[TrashMan]

Originally posted by karajorma


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.

I never leave a player without an objective. That way he allways knows what to do and ih he jumps it won't be a AWOL debrief unless I specificly want it to.

As for hte information - the playr wasn't the only one involved and it stand to reason that the debfied that happens 10 minutes after you jumped sumarizes the whole battle, even if you werent' there for the end.

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.

Depends on how you do the missions actually.
If you set the enemies ot a rather high AI and give the player crappy weaponry 8or edit the tables so he can only carry a few misiles and must rely on primaries more), even a msall number of enemies can be a pain..especialy in the right fighter

[StratComm]

You know, to be fair, the fact that recommendations require a special button press and then show up in red pretty much yells "spoilers!" anyway.  It's not really necessary, but I like them there to know if I've missed a bonus objective or something.

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by karajorma
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.

I very much doubt this; see my main argument below.

I actually hate reccomendations [sic] far more than you hate AWOL Debriefings as they are now. I feel that many times they destroy the immersion of the game. Reccomendations [sic] 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.

But recommendations are not part of the debriefing.  In any given debriefing, the way I see it anyway, there are distinct voices: the debriefing officer and the mission designer.  The debriefing officer speaks from the perspective of the game, tells you the consequences of your actions, and maybe tells you what you should have done.  The recommendations come from the perspective of the mission designer, who is not limited by the constraints of the story and can tell the player whatever he wants.  That's why the recommendations tell the player what he should do.  That's also why the recommendations are hidden until you display them.

Getting back to the subject however I tend to feel that if the player needs the reccomendations [sic] 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.

I agree as far as that goes; but some players may need them anyhow, and if that's the case they should be there.  You seem to forget that the recommendations are hidden until you click on them. (EDIT: And see also BW's post below.)

The player never need see a single recommendation in the entire campaign, if that's what he wants.  Likewise, if he wants to spoil the mission by making a halfhearted attempt at engaging (rather than a good-faith attempt) that's his problem, not ours.  The player expects us to provide him with a mission that is appropriate for his skill level, whether it's basic or expert.  In return, we expect that the player will not abuse the recommendations system.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Removing the AWOL debriefing is not the big production that everyone seems to be making it out to be.  Just imagine the rest of the mission continues on as if the player were no longer present.  Most mission debriefings are divided up such that each debriefing stage corresponds to a major mission event.  All you have to do is print success debriefings up until the point where the player jumped out, and failure debriefings afterwards.  In most cases this is no different from a player flat-out failing the mission at that particular point and being told to RTB legitimately.

Look at Awakenings for a prime example of this, in particular the mission where you have to ensure that supplies and personnel are transferred to the GTD Iowa.  All of its debriefing stages simply checked for whether a mission objective was successful or not.  Failure merited the same consequences as incompleteness, since presumably the mission debriefing wouldn't occur until mission objectives were resolved anyhow.  The lack of an AWOL stage probably made the debriefing less complicated, since the mission designer didn't have to worry about preventing a stage from being displayed if the player was AWOL.

There's no need at all for complicated checks for whether a player's hull strength is below a certain percentage etc.  Just assume that if the player jumped out early he had a good reason for doing so.  Or alternatively, justify it on the basis that the GTVA (or whoever) will suffer the same consequences whether the player lost the mission or was just AWOL.

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by karajorma
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!

I gotta disagree with you there Kara. While you're right that any ship being pummelled ought to be complaining about it in mission, I personally think that allowing the player to use the debrief to hone his strategies actually makes a better mission, if a somewhat less immersive one.

Consider escorting a convoy with a cruiser escort. Your first idea is to just go in, trying to kill all the bombers at random as they appear. But this doesn't work because you're tryiung to fly all over the play area defending every ship. Too many ships die, you go back to the debrief, read it and you get told to concentrate on the freighters.

So, you try again, concentrating on the freighters this time. You succeed in eliminating the first wave of bombers, then a second wave comes in. You concentrate on the freighters, but the cruiser gets wiped because it's taking on Sekhmets while the freighters are taking on Bakhas. Return to base, debrief suggests you defend the cruiser after the first wave.

Eventually, maybe after three tries, you figure out the ideal strategy and make it through the mission. It's a challenge, but not fiendishly complex, and it means that players skilled enough to to be able to prioritize threats properly can be rewarded by getting a through complex mission in one go (or they can pump up the difficulty level).

Admittedly, it's not a process applicable to all missions, but personally I don't think that simply disregarding the debrief as a relevant source of mission information is any better.

[Japong]

Trashman is right - the player should *always* have an objective, and missions should hold to that right up to the final "depart" notifier from command. As long as the player still has something to do, giving him an AWOL for bugging out halfway through is no problem.

However, far, far too many missions will have the player finish the briefing objective (which can often be vague as hell, another problem) and then have the player wait for whatever the mission's surpise/plot twist is.  

If the player has to hang around after destroying the cruiser mentioned in the briefing and destroy all remaining fighters, tell him that. If he has to patrol for a while until a new capital ship comes in afterwards, make sure to tell him that he needs to wait and shouldn't leave yet.  And when it finally is time to go, don't assume he's read your mind that the mission is now done with surprise objectives - instead, tell him that the mission is over, and it's time to depart.

ALWAYS give a depart objective when you want the player to ALT-J... the more inconsistent you make it, the more likely they'll get AWOL screens by leaving accidentally and prematurely.

With all of that in mind, I don't think elaborating on the AWOL message would be that important. For a more branching, dynamic campaign it might help, but since 99% of campagins are linear there's not much point.

[StratComm]

FS1 was actually really good (or bad, depending on how you look at it) about not explicitly telling you when to depart.  FS2 did fall in to the poor mission design objectives-complete-but-depart-order-not-issued-yet trap a time or two, so going back and replaying FS1 left me waiting for the RTB objective on more than one occasion.  But yes, more often than not it is not within Alpha 1's authority to leave the field of engagement most of the time.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Goober5000
The player expects us to provide him with a mission that is appropriate for his skill level, whether it's basic or expert. In return, we expect that the player will not abuse the recommendations system.

If you were making a mission where Delta wing turn traitor would you leave them all with player orders and trust the player not to abuse the system and allow him to make them jump out before they turned bad?
 Part of good mission design lies in fixing those security holes based on the assumption that the player WILL try to cheat. We all know that FS2 players are sneaky b******s

Originally posted by Goober5000
Removing the AWOL debriefing is not the big production that everyone seems to be making it out to be.  Just imagine the rest of the mission continues on as if the player were no longer present.

Most mission debriefings are divided up such that each debriefing stage corresponds to a major mission event.  All you have to do is print success debriefings up until the point where the player jumped out, and failure debriefings afterwards.  In most cases this is no different from a player flat-out failing the mission at that particular point and being told to RTB legitimately.

I've got some really big problems with that approach though.

[LIST=1]

• I can no longer count on the fact that the player was even present for any of these events in the debriefing. So the language I have to use for the debriefing is further limited (and it was already somewhat limited by the need to stay consistant with other parts of the debriefing). I can't say that the player tried but failed to cover a ship. I can't say that the player needed to do a better job taking down enemy bombers. I can't do any of those things because it's not consistant with the fact that the player hadn't even been present for 10 minutes before that event occured.

Furthermore I  have to change my failure debriefs to take into account the fact that the player may not have seen the events that caused them. I can't simply refer to a shivan cruiser that lept in halfway through the mission because of the danger of causing a big non sequitur. Now I have to be sure that my failure debriefings make sense even if the player never saw that ship.

The more senarios a debriefing has to cover the more vague it has to get. This means that it has less impact than it would otherwise. A FREDder like me would probably get sick of the whole thing and end up having to make twice as many failure debriefs based on whether the player was AWOL or not. So I would end up doing a lot more work under this system.

• My real annoyance however is that the player is now presented with events that occured after he left the mission. I mentioned this being something I hated above but I don't think you've got the significance.

Suppose I have a mission where the player has to defend a cruiser in the first half and then has to take down a corvette that turns rogue in the second half. Following your suggestion the player can leap out early and get help with the first half of the mission but the debriefing is going to blabber to him about how the corvette went rogue, completely spoiling the surprise. Hell if you've got voice synth turned on even alt-tabbing out won't stop it spoilering you.

The rule I live by when I'm making AWOL debriefs is that the player should not have access to any events that occur after he jumps out unless they are a simple extrapolation of what was occuring at the time the player left.
  If the player is sent on a boring patrol and leaps out before the enemy jumps in he'll get an AWOL debriefing complaining about how he's not supposed to wander off sightseeing. If the enemy has appeared he'll get shouted at for fleeing when hostiles were present without orders.

• Even if you avoid the above situations by extrapolating good outcomes when they're likely and hiding plot twists you can end up with a debrief where the player has apparently won the battle and yet is unable to continue the campaign.

 After all if the player jumps out when there are just 3-4 Mara's attacking 3 Leviathans then you can be fairly sure the player has won. Of course 10 seconds later a Lilith was meant to jump in and wipe out half the fleet but seeing as how you're hiding this plot twist from the player the fleet won. So why can't I go to the next mission?
 Basically I'm getting an invisible AWOL debrief. I'm not being allowed to proceed to the next mission because I jumped out before the mission was complete but now I don't even see the AWOL message even though I'm forced to replay the mission because of it.

• Sometimes there isn't even a failure debrief you could use. Lets say that you have a mission where the player has been fighting against a Demon class and once other objectives are taken care of and the player is only facing the demon and a few fighters the Colossus is meant to leap in and deal the death blow. What debrief do you use if the player jumps out then? There isn't a simple failure debrief for the player getting to the end of the mission and seeing the colossus blown up because the designer knew that after the Colossus arrived the mission would end successfully or the player would get killed by the enemy before the Demon was destroyed. So now what do you do?

 An AWOL debrief is harsh but at least consistant. Without it though you're stuck. If the Colossus wins we're back to an invisble AWOL debrief or letting the player advance without having to fight however many wings of fighters were meant to come out of that Demon. If you want a failure you need to Deus Ex Machina up an enemy fleet to take down the colossus or force it to retreat. If this was a mission about hunting down a lone shivan destroyer it's pretty much obvious to the player that he was railroaded into playing the mission again.

• If we start saying that the player can jump out at 3% hull why can't his wingmen? Why can't capships? The PC might be valuable but he's nowhere near as valuable as a Hecate class destroyer to the GTVA. Why would they have that fight to the death but let the player escape? Either we say that everyone fights to the death silly though it may be or we start writing missions where no one does. Making a special exception for the PC just seems rather arbitrary to me.

AWOL debriefings exist to prevent a multitude of other problems I describe above creeping in. They're a little heavy handed admittedly but they prevent the player ending up with inconsistant or plain downright unbelievable debriefings like the one I described above. They're there because we have a computer deciding upon the outcome of the players actions rather than a human GM who can make allowances for what probably would have happened after the player jumped out.
 It's not perfect but it's a lot easier than adding another possible way for a player to screw up your perfectly planned mission.

Originally posted by Black Wolf
I gotta disagree with you there Kara. While you're right that any ship being pummelled ought to be complaining about it in mission, I personally think that allowing the player to use the debrief to hone his strategies actually makes a better mission, if a somewhat less immersive one.

Consider escorting a convoy with a cruiser escort. Your first idea is to just go in, trying to kill all the bombers at random as they appear. But this doesn't work because you're tryiung to fly all over the play area defending every ship. Too many ships die, you go back to the debrief, read it and you get told to concentrate on the freighters.

So, you try again, concentrating on the freighters this time. You succeed in eliminating the first wave of bombers, then a second wave comes in. You concentrate on the freighters, but the cruiser gets wiped because it's taking on Sekhmets while the freighters are taking on Bakhas. Return to base, debrief suggests you defend the cruiser after the first wave.

Eventually, maybe after three tries, you figure out the ideal strategy and make it through the mission. It's a challenge, but not fiendishly complex, and it means that players skilled enough to to be able to prioritize threats properly can be rewarded by getting a through complex mission in one go (or they can pump up the difficulty level).

Admittedly, it's not a process applicable to all missions, but personally I don't think that simply disregarding the debrief as a relevant source of mission information is any better.

I'm not suggesting that recomendations are disregarded. Nor am I suggesting that every mission should be completable first time. My problem with them is that too many are little more than a walkthrough for the mission and are included because vital information wasn't included in the mission. Recomendations should just give you some hints on how to proceed. They shouldn't be used as a crutch because the designer couldn't be bothered to include extra messages detailing threats. In the example you gave a few messages detailing what types of enemy bombers were leaping in should be enough to give the player a clue.

Sehkmet bombers leaping in. Looks like they're heading for the cruiser

After hearing that a few times the player should realise that they are the larger threat. The recomendation shouldn't be telling you when to protect the cruiser. All it should say is that the Sehkmet's are more powerful bombers and it might be an idea if the player prioritized them.
 It's a subtle difference between that and telling the player to protect the cruiser but it's an important one. Too many recommendations lead the player around by a ring in his nose trying to get the player to complete the mission exactly how the mission designer pictured it. Your recommendation is not only telling the player what he should be doing it but when he should be doing it too. Mine warns the player what the main danger in the mission is but lets him decide what to do about it.

The other use for recommendations is the one I hinted at earlier and StratComm stated more openly. To point the player at things he may have missed. If the player has completed the mission but lost several frieghters then it's more forgivable to give details on how to protect them better for next time.

Originally posted by TrashMan
As for hte information - the playr wasn't the only one involved and it stand to reason that the debfied that happens 10 minutes after you jumped sumarizes the whole battle, even if you werent' there for the end.

While that works in some cases I hope you can see from my example some reasons why it's not always a good idea. You could seriously screw up missions like FS2's The Great Hunt by letting the player know what's coming without them having seen it.

[TrashMan]

Yes you can' - but that's not my problem.. If hte player want a sneak peak I don't care..he will spoil his own surprise.

I do however take care not to let him really exploit such things fully, by either taking away his control over ships that would turn rouge or allways supplying him with a fixed objective (even a simple one like "hold position") so he can never jump out before hte mission is realyl over unless he does it on purpose - there just isn't the "I though ti was over" thing by me.

[karajorma]

Same here. If the FREDder lets the player jump out mistakenly because they thought the mission was over then that's poor design on the part of the FREDder.

As for the player taking a sneak peek this whole discussion is about the fact that Goober thinks that missions should be written in a way that encourages players to take a sneak peek if they can't complete one part of the mission. The problem with that is that they could very easily spoiler part of the mission which they had no intention of spoilering.
 If you're saying that any player who jumps out has automatically decided that they are spoilering the mission for themselves then you're going to discourage exactly the kind of behaviour that Goober is on about. I wouldn't leap out to get a hint on how to complete part 1 of a mission if I knew that it would automatically spoil the rest of the mission. I'd rather post here and get an answer that didn't spoil the rest of the mission.

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by karajorma
As for the player taking a sneak peek this whole discussion is about the fact that Goober thinks that missions should be written in a way that encourages players to take a sneak peek if they can't complete one part of the mission.

No, no, no, that's not what I'm on about at all.  All I'm saying is that the debriefing should be polite when you jump out, not annoy you with a boilerplate AWOL message.

I think you misinterpreted my post when I said that the mission should continue as normal until concluding.  In most cases it should, and the debriefing should spell out the consequences.  However in cases where there's a surprise in store, the debriefing obviously should not give it away.  Perhaps the debriefing should be phrased as if the squadron leader hasn't heard about the surprise, or assumes what happens, or whatever.  Probably the best thing to do would be to simply add conditions to not display the debriefing stages afterwards, like AWOL does typically.  It would be more work, yes, but surprises of that magnitude don't happen very often.

[FireCrack]

For example... in the mission where the first sathanas appears it could simply be somthing like

"Because of your choice to pull out of the area command decided to also withdraw the (name of sobek) due to the fact that it would be easy prey for shivan bombers.

While we failed to disrut the shivan gas colection operation, we do not know what effect the destruction of it would have on their fleet. The shivans have never shown signs of using or collecting resources before, and though we lost a chance to learn more about the shivans, this was not a major tactical loss"


See, nothing about the sathanas there, no boilerplate, i think i got what goob is saying.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Goober5000
No, no, no, that's not what I'm on about at all.  All I'm saying is that the debriefing should be polite when you jump out, not annoy you with a boilerplate AWOL message.

Originally posted by Goober5000
I think you misinterpreted my post when I said that the mission should continue as normal until concluding.  In most cases it should, and the debriefing should spell out the consequences.

Okay I'm confused now. Firstly the top quote seems to be contradicting the second one. Are you suggesting we get rid of the AWOL debrief completely or are you simply suggesting that it's toned down?

Cause I can argue against both but I don't want to be misinterpreting anything.

Originally posted by FireCrack
For example... in the mission where the first sathanas appears it could simply be somthing like

"Because of your choice to pull out of the area command decided to also withdraw the (name of sobek) due to the fact that it would be easy prey for shivan bombers.

While we failed to disrut the shivan gas colection operation, we do not know what effect the destruction of it would have on their fleet. The shivans have never shown signs of using or collecting resources before, and though we lost a chance to learn more about the shivans, this was not a major tactical loss"


See, nothing about the sathanas there, no boilerplate, i think i got what goob is saying.

And what happens if the player decided to pull out when there was one gas miner left, 12 vasudans fighters, a mara and the Sobek? Seem's pretty bloody unlikely that the lack of Alpha 1's presence was the deciding factor unless you reveal the plot twist that the Sathanas was about to appear?

Suppose we're dealing with the same mission but now the the Sathanas doesn't appear. What then? How do you explain that the mission failed? Or are you going to allow the player to progress if the objectives were mostly achieved?

The boilerplate isn't pretty but it is consistant. Player leaves before RTB = mission fail. No excuses.

[FireCrack]

Then you can use the boilerplate.

[karajorma]

Problem is that now you've got an inconsistancy. The player gets court marshalled and shot when the mission is an apparent success but he happened to jump out early yet in cases where the mission is an obvious failure he simply gets told how his actions caused the mission to fail.

Second problem is we're back to needing a horribly complex formula to determine what constitutes an obviously failed mission and what constitutes one where you need boilerplate.

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by karajorma
Okay I'm confused now. Firstly the top quote seems to be contradicting the second one. Are you suggesting we get rid of the AWOL debrief completely or are you simply suggesting that it's toned down?

Cause I can argue against both but I don't want to be misinterpreting anything.

Erm... I don't get where the contradiction is, so I'll elaborate:

First quote: If you jump out before engaging at all, boilerplate is okay.  Otherwise, it should present you with a debriefing appropriate to your situation.  "Polite" means that it gives a debriefing appropriate to the mission as opposed to one that contains no information about the mission.

Second quote: The debriefing should be presented from the perspective of the player's current point in the mission.  Extrapolate from that point toward the end of the mission, assuming that the squadron leader hasn't heard about the surprise yet.



You raise a substantial number of good points. But I think my point is still valid, because the situations you raise are more complex and therefore raise more complex solutions.  In the Sathanas mission, if the player RTBs without ensuring the destruction of the gas miners, just say that he failed to ensure the operation completed successfully.  If the miners are destroyed, just say that he failed to ensure the protection of the Sobek.  In effect it's an AWOL penalty without an AWOL boilerplate message.  You don't need to allow the player to automatically advance if you don't want to.

But those missions are the exception rather than the rule.  In most cases the end of the mission can be predicted from the beginning of the mission - whether it succeeds or fails - even if there are some surprises along the way, like an additional cruiser.  Only a really drastic surprise like the arrival of the Sathanas requires careful treatment.



I guess my core concern in posting this thread is that the AWOL debriefing has nothing to do with the actual mission.  If you find a situation where you need to use an AWOL debriefing, then make it appropriate to the mission.  If that requires more than one custom AWOL stage because of a complex mission, then so be it.  But don't just copy & paste.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Goober5000
Erm... I don't get where the contradiction is, so I'll elaborate:

Problem for me was that you started off saying that you felt that the military wouldn't castigate a pilot for jumping out to save his life which suggests that you want to get rid of the AWOL debrief completely. If we're simply talking about refining the AWOL debrief then that's a different matter. I think I've got where you're coming from now.

Originally posted by Goober5000
You raise a substantial number of good points. But I think my point is still valid, because the situations you raise are more complex and therefore raise more complex solutions. In the Sathanas mission, if the player RTBs without ensuring the destruction of the gas miners, just say that he failed to ensure the operation completed successfully.  If the miners are destroyed, just say that he failed to ensure the protection of the Sobek.  In effect it's an AWOL penalty without an AWOL boilerplate message.  You don't need to allow the player to automatically advance if you don't want to.

Again we come down to a question of FREDding style. I used to GM an AD&D game and one of the major lessons that is taught in articles on the subject of how to be a good GM is that you must never railroad the players.
 The standard AWOL excuse that jumping out before the end of the mission means that you have broken the rules and must be punished is very harsh I agree but as I keep stating it's consistant and therefore can be accepted as one of the rules that the GTVA military works by.
 Simply saying that cause you jumped out the mission failed and not giving a reason however isn't consistant. It's far to easy for the player to ask why. Furthermore after the player successfully completes the mission he'll know for certain that he was railroaded, that the briefing said that the mission had failed when in truth there was no reason why the forces present couldn't have won.

Originally posted by Goober5000
I guess my core concern in posting this thread is that the AWOL debriefing has nothing to do with the actual mission.  If you find a situation where you need to use an AWOL debriefing, then make it appropriate to the mission.  If that requires more than one custom AWOL stage because of a complex mission, then so be it.  But don't just copy & paste.

I agree wholeheartedly with that. I hate the idea of a single monoliothic AWOL debrief being used in my missions. If you notice I mentioned that early on. I'm not pushing for boilerplate and I never have been.
 My objection is to the reason why you want to say the player failed the mission. You're making it so that the player can be seen to have failed the mission even when the player knows he didn't. I don't like that.
The way I get around it is to have several AWOL Debriefs. Each one complains at you for leaving without authorisation and gives details of the mission depending on the point at which the player jumped out.
 The main difference here is that it's the very fact that you went AWOL that is being held against you not that the mission failed.
 This way the player knows the score. Leaving the mission early = automatic failure of the mission even if you've met the mission objectives and your wingmen could have met the rest without you. It's harsh but fair and to my mind more internally consistant.


Thing is you say that the examples I mention are rare but I don't think they are. I can find a point in almost every single [V] fs2 mission where I could jump out and say "My wingmen could have finished off the ships that were left" For instance on almost any strike mission I could clean up the fighter escort and leave a disabled enemy ship behind to be pummelled by the remaining bombers.
 Now I know that there were no more enemy ships coming so if I get up a message saying that the mission failed I know I'm being railroaded.
 In fact the only mission I can think of off the top of my head where I couldn't complain about being railroaded is "Monster in the Mist" since the player and the player alone is responsible for the completion of all objectives there's no point where you can say "But joe in Alpha 2 could have done it!"

[mikhael]

There's AWOL briefings? O.o

[karajorma]

It's the name given to any unauthorised jump in a mission cause basically you've gone absent from the mission area without leave.

I suppose cowardice debrief might be more accurate cause it's basically a case of you running from the enemy cause you're about to get killed but Goober would be complaining even more if we called it that

[mikhael]

I've never seen one of those. I never jump out the goals are completed, I get a failure message or I get killed.

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by karajorma
Problem for me was that you started off saying that you felt that the military wouldn't castigate a pilot for jumping out to save his life which suggests that you want to get rid of the AWOL debrief completely. If we're simply talking about refining the AWOL debrief then that's a different matter. I think I've got where you're coming from now.

Well that was my original intent.  My core concern was relying too much on the boilerplate, yes, but a secondary concern was that jumping out early to save your skin should be tacitly accepted, not punished.  So I was sort of coming from both directions simultaneously, but the secondary concern is a lot harder to satisfy.

The problem, I suppose, is that FS2 isn't dynamic enough to allow that sort of decision on the part of the player.  In a real-life military situation such as in FS2, jumping out when your hull is at 5% should be allowed.  But since FS2 is a story told for the benefit of the player, the player has to jump through a certain number of hoops in order to experience it properly.

Simply saying that cause you jumped out the mission failed and not giving a reason however isn't consistant. It's far to [sic] easy for the player to ask why.  Furthermore after the player successfully completes the mission he'll know for certain that he was railroaded, that the briefing said that the mission had failed when in truth there was no reason why the forces present couldn't have won.

I wonder how many missions you could allow that in.  In other words invisibly authorize an early departure as soon as it becomes clear the GTVA is winning, and then visibly authorize it later on.  You'd get yelled at but still be allowed to continue.

Of course, that could pose a question in the FS universe of how Alpha 1 gets to bend the rules so often.

The main difference here is that it's the very fact that you went AWOL that is being held against you not that the mission failed.  This way the player knows the score. Leaving the mission early = automatic failure of the mission even if you've met the mission objectives and your wingmen could have met the rest without you. It's harsh but fair and to my mind more internally consistant.

Unfortunately that may have to be the case.  Maybe my "no AWOL" request is better suited for a game where not everything depends on the player, such as Homeworld or something similar.