Well I volunteered
But I will split my review in two parts, grammar and the playing itself.
First of all: I really like your ideas for the mission, there are many different objectives, more than just "flying and shooting". I like that.
Ok, the grammar: Please remember that I'm not a native speaker, so maybe I don't see all mistakes or the things I see are probably wrong.
Combat Briefing:
Page 4 of 6:
freer. I think you mean: free
Page 5 of 6: I think it sounds better if you say: "find... out there (not over there)"
Briefing:
Page 1 of 2: Pilots... pilot yet. (the second one should be pilots, too).
I really didn't find many mistakes, so congrats on that.
But for the mission itself:
I think you can handle FRED well, really. But I think you want too much in this mission.
I have to say, I didn't finish it. I just couldn't. I tried it more than a dozen times, but I only make it to the second exam-part.
I like your idea with the 5 points starting, but that's the problem: 5 isn't enough. But one after the other, I start with general things:
- You should use the emptymessage.wmv to get the little "BEEP" sound, so that the player knows when a new message is displayed. It's hard to read otherwise when you're flying.
- Sometimes the messages need more time between them, they are very fast.
- Every message is just a single line, why? You can have messages over more than one line. I recognised messages that are "broken" in the middle because you start a second message that completes the sentence.
- Without stars and other things to orientate, I find it very hard to know where I am. Especially when the clock is ticking.
The start:
Starting without afterburners makes sense, it's a good idea. Though I usually use them at the beginning, but this killed me more than once
But the cruiser is too close. I couldn't stay away from it far enough so that I didn't lose a point, and then reach the navpoint in time. Usually, when I finally reached the instructor, I was down to two points. With four exams following, this is too hard. As I said,I couldn't finish the mission. Maybe give more starting points? Or make the players not lose so many at the start? It's been really frustrating reaching the NavPoint... (But the idea with the cruiser is nice, really!)
The instructor is way to impatient. As I said, you lose the points very quick.
I also suggest you give the player more time to look for the high explosives, because of the large number of targets, the turrets and the problems with the orientation. 120 seconds should start the moment you find the high explosives, this would be better I think. But I really like the random part here, it's too easy if it's the same crate over and over again.
I think a little bit more information during briefing would be better, so that you don't have to pay so much attention to the instructor all the time.
I think there are too many targets at once. If you would put the containers that you need to scan at, maybe, F11 or so, this would be much easier.
I also suggest you look at the crates again. I shouldn't get away from the navpoint more than 650m, but I think you can't reach all of the crates (into scanning range) if you stay within the 650m radius.
I also think the 2nd test is too hard: The pilots died too easy while I was playing. Maybe it's better to guard them at a certain percentage and make them jump out.
Well, this is where my games usually ended. I lost all the points here and couldn't continue.
BUT: Your ideas are good, very good. You just want too much in one mission, I think. Maybe you should split the training in two missions? Let the player start again with fresh points after the first one?
I hope my review is not too harsh, I would like to see more of you. But I, as a player, was just overwhelmed. The possibilities to f**k up here are very numerous, so I think you should go less hard on us rookies