Histories of submariners both German and American, being a student of the Pacific and Atlantic Wars. We'll start with "Scratch one flattop!" at Coral Sea and move on from there, if you like?
Angst has no place in mission design. Ever. You're pumped up on adrenaline, you're trying to stay calm, reasonably professional. You've been trained to regard all this as not of much moment because contemplating its significance is likely to kill you and destroy your very expensive fightercraft. You don't want to think about it either, and the human mind is quite capable of self-denial.
Did I say anything about angst...? If I did, that's not what I meant. What I meant was people completely overdoing their characters and adding horribly written banter. In effect, the mission designer has not created realistic human beings, but cardboard cut-outs masquerading as people. This is not a question of psychological profiles, but of design choices in mission design.
What I really meant was stuff like "Oh LOL the NTF sent in another silly useless destroyer, let's blow her up d00ds this one might be fun lololol" or something in that vein. I actually quite like lines like "Chalk up another one for the killboard!" and such, and in some cases this can add a lot of flavor and punctuates the action with a bit of humor,
but it's when characters are so overdone and so badly written that it seems like High School Musical in Space (Now With Lazors).
Reading that post of mine, what I wrote was damned unclear (was writing it while talking on IRC; talking not conducive to writing)... My point is, I think that some people should give more thought to their missions and the dialogue that accompanies the action. This is especially easy a mistake to make given that one can place an entire juggernaut in FRED in the same time it would take to place a fighter (barring render times). I'm a firm believer in 'Zen Missions', that is, doing less with more. Why put in a destroyer when a cruiser or corvette or two would fulfil the exact same purpose? (example, INF R1 where the EA had more destroyers than cruisers. To clarify, 'Zen Missions' does not mean minimalism. To cite another example from INF R1, the huge amount of ships in mission "Nemesis" was necessary for that mission to be awesome)
What I'm actually trying to get at here is that some people have trouble conveying stories and getting their point across, leading to badly written lines of dialogue. These people have little story-telling experience (aside from a few abortive short stories, or a novel WIP perhaps) and can't communicate their characters or the situation clearly enough that they completely and utterly over-emphasize everything everywhere. The mission designer has not made believable characters, he has simply written lines of text (or clips of voice acting). There is a line dividing 'characters' and 'lines' of dialogue.
More experienced FREDders are almost always able to avoid this, it's just some of the newer, inexperienced FREDders/storytellers who often trip up (I am often one of them, which is perhaps one of the reasons why I hate it so much).
In the FREDding Events Editor message box, people are able to type
anything to fill the space. What they fill it with is up to them, and it is here that it is really decided if he's created a real person or not.
