I've enjoyed the campaign, but I found those "What are you going to do now, sir?" situations a bit forced. In reality, Command should do whatever it takes to prevent those situations from happening in the first place. They may happen, but surely not in the daily routine...and I don't think you can base training simulations on rare events.
Nail on the head.
Nail on the head, but he's disagreeing with you: 'they may happen, but surely not in the daily routine...'
As you'd say, NGTM-1R, you don't train just for the daily routine, you train for the worst-case scenario.
Of course you base training simulations on rare events. You just don't base all of them.
And to turn your own metagame arguments back on you, Mobius, in how many campaigns do you fly totally uneventful patrols or escorts? In spite of the fact that they probably make up the majority of such missions?
Look, I see your objection: Command shouldn't let these scenarios happen.
Yet they clearly do. As in the case of the withdrawing-from-the-nebula scenario, in spite of everyone's best efforts, sometimes hard choices have to be made.
This is a Freespace version of the Kobayashi Maru.
I've enjoyed the campaign, but I found those "What are you going to do now, sir?" situations a bit forced. In reality, Command should do whatever it takes to prevent those situations from happening in the first place. They may happen, but surely not in the daily routine...and I don't think you can base training simulations on rare events.
Even having to make that kind of decisions may be considered a defeat: no matter of your decision, something bad is going to happen.
Battuta: I don't think the main campaign is a good example, either. We all know that the player is (and is supposed to be) the equivalent of who knows how many fighters or bombers, so we can't base scenarios on "I have 2-3 wings available, what should I do with them?" - the number of available forces may be various and off the schemes we all know. Keep in mind that FreeSpace is a series in which 8 fighters are supposed to protect destroyers from relentless attacks even if there are many additional forces available to do that. Don't forget that FS is a game.
Other than that, I would have really liked to see this as a pure minicampaign set anywhere/anytime in the FreeSpace Universe, and not as a simulation. IMO, it would have been more realistic and enjoyable, and would have also lacked the creep-creep factor that belongs to a different genre of campaigns, like Trascend and Sync.
THE MAIN CAMPAIGN IS CANON. DEAL WITH IT. STOP THE FANWANK BEFORE YOU GET A CRAMP.
Play on Insane, dude. Alpha 1 ain't nothin' special -- just a skilled pilot. And eight fighters are damn well plenty to protect a modern carrier, so why aren't they good enough for an FS2 destroyer? You have no idea if additional forces are available.
This campaign is meant to make you understand WHY there aren't other forces available to relieve Alpha 1.
Garsh, where's Snail when I need him?