[Goober5000]

I've thought about this from time to time ever since I began playing Freespace, and I thought it was high time I posted it.

In my opinion, the entire idea of an AWOL debriefing, as currently applied, is fundamentally flawed.  Now you may wonder why I say this, since it's number 1 on karajorma's list of common FRED mistakes and I'm an experienced FREDder who should know this.  I believe it was a good idea initially that has since become a very bad idea by way of groupthink and simple laziness.

Consider it from a military point of view.  If a friendly force is hopelessly outnumbered with no possibility of success, a retreat is the best tactical option.  "Fight to the last man" may be dramatic, but it's not rational.  It's in the best interest of the GTVA (or whoever) to preserve fighters and pilots, as it's far more economical to repair broken fighters than build new ones out of scratch.  Similarly, it takes years to train pilots, and the GTVA has a vested interest in getting them back alive, particularly ones as skilled as Alpha 1.

Now consider it from a gaming point of view.  If the player failed to respond appropriately to the mission situation or simply made a bad mistake, he might like hints on how to improve his performance the next time around.  Many players will just hit the Escape key and restart the mission.  But some players will jump out and head home, hoping for some hints in the debriefing.  The problem is that if the player didn't flat-out fail the mission, he's greeted with the AWOL debriefing, which is nearly always no help at all.  It gives a boilerplate speech which amounts to basically castigating the player for jumping out early.  This is rather insulting to the player if he was fighting for his life the entire time and only barely managed to make it home in one piece.

Before I played Freespace, I played X-Wing and TIE Fighter.  Those games had no AWOL debriefing.  If you failed the mission, whether you died or made it back safely, you always had the option to ask for help, and the officers would suggest strategy for each part of the mission.  This was a very user-friendly approach.  It might give away spoilers for the part of the mission that the player hadn't encountered yet, but if the player has failed the mission 10 times he probably doesn't care about spoilers anyway.

So why was it used in Freespace?  It started out in FS2 (notice that it wasn't used in FS1) as something that would be standard from mission to mission and make the game more polished and more professional.  The problem was that people started using it as an excuse to do less work.  I've played missions that have had two debriefing stages: one for all objectives accomplished, and one for AWOL.  And since the AWOL stage is cut-and-paste from the main Freespace 2 campaign, it doesn't provide recommendations.  Since FREDders are constantly reminded to account for every possible mission outcome in the debriefing, they use the provided AWOL debriefing as a solution that's already available, even though it's not a good solution.  Take a look at the user-created FS1 missions and compare them with the user-created FS2 missions.  The FS1 missions had varied, often imaginative ways of dealing with incomplete outcomes.  But the FS2 missions all use the standard boilerplate.

In my opinion, the AWOL stage should be used only if the player departs without engaging anything.  If the player has engaged, we should assume he's made a good faith effort to complete the mission and simply needs help.  If the objective is to destroy an enemy warship, the mission is a success if the warship is destroyed and a failure if the warship escapes.  But suppose the player is getting pounded by flak and has to return early.  He should be greeted with a debriefing like this:

The SD Wormwood offered significantly more resistance than we expected.  We failed to destroy it and the Shivans continue to maintain control over this sector.  Fortunately, we were able to recover most of our bombers, which means this operation was not a total loss.  Once our reinforcements arrive, we will make a second attempt.

The Wormwood has a strong defensive screen of fighter beams and flak turrets, making bombing runs difficult.  Using Trebuchets to take out turrets from long range will make your job much easier.

Now isn't that better?

[CP5670]

This an issue I also thought about a bit some years ago and what I usually do in my missions is to check the player's hull strength a few seconds after the jump key is pressed (for the last time) to determine whether a general failure debriefing or a custom AWOL debriefing is to be used. I can definitely see where you are coming from regarding the gameplay, since you only get the advice in the debriefing and not if you die.

Actually, it might be useful to add a feature where you can specify recommendations to be given on the death screen itself. I think this itself would solve the main problem here.

Of course, the enemy fighters almost always fight to the end even in totally hopeless (for them) situations, so Command will probably say that there is no reason you should not be a man and do the same.

[Blaise Russel]

Seems fairly work-intensive for minimal gain. As you point out, most people play to destruction, either winning, losing or dying.

It's like how nobody ever plays the mission in Derelict where the Valhalla is ambushed by the Cthon and Azathoth, because they all made sure they completed the previous mission properly instead of failing it. The feature may never be seen because players either decide to save a few minutes and restart or are stubborn and keep on playing until they die.

Also: surely the advice can only be of so much use to FS players? If you've played the main campaign, you ought to *know* that taking out turrets, particularly beam turrets, and especially with long-range Trebuchets or at least a pair of Cyclops bombs, is the best way to neutralise a capital ship. The main Freespace 2 campaign is generally the first campaign to play for people new to FS2; user missions come after the player has completed and acquired skill in the game.

[Mongoose]

I like where you're going, Goober; it would add a significant element of realism to missions.  Real war does involve retreating to preserve one's assets (and life, for that matter), and no real commander would call a soldier a traitor for running from the battle after being shot in the arm (GTVA Command being the obvious exception ).  A creative campaign designer could actually work AWOL situations into their campaign.  Say, for example, that you're part of a task force charged with taking out a Shivan cruiser wing, but you're all but torn to pieces and barely manage to escape.  Instead of being forced to replay the mission, you can move on, but the cruisers you were trying to kill will make an appearance in the next mission or two.  I'm sure that some of you creative people out there can think of far better examples than that, but you catch my drift.

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by Blaise Russel
Also: surely the advice can only be of so much use to FS players? If you've played the main campaign, you ought to *know* that taking out turrets, particularly beam turrets, and especially with long-range Trebuchets or at least a pair of Cyclops bombs, is the best way to neutralise a capital ship. The main Freespace 2 campaign is generally the first campaign to play for people new to FS2; user missions come after the player has completed and acquired skill in the game.

Perhaps, but that doesn't necessarily mean they've gotten the tactical knowhow that comes with experience.  As an example, the first campaign I played after the main FS2 campaign was Derelict.  At the time I thought the campaign was incredibly difficult because I wasn't used to the FS2 tactics.  I still hadn't realized the potential of the Maxim and Trebuchet, so when I played the mission where you capture the MTD Auriga, I had to disarm the Aeolus the hard way and got myself down to 30% hull in the process.  Of course, the bulk of the mission takes place afterwards, so I hadn't really failed yet.  I ended up having to cheat my way through the mission.  When I played Derelict for the second time only a few months ago, I couldn't believe I had had such a hard time with it before.

And that was a simple example.  The recommendations could also provide clues to more subtle things about the mission, such as which targets to prioritize if you keep getting swarmed by fighters.

Originally posted by Mongoose
A creative campaign designer could actually work AWOL situations into their campaign.

True.  That happened in FS1; in the capture the Dragon mission, for example, you can advance by simply calling in Delta wing and then leaving.  You get penalized, though.

[Kie99]

Originally posted by Goober5000
That happened in FS1; in the capture the Dragon mission, for example, you can advance by simply calling in Delta wing and then leaving.

WHAT?!  I spent ages trying to complete that bloody mission, and all I had to do was call in Delta wing?!

Suppose it might have made me a better pilot...

On Topic:
Most players will fight to the death, it's a lot of work for something that will hardly ever be used.

[T-Man]

I really like Goober's idea here, but i also understand the arguments against it. Such a concept may sound uneeded, but could be very useful if the campaign it is used in is currectly structured. This idea could open up a completly new dimension in realisim and decision making (FACT: It was partly the ability to make game-changing decisions that made Wing Commander so famous!). Its certainly worthy of consideration.

[Solitaire]

If for some reason the player chooses to jump before even engaging, you could give them the benefit of the doubt: "While the cause of Alpha 1's mysterious jump drive malfunction has not yet been found, it is imperative that we do not let this minor setback interfere with the present operation, so we have prepared a spare fighter to allow Alpha 1 to rejoin the mission immediately. Good luck pilot."

I agree, there should be checks run on mission status if the player bugs out early and more context-sensitve debriefs given, but it is entirely the responsibility of the FREDder to decide how far to take the process, typing out 15 A4-size pages of text to cover every single possible situation debrief AND add the set of checks to find the right debrief for the job could be pretty hard on a small mod team dealing with a 40-mission campaign...  

Being a newb, I'm not sure whether its already possible, or whether you'd have to beg the SCP team to try and add the feature, but it would be nice to make missions vary more by getting the success/failure of certain objectives to set flags in the pilot file which subsequent missions could check and the presence of certain flags could change the mission slightly. Fail to kill certain targets during a preemptive strike and they could turn up to reinforce the enemy fleet a mission or two later. You could even throw in some balancing to make sure the missions don't just get harder and harder for less experienced pilots - an earlier bungle could accidentally change the situation for the better later, or a pilot who methodically nails every hostile and grabs every bonus objective and medal may find their wing or even fleet compromised when the enemy gets annoyed/desperate and sends more and bigger fleet ships to counter, or takes a very special interest in Alpha 1 and lobs in the odd extra hunter-killer wing or reinforces anything they feel Alpha 1 may threaten because Alpha 1 is proving a much greater threat/force multiplier.

Then again, that option could make mission scripts unneccessarily messy and complex...

[CP5670]

To the people saying that most players fight to the death, training messages can be used to get people acquainted with gameplay changes like this. For example, I used the support ships repair hull feature and put the cap at 60% in my campaign, so when the player's strength first fell bellow that amount, it displayed a note about this (and set a flag so it wouldn't keep showing every time). This could probably be done in a similar way; if the strength falls below a certain level, a training message could be displayed telling the player that it's possible to return home and get advice.

[karajorma]

I'm afraid I'm going to have to come down in favour of AWOL Debriefings I'm afraid. Yes they're a simplification but I find them more sensible than the alternatives you've mentioned here.

Originally posted by Goober5000
Consider it from a military point of view.  If a friendly force is hopelessly outnumbered with no possibility of success, a retreat is the best tactical option.  "Fight to the last man" may be dramatic, but it's not rational.  It's in the best interest of the GTVA (or whoever) to preserve fighters and pilots, as it's far more economical to repair broken fighters than build new ones out of scratch.  Similarly, it takes years to train pilots, and the GTVA has a vested interest in getting them back alive, particularly ones as skilled as Alpha 1.

I agree with all that but except for the mission Lions Den, Command has always been in contact with Alpha wing and is always fully aware of what the situation is. The decsion to withdraw would never belong to Alpha 1. We rarely face a mission where Alpha 1 is in fact in charge of the situation. The only time where it is up to Alpha Wing to decide to withdraw is in Lions Den and [V] took great pains to set up the mission so that the 15 minute recharge time for Alpha's engines were actually in charge instead of the player's whims.
 So since from a military point of view Alpha must always wait for Command to issue him with orders (or at least an option) to retreat, the error is not with the AWOL debrief but in the mission itself for not offering the player the option to retreat if he wishes to.

However offering the player the option would hugely complicate mission logic and even as someone who likes to design very complicated missions I would baulk at the idea of having to write every single event and message in my missions with an eye to whether Alpha had been given the option to RTB or not.

Originally posted by Goober5000
Now consider it from a gaming point of view.  If the player failed to respond appropriately to the mission situation or simply made a bad mistake, he might like hints on how to improve his performance the next time around.

I actually hate reccomendations far more than you hate AWOL Debriefings as they are now. I feel that many times they destroy the immersion of the game. Reccomendations should always be presented as suggestions for what the PC should have done. Quite often they are presented as what the player should do. If we're talking about reality in debriefings lets not have the admiral talking to the pilot as if he expects him to be able to leap into a time machine and rewrite history.

Getting back to the subject however I tend to feel that if the player needs the reccomendations at all then the mission isn't properly designed. All the information the player needs to solve the mission first time should be present in the mission briefings or in-game messages. If the player hasn't brought trebs a fellow pilot moaning about his stupidity in not loading up with them is far more immersive than a spooky red voice from beyond advising him that he should have brought them.

Reccomendations should exist solely to suggest ways that the player can improve his standing in the mission if he has already failed (or in some cases partially completed the mission), not as a way to leap out early and gain insights into how the mission works from a mysterious oracle who knows everything.

Originally posted by Goober5000
If you failed the mission, whether you died or made it back safely, you always had the option to ask for help, and the officers would suggest strategy for each part of the mission.  This was a very user-friendly approach.  It might give away spoilers for the part of the mission that the player hadn't encountered yet, but if the player has failed the mission 10 times he probably doesn't care about spoilers anyway.

But who's saying anything about the player having failed 10 times? The way you're suggesting would result in the player having the reccomendations available if the player shot one enemy fighter and then jumped out. You'd get a lot of players recieving spoilers about events that they hadn't seen yet.
 On top of that many players use the option to jump out as a way to get back to the briefing screen to change weapon loadout. These players would now be subjected to actual information about the mission instead of the boilerplate AWOL message you're on about.

Originally posted by Goober5000
I've played missions that have had two debriefing stages: one for all objectives accomplished, and one for AWOL.

You can bet that I come down almost as hard on that as I do on no AWOL when I see it in FA missions. It's basically the same problem with a different spin on it. A lack of thought into other possible outcomes for the mission as you say.

Originally posted by Goober5000
Take a look at the user-created FS1 missions and compare them with the user-created FS2 missions.  The FS1 missions had varied, often imaginative ways of dealing with incomplete outcomes.  But the FS2 missions all use the standard boilerplate.

Mine don't. Last mission I wrote had 4 seperate AWOL debriefings depending on what had happened in the mission so far, all of which had reccomendations (I hate them but everyone else expects them so they're there).
 I'd be surprised if other top 10 FREDders weren't doing something different to a single monolithic AWOL debrief.

Originally posted by Goober5000
In my opinion, the AWOL stage should be used only if the player departs without engaging anything.  If the player has engaged, we should assume he's made a good faith effort to complete the mission and simply needs help.

And in my opinion if he needs the Debrief to help him the mission is poorly designed and we should concentrate our efforts on improvng that. The player shouldn't have to fail the mission to be warned that the enemy bombers are concentrating on a single warship. That warship should be screaming that fact out during the mission!

Originally posted by Mongoose
I like where you're going, Goober; it would add a significant element of realism to missions.  Real war does involve retreating to preserve one's assets (and life, for that matter), and no real commander would call a soldier a traitor for running from the battle after being shot in the arm (GTVA Command being the obvious exception ).  A creative campaign designer could actually work AWOL situations into their campaign.  Say, for example, that you're part of a task force charged with taking out a Shivan cruiser wing, but you're all but torn to pieces and barely manage to escape.  Instead of being forced to replay the mission, you can move on, but the cruisers you were trying to kill will make an appearance in the next mission or two.  I'm sure that some of you creative people out there can think of far better examples than that, but you catch my drift.

Thing is that what you're suggesting isn't actually very much to do with what Goober was on about. If the designer chooses to plan the mission with such occurances possible then the debriefings will also take that possibility into account.

Goober is talking about situations where the AWOL debriefing isn't triggered but the player still fails the mission and has to replay it.

Originally posted by Solitaire
Being a newb, I'm not sure whether its already possible, or whether you'd have to beg the SCP team to try and add the feature, but it would be nice to make missions vary more by getting the success/failure of certain objectives to set flags in the pilot file which subsequent missions could check and the presence of certain flags could change the mission slightly.

Read the section on persistent variables in my FAQ if you're a FREDder. It's possible but no campaign released so far has used it as far as I know.

In fact AFAIK only myself and IP Andews are actually using them (Although it's a fair bet that Goober is too since he coded them in the first place).

[Solitaire]

And in my opinion if he needs the Debrief to help him the mission is poorly designed and we should concentrate our efforts on improvng that. The player shouldn't have to fail the mission to be warned that the enemy bombers are concentrating on a single warship. That warship should be screaming that fact out during the mission!

VERY good point actually! If Alpha 1 is supposed to follow orders like a happy little worker drone then the designer should (within reason) spell it out for them. I know that if I was captain of a destroyer getting kicked I'd tell the comms officer to tell Alpha Wing to get moving and remove the source of the threat pronto, its not exactly in the captain's best interest to fail to communicate the problem to whoever can fix it as its the captain who's liable to be sucking vacuum if Alpha botches it! Realistic missions need realistic ship/crew behavior, maybe a civilian ship would panic, MAYBE, but not the crew of a military capital ship!

In any case I think that the debriefs should be context-sensitive but still realistic and NOT a mission walkthrough... maybe an oblique pointer left in the Recommendations and even then mostly to let on that there is something more subtle that needs to be prioritised rather than the usual/obvious solution (which was probably done the first time anyway, resulting in the failure..)

[Nuclear1]

Excellent article, Goob. This should go in kara's FAQ once the Opinion section goes up.

[TrashMan]

I usually make a lot of debrief stages for each event, but i never do the AWOL one.

Why? becosue it he player jumps out instantly he won't complete the objectives and the mission will be faield.

Granted, I do try to work in a few things you don't have to do - like destroying a specific ship (secondary objective) that will pop up later in some other mission if you don't tag him.. and I was even thinking of making a bit more complex mission tree with several possible endings, but I'll leave such consumng considerations for my later projects..Simplicity for now

[CP5670]

The way I see it, the recommendations are more useful for informing players of relevant gameplay changes made in modified tables (that the player probably didn't notice) rather than giving obvious suggestions.

In fact AFAIK only myself and IP Andews are actually using them (Although it's a fair bet that Goober is too since he coded them in the first place).

I actually used one of those in one situation, the thing I described earlier, but never found any use apart from that.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by nuclear1
Excellent article, Goob. This should go in kara's FAQ once the Opinion section goes up.

Not my opinion though so it won't

Not unless Goob can convince me I'm wrong at least

[Axem]

I agree with Goober in that there are situations where you would want to go home early. Lucky shot took out sensors, hull at 4%, 5 wings just arrived. Command should have reinforcements ready incase I either die or need to retreat.

[size=-2]Speaking of which, why doesn't the good guys send replacement wings?[/size]

Or how about you leave 5 seconds before an RTB order came and then poof, you have to redo the mission?

Unfair? Yeah. Would that happen in real life? That's the problem. There's no human judgement to decide that here. You need to identify each and every possibility Alpha 1 can leave and what he has done, and if he should be allowed to leave.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by TrashMan
I usually make a lot of debrief stages for each event, but i never do the AWOL one.

Why? becosue it he player jumps out instantly he won't complete the objectives and the mission will be faield.

Obviously your mission design style is different from mine but if that works for you go ahead with it.

Personally I hate to see the player getting information on events he wasn't present to see and unless you're doing two versions of each debriefing stage dependant on whether or not the player was there to personally witness the events I can't see how you'd avoid doing that.

Now if you don't care about that then so be it but it's something I personally hate and I try my hardest to never let it occur in my missions.

Originally posted by Axem
[size=-2]Speaking of which, why doesn't the good guys send replacement wings?[/size]

Quite simply it's a gameplay consideration. The game would be no fun if numbers were equal. That's why even pirates outnumber the GTVA.

Originally posted by Axem
Or how about you leave 5 seconds before an RTB order came and then poof, you have to redo the mission?

Poor mission design again. Nothing to do with the AWOL debrief at all. The situation could just as easily be applied to the All Enemies Dead Event or whatever that confirms that all the enemy fighters have been destroyed allowing your primary goal to be complete.
 If anything I'd say that AWOL debriefings prevent that sort of thing from happening more often. Thanks to them most of us wait until the RTB directive actually appears before we jump out. Without them we'd see that kind of cock up more often not less.  

Originally posted by Axem
Unfair? Yeah. Would that happen in real life? That's the problem. There's no human judgement to decide that here. You need to identify each and every possibility Alpha 1 can leave and what he has done, and if he should be allowed to leave.

Problem with that is that you'd need an AI computer to evaluate them all or a really long list of possibilities.

What if the player was at 5% hull but had only one enemy bomber left and 4 wingmen?
What if it was only 1?
What if the Shivan fighter was better than that 1 wingman.
What if there were 2 wingmen?
What if the ship the player was escorting could handle the enemy remaining?

It would get ridiculous very quickly if you needed to do all that for every mission.

[Culando]

Hmm, everyone seems to be making good points here. But things are never clear cut. It all depends on the context of a mission. If you're launching an attack and you retreat when almost killed, I doubt an AWOL debrief is called for. On the other hand, if you're defending ships, especially capital ships, and you fled, then an AWOL debrief would be appropriate.

As for recomendations? In most user made missions, it's hard to deal with 3 wings of bombers and fighters AND constantly check for messages coming in that you can't hear. It's hard to read messages while trying to pay attention to the battle and not die. Yes, you can always hit F4 and see the message list, but that's a moot point if you die or flee before you die. Keeping realism is important for a good mission, but it's still a video game after all.

[Roanoke]

That's why it's important to include objectives. Nothing worse than sitting around not knowing what is expected of you.

[karajorma]

Yep. Objectives and directives can go a very long way to plugging the gaps Goober mentioned in his first post.

It's worth remembering that voice synth can go a long way to preventing you missing messages too.