Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The FRED Workshop => FRED Academy => Topic started by: NGTM-1R on November 23, 2004, 12:24:12 am
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Here. (http://www.geocities.com/ngtm1r/camp3miss2.zip)
I added the Alexus to the escort list, and nerfed some of the hostile fighter wings a bit, as requested. I'm pondering on deleting the Loki wing altogether, if the nerfing doesn't reduce the difficulty quite far enough.
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I will try this out today.
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TEST results:
What I liked
- Difficulty seems to be okay, hard, but within the OK category.
- You successfully disable the player from giving orders to freighters and transports. Given the fact you consider yourself new to FREDing, this is an excellent achievement
- Generally, there do not seem to be much to comment, I encountered less factors to oar my nose into than I had been expecting
What needs improvement:
- I noticed a freighter not jumping out. It is because the cargo it was assigned to had been destroyed. Do not make a freighter jump in if its cargo had been destroyed and order it to leave if the cargo isestroyed and it had already jumped in.
- This is minor, but the briefing icon of Alpha wing says Alpha is flying Perseus, but they get the Erinyes
- You could give some nebula as background.
- Count with the possibility that the player decides to disable the Alexis(or whatever, the Leviathan) before disarming it. I did this(to prevent it from escaping) and I noticed that one of my wingmen reported the ship to have been disabled after I disarmed it. Then, a second after the pilot said the target was disarmed.
- Also relating to the Alexis being disabled: The Echelon jumps in after the ship is disabled. It means that it attempts a docking operation even though the weapons are still operational.
- The Echelon's cargo remains Nothing after the docking is finished. Is this intentional? If I were you, I would make its cargo to be: Computer data.
- Too long for my taste, I don't know how the others deem its length being too long or not.
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SECOND RUN
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- Hmmm ... the second time I played the mission, a lot of Erinyes fighters appeared and they almost destroyed the Echelon. It means; if they are supposed to arrive every time the mission is played, the difficulty is increased by an extreme extent. It makes it DAMNED hard. I played on Easy.
- I followed the way you suppose the mission to be completed; I did not destroy the engines before disarming. The Echelon arrived right after the disablement was done, which meant that the messages saying 'Target disabled' and 'Echelon arrived' overlapped.
NOTE: Don't be disappointed to see the number of things I would like improved. I usually note down more flaws.
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...how was the cargo destroyed? It has protect-ship and beam-protect-ship on it, and one of your objectives is "Recover NTF Cargo", so you shouldn't have been shooting at it. I have added the if-destroyed-do-not-arrive, but once they've arrived they announce they're going after the cargo, which ought to stop a player shooting at the cargo units.
Briefing Icon: Whoops. Fixing that now.
I can't make a decent-looking background to save my life, unfortunately. If somebody else wants to add one, they're welcome to do so.
I thought of that. I also disregarded it, because the Alexus makes no attempt to run. It's never even in motion, and most people rate getting it to stop shooting at them higher then disabling it if it's not moving. You would have to kill all 4 AAAf beams at minimum, anyways, to make a disabling run on the Alexus in relative safety. The current setup is also the order your wingmen will attack the subsystems and the order in which you're given the directives.
The Echelon's arrival conditions are "And: Is Disabled Delay (NTC Alexus), Is Disarmed Delay (NTC Alexus), Is Destroyed Delay (Pisces)" Why it would jump in when the Alexus has working weapons is, quite frankly, beyond me.
The cargo is intentional. Since the Alexus is not carrying anything, and the Echelon isn't carrying anything, the Echelon's cargo remains nothing. Just for the sake of completeness, though, I've since changed the Echelon's cargo to "Boarding Party".
The Eryines are standard, but they shouldn't pose a serious threat to the Echelon. One wing is after you, the other is after the Echelon but has a low target priority, and if you and your wingmen get close to them they ought to come after you instead. They also aren't as scary as they look: both wings are armed with only Harpoon#weak/Hornet#weak missiles, and one of them has only Prom-Rs for primary weapons. The other has UD-8 Kaysers, though.
Still, I've dropped them both to two waves, along with Pisces wing, the Myrmidons at the beginning of the mission.
I'll take a look at that messages thing...whoops. Added a ten-second delay to the conditions for the Echelon's arrival.
Also, since this is supposed to be an SOC squadron, I upped the AI class of your wingmen from Captain to Colonel.
Altered mission now available.
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Excellent. I was just about to test this but I decided to give HLP a quick look over before I did so :)
Originally posted by ngtm1r
...how was the cargo destroyed? It has protect-ship and beam-protect-ship on it, and one of your objectives is "Recover NTF Cargo", so you shouldn't have been shooting at it. I have added the if-destroyed-do-not-arrive, but once they've arrived they announce they're going after the cargo, which ought to stop a player shooting at the cargo units.
A word of warning. When writing a mission it pays to not make any assumptions about what the player will do. Write every mission with fallback positions in case the player is a complete idiot. Sooner or later someone will play the mission who hasn't read the mission brief properly and didn't read the in-game messages either (this is more forgivable since they can be easy to miss).
If you have something with a hostile IFF (I haven't tried the mission so I don't know if this is true for the cargo containers) it becomes doubly important to take this into account. Players have a habit of blasting away at anything red that appears during a mission and only checking to see if they should have done that when the mission falls over and they are left stranded waiting for the RTB message.
Originally posted by ngtm1r
I thought of that. I also disregarded it, because the Alexus makes no attempt to run. It's never even in motion, and most people rate getting it to stop shooting at them higher then disabling it if it's not moving. You would have to kill all 4 AAAf beams at minimum, anyways, to make a disabling run on the Alexus in relative safety.
See the above. Besides since TopAce uncovered this error it's obvious that he tried it the "wrong" way around. If one person will do it then it's likely that others will too. Remember that on Easy or Very Easy AAAf beams aren't quite the deterant they are on harder levels.
Originally posted by ngtm1r
The cargo is intentional. Since the Alexus is not carrying anything, and the Echelon isn't carrying anything, the Echelon's cargo remains nothing. Just for the sake of completeness, though, I've since changed the Echelon's cargo to "Boarding Party".
I'd agree with you there. Computer Data shouldn't appear on the HUD as it's not a scanable item. For an extra coolness factor you may want to exchange cargos so that the boarding party move onto the Leviathan and back off again :)
More comments once I've played the mission again :)
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I'm trying to figure out how to do the alternate "Disable then Disarm" without driving myself too insane right now.
The cargo shouldn't break the mission, since it's a secondary objective. It'll just look funny. But I'm fixing that too.
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In response how the cargo was destroyed: I ACCIDENTALLY destroyed one. If I remember correctly, two of my Harpoons hit the container accidentally while chasing a Loki. It was a plain coincidence that the cargo was in the way.
Testing new version.
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You might as well not...I just altered it again. Cargo-related and disabling/disarming weirdnesses corrected.
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I haven't played the mission yet. Re-downloading ...
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*BUMP*
Sooo...comments?
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*POKE, PROD*
If nobody say anything, I'm gonna assume this is done.
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I'll add you to the list of missions I'll play tomorrow.
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Okay. Played the mission. I got killed twice but the second time was probably more my stupid fault than the missions. Seems to be working. I'll have to try it on an easier level though and see what happens.
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For the help you gave me with JtEP, ngtm1r, I will test the mission myself again.
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It IS still too hard. Reduce the effeciency of the Myrmidons.
Also: The fighter is called Ares, not Aries.
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Whoops.
Myrmidons nerfed, got it. Slight weapon alteration, dropped the AI class back one level.
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*BUMP*
We done here?