Author Topic: [RELEASE] Reunion Act 1  (Read 17674 times)

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Offline Voelkel

  • 25
  • Reunion dev
[RELEASE] Reunion Act 1

                                                                                                              DOWNLOAD LINK

THE MOD
______________________________________________________________ ___




Reunion is a lore-friendly, story-driven Freespace 2 campaign with fast-paced fighter combat and epic capital ship battles. The mod aims to capture the look and feel of the original Freespace franchise, providing new content with a sense of authenticity. This is an open beta release, which means that Act 1 is fully playable, but Act 2 and 3 are still in development.

The mod contains:
     ○   10 new missions, which compose Act 1 of the Reunion campaign.
     ○   More than 50 new ships, installations and stellar objects.
     ○   Over a dozen new weapons, most of them never before seen in any other mod.
     ○   A dynamic plot with interesting and diverse characters.
     ○   Epic music and custom skyboxes.



THE STORY
______________________________________________________________ ____________



You assume the role of Commander Simmons, a fighter pilot freshly assigned to the GTVA's 54th fighter squadron aboard the Nagoya, a Rhea-class carrier.

The main campaign is set 12 years after the Capella incident, as the GTVA is nearing the conclusion of its gate construction effort in Delta Serpentis. The Alliance couldn't quite recover from the second Shivan incursion, stretching its resources thin in an effort to both rebuild its fleet and find a way back to Earth.

The voices of those, who never want to return to Sol are getting louder by the day. Some are dissatisfied with the decreasing living standards, others imagine a bright future among the stars. Most however, fear what lies on the other side of the jump gate. A movement to abandon the construction of the gate has started, its radical wing rapidly gaining momentum. As the GTVA fears another insurrection, shadowy powers manipulate the political climate to their own ends.


SHIPS, WEAPONS AND COMBAT
______________________________________________________________ ____________



Reunion draws upon the vast creative talent the Freespace 2 modding community has amassed over the years, introducing a wide variety of new ships, skins and weapons, some entirely unique to this mod. Fly lightning-fast interceptors. Use bombs that are able to eradicate entire convoys. Take out enemies from afar with your antimatter lance. Confront deadly enemies driven by Blue Planet's enhanced AI. Take part in massive battles between enormous starfleets. Help humanity return to Earth.

Successful completion of the campaign requires quick reflexes, good tactical thinking and command abilities. As an officer of the GTVA security forces, you will have to work together as a team with your wingmen, who depend on your judgement as their leader. You will not be able to complete Reunion simply by flying up to hostiles and pulling the trigger.

Full credits are listed in the mod's root folder, it will also be listed at the end of the campaign once it is fully complete.


GAMEPLAY SCREENSHOTS
______________________________________________________________ ____________









FAQ
______________________________________________________________ ____________


Q: How is this mod any different from Blue Planet / Inferno?
A: Reunion's storytelling is centered around the gate construction effort to Sol and an internal conflict within the GTVA. Blue Planet and Inferno are inspiring works of art, however, I felt like telling a different story with this mod. Telling what exactly is different would be delving too much into spoilers, I can only urge you to explore.

Q: But do you get to take part in an epic brother war between the GTVA and Earth forces?
Spoiler:
A: No.

Q: I found a bug or have a suggestion! Where can I make a report?
A: If you encounter any bugs not listed in the "more to come" section, please contact me either via a private message or post in this thread. Please do the same if you have any suggestions with which this campaign could be improved. I am very grateful for any feedback I can get.

Q: When will Act 2 be released?
A: 2021 Q4-2022 Q1 hopefully.

Q: Bro, this campaign is pretty decent, is this seriously your first mod?
A: Nope. This is actually my fourth attempt at making a campaign, but this is the first one I found to be worthy of a public release. The first three will be lost in the labyrinth of space and time forever. Sorry!


MORE TO COME
______________________________________________________________ ____________



Presently, the Reunion mod is in open beta stage, which means an expansion to the project is yet to come. So far, this release contains only Act 1, which is composed of 10 missions. The development of Act 2 is already in progress. Since this is the first campaign I have ever released to the public, your feedback is invaluable to me in the development of the upcoming chapters.

Long term plans include the addition of:
     ○   Act 2 and Act 3
     ○   Custom HUD
     ○   Custom mainhall and briefing animations
     ○   End credits cutscene
     ○   Full character voiceovers
     ○   Custom fonts
     ○   Better tech descriptions
     ○   Correction of potential grammar and spelling mistakes


While the development continues, do not hesitate to give feedback! Your thoughts are very much appreciated.

                                                                                                              DOWNLOAD LINK
« Last Edit: November 24, 2021, 02:22:49 am by Voelkel »

 

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
Re: [RELEASE] Reunion Open Beta
Yo this looks awesome! Also that's a very cleanly formatted and intriguing release post, you told me everything I wanted to know right when I got curious about it.

 

Offline Voelkel

  • 25
  • Reunion dev
Re: [RELEASE] Reunion Open Beta
Yo this looks awesome! Also that's a very cleanly formatted and intriguing release post, you told me everything I wanted to know right when I got curious about it.

Thanks! I would love to hear your feedback when you're finished!

 

Offline Goober5000

  • HLP Loremaster
  • 214
    • Goober5000 Productions
Re: [RELEASE] Reunion Open Beta
This looks amazing.  Highlighted. :yes:

 
Re: [RELEASE] Reunion Open Beta
Stuck on mission 5 with attack on Regulus, but like it so far.  One small flaw I found is that in the first 2 missions, the nebulas and planets don't mesh well into the background. They look as if somebody glued them on

 

Offline Voelkel

  • 25
  • Reunion dev
Re: [RELEASE] Reunion Open Beta
This looks amazing.  Highlighted. :yes:

Thank you, much appreciated!

Stuck on mission 5 with attack on Regulus, but like it so far.  One small flaw I found is that in the first 2 missions, the nebulas and planets don't mesh well into the background. They look as if somebody glued them on

Thank you for the notice! I'll correct that ASAP.

As for the Regulus missions, wingmen commands are absolutely essential to achieve success in this operation!

 

Offline Voelkel

  • 25
  • Reunion dev
Re: [RELEASE] Reunion Open Beta
Added a minor update that
  • fixes the funky starfields in the first two missions with partly involving Nyctaeus' epic nebula skyboxes,
  • introduces some minor mission tweaks.

 

Offline TopAce

  • Stalwart contributor
  • 212
  • FREDder, FSWiki editor, and tester
Re: [RELEASE] Reunion Open Beta
...As for the Regulus missions, wingmen commands are absolutely essential to achieve success in this operation!

Is this hinted at or told explicitly somewhere? If not, some would consider it a design flaw. I'd add a message something along the lines of: "Alpha 1, what do you want us to do?" Ordering wingmen around to achieve great results is good, but having a hard time progressing the campaign at all because of it should be avoided. Generally speaking, you must make sure your missions are beatable without the player having to replay said mission numerous times just to figure out what the FREDder had in mind during development.
My community contributions - Get my campaigns from here.

I already announced my retirement twice, yet here I am. If I bring up that topic again, don't believe a word.

 

Offline Voelkel

  • 25
  • Reunion dev
Re: [RELEASE] Reunion Open Beta
...As for the Regulus missions, wingmen commands are absolutely essential to achieve success in this operation!

Is this hinted at or told explicitly somewhere? If not, some would consider it a design flaw. I'd add a message something along the lines of: "Alpha 1, what do you want us to do?" Ordering wingmen around to achieve great results is good, but having a hard time progressing the campaign at all because of it should be avoided. Generally speaking, you must make sure your missions are beatable without the player having to replay said mission numerous times just to figure out what the FREDder had in mind during development.

It is indeed! There are numerous instances during the campaign when your wingmen prod you for orders, including the very first mission, which has a strong element in it that so-to-say teaches / reminds you to order your wingmen around frequently.

The need for you to lead your wingmen is also explicitly mentioned in the mod's description text and is part of the introductory briefing.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2021, 09:04:24 am by Voelkel »

 
Re: [RELEASE] Reunion Open Beta
you passed the test i see good reactions fro,m you
i going to try voelkel
een goober gived you highlight thars means you are good to go

 

Offline Voelkel

  • 25
  • Reunion dev
Re: [RELEASE] Reunion Open Beta
you passed the test i see good reactions fro,m you
i going to try voelkel
een goober gived you highlight thars means you are good to go

Thank you! I hope you'll enjoy the campaign, make sure you give feedback as well!

 

Offline Dilmah G

  • Failed juggling
  • 211
  • Do try it.
Re: [RELEASE] Reunion Open Beta
Yo Voelkel, congrats on your first release on HLP! I agree with Battuta - that is a spectacular opening post and it definitely motivated me to make the extra effort to download and play a bit after I finished work today!

I've only played through what I imagine is 3/4 of the way through the first mission. In my finite wisdom I left my difficulty set to insane, so it's good to know at least that I got all the way until the end before it became a drama! The overall production quality (especially the music!) is great and it's clear that a lot of effort has been put into the mod. I did also enjoy the use of the Fiction Viewer. My thoughts in detail below:

Spoiler:
As I said, congrats and great work! Mods like BP and Inferno definitely make this a more intimidating piece of FS history to explore but I think you really took that in your stride with the way that you went straight to work with the worldbuilding. I really enjoyed the detail in the opening Fiction Viewer piece and how you made an effort early on to distinguish between the different key characters in the story. IMO it's that level of detail that really sells the story and it's that sort of attention to detail that really made mods like Derelict (and BP!) popular.

That being said, my overriding piece of feedback is that I felt your writing didn't fully enable the power of your content because it was quite overt from the get go. I don't consider my creative writing to be good by any stretch and I'm sure there are plenty of people who've experienced mine who would say you should take my criticism with a grain of salt (including me!), but one of the most helpful expressions I learned when it came to writing was the phrase "Show, don't tell". A brief google search tells me that there are plenty of people smarter than I who have written about it, but the fundamental principle that I pull out of it all is that the balance between "telling" your audience information and "showing" them through your development of the story and descriptions of a scene are key to writing a page-turning narrative. Or in your case, a narrative that makes people want to play until the next mission.

A few examples of this are when you describe how certain characters are during the opening Fiction Viewer, and give little personality snippets about the wingmen during the Command Briefing. I think the fact you have this level of detail is excellent, and that tells me that you've clearly invested a lot of thought into how you think these characters should look and feel. What that then allows you to do is let the interactions between your characters show how they are. This is where wingman dialogue during the mission can really show some nuance and breathe life into your characters. Derelict is a great example of this - I can't see the word "Mackie" written anywhere now without thinking of goddamn duct tape! And on this note, I felt that the wingman dialogue was a tad on the overt side as well when it came to telling the meatier parts of your story. As the audience, I got the impression you really wanted to set this universe up for me in double-time - which I absolutely understand - but it's just hard to do quickly through one mission opening's worth of dialogue without it feeling a bit on the forced side. That being said, I do genuinely think the level of detail in all of the exposition was fantastic, and when it's not closer to 11pm over here in Australia I absolutely will get around to playing the rest of it!

In any case, your overall quality of the mod (music, custom loading screens, custom ships!) was great and in the overall sense, it felt like a polished product. And to be honest, that's all the really hard stuff behind modding anyway. Writing obviously requires much less time spent wanting to throw your monitor through the window because FRED isn't playing ball but potentially a bit more "soak" time to really refine. If you want more specific feedback from me I'm only too happy to oblige later in the week when I have some time. There are plenty of actually accomplished writers kicking around the joint who will have some great feedback for you as well (and might even disagree with everything I have to say!), so I won't be offended at all if you print my post out only to have the ability to then put it through the shredder!  :lol:

 

Offline Voelkel

  • 25
  • Reunion dev
Re: [RELEASE] Reunion Open Beta
Yo Voelkel, congrats on your first release on HLP! I agree with Battuta - that is a spectacular opening post and it definitely motivated me to make the extra effort to download and play a bit after I finished work today!

I've only played through what I imagine is 3/4 of the way through the first mission. In my finite wisdom I left my difficulty set to insane, so it's good to know at least that I got all the way until the end before it became a drama! The overall production quality (especially the music!) is great and it's clear that a lot of effort has been put into the mod. I did also enjoy the use of the Fiction Viewer. My thoughts in detail below:

Spoiler:
As I said, congrats and great work! Mods like BP and Inferno definitely make this a more intimidating piece of FS history to explore but I think you really took that in your stride with the way that you went straight to work with the worldbuilding. I really enjoyed the detail in the opening Fiction Viewer piece and how you made an effort early on to distinguish between the different key characters in the story. IMO it's that level of detail that really sells the story and it's that sort of attention to detail that really made mods like Derelict (and BP!) popular.

That being said, my overriding piece of feedback is that I felt your writing didn't fully enable the power of your content because it was quite overt from the get go. I don't consider my creative writing to be good by any stretch and I'm sure there are plenty of people who've experienced mine who would say you should take my criticism with a grain of salt (including me!), but one of the most helpful expressions I learned when it came to writing was the phrase "Show, don't tell". A brief google search tells me that there are plenty of people smarter than I who have written about it, but the fundamental principle that I pull out of it all is that the balance between "telling" your audience information and "showing" them through your development of the story and descriptions of a scene are key to writing a page-turning narrative. Or in your case, a narrative that makes people want to play until the next mission.

A few examples of this are when you describe how certain characters are during the opening Fiction Viewer, and give little personality snippets about the wingmen during the Command Briefing. I think the fact you have this level of detail is excellent, and that tells me that you've clearly invested a lot of thought into how you think these characters should look and feel. What that then allows you to do is let the interactions between your characters show how they are. This is where wingman dialogue during the mission can really show some nuance and breathe life into your characters. Derelict is a great example of this - I can't see the word "Mackie" written anywhere now without thinking of goddamn duct tape! And on this note, I felt that the wingman dialogue was a tad on the overt side as well when it came to telling the meatier parts of your story. As the audience, I got the impression you really wanted to set this universe up for me in double-time - which I absolutely understand - but it's just hard to do quickly through one mission opening's worth of dialogue without it feeling a bit on the forced side. That being said, I do genuinely think the level of detail in all of the exposition was fantastic, and when it's not closer to 11pm over here in Australia I absolutely will get around to playing the rest of it!

In any case, your overall quality of the mod (music, custom loading screens, custom ships!) was great and in the overall sense, it felt like a polished product. And to be honest, that's all the really hard stuff behind modding anyway. Writing obviously requires much less time spent wanting to throw your monitor through the window because FRED isn't playing ball but potentially a bit more "soak" time to really refine. If you want more specific feedback from me I'm only too happy to oblige later in the week when I have some time. There are plenty of actually accomplished writers kicking around the joint who will have some great feedback for you as well (and might even disagree with everything I have to say!), so I won't be offended at all if you print my post out only to have the ability to then put it through the shredder!  :lol:

Thank you very much! :)

Spoiler:
I concur entirely with your assessment regarding the opening dialogue, you are also right when observing that the reason for it is that I felt the need to bring the player up to speed with the storyline. Even though much of it is written in the briefing and the fiction file, I thought that relying entirely on those is not enough and highlighting the campaign's more important political developments should be a priority in the starting missions. I look forward to your suggestions as to how exactly this could be improved :)
« Last Edit: April 06, 2021, 10:44:43 am by Voelkel »

 

Offline Voelkel

  • 25
  • Reunion dev
Re: [RELEASE] Reunion Open Beta
Update!

  • Replaced Mission 1's skybox
  • Done some tweaks in mission balance and fixed some minor bugs
  • Replaced the menu music and added some tips
  • Fixed an issue with the Rhea carrier's subsystem targeting
  • Also added a hotfix that solves the issue with targeting Artemis and Boanerges bombers
« Last Edit: April 08, 2021, 02:22:40 pm by Voelkel »

 

Offline Iain Baker

  • 210
  • 'Sup?
    • Steam
    • Twitter
    • NOMAD's Reviews
Re: [RELEASE] Reunion Open Beta
Excellent work!

I'm a bit tied up Friday and over the weekend with family stuff, but I can get back to playtesting on Monday. I should have the entire campaign playtested with notes by this time next week - I only get enough free time to test about one mission per day at the moment. After that I can get to work on the proof-reading :-)

All the best,

Iain.
Wanna check out my video games, technology and media website? If so, visit; https://www.nomadsreviews.co.uk/

Interested in hiring my freelance writing, proof-reading, editing, SEO, TTSO, Web Development or Social Media Management services? If so, please messege me at [email protected]

 

Offline Voelkel

  • 25
  • Reunion dev
Re: [RELEASE] Reunion Open Beta
Excellent work!

I'm a bit tied up Friday and over the weekend with family stuff, but I can get back to playtesting on Monday. I should have the entire campaign playtested with notes by this time next week - I only get enough free time to test about one mission per day at the moment. After that I can get to work on the proof-reading :-)

All the best,

Iain.

Thank you, Iain!

I wish you a great weekend!

 

Offline Antares

  • 28
  • Author of The Shivan Manifesto
Re: [RELEASE] Reunion Open Beta
Okay. Good news first.

- I like the campaign's presentation. The "civil war" plot is one that pops up in fan campaigns too often for my liking, but Reunion handles it pretty well. The mission briefings, while sparse (Scroll of Antankharzim has spoiled me with its luxurious briefing animations), are well done and have no obvious problems. A lot of campaigns have difficulties with this and use a kind of tone that isn't appropriate to the FS military sci-fi setting ("Anyways, pilot, we don't really expect you to run into any trouble in this mission, so it should be a walk in the park for you, amirite?"), and Reunion avoids that. It takes itself seriously, which is good.

- So many mods gives the campaign a sense of variety, especially if (like me) you haven't played a lot of campaigns in general or have been absent from the community scene for a while, so everything seems new. The custom comm animations are a nice touch.

- I haven't finished the campaign yet, but what I've seen of the story has kept me engaged. The wingmen in Alpha have a good group dynamic without being over-the-top. (However, I wouldn't go so far as to keep censoring profanity with convenient bursts of static; it seems childish.)

The bad news:

- In general, the campaign is too difficult. This is due to a combination of several factors, but the most significant is probably the highly aggressive "Blue Planet" AI. I started the campaign on medium (my default setting) and had to scale back to Easy because I kept getting killed before I could make any progress. Now--playing on Easy--I'm limping back to base with my ship shot full of holes.

- Corollary to the above: wingmen simply aren't as capable as the enemy AI. They almost seem like they're moving in slow motion and don't turn or fire as quickly as enemy ships. So far, I've ended every mission of the campaign with all of my extra wingmen shot down; the only reason that Alpha wing don't get killed too is because they all have Plot Armor and can't be destroyed.

- Weapons consistently feel underpowered, either because they're not doing enough damage, because the AI is using advanced shield management, or both. The Claymore positions itself as a refined version of the Keyser, but it's nothing of the kind; given its high power drain, it just doesn't do enough damage in exchange. I regularly run out of gun power hammering on enemy ships; you shouldn't have to keep a fighter under sustained, accurate fire for ten seconds or longer before it explodes. The tech room also has no weapons entries, so you can't look up any information on your new guns and missiles.

- The enemy Terran ships are all extremely fast and highly maneuverable, which greatly lessens the effectiveness of your secondary weapons. As a result, your stock FS2 missiles are essentially useless. There have been multiple occasions where I've had half a dozen wingmen trying to shoot down a single enemy fighter; they aren't accurate enough with their guns to hit it, and all of their missiles--and mine--explode harmlessly behind it. In addition, owing to the Macross-style design ethos of all the Terran fighters, they have sleeker designs and more narrow target profiles than the stock FS ships, which makes them harder to hit in general. More than once, I've been tailing a fighter that I've been unable to hit because my gun mounts are wider than the fighter is.

- The music is different, but the quality is uneven. I like the atmospheric choral pieces; the DOOM-style heavy metal, not so much. After replaying a difficult mission for the third or fourth time, I got tired of having that blaring in my ears.

When I resume the campaign, I'm going to set the difficulty to Very Easy and keep it there, because frankly, I need the edge.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that, for whatever reason, it takes support ships a godawful long time to dock with the new fighters. I would guess that the new ship models have docking points in out-of-the-way places, and support is having trouble finding them.
« Last Edit: April 10, 2021, 07:48:19 pm by Antares »
We have returned to continue our purification of this galaxy. It is again your turn to be crushed beneath the great force that is the Antaran army. All your petty squabbling with the other beings in this galaxy is meaningless. The Antaran fleet will destroy you all, one by one. You may not surrender. You cannot win. Your only option is death.

 

Offline Voelkel

  • 25
  • Reunion dev
Re: [RELEASE] Reunion Open Beta
Okay. Good news first.

- I like the campaign's presentation. The "civil war" plot is one that pops up in fan campaigns too often for my liking, but Reunion handles it pretty well. The mission briefings, while sparse (Scroll of Antankharzim has spoiled me with its luxurious briefing animations), are well done and have no obvious problems. A lot of campaigns have difficulties with this and use a kind of tone that isn't appropriate to the FS military sci-fi setting ("Anyways, pilot, we don't really expect you to run into any trouble in this mission, so it should be a walk in the park for you, amirite?"), and Reunion avoids that. It takes itself seriously, which is good.

- So many mods gives the campaign a sense of variety, especially if (like me) you haven't played a lot of campaigns in general or have been absent from the community scene for a while, so everything seems new. The custom comm animations are a nice touch.

- I haven't finished the campaign yet, but what I've seen of the story has kept me engaged. The wingmen in Alpha have a good group dynamic without being over-the-top. (However, I wouldn't go so far as to keep censoring profanity with convenient bursts of static; it seems childish.)

The bad news:

- In general, the campaign is too difficult. This is due to a combination of several factors, but the most significant is probably the highly aggressive "Blue Planet" AI. I started the campaign on medium (my default setting) and had to scale back to Easy because I kept getting killed before I could make any progress. Now--playing on Easy--I'm limping back to base with my ship shot full of holes.

- Corollary to the above: wingmen simply aren't as capable as the enemy AI. They almost seem like they're moving in slow motion and don't turn or fire as quickly as enemy ships. So far, I've ended every mission of the campaign with all of my extra wingmen shot down; the only reason that Alpha wing don't get killed too is because they all have Plot Armor and can't be destroyed.

- Weapons consistently feel underpowered, either because they're not doing enough damage, because the AI is using advanced shield management, or both. The Claymore positions itself as a refined version of the Keyser, but it's nothing of the kind; given its high power drain, it just doesn't do enough damage in exchange. I regularly run out of gun power hammering on enemy ships; you shouldn't have to keep a fighter under sustained, accurate fire for ten seconds or longer before it explodes. The tech room also has no weapons entries, so you can't look up any information on your new guns and missiles.

- The enemy Terran ships are all extremely fast and highly maneuverable, which greatly lessens the effectiveness of your secondary weapons. As a result, your stock FS2 missiles are essentially useless. There have been multiple occasions where I've had half a dozen wingmen trying to shoot down a single enemy fighter; they aren't accurate enough with their guns to hit it, and all of their missiles--and mine--explode harmlessly behind it. In addition, owing to the Macross-style design ethos of all the Terran fighters, they have sleeker designs and more narrow target profiles than the stock FS ships, which makes them harder to hit in general. More than once, I've been tailing a fighter that I've been unable to hit because my gun mounts are wider than the fighter is.

- The music is different, but the quality is uneven. I like the atmospheric choral pieces; the DOOM-style heavy metal, not so much. After replaying a difficult mission for the third or fourth time, I got tired of having that blaring in my ears.

When I resume the campaign, I'm going to set the difficulty to Very Easy and keep it there, because frankly, I need the edge.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that, for whatever reason, it takes support ships a godawful long time to dock with the new fighters. I would guess that the new ship models have docking points in out-of-the-way places, and support is having trouble finding them.

Thank you for the feedback!

I've been looking at rebalancing the combat encounters and am already looking at replacing the "Doom" track. It's actually quite controversial, as some people love it, others seem to think it's out of place too. As for the challenging combat, the compromise will likely be the implementation of a save feature, which I'm already working on.

I noted the support ship issue as well, it seems to be a problem with the Chiron only, which I'll hopefully get fixed with the next update.
« Last Edit: April 11, 2021, 04:12:57 am by Voelkel »

 

Offline spart_n

  • 26
  • I am the labeller of CringeTM and KinoTM
    • Steam
Re: [RELEASE] Reunion Open Beta
(this review was written by the time of the 1.1.4 open beta release)

i'll echo what everyone's so far has said on the presentation. superb, very nice, very cool. music choice is adequate enough, The Only One They Fear Is You was definitely unexpected but having an ear for metal it didnt really bother me. i wish it played in a different mission though. for a fourth campaign first publically released you nailed a lot of atmosphere

mission and, by consequence (and therefore spoiler'd), story designs:

Spoiler:
ill get what annoys me out of the way first; you have either misintepreted the purpose of the kayser as an endgame fighter shredder that delivers high damage per guns, enough to kill things short of a cruiser in a single burst, or you completely forgot and/or botched the balancing of your civilian ships. the claymore is beyond disappointing as the kayser upgrade when the only thing it inherited is the energy drain. it's essentially the subach due to high ROF but none of the early game advantages the subach comes with it. even then, the civilian fighters are unnecessarily tough, and strangely in use by the enemy GTVA faction? let me chew through civvies with my kayser upgrade or dont call it a kayser upgrade at all

now that that is out of the way, i actually liked the missions. ive always been an easy player on M+KB but ive started leaning to medium. i like the frantic dogfights and they're easy to get into a rhythm. i like that there's not set-in-stone mission failures i can get away with such as the radio station with the three transmitter things. they're difficult, but doable imo, with the only major danger being what's shooting at the player. we've already discussed what i'd appreciate in our discord DMs and im sure others would have a better opinion as to what needs balancing or changing.

characters and story writing/plot...yeah ill just say it, alpha wing is forgettable, except for dice, who has too much dialogue of him just being the loose cannon.
Spoiler:
I do like however the attempt at creating a cast, although they're just as forgettable and dull, but the attempt is there at giving them names and personalities. I also like that vasudans have a stronger presence than just passively sitting on their ass while the monkey terrans go off killing each other. very cool.

that's all i have to talk about reunion, really. i hope it doesnt fall into the trap of yet another freespace campaign being left unfinished, i think it was fun and worth returning to the community for, it's rough around the edges but it has soul into it. and good on you for not taking the inferno or blue planet route of an activated sol gate incident.

for what it's worth, this campaign has my (un)official stamp of KinoTM. congrats, first of 2021.

 

Offline Voelkel

  • 25
  • Reunion dev
Re: [RELEASE] Reunion Open Beta
(this review was written by the time of the 1.1.4 open beta release)

i'll echo what everyone's so far has said on the presentation. superb, very nice, very cool. music choice is adequate enough, The Only One They Fear Is You was definitely unexpected but having an ear for metal it didnt really bother me. i wish it played in a different mission though. for a fourth campaign first publically released you nailed a lot of atmosphere

mission and, by consequence (and therefore spoiler'd), story designs:

Spoiler:
ill get what annoys me out of the way first; you have either misintepreted the purpose of the kayser as an endgame fighter shredder that delivers high damage per guns, enough to kill things short of a cruiser in a single burst, or you completely forgot and/or botched the balancing of your civilian ships. the claymore is beyond disappointing as the kayser upgrade when the only thing it inherited is the energy drain. it's essentially the subach due to high ROF but none of the early game advantages the subach comes with it. even then, the civilian fighters are unnecessarily tough, and strangely in use by the enemy GTVA faction? let me chew through civvies with my kayser upgrade or dont call it a kayser upgrade at all

now that that is out of the way, i actually liked the missions. ive always been an easy player on M+KB but ive started leaning to medium. i like the frantic dogfights and they're easy to get into a rhythm. i like that there's not set-in-stone mission failures i can get away with such as the radio station with the three transmitter things. they're difficult, but doable imo, with the only major danger being what's shooting at the player. we've already discussed what i'd appreciate in our discord DMs and im sure others would have a better opinion as to what needs balancing or changing.

characters and story writing/plot...yeah ill just say it, alpha wing is forgettable, except for dice, who has too much dialogue of him just being the loose cannon.
Spoiler:
I do like however the attempt at creating a cast, although they're just as forgettable and dull, but the attempt is there at giving them names and personalities. I also like that vasudans have a stronger presence than just passively sitting on their ass while the monkey terrans go off killing each other. very cool.

that's all i have to talk about reunion, really. i hope it doesnt fall into the trap of yet another freespace campaign being left unfinished, i think it was fun and worth returning to the community for, it's rough around the edges but it has soul into it. and good on you for not taking the inferno or blue planet route of an activated sol gate incident.

for what it's worth, this campaign has my (un)official stamp of KinoTM. congrats, first of 2021.

Thank you for the feedback, glad to hear you enjoyed the campaign!

Looks like I'm going to have to buff the Claymore, been also thinking about introducing a civilian HL-7 variant in the next update.

Spoiler:
Also, civilian fighters are not in service by the rogue GTVA element, they're supposed to be two different factions fighting on the same side, bundled together for operations, but maybe I'll need to clarify that in the dialogue :)

Also fixed the "second lieutenant" mishap in the final mission, thanks for that too :)