Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The FRED Workshop => Topic started by: npsi on October 03, 2007, 04:54:02 pm
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I'm designing a mission... (not in fred... but in ye olde paper) and I was worried if it was a Battle of Endor mission...
There are 6 capital ships, 1 Science Cruiser, 1 Knossos, 8 wings of fighters and 4 wings of bombers
The capital ships are:
(Friendly)
1 Orion destroyer
1 Fenris/Leviathan Cruiser
1 deimos corvette
(Hostile)
1 Aelous Cruiser
1 Sobek corvette
1 Hatsephut (whatever) Destroyer
The wings are:
(Friendly) (main wings)
Virgo-Fighter
Gemini-Fighter
Cancer-Fighter
Scorpio-Bomber
(secondary wings) these will arrive when some of those are destroyed
Leo-Fighter (2 waves)
Aries-Fighter (2 waves)
libra-bomber (2 waves)
(Hostile)
Alpha-Fighter(2 waves)
Beta-Fighter(3 waves)
Gamma-Bomber(2 waves)
Delta-Fighter(3 waves)
Epsilon-Fighter(2 waves)
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So, is it a BOE mission or not?
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You should talk a bit about the way those ships are placed. The number of ships and spacecraft is acceptable but, as I said, the positions occupied by the ships are important.
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Each Capital ship attacks it similar class... I.e. the aelous attacks the fenris, then a few clicks away the sobek is engaging the deimos and finally, a few clicks more (or near the knossos) the hatsetphut (whatever) is engaging the orion
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That should be fine. I'd consider cutting down on the friendly fighters, but I don't know anything about mission balance, so I highly advise you not to trust me.
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Each Capital ship attacks it similar class... I.e. the aelous attacks the fenris, then a few clicks away the sobek is engaging the deimos and finally, a few clicks more (or near the knossos) the hatsetphut (whatever) is engaging the orion
See? The way the ships are placed changed everything. It's ok now :)
That should be fine. I'd consider cutting down on the friendly fighters, but I don't know anything about mission balance, so I highly advise you not to trust me.
I also suggest to adapt the loadout of most bombers. They can easily overkill warships. ;)
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thanks for your help guys.... :P
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It's Our JobTM :)
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It's Our JobTM :)
Well, strictly speaking I'm not licensed, but hey, no problem.
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That's what people do here, right? :)
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It's Our JobTM :)
Well, strictly speaking I'm not licensed, but hey, no problem.
Are any of us licensed? :p
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I'm licensed. :pimp:
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I'm designing a mission... (not in fred... but in ye olde paper) and I was worried if it was a Battle of Endor mission...
Building a BoE is not in and of itself a cause for concern. Doing it badly on the other hand...
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Yep. The problem with BoE missions is that they're often not that much fun to play because the designer has spent so much time working on the capship combat that the fighter stuff is simply a case of fighting never-ending waves of fighters coming from the capships.
Sure watching an entire fleet do battle looks great but in a good mission you should never have time to appreciate that as you should be too busy actually playing the game. :)
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The trick is to make players action have effect on the outcome.
Like if he fails to disarm a enemy capital ship in time, the friendly one buys it. Or if he fails to stop the bombers.
Or he may be tasked with disabling a enemy ship so it can't turn and bring it's gun to bear. Or destryoing it's communication systems to prevent reinforcments.
Or having to hunt down a few transports trough the middle of a battlezone and prevent them from landing on the enmy destroyer.
things liek that.
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Sure watching an entire fleet do battle looks great but in a good mission you should never have time to appreciate that as you should be too busy actually playing the game. :)
but exactly as karajorma said: it can also be a lot of fun to watch them and dogfight in the crossfire.
To do big battles AND make them fun, just add specific triggers in, like the ones topgun described !
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It's one hell of a challenge, trying to make a large scale battle without making it a BoE. The best advice I can give is always have the player persuing some objective that isn't "Destroy everything"
Trust me, I've spent a lot of time planning out a BoE mission. I do, after all, work on the Star Wars Conversion (Yes, there will be a Battle of Endor somewhere)
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Well, everything depends on capship weapons. Beams aren't fine for massive battles while normal turrets and railguns make the missions enjoyable.
Oh, did I say railguns? :confused:
One more thing...does the player always have to make the difference between victory and loss? Why wouldn't a BoE mission have a certain ending, no matter of what the player does?
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thanks for your advices, i'm planning to make it more enjoyable, rather than just shoot bombers and fighters... you'll see it soon...
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A BOE could, in fact have a fixed ending as to who wins. However, it'll be far more enjoyable if at least the player can affect HOW it comes to that ending.
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The trick is to make players action have effect on the outcome.
Like if he fails to disarm a enemy capital ship in time, the friendly one buys it. Or if he fails to stop the bombers.
Or he may be tasked with disabling a enemy ship so it can't turn and bring it's gun to bear. Or destryoing it's communication systems to prevent reinforcments.
Or having to hunt down a few transports trough the middle of a battlezone and prevent them from landing on the enmy destroyer.
things liek that.
Yeah, objectives are definitely fine to avoid stagnation, but beware of making the mission seem forced and arbitrary. For example, causing a friendly ship to self-destruct if you don't disarm the enemy capital ship in time would feel like making the player jump through hoops.
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During my little campaign over on GW I used the destruction of sentry turrets to directly control BGreen firings of a GTVA Hecate vs NTF Orion battle happening in the region. The Slash Greens were time delayed, as was the Orion's BGreen, while the Hecate would fire the BReen when X number of turrets when destroyed (in stages of 5 IIRC).
So the better the player performed the better the overall battle would go.
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thats cool *note*
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forgot to add I adjusted the weapons loadouts and beam-feeing so both destroyers had 2 Ter Slash and 1 BGreen each to play with.
If the destroyers are some distance away you can also add some Fighters "armed" with training weapons to make it look more dramatic (with blobs and fighter beams being thrown about).