Hi,
Although Wing Commander games takes place in a fictional universe in the future, essance of the space battles always reminded me pacific naval sea battles that took place during WWII.
Since we have a very handy mission editor in our hands, I came to a conclusion that a single mission can be prepared reminding one of these historic battles.
I'm working on a mission like that now. I picked up one of the late battles in pacific. First, a little background about the battle that I picked up.
May be some of you have heard of "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot".
Battle of the Philippine Sea was an air-sea battle that was fought during the late stages of the pacific campaign in June 19 and June 20, 1944. This battle was fought between Imperial Japanese Navy and American Forces and was one of the major air-sea battles during the campaign.
Result was a decisive American victory.
The air and sea assets that joined the battle was;
US Battlegroup:
7 fleet carriers,
8 light carriers,
7 battleships,
79 other ships,
28 submarines,
956 planes
IJN (Imperial Japanese Navy):
5 fleet carriers,
4 light carriers,
5 battleships,
43 other ships,
450 carrier-based planes,
300 land-based planes
Aftermath was;
US Battlegroup:
123 of the 956 airplanes destroyed, approximatelly crews of the 80 survived)
IJN (Imperial Japanese Navy):
3 carriers sunk,
2 oilers sunk,
about 600 planes destroyed,
6 other ships heavily damaged
Like in most of the WWII pacific air-sea battles, battle took place between very large battlegroups.
This time casualities were low for the American side only because Japanese forces used inexperienced pilots and outdated aircraft for the battle.
According to some hearings, after the battle was over a pilot on
USS LEXINGTON 
was heard describing the battle saying , "Hell, this is like an old time turkey shoot!".
Because of this the battle was also named as the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot”.
After this little explaination now lets talk about the mission. Actually I’m a beginner for FRED 2 but, I was able do some things although I’m new to mission making.
Firstly mission is starting with two rival battle groups advancing each other. I first thought to add a scout patrol stage in the beginning but than I skipped the idea. But I’m planning to add that if I understand and solve the basics of autopilot feature.
As obvious the player is a confed pilot and for this mission he is flying a thunderbolt in Alpha wing. I must say I used a lot of fighter and bomber wings and great amount of capital ships to give the essance of the original battle.
I prepared a background ambieance with some nebulas and a planet (named strangely Marianas
)
Both sides advance towards each other and, engagement starts. I tested the mission and till this point it is working nearly fine.
I placed a lot of radio chatter at the beginning stage (some how luckilly, I could manage to record some sound files and combine them with some animation files
)
I tried to record the radio chatter in a certain way, that gives the player the feeling of real military radio traffic. Some might say it may not be neccessary but I think in a large operational theatre like the one we’re talking about there should be lots radio traffic not only among air wings but also among capital ships as well.
For the later stages of the mission, I’m planning the arrival of the confed reinforcements to the engagement area and close the circle . Because of this right now I’m working on adding some more fighters and capital ships for both sides in order to increase the lengt of the battle though I don’t know how many I can add. Probaby there may be some engine restrictions.
Now I have some questions;
1- Using single waypoint path for fighter wings are working but when I do the same with cap ships they advance to a single waypoint where they start to crash into each other.
To avoid this happening, I used seperate waypoint orders and seperate waypoint 1 paths for each cap ship to make them advance towards each other in an orderly fashion .
But some how this does not look right to me. Although it is working flawlessly, there are too many waypoints right now and I want to decrease the amount. I’m sure there is a way to do that. But I couldn’t find it.
2- When me or one of my wingmen hits and destroys an enemy fighter, strangely the animation I see on the massage screen does not belong to a dying Kilrathi but to a dying confed pilot. And sometimes when a kilrathi fighter kills one of the confed fighters the massage this time belongs to a kilrathi pilot not a confed pilot.
I could not understand why this happens. Probably I’m making a mistake. Because I didn’t see that happening when I was playing the Prologue campaign or other single missions.
Can you help me solving my problems please?
Thank you
Best Regards.
