Author Topic: Basic Mission Design Philosophy  (Read 1787 times)

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Basic Mission Design Philosophy
So, presumably, when you first start to make a mission you already know it at a conceptual level. The player is in a fight between this ship and those ships, that side wins, then they have to go do this, etc. But after plunking down the major players, and going in for your first round of testing to make sure the broad strokes happen properly, you have a problem. Maybe the side you didn't expect to won, maybe the fight was over with much quicker than you anticipated and the pacing is ruined. How, in very general terms, do you solve the problem?

Do you futz about with special hits and set-turret-rate-of-fire, making sure the ships are exactly as deadly or tough as you think they should be and hope the player doesn't notice?

Do you add more aspects to the mission, like adding more enemy fighters to make things take a bit longer, or add a cruiser to make sure that corvette wins against the other one?

Or do you actually change the concept of the mission? If that ship doesn't win against the other ship in practice, maybe the conflict ought to be rethought and retooled into a situation more fitting elements you wanted to bring to play, rather than trying to force it?

I'm sorry if I've used too much generality, but I've very often found myself taking the first option, happy to bend the rules a bit to make sure the situation ends up a certain way, but I've realized this isn't the only way, and I'm very curious as to what other approaches to this sort of thing people use.

 

Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: Basic Mission Design Philosophy
Change what weapons various ships use.
Adjust the angle that ships engage - More turrets facing for the ship you want to win, fewer for the one you want to lose.
Use special hitpoints to increase strength for the ship you want to win, and decrease them for the ship you want to lose.
If you're in Blue Planet...  "Plot Armor".
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Offline Spoon

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Re: Basic Mission Design Philosophy
Cheat, script, regulate, retime, reposition, adjust numbers, change arrival times.

Take personal control of big beams, sexp them to fire at set intervals rather than rely on the ai to fire them completely at random.
If a fight takes too long or too short, change them hitpoints, adjust the timing at which ships arrive.
Guardian/protect ships for short periods at certain intervals.

All the things.

If you want your side to win against the enemy. Ideally, you'll want them to lose the fight on their own, 100% of the time.
It should be the player's actions that will change the tide of the battle.

Stats from the table should be a general very flexible guideline, you bend those stats to your will, to serve the narrative.
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Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: Basic Mission Design Philosophy
Cheat, script, regulate, retime, reposition, adjust numbers, change arrival times.

Take personal control of big beams, sexp them to fire at set intervals rather than rely on the ai to fire them completely at random.
If a fight takes too long or too short, change them hitpoints, adjust the timing at which ships arrive.
Guardian/protect ships for short periods at certain intervals.

All the things.

If you want your side to win against the enemy. Ideally, you'll want them to lose the fight on their own, 100% of the time.
It should be the player's actions that will change the tide of the battle.

Stats from the table should be a general very flexible guideline, you bend those stats to your will, to serve the narrative.

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Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: Basic Mission Design Philosophy
I remember once, on IRC, General Battuta mentioned having trouble with a mission for BP (for act 4, I assume, although whether that mission was ever finished or was later reworked, I don't know) where one particular hostile ship was having an undue effect on the mission at a certain point... so he added an event whereby a wing of Fedayeen showed up at the right moment, blew it up, and then jumped out. Which both solved the balance problem and added verisimilitude.

So, I guess, the lesson there is "don't be afraid to fine-tune mission balance via the temporary arrival of special ops units".
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Offline Mito [PL]

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Re: Basic Mission Design Philosophy
Blue Planet's "Plot Armor" basically means that in Delenda Est the dev team had to considerably bump up Carthage's "health" and make Impereuse's beams invincible, without that both of them were actually getting completely wrecked.
BP also tends to use a term "Active armor" a lot - while the existance of such isn't really taken into consideration by FSO, they seem to make it look like there is such a thing - If I'm correct that's just properly adjusting hitpoints of a certain vessel.
I also need to mention that in Delenda Est, in this "pause" between warship fights, both friendly Karuna frigates regenerate their health a bit.

The AI of bombers, if they're present, can make a lot of difference in the fight (Fury's AI can improve a lot), just as their placement and strike timing. You'd probably also want to modify their loadouts so that they make more sense. Maybe add some wings tasked with disarming/disabling the other side.
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Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: Basic Mission Design Philosophy
Balls of Steele.
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: Basic Mission Design Philosophy
Blue Planet's "Plot Armor" basically means that in Delenda Est the dev team had to considerably bump up Carthage's "health" and make Impereuse's beams invincible, without that both of them were actually getting completely wrecked.
BP also tends to use a term "Active armor" a lot - while the existance of such isn't really taken into consideration by FSO, they seem to make it look like there is such a thing - If I'm correct that's just properly adjusting hitpoints of a certain vessel.
I also need to mention that in Delenda Est, in this "pause" between warship fights, both friendly Karuna frigates regenerate their health a bit.

We rarely use special hitpoints. Ships get their armor class adjusted based on a loose set of rules about power allocation and ECM state. In some missions you can peel away enemy armor by destroying ECM assets.