[Mobius]

He's probably refering to the fact that:

1) Conspiracies are common in custom campaigns;
2) There always is something like "He has been planning this for decades" and we think that whoever is grouping a massive fleet should be noticed by the GTVA itself;

[Snail]

I'm on the very last mission, but there was only one contradictory-to-canon thing I found: GTVA units are never allowed to fire upon escape pods. Ever.

[CP5670]

He's probably refering to the fact that:

1) Conspiracies are common in custom campaigns;
2) There always is something like "He has been planning this for decades" and we think that whoever is grouping a massive fleet should be noticed by the GTVA itself;

Well, this is the one place where it's all done right. Although there is no "massive fleet" to speak of here, or much in the way of a conspiracy either, for that matter.

I'm on the very last mission, but there was only one contradictory-to-canon thing I found: GTVA units are never allowed to fire upon escape pods. Ever.

Not quite, they aren't allowed to fire on civilians. The escape pods in PI contain important military personnel. I can't recall anything in the main campaign addressing escape pods in general.

[jr2]

I'm on the very last mission, but there was only one contradictory-to-canon thing I found: GTVA units are never allowed to fire upon escape pods. Ever.

Not quite, they aren't allowed to fire on civilians. The escape pods in PI contain important military personnel. I can't recall anything in the main campaign addressing escape pods in general.

BETAC, anyone?

[CP5670]

As far as I know, every reference to BETAC in the campaign concerns either civilians or POWs. Escape pods don't necessarily fall into either category. (actually, the Vasudan ones are in most cases not even manned)

[jr2]

Hmm, I could see trying to capture the escape pod, and if it tries to get away, then destroying it.  But what you have here is similar to the German U-boats blowing life boats of a sinking cruiser out of the water.  Yes, it has been done.  No, we don't really like it when it happens.

[CP5670]

Sure, but that's beside the point. There is certainly no conflict with canon material.

if it tries to get away, then destroying it

This is pretty much the situation we have here.

[Alan Bolte]

In your walkthrough for mission 15, you talk about killing a turret with a Trebuchet. Don't you mean 8 trebuchets? because that's how many it takes me to kill any of the turrets. At least. I've tried switching to a Herc II just to give me a chance to get a few turrets down at range, but damn if I don't end up dying the minute I get a Vasudan on my tail. The Terran fighters seem to go down easy. I can live a while in the Erynies, but I can only make so many strafing runs before most of my wingmen are gone and I have wings of fighters converging on me. That, or I get careless and a beam takes me down.

[CP5670]

Yes, that should read Trebuchets. Good catch.

You actually want to be using a quad Akheton as much as possible in that mission. It will allow you to sit out of range of all the turrets except for the long range blob ones, which are best dealt with using the trebuchets. If the fighters come after you, run away from the destroyer, wait for them to come up to you and then send the usual tempest barrage at them. However, your wingmen can generally keep them occupied for a few minutes at a time before they notice you.

[Mobius]

Should you set by default the best loadout, rather than forcing us to play the mission, lose, return back with a loadout we apparently consider good?

[Sparky]

It's your choice though... you have a briefing, you get the idea of what you're gonna do, so you load accordingly. If it says "Destroy Turrets", I'm sure you wouldn't load up with just Tempests, and the Subach.

[Goober5000]

There is also the fact that I'm currently using a bit of a hack to specify the debriefing music, which wouldn't work if voices were also present there. Although I could probably get the SCP team to add in a proper way of doing this.

There is an undocumented feature in FS2 retail (and probably FS1 too) that will do this.

Immediately after $Briefing Music:, put

$Debriefing Success Music:

or

$Debriefing Fail Music:

and it will play the specified track in debriefing.  You'll have to maintain the mission in Notepad though, as FRED won't save this to the mission file.

[Cobra]

Awesome, completed the campaign and got a 45% score.

[TrashMan]

I got tired with some missions that were unnecesarily tedious, if not hard, so I edited the vulcan (double the range, 90 damage, and 10.0 subsystem modifier). Made disarming teh Saturn and killing EVERYTHING that much easier...MWAHAHAHAHAHA

[Cobra]

Sure, take all the fun out of it.

[Mobius]

What? Score? No, it can't be! FreeSpace can't be ruined!

[Cobra]

You ****ing moron, do you read? The score is how many bonus objectives you complete, and I completed 45% of them.

Honestly, people think I'm the only one who doesn't think before posting, which I do now.

[CP5670]

Should you set by default the best loadout, rather than forcing us to play the mission, lose, return back with a loadout we apparently consider good?

I was thinking about doing that at one point, but eventually decided to make the loadouts uniform among wings. Tempests are something that are useful to have around in most missions, but the AIs are terrible with them, so it was looking a bit funny when the player always had a different default loadout than everyone else in the wing.

That being said, the stock loadouts aren't off the wall by any means; they are generally things that the wingmen are good at using and are tailored to the mission requirements. Also, there is generally no one loadout that is clearly perfect for the situation. The things I describe in the walkthrough are what work for me, but they are by no means clear cut. They have different advantages and shortcomings, and may depend on the player's particular style.

There is an undocumented feature in FS2 retail (and probably FS1 too) that will do this.

Immediately after $Briefing Music:, put

$Debriefing Success Music:

or

$Debriefing Fail Music:

and it will play the specified track in debriefing.  You'll have to maintain the mission in Notepad though, as FRED won't save this to the mission file.

This sounds useful, but I would need something that plays a track specific to a certain debriefing stage, in the same way voice files are used. I have some cases where the completion status of the objectives doesn't quite match up with the music I would like played.

Awesome, completed the campaign and got a 45% score

Nice job. Since this indicates how much extra stuff you got in addition to the main objectives, something around 50% is pretty good.

I got tired with some missions that were unnecesarily tedious, if not hard, so I edited the vulcan (double the range, 90 damage, and 10.0 subsystem modifier). Made disarming teh Saturn and killing EVERYTHING that much easier...MWAHAHAHAHAHA

Wimp.

Actually, if you're cheating anyway, check out the Shivan super laser. I bet you'll have more fun with that thing.

[Game_Master64]

why? is it upgraded?

[CP5670]

Yes, you could say that.