Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The FRED Workshop => Topic started by: Black Wolf on October 20, 2009, 02:54:25 pm

Title: Pet hates?
Post by: Black Wolf on October 20, 2009, 02:54:25 pm
Thought I'd start a thread that I'm hoping might develop into a sort of checklist for campaign designers especially, but also mission designers too. When you're playing a campaign, what are the things you find most annoying? Be it a gameplay issue, something that jolts you out of the storyline, breaks suspension of disbelief, whatever. Any little pet peeves that we, as mission and campaign designers, can look out for and correct or avoid.

In particular, i'm looking for things that can be fixed with relatively little effort, but might get overlooked. E.G., you might hate campaigns without voice acting, but that's a major job that requires (potentially) dozens of different people helping out and it's not always practical to get it for every campaign, so that's not neccesarily all that useful. I'm more looking at small things. My own personal ones are:

 - At a campaign level, I always hate it when Species.tbl is left alone. If I'm playing a campaign set 10 years after Capella, I shouldn't read about how the NTF rebellion started 18 months ago. I know most people rarely go into the intelligence section of the tech room, but it is annoying when you do wander in, hoping to find some cool backstory, and nothings been changed.

 - I also really dislike when you have a new fighter (your own or hostile) and it doesn't have its own shield icon. There's no HUD.tbl any more, and they're really simple to make, 5 minute job at most. But it looks so much better than the ones the game generates.

 - At a mission level, I hate it when you have long period of nothing to do. The battle where the Vishnans first arrive inmajor combat in Blue Planet is a good example of this -
Spoiler:
four or five minutes while they toast three Shivan destroyers and you just have to sit there waiting. While they're often vital to the storyline, events like this can often be sped up with some clever mission design.

So who else has one? Please don't be afraid to post - the more you tell us what you don't like, the less chance of these little niggles turning up in the future. I can't speak for every FREDder, of course, but me personally, I'm always keen to find out what people do and don't like so I can make better missions.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: TopAce on October 20, 2009, 03:22:12 pm
- Typos(!!) and misspelling FS ship names (Collossus, Diemos, Aqutane)
- No escort list or clear indication on what you have to do (such as the Blue Planet "Meet the Vishnans for the first time" mission or ST:R's "Can you guess you must jump out now before you get EMP'd?" mission)
- Giving Subachs and Prom Rs as the default loadout while the Kayser is available.
- Ships sending unimportant messages as "Command" after they have left/been destroyed.
- 15-minute-long missions that you will potentially lose in the 14th minute (a la ST:R "Escort the Faustus to the jump node that's being guarded by a Demon")
- Unpredictable things that make you lose the mission you are supposed to win, a la ST:R "Protect the Karnak" mission.
- (RTB) directives coming up as completed; mission goals completing on startup.
- Command saying "All hostile have been neutralized" after the xth wave of a fighter wing is destroyed: How should they know which wave is the last? (Though I must admit I make this mistake myself sometimes).
- Use of Brief7 for regular missions. This is an apocalyptic theme. Don't use it for a regular convoy escort mission.
- Unnamed jump nodes
- Inconsequential use of capitals in directives/mission goals/mission titles/cargo, etc. Look at the mission goals of Paving the Way and you'll see what I mean. In FS1, you can see "Return To Base," "Return to Base," and "Return to base". FS2 is more or less consistent.
- Superficial treatment of the ship/weapon loadout, such as giving the player 5 Myrmidons while all the customizable ships are Myrmidons. In weapon loadout, it makes little sense to give me 500 Helios torpedoes and only 100 Tempests.
- Overpowered primary weapons that take down anything in a few salvos and drain little weapon energy.
- Overpowered ships, such as interceptors with 6 primary gun banks and the secondary capacity of a Hercules Mk I.
- Wingmen without orders or with a simple "Attack any ship" initial order for the whole duration of the mission.
- Getting a "No debriefing for mission: xxx" debriefing after the very first attempt. It's a clear indication of a poorly designed mission.
- No giving any cargo to transports/containers that are supposed to have some sort of cargo. A transport with "Cargo: Nothing" being sent in to capture an Orion is sort of weird.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Rodo on October 20, 2009, 04:31:12 pm
Because of the standart reached by the latest campaigns released I say the final product must be either very polished or original in desing/story.

Most annoying things:

-Fighting wing after wing of enemy fighters with nothing else happening between each wave, or at least between 2 or 3 waves. (a simple "YEAH!" from some of the wingmates at least!)
-Virtually no dialogue or complete lack of it.
-Extensive dialogue while in combat.
-No proper red alert usage (Personal taste, I would rather have my ship at 1% hull and completely out of ammo than a misteriously refitted ship in the second mission).
-Getting a campaign released without a master VP file ,it's own folder and mod.ini provided in the download file (kept me from playing a couple).
-No orders for wingmates (should have those on every step of the mission).
-No RTB directive.
-Annoyingly colorfull backgrounds.


hope it helps you.




Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Snail on October 20, 2009, 04:37:47 pm
All of the above except BW's last one -  I find periods of inactivity can be atmosphere building if done correctly, and TopAce's one about overpowered ships/weapons - Again, if balanced correctly.

Stuff I don't like:


edit - a few more

Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Nemesis6 on October 20, 2009, 07:45:14 pm
* Bad grammar. Not bad as in "I accidentally ended a sentence with a preposition" but rather mistakes caused by using your native language's grammar for whatever reason. It's bad, and it ruins immersion.

* Checking my loadout and seeing rock eyes. Why would I use those when I'm facing giant capital ships with light fighter cover?

* Hearing victory music after a decisive battle, waiting for RTB from command, and then finally jumping out only to be told that I just disgraced the GTVA by deserting the battle and having to play the mission again.

* Random bugs, like a cargo ship I'm tasked with defending finally boarding a station, and suddenly just exploding.

* Having lots of ships to protect. It's a welcome challenge, but I cannot protect a convoy that stretches over 10 kilometers when I'm out-gunned by an entire Shivan armada and all I have is my retarded squad mates.

* Bad dialogue - lol theres a shivan on your plaine lolololol u beleived it. If you can't do meaningful dialogue, just don't.

* The whole "instant mutiny, just add NTF" is indeed a little strange. Theoretically, though, communications could have been sabotaged before the mutiny, allowing a longer battle to take place before the IFF is changed.

* Boardings - How come they work so well? When a ship is boarded, wouldn't defenders pile up at the airlocks, especially when it's the NTF who would rather die fighting?
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: General Battuta on October 20, 2009, 07:49:55 pm
I think one of the assumptions with ship boarding is that your boarding team is a specialized unit of incredibly badass power-armored, exoskeleton-armed marines who are mostly facing comparatively lightly armed onboard security. There may not be enough of these elite boarder types to provide security aboard most ships, although you'd think destroyers would have at least a squad or two.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Scotty on October 20, 2009, 07:55:39 pm
- Zero combat dialogue for missions, other than the normal pilot reactions.  To mirror the above, PEOPLE ARE DYING. 
- Missions with zero plausibility.  Looking at you Derelict, with your ****tonnes of pirates.
- Supercap battles.  Just in general.  I want to play a fighter game, defending the Colossus by yourself is a no-go.
- Overused big ships.  "Oh, this destroyer just went down" should NOT be what is said when one of your ships goes down.
- Endless waves.  Come ON people, if you are extending the mission for the hell of it, at least try to vary the ships you will be blowing the hell out of.
- Zero mission dialogue, or bad use of it.  These guys are pilots, not your neighbor out for a stroll.  Maybe it's just me, but when I FRED something to come out near the player or a friendly ship, I have my pilots announce the distance, and, if triggered by a waypoint, bearing.  For example, if your fighters are patrolling waypoints, and a sentry gun activates just as you hit one, your friends should be giving a detailed report, not just "Hey, a sentry gun."
- Ditto the Command reading for dead ships in game.  If your ship dies, FRED it to not play, or have someone else say it.
- Zero wingmen build-up.  It doesn't have to be major, just a couple sentences describing who is DYING next to you each mission.
- Overused wingmen build-up.  They shouldn't be a God Mode Sue (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GodModeSue).  Basically, I try to create a family almost, and when more than a couple die in mission, I will actually change the debrief to reflect that.
- Bad Escort Missions (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EscortMission).  Why the hell is the cargo I'M[/i] always guarding attacked by entire flippin' FLIGHTS of fighters.  Here's a novel concept:  an escort mission that helps build atmosphere, with MAYBE a wing or two of ships, and a fairly short timeframe.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Mongoose on October 20, 2009, 09:03:16 pm
- Missions with zero plausibility.  Looking at you Derelict, with your ****tonnes of pirates.
Not to nitpick, but a lot of those weren't actually real pirates. :p

One or two of these have been mentioned to some extent, but here are a few of my own pet peeves:


That's all I can think of right now, but there are probably one or two other annoyances I'll come up with later. :p
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Droid803 on October 20, 2009, 09:07:22 pm
- Lack of Directives: Don't make me figure out what to do - I'll probably do the strangest thing (ie. immediately go after the largest enemy ship and disable/disarm it the proceed to slowly drain its health with my primaries).
- Long Missions: Anything over 10 minutes is too long. My arm gets tired my fingers start hurting, in addition to being a complete bore, and annoying PITA when you fail near the end.
- Long chatter before combat: A huge PITA when you die cause even if you time compress, you get a huge backlog of messages and you can't see the new ones, leading you to fail yet again...ugh. I'd prefer silence TBH.

Oh if shield icons are so easy, would you mind doing a few for me? :P I find them pretty time consuming with the stupid "all pcx's must have same pallete" rule for anis.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: NGTM-1R on October 20, 2009, 11:55:13 pm
Default loads on your own, friendly, and enemy ships.

STOP DOING THE DEFAULTS YOU CADS. IF THERE ARE BETTER WEAPONS AVAILABLE WE'RE GOING TO LOAD THEM OUT ON US AND OUR WINGMATES.

And default enemy loadouts are not always appropriate to the mission. I recall a particular transport escort where the defaults cause a wing of assault fighters to jump in and spam swarm missiles almost instantly at the 'sport. Mission fails.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: CP5670 on October 21, 2009, 01:54:52 am
A number of campaigns I have played in the past had stories that simply did not seem realistic and believable. Major story angles are not fleshed out and explained sufficiently well, people have odd, out-of-place dialogue and don't react to events in a plausible way, and there is no sense that anything is happening in the game universe outside of your own missions. These kinds of things are probably the most common issues I see, to varying degrees.

I don't like long strings of similar missions that are either filler or only exist to build up the story, especially if they have minimal combat. The missions in a campaign should all be memorable in some way. They don't all need to add important events to the story (in fact, if they all do, it will usually hurt plausibility), but they should be able to offer interesting gameplay and a unique tactical situation in some way. The main campaign does this pretty well.

Finally, I hate having the throttle pre-set at something above 0%, unless there is a very good reason for it. :p This affects many Volition missions and gets annoying if you discover it in the middle of a fight. You also have reset it every time you restart the mission.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Nuclear1 on October 21, 2009, 02:43:44 am
I agree wholeheartedly with everyone on the NTF InstaMutiny stuff.  I don't know how many campaigns I've played where all it takes is either A) a short little transmission from an NTF ship or, worse, B) just a few NTF ships to warp in to cause ships to defect.  The whole idea has just gotten old and stupid; unless you've built up the atmosphere and characters to the point where defection is believable.  BR did that well in one of the FoEP missions.

Also agree on the one person speaking for everyone on a ship of 5,000.  I'm guilty of it myself, but yet I think that has enhanced a lot of campaigns; Homesick, Sync, and Transcend wouldn't have worked IMO if you didn't see the Custodian, Persistence, and Generation et al. as individual characters in a novel.  As long as it's corvette or below, I can usually forgive someone for doing that.  And still, that may just be because I do it a lot too.

My personal gripes:
- Formulaic stories. I'm getting sick and tired of the same storyline over and over again.  Blue Planet and Ransom's campaigns were welcome departures, but the vast majority of the other campaigns just follow one basic premise:
Shivans return: HAY you guys I'm fighting pirates in GENERIC PODUNK SYSTEM nothing exciting OH WAIT something mysterious WAIT there's SOMETHING BAD GONNA HAPPEN but Command wants to explore further anyway uh oh WE BROUGHT BACK THE SHIVANS again DEPLOY SUPERWEAPON srsly dudes top of its class nothing can beat it YAY "STOPPED" SHIVANS let's keep going OH CRAP MORE SHIVANS but it's ok the superweapon BOOOOOOOOM oops better start running DEUS EX MACHINA wowwee barely survived that one "GENERIC PHILOSOPHICAL STATEMENT" about humanity and our arrogance.

- Filler enemies.  Pirates, Rebellion of the Month, SHIVANS!!!!!! If there's going to be an enemy, give them a purpose, not just to provide cannonfodder and cheap entertainment.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: shiv on October 21, 2009, 05:18:56 am
Quote
- Use of Brief7 for regular missions. This is an apocalyptic theme. Don't use it for a regular convoy escort mission.
This is a sin! I compleately agree. This track is too epic for regular missions. It was always used before great things that player had to do - Before destroying Ravana, After destruction of colossus, etc, etc

Quote
-Annoyingly colorfull backgrounds.
Looks like I have to check my Earth Defense mission and de-saturate some backgrounds... :drevil:
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: FreeSpaceFreak on October 21, 2009, 05:43:54 am
- Something very grim happens in the mission (e.g. The Colossus is destroyed in Their Finest Hour) the debriefing mourns the loss of thousands upon thousands of lives... and in the background, there's the victory music happily playing. It's put me off ever since I first played the main campaign, and it still does.
It can be fixed using a failing secondary objective, that's all it needs. Although it would be nice to be able to specify debriefing music in FRED.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Snail on October 21, 2009, 05:51:54 am
It can be fixed using a failing secondary objective, that's all it needs. Although it would be nice to be able to specify debriefing music in FRED.
You can, but you have to use notepad. As I recall there are a few lines which allow you to specify Average, Failure and Success music independently. I guess the effect could be achieved by setting all of them to Failure.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Spoon on October 21, 2009, 07:38:43 am
Quote
As a few people mentioned, a lack of in-mission dialog.  At this point, given the amount of time I've spent playing FS2, the amount of pleasure I obtain from the sheer mechanics of blowing up enemy fighters is somewhat limited (unless it's something ridiculous like SGWP2, of course).  I'm primarily still interested in FreeSpace because of its immense potential as an in-game storytelling medium, which means that I most enjoy missions that utilize said medium to its utmost.  Going out on a bog-standard escort mission with no dialog beyond built-in messages is the best way to completely bore me.
This, I cannot stress this point enough
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Uchuujinsan on October 21, 2009, 08:55:09 am
Generally, don't make your missions to hard (or at least no fake difficulty):
- I've failed campaigns for unbelievable stupid reasons like a ship jumping in at the very end of a 20 minute mission, and beaming the ship im supposed to protect instantly to death, just because I didn't play on easy, but on medium.
- Fighting against endless waves of fighters isn't only boring and not very immersive, it's imho also one of the main reasons many campaigns are completely unbalanced on higher difficulties.
- It should never be necessary to remember the spawn points of enemies to complete the mission. Spawning enemies close enough to the transport to kill it almost immediatly if you haven't waited at exactly this position already is a stupid idea.

Apart from that, I can only agree with everyone else.

Well, except maybe the part with "Zero wingmen build-up". That's not important for me.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Sushi on October 21, 2009, 09:13:17 am
Missions/campaigns that are broken on higher difficulty levels.

Missions that don't take into account the possibility that the player will shoot out every beam turret on every enemy capship as soon as it appears (given the chance). Also, missions that require you to do exactly that, but never tell you so explicitly.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: CP5670 on October 21, 2009, 10:22:59 am
Quote
- Formulaic stories. I'm getting sick and tired of the same storyline over and over again.

I would rather see a generic story that is presented well (like FS1) than an original premise that is poorly detailed and doesn't feel believable. The latter is a lot more common than the former.

Quote
- Something very grim happens in the mission (e.g. The Colossus is destroyed in Their Finest Hour) the debriefing mourns the loss of thousands upon thousands of lives... and in the background, there's the victory music happily playing. It's put me off ever since I first played the main campaign, and it still does.
It can be fixed using a failing secondary objective, that's all it needs. Although it would be nice to be able to specify debriefing music in FRED.

This gets annoying, but it's more of a problem with the way FS2 handles debriefing music than with the mission itself. There are ways to work around it though. In PI, I simply removed the debriefing music out of music.tbl and put in the music files as debriefing voices, so I could specify which music is used on each stage.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Nemesis6 on October 21, 2009, 10:45:45 am
No idea how I forgot this:

* I sacrifice half of my wing in an assault on secondary targets of opportunity, only to have these ignored on the briefing in a very strange way. It'll go
"blah blah blah, blah blah blah, as tragic as the losses were, things are looking even more grim in..."
After that verbal beatdown, suddenly the next paragraph starts going - "Along with that, you also helped eliminate the SCv..." as if a paragraph is missing before that one, detailing another positive thing I did.


On the subject of mutiny again, I have one idea of a more plausible scenario - NTF operatives temporarily take over the communications and weapons subsystems and call for support. They could easily sabotage the warp drive, so unless the crew yields, the NTF reinforcements will either kill the crew, replace them, or just destroy the entire ship. Their call.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Snail on October 21, 2009, 10:53:34 am
On the subject of mutiny again, I have one idea of a more plausible scenario - NTF operatives temporarily take over the communications and weapons subsystems and call for support. They could easily sabotage the warp drive, so unless the crew yields, the NTF reinforcements will either kill the crew, replace them, or just destroy the entire ship. Their call.
It usually doesn't work like that in most campaigns. In fact, it'd just be even more contrived given how the GTVA gives not half a thought to all the loyal officers onboard, or the fact that the ship could still be used.


Another thing that annoys me is killing large ships (sometimes even destroyers) without any thought, as if it were just another fighter wing (or worse, the pilots act as if it's a game).

10,000 people are dead.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: shiv on October 21, 2009, 10:53:53 am
This should be wikified.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Snail on October 21, 2009, 10:59:31 am
I really hate it when campaigns treat death like fun and games. Honestly. Especially when the player is expected to destroy numerous destroyer-size capital ships across the length of a campaign without any thought to the hundreds of thousands of people he's killing. The destruction of a destroyer is death on a huge scale. It's not something to be treated lightly.

It was bad enough during FS2, particularly during the Raptors bombing missions at the end of the NTF, where the player has to destroy 2 destroyers in the space of 2 missions, and then Command starts rhyming and acting like a pimp as this happens. A lot of campaigns do this, but far worse (especially with ***** character wingmen who are trying to emulate Mackie but failing and completely destroying the atmosphere).

Unlike a lot of these "pet-hates", which I usually accept under some circumstances (for example, if it builds tension), this is one that I utterly cannot stand. Soldiers don't blow up enormous buildings filled with people and joke about it, pilots in FreeSpace shouldn't either.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: NGTM-1R on October 21, 2009, 11:37:31 am
Historical precedent suggests you're most likely wrong, unfortunately.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Snail on October 21, 2009, 12:23:09 pm
Historical precedent suggests you're most likely wrong, unfortunately.
huh


Where did you learn this historical precedent? Endless action movies?
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: NGTM-1R on October 21, 2009, 12:30:04 pm
Histories of submariners both German and American, being a student of the Pacific and Atlantic Wars. We'll start with "Scratch one flattop!" at Coral Sea and move on from there, if you like?

Angst has no place in mission design. Ever. You're pumped up on adrenaline, you're trying to stay calm, reasonably professional. You've been trained to regard all this as not of much moment because contemplating its significance is likely to kill you and destroy your very expensive fightercraft. You don't want to think about it either, and the human mind is quite capable of self-denial.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: headdie on October 21, 2009, 12:47:13 pm
I think we are forgetting context here, remember at the start of FS2 we are a year and a half into a bloody civil war with destroyers getting whacked semi-regularly on a backdrop of xenocide on the part of the NTF, large casualty tolls are the norm rather than the exception and the characters will be adjusted to that and numbed to the point where the strategic cost will be more important than the living cost especialy to people more removed from the front such as "Command"
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: TacOne on October 21, 2009, 02:31:35 pm
I'm surprised this wasn't mentioned explicitly:

Enemy ships armed with AAAfs.
There's a reason the AAAh exists!
When I turn the difficulty down I want to die LESS, not more.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: General Battuta on October 21, 2009, 03:04:11 pm
Histories of submariners both German and American, being a student of the Pacific and Atlantic Wars. We'll start with "Scratch one flattop!" at Coral Sea and move on from there, if you like?

Angst has no place in mission design. Ever. You're pumped up on adrenaline, you're trying to stay calm, reasonably professional. You've been trained to regard all this as not of much moment because contemplating its significance is likely to kill you and destroy your very expensive fightercraft. You don't want to think about it either, and the human mind is quite capable of self-denial.

Unless you're a character who's been trained from birth to regard the significance of every human life.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Narwhal on October 21, 2009, 05:21:26 pm
I dislike any situation in which a player or wingman could say :
"Hey ! Look ! Yet another destroyer !"

Actually, I like to know what are the approximate strenght of my side and their side, so I don't feel like the FREDer will pop out from his sleezes zillions of enemy capital ships to defeat the brillant plan of Command. That is why I love Intel room.

In too many campaigns in which, if you see a capital ship, you know you will have blowed it up before the end of the mission. In reality, the same ship, even minor, should come back again and again and not be sacrificed just  to use up Alpha 1's shield. FS1 was fairly good at that. . Pirates, especially, are well known in the FS universe for their vast fleets of fighters, even though they  only one Acadia installation, and NTF for having "stolen" at least 130% of the GTVA original capital ship fleet.

Basically, I don't like when the enemy is fighting a battle it has no chance of winning. The other side sending a cruiser on suicide mission just to harass a convoy is a realism-killer. Just avoiding this allows to lower the "total volume" of enemy assets.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Snail on October 21, 2009, 07:41:04 pm
Histories of submariners both German and American, being a student of the Pacific and Atlantic Wars. We'll start with "Scratch one flattop!" at Coral Sea and move on from there, if you like?

Angst has no place in mission design. Ever. You're pumped up on adrenaline, you're trying to stay calm, reasonably professional. You've been trained to regard all this as not of much moment because contemplating its significance is likely to kill you and destroy your very expensive fightercraft. You don't want to think about it either, and the human mind is quite capable of self-denial.
Did I say anything about angst...? If I did, that's not what I meant. What I meant was people completely overdoing their characters and adding horribly written banter. In effect, the mission designer has not created realistic human beings, but cardboard cut-outs masquerading as people. This is not a question of psychological profiles, but of design choices in mission design.

What I really meant was stuff like "Oh LOL the NTF sent in another silly useless destroyer, let's blow her up d00ds this one might be fun lololol" or something in that vein. I actually quite like lines like "Chalk up another one for the killboard!" and such, and in some cases this can add a lot of flavor and punctuates the action with a bit of humor, but it's when characters are so overdone and so badly written that it seems like High School Musical in Space (Now With Lazors).

Reading that post of mine, what I wrote was damned unclear (was writing it while talking on IRC; talking not conducive to writing)... My point is, I think that some people should give more thought to their missions and the dialogue that accompanies the action. This is especially easy a mistake to make given that one can place an entire juggernaut in FRED in the same time it would take to place a fighter (barring render times). I'm a firm believer in 'Zen Missions', that is, doing less with more. Why put in a destroyer when a cruiser or corvette or two would fulfil the exact same purpose? (example, INF R1 where the EA had more destroyers than cruisers. To clarify, 'Zen Missions' does not mean minimalism. To cite another example from INF R1, the huge amount of ships in mission "Nemesis" was necessary for that mission to be awesome)

What I'm actually trying to get at here is that some people have trouble conveying stories and getting their point across, leading to badly written lines of dialogue. These people have little story-telling experience (aside from a few abortive short stories, or a novel WIP perhaps) and can't communicate their characters or the situation clearly enough that they completely and utterly over-emphasize everything everywhere. The mission designer has not made believable characters, he has simply written lines of text (or clips of voice acting). There is a line dividing 'characters' and 'lines' of dialogue.


More experienced FREDders are almost always able to avoid this, it's just some of the newer, inexperienced FREDders/storytellers who often trip up (I am often one of them, which is perhaps one of the reasons why I hate it so much).

In the FREDding Events Editor message box, people are able to type anything to fill the space. What they fill it with is up to them, and it is here that it is really decided if he's created a real person or not.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Goober5000 on October 21, 2009, 10:58:11 pm
This thread seems to have turned into a general rant thread, instead of what Black Wolf wanted...

In particular, i'm looking for things that can be fixed with relatively little effort, but might get overlooked.
Most of the things posted on this thread are serious design flaws, and/or problems that would require practice or experience to catch - not minor things that are overlooked. :p


and then Command starts rhyming and acting like a pimp
Wait, we're not talking about JAD here?  Which line was this?
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: eliex on October 22, 2009, 01:15:20 am
and then Command starts rhyming and acting like a pimp
Wait, we're not talking about JAD here?  Which line was this?

FS2 main campaign "The King's Gambit". 
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Black Wolf on October 22, 2009, 02:40:03 am
This should be wikified.

Ultimately, this is what I want to do, but I'm still not quite sure how to do it. And Goober's right - we are straying from the original little niggles things in some cases.

Big stuff is important too though... hmm... maybe a wiki entry with two separate categories? Major design and minor design?
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: TrashMan on October 22, 2009, 05:03:02 am
Unless you're a character who's been trained from birth to regard the significance of every human life.

What are you doing in the military then? Especially in a front combat role?
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: TrashMan on October 22, 2009, 05:07:35 am
Plot holes. We hates them..yes my precioussss, we hates them!
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Snail on October 22, 2009, 06:28:25 am
and then Command starts rhyming and acting like a pimp
Wait, we're not talking about JAD here?  Which line was this?
"The Perseverance is no more! That's what you flyboys are paid for!"

I think some of the :v: guys got bored with the usual "Ship XYZ neutalized good work" and decided to just throw in something funey.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: General Battuta on October 22, 2009, 09:28:49 am
Unless you're a character who's been trained from birth to regard the significance of every human life.

What are you doing in the military then? Especially in a front combat role?

Isn't that the question?
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Nuclear1 on October 22, 2009, 02:31:47 pm
I think people are confusing cold-blooded killers, the people who enjoy blowing up ships full of thousands of people, and the people who are doing their duty and are attempting to mask their fear of death.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: SF-Junky on October 23, 2009, 12:09:26 am
Reading this thread I realized that my Storm Front campaigns include many of the points mentioned here (Mackie clone, story scheme described by Nuclear1...). :nervous:

What I don't like:
- Dozens of waves of the same enemy fighter wing (PI)
- When a campaign just seems to follow the purpose to blow up as many cap ships as possible (Inferno)
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Thadeus on October 23, 2009, 12:55:35 am
My personal pet peeve - capital ships that keep firing beams even as they're disintegrating, making it look like the beam is coming from empty space. Nowadays, on my own little projects I make sure to stop all beams for larger vessels when they reach 0%.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Mongoose on October 23, 2009, 02:21:40 am
My personal pet peeve - capital ships that keep firing beams even as they're disintegrating, making it look like the beam is coming from empty space. Nowadays, on my own little projects I make sure to stop all beams for larger vessels when they reach 0%.
Ooh, that's a good one.  It's even more irritating when said beams happen to be targeting the ship you're supposed to be protecting...or even worse, you. :p
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: TrashMan on October 23, 2009, 03:06:11 am
Mackie clone

Ditto. Never liked the character in the first place. I'd like to shove a duct tape down his throat, then maybe he would finally SHUT UP.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Snail on October 23, 2009, 04:50:01 am
I think people are confusing cold-blooded killers, the people who enjoy blowing up ships full of thousands of people, and the people who are doing their duty and are attempting to mask their fear of death.
No, people are confusing badly written cardboard cutouts with real people.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Rodo on October 23, 2009, 06:08:58 am
My personal pet peeve - capital ships that keep firing beams even as they're disintegrating, making it look like the beam is coming from empty space. Nowadays, on my own little projects I make sure to stop all beams for larger vessels when they reach 0%.

I've seen this, but isn't that a code issue? I mean as soon as the ship is destroyed beams are supposed to stop firing.. or maybe not?, well I'm not sure if it's code or not, sorry if I'm mistaken.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Snail on October 23, 2009, 08:30:34 am
My personal pet peeve - capital ships that keep firing beams even as they're disintegrating, making it look like the beam is coming from empty space. Nowadays, on my own little projects I make sure to stop all beams for larger vessels when they reach 0%.

I've seen this, but isn't that a code issue? I mean as soon as the ship is destroyed beams are supposed to stop firing.. or maybe not?, well I'm not sure if it's code or not, sorry if I'm mistaken.
Not really a code issue. I guess ships are still considered alive until they're completely blown up, so they are still able to fire beams. It's been a problem since retail.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: SF-Junky on October 23, 2009, 08:32:03 am
Mackie clone

Ditto. Never liked the character in the first place. I'd like to shove a duct tape down his throat, then maybe he would finally SHUT UP.
Do you mean Mackie or his clone? Or both?
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Snail on October 23, 2009, 08:36:34 am
Related to Mackie clones, any clone of the Derelict story. That is, random backwater => random pirates => omgwtf shivans.

IT'S BEEN DONE BEFORE.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Kosh on November 02, 2009, 01:51:24 am
Quote
Pirates


Why wouldn't there be pirates? The GTVA navy for some time after Capella was seriously weakened, combine that with the likely economic problems that were occuring, and piracy would likely increase substantially. Economic depressions generally lead to increases in crime rates.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: General Battuta on November 02, 2009, 02:02:31 am
If there were pirates, they would fly civilian ships and probably wouldn't have access to fighters. We're talking retrofitted transports here.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Kosh on November 02, 2009, 02:11:02 am
Why wouldn't they have access to Great War era fighters? After that war was over the GTA completely collapsed, in the ensuing chaos it wouldn't be too surprising if more than a few fighter wings went rogue since there was no central authority in the Terran sector until the GTVA came about. In post Capella storyline, you still have some remnants of the NTF. I really don't see the GTVA destroying every last fighter, so a few wings might still be around. A remote possibility is also some leftover NTF cruisers might still be around, but even if that happened they would probably just be a couple of Fenris cruisers.


And yeah, most definately they would depend heavily on turning transports into gunboats. That's a good point.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: General Battuta on November 02, 2009, 02:12:48 am
I can't see combat fighters being operated by anything less than a government. You need a logistical tail to keep fighters going, and that tail can be tracked and shut down pretty easily. Not to mention that I can't imagine pirates ever really risking themselves in open combat against armed military opponents.

My evidence for this is basically Real Life.

Could be wrong though, and I think it can be justified in some campaigns.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Kosh on November 02, 2009, 02:24:58 am
Quote
I can't see combat fighters being operated by anything less than a government. You need a logistical tail to keep fighters going,


That's why they wouldn't use their secondaries. To keep the hull intact I can definately see a lot of retrofitting and work arounds going on. Given that a support ship can repair all your fighters subsystems, it doesn't actually seem that improbable. The only real constraint is fuel, hull repair, missiles, the first of which also doesn't seem too hard to steal from hijacked freighters, while the freighter's hull itself can be "repurposed" to repair the pirate fighters/transports.

Quote
Not to mention that I can't imagine pirates ever really risking themselves in open combat against armed military opponents.

Which is why there likely wasn't much in the way piracy right before the second Shivan incursion, but the military took some very heavy losses, and therefore would not likely have the same ability to defend all of GTVA space, leading to the core worlds being prioritized and the outer edges left with whatever scraps are left, leaving them significantly more vulnerable than before.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Black Wolf on November 02, 2009, 03:49:10 am
I can't see combat fighters being operated by anything less than a government. You need a logistical tail to keep fighters going, and that tail can be tracked and shut down pretty easily. Not to mention that I can't imagine pirates ever really risking themselves in open combat against armed military opponents.

My evidence for this is basically Real Life.

Moot point, surely, since canon (Silent threat) > Real life in these kinds of debates.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: NGTM-1R on November 02, 2009, 03:59:44 am
Quoth the wiki (or really me) on pirates. (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/FreeSpace_Pirates:_An_Essay)
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Kosh on November 02, 2009, 05:22:15 am
Good read. I do have one question about one of your points, while it is certainly true that an a weakened GTVA would have many more ships than you, if we factor in the losses of the NTF & Second Great War as well as piracy becoming rather widespread, in your opinion how would that affect the GTVA's ability to police ALL its systems?
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: TopAce on November 02, 2009, 07:03:03 am
In Derelict-style, I assume.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on November 04, 2009, 03:03:38 am
I hate missions where there is like 2-3 minutes of dialogue before the start and then you get your ass kicked later on. If the missions fairly easy it's okay, but I don't want to fast forward through that dialogue every time. I dislike this because of some missions I'VE made btw, not really other people's missions. And it's something I now try to avoid.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Aardwolf on November 04, 2009, 03:02:30 pm
That sounds like me, playing "The Romans Blunder" on insane mode.

Sometimes I just want to kill that loser wingman.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: MatthTheGeek on November 04, 2009, 03:37:06 pm
- Promy S on Post-Capella campaigns. Without the Sol system nor the nebula, GTVA can't produce Promy S, it's canonical and explicitly said in FS2 campaign. Dot.

- Make pirates or rebels using standard, unmodified transports or freighters as gunboats. Anyone who has ever played an escort mission knows how those ships are weak by themselves, and pirates or mercenaries are known to customize their ships, so give them at least some missile pods and armor plating. 2-3 Terran turrets doesn't make a gunboat, whereas a few fury, hornet or piranha launchers can make a freighter quite deadly (yes that needs a little pof editing, but that would be worth it I think).

- Default loadouts. For example i've seen several times, in completed and pretty good campaigns, bombers carrying nothing bigger than hornets. Carrying loads of hornets is an heavy fighter's job. On the other hand, sending heavy bombers against a mere convoy of freighters and transports does not only seem overkill, but is freaking irrelevant because bombs can be shot at, whereas a couple Herc wings with hornets or phoenixes could wreak havoc on a convoy in seconds.

- Escape pods. We nearly never see of those in campaigns. Is it credible for a capital ship battle that all ships get destroyed and none of their crew survive ? Cruiser and above are supposed to have escape pods, and destroyers should have transports and emergency fighters too.

- Flail-like and EMP weapons. They are very rarely used and cleverly building missions around those would be very interesting and original. I thank STR and the Hellfire mission for this one, which made me realize that the disruptor missile actually exists :D. I also remember a mission where you had to push sentries away with a flail without destroying them in order to steal a cargo depot without triggering the alarm, and that was quite clever too.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: General Battuta on November 04, 2009, 03:58:49 pm
- Promy S on Post-Capella campaigns. Without the Sol system nor the nebula, GTVA can't produce Promy S, it's canonical and explicitly said in FS2 campaign. Dot.

They probably just started harvesting it from somewhere else. Argon isn't exactly rare.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Kosh on November 04, 2009, 06:49:07 pm
Then why couldn't they do that during the Reconstruction period?
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: General Battuta on November 04, 2009, 07:02:27 pm
They lost all their periodic tables back in Sol, of course.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on November 04, 2009, 07:06:02 pm
- Promy S on Post-Capella campaigns. Without the Sol system nor the nebula, GTVA can't produce Promy S, it's canonical and explicitly said in FS2 campaign. Dot.

They probably just started harvesting it from somewhere else. Argon isn't exactly rare.

Yeah I call bull**** on that. They shouldn't have Prometheus-S without the nebula. Unless the campaign explicitly lists a new source of the necessary materials.


- Escape pods. We nearly never see of those in campaigns. Is it credible for a capital ship battle that all ships get destroyed and none of their crew survive ? Cruiser and above are supposed to have escape pods, and destroyers should have transports and emergency fighters too.

- Flail-like and EMP weapons. They are very rarely used and cleverly building missions around those would be very interesting and original. I thank STR and the Hellfire mission for this one, which made me realize that the disruptor missile actually exists :D. I also remember a mission where you had to push sentries away with a flail without destroying them in order to steal a cargo depot without triggering the alarm, and that was quite clever too.

Escape pods are only ever used in a story-based capacity (ie protect the escape pods). Most people don't bother for some reason. In fact it's pretty rare that I see any "guard the escaping transport" missions.

If you like the Disruptor missile you might want to try out Trashman's coming of the Storm campaign. I used those missiles a few times in one or two of the missions he's got in there. They're pretty cool.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: General Battuta on November 04, 2009, 09:07:20 pm
- Promy S on Post-Capella campaigns. Without the Sol system nor the nebula, GTVA can't produce Promy S, it's canonical and explicitly said in FS2 campaign. Dot.

They probably just started harvesting it from somewhere else. Argon isn't exactly rare.

Yeah I call bull**** on that. They shouldn't have Prometheus-S without the nebula. Unless the campaign explicitly lists a new source of the necessary materials.

Erm, they did have the Prometheus without the nebula, back in FS1.

Argon's everywhere; it's one of the most abundant gases in the universe. I can list you a few sources of the necessary materials right now if, you want.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Black Wolf on November 05, 2009, 01:19:04 am
This, like pirates, is a situation where canon>Real Life. We are explicitly told that in FS, Argon is rare, and the only places they've found it so far are Sol and the Nebula.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: General Battuta on November 05, 2009, 01:20:04 am
Then how do they figure out how old dinosaur bones are?  :nervous:
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Black Wolf on November 05, 2009, 01:27:25 am
They use Zircons for U-Pb :p
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on November 05, 2009, 03:16:37 am
Erm, they did have the Prometheus without the nebula, back in FS1.

Argon's everywhere; it's one of the most abundant gases in the universe. I can list you a few sources of the necessary materials right now if, you want.

You can say whatever you want about the sources but the canon reality in Freespace is that the Prometheus S is not possible without access to either the nebula or to Earth.

Quote
The original GTW-5 Prometheus S was removed from service when the link to Earth was lost and the GTVA was unable to obtain sufficient quantities of argon (a required element in the Prometheus's power-generation module). Recent deployment of Anuket and Zephyrus gas miners has enabled us to resume production of the GTW-5 Prometheus S. The S-type is a minor variant of the original Prometheus laser cannon. The S-type's faster recharge cycle and lower energy drain cause many pilots to prefer it over the R variant.

And no it doesn't mention anything about the Nebula but by deployment of the Gas Miners it means deployment to the nebula not deployment to the fleet.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: General Battuta on November 05, 2009, 09:36:15 am
Huh, I was actually going to concede to you guys, but looking at that, there's actually no reason to.

Nothing about that tech entry suggests that the GTVA has to get argon from Earth or the nebula. It's just as possible (and slightly less dumb!) that they simply didn't have the infrastructure to do so en masse; it was lost with Sol. They can probably harvest argon wherever they damn well please using the Zephyrus and Anuket.

So I'll modify your statement:

You can say whatever you want about the sources but the canon reality in Freespace is that the Prometheus S was not possible without access to the new gas miners or Earth.

That's all we can say canonically.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: MatthTheGeek on November 05, 2009, 10:45:07 am
Quote
The Artemis will be armed with the new Prometheus cannon. Our nebula gas miners have gathered sufficient resources to resume production of the GTW-5 Prometheus S. The S-type is based on the original design of the Prometheus cannon. With high marks for shield and hull damage, the Prometheus was our weapon of choice in the Great War.
From : The King's Gambit Command briefing

So it's explicitly said that they gathered the gas in the nebula. Given than they wouldn't be stupid enough to gather gas in a combat zone if they could do it somewhere else, it means that they don't have any sufficient argon source (we're talking canonical here, argon may be abundant in the real universe, it's not what's interesting us here) to produce Promy S in sufficient quantity to supply combat units. But I agree that they probably can produce a handful of those for SOC or other elite units without the nebula or Sol.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Black Wolf on November 05, 2009, 10:47:05 am
Doh - I had almost that exact same post all ready to go, but I got red-texted :D.

Anyway, yeah. Granted, there're potential loopholes you could wiggle through if you really wanted to, but I think the intention was always that the Prometheus S needs either the nebula or Sol.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: CP5670 on November 05, 2009, 11:50:26 am
Even if the GTVA can't procure any more argon, you would expect them to still have an existing stockpile of it and of the Prometheus cannons, built during the FS2 period. The weapon may need a supply of argon to actually operate or it could only be used in the manufacturing process, but that doesn't really matter.

It's fine to allow the Prometheus in post-Capella campaigns, but there needs to be a good reason given for why it is being made available to the player. The same applies to the Helios, for that matter.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: TopAce on November 05, 2009, 11:54:26 am
What's wrong with the Helios?
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: CP5670 on November 05, 2009, 12:01:03 pm
From the tech room:

Quote
The Helios is prohibitively expensive to produce, thus its deployment is severely restricted.

Despite this, a lot of fanmade campaigns and missions use it freely, like a standard issue weapon. In the main campaign, you only get it during the two Sathanas bombing missions. The GTVA doesn't even use it for the Ravana strike earlier in the campaign, despite that apparently being a major operation.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: terran_emperor on November 05, 2009, 12:08:04 pm
Mackie clone

Ditto. Never liked the character in the first place. I'd like to shove a duct tape down his throat, then maybe he would finally SHUT UP.

How can anyone hate Mackie?
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: TopAce on November 05, 2009, 12:15:09 pm
The Helios is prohibitively expensive to produce, thus its deployment is severely restricted.

It depends how you read it. To me, it says that you won't get it against anything smaller than a destroyer.  If it's vital that you take down something, you get the Helios. The Ravana wasn't an immediate threat to the GTVA. It threatened the nebula task force, but that's it. The Kings Gambit starts after the introduction of the GTVA Colossus. I wouldn't consider the dated NTF Orions to be such a great threat to justify the Helios. The Sathanas and the other Shivan destroyer (Beleth, right?) were an imminent threat to the GTVA.

Oh and how would a player fell if he had received the Helios for Slaying Ravana? Wouldn't it draw criticism along the lines: "I got some weak bomb named Cyclops, but it's sort of pointless."

I don't know why people forget that FS is a game that needs to adhere to certain gameplay standards. Whoever wrote the Helios's tech description didn't think there would be fans to discuss this issue more than ten years after FS2's release.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: CP5670 on November 05, 2009, 12:39:12 pm
Quote
It depends how you read it. To me, it says that you won't get it against anything smaller than a destroyer.  If it's vital that you take down something, you get the Helios. The Ravana wasn't an immediate threat to the GTVA. It threatened the nebula task force, but that's it. The Kings Gambit starts after the introduction of the GTVA Colossus. I wouldn't consider the dated NTF Orions to be such a great threat to justify the Helios. The Sathanas and the other Shivan destroyer (Beleth, right?) were an imminent threat to the GTVA.

The Ravana, at least, is made out to be a big threat in its mission briefing and debriefing. In any case, I've seen campaigns and standalone missions use it for far less urgent situations than any of those things.

Quote
I don't know why people forget that FS is a game that needs to adhere to certain gameplay standards. Whoever wrote the Helios's tech description didn't think there would be fans to discuss this issue more than ten years after FS2's release.

Sure, I realize that. But the fact is that this usage of it is canonical, and a campaign set in the FS2 universe should either be consistent with it or offer some explanation of why it's not. It could say something like "improvements in manufacturing have brought down the costs to more manageable levels," and that would make sense.

This is an example of what I said earlier in the thread. A lot of campaigns simply don't bother to elaborate on things like this.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: General Battuta on November 05, 2009, 04:01:01 pm
Quote
The Artemis will be armed with the new Prometheus cannon. Our nebula gas miners have gathered sufficient resources to resume production of the GTW-5 Prometheus S. The S-type is based on the original design of the Prometheus cannon. With high marks for shield and hull damage, the Prometheus was our weapon of choice in the Great War.
From : The King's Gambit Command briefing

So it's explicitly said that they gathered the gas in the nebula. Given than they wouldn't be stupid enough to gather gas in a combat zone if they could do it somewhere else, it means that they don't have any sufficient argon source (we're talking canonical here, argon may be abundant in the real universe, it's not what's interesting us here) to produce Promy S in sufficient quantity to supply combat units.

Given that there are gas miners heading on over to the Colossus very shortly after the nebula itself is opened ('Into the Maelstrom,' which occurs shortly after the destruction of the Ravana), and that the design was clearly not fabricated in the span between the discovery of the Knossos and 'Into the Maelstrom', I'd say we have canonical evidence that the gas miners were intended to work anywhere but the nebula.

I'm not saying 'you're wrong, I'm right' - after all, the gas miners gather stuff other than argon, and argon may be only found in the nebula - but as with many things in FS, I think there's plenty of wiggle room.

So, yes, you could argue that argon only comes from the nebula or from Earth. You could also argue that they didn't have effective gas mining equipment online yet, that the miners were deployed directly to the nebula once available because it was a motherlode, and that - with the nebula gone - they will now just send their newly available miners to other sources.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Scotty on November 05, 2009, 04:42:45 pm
That's possible, but exceedingly unlikely, since from the tech room descriptions, the Zephyrus is a deathtrap.  And has apparently been around long enough to have such a strong reputation.  We also see at two gas miners in the first convoy mission (mission after the Colossus shows up), as just ONE of the convoys, which implies a presence of infrastructure that doesn't explain how there weren't Prom Ss around earlier.

And the specific adjective "nebula" attached to nebula miners gives a whole lot a credence to the "Sol, nebula, or bust" theory.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: General Battuta on November 05, 2009, 05:51:25 pm
Well, except the Anuket was not specifically designed for nebulae (although the Zephyrus apparently was.)

Nonetheless it is a bit of a convoluted piece of wank. Were I a campaign designer, though, I'd ignore that argon business as fast as I could every chance I got.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Snail on November 05, 2009, 06:18:09 pm
I have a new one.

People creating their own destroyer names, (or even worse) creating new destroyers for each mission. Granted, this was a problem in FS2, where a lot of Orions appeared and all with different names.

Keep in mind that every time you give a ship a new name, you are effectively making a new one. There is absolutely no reason why you have to create the GTD xyz when you could just as easily use the Messana, Carthage or Aeneas. This is actually quite immersive I find, and people get attachments to these ships, which makes it much better when you blow them up. What's even better is that if you're setting your campaign before FS2 you can use ships that get destroyed later on like the Delacroix, Psamtik or any NTF destroyer.

Nods to the continuity are always good IMO.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Scotty on November 05, 2009, 06:32:42 pm
I'll add a partial second to the Snail's.  Only partial, because sometime using a new vessel allows the designer to make up whatever the hell kind of backstory they want, and aren't limited by what is in canon.  Granted, this is rather minor, but I prefer to have my campaigns continue regardless of how badly the mission went (compared to a perfect one), so using a canon destroyer that could be destroyed and the campaign still completed doesn't fit well.  Maybe it's just me though. :P

I also dislike it when campaigns remold canon instead of wrapping around it and filling in the holes.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Droid803 on November 05, 2009, 08:08:57 pm
Well, if its a whole new ship class you have the opposite problem, namely, recycling names...
Having ships of different classes with the same name is damn confusing, especially if its in a (semi-)major role, and it just looks really damn lazy. Even worse is naming stuff after existing ship classes. "Oh hurr, I can't think of a name for this Hatshepsut so let's just call it the Isis. Just like the transport! HURR HURR."
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Nuclear1 on November 05, 2009, 10:15:45 pm

Ditto. Never liked the character in the first place. I'd like to shove a duct tape down his throat, then maybe he would finally SHUT UP.


How can anyone hate Mackie?

Well, Trashman kinda hates Derelict as a whole, if that helps you understand.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Droid803 on November 05, 2009, 10:49:59 pm
Derelict was boring as **** until Nyarly wakes up, and a few missions after that...and the whole SOC loop was borung too.
The only thing really good about it was the finale which is so epic it makes all of the build up worth it... on second thought no not really. The SOC loop was still worthless, and there was randomly no closure in it at all.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Nuclear1 on November 06, 2009, 12:53:09 am
Well, to be fair, the Nyarlathotep shows up fairly early anyway, and there's still a couple memorable moments before then.  Yeah, I hated the second SOC loop too, but the last 8 missions or so made the whole campaign pretty much worth it.  

Derelict also gets awesome status for being essentially the grandfather of FS2 campaigns.  It basically set a standard.  I guess it's just when everyone's getting sick of seeing the same story copy-pasted into other campaigns and Mackie rip-offs running around everywhere, the original campaign tends to take a lot of flak.  It wasn't Derelict's fault--it's other people's lack of creativity that made Derelict trite.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on November 06, 2009, 01:23:28 am
So I'll modify your statement:

You can say whatever you want about the sources but the canon reality in Freespace is that the Prometheus S was not possible without access to the new gas miners or Earth.

That's all we can say canonically.

Well if the intent is unclear I'll grab another part of the table:

Quote
; ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
; Prometheus (only available after nebula missions begin)
;

Straight from the horses mouth.
Prometheus S = result of Nebula

Therefore no Prometheus S without:
A) Earth
B) Nebula


---------------------------------------------------
EDIT - another pet hate:


Ships getting reduced to ****ty percentages and repaired in a mission or two.
Most commonly found in so-called "Character Driven Campaigns" wherein the ship is often a starring character.

So unrealistic.
Some times, I let it slide, but other times it bugs the piss out of me,


Oh pet Peeve #3 (And this is a BIG ONE!)

The Lucifer gaining shadow-style organic regenerative abilities.

Derelict did this.
Blue Planet did this.

It's dumb.

It's not Freespace in my opinion, the Shivans have never been demonstrated to have organic ships.
Leave Babylon 5 in the Babylon 5 Mod and stick to Freespace. Shivan ships are inorganic pieces of metal that can be blown apart just like any other ship.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: General Battuta on November 06, 2009, 01:24:27 am
Erm, no, it just says the Prometheus isn't available until after the nebula missions begin.

Which isn't to say they weren't pulling argon from the nebula to make the Prom S; that's by far the most parsimonious explanation given what we're shown. However, nothing here rules out other possible sources so long as they're just considerably less attractive than the nebula.

Interestingly, it's apparently true that the GTVA has access to other nebulae to harvest gas from.

What we can say is no Prometheus S without argon, but it's not entirely clear what the holdup on the argon was, and to what degree it was an infrastructure problem and to what degree a source problem.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Nuclear1 on November 06, 2009, 01:28:07 am
Yeah, I always found this part of FS2 canon to be just plain ridiculous.  Argon isn't as rare as FS2 makes it out to be, yet the loss of one system (albeit Sol) somehow makes production of a weapon that requires Argon somehow impossible?  And somehow the only other possible source is in the nebula.

It's one of the few times I'm ever willing to bend canon a little bit.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on November 06, 2009, 01:30:19 am
Erm, no, it just says the Prometheus isn't available until after the nebula missions begin.

Which isn't to say they weren't pulling argon from the nebula to make the Prom S; that's by far the most parsimonious explanation given what we're shown. However, nothing here rules out other possible sources so long as they're just considerably less attractive than the nebula.

If people want to ignore canon or designer intent that's fine just accept the fact you're ignoring it.

Oh and edited my previous post to add some more pet peeves.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: General Battuta on November 06, 2009, 01:32:23 am
Erm, no, it just says the Prometheus isn't available until after the nebula missions begin.

Which isn't to say they weren't pulling argon from the nebula to make the Prom S; that's by far the most parsimonious explanation given what we're shown. However, nothing here rules out other possible sources so long as they're just considerably less attractive than the nebula.

If people want to ignore canon or designer intent that's fine just accept the fact you're ignoring it.

Oh and edited my post to add some more pet peeves.

Well, there's nothing in my post quoted there that actually contradicts canon. We have no evidence that the Prometheus S requires access to Earth or the Nebula, merely that they supplied argon for the Prometheus S production process and that the fall of Earth led to a situation whereby argon was unavailable - perhaps due to simple lack of access to argon (your theory), perhaps because they lacked the infrastructure and it only became available about when the nebula did.

I don't particularly favor either theory; I think a campaign could pull either one.

I do agree that ship hull regeneration generally needs a good rationale (though self-repair mechanisms on a warship seem pretty elementary...even a metal ship isn't difficult to heal.)

Given that the FSVerse can apparently regenerate fighter subsystems near-instantaneously, there's at least a good grounding for rapid ship regeneration.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on November 06, 2009, 01:53:55 am
Well, there's nothing in my post quoted there that actually contradicts canon. We have no evidence that the Prometheus S requires access to Earth or the Nebula, merely that they supplied argon for the Prometheus S production process and that the fall of Earth led to a situation whereby argon was unavailable - perhaps due to simple lack of access to argon (your theory), perhaps because they lacked the infrastructure and it only became available about when the nebula did.

I don't particularly favor either theory; I think a campaign could pull either one.

Occam's Razor.
Prometheus S is introduced as a result of access to the nebula, nothing more. If people want to construct some elaborate work around for their campaign kudos to them, it's better I suppose than simply ignoring the fact all together.

Quote
I do agree that ship hull regeneration generally needs a good rationale (though self-repair mechanisms on a warship seem pretty elementary...even a metal ship isn't difficult to heal.)

Given that the FSVerse can apparently regenerate fighter subsystems near-instantaneously, there's at least a good grounding for rapid ship regeneration.

If people want to take it that route in a post-capella environment that's their prerogative but to me it stretches credibility and has little basis in canon. It's no mistake that nearly every ship in FS2 appears only once with just a few exceptions. If a ship takes heavy damage it's probably out of the fight for weeks or months.

Essentially this is a game and all canon with in the game is to support that game. So yes fighters systems regenerate as long as they are not destroyed and yes ships engines can be swapped out or repaired in minutes by some small repair craft but there's little precedence for a heavily damaged ship being back in action a mission or two later. In fact I believe the mission where the Aquitane takes damage is the same mission where the player gets transferred to the Psamtik though I could be mistaken.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on November 06, 2009, 02:10:48 am
Ooooh double post but another Pet Hate:


Missions should be winnable the first time around.

In some missions for example, a ship jumps in and wipes out an Escort ship. The player should not HAVE TO KNOW that it's coming in order to prevent it destroying the allied ship. For example, Blue Planet is fine when the Ravana jumps in during that one mission because the player is given forewarning. But other missions, I forget what campaign but one mission a Deimos jumps in and scrags a cruiser and the first time it did I was miles away. Next time I went to intercept it and I still lost. Took me a few tries even KNOWING it was coming. This should not happen.


Essentially a mission's success should not depend upon the player's advanced or prior knowledge of the mission. This of course doesn't mean that a mission can't be hard, but it should be winnable the first time around. (and not by blind luck)

So if a ship jumps in, threatening to unleash some beam destroying power, either give the player forewarning of its arrival, OR, give the ship a reasonable delay before it can fire.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: SF-Junky on November 06, 2009, 02:45:33 am
I have a new one.

People creating their own destroyer names, (or even worse) creating new destroyers for each mission. Granted, this was a problem in FS2, where a lot of Orions appeared and all with different names.

Keep in mind that every time you give a ship a new name, you are effectively making a new one. There is absolutely no reason why you have to create the GTD xyz when you could just as easily use the Messana, Carthage or Aeneas. This is actually quite immersive I find, and people get attachments to these ships, which makes it much better when you blow them up. What's even better is that if you're setting your campaign before FS2 you can use ships that get destroyed later on like the Delacroix, Psamtik or any NTF destroyer.

Nods to the continuity are always good IMO.
I generally agree with you. I always find it nice to see known ships in a fan-made campaign and I also often used ships in my own campaigns that we already knew from the FS2 main campaign. But when a campaign takes place far away from the systems we visited in FS2, it doesn't make much sense in my eyes to let canon ships show up.

A campaign that takes place in let's say Dubhe or Aldebaran or Antares won't have much of an opportunity to show ships :v: used in their campaigns.

Did you get my pm, btw? :)


Ooooh double post but another Pet Hate:


Missions should be winnable the first time around.

In some missions for example, a ship jumps in and wipes out an Escort ship. The player should not HAVE TO KNOW that it's coming in order to prevent it destroying the allied ship. For example, Blue Planet is fine when the Ravana jumps in during that one mission because the player is given forewarning. But other missions, I forget what campaign but one mission a Deimos jumps in and scrags a cruiser and the first time it did I was miles away. Next time I went to intercept it and I still lost. Took me a few tries even KNOWING it was coming. This should not happen.


Essentially a mission's success should not depend upon the player's advanced or prior knowledge of the mission. This of course doesn't mean that a mission can't be hard, but it should be winnable the first time around. (and not by blind luck)

So if a ship jumps in, threatening to unleash some beam destroying power, either give the player forewarning of its arrival, OR, give the ship a reasonable delay before it can fire.
Yes and no. Having to replay some missions is part of the game, in my eyes; as it belongs to an ego-shooter that you sometimes die and have to reload. But when you have to re-play every second mission it gets annoying, yes.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: TrashMan on November 06, 2009, 06:14:27 am
How can anyone hate Mackie?

Well, Trashman kinda hates Derelict as a whole, if that helps you understand.

I don't hate Derilict. I just hate annoying cardboat-cutout characters. Mackie is a one-trick pony. Really, do you remember anything about him other than the duct tape?
Derilict was good, but probably not as good as many people remeber it.

That said, let's not turn this into a discussion about a singel campaign, k?
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: TrashMan on November 06, 2009, 06:26:09 am
Missions should be winnable the first time around.

In some missions for example, a ship jumps in and wipes out an Escort ship. The player should not HAVE TO KNOW that it's coming in order to prevent it destroying the allied ship. For example, Blue Planet is fine when the Ravana jumps in during that one mission because the player is given forewarning. But other missions, I forget what campaign but one mission a Deimos jumps in and scrags a cruiser and the first time it did I was miles away. Next time I went to intercept it and I still lost. Took me a few tries even KNOWING it was coming. This should not happen.


Essentially a mission's success should not depend upon the player's advanced or prior knowledge of the mission. This of course doesn't mean that a mission can't be hard, but it should be winnable the first time around. (and not by blind luck)

So if a ship jumps in, threatening to unleash some beam destroying power, either give the player forewarning of its arrival, OR, give the ship a reasonable delay before it can fire.


Agreed for Primary Objectives. Secondary or bonus objectives - not so much.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on November 06, 2009, 08:29:53 am
Yes and no. Having to replay some missions is part of the game, in my eyes; as it belongs to an ego-shooter that you sometimes die and have to reload. But when you have to re-play every second mission it gets annoying, yes.

I don't mind replaying missions, but my point is that a player should not have to rely on knowledge they shouldn't know in order to win the mission. If the only way a player can complete a mission is by knowing something about its structure from a past attempt at the mission then it's faulty. It suggests that the mission designer is structuring the mission from his perspective (the perspective of someone who knows everything about teh mission) rather than as a first time player.

Agreed for Primary Objectives. Secondary or bonus objectives - not so much.

Yeah I'll agree with that.
As a player I don't honestly care about bonus objectives, maybe a little about secondary but not bonus. That's probably why none of my missions even have secondary or bonus objectives. Another one of my failings no doubt.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: MatthTheGeek on November 06, 2009, 10:34:03 am
Given that there are gas miners heading on over to the Colossus very shortly after the nebula itself is opened ('Into the Maelstrom,' which occurs shortly after the destruction of the Ravana), and that the design was clearly not fabricated in the span between the discovery of the Knossos and 'Into the Maelstrom', I'd say we have canonical evidence that the gas miners were intended to work anywhere but the nebula.

I'm not saying 'you're wrong, I'm right' - after all, the gas miners gather stuff other than argon, and argon may be only found in the nebula - but as with many things in FS, I think there's plenty of wiggle room.

So, yes, you could argue that argon only comes from the nebula or from Earth. You could also argue that they didn't have effective gas mining equipment online yet, that the miners were deployed directly to the nebula once available because it was a motherlode, and that - with the nebula gone - they will now just send their newly available miners to other sources.
You catch me wrong. I didn't mean that the gas miners weren't used before the nebula, I meant that it's them collecting in the nebula that clearly and canonically enabled mass production of the Promy S. There are other gases the miners could collect elsewhere before entering the nebula - I remember it's said somewhere that they're supposed to collect deuterium for reactors. And so a campaign taking place in a post-Capella era should give a good enough explanation of why they still use Promy S.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Aardwolf on November 07, 2009, 12:35:45 am
The Lucifer gaining shadow-style organic regenerative abilities.

Derelict did this.
Blue Planet did this.

It's dumb.

It's not Freespace in my opinion, the Shivans have never been demonstrated to have organic ships.
Leave Babylon 5 in the Babylon 5 Mod and stick to Freespace. Shivan ships are inorganic pieces of metal that can be blown apart just like any other ship.

Wait, what? I don't remember this... at least not in BP
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: NGTM-1R on November 07, 2009, 01:21:23 am
Yeah, I can't recall that one from BP either.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Spicious on November 07, 2009, 01:29:54 am
Occam's Razor.
Prometheus S is introduced as a result of access to the nebula, nothing more. If people want to construct some elaborate work around for their campaign kudos to them, it's better I suppose than simply ignoring the fact all together.
That does not remove the problem that Argon is not a rare gas. On top of that it's fairly conceivable that the GTVA could manufacture it from other elements if necessary. It's just a bull**** excuse to not give you as good a weapon early on while keeping the name and appearance.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Scooby_Doo on November 07, 2009, 03:04:35 am
Or just find another nebula....
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: SF-Junky on November 07, 2009, 04:08:21 am
The question raises for me: What gas would have been more appropriate? Or better: What explanation would you have chosen?
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Snail on November 07, 2009, 07:16:09 am
Erm, back on to the topic, is this going on the Wiki?
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: The E on November 07, 2009, 10:14:20 am
Indeed. There is one Lucifer in BP, which appears in three missions (one of them a cutscene,  another one a dream), and it is destroyed in the third. No regeneration there.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: General Battuta on November 07, 2009, 10:16:09 am
It does jump out to repair damage, as mentioned in a line of dialogue. I can't remember if there's any regeneration involved.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: NGTM-1R on November 07, 2009, 06:13:56 pm
Erm, back on to the topic, is this going on the Wiki?

Don't think this is wiki-appropriate no more, as far too many issues of personal taste have been brought up.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Snail on November 07, 2009, 09:03:08 pm
Those which are valid concerns (ones earlier on in the thread) can be stuck onto the Wiki...
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Nuclear1 on November 07, 2009, 09:30:07 pm
"Said the Spider to the Fly", the nebula recon mission in Derelict.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Axem on November 08, 2009, 12:16:41 am
We need a FSTropes for unnotable, ranty and purely opinionated subjective tirades on campaign plots and well... tropes.  :nervous:

Also it'll destroy any chance for any FREDder ever releasing a campaign ever again.

Except the liars who say they don't get this whole "Tropes" thing.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Droid803 on November 08, 2009, 12:23:09 am
Tropes are stupid.
Most of the time the connections are forced rather than being apparent, in addition to them being subjective crap. Like literary analysis, tropes are bunk.
There. I said it.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Axem on November 08, 2009, 12:49:30 am
Should we just not use the word Trope then?

Because this whole thread is about "subjective crap."

I'm only finding about half these pet hates valid. So I could all most of this bunk even!
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Droid803 on November 08, 2009, 12:52:59 am
Yeah, actually, most of this thread is.
Which is precisely why it shouldn't be going on the wiki.
As Snail said, only those that are valid concerns could...but drawing the line is...difficult.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: NGTM-1R on November 08, 2009, 01:46:14 am
Tropes are stupid.

Bull****. They're broadly defined, sure, but their definitions are rarely subjective. They're not something you can make up and examples are typically easily recognized.

If you think otherwise that's because you're the subjective problem. I've caught more than a few people doing that.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Mongoose on November 08, 2009, 02:31:15 am
The-Site-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Linked has given us an entire shared language for recognizing and discussing age-old story elements that we've experienced for our entire lives yet never explicitly discussed.  No matter what one thinks of the items on any individual page, that alone is invaluable.  Plus, it's the single-greatest cross-linking piece of time genocide I've ever come across on the Internet, which is worth something in and of itself.

More on-topic, while all of the entries as-presented may not be suitable for a wiki article, I feel like the majority of them cross over from individual pet peeves to negative elements that hinder just about any campaign they're used in.  I mean, I don't know a single player who likes a challenging 20-minute-long mission with a very real chance of death in the 19th minute, or having to sit through five minutes of dialogue every time they restart a difficult mission, or a twenty-wave enemy wing, or anything along those lines.  These complaints are bigger than individual players.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: TopAce on November 08, 2009, 03:56:07 am
And who's gonna decide which ones are "bigger than individual players?"
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Snail on November 08, 2009, 05:57:30 am
As Snail said, only those that are valid concerns could...but drawing the line is...difficult.
Yes.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Mongoose on November 08, 2009, 12:14:46 pm
And who's gonna decide which ones are "bigger than individual players?"
I didn't say that anyone would. :p Like I said, this may not be suitable for a wiki article, but it doesn't make the comments any less valid.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Droid803 on November 08, 2009, 12:44:45 pm
If you think otherwise that's because you're the subjective problem. I've caught more than a few people doing that.

I don't rule out the possibility that that could be the case. Though with their nonsensical naming scheme its difficult to tell (seriously though, the names sound like their jokes, not accurate description of what they really are).
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Kosh on November 09, 2009, 12:38:06 am
Quote
What we can say is no Prometheus S without argon, but it's not entirely clear what the holdup on the argon was, and to what degree it was an infrastructure problem and to what degree a source problem.


You could just state they found a new source in one of the backwater Terran systems. Given the chaos of the terran sector during the reconstruction era it is quite believable that it had been overlooked for so long.

Quote
It's not Freespace in my opinion, the Shivans have never been demonstrated to have organic ships.

Neither did the Borg but they could regenerate their ships hulls. Fact is we don't totally know the full extent of Shivan technology.


Here's one of my pet hates:

When in a campaign they transfer your fighter (or your squad) to a Deimos corvette, conveniently leaving out that the Deimos doesn't have a fighterbay.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Dragon on November 09, 2009, 05:48:03 pm
I agree with you on this one, people should be using user-made carriers instead of corvettes for this, or find a corvette with fighterbay (not that difficult as it might seem).
Even FS1 did something like that, by establishing Taranis as a main Shivan ship at the beggining of the campaign, though this can also be explained by fighters coming from Lucifer (which obviously was close behind Taranis, just avoiding detection until attack on Tombaugh). Also, there's an indication in table comments that Cain had a fighterbay at some point of FS1 development. The other thing I find annoying are infinite waves of fighters coming from ship's fighterbay, Hecate have 150 combat spacecraft aboard, counting fighters and bombers. This gives about 12 fighters for each class, if a ship carries all classes of GTVA fighter in similar quantity. So there's no way that it could launch 50 superiority fighters of single class. Again, this happens both in user-made campaigns and in canon :v: campaigns.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Nuclear1 on November 09, 2009, 08:50:12 pm
Here's one of my pet hates:

When in a campaign they transfer your fighter (or your squad) to a Deimos corvette, conveniently leaving out that the Deimos doesn't have a fighterbay.

Yeah, guilty of that one...
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: headdie on November 10, 2009, 05:42:05 am
i believe at the point of FS alpha cruisers in FS were going to have a small fighter complement and the player was going to be based off the cruiser eventually named the Orff so the Taranis reference could have been a hold over from then
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Paladin327 on November 10, 2009, 09:56:37 pm
just because the game tells us they cant make the prometeus without Sol or the nebula doesnt mean argon is rare. durring reconstruction, argon production could have been strained while most of the argon produced is needed somewhere else for some other use, while cannon productiongoes on the back burner. it is conceivable that some cannons were phased out ecause there was little need for them.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Scotty on November 10, 2009, 10:07:16 pm
Out of curiosity, how many dock points does a Deimos have?
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Hades on November 10, 2009, 11:12:18 pm
Out of curiosity, how many dock points does a Deimos have?
It has two, one on the left, and one on the right.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Kosh on November 11, 2009, 08:09:44 am
i believe at the point of FS alpha cruisers in FS were going to have a small fighter complement and the player was going to be based off the cruiser eventually named the Orff so the Taranis reference could have been a hold over from then

Well perhaps the way around this in the campaign is to make your squadron attatched to a cruiser or corvette. This way they can routinely involve it, even though you aren't actually taking off/landing from/on it. Derelict did this with the GTC Lonewolf, and I think the Lightning Marshal did it with the Actium.

You know come to think of it in FS1 we very seldom encountered any GTA or PVN cruisers. Most of the time if there was a cruiser, it was either HoL or Shivan. I don't remember a single instance where we ever saw a Leviathan, and only during 2 missions did we ever actually see a Fenris. Fact is we saw the Galatea more often than we saw any GTA cruisers. Thankfully FS2 did a much better job of utilizing capital ships.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Dragon on November 11, 2009, 07:03:43 pm
But in FS1, the fact that you didn't encouncered much capital ships increased the feeling that every one of them meant something.
If there was an assault on a cruiser, it was a serious business. In FS2 on the other hand, cruisers were going down like flies, without the slightest regard from the command, even though you just killed over 1000 people. FS1 was more realistic about it's capital ship handling and while FS2 had more of them, none of them but two (excluding the unique ones such as Iceni, Sathanas was also unique until very late in the game) felt really important. Even destroyers were threated that way. On a side note, that's another thing I dislike in user-made campaigns, an Orion takes few years to build, so command (both NTF and GTVA, also Shivans shouldn't waste their Demons ad Ravanas) should threat them more carefully. Just compare SD Eva and SD Ravana, how long you were threatened by the former and how quickly GTVA got rid of the latter. And Ravana was more advanced and better armed then Eva. Also, look at the number of Shivan destroyers encouncered during each game, FS1 had 2 (3 if you count Lucifer, but it was in fact much more than a destroyer) and FS2 had 6. That's three times of FS1 compliment of normal destroyers.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Droid803 on November 11, 2009, 07:43:48 pm
FS2 did involve a whole lot more Shivans, though...I mean, 80 Saths...who knows how many Ravanas and Demons they have just lying around. Maybe they don't even need to conserve their ships, unlike in FS1 where the Shivans did have quite limited numbers (1 Lucifer, 2-4 Demons (depending if you count the multiplayer missions)...

It's very likely that the SD Ravana meant little to none to the FS2 Shivans. I mean, even the first SJ Sathanas they lost is pretty insignificant compared to the 80+ they still had.

FS1 takes place during the closing days of a 14-year long war. Resources are thin, noone is willing to lose even a cruiser. In FS2, the NTF Rebellion has only been going for less than a year. At that point, GTVA Command may be more interested in finishing them quickly or whatever (and the NTF not really give them the liberty of conserving their craft - the NTF just attack with everything they got, and their retreats are really sloppy so its easy to pick off their ships).

SO in FS2, you have both enemies who really don't employ the same strategies as the PVN and FS1 Shivans. In FS1, there was much fewer resources available to put to battle, as a result, major engagements were fewer, and smaller, and sides didn't devote as many ships. In FS2, both the NTF and the Shivans (and to an extent, the renegade Vasudans) don't really have much regard for their own ships, so they just throw them at each other and try to overwhelm each other. The GTVA had to react accordingly, or they would have just gotten flattened by en-masse attacks.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Mongoose on November 11, 2009, 08:37:32 pm
From what we see in FS2, the Terran and Vasudan fleets seem to have expanded significantly from their levels during FS1.  Couple that with the fact that beam weaponry enables their destruction much more swiftly and easily, and I could see how Command would view the loss of a single asset as being somewhat less crucial.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Goober5000 on November 11, 2009, 10:14:40 pm
You know come to think of it in FS1 we very seldom encountered any GTA or PVN cruisers. Most of the time if there was a cruiser, it was either HoL or Shivan. I don't remember a single instance where we ever saw a Leviathan, and only during 2 missions did we ever actually see a Fenris.
Grep to the rescue!

These are all the allied cruisers in FS1/ST single player:

FS1:
GTC Neptune (Leviathan) - Training 4
GTC Orff (Fenris) - Eve of Destruction, Small Deadly Space
GTC Ravage (Fenris) - The Big Bang
PVC Mecross - Exodus, Last Hope

ST:
GTC Leto (Fenris) - Cloak and Dagger
GTC Iapetus (Fenris) - ditto, but destroyed before mission
GTC Python (Fenris) - ditto, but destroyed before mission
Iota 1 (Fenris) - Field of Destruction
GTC Orff (Fenris) - Secrets Revealed


These are all the Shivan destroyers in single player:

FS1:
SD Eva
SD Tantalus
SD Lucifer

FS2:
SD Ravana
SD Nebiros
SD Beleth
SD Beast

Dragon, where did you get six from?
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Kosh on November 11, 2009, 10:43:03 pm
Quote
But in FS1, the fact that you didn't encouncered much capital ships increased the feeling that every one of them meant something.


And yet we saw allied destroyers all the time. It seems to me that we should see the smaller ships more often than the big ships, but in FS1 we didn't.


Quote
Grep to the rescue!

These are all the allied cruisers in FS1/ST single player:

I didn't count training because it is training, and I didn't count silent threat because the canon version sucked so bad. I will admit I forgot about the Macross. Anyway, that only leaves us with 3 cruisers......we see more DESTROYERS than that.

PVD Pinnacle
PVD Hope
GTD Galatea
GTD Bastion

And not seen in the campaign is the GTD Minnow and the GTD Intrepid. Given that in FS1 cruisers are supposed to be the workhorses of the GTA and PVN fleets, and therefore should greatly outnumber their destroyers.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: TrashMan on November 12, 2009, 01:08:57 am
Neither did the Borg but they could regenerate their ships hulls. Fact is we don't totally know the full extent of Shivan technology.

(http://www.stevepugh.net/VTT/images/p1.jpg)

Point is - shivans were never shown or even hinted, at having any sort of hull regeneration.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Kosh on November 12, 2009, 02:23:35 am
In FS1 they didn't show or even hit they could blow up a star.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: NGTM-1R on November 12, 2009, 05:51:29 am
The GTVA has a fairly good grasp of Shivan ship design by now, though. Nothing they were presented with in design terms in FS2 surprised them the way the Lucifer's shielding or shielding in general did in FS1. The Shivans didn't present any ships in FS2 that were outside of the GTVA's context. It was the number of ships that was.

A pattern or even repetition in terms of new areas of Shivan capablity weakens the narrative. They're still the masters of shielding; they'll still have overwhelming numbers. But the next new thing they pull's not going to be in the same fields as the other two.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: TrashMan on November 12, 2009, 06:53:12 am
In FS1 they didn't show or even hit they could blow up a star.

So you're arguing that they MIGHT have it in the future?
That's not really an argument. Canonicly they don't have it and have never hinted at having it.

If a campaign is set in the future, yes, you can plop pretty much anything in there - even contradictory things. But chances are you're camapign will suck.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Dragon on November 12, 2009, 09:10:33 am
Dragon, where did you get six from?
From the FS2 Shivan ship list.
The two additional destroyers were SD Chemosh and SD Barqu, as I recall those weren't seen in-game, but just mentioned.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: TopAce on November 12, 2009, 10:22:38 am
They're in multiplayer missions.
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: Nuclear1 on November 12, 2009, 07:03:25 pm
Canonicly they don't have it and have never hinted at having it.

You mean...other than that one time they blew up a star?
Title: Re: Pet hates?
Post by: TrashMan on November 13, 2009, 03:18:09 am
I'm refering to hull regeneration.