FreeSpace Releases > Mission & Campaign Releases
RELEASE: New Path Chapter 1
SilverAngelX:
Thanks for the feedback, I will check on those. I hope I can get a bugfixing update out within the next couple of weeks. It will likely be the last one before chapter 2 (writing is progressing; slower than I had hoped, but progressing nevertheless).
0rph3u5:
Okay, I made it past mission 18, so I feel qualified to review this campaign - I am going to finish it later but going from Mission 17 into the Mission 18 kinda exhausted me...
First, I would like to commend you - for your first campaign this is solid writing, even thought there are a few cringe elements there; and I am saying this after having stared down my own first campaign recently, which were of much lesser quality and need(ed) a lot of polish before I could be satisfied with them.
The scenario, while wholly original (it reminds me a bit of the Auriga-subplot in Derelict), is well executed and with much more attention to making it credible than previous versions I've played.
The bad mostly comes from stuff that I can understand as being the result of a lack of experience but should nonetheless be mentioned here:
- The balance of many missions can swing wildly; sometimes its is an overreliance on the "Near Ship"-arrival anchor which introduces "wild" variation through the sheer distance a player has to travel, where it is not needed (e.g. Missions 5 and 11), other times it appears to be that the balance was done using subtraction method of balancing (i.e. start with a high volume of the enemy fighters and reduce their numbers to balance), which can compound with the existing familiarity of the mission to declare the balancing okay prematurely (I know, I am guitly of that many times over).
- Towards the end the scenario trips over itself and goes against it previously established creditibility - Mission 17 and Mission 18 reduce the countering the supposed enemy brain power into exercises in tedium. If you are enemies are supposed to be that smart as suggested before those mission, these kind of attrition based scenarios should allow them to do more - A steady drip may errode a mountain, but the moutain doesn't have the ability and smarts to make an umbrella. /tortured metaphore
- Another thing - which ususally is not something you hold against a first time-campaign maker, but Mission 5 made it painfully obvious - is that the campaign could benefit from allowing more "partial success" states for its missions - these add some replayability to the campaign but also function as an acknowledgement of player skill, which create a sense of ackomplishment not just completion.
- And some newer techniques to improve battlefield awareness could provide a significant improvement on occassion - e.g. to use a consistent lingustic framing for the directives which makes a difference between fighter wings ("Destroy") and bomber wings ("Intercept").
In a nutshell, a first outing with some familiar issues for first time campaign makers but still wroth the time investment to check it out - not only to enjoy the novelty of the FMV cutscenes.
0rph3u5:
Two bugs I found in Mission 19:
Spoiler: When the Bosch reaches the Node and self-destructs, the same dialogue as if Lambda had docked - even if Lambda was not arrived yet.
Transport Omega is not secured against being disabled and the mission always fails if it doesn't dock with the Pod.
SilverAngelX:
Hi 0rph3u5,
thanks for your feedback. I added the two bugs to my to-do list.
Regarding your general feedback:
* Near ship anchor: This one's an example of finding the right compromise between in-universe realism and gameplay balancing. In-universe it does make a lot of sense for an attack on a stationary target to jump in from various attack vectors for the expressed purpose of making the defenders fly long distances. In case of mission 11 I do agree, that the large hitbox of an Arcadia makes that more challenging than it should be and I've already changed the mission to have a more localized entry area for the attackers. In case of mission 5 I'm not sure whether that is the right approach. You mentioned "balancing by subtraction". Ironically, mission 5 is an example of the opposite. My original version had less hostile ships, but during beta testing I got the feedback that the mission was too easy and too short, so I reluctantly added more pirates. Reluctantly, because I found it unrealistic that the pirates would send more ships to the attack. But for gameplay's sake I added more, thus making the mission harder than I originally intended. But I think for this mission the culprit is actually the next point.
* Balancing in general: I agree, that some missions are not balanced very well. Especially after last week's stream with Joe I would say, this is in large part to the unreliability of the wingmen. I tend to micro-manage them quite a lot, so during my own tests I didn't reach the level of wingmen casualties we saw last week. My lesson learned here is that my playstyle doesn't seem to be very representative. So in order to get the balancing right, I need different approches, different styles, different used difficulty levels to get that kind of feedback. For chapter 1 the roster of beta testers was rather small, so maybe it wasn't diverse enough to get feedback from all the needed angles. I intend to change that for chapter 2 and have a more diverse roster of testers.
* Partial successes: I have mixed feelings about those. In some cases in the FS2 Retail campaign I was surprised what kind of collateral damage Command was willing to accept. But that was during war times and I can understand that acceptable losses are a thing in such times. I'm not sure this kind of stance suits the story I want to tell. And then there were some cases during the development of this chapter where I dropped the idea of having partial success. I'm not quite sure whether it was being annoyed with something not working out or just being lazy, but there were indeed instances where I made goals more absolute.
* Your point about the scenario losing credibility: I would tend to disagree here that the (re)actions of the opponent force in the last missions goes against their previous superiority. The thing is: That superiority was completely in technology and numbers, combined with an element of surprise (The events of the second half of the chapter play out in about a week). Once that element of surprise wears off and the technological advantages are being countered, it reveals that while they had all those advantages, they crucially lack military experience in terms of strategy and thus overrely on their other advantages. It is one thing to prepare your campaign more or less undisturbed and then strike in a surprise attack. But without proper strategic experience all those other advantages can be countered and you can become cornered easily; a lesson other factions in FS lore had to learn as well. I think that hybris fits the antagonist's character and the idea of that faction in general as not being military and thus making those kind of mistakes.
Again, thanks for the feedback and I will certainly have some more awareness to some of the things during the development of chapter 2.
0rph3u5:
--- Quote from: SilverAngelX on February 13, 2022, 09:32:13 am ---Near ship anchor: This one's an example of finding the right compromise between in-universe realism and gameplay balancing. In-universe it does make a lot of sense for an attack on a stationary target to jump in from various attack vectors for the expressed purpose of making the defenders fly long distances. In case of mission 11 I do agree, that the large hitbox of an Arcadia makes that more challenging than it should be and I've already changed the mission to have a more localized entry area for the attackers.
--- End quote ---
Ironically, there is a way to fix that which uses "Near Ship" - you just have to stop using Acadia as the Anchor but instead use an alternative:
e.g. the new Omnibus-version of Rain on Ribos IV, Mission 12 uses stealthed and cloacked nav buoys to keep Durga and Kali wing from arriving at wildly disadvantageous positions:
1) Durga wing data
--- Code: ---$Name: Durga
[...]
$Arrival Location: Near Ship
+Arrival Distance: 150
$Arrival Anchor: Durga arrival anchor
[...]
--- End code ---
2) event moving the Durga arrival anchor
--- Code: ---$Formula: ( every-time-argument
( any-of "Duty" "Loyality" )
( and
( has-arrived-delay 0 "<argument>" )
( not
( destroyed-or-departed-delay
0
"Duty"
"Loyalty"
)
)
)
( set-object-position
"Durga arrival anchor"
( get-object-x
"<argument>"
"<none>"
2000
300
-800
)
( get-object-y
"<argument>"
"<none>"
2000
300
-800
)
( get-object-z
"<argument>"
"<none>"
2000
300
-800
)
)
)
+Name: durga arrival point move
+Repeat Count: 1
+Interval: 1
--- End code ---
You can add a random element with something similar to the following (from RoR_17a-new):
--- Code: ---$Formula: ( when-argument
( random-multiple-of
"Paimon anchor 1"
"Paimon anchor 2"
"Paimon anchor 3"
"Paimon anchor 4"
)
( true )
( set-arrival-info
"Krishna#wave 1"
"Near Ship"
"<argument>"
0
120
0
( true )
)
)
+Name: arrival anchor wave 1-1
+Repeat Count: 1
+Interval: 1
--- End code ---
... or just appyling a varibale that is randomized each time the event executes and setting the position of anchor each time to a set of coordinates linked to each possible value of the variable.
That way you get the attack wings to attack from different vectors but also retain some control so the spread is not as wild as with a pure "Near Ship".
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