[IPAndrews]

Well it seems the Raider Wars campaign is already getting a reputation as being rather difficult. I have to admit this is true. In fact it was somewhat intentional. I'd rather give a player a challenge than something they can stroll through with their eyes closed. Although I will not accept any responsibility for damage caused when throwing joysticks across the room in frustration. Anyway. I was wondering how long it took each of you to complete the campaign?

No spoilers please. Yes I know it doesn't have that much of a plot to spoil, but that's not the point

[bigglesworth]

I kept getting wiped out on mission 1 and gave up.  It is too difficult for me.  I prefer a campaign whose difficulty steadily rises as the missions progress.  Maybe I'll pick it up again if someone writes a strategy guide with plenty of advice on how to beat it.

[Fury]

Three words: very easy difficulty.
The campaign is not hard, you just need to learn how to dogfight. Lower difficulty if you need to.

I can usually beat the campaign on hard so it's far from impossible. And I'm not even that good pilot.

[Alphakiller]

Originally posted by Mr. Fury
Three words: very easy difficulty.
The campaign is not hard, you just need to learn how to dogfight. Lower difficulty if you need to.

No, that's not it. The campaign relies too much on a gimmicky mission design in the first half; it gets better as it goes along.

For example, the "you have to kill all eight of these fighters before they torpedo a freighter" - or the "there are 2308 Zephyrs coming out of this jump gate, kill them all before they get to the shuttles you're protecting behind you" -- that's not really dogfighting, it's "hey let's see how fast you can kill things because you ONLY HAVE LIKE FIVE SECONDS OH JESUS." And God help you if you don't have ESP and you're not in _perfect_ position to start smoking them the INSTANT their IFF goes hostile.

My personal least favorite is the one where unless you kit out ALL your wingmen with 60mm pulse cannon (and why the hell would you think to do this without playing the mission) there is almost no way you can disable/destroy both the targets you have to disable/destroy - and you get maybe sixty, seventy seconds to take out the second from when it goes hostile, and chances are you're a good few kilometers away

In other words, it leads to far too much "play mission, fail because you have 0.07 seconds to react, repeat mission now that you know its trick and actually win." That's not good design.

There's a difference between making a mission challenging yet fun and just plain difficult. Far too many of the early Raider Wars ones fall into the latter category.

That said, it didn't take me that long. I'm no slouch when it comes to shootin' Zephyrs, so the only thing that really slowed me down was the heinously unfair bull****


...


Now that I've railed on it for paragraphs on end, I do want to say I don't mean to be such a downer. I did like MOST of it. I liked almost all of it, and it was fun.

But the few things I didn't like I really didn't like, as you can see. They were really frustrating, not in the "man this is a challenge" way, but in the "this is stupid" way.

[bigglesworth]

Originally posted by Mr. Fury
Three words: very easy difficulty.
The campaign is not hard, you just need to learn how to dogfight. Lower difficulty if you need to.

I can usually beat the campaign on hard so it's far from impossible. And I'm not even that good pilot.

Your opinion is in the minority.  I played on medium difficulty.  If I wanted hard I would have set it on hard.  Medium difficulty should be a medium challenge.  Perhaps this campaign could be changed to mitigate the required skill level in the future.

Or, here's an idea: each time you lose a mission, give 1 or 2 specific strategy tips on how to approach the mission next time.  As in, assign alpha wing to do blah blah while you attack blah blah, etc.

[Admiral Nelson]

I think the issue I have so far is that the missions feel like the kind of 'puzzle' missions as the old X-Wing games have. In order to beat them, you MUST have foreknowledge of what will happen and order your wingmen or change your course in ways you would not do unless you know what is coming.

Spoiler:

I imagine Alphakiller was thinking of Slipping the Noose in his comments about the wingman loadout etc... I agree entirely. There is no way to accomplish this mission unless you behave abnormally. E.g. once the PSI Corps fighters attack, just motor towards the Gibraltar. You have to disable it yourself as your wingmen to an extremely poor job themselves. Meanwhile order, Delta wing to close the GOD sat. If you don't it absolutely instantaneously, you have no chance. There isn't even any dogfighting to do really. Its just a test of if you can hit the right commands at the right second. Whether you are Chuck Yeager or Grandma Moses flying the fighter doesn't matter...

The same is true of the PSI Corps shuttle mission, where you have to know exactly which shuttle has the bomb to have any chance of stopping it. I beat this one by scanning all the craft in advance. Once the 'bomb' threat came across, the shuttle instantly turned red and was destroyed by the cruiser.

Likewise again, the 'stop the Narn from killing the Centauri mission.' You have to know to tell your wingmen to protect the centauri ship (which is an EA frieghter, for some reason) or you can't stop the Narn from blowing it. No dogfighting here either, really, since the Narn fighters just fly in a straight line at max speed towards their target.

Hence, I think, the 'gimmick' complaint is justified. Not to bash this campaign, as it has great atmosphere and style, but I agree that this is not ideal mission design.  A good test is (IMO), can a skilled pilot beat the mission THE FIRST TIME through, if he is both clever and a good dogfighter.

Thanks for listening.

[IPAndrews]

For the record I personally don't think the campaign is that difficult. I can complete most of the missions fairly easily. The only one that causes me real grief is Showdown at the Pass, but even that isn't impossible by any means. Now that aside the is a lot of perfectly valid stuff being said in the comments above. Yes it is quite a gimmicky campaign but then an EA vs Raider campaign that relied on basic dogfight missions wouldn't be that interesting would it? Hence a good few of the missions definitely fall into the catagory of "puzzle" missions just as Admiral Nelson described. A certain degree of skill is required but equally important is intelligence in figuring out the best way to approach the mission. You are going to fail these missions the first time unless you are extremely lucky and very smart. It's something different. If it ain't  your bag then that's a shame. Go set up your own campaign . Actually I'm hoping people will do that anyway.

[bigglesworth]

How do I stop the Venzen ship from being destroyed in the Wheel turns mission?  This is getting frustrating (even with difficulty on very easy setting).  Hopefully this campaign gets more fun as the missions progress.  This mission is not fair.  The Venzen ship blows up too quickly to be saved, even with all my wings assigned to protect it.

[Alphakiller]

Originally posted by IPAndrews
FIt's something different.  

Yeah, it's more like Starlancer.

[NGTM-1R]

Never, unless I can resolve the issue I'm currently having with it...

[Burns]

Ive past the hyperspace mission where you mothership goes down. The next "incoming transmission" mission exits to desktop when i press continue.

[Fury]

Originally posted by Mr. Fury
Do what Alphakiller did and use a debug build, for a reason only devil knows it worked.

http://fs2source.warpcore.org/exes/fs2_open_3_6_5_debug.exe

[IPAndrews]

Originally posted by bigglesworth
How do I stop the Venzen ship from being destroyed in the Wheel turns mission?

The easiest way is to persuade the Narn to surrender by destroying one of their Skylarks. Since they're a bigger easier to hit target. You can do it by destroying the Frazis by tailing them and using fighter suppression missiles, but that's a more difficult way of completing the mission.

Originally posted by bigglesworth Hopefully this campaign gets more fun as the missions progress. [/B]

It doesn't get any easier if that's what you mean. Sorry bud.

[IPAndrews]

This build will allow you to continue playing the campaign after the hyperspace mission.

http://fs2source.warpcore.org/exes/fs2_open_3_6_5_debug.exe

[Roanoke]

I was never able to do STC

[IPAndrews]

Originally posted by Roanoke
I was never able to do STC

I did some last minute improvements to it before release. It's quite a bit easier now, and more fun. I doubt anyone will get far enough in the campaign to ever see it though :devil:

[NGTM-1R]

Completed in roughly four hours of play time. The regular build doesn't like As The Wheel turns, the debug doesn't like the mission right after that. Go figure.

Oh, and I must commend you. Flying the Thunderbolt was a real step up from flying the Aurora and Badger, as it should be. It wasn't like that for R2.

Spoiler:

But shouldn't the surface of Shattered Star have been white, not brown?

[Burns]

Make your missions objectives more specific. Saying "Nullify" doesnt mean squat, do you mean disable or destroy? And how the hell do you disable something's guns (apart from hitting every single cannon). when destroying the weapons subsystem does nothing.

[rynadrk]

Originally posted by Burns
Make your missions objectives more specific. Saying "Nullify" doesnt mean squat, do you mean disable or destroy? And how the hell do you disable something's guns (apart from hitting every single cannon). when destroying the weapons subsystem does nothing.

It means just that.  Disable the engines or destroy all the turrets or even destroy the ship.  If you have the proper weapon you can disable and disarm a ship while barely hurting it.  Nullify  I suppose leaves you with the choice of what you want to do.

[Burns]

So whats the best way to do it in THAT particular mission?