You put them into your "Freespace2\Wings of Dawn\data\missions" folder and then you can start them from the techroom.
Let's continue with the testing.
Mission 1:
-I finally managed to save one transport. I think Command is a little too happy about the outcome, saying the evacuation was a complete success, even with 3 out of 4 transports destroyed. Usually a 75% casuality rate isn't something you celebrate as a great victory.
Maybe let them say something a bit more subdued like "you did well saving as many as you could" or "good work considering the circumstance" with the overall evacuation going "very good" or somesuch, but I definately wouldn't use "perfect" or "complete success".
Mission 2a:
-LSF Dirt Warrior 
-I think the scron went a bit over the top here. I really, really had to fight myself down to not just waste the assholes.... the first time I started the mission anyway... the second time I went for it, which brings me to my next point.
-"Don't fire on friendly targets MKay?" I assume that comes from WoD, but either way it was certainly good for a quick laugh. More to the point, considering how you were treated it's not surprising for the player to snap, maybe you could catch that possibility in-mission and give it some comments from your wings and command.
-Any chance you could tie 2a and 2b together with a subspace effect and auto-starting 2b?
Mission 2b:
-Nothing much to say about this here, all in all a solid mission to get you back on track if you messed up in m1. Maybe a few re-spawns for the bug fighters might be nice though, to keep it from being a pure turkey shoot in the end, with the two destroyed gunships making up the trigger for calling in the Caliburns.
Or maybe give the option of calling the Calis as reinforcements at whatever point you wish, with them giving fitting comments "At least the screwup is smart enough to know he's incapable of anything" if you call them in early for example and command chewing you out if you didn't call them at all "This is not your personal proving ground! We can't afford to accomodate your wish for recognition, we have a war to win! Another stunt like that and you'll be courtmartialed for disobeying a direct order and dereliction of duty!"
Mission 3:
-"Prepare to receive bombs" That like sounded a bit odd to me.
-It also felt a bit odd that command would just leave the ships undefended after you left, even if they are no longer in the alien's sphere of influence. Maybe let them say that another wing is takeing over the escort and you may return to base (like in the very first FS1 mission for example).
-In my tests I blew up the Lotus Flower quite early in the mission, but it still kept talking, but with the messages comming from "Command: Lotus Flower:". Also noone commented about the destruction of any of the freithers. No "damn we lost the <inser shipname>!"
-The debriefing doesn't care for how many freithers survived. It always congratulates you on getting the freithers (note the plural) through, even if just a single one survived. It would be nice if command would comment differently depending on how many ships you got through.
I guess there's not much to say about an escort mission that hasn't been said a hundred times before. A definately good thing is that you don't have to wait for 5 minutes till anything happens.
All in all the missions do raise my interrest in the final campaign. They can do with more work and a bit more finesse in some places (like tying 2a and 2b together), but for a beginner and a point so early in the WIP definately not bad.
I hope in the later missions the player isn't getting too much respect too quickly. If it were up to me, I'd have him gather respect only slowly (except for your wingmen of course.... they are in the same boat as you, which fosters respect and friendship).
- Command is referring to the evacuation of the station. Besides, I’m not sure if you even can save more than one. I might have done it once in testing, but I’m not sure. But either way, it’s not something I expect the player to achieve.
2a
- Hey, what’s wrong with that name? I like it. I’m even considering having a wing of fighters calling themselves the Dirt Warriors to go with it.
- Ha ha! It sounds like I did what I was trying to do. I want these guys to get right under the player’s skin. I want them to be exactly that, absolute assholes. I’m going to separate the campaign into a winning and losing path, though victory will be achievable from the losing path. If you go down the winning path, and win mission 1, you’ll never have to deal with these guys. But if you end up on the losing path, then I’m going to jam them down the player’s throat. I’d like to set up a confrontation down the line if possible to allow the player that satisfaction, but if I can’t do it in the context of the campaign, a bonus stage will be created.
- Ha ha, I’ve never seen that either. It must be something Spoon put in
I don’t know how I would do that. It’s an interesting idea, but not a priority.
- I wanted to separate these and future such missions like this in order to allow a player to skip such talking in future replays if they want to go straight to the action.
2b
- Sometimes this mission can be surprisingly tricky. But I didn’t want it to be too hard for the start of the campaign. But I did actually have more fighters to begin with, and actually chose to delete some because I thought it was too hard. It was winnable, but I thought it too hard for this early. I don’t want cakewalk missions, but I don’t want brutally hard missions either, especially this early. The mission will turn into a cakewalk if those guys are on station early, so they’ll be staying as they are. They are assholes, but they know how to fly a ship.
3
- I’ve seen that kind of language used before. Like “Prepare to receive arrows” or “Prepare to receive torpedoes”, which is more in line with this.
- The original escort wing (if it is still there) will be staying. You were only brought in as temporary extra cover.
- I thought about this kind of thing early, and decided I don’t want to go fighting fires entirely of the player’s own making like this. They won’t die in the first wave, the fighters are scripted to ignore the freighters and attack the escorts. However, like I said in an earlier post, ejection and death lines have been added to the missions, so the Lotus Flower does have a death line now.
- Perhaps. Unlike mission 1, it is indeed possible to save all three. I have been having trouble trying to figure out how to work such sexps though, and have been working around them in a kind of crude but effective fashion. If I can figure it out though, I’ll make a secondary objective to save all three, complete with praise in the debriefing.
What is WIP? EDIT: Oh yeah, work in progress.
Oh yes. If you end up on the winning path and keep winning, it will all be good. On the losing path, not so much. Of course, like you say, your wingmen will be nice to you all the way through.
Finally was able to download and play the missions. In my opinion they were too easy.
I guess you could try raising the difficulty above Medium and see where it gets you, though opening missions shouldn't be overly hard anyway. Though with your talk of tangling with Aestivals, I imagine dealing with mere Cordi and Nordera will be somewhat trifling for you.
