Dynamic ship naming

This link: http://px2owffng8.embed.tal.ki/20130111/custom-ship-descriptionsscience-text-2234099/
discusses the use of set_ship_text, which accomplishes what you are wanting.

Awesome! That's just what I needed. I just hadn't read through set_ship_text close enough. Thanks!

Oh. I spoke too soon. I think I should provide more clarity as to what I am trying to do. Unfortunately set_ship_text isn't accomplishing it.

I would like to use a variable value to name a ship. in this case, 'enemy_count' is a variable that is tracking the number of enemy ships created. it is just a number. Unfortunately, the 'name' attribute in create object, and the rename attribute for set_ship_text do not seem to support using variable substitution. Instead, all the ships are named (in my example) 'enemy_count'.

Unfortunately, no--only objects and variables that accept numeric values can use a variable to be defined. objects and variables that require string values (such as the name of a ship) must use literal strings, not variables.

Perhaps it's something Thom will do for version 2, but that's unknown at this time.

My solution (see: Mission: Invasion) was to create a library of enemy ships to be created with a variety of names and randomly create the ships from the library.

The downsides to this are:

• file size
  
• performance of the script due to said file size, and
  
• an inability to specifically reference any enemy ship due to the potential that is does not exist or is not where it is expected.

I am amazed at how much there is to learn with this language every time I read through these forums. Leaving a ship name blank upon creation will give it a random identifier. This could easily be incorporated into my code to reduce the size of it dramatically. It just means that if I want specific craft to trigger, I need to create the names and hard code them into the scenario.

Oh! Well, that is an option for random ships with default Ai stack. Thanks again!