[WMCoolmon]

Well in that case instead of using the mission outcome in a debrief you're basically using it elsewhere.

Let me put it more simply. What is really important is that the players actions should matter. As I keep saying in many BoE missions they don't. The campaign would be the same whether the player played well or not.

Ironically one of the FS2 missions with the least ships is actually the one which bests fits the BoE mission description. High Noon is actually pretty close to a BoE mission. While initially you have an effect on the battle by disabling the Sathanas' cannons after you've done that it matters very little what you do, and that's something you can accomplish within the first 2 minutes or so. You can simply put the ship at top speed and walk off for a cup of tea and it won't change the mission outcome after that point.

After the Sathanas is disabled the player is reduced to simply waiting for the capships to end their fight. His actions don't matter. Great in terms of storyline but rather poor from a mission design point. I suspect that if they could have done it would have gone to a cutscene once the beam cannons were taken out.

I don't think it's necessary that the player's actions matter, and I don't think a cutscene necessarily changes anything. Half-life 2 makes a big deal of having the player in control nearly all of the time, and having scripted events play out. Sure, you can turn around and stare at a wall while all the fireworks are happening, but do you want to? Metal Gear Solid 2, on the other hand, doesn't have any problem with gratuitous use of in-game cutscenes. Both games are pretty well-established and have following in their own right, obviously.

But I'm also kind of iffy as I think if you were to use that as a rule of thumb, you would probably be right. I think you could get away with a BoE without having the player's actions matter, but every instance I come up with generally needs some extensive setup to make it seem like the FREDder hasn't just tossed a bunch of ships into FRED and beam-free-alled, maybe quite a few scripted events too.

[karajorma]

As you say making missions is an art not a science. As with all art there are times when you can get away with ignoring the established rules. However as with art if you abandon them without understanding why they exist and what they mean, your work will probably look amateurish as a result.

[Zarathud]

The only opinion pieces I see appropriate as being in the wiki are things that are so popular that a working knowledge of them is necessary to be in the community (ie they have an identity of their own), and if they help give context to something that isn't clear from hard facts (eg veteran comments).

I think that the issue of the Battle of Endor syndrome has been canon since before the release of FreeSpace 2.  And if the article doesn't meet your definition for the wiki, then I don't know what would.

You're ignoring most of my argument and focusing only on the zen mantra of mission design (supported by Volition even in terms of coding the engine).  But the proof of that mantra is in everything else dismissed -- complex missions often fail and inherently remove the player from the story elements.  That's the knowledge that needs to be communicated.

You can enjoy art that has poor technique, but that doesn't make it "good" in terms of design.  Fun is a different factor than design.  We can have different opinions of fun, but design techniques can be objectively analyzed.  A "Battle of Endor" mission relying only on its briefing and debriefing to advance its story is classic bad design technique, and it's only worse when the designer doesn't even bother.

We had a big discussion over this, and the sort of agreement that was hammered out was that opinions would gain 'equal time'.

Cuddle puppies all you want, but that's the coward's way out.  Some opinions can be proven better than others.  If you don't like what I say, find someone with a good argument about why I can be wrong in the wiki.  I'd suggest focusing on the "fun" factor.

At the very least a high-level summary of the BoE discussion IMO merits space on a wiki if its purpose is to really inform the community.  Do that, and they'll thank you more often than not.

[WMCoolmon]

I think that the issue of the Battle of Endor syndrome has been canon since before the release of FreeSpace 2.

Then you don't understand the definition of canon. Operation Thresher is canon. "Battle of Endor" is not canon - it never appears anywhere in the Freespace universe.

You're ignoring most of my argument and focusing only on the zen mantra of mission design (supported by Volition even in terms of coding the engine).  But the proof of that mantra is in everything else dismissed -- complex missions often fail and inherently remove the player from the story elements.  That's the knowledge that needs to be communicated.

The way :V: coded the engine doesn't have anything to do with whether they supported BoE missions or not. They also didn't code in the ability to have ships with more than ~2000 polys, shine maps, glow maps, or normal maps. That doesn't mean that they were making a statement that normal maps suck, it just wasn't technically feasible at the time due to limitations of computers. Had :V: started putting in missions with over 200 ships, nothing would have been able to run Freespace 2 without keeling over or display everything as gigantic triangles.

Furthermore, :V: could be wrong. :V: only has the power to define absolute truths within the Freespace Universe. Outside of that universe, they're just as human as the rest of us.

If you want to communicate to people that "complex missions often fail and inherently remove the player from the story elements", first of all, you need to state that rather than publishing your conclusions based on taking that, extrapolating some unknown number of times, and then generalizing an entire type of mission.

I'm dismissing things which are irrelevant or do little to support your point. Much of the 'evidence' you've suggested has been circumstantial and has many other factors contributing to it which is just as likely to have caused things to happen the way they did as some inherent problem with Battle of Endor missions.

You can enjoy art that has poor technique, but that doesn't make it "good" in terms of design.  Fun is a different factor than design.  We can have different opinions of fun, but design techniques can be objectively analyzed.  A "Battle of Endor" mission relying only on its briefing and debriefing to advance its story is classic bad design technique, and it's only worse when the designer doesn't even bother.

Design techniques must have an end goal in mind in order for them to be meaningful. Design techniques themselves cannot be objectively organized, inasmuch as creating art is concerned, because their goal is a general subjective feeling. What are your design goals? Success? Humor? Fun? Drama? Excitement? How do your design goals cause all of these to happen? So far you've done a swell job of showing how your design techniques are ill-suited to a Battle of Endor mission - fair enough. That doesn't mean that they're the only set of design techniques that can be used to create a mission that is widely considered a good mission.

We had a big discussion over this, and the sort of agreement that was hammered out was that opinions would gain 'equal time'.

Cuddle puppies all you want, but that's the coward's way out.  Some opinions can be proven better than others.  If you don't like what I say, find someone with a good argument about why I can be wrong in the wiki.  I'd suggest focusing on the "fun" factor.

At the very least a high-level summary of the BoE discussion IMO merits space on a wiki if its purpose is to really inform the community.  Do that, and they'll thank you more often than not.

I don't think that all of the people who were outraged at the idea of the Shivan Manifesto being included in the wiki would like being called "puppies". The support you've presented for your opinion so far has been rather lackluster and inconsistent in its solidarity. I don't like what you say because it doesn't work - you're trying to make an absolute statement about a subjective subject and you can't offer any definite, strong proof to support your opinion. So far all you've done is prove that you're consistent - when people design missions more according to the design techniques you support, you tend to compliment their work as 'more mature'.

[WMCoolmon]

As you say making missions is an art not a science. As with all art there are times when you can get away with ignoring the established rules. However as with art if you abandon them without understanding why they exist and what they mean, your work will probably look amateurish as a result.

Exactly, but generalizations are not the way to teach those rules. I can claim that horror movies are crappy movies because they tend to kill off characters and have unrealistic plots, so an audience won't identify with the characters and will have a hard time suspending their disbelief. However, there are a lot of good horror movies. I could also argue that point-of-view shots are bad because it's hard for the audience to know what's going on - that doesn't stop movies or TV series from using point-of-view shots for effect.

Both of these things stated as just a generalization do more harm than good. It would shut people's minds off to the possibilities under the guise of it being 'the right way to do things'. The trick to teaching is to be able to instill in your students an understanding of what's right and what's not right that transcends blatant generalizations and borders on intuition. That way they can learn for themselves what works and what doesn't work. If all you're delivering to them are canned conclusions that stifle independent thought and don't stand up to critical inspection, your students are well within their rights to ignore everything you say. That doesn't necessarily mean that every student is going to enter into things with the knowledge and experience to call BS on your conclusions. Everybody has to start from somewhere.

[karajorma]

I tend to agree with that. It's why my posts for the FRED Academy tend to be so long. I prefer to explain why something is badly designed rather than simply saying "Don't do that."

The BoE article needs to separate out the legitimate concerns with BoE missions (and there are a couple of really big ones) from the warnings not to make them. The BoE article should be closer in tone to the 14 FREDding mistakes article I wrote a while back. Instead simply advising against BoE it should cover the common problems with BoE and what can be done to solve them. As far as I can see the two biggest problems with BoE are

1) More ships = more complexity = much more chance of the player screwing up the mission by doing something the FREDder didn't expect. The level to which this is a problem tends to correspond to how skilled the FREDder is (i.e how good he is at spotting potential problems) and how anal he is about fixing bugs and protecting against them.

2) Missions which basically put the player in "spectator mode" where he has little effect on the mission. This problem can exist in any mission (High Noon once you take out the Sath's cannons for instance) but can be avoided by giving the player a specific task (Feint! Parry! Riposte! for instance avoids the problem by making the player protect the Rampart instead of simply watching Koth ram the Colossus).


What we need is an article explaining that.

[Snail]

Also the AI tends to be stupid if there are lots of things for it to control. At least in retail.

[Zarathud]

Then you don't understand the definition of canon.

While there can be no "canon" of design under that narrow definition, the Battle of Endor syndrome has been influencing mission design for over 10 years.  To eliminate that from the wiki makes no sense to me.  To compare the design article to fan fiction is like comparing apples to oranges.

Volition's deliberate coding limitation to simplify mission design was well within the technology of the time, which is entirely different than comparing it to technology that hadn't been developed yet.  If the FDL was still around, you could see these concepts promoted by Volition to mission designers -- and the deliberate design discussions in the community that were expressed in the Battle of Endor article.  Just because you can do something (add more ships into FRED), doesn't mean you should.  It's often better design to do more with less (like recurring fighter wings, rather than separate wings for everything).

Design techniques must have an end goal in mind in order for them to be meaningful. Design techniques themselves cannot be objectively organized, inasmuch as creating art is concerned, because their goal is a general subjective feeling.

I disagree.  You can design an elegant code that doesn't meet its goal.  You're talking merely about function, but art involves form as much as expression.  That's why art fundamentals, like mission design or coding, can be taught. 

It's then up to the artist/coder/designer to make something that achieves its function.  That's why I'll concede that Battle of Endor missions can be "fun" if everything falls within the expected parameters (which isn't guaranteed).  I'll grant your point on expression, but not design -- which is only subjective if you confuse the means with the goal.

The support you've presented for your opinion so far has been rather lackluster and inconsistent in its solidarity. I don't like what you say because it doesn't work - you're trying to make an absolute statement about a subjective subject and you can't offer any definite, strong proof to support your opinion.

If you want to defend Battle of Endor missions, then do so.  It's specious (false) logic to attack my arguments as circumstancial, not following your twisted analogies to a hypothectical "Joss Whedon" mission designer, or invalid because you're confusing design with expression.

[WMCoolmon]

Then you don't understand the definition of canon.

While there can be no "canon" of design under that narrow definition, the Battle of Endor syndrome has been influencing mission design for over 10 years.  To eliminate that from the wiki makes no sense to me.  To compare the design article to fan fiction is like comparing apples to oranges.

It's the definition of "canon" that's been used on every single discussion board related to a fictional universe that I've seen. I've never seen anybody contradict that definition unless it was a situation where two different pieces of "canon" contradicted each other.

Volition's deliberate coding limitation to simplify mission design was well within the technology of the time, which is entirely different than comparing it to technology that hadn't been developed yet.  If the FDL was still around, you could see these concepts promoted by Volition to mission designers -- and the deliberate design discussions in the community that were expressed in the Battle of Endor article.  Just because you can do something (add more ships into FRED), doesn't mean you should.  It's often better design to do more with less (like recurring fighter wings, rather than separate wings for everything).

Not entirely sure what you're saying with regards to technology here. Are you saying that design techniques shouldn't take into account technical improvements which reduce limitations?

Design techniques must have an end goal in mind in order for them to be meaningful. Design techniques themselves cannot be objectively organized, inasmuch as creating art is concerned, because their goal is a general subjective feeling.

I disagree.  You can design an elegant code that doesn't meet its goal.  You're talking merely about function, but art involves form as much as expression.  That's why art fundamentals, like mission design or coding, can be taught. 

It's then up to the artist/coder/designer to make something that achieves its function.  That's why I'll concede that Battle of Endor missions can be "fun" if everything falls within the expected parameters (which isn't guaranteed).  I'll grant your point on expression, but not design -- which is only subjective if you confuse the means with the goal.

"Expression", as I've commonly heard it used, has more to do with the artist's feeling about a particular piece of work than the audience's reaction to it. A piece can successfully express an artist's inner rage, then, but may have little meaning and be incomprehensible to its audience. It's not a word that I would use with regards to mission design, or especially not about what should or should not be in the wiki, because if someone claims that they have expressed themselves with a mission, I don't see how I could disagree with them. I hate to bring up another definition but if somebody tells me that a "mission expresses fun", it means something a lot different to me than if they say that a "mission is fun".

"Good design techique" as we're talking about it here seems to mean "the process that the mission designer uses to make a good mission". The key thing being the end goal here. What is a "good" mission? The most common definitions here seem to mean that it's a mission that most people want to play and would consider a good mission. That last part there is where the subjectivity comes in. And IMHO there is a certain amount of charity that should be used here. If somebody sticks to design technique but comes out with a mission that everybody hates, it may still be a good mission. If somebody does not stick to design technique but comes out with a mission that everybody loves, it's still a good mission, even if the person that created it doesn't know a thing about design technique and just did it via intuition.

The subjectivity from all this stems from the question - who defines the meaning of "good"? Is it the majority of the crowd or the educated elite who analyze the film? Or is there some more complex process entirely? Generally speaking it isn't actually the artist themselves. However the artist's opinion may influence others' ideas of the work.

But with Freespace missions in particular, I think that the bottom line is that there is some generally-agreed-upon missions that are good and missions that are bad. Though interestingly, missions that are bad at one thing may be good at another. SGWP2 has crappy technique for a serious campaign but is pretty well-referenced as a campaign so absurdly wrong that it's funny. So maybe SGWP2 is where people should look for inspiration for a parody campaign.

The support you've presented for your opinion so far has been rather lackluster and inconsistent in its solidarity. I don't like what you say because it doesn't work - you're trying to make an absolute statement about a subjective subject and you can't offer any definite, strong proof to support your opinion.

If you want to defend Battle of Endor missions, then do so.  It's specious (false) logic to attack my arguments as circumstancial, not following your twisted analogies to a hypothectical "Joss Whedon" mission designer, or invalid because you're confusing design with expression.

It's not false logic to attack arguments as circumstantial so long as the person making the argument has not shown proof that there is a clear link between cause and effect.

As far as confusing the definition of "design" and "expression", I've never had a problem with the way the terms have been used with my definition of them, either in professional theater work or in any of the courses I've taken or related books I've read. (I also checked the definitions on dictionary.com, but there's at least a dozen for each - nevertheless, design seemed to tend towards accomplishing a goal, while expression seemed to focus on a person conveying feeling or emotion and not on how the listeners reacted to that.) Even if I'm not expressing myself clearly () I am pretty comfortable with my understanding of the terms, although I'll grant you a certain amount of leeway there since they are pretty vaguely defined.

[Zarathud]

In one sense, canon applies only to fictional storytelling, not design:

Canon, in the context of a fictional universe, comprises those novels, stories, films, etc., that are considered to be genuine or officially sanctioned, and those events, characters, settings, etc., that are considered to have existence within the fictional universe. In order for a setting to appear coherent, especially in fictions that contain multiple parts, both creators and audiences sometimes find it useful to define what has and has not "actually happened" in that universe.

But canon can also be used to apply to design such as films or literature:

Film canon is the limited group of movies that serve as the measuring stick for the highest quality in the genre of film....
The Western canon is a term used to denote a canon of books, and, more widely, music and art, that has been the most influential in shaping Western culture.

Are you saying that design techniques shouldn't take into account technical improvements which reduce limitations?

Volition's technical capabilities (especially when creating FreeSpace 2) exceeded design capabilities, so limitations were imposed to ensure quality.  The goal was ensuring thorough testing, and supported by the design theory that simpler is often better.  Volition deliberately limited mission designers, but not becasue of technical limitations.  So I don't necessarily see the ability to create bigger Battle of Endor missions as a "technical improvement."  The SCP's technical improvements are impressive, but now the designers have some need to impose their own self-restraint -- which is why I'm concerned about preserving the BoE warning.

It's not false logic to attack arguments as circumstantial so long as the person making the argument has not shown proof that there is a clear link between cause and effect.

Perhaps you're misunderstanding logical inferences made in analyzing circumstantial evidence, the inductive process of analogies, and the entirely separate method of establishing causal proof. 

Basically, I believe in the objective reality of design that can be taught, demonstrated and proven.  WMCoolmon doesn't, prefering a more subjectivist approach that design isn't separate from the "fun" or a determination of what is "good."  For example, I think we can objectively prove and achieve a consenus that it isn't good design to put in 12 separate wings of 5 fighters when the capability exists to have 3 wings of fighters with 4 waves each.   We can disagree about whether it's more "fun" to have 15 fighters or 60 fighters in play all at the same time, but I'm confident 15 fighters x 4 waves is generally the better design.

In terms of coding, we can achieve the same result with 5 lines of code or 50 lines.  But I'm confident competent programmers would generally agree that the 5 lines of code is better design, and 50 lines should be used only when necessary.  Why would mission design be any different?

Whether we ultimately agree about mission design being objective or subjective, I'd like to see some arguments in the wiki about why Battle of Endor missions are "good" -- whether in terms of design or otherwise.  Battle of Endor missions can't be considered "good" if no one is able to defend them except by saying "they exist."

[NGTM-1R]

Basically, I believe in the objective reality of design that can be taught, demonstrated and proven.  WMCoolmon doesn't, prefering a more subjectivist approach that design isn't separate from the "fun" or a determination of what is "good."  For example, I think we can objectively prove and achieve a consenus that it isn't good design to put in 12 separate wings of 5 fighters when the capability exists to have 3 wings of fighters with 4 waves each.   We can disagree about whether it's more "fun" to have 15 fighters or 60 fighters in play all at the same time, but I'm confident 15 fighters x 4 waves is generally the better design.

See, this argument is problematic in that it betrays your preferences and biases. I too tend to believe in a objective reality of mission design; unlike writing, this is a learned rather than an intuitive process, so I can adequately explain how I do what I do. (Though arguably, that is because FRED makes it painfully obvious as well.) However, you betray your bias with this argument. You like to build small actions between small numbers of ships. However, you fail to distingush, or fail to take into account, the possiblity of larger events occuring. 12 seperate wings of 5 fighters appearing consecutively is bad design, and I doubt anybody will ever argue that point (unless, of course, it's one of the gauntlet-type missions...those qualifiers seem to screw you up every time).

However, consider 12 seperate wings of 5 fighters appearing simulatanously for something like the Colossus battlegroup storming the Polaris-E.P. node or the intial GTVA plan to assault the Sathanas with multiple destroyers. In an action that important, with multiple capital craft engaged in a do-or-die situation and the stakes being nothing less than total victory or total defeat, that you would have only three wings of fightercraft in the fighting stretches credulity badly. Having the book thrown at it, after having said book chiselled into stone tablets for extra impact, is a much more likely and rational course of events. Thus, 60 fighters on the field at one time would be good design if you were to create such a situation in your missions.

(Sidenote; I chose those two situations for the rather specific reason that we know they happened or could have happened, but they were not portrayed in missions. The plan to deal with the Sathanas in the nebula particularly screams BoE in what it would have been like had it transpired "on screen". It also serves as an excellent demonstration of the advance of computer technology; such a mission would have been totally unfeasible when FS2 was released. Now, today, it's very much possible.)

Whether we ultimately agree about mission design being objective or subjective, I'd like to see some arguments in the wiki about why Battle of Endor missions are "good" -- whether in terms of design or otherwise.  Battle of Endor missions can't be considered "good" if no one is able to defend them except by saying "they exist."

Have you actually read the wiki article? I specifically outlined several reasons, and just added several more. ( http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Battle_of_Endor_Syndrome#Why_should_I_make_such_missions.3F ) This statement alone should almost totally disqualify your arguments, as you don't seem to know very much about the article being argued about!

To put it in simplest terms, as the number of ships in the mission area expands, so do the options of the mission designer in terms of what he wishes to have happen. With a single destroyer, the opportunity exists to create a serious situation; anything involving a destroyer is serious by definition. With two destroyers, a defeat of the owning side becomes a crushing blow, one that will leave them crippled for some time in that area at least. With four destroyers, their loss would be like the Imperial Japanese Navy's loss of four fleet carriers at Midway; a turning point not for a battle or a campaign but an entire war.

As the severity of the situation increases, as it becomes closer to a do-or-die proposal, then people will devote more effort to ensure that they do instead of die. More men, more fighters, more capital craft. We all know High Noon, but I think we can all agree that it was a simplistically designed mission. For the GTVA, the events of High Noon are make or break; if the Colossus is lost, then the odds are very good they'll lose the war. But they only send Alpha 1 and his wingmen to assault the Sathanas, alone. Yes, Alpha 1 was enough to do the job, but the whole thing seems ridiculous if you recall the Colossus has more than a hundred fighters of its own that could have presumably been commited to the battle. Similarly, the Sathanas must have had more fighters available to it then it actually deployed to defend itself, which is very short-sighted in that they were facing a ship of roughly equal size and perhaps equal capablities; if the Sathanas had put its own bomber wings in space to attack the Colossus, particularly if the Sathanas was disarmed or after it became so, then things would have been much more even. Instead it takes it on the chin and looks pretty damn stupid doing it. The player would be much less likely to notice the Sathanas is essentially sitting around and letting itself get hammered for no good reason if he was fighting off four bomber wings counterattacking the Colossus' main guns.

BoEs offer, above all else, the ability to create a decisive battle that not only is decisive, but looks decisive. And perhaps more importantly, looks credible, as if it really is considered to be a matter of life and death by the two sides.

[WMCoolmon]

In one sense, canon applies only to fictional storytelling, not design:

Canon, in the context of a fictional universe, comprises those novels, stories, films, etc., that are considered to be genuine or officially sanctioned, and those events, characters, settings, etc., that are considered to have existence within the fictional universe. In order for a setting to appear coherent, especially in fictions that contain multiple parts, both creators and audiences sometimes find it useful to define what has and has not "actually happened" in that universe.

But canon can also be used to apply to design such as films or literature:

Film canon is the limited group of movies that serve as the measuring stick for the highest quality in the genre of film....
The Western canon is a term used to denote a canon of books, and, more widely, music and art, that has been the most influential in shaping Western culture.

The former is the definition that's used to limit guaranteed inclusion of articles in the wiki, which is what we were discussing. Don't try and screw around with word definitions and intentionally use them out of context - I haven't got any patience for that.

Are you saying that design techniques shouldn't take into account technical improvements which reduce limitations?

Volition's technical capabilities (especially when creating FreeSpace 2) exceeded design capabilities, so limitations were imposed to ensure quality.  The goal was ensuring thorough testing, and supported by the design theory that simpler is often better.  Volition deliberately limited mission designers, but not becasue of technical limitations.  So I don't necessarily see the ability to create bigger Battle of Endor missions as a "technical improvement."  The SCP's technical improvements are impressive, but now the designers have some need to impose their own self-restraint -- which is why I'm concerned about preserving the BoE warning.

The ability to create bigger Battle of Endor missions isn't really a technical issue anyway, so just because you don't see it as a technical improvement doesn't mean it isn't an improvement.

:V: 's limitations were those of a company working on a deadline, creating a game for mass consumption by gamers on a wide variety of computer systems. They also had a responsibility to make the game work evenly across those systems, so that a wider group of players could play the game. "Simpler is better" in that case, because it's easier to test a simple mission multiple times, and it's also less likely to break a simple mission if you make modifications to the engine.

There are a couple missions in the main Freespace 2 campaign involving the Colossus, "High Noon" and "Their Finest Hour" that people have postulated that :V: would have done differently, and made more fun, if they had been able to. "High Noon" is unusually devoid of any ships except the Colossus and the Sathanas besides a single wing of fighters launched from the Sathanas. In "Their Finest Hour", the Colossus has a complex set of waypoint paths that wasn't removed.

In those cases, "simpler is better" does mean that those missions were playable and (generally) proceed as planned, but it's raised a lot of questions - like why the Colossus hollers about melting down its beam cannons and taking hull damage when the Sathanas can't do a thing to defend itself. Or why the Colossus claims it's making a heroic sacrifice when it's disabled anyway.

There are many bugs and hardcoded limitations in the game that just would've been plain better if they were fixed or made dynamic. But they weren't. :V: was a company working on a deadline - designing overly complex missions would've caused issues further down the line when rebalancing made certain missions too hard or too easy because of tweaking damage values. There's many points in the code where a comment says something like "If you need to bump this, talk to Frank". I've never seen a comment that read "There can only be 130 ships in ships.tbl because anything more would be more likely to cause bad mission design." Current ship limits have more to do with inefficient collision code than anything else.

It's not false logic to attack arguments as circumstantial so long as the person making the argument has not shown proof that there is a clear link between cause and effect.

Perhaps you're misunderstanding logical inferences made in analyzing circumstantial evidence, the inductive process of analogies, and the entirely separate method of establishing causal proof.

I'm also not going to tolerate ignoring my arguments to suggest that I'm ignorant. If you can't refute my arguments directly, I'm not going to buy an ad hominem abusive either.

Basically, I believe in the objective reality of design that can be taught, demonstrated and proven.  WMCoolmon doesn't, prefering a more subjectivist approach that design isn't separate from the "fun" or a determination of what is "good."  For example, I think we can objectively prove and achieve a consenus that it isn't good design to put in 12 separate wings of 5 fighters when the capability exists to have 3 wings of fighters with 4 waves each.   We can disagree about whether it's more "fun" to have 15 fighters or 60 fighters in play all at the same time, but I'm confident 15 fighters x 4 waves is generally the better design.

One question I always ask myself is why the people in the Freespace universe are so stupid to only send four fighters at once. Observe a typical mission:

Light fighters jump in and are identified as a scouting wing. Alpha wing destroys them.
4 Heavy fighters jump in.
4 Heavy fighters jump in.
4 Heavy fighters jump in.
4 Heavy fighters jump in.
Command or a wingmate reports all hostiles have been destroyed.

I've always wondered why people in the Freespace universe are so stupid to send fighters in piecemeal, where they'll be obviously overwhelmed by the defending forces. And worse yet, they keep doing it - mission after mission! They already sent a scouting wing, they know exactly how many fighters are on patrol and can probably give a good estimate on how long what the defenders are doing is going to take. Why not simply wait until the first two or three wings are ready, and jump in with numerical superiority? Not only is it less suicidal for the pilots and the enemy forces' longevity, as they'll take less casualties that way, they also have a much better chance of victory and will still have at least one wing in reserve that can jump in as soon as its ready and outflank the defenders (Or disable/destroy what they're escorting while they're distracted).

Having fighters jump in like that is one of the biggest weaknesses of the Freespace design mantra. It makes the Shivans much less scary when they're polite enough to only send just enough fighters for Alpha wing to destroy, and they even wait to send the next wing until Alpha one has finished killing the first one. What manners!

So, no, you can't do the same thing with waves of fighters all the time. It gets obvious, it gets repetitive, and it does take away form the suspension of disbelief.

Re: your comments regarding what you think my views are, putting words in my mouth doesn't make me any more receptive to your arguments. Especially when I've described what I would generally consider, using objective terms, to be a good mission.

In terms of coding, we can achieve the same result with 5 lines of code or 50 lines.  But I'm confident competent programmers would generally agree that the 5 lines of code is better design, and 50 lines should be used only when necessary.  Why would mission design be any different?

Speaking as a competent programmer, one reason might be that you want to avoid code obfuscation. Another might be that you need 45 lines of comments to explain what you're doing in those five lines - unlikely, but still a possibility. Another possibility might be that it's actually faster to do it with 50 lines of code than 5 lines of code - eg a tree search versus a brute force algorithm. Still another might be that the tools required to do it in five lines are inappropriate to the project - eg you'd have to use proprietary code to do it that way. Yet another might be that it's more forward-thinking to do it with 50 lines than with 5 - observe my comments about limits above. Another might be that the design specifications for the project force you to do it in 50 lines "just because".

Each would have the same result. And I'm using result here in a programming context - the function or program would return with the same value(s). But there are many side effects to doing things a different way, much like there are different results.

Whether we ultimately agree about mission design being objective or subjective, I'd like to see some arguments in the wiki about why Battle of Endor missions are "good" -- whether in terms of design or otherwise.  Battle of Endor missions can't be considered "good" if no one is able to defend them except by saying "they exist."

If you can't even defend your arguments properly on the forums then your opinion doesn't deserve to be endorsed by the wiki. As you said, "some opinions can be proven better than others". Where I've offered relevant counterpoints and counterexamples to your evidence, you've more often responded with personal attacks.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Wiki says:
However this brings us to the key point regarding this type of mission. It is extremely unforgiving of designer inexperience, lack of attention to detail, and error. In a mission that features only a couple of cruisers and their fighter wings fighting it out, one can afford to make a few mistakes or to simply "gloss over" details; likely it won't be noticed.

In a Battle of Endor-type mission, any mistake or overlooked detail will show up glaringly.

      Seems to me that the Wiki article could be a little better structured. I'm not really sure what the point of the Wiki is, but if it's to help people make BoE missions it could be a little more helpful, as Karajoma has said. The above quote is wierd to me, it seems the complete opposite of reality. If you have one ship, and a few wings of fighters, then any screw up, is going to show up. But if there's a bunch of crap going on, and the player's busy doing all sorts of things then are they going to notice if you forgot something??


        But anyway, if the article is meant to be helpful, why not put something like:
        -If you the designer wants a certain outcome to the mission, they should use fire-beam and not beam-free-all (does anyone use firebeam anymore??? Did anyone besides volition ever use it at all???)
        -It's important to structure the mission to basically control Alpha 1's activities. Like has been mentioned elsewhere, if you don't want Alpha 1 taking out some Ravana's beam cannons, then confine him to protecting a ship elsewhere.

        Things like that.
        Personally, I think the article itself is in the completely wrong place. FRED Mistakes? Howabout "FRED Challenges" instead. Or for something that's actually available, "FRED Tips". The Battle of Endor is just another type of mission, why not have a wide but of course not comprehensive list of mission categories and talk about the objectives of each one. What are the challenges, what are the problems. What to do, what to look for, etcetera and so on.

         That seems like it would make more sense to me.
         Have What is a BoE Mission? How to make it work. What problems to look for, etcetera. The Wiki should give advice imo on how to FRED, rather than just tell someone how they've already ****ed up.

          So one article under BoE might be:

1. Beam Cannons
       Many FRED designers often go with the default of simply beam-freeing all ships in a mission. But in a large battle, this can lead to very unpredictable results. More ships in a mission is more variables, and ultimately any mission is simply an equation which is providing a certain answer to advance a story. To help avoid these problems, it's much more advisable to use the fire-beam sexp. By using the fire-beam sexp the player can specify which target is being shot at, what subsystem, and how often the beam fires. A beam can even be fired more or less often if they better meet the design goal of the mission. If the variable is not too high, a busy player will not even notice the discrepancy.  Also don't be afraid to alter the weaponry of certain ships, Volition has been known to both increase and decrease the number of beam and other weapons on certain ships for the sake of mission balance.

         Anyway, something those lines is something I'd recommend personally. Have a page, for each type of mission, and have suggestions on how to make a successful mission and a list of problems to look and to avoid.

[karajorma]

The above quote is wierd to me, it seems the complete opposite of reality. If you have one ship, and a few wings of fighters, then any screw up, is going to show up. But if there's a bunch of crap going on, and the player's busy doing all sorts of things then are they going to notice if you forgot something??

In BoE missions you're much more likely to have events that fail due to a knock-on effect. For instance suppose you forget that disabled ships won't be able to ai-warpout. That's a big problem in a small mission and will look very ugly if it happens. But it's much more likely to happen in a big one. All it takes is one stray slash beam and a cruiser you were counting on to escape will be destroyed. And in a BoE mission you have more capships and bombers to make that stray shot.

Small missions tend not to snowball out of control like that.

does anyone use firebeam anymore??? Did anyone besides volition ever use it at all???)

I use it all the time. I prefer the randomness of unscripted battles. I only use fire-beam if I want a specific ship to fire at a specific target at a specific time. Besides once I get around to sticking this in the code using fire-beam for scripting battles will be largely obsolete anyway.

For the GTVA, the events of High Noon are make or break; if the Colossus is lost, then the odds are very good they'll lose the war. But they only send Alpha 1 and his wingmen to assault the Sathanas, alone. Yes, Alpha 1 was enough to do the job, but the whole thing seems ridiculous if you recall the Colossus has more than a hundred fighters of its own that could have presumably been commited to the battle. Similarly, the Sathanas must have had more fighters available to it then it actually deployed to defend itself, which is very short-sighted in that they were facing a ship of roughly equal size and perhaps equal capablities; if the Sathanas had put its own bomber wings in space to attack the Colossus, particularly if the Sathanas was disarmed or after it became so, then things would have been much more even. Instead it takes it on the chin and looks pretty damn stupid doing it. The player would be much less likely to notice the Sathanas is essentially sitting around and letting itself get hammered for no good reason if he was fighting off four bomber wings counterattacking the Colossus' main guns.

I had an argument with Trashman about much the same thing. Don't want to drag the conversation off-topic but a summary of my points.

1) We don't know what the fighter compliment of the Sathanas is.
2) It may have used it up at some point between discovery and High Noon (It did smash through a GTVA blockade after all)
3) Similarly the Colossus may have used up its own fighter wings in the blockade.

Of course those are all explanations after the fact (And don't explain why more help wasn't forthcoming from the Psamtik either). should have either included something along those lines in the mission brief or done what you suggested and ended up with a better mission as a result.

[NGTM-1R]

The above quote is wierd to me, it seems the complete opposite of reality. If you have one ship, and a few wings of fighters, then any screw up, is going to show up. But if there's a bunch of crap going on, and the player's busy doing all sorts of things then are they going to notice if you forgot something??

In BoE missions you're much more likely to have events that fail due to a knock-on effect. For instance suppose you forget that disabled ships won't be able to ai-warpout. That's a big problem in a small mission and will look very ugly if it happens. But it's much more likely to happen in a big one. All it takes is one stray slash beam and a cruiser you were counting on to escape will be destroyed. And in a BoE mission you have more capships and bombers to make that stray shot.

Small missions tend not to snowball out of control like that.

Also larger missions have a much greater possiblity for these sorts of things not to show up in testing but happen randomly in play. In a cruiser-on-cruiser duel, if that sort of thing's going to happen, you'll probably encounter it while testing it only a few times. In a large mission, it could happen and you might never realize it until the angry posters show up in your release thread. (Something similar to this happened to Davros in Blue Planet during the dream mission, which in all other respects was well-done. I also recall having specifically made an effort to prevent the sort of thing that you describe, Kara, in Operation Savior.)

I had an argument with Trashman about much the same thing. Don't want to drag the conversation off-topic but a summary of my points.

1) We don't know what the fighter compliment of the Sathanas is.
2) It may have used it up at some point between discovery and High Noon (It did smash through a GTVA blockade after all)
3) Similarly the Colossus may have used up its own fighter wings in the blockade.

Of course those are all explanations after the fact (And don't explain why more help wasn't forthcoming from the Psamtik either). should have either included something along those lines in the mission brief or done what you suggested and ended up with a better mission as a result.

To be fair, those occurred to me too (I even mentioned #2 in a post once) but that just makes you want to strangle for not including the blockade as a mission even more.

[Zarathud]

Now we finally have a productive conversation going!   

See, this argument is problematic in that it betrays your preferences and biases.

I'm not betraying them, I see no problem with accepting them, putting them on display and defending them vigorously.

Thus, 60 fighters on the field at one time would be good design if you were to create such a situation in your missions.

But would designing a mission with 60 fighters be good design?  Why are they necessary to the mission?  Just to have more ships to "amp up the confrontation" is sloppy when you could have fewer fighters be more effective, and so on.  Why is bigger better?

Whether we ultimately agree about mission design being objective or subjective, I'd like to see some arguments in the wiki about why Battle of Endor missions are "good" -- whether in terms of design or otherwise.  Battle of Endor missions can't be considered "good" if no one is able to defend them except by saying "they exist."

Have you actually read the wiki article? I specifically outlined several reasons, and just added several more. ( http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Battle_of_Endor_Syndrome#Why_should_I_make_such_missions.3F ) This statement alone should almost totally disqualify your arguments, as you don't seem to know very much about the article being argued about!

That's a weak argument, particularly since the bulk of the defense of "Why should I make such missions?" is in its first three paragraphs that basically state that BoE missions "exist" or were "narrowly avoided/dodged."  Let's look at that part of the wiki:

Volition had to "dodge" making such missions several times over the course of FreeSpace and Freespace 2.

The player participates in the epic Battle of Deneb depicted in the Freespace 2 intro through the missions Evangelist and Doomsday, holding off the SD Lucifer and SD Eva from Vasuda; it is instructive to consider how much more impressive that battle is in the FS2 intro, and how many more ships were involved. This seems a much more reasonable expression of how the battles "should" have played out considering what both sides had available and how important it was to them. In Freespace 2, High Noon and Bearbaiting come to mind; this is effectively make-or-break for the GTVA, but they commit only a small number of fighter wings (I count four or five) and three capital craft when we know they had more than that available. (Karajorma's "Grizzly Bearbaiting" gives a reasonable impression of what Bearbaiting perhaps should have been.) Similarly the events between Bearbaiting and High Noon, and there is in fact a time gap of at least several hours, encompass what would have qualified as a BoE. The original GTVA plan for taking down the Sathanas with a multi-destroyer assault would probably have also counted as one, as would the version of Their Finest Hour that seems to have been originally intended.

Volition had to avoid this, have the poor Aquitaine totally unescorted by friendly capital ships either of the two times it was bushwhacked by a Moloch, or have no more than two ships corvette-sized or up in the mission area, because they had to contend with the limits of contemporary computers. Computers have since advanced, and these missions could now have been built, or the Aquitaine could have yelled for backup from its fleet in Proving Grounds rather than run away. Above all else, this type of mission offers the opportunity to create a decisive battle that is not only decisive, but looks decisive and looks realistic.

There are some assumptions made about what ships were available in "canon" (using WMCoolmon's definition), and assertions about what Volition had or didn't have to do with its design.  My conversations with Volition during the development of FreeSpace 2 and a tour of Volition before its release were that their designers chose in many cases to showcase simpler missions rather than more complex ones -- party from a short design cycle, and also partly due to a simpler is better mission design philosophy.

To put it in simplest terms, as the number of ships in the mission area expands, so do the options of the mission designer in terms of what he wishes to have happen.

Agreed, but I think the discussion is what options are better design.

As the severity of the situation increases, as it becomes closer to a do-or-die proposal, then people will devote more effort to ensure that they do instead of die. More men, more fighters, more capital craft.
...
BoEs offer, above all else, the ability to create a decisive battle that not only is decisive, but looks decisive. And perhaps more importantly, looks credible, as if it really is considered to be a matter of life and death by the two sides.

Not necessarily.  Sometimes the right approach is a surgical strike, and losing that one critical defender is more compelling than losing a horde of troops.  The loss of the GTVA Colossus is critical because it's the only ship that's capable and ready to defeat the Shivans and the Sathanas.  Defending or defeating that one ship is more do-or-die than a whole fleet engagement, making the other ships are essentially meaningless.  I think that's why Volition didn't "dodge" anything in its mission design -- the tension of the expected Colossus v. Sathanas engagement is heightened by the existence of only a few ships.  The illusion is maintained by the maps of other ships in the background, rather than in the mission itself.  That's good design.

[Zarathud]

The former is the definition that's used to limit guaranteed inclusion of articles in the wiki, which is what we were discussing.

Used by who?  Not me.  Using your narrow definition of "canon" excludes the intellectual contributions of the community about what is good "design" -- which is what we're talking about when discussing the creation of Battle of Endor missions rather than fan fiction/mission storylines.  It's also circular logic since the wiki articles included Battle of Endor for years, which is why you're arguing with this dinosaur.

"Simpler is better" in that case, because it's easier to test a simple mission multiple times, and it's also less likely to break a simple mission if you make modifications to the engine.

You're making a great deal about the technological limitations, but they were mainly self-imposed not just for quality reasons.  Dave Baranec, a mission designer and I had a nice chat at Volition's offices about leaving in much of the hard-coded limitations as being to focus on quality design, rather than mainly technical limitations.  Testing and timing were limitations, but so were design and quality.  The latter is good design, in my book.

In those cases, "simpler is better" does mean that those missions were playable and (generally) proceed as planned, but it's raised a lot of questions - like why the Colossus hollers about melting down its beam cannons and taking hull damage when the Sathanas can't do a thing to defend itself. Or why the Colossus claims it's making a heroic sacrifice when it's disabled anyway.

Those canon failures are due to ensuring forced mission outcomes and advancing the rails of the story.  A mission that is more playable and proceeds as planned is my definition of good design.  I don't think you're disputing that!  (Are you?)

I'm also not going to tolerate ignoring my arguments to suggest that I'm ignorant. If you can't refute my arguments directly, I'm not going to buy an ad hominem abusive either.

I'm pointing out deficiencies in your analytical style and argumentation skills, rather than an ad hominem that you are an objectionable or ill-tempered person who takes personal slights too easily and thus can't make a correct argument.  You were the one who made a questionable argument about circumstantial evidence, which as any lawyer will tell you is a valid method of analytical reasoning.

I've always wondered why people in the Freespace universe are so stupid to send fighters in piecemeal, where they'll be obviously overwhelmed by the defending forces. And worse yet, they keep doing it - mission after mission!

Good design would include (a) managing the defending forces so that neither side is overwhelmend and (b) creating plausible scenarios where both sides have reinforcements enroute, but waiting risks the other side having the overwhelming force.

Having fighters jump in like that is one of the biggest weaknesses of the Freespace design mantra. It makes the Shivans much less scary when they're polite enough to only send just enough fighters for Alpha wing to destroy, and they even wait to send the next wing until Alpha one has finished killing the first one. What manners!

So, no, you can't do the same thing with waves of fighters all the time. It gets obvious, it gets repetitive, and it does take away form the suspension of disbelief.

Again, good design would include mixing it up so that there are variations on the theme, so it doesn't become either "obvious" or "repetitive."

Re: your comments regarding what you think my views are, putting words in my mouth doesn't make me any more receptive to your arguments.

Frankly, you're not my audience with that segment, WMCoolon (hence why I referred to you in the third person).  I would explain why, but I don't want to get sidetracked on your tone or what might be called an ad hominem attack. 

Whether we ultimately agree about mission design being objective or subjective, I'd like to see some arguments in the wiki about why Battle of Endor missions are "good" -- whether in terms of design or otherwise.  Battle of Endor missions can't be considered "good" if no one is able to defend them except by saying "they exist."

If you can't even defend your arguments properly on the forums then your opinion doesn't deserve to be endorsed by the wiki. As you said, "some opinions can be proven better than others". Where I've offered relevant counterpoints and counterexamples to your evidence, you've more often responded with personal attacks.

Now YOU are making the ad hominem attack, by directly arguing that my argument is wrong because I'm advocating it...and well, I'm a bad person so anything I support can't be endorsed by the wiki.  While you might be a competent programmer, perhaps I should reveal that I'm a more than competent lawyer and debater.  Q.E.D.

[Zarathud]

Wiki says:
However this brings us to the key point regarding this type of mission. It is extremely unforgiving of designer inexperience, lack of attention to detail, and error. In a mission that features only a couple of cruisers and their fighter wings fighting it out, one can afford to make a few mistakes or to simply "gloss over" details; likely it won't be noticed.

In a Battle of Endor-type mission, any mistake or overlooked detail will show up glaringly.

Seems to me that the Wiki article could be a little better structured. I'm not really sure what the point of the Wiki is, but if it's to help people make BoE missions it could be a little more helpful, as Karajoma has said. The above quote is wierd to me, it seems the complete opposite of reality.

I 100% agree.  At this point, I'd try to write up the wiki but I think anything I suggest would be immediately removed or dismissed (much like my edits were deleted about why BoE missions are problematic due to storytelling issues).  I'd be happy with a good argument about why BoE missions are "fun" or "cinematic."  Or even how the changes to FRED and the expanded SCP makes them more easy to control (assuming this is actually correct).

The Battle of Endor is just another type of mission, why not have a wide but of course not comprehensive list of mission categories and talk about the objectives of each one. What are the challenges, what are the problems. What to do, what to look for, etcetera and so on.

I think that a full discussion of mission categories would be great, and I think there once was something similar in the community.  It may have been part of the VolitionWatch Archives (now broken), which once included mission reviews that offered rankings in several categories for the mission, advice for the player/designer, and (I think) categorized the mission type.

It seems we've lost most of the VolitionWatch network's information on design here and here, unfortunately.  This must be an old recovered page, since I thought we had completed more tutorials.  If anyone has Solrazor's FRED Checklist, I remember that resource being helpful back in the day.

[karajorma]

The FRED Checklist ended up as part of the FS2 Reference guide (I suspect.) There's a link to it somewhere in the FRED section of my FAQ.


When it comes to 's design ethos it's worth remembering that the same minimalism also gave us the final mission of Silent Threat.

[NGTM-1R]

But would designing a mission with 60 fighters be good design?  Why are they necessary to the mission?  Just to have more ships to "amp up the confrontation" is sloppy when you could have fewer fighters be more effective, and so on.  Why is bigger better?

Simply because if the resources are out there, and we know they are, why weren't they being used? Suspension of disbelief begs the question as to where the rest of the Colossus' battlegroup was, where its fighters were, where the rest of the Psmatik's fighters were...etc.

It's left there for you to wonder about, and the more you are inclined to wonder, the less you are inclined to believe. Even Wing Commander 2 went out of its way to explain why the Concordia wasn't around to help you out when it would have been very helpful for it to be so.

There are some assumptions made about what ships were available in "canon" (using WMCoolmon's definition), and assertions about what Volition had or didn't have to do with its design.  My conversations with Volition during the development of FreeSpace 2 and a tour of Volition before its release were that their designers chose in many cases to showcase simpler missions rather than more complex ones -- party from a short design cycle, and also partly due to a simpler is better mission design philosophy.

As noted above, it is implict in almost every mission in FS2 that you are not alone, and that there are other ships out there fighting as well, simply not on the same field as you. The Aquitaine is flagship of a whole fleet; the Psamtik flagship of a battlegroup. It's quite rare to see a capital vessel more than once, yet we do not change theaters of combat nearly as often as once a mission. Several times it is in fact stated that there were other ships in the area but that were not fighting in your battle.

The only missions in FS2 that I can think of off the top of my head that do not leave open the possiblity of having more forces available to be commited are Argonautica, Into the Lion's Den, Slaying Ravana (actually a bit questionable, the Aquitaine itself was presumably available), and Apocalypse. For one other mission, Feint!, Parry!, Riposte!, it was explained why they didn't do so, yet in so explaining, the existence of such forces was admitted. Also worthy of mention are the SOC Loop 1 missions, which clearly demonstrated that the GTVA had forces free to attack the Iceni, and that even though the NTF was up against the ropes, bleeding, it had ships to spare to investigate/attempt to stop the Sunder and yourself...this from a force that was never really equal to the GTVA to begin with and was now decidely less equal due to the the depredations of the Colossus.

There are other people, other fighter wings and other capital ships out there. If you want to try and say otherwise, that argument both directly assaults the canon and defies logical assumptions from it. It is by any possible standards invalid.

As for 's design philosophy, I care not a wit. Indeed, as I've stated before, the simplicity of some of their missions assaults suspension of disbelief. Kara's comment about what we got for Silent Threat is well-founded. So are my and WMC's comments regarding High Noon. Simplicity in what should be a serious engagement looks silly. Decisive actions are not single ship vs. single ship. Tsushima Straights, Midway, Leyte Gulf, the Nile, Trafalgar, these are decisive battles. FS1 successfully justified the nature of its campaign and ending with the unique and uniquely powerful Lucifer. Silent Threat tried, and failed, to follow this formula with the Hades. FS2 didn't even bother. Yet the mission design did not fully evolve to support this.

Agreed, but I think the discussion is what options are better design.

Why is it not better design to give yourself more options, if you make intelligent use of them? I've yet to see you explain that.

Not necessarily.  Sometimes the right approach is a surgical strike, and losing that one critical defender is more compelling than losing a horde of troops.  The loss of the GTVA Colossus is critical because it's the only ship that's capable and ready to defeat the Shivans and the Sathanas.  Defending or defeating that one ship is more do-or-die than a whole fleet engagement, making the other ships are essentially meaningless.  I think that's why Volition didn't "dodge" anything in its mission design -- the tension of the expected Colossus v. Sathanas engagement is heightened by the existence of only a few ships.  The illusion is maintained by the maps of other ships in the background, rather than in the mission itself.  That's good design.

Keyword: "Sometimes." In fact, quite rarely; competent tactics mean that such situations are rare. And we know it's not true that the Colossus is the only ship capable of defeating the Sathanas. The GTVA did have an apparently sound plan for doing so using several destroyers, and we know that the Psamtik at least is still active and alive (and because it reappears later, presumably the Aquitaine as well). Perhaps they would have needed more than that even, but the Colossus wasn't quite the only option...and certainly the Psamtik could have done more to help the Colossus win.

Also, this isn't true. Tension for High Noon is non-existant if you did well in Bearbaiting. Even if you did moderately well in Bearbaiting the Colossus is not in fact in any real danger. There's no tension to High Noon at all. I've seen a lot of people list what they thought were the best missions of FS2. Into the Lion's Den is a perennial favorite. The Sixth Wonder shows up a few times. So does Bearbaiting. Nobody ever lists High Noon. High Noon can be, at worst, even less well-designed then the last mission of Silent Threat, because the player doesn't even have a reason to tape down their fire key and walk away. The dialogue takes on a faintly ridiculous aspect. It's really a very poorly designed mission.