Okay, I'm editing an earlier post into a full review.
I'll get the bad stuff out of the way first. It's a small thing, but significantly contributed to my frustration: escort lists and directives. Given the number of experienced FREDders on this team, I must say I'm quite shocked as to the fact that there was almost no use of either of those things in Act III (I played Acts 1 and 2 a while back and I didn't replay them, so I don't know if the problem applies there as well). I didn't know what ships I was supposed to focus on in terms of either defence or offence, so I kept having to guess, which was annoying. I couldn't quickly target the ships I was supposed to be protecting, such as the Grant in the second to last mission. Lack of directives wasn't nearly as annoying, but it still made the missions a lot less focused as, once again, I didn't know which hostiles I was supposed to be killing.
Oh, and in the second to last mission of Act III: I killed all the fighters and bombers, and the fleet just sat there, doing nothing. The Diana eventually (ie after about 25 minutes with time compression) got destroyed and my primary objective was for some reason marked as complete and the victory music played. I waited for five minutes for something to happen, but nothing did. So I restarted the mission and killed myself five times so I could skip to the next mission.
Now the good stuff. I really liked the development of the wingmen as characters, and the story itself was great. The gameplay changes in terms of targeting and all that stuff gave it a feel of progression. Not much else to say, except that I'm looking forward to the next release! Well done!
I need some advice for one of the later missions (I think 23, but cant check atm since I'm in-mission):
The mission where you investigate the UNE distress call in Beta Aquilae (which I think is incredible tense: a whole UNE fleet disabled in an uncharted starsystem? How? Vasudans? Or... SHIVANS? My god, my whole body shudders; great work on this, its also a nice diversion from the war).
What I'm supposed to do? I scanned the Hispania but nothing happens. There are no other unscanned vessels around (at least "target next unscanned target" provides nothing).
Do I simply have to wait? If that, a little confirmation on my scan from the Luna would be nice.
Edit: scratch that, I figured you have to scan each subsystem individualy.
Still would be nice if this would be clearer from the Luna's orders.
In the mission Light Brigade, the mission just stopped after the Columbia hailed the Diana for the second time to surrender. I think I broke the mission by saving the Diana, since after a while I ~+K'd it and the primary objective became true. So confused.
SO I just finished it, and I have to say, it's kind of a mixed bag. Some awesome in there, some stuff I really disliked.
I'll just put my whole review in spoiler tags:
Just to get the good things out of the way first: The overall story was great and interesting, and full of great ideas. I have some problems with details, but they are mostly matters of taste, more on the stuff that really bothered me later. Things like the United Earth fleet behind the second jump node made for interesting developments and were the story and mood highlight of the campaign for me.
I absolutely loved the feel of the first few missions in act I, to be honest, they are my favourite of the whole campaign. It felt genuinely different, challenging and rewarding to fly without all the candy that makes our lives so easy in FS.
The overall mission design was also good, with ammunition playing an important role, one really had to think about what to engage, shockwaves being extremely dangerous and fuel limitations on the afterburners made for interesting and gripping situations.
So, I would call this a very good campaign, bear this in mind before I come to the things that really kind of upset me.
The first thing I did in many missions was frantically adding ships to the escort list, and pressing F4 from time to time to read messages I missed. I really don't know why ships that are vital to the mission aren't on the escort list all the time. Nothing is more frustrating than having to engage a fighter that's on your tail and then searching through all the ships again until you find the one you actually need.
Then comes one point that is entirely a matter of taste, but I have to say it: I really didn't like some of the writing. While I enjoyed the overall storyline, I couldn't stand my wingmen and the Lunar Republic overall after a while... Somehow I felt like flying for the greatest dicks of Sol, that will knowingly fight dirty, do bussiness with criminals - all of which I could stomach, if it weren't for the arrogance they were showing all the time. Those crazy martians all envy us oh so superior Moon-men. Don't worry, quality over quantity, all those other factions have worse pilots than us, and we are really the best at everything. Oh, but we are also the likeable underdogs of Sol, because we only have one moon, and everyone else has a planet or even more.
As for Juan and Brock, I kinda liked some moments (like Brock's name origin talk and the feel of the talk in the final mission), but sometimes it seemed inconsistent, and I really didn't know if I should like either of them, because in some missions they just seemed to be trying to out-dick each other in different ways. Juan by sucking up to command and being as yellow as a rubber duck, and Brock by doing the opposite, but both in a strange, overall unlikeable way. But this is the point where "IMO" applies the most, as it's really a matter of taste.
But the whole mission "Light Brigade", this was when I actually stopped thinking "well, I have some problems with some of the stuff, but overall, this is really good" and actually literally said out loud: "Bull****!"
First of all: The mission design is incredibly flawed. If you are flying well, you can actually survive and shoot down all the bombers. Of course this will leave you without ammo, at which point I ran away about 5 clicks and just hit the time compression mode. I had to wait around 40 minutes until finally my destroyer bit the dust, and that was after several tries on this mission. And then... well... The bull**** part is of course the sudden turn the story makes.
So... A warship gets destroyed while carelessly charging into an enemy blockade. And this suddenly gets everyone - including the enemy - so teary eyed they call a ceasefire and want to negotiate peace, because... SOLDIERS ON A BATTLESHIP DIED IN A WAR :( :(
I don't even get why your own wingmen get THAT stricken with emotion. It wasn't even the Luna, on which we were stationed far longer. And the JC and UNE? They should press on, use their advantage, and not go into: "OMG, what have we done, we have DESTROYED AN IMPORTANT ASSET OF OUR ENEMY! Oh god, let the killing end, let's make peace on terms that you may negotiate, oh wondrous Lunar Republic."-mode. No, seriously. I literally said bull**** to my screen after reading the outcome there. That would be THE chance of the UNE to annex their own moon and the JC to conquer mars. That would be the final turning point of the war, the Lunar Stalingrad, the point at which the UNE and JC have their victory...
Now, it could have worked, if there had been some more explanation on their motivation, like if they had lost a Reliant of their own during the engagement - which as far as I can guess could only happen if it were disabled, which is next to impossible or at least very hard to achieve given the overall mission design there. It even gets stranger, when Brock in the next mission states "there will only be peace until everyone had a chance to rebuild." Chance to rebuild? Jovian and Earth..ican fleets seem to be in perfectly adequate shape to wage war against the crippled forces of M&M. There is no indication at this point, that their death toll has been so great, that they would give up on their chance at victory...
And the last mission... I get the idea, and I like it, but I don't like the execution. I don't see how it would completely destroy the negotiations, if KC forces identifiable as such would kill of some of the diplomats. It would make things a bit more complicated, but in the long run - shouldn't it more likely unite the factions against the KC? When they do a charge like that, everyone knows it was the KC that did it. Any reasonable man would not go and say "Oh, it was the fault of you martians" or "oh, you moon-people, it's all your fault". They would clearly say "damn those Kuiper crapmunchers!"
It would work perfectly, and IMO it would work only, if there were Kuiper agents planted among the forces that protect the convoy. So that they can really sow distrust among the men, if one of the martian ships, bribed, instigated or infiltrated by KC agents, suddenly attacked the lunar diplomats -THAT would be warmongering. But that all-out attack just doesn't convince me at all as truly threatening the peace effort.
So, overall, I love the campaign, and In appreciate all the hard work that went into it - but the ending just feels plain wrong to me. It may be just a matter of taste, I dunno. Maybe others will really like it, but I just couldn't stomach it...
I remember one thing that i thought odd was how the Alpha/Beta wing naming system that came to be used in the GTA was only used by the losing side of the war. :confused: (I assume that's only because when the campaign was started you could only use Alpha/Beta etc)
As for the end, i had in my head that there was a Coup d'état on Luna during the battle, kicking out the warmongering leaders and replacing them with moderates who surrendered immedietly, hence the sudden change. I sincerely doubt that is the end of the U-war though; always imagined they'd be seperatists in every faction probably unhappy at the sudden alliance with their foes, and it'd take at least a few years to bring them under control, not to mention the GTA navy would be in total chaos with ships having different technologies and quality etc, so Earth's fleet (which i sensed was the most advanced) would likely have to take the lions share while the former colonial fleets were overhauled.
Maybe one day we could revamp the U-War era (spruce the storyline up, try to make it more canon, improve the graphics etc), but i feel for now that actually living up to the project's name with what we make would probably be most popular among fans. :lol:
Yay, worked great with the (very nice) interface art. A few questions - does the "full" campaign have anything else that the "act1 + act2 + act3" campaigns?
Also, a few missions left hanging with nothing to do, especially if you kill all the fighters and bombers before the friendly Reliant gets to 1%
And, the AI flying around in circles like the big mommas in AoE RoR, :lol:
Hello world!
I had a good overall feeling about this campaign after playing first act, although I had to get over it after the idea that it feels like a time travel through stone age of space combat. Man! people really had to deal with only this radar with green and red dots? Well they have all my respect.
I played full chapter at medium difficulty lvl, now it's been released I think you can forget about other acts I II and III. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Before I can continue I beg you not to get me wrong, I can be very critical on some aspects either of the gameplay or the story, but I'm never complaining. I understand this is the way the authors wanted things to be and I (almost) fully agree. Think of it as what Juan or Brock (no, not brock :hopping: ) would have said if they were in my pants. ok?
So my first advise would be: just play with -orbradar and -targetinfo options, this will give you a better immersive experience IMO and you'll find this antediluvian targeting system more helpful.
Just as certain people did in the thread I sometimes felt like I'm on the wrong side of the road. But if you think of it people who voted Bush for president didn't leave the country after war began in Iraq. So this part of the story *had* to make you feel uncomfortable with decisions which IRL would be beyond your power to change them, and you would continue to live with it wouldn't you? No really the screenplay (is that the good word?) is rock solid for me.
I already played diaspora so the physics didn't disturb me at all, it reminds you once again that it was a different time.
Now for the things I found "bad":
Why not have only the circle as the center of reticle, the blob around it makes it totally inefficient and useless and ugly (although perfectly outdated :yes: )
I found myself using time compression too often, but maybe I'm too impatient, I don't know.
At the beginning of mission "pride of luna" Alpha wing of Mustangs alpha is assigned to attack Cape town, a capship, while wing gamma of Atlas bombers is assigned to cover alpha. Every time I had to start again this mission I had to reassign orders by reversing their roles, which at some point began to make me upset.
So allow me to relieve my burden here:
-What the heck were you thinking about when you decided that a wing of bombers should cover a wing of fighters?
[place whichever Zen techniques here]
I suspected there was a good reason but didn't find any.
I found "Charge of the greys" the most insanely difficult mission of this campaign.
Did someone really manage to save all 4 Hyperion frigates and take down every carrier and frigate? I eventually doubted that but if anyone who is reading this could explain to me how it's possible I'd be grateful. And please don't tell me to select another difficulty lvl because if I wanted things to be easier I would have gone play pong instead of retrying it 28+ times in a row (true!).
Voilà!
That's all I have in mind right now after finishing it a couple of hours ago, along with an impression that you've achieve an amazing work, I wish I had such an imagination.
Guys you make me want to go back to FREDding you know.
:v-old: A+
Jack H.