[Mito [PL]]

Hello, I have a mission design question and a bit of an exploration of good and bad game design practice at the same time.

Assume a following situation:

I create a mission that's a standoff between two forces, each a capship and some fighters. The enemy has an advantage in weapons, hitpoints, fighter numbers, they have bombers while you don't, they have reinforcements and you don't and your goal is to capture the other capship while they are perfectly fine with destroying yours. You are also on a rather tight time limit.

Then, let's say I douse the battlefield with heavy EMP, making it very random and difficult to achieve weapons lock.
Then, let's say I also enable scramble-messages, destroying some ingame dialogue and also prevent you from ordering your wingmen.
Then, let's say I also give half of friendly AI orders to stay back with your vessel, not assisting you with the capture.

Would that constitute for a mission that you would enjoy playing? At which point would it become annoying or irritating instead of challenging?

Edit: to make my point more clear - what if the mission is already cutting it close and meshes with overall difficulty of the rest of the campaign without all of those added hardships?

[Colonol Dekker]

As long as it's designed to be winnable with the right amount of effort, I think it's a fine idea.


Adds some replayability to get the missing message chunks too.

[0rph3u5]

I am voting NO.

Firstly because I find the FS2 EMP effect on the HUD very annoying. It is too much of multi-sensory assault. I encourage you to (re)play the "Doomtrains"-mission from Gehenna's Gate if you have the chance, it illustrates this point very well.

Secondly because there are better way to realize the effects of ECM for which a skillful can be learned, e.g. by inclusing force multipler ships into enemy formations which can be identified (e.g. by using a bomber-type ship as a tag along for a fighter formation).

Other designs might be to reduce the effectiveness of the radar by including false positive signals through invisible, non-collidiable objects.


As far as messages are concerned, I think there is a better solution that can be designed using nested events and variables than relying on the randomness of the engine-intrinsic system. E.g. you use a "jamming strength" variable and tie it to the state of the communications subsystem on enemy ships; then you create curated "jammed" version of the messages for certain jamming strengh value ranges, which have some information erased.
That way you can keep key words in the messages, so the information loss through enemy interference is controlled, e.g. at jamming level 0 you get the message "Intercept X wing because they are carrying heavy warheads" clear, but on a higher jamming level you only get "--------- X wing ------- ---- --- -------- heavy warheads". That way the critical information is preserved but you get the narrative effect.


As far as interference with wingmen is concerned, I personally would drop it entirely. AI wingmen in FSO are, even with upgrades, not always the most useful tool at your disposal. Their performance hinged on too many factors, especially in a complex combat situation.

[0rph3u5]

If you do not want to drop interferrwnce with wingmen commands however, I think there is a better design than just going random:

You could tie the option to command wings or pilots to their distance to player, i.e. you can command wingmen up to a certain "shouting range" . You can then scale that range using variables and mission conditionals, e.g. friendly capship communications subsystem health.

[Iain Baker]

If you do not want to drop interferrwnce with wingmen commands however, I think there is a better design than just going random:

You could tie the option to command wings or pilots to their distance to player, i.e. you can command wingmen up to a certain "shouting range" . You can then scale that range using variables and mission conditionals, e.g. friendly capship communications subsystem health.

Oooh. You must teach me these things master, your padswan is eager to learn 😁

[Iain Baker]

Re the posts original question: It’s a hard ‘NO’ from me.

In other hypothetical missions it might be ok - for example if it is the enemy that is doing it. But in that case I would have that enemy - or it’s subsystem that is causing it - be relatively fragile, so it can be taken out fairly easily - if you can get close enough to hit it. I would have said ship be heavily escorted because it would be a force multiplier.

[Mongoose]

The mission you're describing sounds like the absolute perfect storm of player rage, to be honest.

[Shivan Hunter]

^ this

EMP is far more often annoying than it is enjoyably difficult. Also, if you're "already cutting it close and meshes with overall difficulty of the rest of the campaign"... why add difficulty on top of that? Also that mission sounds like a bit of a cluster**** to begin with (depending on ship/weapon selection obviously). Some of us would definitely end up using the www.freespace2.co.uk strats