[Javito1986]

I just plain don't like missions where they ask you to do impossible and silly things like that without any support. 4 bombers attacking the Ravana? Wtf? Did they even give you a fighter escort in that mission? I don't remember.


The best campaigns and missions are the ones that have some semblance of balance. If the only way you can survive is by turning down the difficulty to Easy and getting 10 - 20 kills yourself after all your wingmen have been wiped out... I just get turned off.

[Aurora Paradox]

I just plain don't like missions where they ask you to do impossible and silly things like that without any support. 4 bombers attacking the Ravana? Wtf? Did they even give you a fighter escort in that mission? I don't remember.


The best campaigns and missions are the ones that have some semblance of balance. If the only way you can survive is by turning down the difficulty to Easy and getting 10 - 20 kills yourself after all your wingmen have been wiped out... I just get turned off.

They actually did give you fighter escort.  A single wing of Vasuadan Fighters.  I forget which fighter exactly.  I always thought that mission wasn't realistic.  I have beaten it on medium.  I don't turn down the difficulty unless I have to.  One wing of bombers and fighter escort is just suicide for that kind of attack.

[Dilmah G]

Yeah, except the Vasudan fighter weren't even your escort. They were the Khenmu's.

[Droid803]

Just stick near the Sobek. Treat it as your escort that doesn't move. It'll flak and AAAf down those Basilisks for you and provide you with a place to hide while rearming.

[Dilmah G]

It's easy to get cut down on the way there though. That's what I found.

[Javito1986]

I just plain don't like missions where they ask you to do impossible and silly things like that without any support. 4 bombers attacking the Ravana? Wtf? Did they even give you a fighter escort in that mission? I don't remember.


The best campaigns and missions are the ones that have some semblance of balance. If the only way you can survive is by turning down the difficulty to Easy and getting 10 - 20 kills yourself after all your wingmen have been wiped out... I just get turned off.

They actually did give you fighter escort.  A single wing of Vasuadan Fighters.  I forget which fighter exactly.  I always thought that mission wasn't realistic.  I have beaten it on medium.  I don't turn down the difficulty unless I have to.  One wing of bombers and fighter escort is just suicide for that kind of attack.

Right right, the single wing of Vasudan fighters. That mission -was- suicidal.

I just don't like missions like that in general. It's not just Slaying the Ravana, they come up elsewhere in other non-canon campaigns every now and again. I'm a huge fan of Wing Commander but I don't like it when Wing Commander syndrome creeps into my Freespace. I.E. the player must do EVERYTHING, THE PLAYER IS UTTERLY RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING, YOU HAVE TO KILL EVERYTHING YOURSELF, etc...

It's not what Freespace has always been about for me. Freespace has the best wingmen AI of any space sim I've played. It's at it's best in missions like the one in FS1 to capture that Shivan warship. When you're coordinating wingmen, just one of many, and work together to achieve the objectives. I really dislike it when Alpha 1 is the god of the battlefield.

[Spoon]

What makes the 'slaying the ravana' mission even more unbelieveable it the briefing they give before it
"The ravana just destroyed 10 ships here, 20 caps there and wiped out 50 fighter wings. we are in full retreat
So we want you to destroy the ravana for us.
Get in gear pilot"
wut?
This comic is ever related

[Dilmah G]

I love that series.

[Javito1986]

Haha yea.  I think a lot of it was just Volition not being able to make quality "large scale" missions because people's computers couldn't handle it back then. So if they had given you a lot of support in Slaying The Ravana it probably would have crashed most people's '99/'00 computers.

But this is '09 now and really there's no reason to do that anymore. If my computer can handle the second to last mission of Blue Planet then I can get some friggin' support to destroy the Ravana. 

Has anyone ever thought of 'remaking' the FS2 campaign, the way FSPort remade Silent Threat? I love the campaign, it's what got me into Freespace in the first place, but there are some missions that could definitely be improved (Ravana, Their Finest Hour) or given a little 2009 "umph". 

[karajorma]

Problem is that ST is almost universally seen as a good idea poorly executed. So any fix to it by a competent team was going to be an improvement.

FS2 on the other hand is much, much better. Fixing the missions would be a lot more subjective. You'd get lots of people who liked the changes and probably quite a few who didn't no matter who did it.

On top of that, any large scale changes are going to require voice acting, which might be hard if we're doing anything to a character already voice acted in FS2.

[Javito1986]

Well, maybe not a complete reimagining like Silent Threat Reborn. But I don't think anyone would mind if FS2's campaign was 'touched up' some? Case in point, I'm fairly sure most everyone agrees that Their Finest Hour could use some work.

[Snail]

No, I think Their Finest Hour is fine. TBH on my first playthrough I didn't see anything wrong with it whatsoever.

[Sushi]

1. I agree, Their Finest Hour is pretty fine as-is. It works well as a mission and feels reasonably balanced.

2. Thadeus did remake this mission: http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.499

[Krelus]

I think trying to "fix" the main campaign would amount to an entire class of first-graders trying to "fix" Margritte's "Son of Man" with a box of crayons.

If I could, though, one thing I would fix is to increase the scale and not have everything hinge on Alpha 1. I always try to make the player not feel like the only competent person in the whole GTVA. There's easy ways to do this without going into BoE territory. For example, in one mission I made, at some point an Arcadia about 7km from your position falls under attack from some Hercs. Command orders you to continue doing what you're doing while two wings of Taurets come to the installation's aid.

[Mongoose]

No, I think Their Finest Hour is fine. TBH on my first playthrough I didn't see anything wrong with it whatsoever.

So you didn't notice the fact that the Colossus was going on and on about standing its ground to the bitter end when it was completely disabled anyway?

I think that just about the only sort of tweak I'd approve of for something like MediaVP inclusion, or the equivalent, would be for Their Finest Hour, for the simple reason that it's clear from looking at the mission file that what we see in-game isn't what originally intended to do with it.  There's a whole series of waypoints for the Colossus that are never utilized due to its disabling, presumably because it wasn't moving properly.  And if I remember correctly, a few of the cruisers have beam-free-all events that don't trigger due to a timing error.  In this one case, where we have a blueprint laid out of what the mission was originally supposed to be like, I think that "officially" tweaking it back to that state would not only be acceptable, but would also make it fit a lot closer with what's actually going on during the mission.  As it stands, we have allied ships blockading a node from Shivan attack who seem to have forgotten how to use their beams, and a superweapon's bravely defiant last stand rendered moot by their ability to go anywhere in the first place.  Difficulty level aside, the mission isn't all that challenging in the first place, so whether or not the allied capital ships help make kills seems of little consequence, and the player wasn't meant to have any interactions with the Colossus other than sitting around and watching what happens, so any changes to its motion wouldn't affect the player at all.  It'd make for an all-around better experience.

[Dilmah G]

Yeah, at least beam-free those ships.

[bloated]

Nope, what he was saying was that the Sathanas didn't project that aura of fear that the Lucifer created, though Kara has pretty efficiently covered the reasons why, and I agree with him, even when 80 Saths appeared on the scene, I still didn't get the same feeling of helplessness and desperation as I did from FS1.

personally I despised the lucifer.

I felt it higlighted flaws in FS1's weapons and ship balance.

the problem with FS1 back in the day was always that if you had the time you could without all that much effort take out any capital ship, find a place to hide and shoot..... except for Lucifer of course because it was indestructible with it's magical shields, I took out a demon class cruiser more than once by picking a spot after disabling it's engines..... literally capital ships weren't frightening which was just silly, everyone knew it was indestructible so why bother... what made it's presence all the more silly is that I could pick so many spots and use the same tactics.. sit and shoot but Volition decided I wasn't allowed to do it because Lucifer had these "magical shields".... Lucifer imposed badly scripted missions and didn't reward players with any options for creativity in combat.

now look at FS2....... I felt dread every time I heard a beam cannon spool up.... literally I was full of dread, I felt dread everytime any capital ship noticed me and starting sending flak my way....... uber dread when I was being hit by flack and I heard the beam cannon spooling up.

FS2 made you feel like you were in a fighter,  that bigger players ruled this day and you were little more than a pawn FS1 had none of that.

when the first Sathana's showed I knew I wouldn't be able to take it out, I was having a hard enough time attacking Cain class cruisers,  I knew capital ships were going to be required, when 80 Sathana's showed up I knew humanity and the Vasudans lost.

literally we had picked the wrong fight at the wrong time.

FS1 was annoying in comparison to FS2 the uber indestructible ship with magical shields that were impossible to destroy made the whole experience pointless......and lead to a disappointing ending involving the 1 chance scenario where I'm forced to fly a massively slow cattle wagon that didn't handle and spend a half hour flying towards the 5 engines I had to disable because it was the "only way" to destroy Lucifer.

I played FS1 on insane until the final mission, I was so disappointed I set it to the easiest level and still it took forever to finish.

I so disliked FS1's ending compared to what was overall a pretty good game.

FS2 was a masterpiece in comparison having learned from FS1 Volition put together tight and epic experience.

the last mission was incredible after I died heroically I was stunned an amazed...... when I redid the final mission and made certain to survive I was a little disappointed and decided to go back and die again.

a phenominal ending.

FS1's less so.

[Spoon]

I'll have to agree with Bloated on most points.

The caps ships in Fs1 are weaksauce

[William Wolfen]

FS2 just makes me wish i could command an Aeolus or a Deimos, whereas in FS1, i never would have wanted to be a capship at all...

[redsniper]

Really guys? You didn't like the mad dash to the Sol-Delta Serpentis node? You didn't like the final battle IN SUBSPACE with NO SHIELDS???

To each their own, I guess.