[TrashMan]

This thread might fir better in the Freespace Campaign... we''kl see


Anyway - there are several ways one can make a campaign, but two are the most obvious:

- a purely action/story driven one (like retail) where your wingman are nameless cannon fodder (wiht very few exception like Snipes)

- a squad/charachter oriented one that tells the story of specific charachters/squadron and thus has a lot of poeple who can't die (untill the designer saz so that is)


My own Camapign (Chapter 1 at least) is squad based and there are interesting issues that pop up.

firstly the mission design and the way to make them survive.

MISSION DESIGN:
With wingman that cannot die a mission can easiyl be broken. A player can just order his wingman to attack and move away and simply wait - they will do the job.

A way around it is to give time-related goals that the AI might not be able to manage in time, thus requireing the player interference. The other one is taking the player contol form his wingman and scripting their behaviour, which works great in the first few missioin, but once he becomes a squadron leader it becomes hard to rationalize your inablity to give commands..

The second problem (with wingman shouldn't get killed but do) is their recovery. You  can allways say they ejected and were pcked up later, but I never noticed ejection as canon in FS (which is stupid, but hey!).
The second problem is that it can only work in a few mission. No one is going to belive that a secesfull recovery will be made after someone who ejected deep within a shivan infested nebula, or deep behind enemy lines or in subspace...

HOW TO MAKE THEM SURVIVE:
Teh easiest way - make them invulnerable instantly. They will surely survive, but they will never get damaged and you never have to care of fear for them (becouse some mission you can't complete alone). This allso ruins the immersion when tehy don+'t get damaged no matter how much firepower is directed at them.

The second way is to trigger invulnerabiltiy once they get damaged enough (when hull is below 50% or 10%). This makes it a bit more belivable as they can get disabled and all, but they rarely die... rarely, since if a weapon of sufficient firepower hits them, the damage reduced will be too much and will reach 0% before the invulnerabilty triggers and thtey will get destroyed. A way around it is to increase the hull percentage at which to trigger invulnerabiltiy, but that just pushes it back to the first solution, since many missiles are powerfull enough to destroy a fighter in a single hit.

the third way is to use the SpecilHP option in FRED and give them uber shields and hull. They are not vvvery likely to die now, but you still have to take care of them since you know they can be killed.

As I was FREDing mission lately I started to prefer the thrid option.


Allrighty...DISCUSS!

[StratComm]

You forgot the most common way of dealing with this, ship-gaurdian.  Where he'll take damage normally but not be vulnerable once he's down to 1% hull integrity.

  If it's important that the character not die, you could have him jump out every time his hull went critical (see StarFox 64) and be able to return in later missions.  How you go about implimenting this is up to you, but I'd do it by applying a gaurdian SEXP to him and having his departure event linked to his hull integrity.

[Kie99]

Guardian Flags.  Ships can still be disabled, but their hull never dips below 1%.  (IIRC)

[CP5670]

I would stay away from that sexp. It's still possible for guardian ships to die in some cases. An event that makes the ship invulnerable when its strength falls below something like 40% is a much better idea instead.

I use this for a fixed number of wingmen in all my missions, not because they are important to the story, but so that they don't all die two minutes into the mission and seem like noobs compared to you. It's very difficult for a player to tell what's going on as long as different strength thresholds are used for every ship.

[StratComm]

Guardian-ship-threshold (which is effectively the same as ship-invulnerable at some hull damage point) would probably be a better choice for a fighter, but since Trashman apparently doesn't know either exist we had better start with the basics.

[CP5670]

I don't remember seeing that one either, actually. Was it in retail or is it a new FSO sexp? I haven't done any mission design for a while so I've fallen out of the loop a bit.

[aldo_14]

If you need a wingman to stay alive, IMO the best option is guardian then jumpout.  That's presuming that you can arrange the dialog in some way to suit, though.

[TrashMan]

there is one problem with jumping out though - how come they can leave when they're critical and I'm branded a traitor???

[karajorma]

Originally posted by CP5670
I would stay away from that sexp. It's still possible for guardian ships to die in some cases. An event that makes the ship invulnerable when its strength falls below something like 40% is a much better idea instead.

Then that's a bug that needs fixing.

Personally I've never seen it happen and I tend to doubt it actually exists. Lions Den is frequently quoted as a mission where it goes wrong but it doesn't even use the Ship-Guardian SEXP.

As a matter of fact Lions Den uses exactly the method you've suggested.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by aldo_14
If you need a wingman to stay alive, IMO the best option is guardian then jumpout.  That's presuming that you can arrange the dialog in some way to suit, though.

Not an option Aldo. Besides the point that Trashman raised there are missions where your wingmen can't jump out (Lions Den) or where you need them to stick around for plot purposes or to say something.

[Axem]

CoS has the same thing, a large amount of wingmen that stay with you always.

I use threshold-guardian at around 30 percent hull, and sub-system-threshold-guardian for engines at 50 percent. The one for engines is because while they may be invicible, their engine system aren't, and if that gets destroyed they're as good as dead anyway. Looks stupid too.

But balance is shifted in your favour too, you could use them as a distraction or to eventually clear out enemies that were meant for you to do. Hey, they're invicible, what stops them?

So using arguments and crap, I protect the ships and set their AI-class to coward. This way, they're still there, but you can't expect them to do much for you.

[Nuclear1]

Originally posted by karajorma
Then that's a bug that needs fixing.

Personally I've never seen it happen and I tend to doubt it actually exists. Lions Den is frequently quoted as a mission where it goes wrong but it doesn't even use the Ship-Guardian SEXP.

As a matter of fact Lions Den uses exactly the method you've suggested and I have heard tales of the other ships getting killed.

Exactly. It's all-too obvious in Bearbaiting especially, where the Phoenicia's invulnerable SEXP activates a split-second later than it should, a split-second that often ends up in the destruction of the Phoenicia.

I tend to use both invulnerable and guardian. Ship-invulnerable gives the player the belief that a wingman is taking damage, but also keeps a character alive. Unless the player is bughunting or blatantly looking for discrepencies, then this works. Guardian basically is a fail-safe; it honestly is better to have a wingman stupidly floating around at 1% than having Command send your wingmen's messages.

[CP5670]

Then that's a bug that needs fixing.

Personally I've never seen it happen and I tend to doubt it actually exists. Lions Den is frequently quoted as a mission where it goes wrong but it doesn't even use the Ship-Guardian SEXP.

As a matter of fact Lions Den uses exactly the method you've suggested and I have heard tales of the other ships getting killed.

It's impossible to safeguard from the ship dying completely (apart from making it invulnerable right at the beginning) but having a larger percentage threshold will definitely reduce the chance of it screwing up. I think it has to do with how damage is applied. In an extreme case, if a fighter is at 2% strength and gets hit by a BFRed, then it will probably fall straight to 0% without ever hitting 1%. (can a coder verify this?)

Even if it worked though, you wouldn't want all your wingmen to have exactly 1% strength by the end of the mission. That would make it obvious to the player.

I have had Snipes die in loop1-2 (Love the Treason) quite a few times. In fact, I ran into it just a few weeks ago. It looks really stupid when a ship that is supposed to have a conversation with some other ship is dead and the other ship keeps talking on anyway.

Unless the player is bughunting or blatantly looking for discrepencies...

Who doesn't do that? I do that in every game I play. Finding glitches is so much fun.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by CP5670
I have had Snipes die in loop1-2 (Love the Treason) quite a few times. In fact, I ran into it just a few weeks ago. It looks really stupid when a ship that is supposed to have a conversation with some other ship is deac and the other ship keeps talking on anyway.

That one doesn't use Ship-Guardian either though.

[CP5670]

Are there any official missions that use it? I remember having it fail far too often in my missions when I started out with FRED2, so I avoided it  for good after that.

[karajorma]

I'm writing out a list as we speak

[TrashMan]

I'm thinking of making a escape pod model (cockpit only - like on SAAB) and that way my wingman can get killed in several missions without actually dying.. . (on death - spawn pod)
Of course, that would mean a recovery craft allso.. and all the SEXP's...

Don't know if it would work becouse of a ship's name and all...
Do the Code Wizzards have any ideas?
Maby a special escape-pod option in FREd, where for each ship you can set up a escape pod model ti will use and it will automaticly be named like "destroyed ship name" pod..

Thing is, messages have to be coded to still play from Alpha 2 pod like they would from Alpha 2...

[karajorma]

The Place of Chariots - Iceni/Bodaciea
Mystery of the Trinity - Alpha 2 and Zeta 1 (Zeta 2 is unguardianed at one point but was never guardianed in the first place )
A Game of TAG - Alpha 2, Scout 1, Kappa 3  
Endgame and Speaking in Tongues - Iceni
Exodus - Nebtuu (Believe it or not the Nebtuu is guardianed for just long enough to take out the Abraxis).
Clash of the Titans II - Alpha 2-4


That's a surprisingly short list to be honest

[CP5670]

Exodus - Nebtuu (Believe it or not the Nebtuu is guardianed for just long enough to take out the Abraxis).

Interesting. The Nebtuu dies almost every time (on hard) if you don't take out the Nahemas at the beginning, so I guess that sexp is pretty useless as things stand.

[karajorma]

Not useless. If you're playing retail you can tell everyone to ignore the Abraxis, and disarm it instead. Then you've got a nice invulnerable Sobek to help you throughout the mission