Well 2 nights later but I finally got some free time to play it.
Well I had fun playing but there are a few things that need fixing.
1. In section 3 of the mission brief the text below one of the icons was partially offscreen. I know it's just a little thing but it's the little things that make your mission look professional
2. The Damocles isn't on your escort list at the start of the mission. There's no good reason it shouldn't be. Make sure it has a higher priority than the cruisers too since it is the main reason for the mission after all.
3. Alpha wing will quite happily sit still where they start, about 4km from the enemy. Any reason for this? If not give them a waypoint to head towards (with a low priority) and cancel the order once the fighting begins.
4. The last couple of wings of bombers jump in and engage the fighters leaving the Actium alone. It would probably be better to have them attack the Actium even if only half-heartedly cause thanks to the fact that you've given them piranhas they are quite lethal. It might be an idea to swap around some of the attackers so that the bomber waves have some fighter cover.
5. I felt the first half of the mission a little too easy and the second half a little to hard. Maybe it's cause I nearly got run over by the Actium both times I played the mission but cause I was so close to it the enemy ships were killed by it before I could do more than fire off a few shots. The NTF cruisers died very quickly too. Maybe starting the Actium further back might help with that a little.
Okay. That's what I noticed in the mission. Lets open it up and take a look at it in FRED.
6. As far as I can see there's no actual way to fail the mission short of dying. Making the Actium a target and making the missions success dependant on it's survival would help a little.
7. The Debriefing need a message for if you jump out without permission to do so.
8. There is no return to base directive. Chain one to your return to base event.
9. Your last message need a better name than
Since you named all the others I'll assume this was an oversight.
10. There's no use of the Y-axis in the mission. Have some of the enemy come in on that axis. Or better yet move alpha 1 about so he doesn't come at the enemy from exactly the same angle the Actium does.
11. The Actium has been given the order Waypoints rather than waypoints-once. Since I'm looking at the mission in the borked version of FRED2_Open it's hard to see where you've placed the waypoints but Waypoints is used for setting up a patrol route. Waypoints-once is the better choice if you just want a ship to go to a certain location.
12. Your first event uses
when
-has-time-elapsed
--1
I doubt anyone would notice the difference if you simply used
when
-true
and had the mission chatter start as soon as the game does.
13. You have three events to trigger beam-free-alls for the Actium and two NTF cuisers. There is no need for this as they have the same triggering conditions. When you have an event like this
when
-has-arrived-delay
--1
--GTCv Actium
-beam-free-all
--GTCv Actium
you can add extra SEXP's by clicking on the the when with your right mouse and choosing add-operator to make the event look like this
when
-has-arrived-delay
--1
--GTCv Actium
-beam-free-all
--GTCv Actium
-beam-free-all
--NTC Resolute
It makes things much tidier to do things this way. That said the NTF cruisers should be beam-freed at the start of the mission to deal with the player if he just afterburns his way all the way over to them.
Okay. That should be enough to be getting on with for a while. Sorry to take so long about it.