Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The FRED Workshop => Topic started by: Goober5000 on September 23, 2005, 02:56:19 pm
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I've thought about this from time to time ever since I began playing Freespace, and I thought it was high time I posted it.
In my opinion, the entire idea of an AWOL debriefing, as currently applied, is fundamentally flawed. Now you may wonder why I say this, since it's number 1 on karajorma's list of common FRED mistakes and I'm an experienced FREDder who should know this. I believe it was a good idea initially that has since become a very bad idea by way of groupthink and simple laziness.
Consider it from a military point of view. If a friendly force is hopelessly outnumbered with no possibility of success, a retreat is the best tactical option. "Fight to the last man" may be dramatic, but it's not rational. It's in the best interest of the GTVA (or whoever) to preserve fighters and pilots, as it's far more economical to repair broken fighters than build new ones out of scratch. Similarly, it takes years to train pilots, and the GTVA has a vested interest in getting them back alive, particularly ones as skilled as Alpha 1.
Now consider it from a gaming point of view. If the player failed to respond appropriately to the mission situation or simply made a bad mistake, he might like hints on how to improve his performance the next time around. Many players will just hit the Escape key and restart the mission. But some players will jump out and head home, hoping for some hints in the debriefing. The problem is that if the player didn't flat-out fail the mission, he's greeted with the AWOL debriefing, which is nearly always no help at all. It gives a boilerplate speech which amounts to basically castigating the player for jumping out early. This is rather insulting to the player if he was fighting for his life the entire time and only barely managed to make it home in one piece.
Before I played Freespace, I played X-Wing and TIE Fighter. Those games had no AWOL debriefing. If you failed the mission, whether you died or made it back safely, you always had the option to ask for help, and the officers would suggest strategy for each part of the mission. This was a very user-friendly approach. It might give away spoilers for the part of the mission that the player hadn't encountered yet, but if the player has failed the mission 10 times he probably doesn't care about spoilers anyway.
So why was it used in Freespace? It started out in FS2 (notice that it wasn't used in FS1) as something that would be standard from mission to mission and make the game more polished and more professional. The problem was that people started using it as an excuse to do less work. I've played missions that have had two debriefing stages: one for all objectives accomplished, and one for AWOL. And since the AWOL stage is cut-and-paste from the main Freespace 2 campaign, it doesn't provide recommendations. Since FREDders are constantly reminded to account for every possible mission outcome in the debriefing, they use the provided AWOL debriefing as a solution that's already available, even though it's not a good solution. Take a look at the user-created FS1 missions and compare them with the user-created FS2 missions. The FS1 missions had varied, often imaginative ways of dealing with incomplete outcomes. But the FS2 missions all use the standard boilerplate.
In my opinion, the AWOL stage should be used only if the player departs without engaging anything. If the player has engaged, we should assume he's made a good faith effort to complete the mission and simply needs help. If the objective is to destroy an enemy warship, the mission is a success if the warship is destroyed and a failure if the warship escapes. But suppose the player is getting pounded by flak and has to return early. He should be greeted with a debriefing like this:The SD Wormwood offered significantly more resistance than we expected. We failed to destroy it and the Shivans continue to maintain control over this sector. Fortunately, we were able to recover most of our bombers, which means this operation was not a total loss. Once our reinforcements arrive, we will make a second attempt.
The Wormwood has a strong defensive screen of fighter beams and flak turrets, making bombing runs difficult. Using Trebuchets to take out turrets from long range will make your job much easier.
Now isn't that better?
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This an issue I also thought about a bit some years ago and what I usually do in my missions is to check the player's hull strength a few seconds after the jump key is pressed (for the last time) to determine whether a general failure debriefing or a custom AWOL debriefing is to be used. I can definitely see where you are coming from regarding the gameplay, since you only get the advice in the debriefing and not if you die.
Actually, it might be useful to add a feature where you can specify recommendations to be given on the death screen itself. I think this itself would solve the main problem here.
Of course, the enemy fighters almost always fight to the end even in totally hopeless (for them) situations, so Command will probably say that there is no reason you should not be a man and do the same. :D
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Seems fairly work-intensive for minimal gain. As you point out, most people play to destruction, either winning, losing or dying.
It's like how nobody ever plays the mission in Derelict where the Valhalla is ambushed by the Cthon and Azathoth, because they all made sure they completed the previous mission properly instead of failing it. The feature may never be seen because players either decide to save a few minutes and restart or are stubborn and keep on playing until they die.
Also: surely the advice can only be of so much use to FS players? If you've played the main campaign, you ought to *know* that taking out turrets, particularly beam turrets, and especially with long-range Trebuchets or at least a pair of Cyclops bombs, is the best way to neutralise a capital ship. The main Freespace 2 campaign is generally the first campaign to play for people new to FS2; user missions come after the player has completed and acquired skill in the game.
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I like where you're going, Goober; it would add a significant element of realism to missions. Real war does involve retreating to preserve one's assets (and life, for that matter), and no real commander would call a soldier a traitor for running from the battle after being shot in the arm (GTVA Command being the obvious exception :p). A creative campaign designer could actually work AWOL situations into their campaign. Say, for example, that you're part of a task force charged with taking out a Shivan cruiser wing, but you're all but torn to pieces and barely manage to escape. Instead of being forced to replay the mission, you can move on, but the cruisers you were trying to kill will make an appearance in the next mission or two. I'm sure that some of you creative people out there can think of far better examples than that, but you catch my drift.
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Originally posted by Blaise Russel
Also: surely the advice can only be of so much use to FS players? If you've played the main campaign, you ought to *know* that taking out turrets, particularly beam turrets, and especially with long-range Trebuchets or at least a pair of Cyclops bombs, is the best way to neutralise a capital ship. The main Freespace 2 campaign is generally the first campaign to play for people new to FS2; user missions come after the player has completed and acquired skill in the game.
Perhaps, but that doesn't necessarily mean they've gotten the tactical knowhow that comes with experience. As an example, the first campaign I played after the main FS2 campaign was Derelict. At the time I thought the campaign was incredibly difficult because I wasn't used to the FS2 tactics. I still hadn't realized the potential of the Maxim and Trebuchet, so when I played the mission where you capture the MTD Auriga, I had to disarm the Aeolus the hard way and got myself down to 30% hull in the process. Of course, the bulk of the mission takes place afterwards, so I hadn't really failed yet. I ended up having to cheat my way through the mission. When I played Derelict for the second time only a few months ago, I couldn't believe I had had such a hard time with it before.
And that was a simple example. The recommendations could also provide clues to more subtle things about the mission, such as which targets to prioritize if you keep getting swarmed by fighters.Originally posted by Mongoose
A creative campaign designer could actually work AWOL situations into their campaign.
True. That happened in FS1; in the capture the Dragon mission, for example, you can advance by simply calling in Delta wing and then leaving. You get penalized, though. ;)
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Originally posted by Goober5000
That happened in FS1; in the capture the Dragon mission, for example, you can advance by simply calling in Delta wing and then leaving.
WHAT?! I spent ages trying to complete that bloody mission, and all I had to do was call in Delta wing?!
Suppose it might have made me a better pilot...
On Topic:
Most players will fight to the death, it's a lot of work for something that will hardly ever be used.
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I really like Goober's idea here, but i also understand the arguments against it. Such a concept may sound uneeded, but could be very useful if the campaign it is used in is currectly structured. This idea could open up a completly new dimension in realisim and decision making (FACT: It was partly the ability to make game-changing decisions that made Wing Commander so famous!). Its certainly worthy of consideration.
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If for some reason the player chooses to jump before even engaging, you could give them the benefit of the doubt: "While the cause of Alpha 1's mysterious jump drive malfunction has not yet been found, it is imperative that we do not let this minor setback interfere with the present operation, so we have prepared a spare fighter to allow Alpha 1 to rejoin the mission immediately. Good luck pilot." :lol:
I agree, there should be checks run on mission status if the player bugs out early and more context-sensitve debriefs given, but it is entirely the responsibility of the FREDder to decide how far to take the process, typing out 15 A4-size pages of text to cover every single possible situation debrief AND add the set of checks to find the right debrief for the job could be pretty hard on a small mod team dealing with a 40-mission campaign... :shaking:
Being a newb, I'm not sure whether its already possible, or whether you'd have to beg the SCP team to try and add the feature, but it would be nice to make missions vary more by getting the success/failure of certain objectives to set flags in the pilot file which subsequent missions could check and the presence of certain flags could change the mission slightly. Fail to kill certain targets during a preemptive strike and they could turn up to reinforce the enemy fleet a mission or two later. You could even throw in some balancing to make sure the missions don't just get harder and harder for less experienced pilots - an earlier bungle could accidentally change the situation for the better later, or a pilot who methodically nails every hostile and grabs every bonus objective and medal may find their wing or even fleet compromised when the enemy gets annoyed/desperate and sends more and bigger fleet ships to counter, or takes a very special interest in Alpha 1 and lobs in the odd extra hunter-killer wing or reinforces anything they feel Alpha 1 may threaten because Alpha 1 is proving a much greater threat/force multiplier.
Then again, that option could make mission scripts unneccessarily messy and complex... :doubt:
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To the people saying that most players fight to the death, training messages can be used to get people acquainted with gameplay changes like this. For example, I used the support ships repair hull feature and put the cap at 60% in my campaign, so when the player's strength first fell bellow that amount, it displayed a note about this (and set a flag so it wouldn't keep showing every time). This could probably be done in a similar way; if the strength falls below a certain level, a training message could be displayed telling the player that it's possible to return home and get advice.
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I'm afraid I'm going to have to come down in favour of AWOL Debriefings I'm afraid. Yes they're a simplification but I find them more sensible than the alternatives you've mentioned here.
Originally posted by Goober5000
Consider it from a military point of view. If a friendly force is hopelessly outnumbered with no possibility of success, a retreat is the best tactical option. "Fight to the last man" may be dramatic, but it's not rational. It's in the best interest of the GTVA (or whoever) to preserve fighters and pilots, as it's far more economical to repair broken fighters than build new ones out of scratch. Similarly, it takes years to train pilots, and the GTVA has a vested interest in getting them back alive, particularly ones as skilled as Alpha 1.
I agree with all that but except for the mission Lions Den, Command has always been in contact with Alpha wing and is always fully aware of what the situation is. The decsion to withdraw would never belong to Alpha 1. We rarely face a mission where Alpha 1 is in fact in charge of the situation. The only time where it is up to Alpha Wing to decide to withdraw is in Lions Den and [V] took great pains to set up the mission so that the 15 minute recharge time for Alpha's engines were actually in charge instead of the player's whims.
So since from a military point of view Alpha must always wait for Command to issue him with orders (or at least an option) to retreat, the error is not with the AWOL debrief but in the mission itself for not offering the player the option to retreat if he wishes to.
However offering the player the option would hugely complicate mission logic and even as someone who likes to design very complicated missions I would baulk at the idea of having to write every single event and message in my missions with an eye to whether Alpha had been given the option to RTB or not.
Originally posted by Goober5000
Now consider it from a gaming point of view. If the player failed to respond appropriately to the mission situation or simply made a bad mistake, he might like hints on how to improve his performance the next time around.
I actually hate reccomendations far more than you hate AWOL Debriefings as they are now. I feel that many times they destroy the immersion of the game. Reccomendations should always be presented as suggestions for what the PC should have done. Quite often they are presented as what the player should do. If we're talking about reality in debriefings lets not have the admiral talking to the pilot as if he expects him to be able to leap into a time machine and rewrite history.
Getting back to the subject however I tend to feel that if the player needs the reccomendations at all then the mission isn't properly designed. All the information the player needs to solve the mission first time should be present in the mission briefings or in-game messages. If the player hasn't brought trebs a fellow pilot moaning about his stupidity in not loading up with them is far more immersive than a spooky red voice from beyond advising him that he should have brought them.
Reccomendations should exist solely to suggest ways that the player can improve his standing in the mission if he has already failed (or in some cases partially completed the mission), not as a way to leap out early and gain insights into how the mission works from a mysterious oracle who knows everything.
Originally posted by Goober5000
If you failed the mission, whether you died or made it back safely, you always had the option to ask for help, and the officers would suggest strategy for each part of the mission. This was a very user-friendly approach. It might give away spoilers for the part of the mission that the player hadn't encountered yet, but if the player has failed the mission 10 times he probably doesn't care about spoilers anyway.
But who's saying anything about the player having failed 10 times? The way you're suggesting would result in the player having the reccomendations available if the player shot one enemy fighter and then jumped out. You'd get a lot of players recieving spoilers about events that they hadn't seen yet.
On top of that many players use the option to jump out as a way to get back to the briefing screen to change weapon loadout. These players would now be subjected to actual information about the mission instead of the boilerplate AWOL message you're on about.
Originally posted by Goober5000
I've played missions that have had two debriefing stages: one for all objectives accomplished, and one for AWOL.
You can bet that I come down almost as hard on that as I do on no AWOL when I see it in FA missions. It's basically the same problem with a different spin on it. A lack of thought into other possible outcomes for the mission as you say.
Originally posted by Goober5000
Take a look at the user-created FS1 missions and compare them with the user-created FS2 missions. The FS1 missions had varied, often imaginative ways of dealing with incomplete outcomes. But the FS2 missions all use the standard boilerplate.
Mine don't. Last mission I wrote had 4 seperate AWOL debriefings depending on what had happened in the mission so far, all of which had reccomendations (I hate them but everyone else expects them so they're there).
I'd be surprised if other top 10 FREDders weren't doing something different to a single monolithic AWOL debrief.
Originally posted by Goober5000
In my opinion, the AWOL stage should be used only if the player departs without engaging anything. If the player has engaged, we should assume he's made a good faith effort to complete the mission and simply needs help.
And in my opinion if he needs the Debrief to help him the mission is poorly designed and we should concentrate our efforts on improvng that. The player shouldn't have to fail the mission to be warned that the enemy bombers are concentrating on a single warship. That warship should be screaming that fact out during the mission!
Originally posted by Mongoose
I like where you're going, Goober; it would add a significant element of realism to missions. Real war does involve retreating to preserve one's assets (and life, for that matter), and no real commander would call a soldier a traitor for running from the battle after being shot in the arm (GTVA Command being the obvious exception :p). A creative campaign designer could actually work AWOL situations into their campaign. Say, for example, that you're part of a task force charged with taking out a Shivan cruiser wing, but you're all but torn to pieces and barely manage to escape. Instead of being forced to replay the mission, you can move on, but the cruisers you were trying to kill will make an appearance in the next mission or two. I'm sure that some of you creative people out there can think of far better examples than that, but you catch my drift.
Thing is that what you're suggesting isn't actually very much to do with what Goober was on about. If the designer chooses to plan the mission with such occurances possible then the debriefings will also take that possibility into account.
Goober is talking about situations where the AWOL debriefing isn't triggered but the player still fails the mission and has to replay it.
Originally posted by Solitaire
Being a newb, I'm not sure whether its already possible, or whether you'd have to beg the SCP team to try and add the feature, but it would be nice to make missions vary more by getting the success/failure of certain objectives to set flags in the pilot file which subsequent missions could check and the presence of certain flags could change the mission slightly.
Read the section on persistent variables in my FAQ if you're a FREDder. It's possible but no campaign released so far has used it as far as I know.
In fact AFAIK only myself and IP Andews are actually using them (Although it's a fair bet that Goober is too since he coded them in the first place). :)
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And in my opinion if he needs the Debrief to help him the mission is poorly designed and we should concentrate our efforts on improvng that. The player shouldn't have to fail the mission to be warned that the enemy bombers are concentrating on a single warship. That warship should be screaming that fact out during the mission!
VERY good point actually! If Alpha 1 is supposed to follow orders like a happy little worker drone then the designer should (within reason) spell it out for them. I know that if I was captain of a destroyer getting kicked I'd tell the comms officer to tell Alpha Wing to get moving and remove the source of the threat pronto, its not exactly in the captain's best interest to fail to communicate the problem to whoever can fix it as its the captain who's liable to be sucking vacuum if Alpha botches it! :lol: Realistic missions need realistic ship/crew behavior, maybe a civilian ship would panic, MAYBE, but not the crew of a military capital ship!
In any case I think that the debriefs should be context-sensitive but still realistic and NOT a mission walkthrough... maybe an oblique pointer left in the Recommendations and even then mostly to let on that there is something more subtle that needs to be prioritised rather than the usual/obvious solution (which was probably done the first time anyway, resulting in the failure..)
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Excellent article, Goob. This should go in kara's FAQ once the Opinion section goes up. :yes:
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I usually make a lot of debrief stages for each event, but i never do the AWOL one.
Why? becosue it he player jumps out instantly he won't complete the objectives and the mission will be faield.
Granted, I do try to work in a few things you don't have to do - like destroying a specific ship (secondary objective) that will pop up later in some other mission if you don't tag him.. and I was even thinking of making a bit more complex mission tree with several possible endings, but I'll leave such consumng considerations for my later projects..Simplicity for now :D
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The way I see it, the recommendations are more useful for informing players of relevant gameplay changes made in modified tables (that the player probably didn't notice) rather than giving obvious suggestions.
In fact AFAIK only myself and IP Andews are actually using them (Although it's a fair bet that Goober is too since he coded them in the first place). :)
I actually used one of those in one situation, the thing I described earlier, but never found any use apart from that.
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Originally posted by nuclear1
Excellent article, Goob. This should go in kara's FAQ once the Opinion section goes up. :yes:
Not my opinion though so it won't :D
Not unless Goob can convince me I'm wrong at least :)
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I agree with Goober in that there are situations where you would want to go home early. Lucky shot took out sensors, hull at 4%, 5 wings just arrived. Command should have reinforcements ready incase I either die or need to retreat.
[size=-2]Speaking of which, why doesn't the good guys send replacement wings?[/size]
Or how about you leave 5 seconds before an RTB order came and then poof, you have to redo the mission?
Unfair? Yeah. Would that happen in real life? That's the problem. There's no human judgement to decide that here. You need to identify each and every possibility Alpha 1 can leave and what he has done, and if he should be allowed to leave.
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Originally posted by TrashMan
I usually make a lot of debrief stages for each event, but i never do the AWOL one.
Why? becosue it he player jumps out instantly he won't complete the objectives and the mission will be faield.
Obviously your mission design style is different from mine but if that works for you go ahead with it.
Personally I hate to see the player getting information on events he wasn't present to see and unless you're doing two versions of each debriefing stage dependant on whether or not the player was there to personally witness the events I can't see how you'd avoid doing that.
Now if you don't care about that then so be it but it's something I personally hate and I try my hardest to never let it occur in my missions.
Originally posted by Axem
[size=-2]Speaking of which, why doesn't the good guys send replacement wings?[/size]
Quite simply it's a gameplay consideration. The game would be no fun if numbers were equal. That's why even pirates outnumber the GTVA. :)
Originally posted by Axem
Or how about you leave 5 seconds before an RTB order came and then poof, you have to redo the mission?
Poor mission design again. Nothing to do with the AWOL debrief at all. The situation could just as easily be applied to the All Enemies Dead Event or whatever that confirms that all the enemy fighters have been destroyed allowing your primary goal to be complete.
If anything I'd say that AWOL debriefings prevent that sort of thing from happening more often. Thanks to them most of us wait until the RTB directive actually appears before we jump out. Without them we'd see that kind of cock up more often not less.
Originally posted by Axem
Unfair? Yeah. Would that happen in real life? That's the problem. There's no human judgement to decide that here. You need to identify each and every possibility Alpha 1 can leave and what he has done, and if he should be allowed to leave.
Problem with that is that you'd need an AI computer to evaluate them all or a really long list of possibilities.
What if the player was at 5% hull but had only one enemy bomber left and 4 wingmen?
What if it was only 1?
What if the Shivan fighter was better than that 1 wingman.
What if there were 2 wingmen?
What if the ship the player was escorting could handle the enemy remaining?
It would get ridiculous very quickly if you needed to do all that for every mission.
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Hmm, everyone seems to be making good points here. But things are never clear cut. It all depends on the context of a mission. If you're launching an attack and you retreat when almost killed, I doubt an AWOL debrief is called for. On the other hand, if you're defending ships, especially capital ships, and you fled, then an AWOL debrief would be appropriate.
As for recomendations? In most user made missions, it's hard to deal with 3 wings of bombers and fighters AND constantly check for messages coming in that you can't hear. :P It's hard to read messages while trying to pay attention to the battle and not die. Yes, you can always hit F4 and see the message list, but that's a moot point if you die or flee before you die. Keeping realism is important for a good mission, but it's still a video game after all.
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That's why it's important to include objectives. Nothing worse than sitting around not knowing what is expected of you.
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Yep. Objectives and directives can go a very long way to plugging the gaps Goober mentioned in his first post.
It's worth remembering that voice synth can go a long way to preventing you missing messages too.
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Originally posted by karajorma
Obviously your mission design style is different from mine but if that works for you go ahead with it.
Personally I hate to see the player getting information on events he wasn't present to see and unless you're doing two versions of each debriefing stage dependant on whether or not the player was there to personally witness the events I can't see how you'd avoid doing that.
Now if you don't care about that then so be it but it's something I personally hate and I try my hardest to never let it occur in my missions.
I never leave a player without an objective. That way he allways knows what to do and ih he jumps it won't be a AWOL debrief unless I specificly want it to.
As for hte information - the playr wasn't the only one involved and it stand to reason that the debfied that happens 10 minutes after you jumped sumarizes the whole battle, even if you werent' there for the end.
Quite simply it's a gameplay consideration. The game would be no fun if numbers were equal. That's why even pirates outnumber the GTVA. :)
Depends on how you do the missions actually.
If you set the enemies ot a rather high AI and give the player crappy weaponry 8or edit the tables so he can only carry a few misiles and must rely on primaries more), even a msall number of enemies can be a pain..especialy in the right fighter :D
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You know, to be fair, the fact that recommendations require a special button press and then show up in red pretty much yells "spoilers!" anyway. It's not really necessary, but I like them there to know if I've missed a bonus objective or something.
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Originally posted by karajorma
However offering the player the option would hugely complicate mission logic and even as someone who likes to design very complicated missions I would baulk at the idea of having to write every single event and message in my missions with an eye to whether Alpha had been given the option to RTB or not.
I very much doubt this; see my main argument below.I actually hate reccomendations [sic] far more than you hate AWOL Debriefings as they are now. I feel that many times they destroy the immersion of the game. Reccomendations [sic] should always be presented as suggestions for what the PC should have done. Quite often they are presented as what the player should do. If we're talking about reality in debriefings lets not have the admiral talking to the pilot as if he expects him to be able to leap into a time machine and rewrite history.
But recommendations are not part of the debriefing. In any given debriefing, the way I see it anyway, there are distinct voices: the debriefing officer and the mission designer. The debriefing officer speaks from the perspective of the game, tells you the consequences of your actions, and maybe tells you what you should have done. The recommendations come from the perspective of the mission designer, who is not limited by the constraints of the story and can tell the player whatever he wants. That's why the recommendations tell the player what he should do. That's also why the recommendations are hidden until you display them.Getting back to the subject however I tend to feel that if the player needs the reccomendations [sic] at all then the mission isn't properly designed. All the information the player needs to solve the mission first time should be present in the mission briefings or in-game messages.
I agree as far as that goes; but some players may need them anyhow, and if that's the case they should be there. You seem to forget that the recommendations are hidden until you click on them. ;) (EDIT: And see also BW's post below.)
The player never need see a single recommendation in the entire campaign, if that's what he wants. Likewise, if he wants to spoil the mission by making a halfhearted attempt at engaging (rather than a good-faith attempt) that's his problem, not ours. The player expects us to provide him with a mission that is appropriate for his skill level, whether it's basic or expert. In return, we expect that the player will not abuse the recommendations system.
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Removing the AWOL debriefing is not the big production that everyone seems to be making it out to be. Just imagine the rest of the mission continues on as if the player were no longer present. Most mission debriefings are divided up such that each debriefing stage corresponds to a major mission event. All you have to do is print success debriefings up until the point where the player jumped out, and failure debriefings afterwards. In most cases this is no different from a player flat-out failing the mission at that particular point and being told to RTB legitimately.
Look at Awakenings for a prime example of this, in particular the mission where you have to ensure that supplies and personnel are transferred to the GTD Iowa. All of its debriefing stages simply checked for whether a mission objective was successful or not. Failure merited the same consequences as incompleteness, since presumably the mission debriefing wouldn't occur until mission objectives were resolved anyhow. The lack of an AWOL stage probably made the debriefing less complicated, since the mission designer didn't have to worry about preventing a stage from being displayed if the player was AWOL.
There's no need at all for complicated checks for whether a player's hull strength is below a certain percentage etc. Just assume that if the player jumped out early he had a good reason for doing so. Or alternatively, justify it on the basis that the GTVA (or whoever) will suffer the same consequences whether the player lost the mission or was just AWOL.
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Originally posted by karajorma
And in my opinion if he needs the Debrief to help him the mission is poorly designed and we should concentrate our efforts on improvng that. The player shouldn't have to fail the mission to be warned that the enemy bombers are concentrating on a single warship. That warship should be screaming that fact out during the mission!
I gotta disagree with you there Kara. While you're right that any ship being pummelled ought to be complaining about it in mission, I personally think that allowing the player to use the debrief to hone his strategies actually makes a better mission, if a somewhat less immersive one.
Consider escorting a convoy with a cruiser escort. Your first idea is to just go in, trying to kill all the bombers at random as they appear. But this doesn't work because you're tryiung to fly all over the play area defending every ship. Too many ships die, you go back to the debrief, read it and you get told to concentrate on the freighters.
So, you try again, concentrating on the freighters this time. You succeed in eliminating the first wave of bombers, then a second wave comes in. You concentrate on the freighters, but the cruiser gets wiped because it's taking on Sekhmets while the freighters are taking on Bakhas. Return to base, debrief suggests you defend the cruiser after the first wave.
Eventually, maybe after three tries, you figure out the ideal strategy and make it through the mission. It's a challenge, but not fiendishly complex, and it means that players skilled enough to to be able to prioritize threats properly can be rewarded by getting a through complex mission in one go (or they can pump up the difficulty level).
Admittedly, it's not a process applicable to all missions, but personally I don't think that simply disregarding the debrief as a relevant source of mission information is any better.
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Trashman is right - the player should *always* have an objective, and missions should hold to that right up to the final "depart" notifier from command. As long as the player still has something to do, giving him an AWOL for bugging out halfway through is no problem.
However, far, far too many missions will have the player finish the briefing objective (which can often be vague as hell, another problem) and then have the player wait for whatever the mission's surpise/plot twist is.
If the player has to hang around after destroying the cruiser mentioned in the briefing and destroy all remaining fighters, tell him that. If he has to patrol for a while until a new capital ship comes in afterwards, make sure to tell him that he needs to wait and shouldn't leave yet. And when it finally is time to go, don't assume he's read your mind that the mission is now done with surprise objectives - instead, tell him that the mission is over, and it's time to depart.
ALWAYS give a depart objective when you want the player to ALT-J... the more inconsistent you make it, the more likely they'll get AWOL screens by leaving accidentally and prematurely.
With all of that in mind, I don't think elaborating on the AWOL message would be that important. For a more branching, dynamic campaign it might help, but since 99% of campagins are linear there's not much point.
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FS1 was actually really good (or bad, depending on how you look at it) about not explicitly telling you when to depart. FS2 did fall in to the poor mission design objectives-complete-but-depart-order-not-issued-yet trap a time or two, so going back and replaying FS1 left me waiting for the RTB objective on more than one occasion. But yes, more often than not it is not within Alpha 1's authority to leave the field of engagement most of the time.
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Originally posted by Goober5000
The player expects us to provide him with a mission that is appropriate for his skill level, whether it's basic or expert. In return, we expect that the player will not abuse the recommendations system.
If you were making a mission where Delta wing turn traitor would you leave them all with player orders and trust the player not to abuse the system and allow him to make them jump out before they turned bad?
Part of good mission design lies in fixing those security holes based on the assumption that the player WILL try to cheat. We all know that FS2 players are sneaky b******s :p
Originally posted by Goober5000
Removing the AWOL debriefing is not the big production that everyone seems to be making it out to be. Just imagine the rest of the mission continues on as if the player were no longer present.
Most mission debriefings are divided up such that each debriefing stage corresponds to a major mission event. All you have to do is print success debriefings up until the point where the player jumped out, and failure debriefings afterwards. In most cases this is no different from a player flat-out failing the mission at that particular point and being told to RTB legitimately.
I've got some really big problems with that approach though.
[LIST=1]
- I can no longer count on the fact that the player was even present for any of these events in the debriefing. So the language I have to use for the debriefing is further limited (and it was already somewhat limited by the need to stay consistant with other parts of the debriefing). I can't say that the player tried but failed to cover a ship. I can't say that the player needed to do a better job taking down enemy bombers. I can't do any of those things because it's not consistant with the fact that the player hadn't even been present for 10 minutes before that event occured.
Furthermore I have to change my failure debriefs to take into account the fact that the player may not have seen the events that caused them. I can't simply refer to a shivan cruiser that lept in halfway through the mission because of the danger of causing a big non sequitur. Now I have to be sure that my failure debriefings make sense even if the player never saw that ship.
The more senarios a debriefing has to cover the more vague it has to get. This means that it has less impact than it would otherwise. A FREDder like me would probably get sick of the whole thing and end up having to make twice as many failure debriefs based on whether the player was AWOL or not. So I would end up doing a lot more work under this system.
- My real annoyance however is that the player is now presented with events that occured after he left the mission. I mentioned this being something I hated above but I don't think you've got the significance.
Suppose I have a mission where the player has to defend a cruiser in the first half and then has to take down a corvette that turns rogue in the second half. Following your suggestion the player can leap out early and get help with the first half of the mission but the debriefing is going to blabber to him about how the corvette went rogue, completely spoiling the surprise. Hell if you've got voice synth turned on even alt-tabbing out won't stop it spoilering you. ;)
The rule I live by when I'm making AWOL debriefs is that the player should not have access to any events that occur after he jumps out unless they are a simple extrapolation of what was occuring at the time the player left.
If the player is sent on a boring patrol and leaps out before the enemy jumps in he'll get an AWOL debriefing complaining about how he's not supposed to wander off sightseeing. If the enemy has appeared he'll get shouted at for fleeing when hostiles were present without orders.
- Even if you avoid the above situations by extrapolating good outcomes when they're likely and hiding plot twists you can end up with a debrief where the player has apparently won the battle and yet is unable to continue the campaign.
After all if the player jumps out when there are just 3-4 Mara's attacking 3 Leviathans then you can be fairly sure the player has won. Of course 10 seconds later a Lilith was meant to jump in and wipe out half the fleet but seeing as how you're hiding this plot twist from the player the fleet won. So why can't I go to the next mission?
Basically I'm getting an invisible AWOL debrief. I'm not being allowed to proceed to the next mission because I jumped out before the mission was complete but now I don't even see the AWOL message even though I'm forced to replay the mission because of it.
- Sometimes there isn't even a failure debrief you could use. Lets say that you have a mission where the player has been fighting against a Demon class and once other objectives are taken care of and the player is only facing the demon and a few fighters the Colossus is meant to leap in and deal the death blow. What debrief do you use if the player jumps out then? There isn't a simple failure debrief for the player getting to the end of the mission and seeing the colossus blown up because the designer knew that after the Colossus arrived the mission would end successfully or the player would get killed by the enemy before the Demon was destroyed. So now what do you do?
An AWOL debrief is harsh but at least consistant. Without it though you're stuck. If the Colossus wins we're back to an invisble AWOL debrief or letting the player advance without having to fight however many wings of fighters were meant to come out of that Demon. If you want a failure you need to Deus Ex Machina up an enemy fleet to take down the colossus or force it to retreat. If this was a mission about hunting down a lone shivan destroyer it's pretty much obvious to the player that he was railroaded into playing the mission again.
- If we start saying that the player can jump out at 3% hull why can't his wingmen? Why can't capships? The PC might be valuable but he's nowhere near as valuable as a Hecate class destroyer to the GTVA. Why would they have that fight to the death but let the player escape? Either we say that everyone fights to the death silly though it may be or we start writing missions where no one does. Making a special exception for the PC just seems rather arbitrary to me.
AWOL debriefings exist to prevent a multitude of other problems I describe above creeping in. They're a little heavy handed admittedly but they prevent the player ending up with inconsistant or plain downright unbelievable debriefings like the one I described above. They're there because we have a computer deciding upon the outcome of the players actions rather than a human GM who can make allowances for what probably would have happened after the player jumped out.
It's not perfect but it's a lot easier than adding another possible way for a player to screw up your perfectly planned mission.
Originally posted by Black Wolf
I gotta disagree with you there Kara. While you're right that any ship being pummelled ought to be complaining about it in mission, I personally think that allowing the player to use the debrief to hone his strategies actually makes a better mission, if a somewhat less immersive one.
Consider escorting a convoy with a cruiser escort. Your first idea is to just go in, trying to kill all the bombers at random as they appear. But this doesn't work because you're tryiung to fly all over the play area defending every ship. Too many ships die, you go back to the debrief, read it and you get told to concentrate on the freighters.
So, you try again, concentrating on the freighters this time. You succeed in eliminating the first wave of bombers, then a second wave comes in. You concentrate on the freighters, but the cruiser gets wiped because it's taking on Sekhmets while the freighters are taking on Bakhas. Return to base, debrief suggests you defend the cruiser after the first wave.
Eventually, maybe after three tries, you figure out the ideal strategy and make it through the mission. It's a challenge, but not fiendishly complex, and it means that players skilled enough to to be able to prioritize threats properly can be rewarded by getting a through complex mission in one go (or they can pump up the difficulty level).
Admittedly, it's not a process applicable to all missions, but personally I don't think that simply disregarding the debrief as a relevant source of mission information is any better.
I'm not suggesting that recomendations are disregarded. Nor am I suggesting that every mission should be completable first time. My problem with them is that too many are little more than a walkthrough for the mission and are included because vital information wasn't included in the mission. Recomendations should just give you some hints on how to proceed. They shouldn't be used as a crutch because the designer couldn't be bothered to include extra messages detailing threats. In the example you gave a few messages detailing what types of enemy bombers were leaping in should be enough to give the player a clue.
Sehkmet bombers leaping in. Looks like they're heading for the cruiser
After hearing that a few times the player should realise that they are the larger threat. The recomendation shouldn't be telling you when to protect the cruiser. All it should say is that the Sehkmet's are more powerful bombers and it might be an idea if the player prioritized them.
It's a subtle difference between that and telling the player to protect the cruiser but it's an important one. Too many recommendations lead the player around by a ring in his nose trying to get the player to complete the mission exactly how the mission designer pictured it. Your recommendation is not only telling the player what he should be doing it but when he should be doing it too. Mine warns the player what the main danger in the mission is but lets him decide what to do about it.
The other use for recommendations is the one I hinted at earlier and StratComm stated more openly. To point the player at things he may have missed. If the player has completed the mission but lost several frieghters then it's more forgivable to give details on how to protect them better for next time.
Originally posted by TrashMan
As for hte information - the playr wasn't the only one involved and it stand to reason that the debfied that happens 10 minutes after you jumped sumarizes the whole battle, even if you werent' there for the end.
While that works in some cases I hope you can see from my example some reasons why it's not always a good idea. You could seriously screw up missions like FS2's The Great Hunt by letting the player know what's coming without them having seen it.
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Yes you can' - but that's not my problem.. If hte player want a sneak peak I don't care..he will spoil his own surprise.
I do however take care not to let him really exploit such things fully, by either taking away his control over ships that would turn rouge or allways supplying him with a fixed objective (even a simple one like "hold position") so he can never jump out before hte mission is realyl over unless he does it on purpose - there just isn't the "I though ti was over" thing by me.
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Same here. If the FREDder lets the player jump out mistakenly because they thought the mission was over then that's poor design on the part of the FREDder.
As for the player taking a sneak peek this whole discussion is about the fact that Goober thinks that missions should be written in a way that encourages players to take a sneak peek if they can't complete one part of the mission. The problem with that is that they could very easily spoiler part of the mission which they had no intention of spoilering.
If you're saying that any player who jumps out has automatically decided that they are spoilering the mission for themselves then you're going to discourage exactly the kind of behaviour that Goober is on about. I wouldn't leap out to get a hint on how to complete part 1 of a mission if I knew that it would automatically spoil the rest of the mission. I'd rather post here and get an answer that didn't spoil the rest of the mission.
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Originally posted by karajorma
As for the player taking a sneak peek this whole discussion is about the fact that Goober thinks that missions should be written in a way that encourages players to take a sneak peek if they can't complete one part of the mission.
No, no, no, that's not what I'm on about at all. All I'm saying is that the debriefing should be polite when you jump out, not annoy you with a boilerplate AWOL message.
I think you misinterpreted my post when I said that the mission should continue as normal until concluding. In most cases it should, and the debriefing should spell out the consequences. However in cases where there's a surprise in store, the debriefing obviously should not give it away. Perhaps the debriefing should be phrased as if the squadron leader hasn't heard about the surprise, or assumes what happens, or whatever. Probably the best thing to do would be to simply add conditions to not display the debriefing stages afterwards, like AWOL does typically. It would be more work, yes, but surprises of that magnitude don't happen very often.
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For example... in the mission where the first sathanas appears it could simply be somthing like
"Because of your choice to pull out of the area command decided to also withdraw the (name of sobek) due to the fact that it would be easy prey for shivan bombers.
While we failed to disrut the shivan gas colection operation, we do not know what effect the destruction of it would have on their fleet. The shivans have never shown signs of using or collecting resources before, and though we lost a chance to learn more about the shivans, this was not a major tactical loss"
See, nothing about the sathanas there, no boilerplate, i think i got what goob is saying.
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Originally posted by Goober5000
No, no, no, that's not what I'm on about at all. All I'm saying is that the debriefing should be polite when you jump out, not annoy you with a boilerplate AWOL message.
Originally posted by Goober5000
I think you misinterpreted my post when I said that the mission should continue as normal until concluding. In most cases it should, and the debriefing should spell out the consequences.
Okay I'm confused now. Firstly the top quote seems to be contradicting the second one. Are you suggesting we get rid of the AWOL debrief completely or are you simply suggesting that it's toned down?
Cause I can argue against both but I don't want to be misinterpreting anything.
Originally posted by FireCrack
For example... in the mission where the first sathanas appears it could simply be somthing like
"Because of your choice to pull out of the area command decided to also withdraw the (name of sobek) due to the fact that it would be easy prey for shivan bombers.
While we failed to disrut the shivan gas colection operation, we do not know what effect the destruction of it would have on their fleet. The shivans have never shown signs of using or collecting resources before, and though we lost a chance to learn more about the shivans, this was not a major tactical loss"
See, nothing about the sathanas there, no boilerplate, i think i got what goob is saying.
And what happens if the player decided to pull out when there was one gas miner left, 12 vasudans fighters, a mara and the Sobek? Seem's pretty bloody unlikely that the lack of Alpha 1's presence was the deciding factor unless you reveal the plot twist that the Sathanas was about to appear?
Suppose we're dealing with the same mission but now the the Sathanas doesn't appear. What then? How do you explain that the mission failed? Or are you going to allow the player to progress if the objectives were mostly achieved?
The boilerplate isn't pretty but it is consistant. Player leaves before RTB = mission fail. No excuses.
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Then you can use the boilerplate.
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Problem is that now you've got an inconsistancy. The player gets court marshalled and shot when the mission is an apparent success but he happened to jump out early yet in cases where the mission is an obvious failure he simply gets told how his actions caused the mission to fail.
Second problem is we're back to needing a horribly complex formula to determine what constitutes an obviously failed mission and what constitutes one where you need boilerplate.
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Originally posted by karajorma
Okay I'm confused now. Firstly the top quote seems to be contradicting the second one. Are you suggesting we get rid of the AWOL debrief completely or are you simply suggesting that it's toned down?
Cause I can argue against both but I don't want to be misinterpreting anything.
Erm... I don't get where the contradiction is, so I'll elaborate:
First quote: If you jump out before engaging at all, boilerplate is okay. Otherwise, it should present you with a debriefing appropriate to your situation. "Polite" means that it gives a debriefing appropriate to the mission as opposed to one that contains no information about the mission.
Second quote: The debriefing should be presented from the perspective of the player's current point in the mission. Extrapolate from that point toward the end of the mission, assuming that the squadron leader hasn't heard about the surprise yet.
You raise a substantial number of good points. :p But I think my point is still valid, because the situations you raise are more complex and therefore raise more complex solutions. In the Sathanas mission, if the player RTBs without ensuring the destruction of the gas miners, just say that he failed to ensure the operation completed successfully. If the miners are destroyed, just say that he failed to ensure the protection of the Sobek. In effect it's an AWOL penalty without an AWOL boilerplate message. You don't need to allow the player to automatically advance if you don't want to.
But those missions are the exception rather than the rule. In most cases the end of the mission can be predicted from the beginning of the mission - whether it succeeds or fails - even if there are some surprises along the way, like an additional cruiser. Only a really drastic surprise like the arrival of the Sathanas requires careful treatment.
I guess my core concern in posting this thread is that the AWOL debriefing has nothing to do with the actual mission. If you find a situation where you need to use an AWOL debriefing, then make it appropriate to the mission. If that requires more than one custom AWOL stage because of a complex mission, then so be it. But don't just copy & paste.
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Originally posted by Goober5000
Erm... I don't get where the contradiction is, so I'll elaborate:
Problem for me was that you started off saying that you felt that the military wouldn't castigate a pilot for jumping out to save his life which suggests that you want to get rid of the AWOL debrief completely. If we're simply talking about refining the AWOL debrief then that's a different matter. I think I've got where you're coming from now.
Originally posted by Goober5000
You raise a substantial number of good points. :p But I think my point is still valid, because the situations you raise are more complex and therefore raise more complex solutions. In the Sathanas mission, if the player RTBs without ensuring the destruction of the gas miners, just say that he failed to ensure the operation completed successfully. If the miners are destroyed, just say that he failed to ensure the protection of the Sobek. In effect it's an AWOL penalty without an AWOL boilerplate message. You don't need to allow the player to automatically advance if you don't want to.
Again we come down to a question of FREDding style. I used to GM an AD&D game and one of the major lessons that is taught in articles on the subject of how to be a good GM is that you must never railroad the players.
The standard AWOL excuse that jumping out before the end of the mission means that you have broken the rules and must be punished is very harsh I agree but as I keep stating it's consistant and therefore can be accepted as one of the rules that the GTVA military works by.
Simply saying that cause you jumped out the mission failed and not giving a reason however isn't consistant. It's far to easy for the player to ask why. Furthermore after the player successfully completes the mission he'll know for certain that he was railroaded, that the briefing said that the mission had failed when in truth there was no reason why the forces present couldn't have won.
Originally posted by Goober5000
I guess my core concern in posting this thread is that the AWOL debriefing has nothing to do with the actual mission. If you find a situation where you need to use an AWOL debriefing, then make it appropriate to the mission. If that requires more than one custom AWOL stage because of a complex mission, then so be it. But don't just copy & paste.
I agree wholeheartedly with that. I hate the idea of a single monoliothic AWOL debrief being used in my missions. If you notice I mentioned that early on. I'm not pushing for boilerplate and I never have been.
My objection is to the reason why you want to say the player failed the mission. You're making it so that the player can be seen to have failed the mission even when the player knows he didn't. I don't like that.
The way I get around it is to have several AWOL Debriefs. Each one complains at you for leaving without authorisation and gives details of the mission depending on the point at which the player jumped out.
The main difference here is that it's the very fact that you went AWOL that is being held against you not that the mission failed.
This way the player knows the score. Leaving the mission early = automatic failure of the mission even if you've met the mission objectives and your wingmen could have met the rest without you. It's harsh but fair and to my mind more internally consistant.
Thing is you say that the examples I mention are rare but I don't think they are. I can find a point in almost every single [V] fs2 mission where I could jump out and say "My wingmen could have finished off the ships that were left" For instance on almost any strike mission I could clean up the fighter escort and leave a disabled enemy ship behind to be pummelled by the remaining bombers.
Now I know that there were no more enemy ships coming so if I get up a message saying that the mission failed I know I'm being railroaded.
In fact the only mission I can think of off the top of my head where I couldn't complain about being railroaded is "Monster in the Mist" since the player and the player alone is responsible for the completion of all objectives there's no point where you can say "But joe in Alpha 2 could have done it!"
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There's AWOL briefings? O.o
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It's the name given to any unauthorised jump in a mission cause basically you've gone absent from the mission area without leave.
I suppose cowardice debrief might be more accurate cause it's basically a case of you running from the enemy cause you're about to get killed but Goober would be complaining even more if we called it that :D
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I've never seen one of those. I never jump out the goals are completed, I get a failure message or I get killed.
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Originally posted by karajorma
Problem for me was that you started off saying that you felt that the military wouldn't castigate a pilot for jumping out to save his life which suggests that you want to get rid of the AWOL debrief completely. If we're simply talking about refining the AWOL debrief then that's a different matter. I think I've got where you're coming from now.
Well that was my original intent. My core concern was relying too much on the boilerplate, yes, but a secondary concern was that jumping out early to save your skin should be tacitly accepted, not punished. So I was sort of coming from both directions simultaneously, but the secondary concern is a lot harder to satisfy.
The problem, I suppose, is that FS2 isn't dynamic enough to allow that sort of decision on the part of the player. In a real-life military situation such as in FS2, jumping out when your hull is at 5% should be allowed. But since FS2 is a story told for the benefit of the player, the player has to jump through a certain number of hoops in order to experience it properly.Simply saying that cause you jumped out the mission failed and not giving a reason however isn't consistant. It's far to [sic] easy for the player to ask why. Furthermore after the player successfully completes the mission he'll know for certain that he was railroaded, that the briefing said that the mission had failed when in truth there was no reason why the forces present couldn't have won.
I wonder how many missions you could allow that in. In other words invisibly authorize an early departure as soon as it becomes clear the GTVA is winning, and then visibly authorize it later on. You'd get yelled at but still be allowed to continue.
Of course, that could pose a question in the FS universe of how Alpha 1 gets to bend the rules so often. :pThe main difference here is that it's the very fact that you went AWOL that is being held against you not that the mission failed. This way the player knows the score. Leaving the mission early = automatic failure of the mission even if you've met the mission objectives and your wingmen could have met the rest without you. It's harsh but fair and to my mind more internally consistant.
:sigh: Unfortunately that may have to be the case. Maybe my "no AWOL" request is better suited for a game where not everything depends on the player, such as Homeworld or something similar. :)
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Originally posted by mikhael
I've never seen one of those. I never jump out the goals are completed, I get a failure message or I get killed.
The only time I've ever seen one when playing normally is if I decide I want to hear the mission briefing again rather than just quickstarting the mission.
On the other hand when playtesting missions for people I deliberately go looking for them. If the mission designer hasn't considered what will happen if the player jumps out prematurely then in many cases the player can just jump out at the start of the mission and complete it. For instance in an escort mission the escort will still be alive so the player wins.
Originally posted by Goober5000
Well that was my original intent. My core concern was relying too much on the boilerplate, yes, but a secondary concern was that jumping out early to save your skin should be tacitly accepted, not punished. So I was sort of coming from both directions simultaneously, but the secondary concern is a lot harder to satisfy.
The problem, I suppose, is that FS2 isn't dynamic enough to allow that sort of decision on the part of the player. In a real-life military situation such as in FS2, jumping out when your hull is at 5% should be allowed. But since FS2 is a story told for the benefit of the player, the player has to jump through a certain number of hoops in order to experience it properly.
Yep. That's the real problem. To be honest I doubt many games could cope with the sort of situation FS2 deals with any better. Most similar games either simply regard the mission as failed in an equally static way or simply avoid the problem by not allowing the player to go AWOL in the first place. Personally I prefer the boilerplate to having [V] deal with the problem by saying that Command lock the jump drives of fighters until the mission is complete :D
Originally posted by Goober5000
I wonder how many missions you could allow that in. In other words invisibly authorize an early departure as soon as it becomes clear the GTVA is winning, and then visibly authorize it later on. You'd get yelled at but still be allowed to continue.
In most missions it would be tricky to decide if the player has done enough to progress because you need to decide if the remaining forces are strong enough. There could be a few situations where that could happen though.
On the flip side of the coin I do have a mission where the player is supposed to depart by docking with a carrier and recieves an AWOL debrief if he decides to jump out (Doesn't lose the player the mission but the CO does make some cutting remarks :D )
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Originally posted by karajorma
On the other hand when playtesting missions for people I deliberately go looking for them. If the mission designer hasn't considered what will happen if the player jumps out prematurely then in many cases the player can just jump out at the start of the mission and complete it. For instance in an escort mission the escort will still be alive so the player wins.
This can easily be fixed by checking if hte ships waypoints are done AND if the ship has departed. That way he will fail if he jumps out despite the fact that the ships are still laive.
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Of course it's easily fixed. I never said that it wasn't. You've obviously completely missed the point I was making. If you've put in the check that the waypoints are done then you've obviously considered the fact that the player might leap out before the mission is complete which is the whole point I was making :rolleyes:
However your solution is incomplete. If you leap out before the waypoints are done you get a No Debriefing for mission x message which is exactly the kind of poor planning I was on about in the first place.
You have to add the check AND put in a debriefing stage for if the check is failed.
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Without a specific debriefing it would show the normal misison faliure debrief - nothing wrong with that.
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And yet again you completely miss the point that this means that the mission designer has thought about what happens if the player leaves before the mission is complete.
As for there being nothing wrong with giving the standard debrief have you not been reading the thread? I've posted several thousand words detailing all kinds of things that can go horribly wrong if you simply do that.
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Just write the appropriate debrief that takes care of everything.. like so:
"You orders were to escort the convoy pilot! And that means following it to it's destination and guardin it from any harm - and you failed to complete your mission!"
See - this doesn't specificly say the convoy was destroyed - only that you failed the escort - which you did if you go away before you are finished.
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That's a standard AWOL debrief!
All you've done is changed the wording. You give no information on the mission and you don't play any of the other debriefing sections. What's new in that?
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The difference?
It can be used for both a standdard AWOL and miison faliure - thus a single debrfied stage for 2 things. Less work.
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You'd use that one liner as a failed debrief? :ick: Even if you expanded it to make it longer it says absolutely nothing about why the mission failed (not even if the ship you were escorting was destroyed or not!). A good failure debrief should be more than "You failed, try again" It should go into depth on why you failed, which ships were destroyed, what you could have done better.
From what you're saying above it appears that you're sacrificing well thought out, high quality debriefs in order to save yourself from the effort of making a couple more debriefing stages.
I find it ironic that Goober started this thread because he felt that people were producing inferior briefings in a desire to save themselves work and the only person still arguing with me about anything similar to the idea is producing briefings inferior to even the standard FS2 AWOL and failure messages as a result.
Oh and check you PMs while you're at it.
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You misunderstood - that line would be the first in the full true mission faliur debrief (in that case there are more stages that go furhter into details), but in case of an AWOL, only this shows.
thus you have one debrief stage less, but you still have practicly 2 different debriefs for AWOL and normal mission faliure :D
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Don't see much point in doing it that way. All you've really done is make it so that your version of the AWOL debrief plays regardless of whether you fail or go AWOL from a mission.
Personally I would find that the vague language I'd have to use in the AWOL debrief would spoil the flow of the rest of the debrief but fair enough we're down to a difference in style rather than simple laziness or poor understanding of FRED so I can't complain at you for it :)