[Fabian]

Hi,

has anyone able to beat Second Front?

Especially the last mission is hell and even frustrating and imho also quite unrealistic ...

You should encounter just the last of the Shivan Fleet, which have no longer any destroyer or anything and in come:

1)

- 2 waves of 4 Astaroth Fighters (Neptune)
- 2 waves of 4 Nahema Bombers (Pluto)
- 5 waves of 3 Seraphim Bombers (Io)
- 2 waves of 3 Taurvi Bombers (Charon)
- 1 Freighter (Sly)

== whole of 8 fighters + 29 bombers + 1 freighter

This would still be quite okay, as the Orion can protect itself a bit and Alpha wing with 4 fighters can also do some.

Also they no longer spawn as soon as some other event is true.

2) (where you protect another ship)

- 2 waves of 3 Mara Fighters (Ganymede)
- 6 waves of 3 Nephilem Bombers (Venus)
- 6 waves of 4 Nahema Bombers (Europa)

And this waves come and come, regardless if their target is gone or not.

(delta wing (3) come as reinforcements, but as soon as the to-be-protected target is away they get quickly eaten)

=> 6 fighters + 42 bombers ...

3) (where you protect a completely helpless ship with low hull protection (primary-goal))

- 6 waves of 3 Taurvi bombers (Callisto)
- 6 waves of 4 Seraphim bombers (Mercury)

=> 42 bombers against Alpha 1 and the to-protect-ship needs to live 4 minutes after dock and if any stray stiletto of Callisto hits it, its over too ... (and one time one Callisto bomber even attacked the Orion 10000 m away ...)

(You get epsilon wing consisting of 2 protecting against asteroids though ...)

==> as sum: 14 fighters + 113 bombers. 

Somehow it feels that this mission was just thrown out due to being frustrated by the slow beta testers.

Readme also says:

"The sixth mission seems tacked on for no apparent reason other than to be really annoyingly difficult.
        Workaround:     Wait a while, and all shall be explained.  Either that, or I just
                        wanted to leave you hanging; I've not decided yet.
                        Oh, and about being annoyingly difficult, it is the last mission."

I find it a bit strange to believe that the last stray fighters and bombers are almost more than what fits on one destroyer ...

I also found it strange, that when the docked ship enter the protected ship, they were not able to repair the engines once they were hit or that the engines were not protected from beginning on - it still had 85 health ...

And that the bombers kept coming even though the target was long gone. (And 1 on 1 with the other party having full health and lots of missiles is a bit unfair ...)

Well back to my initial question:

Has anyone been able to beat this mission?

Best effort I had with a disruptor and lots of dumb fire missiles, but even though I told my wingmen to ignore my target the disrupted bombers got killed anyway after a while ...

And then they stiletto 'd  the engines and it was over ...

Anyway that was frustrating ...

cu

Fabian

[edit:

Now I took terrible revenge and completely misused the mission to pass it .

Spoiler

- Don't scan the cargo depot until the remote action begins. The first waves of bombers will never arrive.

- For the remote action send your wing, but keep in safe distance of > 2500 m and watch the show. Venus will never arrive.

- Disable one of the problematic bombers (Mercury) and keep on telling your wingmen to ignore the target. After Callisto is completely destroyed no new bombers of Mercury will arrive.

End Spoiler

Unfortunately no goals will be true this way, but its still feeling good to be unfair to an unfair mission.

]

[BlueFlames]

Has anyone been able to beat this mission?

It is obnoxiously difficult, and it was added fairly late in the design process, but I seem to recall putting it into the outline before bringing in any beta testers, so I'm not sure why I was so horribly bitter.  I do recall wanting it to be ludicrously hard, though.  A few times, I flirted with the idea of revisiting the campaign to fix bugs throughout all of the missions as well as toning down the final mission, but an apparent lack of interest from the community made me focus on other games and projects.

That said, I have beaten it before.  I'm not so cruel as to release an utterly unbeatable mission.  It bears stating that I've failed or died* during this mission more often than I've succeeded, but with some luck to keep the Stilettos away and crazy-fast reflexes to help deal with the torpedos at the end, the mission can be beaten.

Regarding the total number of fighters and bombers, it's pretty rare that I keep count.  In-mission, what matters is the action, though in this case, I will admit to having gone over the top.

I may yet still go back and revise Second Front, but as it stands, that endeavor isn't even on the back burner.  If there was a third or fourth row of burners, that's where it'd be, but since there's not, it's just sitting behind the stove, festering and smelling up the place.

* -- Last time out, I kind of ran directly into one of Venus wing's Infyrnos, while playing chicken with one of the bombers in the wing.  Oops.

[Fabian]

Oh wow,

I didn't expect an answer from the original author :-).

When I wrote that first post I was just plain frustrated.

Would you accept patches for the missions? (first of all fixing the bugs)

Because:

I really liked the beginning of the campaign, the story was intriguing, enough chatter ...

But as the campaign progresses further it somehow gets flatter and flatter ...

And more difficult also ...

Also the first missions not only seem well balanced, but also well thought out and well tested.

Until I came to mission 6 and 7 (or 5 and 6, depending where you put the SOC loop) I thought, wow that is a nice campaign that really should be voice acted.

But afterwards that "something" was missing.

cu

Fabian

[Koth]

Funny, I just played through it yesterday.
Nice campaign . The story isn't too bad and the missions are good too.
In some missions the number of bombers was ludicrously high and
the last mission was a bit anti-climatic but the rest is fine.

[Game_Master64]

lol, in one mission in this campaign i think i got around 100 kills, at least, i think it was this one

[MarsNeedsWomen]

I think I get a bug with this mission. When a transport comes to repair the disabled Vasudan ship, instead of a real transport ship (like an argo or elysium), a ulysses fighter jumps in instead! Yet it still has a GVT designation!

[Snail]

...

Sorry for stupid post, but that error is most likely caused by a table error... Does Second Front even have modified tables?

Make sure you don't have any rogue .vp files lying around.

[MarsNeedsWomen]

What do you mean by rogue VPs? All other mods and campaigns are in their own folder. I am using the media VPs, but like I said they are in their own folder. The second front vp is in the main FreeSpace2 folder. I'm playing it with FS Open.

[Snail]

Put the Second Front VP in a mod folder... See if that makes any difference.

[MarsNeedsWomen]

It worked. Although, I wonder why it did what it did?

[Game_Master64]

it worked because something in the vp was confilcting with the stock files

[Snail]

ALWAYS put mods in MODFOLDERS, not in your main directory or it will rape your install.

[starlord]

Did any of you finished the mission rewarding the poor in second front?
The shivans always seem to jump away before the wind can dock and detonate, what to do?

[BlueFlames]

That mission just requires you to be speedy, taking out the Shivan fighter escort.  I don't remember exactly how long your window of opportunity is, but I think I put it in the walkthrough, included with the campaign.  Unlike many missions where you can lure escorts away from hostile warships, though, that one doesn't permit you time to do so, so you'll need to eat some flak and try to stay out of the AAA beam arcs.

[Obscured]

I get a strange issue in the last mission of the Second Front campaing: nothing happens after all attacks on SC Retorphim when it's docked with GTT Swiftwind. Shivan bombers do not jump in, no more orders are given... a_SecFront.vp is in modfolder. FS2 Open 3.6.9

That last mission is definetly odd and isn't fit to the whole campaing. 

[BlueFlames]

Couldn't tell you why the bombers aren't arriving.  Their arrival and the Swiftwind's arrival are both on an is-cargo-known-delay event, checking whether or not you scanned the Retorphim.  They've got different delays, but if the Swiftwind arrived, the bombers should have already been on the attack.  That's definately a bug, but it doesn't seem to be one I'm responsible for, at first glance anyway.  I'll have another look at it this weekend to be sure, though.

[Obscured]

Right.  Shivan bombers (Seraphim - Mercury wing and Tauvri - Callisto wing) attack the SC Retorphim when GTT Swiftwind arrives - lots of bombers. Mission progress stops only after repelling several wings of bombers. GTT Swiftwind is docked with SC Retorphim at this time.

But the main part of the Second Front campaing is good, thanks for your work. 

P.S. It seems that your new Artifice campaing is bound with the last mission of Second Front.