Originally posted by Flaser
It has its merits, but there's a lot of work to do about it.
It has one major advantage over any new release:
I HAVEN'T ENCOUNTERED ANY BUGS!
Well I played each mission pretty thoroughly so I should hope so. All except the third mission as that one takes so damn long to play, I think I only played it all the way through once or twice.
However mission design should be a bit refined. One thing is the way bombers are deployed: change the entry angle, so the player has to rush from one side of the battle to the other.
Yeah, I heavily scripted these first few missions and didn't put in that random variable of bombers coming in from different places. For the first mission I had some ships come in and attack the Argo and that's supposed to draw the player off from the bombers that come in later on.
Also try to ambush certain ships - if the player doesn't pay attention the ship will be slaughtered (see the Earth battle in Inferno - that's a good implementation), if he catches on the entire bomber regiment will be killed en masse.
Well if the player isn't constantly intercepting the ships should get killed. The Destroyer, Corvette and Argo specifically. Not to mention the whole shipyard if he doesn't do the first objective in the mission.
Weapons: this is the battle of Capella, weapons such as the Maxim, Distruptor, Piranyha and bombers should be availible.
My reasoning was that the player is just a grunt and so doesn't get all the toys that Alpha 1 does. These weapons, while abundantly available in the other campaign I felt should be more limited here.
For pure bomber interception the Horus can be better in some situations - though it would be nice to see an upgraded version of the said interceptor in the final release.
Uh, well given mission 3's storyline I'm not sure you'll see an upgraded ship.
[/B]The first mission just screams "Shipyard" - so vary it a bit.
Add some other ships to protect - e.a. a transport or a science cruiser - en route to the second mission.[/B]
Missions 1 and 2 are supposed to be largely unrelated. They're just two trouble spots that the player needs to help out in. It may be an idea to stick another mission inbetween to help better connect them. I was originally going to have the Fa'Shul in mission 2, but replaced it with the Neksulla because it always got its butt kicked and I wanted it with much greater health.
This isn't a problem, but some of them are just plain scenery and don't do too much - change this, add them some personality (I mean battle moves and roles, not a bunch of messages).
Science Ships are extremely valuable, so arrange them in a pack.
Well, some of them do, some of the don't. The Atens move around the formation, while the Agrippa and the Neksulla both move to engage if a certain goal isn't completed. The Science ships are arranged in a formation but are somewhat spread out. They don't want one BRed ripping through three ships at once or something. Also I figure there should be some room so they could pick up more of the data.
As for the sun - the 32-bit textures are a must be for this mission.
Uh, I'm not sure how to implement those. Imagine playtesting this mission, boy was that hard on the eyes.
The thridm mission is good, but I have this feeling of 'deja vu'.
So is that a good thing or no? I know the other campaign in teh works has a similar premise but the storyline will vary somewhat with the allied forces operating in a much smaller scale.
Any other comments? It would seem at least 30 people have looked at this thread, has anyone else played it and has some advice?
