[Kestrellius]

This is the mission I was talking about in the other thread. It's still a work in progress, and not especially functional as a mission -- I've been mostly focusing on getting the flow of the battle to work.

It's a large battle set up hierarchically -- that is, there are three destroyers on each side, and they sort of pair off and engage each other. Each destroyer has several fighter wings attached to it, which respawn from its hangars and stop respawning if it gets destroyed. Cruisers and corvettes are in wings, which will respawn for three waves. I set them to attack the destroyers, which more or less works. They still tend to clump up and stay still more than I'd like, though, so we'll see.

Oh and there's nothing really interesting that happens after all three Shivan destroyers are gone. It's pretty much just cleanup after that. There's the Lucifer-class there, and I have a few plans for it, but I haven't implemented them yet, so right now it's just a big target.

Anyway. Like I said, it's unfinished, but I wanted to post this before I went to sleep. So, if anybody wants to give it a try and give me their thoughts/tell me all the dumb noob mistakes I made, it'd be greatly appreciated.

Thanks! 

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[mjn.mixael]

What mod, if any, does it require?

[Kestrellius]

It shouldn't need any. Just FSO.

Sorry, I should have remembered to mention that.

[Lepanto]

First of all, congrats for trying your hand at FRED. It's a skill this community needs, but a hard one to sit down and master. FREDding a good mission can be overwhemingly complex at first. But you'll learn by experience and feedback. So you've made a good first step.


Now, about the mission itself:

-You need to give the player a specific goal during each phase of the mission. De-beam warships, dogfight to clear the airspace, shoot down bombers, etc. Ideally, your mission will be split into phases, each defined by a specific goal you have to complete. That way, the player knows exactly what they need to do, and get a new objective once they've finished the last one. Think retail mission structure; you always had directives telling you what to do at every point.

This mission has no goals, besides blow up destroyers (a task you don't have the bombs for, and therefore can't complete). Think of ways the player can affect the ongoing battle, and give them directives to match.

-Why is the player forced into flying a Ptah? If you want the player to fly a wimpy stealth fighter, give them goals that reward stealth (scan enemy ship X, get from point A to point B without being attacked by enemy fighters, etc.) For your first mission, you'd probably do best to avoid complex stealth gameplay, so give the player a more powerful fighter or bomber. Better yet, give the player a lot of ships to choose from in the Loadout screen, unless your mission is designed around the player using a specific ship.

-The Ravanas have their beams forward, and so won't keep them in arc if you just give them a basic Attack order (which makes them circle around the ship they're attacking). Pro-level missions give capships an elaborate choreography of waypoints to move through, to simulate the captains maneuvering their ships to bring weapons to bear. For right now, you might just want to swap the Ravanas out for Demons, which have broadside beams and won't turn out of their own firing arcs.

-Obvious Shivan warship name references are obvious.


TBH, you might want to try a smaller-scale mission before making huge epic battles like this. The more complex you make the mission, the harder it gets to keep it orderly and fun.

----
Hope I didn't crush your FREDding spirit. Practice makes perfect!

[Kestrellius]

-Why is the player forced into flying a Ptah? If you want the player to fly a wimpy stealth fighter, give them goals that reward stealth (scan enemy ship X, get from point A to point B without being attacked by enemy fighters, etc.) For your first mission, you'd probably do best to avoid complex stealth gameplay, so give the player a more powerful fighter or bomber. Better yet, give the player a lot of ships to choose from in the Loadout screen, unless your mission is designed around the player using a specific ship.

...you should have been able to choose from the whole Vasudan fighter lineup. Did I check scramble by accident or something? I've just been using the Ptah for observation and testing because it's my favorite (Vasudan) fighter in general, and also it helps that you can't get targeted by the warships.

-You need to give the player a specific goal during each phase of the mission. De-beam warships, dogfight to clear the airspace, shoot down bombers, etc. Ideally, your mission will be split into phases, each defined by a specific goal you have to complete. That way, the player knows exactly what they need to do, and get a new objective once they've finished the last one. Think retail mission structure; you always had directives telling you what to do at every point.

This mission has no goals, besides blow up destroyers (a task you don't have the bombs for, and therefore can't complete). Think of ways the player can affect the ongoing battle, and give them directives to match.

Yeah, the objectives thing is definitely an issue. So far my goal has just been to create a battle framework that I would then create a mission "within", if that makes sense. The nature of the mission itself...well, as it is, you can sort of play it as an RTS, using wingman commands as your main weapon. Also, I need to work on giving the fighters more specific goals -- right now most of them are just told to attack any ship.

I think what I sort of have in mind is this: the player's initial objective is to maintain space superiority in order to aid the attack on Israfel. Escorting the bombers, basically, and possibly debeaming the destroyer so it can't do too much damage to the fleet. The player's job would basically be to stick close to the Psamtik (which I need to rename if I decide to give this mission an actual plot, because it would be post-Capella) and Israfel and keep the enemy busy until the bombers and cap ships have taken out the Israfel. The issue is whether the player will be able to have sufficient influence on the battle in that role. Maybe I could have the Israfel launch certain specific wings, like more bombers to attack the Psamtik or fighters to engage the player, when its health reaches certain points? That might help with the sense of progress.

-The Ravanas have their beams forward, and so won't keep them in arc if you just give them a basic Attack order (which makes them circle around the ship they're attacking). Pro-level missions give capships an elaborate choreography of waypoints to move through, to simulate the captains maneuvering their ships to bring weapons to bear. For right now, you might just want to swap the Ravanas out for Demons, which have broadside beams and won't turn out of their own firing arcs.

I'll keep it in mind. I'm sort of okay with the Ravanas not operating at maximum efficiency, because LReds are kind of prohibitively difficult to deal with because they just do so much damage. I could change them to Demons, but Demons are really ugly. (Actually I was planning to switch the Israfel to a Ravana, and one of the Ravanas to a Demon. No need to have that non-HTL'd model front and center.) In fact, the whole Shivan destroyer lineup is kind of terrible. Their only big ship that isn't hideous is the Sathanas, which is...not really something you can easily use in a battle like this. Maybe I should look into modded destroyers.

-Obvious Shivan warship name references are obvious.

 

TBH, you might want to try a smaller-scale mission before making huge epic battles like this. The more complex you make the mission, the harder it gets to keep it orderly and fun.

For what it's worth, this was basically just me going "oh hey I'm gonna screw around in FRED today", rather than actually deciding to start a project. I know that's a terrible excuse for simultaneously being overambitious and halfassing it, but, you know.

Hope I didn't crush your FREDding spirit. Practice makes perfect!

Not at all. Thanks for the feedback!

[Colonol Dekker]

The Fred tutorial document that should come with retail has a quite nifty set of walkthrough tutorials on making a fleshed out mission with briefing and directives etc.

[Kestrellius]

I'm in town on my laptop right now, so I can't work on the mission, but I'll probably post an updated version sometime tonight.

I have sort of a plot in mind, that should probably have a few preliminary missions before this one. The premise is basically that the GTVA finds an alien ship in distress at an uncharted node, and finds out that there's another species that's been at war with the Shivans, and their homeworld is under bombardment by a Lucifer-class. And they try to use ETAK to communicate with them, and then a bunch of weird stuff happens. The upshot is that the Shivans start talking back, but saying things that don't make any sense, so you're in this battle and the whole time the Lucifer is shouting terrifying crazybabble at you.

Should be fun.

Anyway yeah. I expect I'll be working on the mission tonight, but I also have to do some writing. And read Shadows of Self and Bands of Mourning.