[NGTM-1R]

5-mission mini-campaign. Force entry to Polaris during the early hours of the NTF Rebellion to rescue GTVA loyalists of 6th Fleet. FSO required. No mods, no VP. Just 5 missions and a campaign file. Drop it in your missions folder and remember to turn off whatever mod you may be playing.

http://www.geocities.com/ngtm1r/OperationSavior.zip

Random facts about this campaign:

Originally intended to be FRED'ed over 24 hours, got the first two missions done in eight and then upgraded to 3.6.9 RC6, which rebelled and caused problems that delayed the campaign for more then a week.

The first three missions and part of the other two were built while listening to Rammstein's Moskau; the remainder was done with some Outkast song on that I don't know the title of.

It's the French Terran Front (Goober's fault!) against the GTVA Royal Navy. This wasn't actually intentional, but I ended up naming most of the NTF ships after French ships circa WWII. The GTVA ships don't have quite so rigid a naming scheme, but I named two for Tribal-class destroyers and there's a Victory in there too.

Two future victims of the GTVA Colossus and one future victim of Alpha 1 (and the GTCv Monitor) make appearances. See if you can spot them. Don't worry, they live through the campaign. It's not their time yet.

[Mobius]

The Difficulty level seems ok,but there are many things which need to be fixed:
1)Some Pegasui instead of Pegasi;
2)Many other grammar errors(they're normal when someone writes rapidly with the keyboard...);
3)The GTC Victory rams the Shield,placing it even 40 meters right and everything will be ok;
4)Too many fighters and bombers,low number of wingmen.Though with my MobiuSpiral I was able to evade most missiles,seemed that every damned fighter was completely ignoring the GTVA cruisers to pursue me(ok for the Lokis...but the Hercs?);

Nice work.

[NGTM-1R]

The Victory should not be ramming the Shield. It's never done that for me...and moving it 40 meters to the right would place it closer to a direct line for the Shield when it exits subspace.

As for the grammar errors, so far as I can tell they don't exist. Perhaps the speech is not 100% grammatically correct, but then again, it shouldn't be, since people don't speak perfect English. I similarly can't find the misspelled Epsilon Pegasui.

There were supposed to be a lot of fighters. There's also supposed to be a friendly Aeolus. Escort works both ways.

[Rhythmic]

Doesn't work for me.

Nothing ever does anymore :/


Error: C3M2.fs2(31):
Error: Required token = [#Command Briefing] or [#Briefing], found [$AI Profile: FS2 RETAIL] .

File:parse/parselo.cpp
Line: 551
[This filename points to the location of a file on the computer that built this executable]

Call stack:
------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------


Error: C3M2.fs2(93):
Error: Required token = [$multi_text], found [$mirror: 0] .

File:parse/parselo.cpp
Line: 551
[This filename points to the location of a file on the computer that built this executable]

Call stack:
------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------

Error: C3M2.fs2(125):
Error: Required token = [$multi_text], found [$mirror: 0] .

File:parse/parselo.cpp
Line: 551
[This filename points to the location of a file on the computer that built this executable]

Call stack:
------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------

A gripe more but I don't feel like copying and pasting them all,
Amd3200+ x700 radeon with omega drivers
used 367 version of fso and tried the "fs2_open_r-P420060306.exe" version.
Neither works.

[NGTM-1R]

It was built for 3.6.9 RC 6/RC 7, so I think your builds just might be too old. I also recall around that time FSO started to get pissy about tabling when it shouldn't have. Axem released JAD2 around then and everyone had similar errors to that.

[Mad Bomber]

*MB's Campaign Critiquing Rant!*


Just to start off, I wonder why it is that no one can seem to remember how the GTC Ertanax's name is spelled. (I've found this in a few other campaigns as well as this one.)

Remember, it's pronounced
Air Tan Axe
not
Erin Tax

I found a lot of "Pegasui" and "Agammenon"; the misspellings were very consistent.

In terms of gameplay, it could have been done better. Needs backgrounds (yeah, like I can talk ). And put things on escort lists! The list can have 5 entries in SCP, not just 3 (which is a huge help IMO). But at least nothing was broken.

I also thought there were far too few friendly fightercraft in any of the missions. I realize the GTD Master was low on supplies, but damn.

At least there's a very good reason for the lack of reinforcements in Mission 1 (kudos on that, there are far too many FREDers who seem to think fighter intersystem drives grow on trees or something). But, the player is essentially guaranteed to not have any wingmates left. Oh well.

Mission 2 was great once I got the loadout down (Medusa: Subach, Stiletto2/Hornet/Cyclops) so that i could thwack the destroyer while still having enough weaponry to take out enemy bombers. (The first time through, the GTD Master wasn't on the escort list, so I had no idea it was in trouble! And so it went boom.)

Mission 3... again, too few friendlies, but there was a reason for that at least. The NTF fighters weren't anything I and the Victory couldn't handle.

My only complaint with this mission is that the Victory jumps out before the conversation between the Ashanti and Master. I almost jumped out, but then saw the conversation and aborted the jump.

I replayed Mission 4 twice to get it to the point where the enemies would stop concentrating their fire on one of the corvettes. They kept reaming the Agamemnon while I was busy with the rebel Zeuses. So I decided "screw it", went into FRED, and added in Delta wing of Medusa bombers to help clear the blockade. (Really, is the Master so low on supplies that it can't spare a single wing for such an important mission?)

Also, it takes a long time (10 minutes or so) for the two Leviathans to get to the node in that mission. Putting the player in a situation where there's nothing to do but put on time compression is not a good thing to do IMO.

The last mission was okay, balance-wise, though one would think the Vasa would have launched defensive fighters. (I'm glad it didn't, though -- by the time I had blown up or scared off all the NTF capital ships, all that was left was me, Alpha 3, and Delta 1.) Could have been more climactic, but... meh. Battles aren't always climactic. Returning to the hanger, rather than to subspace, was a nice touch of detail (again, kudos).


Overall, 6.5 out of 10. If more time had been put into it (in spell checking especially) I'd give it another point. But the plot was solid, and certainly fits in well with canon, and there were a bunch of little details that I liked.


Well, that's my 2 cents. Don't spend it all in one place.

[Mefustae]

That's odd, I can't get the damn thing to show up anywhere. Even if I remove the campaign file and just stick the missions in my missions folder, they don't show up at all. I can open them in FRED, but when I get ingame; nada. Curious, indeed.

...there's a Victory in there too.

You son-of-a-*****. I'm using the Victory as a major player a little project i'm working on, and you go and steal my thunder! You will rue the day you totally inadvertantly crossed me in such a minor fashion!!

[karajorma]

Are you using RC 7 by any chance? Did you download it very soon after it was released? If so redownload it.

[NGTM-1R]

Mission 2 was great once I got the loadout down (Medusa: Subach, Stiletto2/Hornet/Cyclops) so that i could thwack the destroyer while still having enough weaponry to take out enemy bombers. (The first time through, the GTD Master wasn't on the escort list, so I had no idea it was in trouble! And so it went boom.)

I really should have put the Master on the escort list. <,< >,> It's actually quite possible to complete that mission with the default loadout, I've done it several times, but it means the Master has to suffer through the An Luchan's beams and generally ends up around 5% hull strength.

My only complaint with this mission is that the Victory jumps out before the conversation between the Ashanti and Master. I almost jumped out, but then saw the conversation and aborted the jump.

That's really rather odd, since when I ran it the problem was it would jump out a good twenty or thirty seconds after the conversation ended. I extended the conversation by one message to cover the gap, but I guess it didn't quite work. Whoops.

I replayed Mission 4 twice to get it to the point where the enemies would stop concentrating their fire on one of the corvettes. They kept reaming the Agamemnon while I was busy with the rebel Zeuses. So I decided "screw it", went into FRED, and added in Delta wing of Medusa bombers to help clear the blockade. (Really, is the Master so low on supplies that it can't spare a single wing for such an important mission?)

I suppose faith in one's wingmen doesn't come easy to people; I normally trust Beta to do its job (and they do!) and head for the Amphetrite to nuke beams. The corvettes will still get banged up, but they're supposed to.

Also, it takes a long time (10 minutes or so) for the two Leviathans to get to the node in that mission. Putting the player in a situation where there's nothing to do but put on time compression is not a good thing to do IMO.

It was partly to lull the player into a false sense of security; generally the Amphetrite or Colbert buys the farm at three or four minutes out from the node, and when they do an Aeolus is supposed to appear there to make you panic a bit. <,< >,>

The last mission was okay, balance-wise, though one would think the Vasa would have launched defensive fighters. (I'm glad it didn't, though -- by the time I had blown up or scared off all the NTF capital ships, all that was left was me, Alpha 3, and Delta 1.) Could have been more climactic, but... meh. Battles aren't always climactic. Returning to the hanger, rather than to subspace, was a nice touch of detail (again, kudos).

Well, I did say the Vasa had just been refitted and probably didn't have many, if any fighters. Actually it's designed so one of the corvettes shows up to help out if you lose Delta and Beta wings, letting you work on saving yourself. Testing that mission taught me a new respect for the Ursa's turret.

[Mobius]

I'm using RC5 and all works well.
I said there were Pegasui and other minor errors...
The Victory slightly collides with the Shield and shakes for 1/2 secs.

[Mobius]

Finished,well not:even if I have accomplished all objectives in the last mission,it's reported as failed!
Okay I found many bugs to fix:
1)There are only Pegasui;
2)The Victory collides with the Shield,the Shield shakes for more than 1/2 secs;
3)The last mission doesn't have a soundtrack;
4)In the last mission,when you hit hard the S.(that Leviathan cruiser)reappears that message about the Vasa;
5)The exact name for that Aeolus is Ertanax,someone has already told this;

Why you say that there's no record of the Vasa?Did you invented this or it's canon?

[NGTM-1R]

The last mission of the campaign isn't failed; it just doesn't have a campaign-end tag. There was a point in my provisional release for testing over on sectorgame where I had forgotten to add objectives, but it was corrected before the HLP release. Similarly, the bug regarding the Slazak was also present on the Sectorgame release then hunted down and fixed before I built the file for the HLP release. Somehow it seems the old mission files are still in.

There exists no failure debrief for the last mission, on the other hand, because it's only possible to fail it by dying. I even set Alpha 1 to never-warp so you can't go AWOL. I think I may have delibrately set it to play the failure debrief music because, after all, you've won a small victory...but the NTF is about to come batter down the door anyways. Things are not particularly cheery.

Why you say that there's no record of the Vasa? Did you invented this or it's canon?

I basically made it up. It's true insofar as the canon goes, mind you; the Vasa isn't mentioned in FS1 or Operation Templar. But that doesn't prove it didn't already exist.

I didn't want to toss the Repulse into the mix, since I figured somebody somewhere might manage to blow it up despite my best efforts and therefore manage to contradict "Feint!, Parry!, Riposte!", in addition to it being an apparently elite ship and a major player in the NTF war effort, so I wanted to swap it for a "lesser" Orion. The Vasa being a reactivated and renamed older ship worked, although the Vasa is also canonical as a victim of a node blockade somewhere between Polaris and Gamma Drac. (Or maybe the Colossus? The command brief is slightly ambigious.)

For the curious: the future victims of the Colossus are the Repulse and An Luchan; if you destroy one of the corvettes in mission four you also get to meet the NTC Loyola, a future victim of Alpha 1.

It's amusing to me in a way that I went to great lengths to ensure there would be no bugs regarding the inappropriate destruction of ships or messages related to such. Another set of messages exists for the Slazak if you disable it before it hits 50% or less hull, for example. The Vasa and An Luchan both get an engine subsystem repair and invunerablity to allow them to escape so they can die ignomiously 18 months later. But nobody noticed.

[Mobius]

Entering the fighterbay...I was sure I have invented it and no one used it except me...d'oh!
The Loyola was taken down by the Monitor when I play Endgame,I prefer to take care of the fighters!
Most Orions in FS2 aren't present in FS1,and I not actually think they have been modified and/or their name has been changed.
The Vasa and the An Luchan were taken down by blockade forces,considering that the Colossus was in close pursuit 'cause it was outmaneuvered.As you probably know,I started making a campaign based on the Colossus.Though I've started the first three missions,I was sure to make something small,then my brain is now full of ideas.Until I finish Steadfast,however,Colossus will remain incomplete.Giving you original inventions,you could be a perfect project member for this campaign.How about it?

[Depth_Charge]

good campaign,  got my ass kick....   my wingmates were getting kill instantly  while i'm trying to take out crusier and all the fighteres were on me........lol

[Mobius]

I used the "Inferno" warheads for this!

ngmtr1:You had an excellent idea about the NTD Vasa.This explains why there are NTF ships with names like Jacquerie,Camisard and Refute.