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Story:
The year is 2366. The reconstruction era is about to come to an end and anti-vasudan sentiment is reaching its peak. Polaris is ready to erupt in revolution, but many systems and nodes away, a small team of pilots and cruisers handpicked by Admiral Aken Bosch himself are on a mission of great importance that could shift the tide of the coming war in favour of the rebellion.
Only two weeks away from the actual rebellion of Polaris starting, the team are not in hot water but they will soon be neck deep in enemy territory, watched at every angle by an enemy who is just as familiar with war as they are.
Missions: 18 including RAs
Download Link:
http://download620.mediafire.com/57j4s8po9xeg/4y1xubdbk8m54lt/greattincanrun.rar
This is the first campaign i've ever made so i'm willing to believe there are a lot of fredding mistakes that i overlooked. Constructive criticism is welcome and please keep it at that.
Note:
For anyone suffering from lag due to an unbearable amount of objects, feel free to remove the mod.ini, but be prepared to look at the vast emptiness of space; from personal experience, there will be no backgrounds without mediavps.
Also if anyone spots the same file on freespacemods.net then do not waste your time with that. That file was uploaded while the site was suffering problems and the download link will lead to nowhere.
The command briefing animations may feature a high-texture GTVA logo. It may be caused by mjn.mixael's fs2 command briefing anims which for some reason overwrite some files when used. to view it properly for the moment, remove the CB_ANI_VP from mediavps. Otherwise, it will look out of place.
revised version includes:
--reworked escort missions to save your time
--topace's bugfixes
--new landing SEXPS
--minor grammar corrections
--lots of brand new nameplates
--NTF interface by galemp and flaming_sword used in crossing the styx (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=64271.0) by FSF
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Hello there, congrats for releasing your first campaign.
BTW, there seems to be a little overlook in the first mission. You have to scan the comms of the Shipyards, but unfortunately I can't scan it. Instead I scanned the "new" stuff. A message occurs but as long as I can't scan the comms I can't proceed with the mission.
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You have to give some kind of cargo to the station's comms in order to make it scannable.
I'm at mission 4 now. I'll post some compliments and nitpicks once I'm finished.
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I too, can't proceed past the first mission because I can't scan the comm system of the station.
Also, the models that show up in the briefing when you click on the briefing icons don't quite seem correct.
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Yes, mission 1 is bugged.
Here's a quick-and-dirty fix. See fix below.
Let's give some compliments before the criticism starts.
The mission backgrounds (with the exception of mission 1) are quite good. It doesn't look as if they were made of multiple separate bitmaps, which is the impression nebula backgrounds must receive. So you deserve a thumb up here :yes:
Difficulty is on the easy side, which is a big plus in my book. As a consequence, all available ships and weapons are usable in the missions.
There are some cool moments in the campaign, most notably
Escorting the train of Aeolus cruisers in mission 7
.
As for the negative side, I'd just mention some of my personal nitpicks. The others will certainly make most of the more general points I would, so there's no need for repetition, is there?
My biggest complaint so far is mission length. The first 6 missions were okay in this regard, but missions 7-8-9 are well above the recommended 10-minute optimum. In mission 7, I turned on invulnerability when in the 15th minute
The Hecate arrived from behind with lots of fighters.
My other nitpick is spelling. Most specifically, the use of commas. Please, please, if you include the name of who you're addressing, use the comma before, and if the sentence continues, after it. So like this:
"Return to base, everyone." Where "everyone" is addressed to return to base.
or
"See in the afterlife, traitor" instead of "after life traitor." I kept wondering who the "after life traitor" is until I realized what it's about.
[EDIT]What am I supposed to do in mission 12?
Judging from the debrief, the NTC Vasily is meant to be lost. However, the campaign only lets me proceed if the Vasily reaches its waypoints, which just won't happen. I'm gonna assume the campaign file is bogus, so I'll edit the mission to make campaign progress possible.
Finished it. Unfortunately, there were a couple show-breaking bugs that required some fixing in FRED. I quickly fixed these dead ends. Get the files here (http://www.mediafire.com/?oyg0h40x6s32urh). This includes the fix for mission 1.
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Hello there, congrats for releasing your first campaign.
BTW, there seems to be a little overlook in the first mission. You have to scan the comms of the Shipyards, but unfortunately I can't scan it. Instead I scanned the "new" stuff. A message occurs but as long as I can't scan the comms I can't proceed with the mission.
i definitely overlooked that and i'm well aware that all the other scannables in the campaign are missing cargo.
Yes, mission 1 is bugged. Here's a quick-and-dirty fix. See fix below.
Let's give some compliments before the criticism starts.
The mission backgrounds (with the exception of mission 1) are quite good. It doesn't look as if they were made of multiple separate bitmaps, which is the impression nebula backgrounds must receive. So you deserve a thumb up here :yes:
Difficulty is on the easy side, which is a big plus in my book. As a consequence, all available ships and weapons are usable in the missions.
There are some cool moments in the campaign, most notably
Escorting the train of Aeolus cruisers in mission 7
.
As for the negative side, I'd just mention some of my personal nitpicks. The others will certainly make most of the more general points I would, so there's no need for repetition, is there?
My biggest complaint so far is mission length. The first 6 missions were okay in this regard, but missions 7-8-9 are well above the recommended 10-minute optimum. In mission 7, I turned on invulnerability when in the 15th minute
The Hecate arrived from behind with lots of fighters.
My other nitpick is spelling. Most specifically, the use of commas. Please, please, if you include the name of who you're addressing, use the comma before, and if the sentence continues, after it. So like this:
"Return to base, everyone." Where "everyone" is addressed to return to base.
or
"See in the afterlife, traitor" instead of "after life traitor." I kept wondering who the "after life traitor" is until I realized what it's about.
[EDIT]What am I supposed to do in mission 12?
Judging from the debrief, the NTC Vasily is meant to be lost. However, the campaign only lets me proceed if the Vasily reaches its waypoints, which just won't happen. I'm gonna assume the campaign file is bogus, so I'll edit the mission to make campaign progress possible.
Finished it. Unfortunately, there were a couple show-breaking bugs that required some fixing in FRED. I quickly fixed these dead ends.
1. I don't deserve credit for those backgrounds. All of them were provided by someone else (whatsisname?) and places seen in the fs2 campaign were taken from the actual missions when i realized the backgrounds provided didn't match. I had to take liberties in the first mission because it's set in laramis which is completely fictional. It wasn't lightspeed who made those backgrounds because his nebulas are inconsistent with canon.
2. Also well aware of that since i playtested the missions themselves. Mission 7 is embarassingly long. As an experiment, i put the cruisers in rows of twos for mission 10 and onwards.
mission 9: you have full command of your cruisers. The option to order them to depart is entirely your own not just because they trust you, storywise, but really because i don't know how to get them to execute an action when they're damaged to a certain percent. Even if i knew how, Beams don't stop for anyone so they can end up dieing when they really need to leave.
3. English was never my best subject even as a first language.
4. There's suppose to be an escape pod that appears and your suppose to escort to the waypoint when the vasily is wrecked. This was a fredding nightmare for myself; originally, i wanted to get the pod to appear in the exact spot the vasily explodes. some things i tried was having it docked already but it looked ugly and was too vulnerable to the beams, and i tried making it spontaneously appear where i wanted it too and that was pointless because when using that SEXP, the new ship can't have any immediate orders. In the end, i chose to just make it warp in front of the cruiser without a warp effect.
5. mission 12 is just a story mission. Thought i'd make it a simple break since it followed right from another red alert mission.
Thanks for the file ace. All these tips are what i've been hoping for and i must say that you guys are the best. So tell me ace, what exactly did you do?
EDIT: It was difficult in my opinion because i kept dying when playtesting the missions so i don't understand how it can be so easy for everyone.
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For number 2, in the depart box:
"<"
--> Hits-left
--> <cuirser's name>
--> <percent hull you want it to leave at>
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For number 2, in the depart box:
"<"
--> Hits-left
--> <cuirser's name>
--> <percent hull you want it to leave at>
much thanks.
Now for my questions to everyone:
1. The campaign editor was the last thing it used. Has the campaign proceeded smoothly for everyone, as in are you passing because you at least completed primary objectives or just because (jumping out without RTB directive and pass anyways)?
2. Anyone feel the missions were too BoE style? I definitely had some guilt especially in the missions involving escort and mission 9 and 15.
3. does the dialogue feel empty or too long?
4. question feels kind of dumb. anyways, is it taboo to talk about the NTF within the 19-month gap before the main FS2 campaign? The only other mods i can think of within this time period is Crossing the Styx which took place far far away.
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I haven't played it yet, so I can't answer 1-3, but I can answer 4 simply enough.
No. It is not taboo. Anyone who tells you differently is wrong.
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I too, can't proceed past the first mission because I can't scan the comm system of the station.
Also, the models that show up in the briefing when you click on the briefing icons don't quite seem correct.
i didn't even know you could click icons.
The Hecate arrived from behind with lots of fighters.
what's so bad about the that? They're pretty far away to begin with and the one that can potentially KO you to fail is out of range.
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mission 9: you have full command of your cruisers. The option to order them to depart is entirely your own not just because they trust you, storywise, but really because i don't know how to get them to execute an action when they're damaged to a certain percent. Even if i knew how, Beams don't stop for anyone so they can end up dieing when they really need to leave.
Well, being able to order cruisers to depart yourself is unusual. It just occurred to me that maybe I could try the comm window before declaring the mission broke and take a look at it in FRED. I imagine that without a briefing line/mission message/developer note that brings attention to this way to winning the mission, it could be considered a bug.
4. There's suppose to be an escape pod that appears and your suppose to escort to the waypoint when the vasily is wrecked. This was a fredding nightmare for myself; originally, i wanted to get the pod to appear in the exact spot the vasily explodes. some things i tried was having it docked already but it looked ugly and was too vulnerable to the beams, and i tried making it spontaneously appear where i wanted it too and that was pointless because when using that SEXP, the new ship can't have any immediate orders. In the end, i chose to just make it warp in front of the cruiser without a warp effect.
Yes, I saw the escape pod, and it jumped out successfully. The problem is not with the escape pod, but rather the SEXP that handles it. The SEXP requires the Vasily to reach its waypoint, which its doesn't.
So tell me ace, what exactly did you do?
With the fixes? Fix the station's comm, the Vasily thing mentioned above, fixing the victory condition of the "Typhon attacks Arcadia" mission (I don't remember its number now), and fixing the friendly destroyer jump out conditions for the last mission.
The Hecate arrived from behind with lots of fighters.
what's so bad about the that? They're pretty far away to begin with and the one that can potentially KO you to fail is out of range.
In terms of FREDding? Nothing. It's psychology. I had my fair share of "Lose an extremely long mission in the last minute" moments in some other user-made campaigns, and I thought it would be the case here. Fortunately, it wasn't, but since I played the mission for the first time, I didn't know how much a threat it was to the convoy.
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mission 9: you have full command of your cruisers. The option to order them to depart is entirely your own not just because they trust you, storywise, but really because i don't know how to get them to execute an action when they're damaged to a certain percent. Even if i knew how, Beams don't stop for anyone so they can end up dieing when they really need to leave.
Well, being able to order cruisers to depart yourself is unusual. It just occurred to me that maybe I could try the comm window before declaring the mission broke and take a look at it in FRED. I imagine that without a briefing line/mission message/developer note that brings attention to this way to winning the mission, it could be considered a bug.
I've added some lines to the mission remind everyone about this liberty. However, i'm sure i wrote at least one briefing page dedicated to telling you about this
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I'm only a few missions in. The only annoyance I've spotted is spelling/grammar. One recurring problem within that realm is not differentiating between "your/you're" - "Your in a restricted area" for example.
Not to focus too much on a minor point, but wasn't there talk at some point of maybe having a place that authors could submit their missions or text tables to be corrected for common grammar and spelling mistakes? Anyway, back to the campaign. Looking forward to seeing where this leads! :)
Edit: I'm at the "Land of the Free" mission, and this mission seems a bit bugged -- I cannot engage the enemy cruiser's weapons, because as it's moving to intercept, it keeps snapping back and forth. Combined with the lag of the mission, this makes engaging it impossible, at least the way I want to. I'm gonna try to just spam rockets at it now! :D
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I'm only a few missions in. The only annoyance I've spotted is spelling/grammar. One recurring problem within that realm is not differentiating between "your/you're" - "Your in a restricted area" for example.
Not to focus too much on a minor point, but wasn't there talk at some point of maybe having a place that authors could submit their missions or text tables to be corrected for common grammar and spelling mistakes? Anyway, back to the campaign. Looking forward to seeing where this leads! :)
Edit: I'm at the "Land of the Free" mission, and this mission seems a bit bugged -- I cannot engage the enemy cruiser's weapons, because as it's moving to intercept, it keeps snapping back and forth. Combined with the lag of the mission, this makes engaging it impossible, at least the way I want to. I'm gonna try to just spam rockets at it now! :D
are you sure you named the right mission? the one you mentioned is a nice break from fighting.
its just an asteroid blasting mission. there aren't suppose to be any enemies.
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Ok, I donwloaded the original missions and the patch and something is still wrong.
On mission 2 timings are off, the enemy cruiser and fighters jump in right after the Faustus jumps, also the thing that is supposed to happen to the first wave of fighters doesn't.
Also, I cannot proceed cause (I guess you have a distance-sexp with the node) the jump out sexp is not working.
EDIT: cannot provide a real feedback right now, I'll do that after a playthrough.
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I might have gotten the mission names confused. Anyway, the one I was complaing about was the one where you
steal a load of Aeolus class cruisers from the GTVA scrapyard.
I've since completed the mission by turning difficulty to easy and flying a bomber loaded with only hornets.
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whoever reads this please, go back to the top and re-download the link. GTCR has been revised based on your assessments and includes some extra fixes by myself. new version includes topace's fixes and a fixed mission 2. there will be more fixes to come; in the mean time, please don't click the briefing icons.
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I'll be mirroring this on FSMods as soon as its reached something like a "final" release. Of course, that's only if it's okay with you yuezhi.
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I'll be mirroring this on FSMods as soon as its reached something like a "final" release. Of course, that's only if it's okay with you yuezhi.
feel free to do that anytime swantz. the only thing the new release could possibly need is grammar checking; most fredding and texturing is final. if the proofreading passes then it's final. There's not much point anyways since the long anticipated release of freespace 3 has totally ruined the chance of this campaign being successful.
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Thanks, will continue the playthrough later this week.
EDIT: Now I get a no-defriefing legend at the end of m2 and I cannot proceed further since it warns me that I lost the mission when the two cruisers were kept alive, that might be related to the campaign file more that to the mission itself.
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http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.778
Got around to mirroring it.
It is an SCP Campaign, right?
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thanks swantz.
I wouldn't call it an SCP campaign since it doesn't require anything non- :v-old:-made.
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It could use SCP sexps thought. Hard to remember which ones are retail and which ones aren't those days.
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Downloaded the campaign and played the first mission or so.
It was glaringly noticeable that you did not include a logo in your modpack. I went ahead and made one for you. If you want to use it, add/replace the contined files in your mod directory freespace2/greattincanrun and make another update.
http://www.mediafire.com/?owxp6t75e9gbeqn
This will add a logo to the launcher screen which allows your mod to stand out and avoids potential confusion.
I highly suggest you add some form of custom logo to the main highlight of this release thread. The one provided in here fits format requirements, but it is merely a suggestion.
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It was glaringly noticeable that you did not include a logo in your modpack. I went ahead and made one for you.
The logos i'd prefer all turn out pitch black. what i prefer are screenshots from the game, yet the tga is limited. I can't even picture a single cruiser.
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Seems like mission eight is bugged, can't depart for some reason after the cruisers and most of the fighters do.
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Seems like mission eight is bugged, can't depart for some reason after the cruisers and most of the fighters do.
sorry about that.
http://download1418.mediafire.com/had4wd5rvdsg/q88hyz92hszbkcv/08.fs2
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Ok. So, there are some things you definitely need to fix. Mission eight is now fine, since you just corrected that. Mission 9 is not bad already, and it has potential to be even better.
Only, the aeolus cruisers are isolated when they jump in, so it's dangerous to tell them to jump in too early because they get destroyed by the fighters and bombers that are launching from the destroyers. If instead you have their arrival set as near one of the leviathan cruisers, then they can benefit from each other's anti-fighter beams, and it's not as difficult to cover everyone.
In mission 10, You have Gamma 2 set to invulnerable instead of Gamma 1, and in the next mission he isn't invulnerable again.
Also in mission 10, if you give orders to the cruisers to attack any of the capital ships in particular, it'll cause that ship to move off its path and then get in the way of the other cruisers when it returns to follow its waypoints. I suggest you turn orders off for them.
In Mission 11, the mentu is going 35 m/s. The fenris is going 20. The leviathan is going 10. And they're going in a straight line. The first time I went through the mission, the leviathan attacked the mentu, but it didn't change course: all of the leviathan's attacks hit the fenris and it died. For some reason, the second time through, this didn't happen, otherwise I'd still be playing. What did happen, though, is that they were sandwiched together.
In Mission 12, This is more of a immersion issue, but I had no idea there was an escape pod, because there was no message that said there was an escape pod, neither did it show up on the escort list, and neither did it appear in the directives. Adding some kind of message that there is an escape pod would really help.
In mission 13, The entire mission is based on whether you can take down the beams. I failed the mission after I destroyed the Typhon because I had only taken out 1 beam, despite the station being safe. There is only one main beam per side of the ship, and it's pretty difficult to use them both because of this. Also, nothing else happened in the mission after the Typhon was destroyed. You should probably set the events so that they will react to either the beams being down OR the Typhon being destroyed.
Mission 13 was as far as I got. Good luck!
EDIT: Got through the rest. Missions 9, 14, 15, and 16 are probably my favorite of the campaign.
Mission 16 was a pretty well done large scale battle and I experienced no problems.
There doesn't seem to be anything further that I could point out, except for two things. Missions 17 and 18 are too hard. There are too many fighters. In mission 17, your team has 12 fighters and 10 bombers (with 6 bombers in reserve). At least 15 fighters are constantly attacking your wingmates after the three cruisers are destroyed, and your only hope of finishing the mission is taking down the turrets as quickly as possible after the cruisers are down. If you wait for the bombers, then your entire squad is destroyed before the destroyer goes down, and there is only a low chance of you surviving against 15-odd fighters with only a few invulnerable wingmates and a few AAA beams on your side. Add some delay between the wing respawns, and this should help to make it marginally easier.
Mission 18 was pretty good except that it seems like you must take down the beams of either the Typhon or Hatshepsut. Maybe I didn't play the mission right, but it feels like trying to fend off the figheters and bombers is a little bit unimportant in the face of 4 enemy beam cannons.
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In Mission 12, :
This is more of a immersion issue, but I had no idea there was an escape pod, because there was no message that said there was an escape pod, neither did it show up on the escort list, and neither did it appear in the directives. Adding some kind of message that there is an escape pod would really help.
The escape pod is suppose to have escort status. At the moment, i am considering a fred glitch.
In mission 13, Spoiler:
The entire mission is based on whether you can take down the beams. I failed the mission after I destroyed the Typhon because I had only taken out 1 beam, despite the station being safe. There is only one main beam per side of the ship, and it's pretty difficult to use them both because of this. Also, nothing else happened in the mission after the Typhon was destroyed. You should probably set the events so that they will react to either the beams being down OR the Typhon being destroyed.
problem solved. consider the directives a tactical thing. destroying the beams is suppose to send the destroyer running
for new fixes, please re-download the campaign.
http://download620.mediafire.com/57j4s8po9xeg/4y1xubdbk8m54lt/greattincanrun.rar
EDIT:glad you're enjoying the missions. I consider missions 9 and 15 the crown achievements.
for mission 17, i don't find a delay would make sense since you're attacking a destroyer directly.
in mission 18, don't feel bad about losing your ships. The only objective is to destroy the destroyers. Plus, there's cruisers standing by as reinforcements.
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The file has been updated on fsmods.
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does anyone find the whole story believable?
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I took it mostly as it was.
One thing that helped with believability was the loss of the cruiser. Things that hurt it were the lack of Carrier support, (it's ok, other campaigns do this, too.) and the fact that there were so many times where destroyers ... well ... got destroyed.
Beyond that I don't have much problem believing it.
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did you know the faustus has a ridiculously small fighterbay?
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I saw it once and wondered what it was, but never tried to do anything with it.