[Akalabeth Angel]

Then go and play BP.

  I have played it. That's why I'm saying, it didn't blow my mind.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Sorry, I took it to mean that you've never played it. The bolded bit led me to my presumption.

Universal Truth must not have blown my mind since I don't have a clue what mission you guys are even talking about.

That said, Universal Truth didn't blow my mind either. It's just escorting everyone while the Vishnans and Shivans duke it out.

[Akalabeth Angel]

That said, Universal Truth didn't blow my mind either. It's just escorting everyone while the Vishnans and Shivans duke it out.

Oh that one.
Meh. Too much exposition

[Scotty]

To be fair, it is a good mission even before the Vishnans get there, what with the already GIGANTIC capship battle (by FS standards). 

Spoiler:

And then FOUR MORE DESTROYERS jump in.  That battle probably has the biggest weight of metal of any mission I had seen up to that point.  But then the second to last mission just blows the hell out of that.

[General Battuta]

To be fair, it is a good mission even before the Vishnans get there, what with the already GIGANTIC capship battle (by FS standards). 

Spoiler:

And then FOUR MORE DESTROYERS jump in.  That battle probably has the biggest weight of metal of any mission I had seen up to that point.  But then the second to last mission just blows the hell out of that.

I think you're thinking of The Great Preservers.

Oh that one.
Meh. Too much exposition

Well, we can always add a skip button.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Oh that one.
Meh. Too much exposition

Well, we can always add a skip button.

The mission's fine as is I just thought it was a little too much in terms of telling me what's going on. It's like "oh, so that's the secret of the universe. Thanks for sharing".

[Scotty]

@Battuta:  Probably.  The one right after Forced Entry?  The second one I was talking about was Universal Truth, what with the BFSs and all.  The first one I was thinking of was Preserving the Balance.  Who wouldn't love a mission where a total of EIGHT Destroyer sized warships duke it out for most of a mission?

[General Battuta]

Oh that one.
Meh. Too much exposition

Well, we can always add a skip button.

The mission's fine as is I just thought it was a little too much in terms of telling me what's going on. It's like "oh, so that's the secret of the universe. Thanks for sharing".

Yeah, my reaction the first time through was similar, but it's grown on me.

[NGTM-1R]

It wasn't terribly cinematic either to be honest. They weren't slinging much in the way of beams and such.

[Droid803]

Universal Truth needs a skip button.
Sitting through the 2-3 minute chat the bigass ships have before the battle every time gets annoying when you get splashed by bomb shockwaves a few times. (I ended up getting irritated and just invul'ed myself, and started 'k-ing stuff).

I can stand repeating difficult missions if I don't have to sit there watching the same thing over and over and over before it gets to the actually part that matters. If I do, then I get irritated and the mission looses it's appeal entirely. (This is the same reason I dislike He Who Rides the Tiger, with it's long wait time before anything happens).

While it may be good for storytelling, it becomes aggravating to play for the third or fourth time.

[General Battuta]

A skip button will be easy to implement. So will MORE BEAMZ (as long as it doesn't trash framerate!) We could even waypoint the Dante or something...make it bear down on the convoy as if perhaps intending to swat it away...

[Akalabeth Angel]

I can stand repeating difficult missions if I don't have to sit there watching the same thing over and over and over before it gets to the actually part that matters. If I do, then I get irritated and the mission looses it's appeal entirely. (This is the same reason I dislike He Who Rides the Tiger, with it's long wait time before anything happens).

While it may be good for storytelling, it becomes aggravating to play for the third or fourth time.

Try playtesting such a mission. Now that's aggravating. For my own campaign I'm cutting down the pre-action chatter, if there's any delay to the player getting into the action I'll make the mission fairly easy so that they shouldn't have much opportunity to fail. But in the first chapter of the campaign I'd have to go through all this boring chatter just to test if something worked at the very end of the mission. Now that was annoying and is such a motivation killer as well both as player and creator.

In a case like BP I would simply make the mission a red alert. Put all the blah blah blah in one mission. Cut, go to red-alert mission and cue combat. Sure the player may not be where they were before but whatever. Or just make it a cutscene, so the player can't screw around.

[General Battuta]

Or...put in a skip button?

[Akalabeth Angel]

Or...put in a skip button?

Like what, a training mission? Skip training sort of thing?


From a player perspective. I don't want to skip the dialogue. I just want to see it once. So I'm not sure how a skip button would help in that regard. People might skip it altogether and miss the big universal truth.

[General Battuta]

No, a keypress to skip the dialogue section of the mission and move to the action. You can use campaign persistent variables to have it only show up once the mission has been played through the cutscene at least once.

[Sushi]

Time Compress works wonders... Just use that to "skip" through long cutscenes and exposition.

[General Battuta]

Yeah, but then the messages/voice acting all stack up and form a backlog.

[Droid803]

Time compress also messes up cutscenes that work with beam fire, so a skip button would probably be better.
The backlog of messages can bite back when you get to a new part of the mission and it's still going on about the old stuff, then you don't know what to do, so you just end up failing again :/

[Javito1986]

I  never thought Forced Entry was overly difficult. It's an amazing mission but difficult? Eh... the key to FE is wingmen control. I certainly wasn't running off in every direction attacking Lilith's, I just dispatched a wing of fighters to do that for me. This was on insane difficulty btw.

The only things you need for FE are trebuchets for the beam cannons you'll be taking out.

My favorite mission from BP was Univeral Truth. The music's what does it for me.

[LazyNinja]

What about Windmills? The final mission really blew my mind away this morning...