostiles will, I believe, attack everyone (except other hostiles). Friendly is the team a single player is on. Friendly ships will attack hostiles and neutrals. Neutral was used for the Hammer of Light in the main campaign. Neutrals will attack friendlies. Unknown ships won't attack anyone.
Cargo	What the ship is carrying. This field is a bit too helpful, in that if you've entered, say, "Sandwitches" (sic) for the cargo of one ship, any subsequent 'misspellings' will be 'corrected' to this.
Wing	Which wing, if any, the ship belongs to.
Hotkey	Which hotkey the player can press to target this ship. If you select "hidden", this ship will not show up in the hotkey assignment list -- a good idea for ships whose arrival should be a surprise.
Persona	Which set of voice/animation files will played when the ship sends automatic messages (such as "Impressive, Pilot!"). Does anyone have brief descriptions of the different personae?
Score	The point value of destroying this ship. These points are used for promotions, awarding medals, etc.
Player Ship	Whether a player can control this ship. This is grayed out in single-player missions.
Prev	Edit the previous ship.
Next	Edit the next ship.
Delete	Deletes this ship.
Reset	Resets the ship to default values.
Weapons	Which weapons are assigned to the ship (or various turrets on a larger ship). For some reason, you can also set the AI class in here.
Player Orders	Which orders the ship will accept from the player. The defaults here seem pretty good.
Misc	Destroy before Mission This lets you have make a ship explode before the mission starts; handy for having the player stumble upon an ongoing or just-completed battle. Scannable Whether the ship can be scanned. Scanning is not the same as inspecting for cargo; it is what the player does in the main campaign mission involving the stolen Shivan Dragon fighter. Cargo Known Whether the ship's cargo is known; if not, the player will have to inspect it to find out what the cargo it. Reinforcement U Whether the ship is a reinforcement unit. You'll usually want to make an entire wing, rather than individual ships, available as reinforcements. Protect Ship AIs will not fire on a protected ship unless ordered to do so by a player. Ignore for Counting Goals If this is checked, this ship will be ignored for goals like "destroy 75% of freighters". Escort Ship Ships with this checked show up in the Monitor View on the right side of the HUD. Also, asteroids threatening such ships are automatically targeted. Ships to be protected should have this checked, as well as large ships to be destroyed. Only three ships can fit in the Monitor View; if one is destroyed, another will filter up. No Arrival Music If checked, there will be no fanfare when this ship arrives. Invulnerable An invulnerable ship cannot be destroyed. Hidden from Sensors A ship hidden from sensors cannot be targeted, as the Shivans at the beginning of the main campaign. Kamikaze Tells a ship to crash into its target, and sets the amount of damage this does. No Dynamic Goals If this is checked, the ship will not defend itself, but will stick to its orders. Red Alert Carry Status I suspect that this controls whether the ship comes along with the player in a red alert.
Initial Status	Velocity The ship's starting velocity. A ship may well change its initial velocity depending on its initial orders. Also, ships appearing out of hyperspace necessarily do so with some initial velocity. Hull Integrity Allows you to start a ship off damaged. Has Shield System Lets you control whether a ship has shields. You can check this for ships other than fighters and bombers, but it doesn't have any effect. Locked Prevents the player from altering the ship class or loadout. Shield Integrity The ship's initial shield strength level. Docked with Which ship, if any, the ship begins docked to. Docker point Which docking bay this ship is using. Dockee point Which docking bay the other ship is using. Subsystems and Integrity Lets you start the ship with various systems damaged.
Initial Orders	What the ship is initially supposed to do. Priorities range from 0 to 89; 90 to 100 are reserved for player orders given during the game. Ships will execute the highest-priority relevant order, but will act to protect themselves if they feel sufficiently threatened. Does anyone have details on what the various orders do? Capital ships have a different, smaller set of orders to choose from. They are so slow that they can't really chase down fighters or protect other ships. You can't expect your cap ships to move about intelligently; you'll need to choreograph them to some degree. A ship can never be docked with more than one other ship (either as docker or dockee).
Hide Cues	Mskes the Ships editor dialog box smaller, so that you can get at the main screen while it is open.
Arrival	When the ship arrives. Delay indicates how many seconds into the mission the ship appears, and Cue is a sexp explaining when the ship shows up. Remember to check "No Warp Effect" if you're having ships launched out of a docking bay.
Departure	Analogous to Arrival.

Wings editor
This is very similar to the Ships editor, but is used to change the properties of entire wings. Many properties are available in both editors; given a choice, use the Wings editor.

The following doesn't appear in the Ships editor:

Leader	Which ship leads the wing. Does anybody know what effect, if any, this has?
# of Waves	A wing can appear in multiple waves. Each one will appear after the previous one has taken enough losses. This is a good way to let the player blow up lots of enemy fighters without having to deal with them all at once.
Wave Threshold	The minimum number of ships left in the wing before the next wave arrives. This can't be so high that there will ever be more than six ships in the wing at a time.
Delay Between Waves	Determines the delay between when the wave threshold is met and when the next wave arrives. I believe the actual value is chosen randomly within this range.
No Arrival Message	If this is checked, no wingman will announce the presence of new bandits in the area.
Delete Wing	Deletes the wing and all ships in it.
Disband Wing	Deletes the wing, but leaves the ships which were in it.

Objects editor
Useful for precise positioning, this editor lets you specify exact coordinates or have a ship point at a particular object or location.

Waypoint Paths editor
Waypoints are invisible objects which can be used to choreograph ship movements, especially those of transports to be escorted, or define locations for other goals and events.

This editor lets you change the name of a path. (An individual waypoint is created just like a ship: pick Waypoint from the object list on the toolbar, and control click where you want it.) To start a new path, make sure no waypoints are currently marked.

Mission Objectives editor
This is where you set the player's goals. There are sexps on the left, and some other buttons and fields on the right:

Display Types	Determines whether Primary, Secondary, or Bonus goals are displayed. Succeeding in a mission requires completing all Primary goals; Bonus goals are neither required nor listed in the briefing. The player can get a list of objectives in-flight (the default key is F4). Invalid objectives and uncompleted bonus objectives will not appear in this list.
Current Objective	Specify the type, name, text, point value, and team for the current goal.
Objective Invalid	The objective will not show up in the briefing and is not required for mission completion. However, it could be made valid by a validate-goal event. Similarly, valid goals can be invalidated.
Don't Play Completion Sound	If this is checked, there will be no dramatic swelling in the music when this goal is completed.
New Obj.	Create a new objective.
OK	Close this dialog box and save changes. FRED is not terribly consistent about having OK/Cancel buttons in every dialog box.
Cancel	Close this dialog box without saving.

Events editor
This is where the real fun is. You can use events to have ships send messages, change sides, or otherwise alter their behavior when certain things occur. Also, this is where you produce directives, those things like "Destroy Pisces" that appear on the left side of the HUD.

Most of the work is done with the sexps on the left side of the dialog box. The other controls are:

New Event	Create a new event at the end of the list.
Insert Event	Create a new event before the currently selected event.
Delete Event	Delete the current event.
New Msg.	Create a new in-flight message. You must first create the message and then create an event to send it.
Delete Msg.	Delete the current message.
Name	The name of the current message.
Message Text	The text of the message, as it will appear in the game.
ANI file	The face animation that will appear with this message. You can choose from those included using the pop-up menu, or press Browse to use your own file. CM stands for command, TP for Terran Pilot, VC for Vasudan command, and VP for Vasudan pilot. TP2 is female (although it's hard to tell through the helmet).
Wave file	The sound file played with this message. Again, you can choose a built-in one or Browse to use your own sound file. The triangle button at right plays the sound, but only if it's one of your own; the built-in sounds are not really separate files, and whatever was used to play them here can't deal with that. We have a complete listing of all the WAV files used in the main FS and Silent Threat campaigns. To access this listing, click here.
Persona	The voice delivering this speech. I don't think it has any effect when using your own files, but clicking on Update Stuff after selecting a built-in sound automatically updates ANI file and Persona. If you use a built-in sound, set the persona for the ship which will send the message (in the Ships editor) to match, so that other messages from that ship will have the same face and voice.
Repeat Count	How many times this event will occur.
Interval time	Delay between repetitions of the event.
Score	Points (for promotions) scored by the player if and when this event occurs.
Chained	If this is checked, the event will not occur until the event before it has occurred.
Chain Delay	How long after the previous event the chained event should wait.
Directive text	Directives are the in-flight instructions that appear on the left side of the HUD. The directive will turn blue (success) when the event occurs, or red (failure) when the event becomes impossible (e.g., the event involves destroying a ship and it jumps out). A directive will appear as soon as it becomes possible for the player to work toward satisfying it. Specifically, a directive requiring that certain ships be destroyed will not appear until at least some of them have arrived, and a directive attached to a chained event will not appear until the previous event has occurred. FreeSpace is pretty clever about directives. If you've got a directive "Destroy Leo", and the associated event is: Destroy Leo is-destroyed-delay 0 Leo then the number of ships remaining in Leo wing will be shown in parentheses in the HUD.
Directive keypress text	This tells the player which key to press to satisfy the directive, as used in the official training missions. FreeSpace will automatically adjust it if the player has re-bound the key in question, provided that you surround the name of the key with dollar signs, e.g., "Press $spacebar$".

Team Loadout editor
This lets you select what ships and weapons, and how many, are available for player loadout selection for each team. (There is only one player team in single-player.) Single Player start doesn't seem to give you a choice.

You can set a Player entry delay to let things run a while before the player(s) show up. It's not clear what this is doing under Team Loadout.

Background editor
The first batch of controls in this dialog box, down through "Amount", were originally intended to let you use a bitmap as a backdrop. Alas, that feature didn't make it into FreeSpace, so these controls were recycled to control sun placement. There is only one kind of sun, and I don't believe "Light Emitting" or "Amount" do anything. To place a sun, control click in the main FRED window while this editor is open. The sun will act something like an object, but you can only manipulate it when this editor is open.

This feature often gives strange behavior, e.g., refusing to add a sun because it thinks there is already one there and the bitmap limit has therefore been reached. If this sort of thing happens, try saving, quitting and restarting FRED, and reloading. If that doesn't work, try manually editing the .fsm file (with Notepad, Emacs, or something like that) and removing all information about a bitmap.

The rest of the controls do what you'd expect. Pitch, Bank, and Heading refer to the Nebula, and can be used to move it so that the sun is in a black area. (The sun looks strange otherwise.)

Sometimes the nebula color doesn't change in FRED. It seems to always be right in FreeSpace, though.

Reinforcements editor
This lets you add and remove ships or wings from the reinforcements list. If you have a reinforcement wing, just have the wing listed here, not the individual ships.

Uses indicates how many times the reinforcement can be called in; this is like Number of Waves in the Wings editor.

Delay After Arrival indicates how many seconds after the player arrives the reinforcement becomes available.

Asteroid Field editor
If you check enable, you can have asteroids. The various coordinates give the boundaries of the field. Individual asteroids will start within this box and drift randomly, resetting when the player isn't looking.

Don't make the asteroids too dense; their behavior (especially with regard to collisions) isn't as clean as that of ships, and there's no point in subjecting the player to this strangeness.

You can have only one, box-shaped asteroid field, so the Select Field pull-down menu in this editor is useless. It will probably be removed eventually.

Mission Specs editor
This has some miscellaneous information in it. A particularly nice feature is the ability to choose the music for your scenario.

The checkboxes are:

All Teams at War	For a three-team multiplayer mission. Each team attacks both of the others, regardless of IFF settings (Friendly, Hostile, etc.) in the Ships editor.
Red Alert Mission	This is the sort of mission which begins in the middle of another one, like the last mission in the main campaign. There is no return to a capital ship for repairs.
Scramble Mission	There is no opportunity to change ship or weapon loadout in a scramble mission.
Disallow Support Ships	If this is checked, the nobody can call for repair and rearming.
Disallow Promotions/Badges	The original FRED docs don't explain this, but presumably it does what it says.

Briefing editor
If you don't use this, they player will just get a briefing listing mission objectives. A more detailed briefing increases the drama of the mission, and makes it look more professional. You can give a different briefing to each team in a multiplayer teams mission.

Notice that the main FRED view stays open, but gets smaller, while this editor is open. If you click there, you can change the view with the usual movement keys. This is how you set up the camera shots for the briefing, as explained below.

The controls are:

Select Team (pull-down menu)	Determines which team receives this briefing.
Add Stage	Add a new stage to the end of the briefing.
Insert Stage	Add a new stage after the current one.
Delete Stage	Delete the current stage.
Prev	Move to the previous stage of the briefing.
Next	Move to the next stage of the briefing.
Save View	Take a snapshot of the current view in the main FRED window to use for this stage of the briefing. Only icons and the grid will show up; if you don't make icons, you'll get a blank grid.
Goto View	Goes to a view saved in the View menu.
Camera Transition Time	The amount of time (in milliseconds) taken for camera panning between the current stage and the next one.
Voice Wave File	Here you can specify a .wav file for the voiceover in this stage of the briefing. The Browse button lets you look for the file (normally in FreeSpace/Data/Voice/Briefings), and the right-pointing triangly plays the file.
Briefing Music	Lets you select any of several choices for briefing music.
Cut to Next Stage	If this is checked, there will be static (rather than a camera sweep) as the transition to the next stage.
Cut to Previous Stage	Similar to "Cut to Next Stage". Presumably this would come up if the player hit the Back button while viewing the briefing.
Text	The text of this stage of the briefing. You can put a word in a different color by preceding it with one of the following "tags": $h Hostile IFF color $f Friendly IFF color $n Neutral IFF color $r Red $g Green $b Blue
Usage Formula	A SEXP determining whether the player will see this stage of the briefing. I can't think of a reason to use anything other than "true".
Make Icon	Make a icon for the currently marked ship(s).
Delete Icon	Delete the current icon.
Propagate	According to the official FRED documentation, "Propagate adds the currently selected icon in its current position to all following briefing stages." Doesn't this happen automatically?
Label	The name to be displayed with the icon.
Icon Image	Which image to use for this icon. Note the existence of the option "Player Fighter Wing".
Ship Type	Which ship type will be displayed if the player clicks on the icon during the briefing.
Team	Which team (color) the icon is on.
Text	This is broken, and will presumably be removed in the next version of FRED.
Highlight	If this is checked, there will be nifty spinning arrows around this icon in the briefing.
ID	According to the official FRED documentation, "ID is useful for briefings that have several ships with the same name. It allows the ships to be differentiated more easily."
Change Locally	If this is checked, changes made to this icon will only affect the current stage.

Debriefing editor
This is similar to, and simpler than, the Briefing editor. Note that all debriefing stages are shown on the same screen, rather than sequentially.

Shield System editor
This lets you control who has shields.

FRED will let you specify shields for ships other than fighters and bombers, but it won't have any effect.

Command Briefing editor
Command briefings are the ones that come before several missions; you may want to use this in a campaign. This editor is just a simpler version of the Briefing editor.

We also have a complete listing of all the briefing ANI files in the main FS and Silent Threat campaigns. To access this listing, click here.

Campaign editor
I haven't designed a real campaign yet, so I'm not very familiar with this editor. I can offer a little advice, though.

To create a new campaign, pick "New" under the file menu. To add a mission to a campaign, select it from "Available missions" and then control click in an empty gray box at right.

If you put a mission in a campaign, you won't be able to get at it in the tech room until you've played that far in the campaign. Best to test all your missions individually before stringing them together.

The Initial Status menu controls which ships and weapons are available at the beginning of the campaign. There aren't many available by default, and FreeSpace will simply replace any unavailable weapons without comment. If you want to use Avengers in the first mission of your campaign, make sure they're checked off here!

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