Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The FRED Workshop => Topic started by: crizza on July 13, 2011, 05:48:43 pm

Title: Ambush(BoE, BP, WIP)
Post by: crizza on July 13, 2011, 05:48:43 pm

So...I finally created a mission I wanted for a long time but it's still WIP...
But I hope by showing it the comunity, I can learn a few things.
The messages are not all done, ships need still proper names, team loadout must be fixed...and...hm...that's all what I've on my todo-list.
A, I still need to do something with the gates^^

ftp://nim.ni.funpic.de/Ambush.fs2 (ftp://nim.ni.funpic.de/Ambush.fs2)
I actually hope that the link works, I have trouble with my webspace-.-

Title: Re: Ambush(BoE, BP, WIP)
Post by: Moonfall-Wolf on July 14, 2011, 08:52:49 am

Sorry, couldn't get it. The website asks for an authentication username and password. I assume this means you need to have an account on that site to download it? or am I making a total fool of myself?

Title: Re: Ambush(BoE, BP, WIP)
Post by: crizza on July 14, 2011, 09:36:18 am

This means, funpic ****ed up my webspace...
Let's try it with an attachment...



[attachment deleted by ninja]

Title: Re: Ambush(BoE, BP, WIP)
Post by: Deadly in a Shadow on July 14, 2011, 01:08:23 pm

Uh, when I load the mission, it says that 4 ship classes are missing. Did you used ships that weren't originally used in BP?

EDIT: According to FRED, Spectre wing consists of Ulysses fighters which probably means they are the missing ships.

Title: Re: Ambush(BoE, BP, WIP)
Post by: crizza on July 14, 2011, 01:26:20 pm

Oh, ****, yes, they're Custos class... I just love them...damn.
But as they are just reinforcements...just don't call them in^^

Title: Re: Ambush(BoE, BP, WIP)
Post by: bigchunk1 on July 15, 2011, 05:11:07 pm

This is kind of more of a 'missions and campaigns' kind of topic but I dunno.

I downloaded and played the mission using bp multi. Loaded all but 2 assets (Hellion and HellionFAST or something)  :ick: but it worked and I was able to play through it using a recent debug build.
 

Spoiler:

Not bad for what it is. It's a BOE spamfest with shivan forces jumping in all around earth and UEF/GTVA forces reacting. You make decent use of the space, and the warship compbat seems to have some purpose.

If you wanted to improve on it, give the player something to do. As it is now, it is essentially a movie with a Sathanas jumping in and massive warships attacking it far from the player's point of entry. In the mission, I found some random manticores and started fighting them until I was told to jump out. Not too different from your average retail mission, only I did it in a Lao Tze. So give the player a more specific objective, perhaps a transport to defend or a wing of bombers to take out.

Nitpick: The 'defend the station' directive flag turns blue way too soon.

"...and Admiral Byrne has suffered a heart attack." That made me laugh. Maybe i'm sick. 

Title: Re: Ambush(BoE, BP, WIP)
Post by: crizza on July 15, 2011, 06:37:23 pm

yeah, thats weird.
The directive flag appears only if I set the directive text...complet bull****...don't know why...
The player should guard the Intrasystem gates, but as of now, I don't know how I create a mission goal, which fails if 4 of 6 gates are destroyed.
The player should guard the gates and UEI Berlin.

Title: Re: Ambush(BoE, BP, WIP)
Post by: Moonfall-Wolf on July 18, 2011, 10:10:02 am

Alright, first off, the mission played quite well. Overall it was quite fun and interesting, with good story potential. There were no individually great errors, although there were a few things that could have been done to add greater depth. Now, this isnt really my place, as you probably have more Fredding experience than me, but these are the general points.
Note: Played in "War in Heaven", this was unclear from mission name ext.

1: It was kind of unclear what the player was supposed to do, if you could make a directive perhaps saying "Defend docking rings" or designate what targets to defend, that would be nice.
2: Big one that is very easy to do. Add some music. In the events manager, use a SEXP similar to this when enemies arrive. (Change->Music and sounds-> Change-soundtrack) and choose your music from the list. This will help add depth and mood to the mission.
3: Depth of orders: It appears that every ship had only one thing in mind. Friendly forces did little unless directly ordered, (alpha just floated around near the Berlin) and enemies had little interest in defending themselves. Shivan interceptors went after the armoured docking rings as opposed to defending their cruisers, and when the rings were destroyed, the fighters went idle. Perhaps include additional orders at lower priority to make the AI more fluid. (A shivan juggernaunt slowing trying to haul itself away from a colossus without firing is kind of shallow.)
4:Ship placement: The player was a bit far from the docking rings, and Alpha wing flies off in the direction of the Zeus at start, which made my objective confusing. Also, even at missions end, the Aquitane was over 18 clicks from the zeus and did absolutely nothing to help.
5:Balance: The BP fighters are by nature far more powerful than shivan fighters, and I was able to single handedly eliminate all fighters with little trouble, using no help from team. so 2 things A: make it so all friendly ships engage enemies. B: Increase power or numbers of shivans.
6:Technical bugs: Omega and other friendlies not on wingmen list, dont know if thats fixable. Return to base order given when enemies were still present (bind it to cruisers as well as juggernaunt) Also, the objectives list says "the depot may not fall", may should be must. totally picky I know.

In the end though, it was a fun mission with great potential, these were a few points to help capitalize on that potential

As for your objective trouble, try making a mission objective that becomes true when event A (all shivans destoyed) is true, AND event B (percent-destroyed of docking rings =66  [done by objectives-> percent-ships-destroyed, then add data until the 6 rings are in the same event] is false. If the rings are destroyed, it will become impossible to win, so Freespace will automatically fail the objective. Then chain a return to base or mission end event to this for closure.