Silent Threat: Reborn

[Galemp]

So it looks like Silent Threat is finally going to be converted to Freespace 2, using my port. Hooray. What Stealth and I have been discussing, though, is the possibility of upgrading Silent Threat to fix some of the mission flaws. We're going to do a 'legacy' campaign with the ST missions as they were originally presented, for the sake of nostalgia, but we're also going to revise each and every Silent Threat mission and make a better campaign with them.

Right now we need some input from FREDders with Freespace 1, Silent Threat, and Freespace 2. What did you hate most in Silent Threat? What would you like to see changed? You can convert missions yourself with your own editing and post them here, or just gripe. Let's try to make a compaign worth playing not just for the historical value.

[RandomTiger]

I've not played ST myself but I watched a friend play and he got really stuck when he had to destory the largest ship in the game.

In the end the only way he could find to beat it was finding a hiding place inside the ship (away from enemy fighter fire), put game speed to x4, tie a rubber band round the fire button of the joystick and go a away for a few hours!

This always seemed a bit rubbish to me. He was a good player and I know others that had the same problem.

[karajorma]

I hear that one all the time. Have you people failed to notice that you can fly a bomber in the last mission?
 Completed that mission on the second try (the first try I used a fighter and when I noticed my mistake I went back and got a bomber)

However it does raise a good point. even in a bomber the last mission is utter rubbish. It really needs some work. At the moment it's just endless waves of loki with some shooting in between

[AqueousShadow]

YES!!! THE LAST MISSION SUCKZ!!!!! I mean, I beat it on first try cuz I used the Ursa, but boy did I have a headache after I blew up the Hades. Sitting there at my friend's house, continually launching Harbingers and calling in support. It was utterly stupid to have to fight that thing for so long. It was so dumb that I called in reinforcements that had about 9 or 10 Ursas (I know that's over the limit but they did it anyway), and they all died in a couple seconds. I was like.... Also, there's not much action at all and there are only 12 ST campaign missions. If possible, I would like to see all that expanded. It was sooooo retarded

EDIT: If you want me to work on it, I'd be happy to do a better job than "they" did

[ShadowWolf_IH]

a mission before you destroy the hades, where she actually fires her big guns would have been good, at least then you would have known about the shivan super lasers on her.  as it is, she didn't do anything except jump in and get blown up...

[phreak]

Have command give you an order to disable the hades, if you can't within 4 minutes, it leaves and you fail.

when the player disables the hades have 30 ursas jump with harbingers and pummel the hades.

oh yea bring a bunch of hercs too.

[LtNarol]

A pair of helios does about 3% hull damage last i remember...thats pathetic.  If you ask me, they need to make a new weapon available for that mission and one that does a lot of damage.

[Solatar]

Shush! Your insulting[V]. Okay, screw that, the last mission sucked, though all of the other missions where great. I think they need to add a Nuke for the last mission.

[Stealth]

insulting [V]?  they made a sucky mission... sure FS1 and FS2 were good, but ST's last mission sucked

[RandomTiger]

Originally posted by karajorma
I hear that one all the time. Have you people failed to notice that you can fly a bomber in the last mission?

I think he tryed that put there was always too many enemy fighters.

[penguin]

I found the whole ST storyline very... disjointed.  It almost seemed like 2 different campaigns spliced together.

And yeah, the last mission was not a lot of fun.  Seems like 20 minutes of shooting at that damn Hades, 'cause of course my useless wingmates get wiped out in the first 5 minutes.

Never tried being a bomber though... might make it more palatable, or at least faster

[StarGunner]

I call my own vote leve it as it was in fs1

[demon442]

Originally posted by penguin
Never tried being a bomber though... might make it more palatable, or at least faster

its no faster, and if you dont protect the other bombers your're toast.

[Pegasus V]

My Opinion of changes to the final mission:

We don't want the GTC Orff to die (she's dear to our heart) (she's a reinforcement by the way). When her hull gets to about 5% her captain says there's nothing more they can do so they leave.
There's not enough room in the Hades' fighterbay to accommadate 99 wings of Loki's. Fiddle around with that.
Once all of your wingmen are destroyed and the Orff is destroyed-or-departed, have the Hades leave and make a couple of follow up missions. I would like to see the Hades get to Deneb where it meets its destruction (it would explain why it is crashed on that planet in Deneb in the FS2 intro cutscene).
It would also be cool to see a very scaled down version of the Shivan Super Laser (as a beam of course) with the equivilence of the SRed or something (make it an orange colour). And perhaps the GTA-VPE capture the Hades or something and study the beam tech and that's where all of our beams come from.
I made my own revised version of the final mission for FS2 last weekend in fact. It was much better. I managed to save my wingmen long enough for them to destroy the Hades.
But honestly, we need to see why the Hades was considered so terrifying, because it didn't show off at all in that mission. Well... Except for its strong hull.

As for the remainder of Silent Threat, I think that some of the sloppy mission design needs to be updated. For example, many ships were left nameless in some missions (like GTC Fenris 12). This needs to be fixed.
Yeah, fix the unbelievably high number of Lokis problem. That's a new ship, it couldn't have been mass produced that quick. Add some retired Apollos and Valkyries, etc.

This is an excellent idea to port Silent Threat. I am very much looking forward to its release. I really enjoyed The Great War port.

[Vasudan Admiral]

the planet in the cut scene was deneb . not capella

[Pegasus V]

Originally posted by Vasudan Admiral
the planet in the cut scene was deneb . not capella

Oops . -Edit-

Thanks.

[Star Dragon]

Damn I forgot about the time compression (x4)!!!!! I hid and put a rubber band around the joystick while I made dinner... (Didn't we all?)

Anyway, make the Hades show her stuff! Only allow 30 wings of fighters (max)... And get some Capital ship reinforcements! Not overkill but an orion here, a Typhon there every few minutes... (we're sending them to you as fast as we can pilot!)...

   Now for somethig original. How about having a traitor (ops! I meant a PATRIOT!) on board the Hades who never turned disloyal to the GTVA and is disgusted by the evil that is now the SOC... At some point during the mission you get a partially garbled message,"To all GTVA forces, I have sabotaged the reactor core of the Hades... Focus all your attacks on the Engine room to make the unstable reactor go critical! Tell my wife......[Lost in static mixed with gunfire]...." At this point you have a time limit to disable the Hades main engine otherwise it warps out and they eventually repair the damage... If you destroy the main engine defore that time expires, the hades goes thru a slow death scene enabling a quick pilot to get the hell outta there before they go boom!!! (maybe a cutscene or the nextmission briefing could show the end of The Hades and congratulate you)...

Whaddya think???

Look out! Hades-Nova!

[CP5670]

I thought ST was actually pretty good, of course, that is with the exception of two missions: the last one, and that other one where you had to capture (I think) this HOL science scruiser. (cannot remember the name or mission number) We all know what was wrong with the final mission: the stupid AIs died almost right away, leaving you to deal with the Hades alone, and there were too many enemy Lokis and Zeus ships (actually, this would be okay if your friends stayed around long enough to protect you). The other mission I was talking about had a similar problem; you had to blow up this nearby destroyer, the HLD Ptah I believe, and the best thing you could get was a Thoth or something. Your wingmen died out as usual, but the destroyer did not launch too many fighters actually; it was just a case of taping down the fire button for ten minutes. If these two problems are fixed up, Silent Threat would be quite an enjoyable campaign.

By the way, GE: for those of us who have FS1, can you keep the voice filenames in the mission files? This way, all one has to do is to move the voc.vp file to the main FS2 directory and extract all of the voice files from freespace.vp and mdsk.vp into the FS2 sounds directory, and the missions will appear with full voice acting.

[Riven]

anybody else think the hades needs a new texture job? i thought it was a bit gareish.

[CP5670]

I did that in my campaign. There is also a retextured Hades out there somewhere.