[Moonfall-Wolf]

Hey all, just finished my first real mission in FRED2 (besides the tutorial) and I wanted to get some advice as to what is good and what is bad, so if anyone is interested in trying my mission, here it is
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=W32J2G2F
I assume this sort of topic should go in this forum, if not, i apologize and please move it accordingly.

The mission functions as a mod, although it only has one mission. I did this A) for practice, and B) I wasn't sure how voice files would pack with a single mission. Oddly, it lists about 4 campaigns on the campaign menu, but it should be the one titled "Test Mission", second from the bottom (there are two with the same name, I don't know why, I had to write the campaign script in notepad so I probably messed up.)

Also, I appologize for my abysmal voice acting, feel free to mute it 
It you have voices on and the Lancer goes down, the resulting sound is VERY loud, so, fair warning.

Anyway, give me your honest opinion about the mission, I went for getting as many mechanics as I could without using any actual plot.

[LordPomposity]

Decent first mission. Good use of dialog and directives throughout the mission. Mission balance was alright, but a bit on the easy side. You also didn't have a fleet of Colossuses, which puts you ahead of the vast majority of first-time mission designers. Now for the problems, which I'm going to harp on because that's what's helpful:

- The biggest problem: lack of use of the y-axis. Use it.
- The loadout. We're taking down a pair of Fenrises. We don't need five hundred cyclopses. We also don't need the dogfight subach, because we can't use it. I also wonder if some of the ease with which I completed this mission had something to do with the loadout; did you balance it around the player having access to the Ares, Erinyes, Trebuchet, and Maxim?
- Background. In the background editor, type "starfield.pof" (without the quotes) in the skybox field. Do this for every mission unless you're using a different skybox.
- Some of the text was in need of a spellcheck.
- When you give the jump directive, put the Alt-J in the "directive keypress text" box.
- The player is rammed by one of his wingmen two seconds into the mission. Place ships so as to avoid this.
- The debriefing did not account for all contingencies; the player receives a success debriefing if he jumps out at the beginning of the mission. In future missions, set an event that becomes true twenty seconds into the mission. Now create a debriefing stage that is only displayed if that event is false. The text of this stage should be: "You're one of those pricks who hits Alt-J at the start of every mission he downloads to see if there's an AWOL debriefing, aren't you?"

Bottom line, you made a simple but stable and fun mission with no game-breaking ****ups that I detected in one playthrough. I might look at the FRED file later and comment more.

[bigchunk1]

Pretty decent first mission. Voice didn't work for me for some reason,

Liked:
Pretty decent first mission. I can tell you carefully planned out the events/objectives which would take place and executed them in mission with a fair amount of control. Control is important in mission design because it gives the player a more purposeful experience. Good job keeping the purpose of your mission focused.

I like the AWACS mechanic. I had to stick my neck out a bit in the beginning to get that ship which made me vulnerable to beam fire. Sort of an interesting dilemma.

Potential Improvements:
Retail backgrounds (stars) are somewhat plain looking. You can easily enhance a background by opening the backgrounds editor and typing starfield.pof in the text field at the bottom right. You should see the background change in FRED. Consider enlarging the background bitmaps, or adding more background bitmaps. Later down the road, if and when you start modding, consider making/adding custom skyboxes. They are so so pretty.

Also, and this is very important, make use of the Y-Axis when placing ships (click the letter Y in the top tool tip when FRED is open). This allows you to make better use of your mission space and allows for a greater sense of atmosphere. You can get a sense of the distance between ships by clicking view -> 'show distances' at the top of FRED.

Everything seemed to happen somewhat quickly and the mission was kind of short. I have trouble with this myself. Perhaps space units out and give things more time to develop. Not too bad though, the pace was decent.

Overall:
Good first mission: clean objectives, decent action and understandable plot. You have potential at FREDing, a skill which is essential for building campaigns/mods. Keep at it and you will surely make something cool.   

[LordPomposity]

On re-reading, the positive parts of my post came across as damning with faint praise. That wasn't the intent. Like chunk says, you've definitely got potential. Keep it up. 

As for multiple instances of the campaign appearing in the campaign room, I'm guessing that occurred because you had copies in both your core data folder and the mod folder. I only had one instance appear, so it's not a problem in the download.

[Moonfall-Wolf]

- The loadout. We're taking down a pair of Fenrises. We don't need five hundred cyclopses. We also don't need the dogfight subach, because we can't use it. I also wonder if some of the ease with which I completed this mission had something to do with the loadout; did you balance it around the player having access to the Ares, Erinyes, Trebuchet, and Maxim?

- Some of the text was in need of a spellcheck.

1: Nope, I figured the player would do his job and take out the fighters as apposed to stealing the cruisers kills and faffing about with those Fenris =p               But we all know how well that works out.
anyway, how would one balance the mission for those? I figured "heres a mission, do what command says however you want to"
I mean, bigger distances would make it harder for a slower fighter, but other than that, how do you balance? oh, and perhaps not having the AWACS in range of Maxim at the start.
I also included those weapons because I am fond of abusing the Maxim-Circe combo on fighters 

2: My spellcheck lied to me =O