I'm a crusty old grognard who was FREDding before some of HLP's members were even born. As such I learned everything I know from Volition's FRED tutorials and from dissecting FS1 table data for FreeSpace Port.
But that's put me at a loss as to how to use some of the more advanced SEXPs, tabling, and scripting that's been implemented since then. If you've played Vasudan Imperium you've seen my most up-to-date work, things like landing in hangars, in-mission subspace jumps, and cutscenes.
The Wiki has some rather dry documentation on features but nothing that I can *play with* to see how it actually works in-game. I'm asking for people with knowledge of these features to create straightforward, simple examples using retail data to show off their features. Because what's the point of coding a cool feature if the only ones that know how to use it are working on a giant mod that will never see release?
For example, suppose you want to create a capital-ship pursuit like the recent Inferno mission. The Wiki should have a demo mission that shows how to do an in-mission jump, and a demo mission that shows how to have a ship depart and reappear with the same status. The FREDder can download the demo missions and look at the SEXPs necessary, and copy-paste them into their own mission.
Another example would be a subspace missile strike, or a fighter beam weapon, or some nifty special visual effect. These could be .TBMs that replace an unused FS2 retail weapon, and maybe a demo mission with a locked loadout. Modders can use these as templates in exactly the same way they would learn to modify retail table data.