[starbug]

I am starting to work on a mini-campaign, figuring that's the best way to start. I have a very rough idea on what i want to do. The middle of the campaign i know exactly whats happening i just really not clear on the beginning or the end as such, don't even have a name for it yet, funny that. So i have fredded the middle mission first while it is still pretty clear in my head. I think the basics of it is pretty much done, but i was hoping that someone or someones would test it for me just to see what the balance is like, I have been playing it on medium and it seems to give a bit of challenge but as i said someone else's opinion would really mean a lot even if its to say its crap LOL. This is my first mission i have fredded in quite a long time so its probably pretty bad.

Ok so here it is. Just place everything in your BluePlanet2\data\missions folder.
http://www.mediafire.com/?m1a8qatjw89799y

Basic background
Your a pilot Jenna Sheppard (May change that) for the 96th Dragon Knight's interceptor and assault squadron aboard the Orion GTD Aribeth(cookie for who knows that name!   ) under the command of captain Alex Keegan. Based in the Wolf 359 system battling the Terran/vasudan Rebel Dominion(name will most likely change) based in Alphard, Dubhe and Barnard's Star. There background i am working on and that's all i got so far lol.

Things to note.
Requires BluePlanet2 War in heaven as i use the AI and some of the Ships.
Has new music in it, that's why its about 10MB in size.
There are probably quite a few spelling mistakes as i wanted to get the gameplay done first, then i look at my spelling mistakes. (doing it now or there abouts)
There is no debriefing as of yet need to work on that.
There is an event where a ship has to fire its beams at something but i can't seem to get the fire-beam sexp to work i have checked that the turret has a beam weapon. This mission still works because this is just for an effect the rest of that event is scripted.
Yes the dialog is probably crap, i am not a very good writer.
With the Kamakize sexp how do alter the speed of the Shockwave as when it seems to be really slow?

Edit: As for the story i haven't really figured it out yet   I just cleared mind of how the middle went which is why i did this one first.

[General Battuta]

Downloaded'd'd'ded.

[starbug]

So has anyone had a chance to play this? As the Feedback would really be appreciated and would mean a lot even if it is negative feedback that to will help me on what i need to do to improve it.

P.S Just incase you ask Battuta yes you can use those music files in BP  

[The E]

Just as a technical note, music belongs in data\music, not data\missions. In addition, the Alarm, Alarm2 and emptymsg sounds are in BP already, no need to reinclude them.

[starbug]

When ever i tried having the music in the Data/music folder it would never play in mission but when i put it in the data/mission folder it worked.

[General Battuta]

Righto, giving it a stab. Thoughts as I play -

1) Writing's a tad dicey, but it's the thought that counts; I like that you took the effort to put a little backstory into the setting and characters.

2) Loadout seems to be pretty much default, did you mean for UEF ships to be available? Similarly there seem to be dogfight weapons in the loadout. I'll go with default for now.

3) I can give orders to the Erikson and Rhode Island; remember to disable player orders for them.

4) Love the music, though it's rather triumphant for a mission opening.

5) There's a long pause between the end of the opening dialogue and the first Omega transport's arrival.

6) I enjoy the buildup, but I think you should use some tenser music.

7) The Ventris isn't very formidable; I was able to shoot off her main beams with no resistance. How about slapping a higher AI class and some armor on her? This is particularly important because she has to be a threat towards the end of the mission.

8) The Naggaroth doesn't actually fire at the docking ring - it'd be cool if she did.

9) Why doesn't the Ventris maneuver to avoid the ram? It can at least match the Aribeth's speed.

10) No debriefing that I can see.

All in all it was a great first mission, though I don't think it quite hangs together on the logic level. More importantly, the player's task of shooting down bombers is pretty easy - the bombers barely have an escort and seem to be on a non-Fury AI. Difficulty balancing is a good idea to leave for last, though, so I wouldn't worry too hard about that yet.

Well done, and keep it up.

[The E]

Pretty much what Battuta said. A pretty solid first effort, that needs a bit of polishing before being considered great.

I should note that, unlike Battuta, I blatantly cheated and equipped Alpha with Izra'ils in default config with me carrying Slammers. Suffice it to say that shooting down bombers was ridiculously easy, not to mention that the hostile Heca got killed rather easily, making the heroic sacrifice of the Orion rather pointless (not to mention remarkably non-sacrificial, as the Heca asploded before any ramming could occur).

Also, I kinda have to wonder why a Post-Capella force uses Herc 1s and Zeus Bombers.

As for the music, well.... the transitions between the various pieces needs a bit of work, I think. I would suggest going to silence when the Orion gets disabled, to give a bit of breathing room between the "ambient" and "combat" music.

[starbug]

1) Writing's a tad dicey, but it's the thought that counts; I like that you took the effort to put a little backstory into the setting and characters.

Yeah i know my writting is not that great, working on improving that.

2) Loadout seems to be pretty much default, did you mean for UEF ships to be available? Similarly there seem to be dogfight weapons in the loadout. I'll go with default for now.

I forgot to set the weapons and ships before i uploaded it, the player is meant to just to have there ship preselected and pre armed for them but i forgot. oops.

5) There's a long pause between the end of the opening dialogue and the first Omega transport's arrival.

I am working on lowering that gap.

7) The Ventris isn't very formidable; I was able to shoot off her main beams with no resistance. How about slapping a higher AI class and some armor on her? This is particularly important because she has to be a threat towards the end of the mission.

I did try and give the Ventris higher AI but it always ripped the aribeth to bits for it could ram that's why i ended up giving it slashers. This was the main bit i struggled with for a day on how to make it a threat, still am.

8) The Naggaroth doesn't actually fire at the docking ring - it'd be cool if she did.

Its supposed to fire its beams i even set up a fire beam event up for it but it won't fire and i am not sure why, i have beam-freed it and turret-freed it but it still wont fire.

9) Why doesn't the Ventris maneuver to avoid the ram? It can at least match the Aribeth's speed.

Would the Aribeth still ram the Ventris ok if i gave it waypoints to try and avoid the ramming?

Also debriefing as said in first post, i am trying to write up a debrief.

Also, I kinda have to wonder why a Post-Capella force uses Herc 1s and Zeus Bombers.

My reasoning for that was, after the events of Capella, the GTVA and the problems with resettling the capellans and has had a bit of a problem for the economics of the GTVA and they have to resort to using some of the older ships until it has recovered enough to replace the older fleets with more modern vessels. That's my very basic idea.

I had considered of having the ramming done as a cutscene, where once the aribeth gets to a certain distance it would change to cutscene for the actual ram effect. But i have had one or 2 problems with the distance sexps, also how do you change the speed of the shockwave coming from the kamakize ship?
 

[General Battuta]

What I'd do is make the Ventris tougher and keep its heavy weapons, but give the Aribeth Heavy Armor 5 or something at that point using the set-armor-type SEXP.

[starbug]

Aaahh! thats bud, i didn't even know there was an armor sexp in fred. Will try that out when i get home from work

[0rph3u5]

It's a nice first go... I like it though you should elaborate a bit more (but since this is still a single mission that's okay)

most of the things I spotted were already mentioned by Battuta, so there are only two more points I'd like to add before I go on commenting the comments

1) You should look into the arrival vector/point of the first attacking wave.... during the whole rest of the mission the enemy fighters/bomber come from the Ventris (which would be exactly the same direction)
Unless that's intentional I'd do something about that - maybe have bombers arrive "in front of" (-> Arrival, Location) the Aribeth/Naggaroth and then the rest of the fighters near the bombers

2) Why are you sending wings to aid a kamikaze destroyer? - It's not very logical to me....
I'd rather have the Ventris threaten the Naggaroth with it's bombers (so your fighter wings have to protect it) and the Naggaroth speeding away during the whole Aribeth-Ventris collision maneuver... (would be a good character play here: the Ventris CO doesn't belive Aribeth CO is really going to ram his ship, since you already pointed out they used to be friends)

Now to the stuff that already has been said:

8) The Naggaroth doesn't actually fire at the docking ring - it'd be cool if she did.

Its supposed to fire its beams i even set up a fire beam event up for it but it won't fire and i am not sure why, i have beam-freed it and turret-freed it but it still wont fire.

I had that before, I figured it is the model of the docking ring... either make the Naggaroth aim for the subsytems on the ring or dummy navbouys - should do the trick
also you should do something about the detonation of that docking ring with the special explosion feature of the ships editor; get rid of the shockwaves perhaps...

9) Why doesn't the Ventris maneuver to avoid the ram? It can at least match the Aribeth's speed.

Would the Aribeth still ram the Ventris ok if i gave it waypoints to try and avoid the ramming?

Yes, it should - The Aribeth goes right for the "center" of the Ventris for the collision (or was it the shortest distance to the hull - don't remember)...
ps. if the Aribeth hit the Ventris not up front but in mid-section - how cool would that look?

[starbug]

Thanks for the feedback guys, i am start re-working this in a couple of hours.