[Lorric]

Well it is nice to have a shield mesh, however the (very limited) autoaim is pretty annoying. It's like I don't know when I can afford to lead my shots or not... I say either have no autoaim or a wide-FoV autoaim. Don't half-ass it.

Are you talking about flying the Aestival? I was thinking so you could destroy it. Did Spoon give it a small auto aim then?

[Legate Damar]

Yes, I have flown it (the new one from Stranded). It has minimal autoaim which is, as I said, annoying.

I have also flown against it... other than the shields it's not much different than the original one to deal with.

[Lorric]

Yes, I have flown it (the new one from Stranded). It has minimal autoaim which is, as I said, annoying.

I have also flown against it... other than the shields it's not much different than the original one to deal with.

Yes, I had a brief look at it's table file after I played Stranded. It's almost the same as the R4 besides the shield from what I could tell.

[Legate Damar]

Although trying to get an AI-controlled wing of them to disarm a capship is rather difficult...

[Lorric]

Although trying to get an AI-controlled wing of them to disarm a capship is rather difficult...

I expect they just blow it away with all that firepower.

[Legate Damar]

Although trying to get an AI-controlled wing of them to disarm a capship is rather difficult...

I expect they just blow it away with all that firepower.

More like they all get shot down before making much progress... this is a tough ship. However I have some ideas to make it work.

[Spoon]

I've totally been meaning to check this out but I've been busy lately.
Soon™

[Lorric]

I've totally been meaning to check this out but I've been busy lately.
Soon™

Nice! 

Yes, I bet you've been busy-busy-busy with the remaking of WoD and Christmas too, if you celebrate it that is.

I have been continuing on with this project too.

[Lorric]

I have changed the title of this topic to be more in line with convention around here, with the [RELEASE] thing. Perhaps people who would like to try it are missing out because of that.

I uploaded the superior version of the demo to Freespace Mods 3 days ago (I think) but it hasn't appeared yet. I will notify you if and when it does. You can still grab it in the attachment though, and you should try that first if you want to try this out.

[-Norbert-]

Maybe a link in the "Missions and Campaigns" forum might help too.

[Lorric]

Hmmm. Perhaps. I will wait awhile longer though, to see if the better version appears on Freespace Mods first, it still hasn't. Then I'll just post something linking to this.

[Lorric]

V1.01 is now available at the link in the OP, and the attachment has been removed, as it is no longer needed. The OP has been updated.

Oh, and Norbert, I'm going to wait till 1.02 before putting a thread in the Missions and Campaigns forum, with the A Nordera Day thing. (Future versions will require A Nordera Day, but not this one.)

[Spoon]

Not bad!
I like the 'LSF perspective from the start of the war' you've picked here. Lots of untold mission/story potential there.

Mission 1 was kind of hit and miss. First time everything got blown up, second time I ate too many bombs and only the third time did I manage to save one ship. Then when I looked at the time I saw it only took 2 minutes to complete the mission. But I liked the different debrief I got in both failure cases.

In mission 2a & b it stuff got a bit funny as the ships of your wingmen aren't locked. So I swapped the caliburns of heavy wing and laughed my way to the Cordi mothership with missilebays full of BOMBS. That made heavy wing sure look stupid when they arrived in a wing full of III's! 
Heavy wing were a bunch of meanies anyway.
(Protip: Lock wingmen ships if they aren't suppose to be changed)

Mission 3 was a tad on the easy side. I dont think a single warhead made it even close to the convoy!

To quote -norbert-

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.

You've done well with the timing of the chatter and the missions don't have any 'dead time' in them. So keep it up.

[Lorric]

Not bad!
I like the 'LSF perspective from the start of the war' you've picked here. Lots of untold mission/story potential there.

Mission 1 was kind of hit and miss. First time everything got blown up, second time I ate too many bombs and only the third time did I manage to save one ship. Then when I looked at the time I saw it only took 2 minutes to complete the mission. But I liked the different debrief I got in both failure cases.

In mission 2a & b it stuff got a bit funny as the ships of your wingmen aren't locked. So I swapped the caliburns of heavy wing and laughed my way to the Cordi mothership with missilebays full of BOMBS. That made heavy wing sure look stupid when they arrived in a wing full of III's! 
Heavy wing were a bunch of meanies anyway.
(Protip: Lock wingmen ships if they aren't suppose to be changed)

Mission 3 was a tad on the easy side. I dont think a single warhead made it even close to the convoy!

To quote -norbert-

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.

You've done well with the timing of the chatter and the missions don't have any 'dead time' in them. So keep it up.

I am happy indeed that you like it.

Mission 1 seems about right. Bomb death is infrequent, but it's not an easy mission to win, and chances are you'll win with just one ship left when you do.

Sneak! You go back and play that properly! 

It is genuinely funny that you got one over on those guys though 

How do you lock wingmen then? This possibility is something I discovered very recently, although I was more worried about the fact you could remove the ships entirely. For some reason, swapping them around didn't occur to me, but either way I need to know how to fix it. A quick and dirty fix for that particular mission would be just to redisignate them as Heavy Wing so they'd disappear, but it would be best if someone tells me how to do it, anyone. I've just had a look, but can't find it. I've never had much luck with this aspect of FRED and only found out about the scramble mission thing by chance because someone mentioned it in their own topic in the FRED thread. It's confusing, you'd think all this stuff would be in the Team Loadout section.

Mission 3 I may consider tweaking. Sometimes it can be too easy, but other times it can give you a hard time. Usually it sits at about the kind of difficulty I want though for this one, so I'm wary of changing it.

Avoiding "dead time" is a strong goal of mine.

[Spoon]

Ship editor -> Initial Status

[Lorric]

Ship editor -> Initial Status

Thanks. So that's a third location (with scramble mission in the mission specs) for things which ideally (at least to me) should be in a central location. It's strange that  would do that in their editor.

[Lepanto]

With the forum game starting up, Lorric wants to revive interest in this campaign and thread, so I'm posting some of my private comments here. (Spoon was fine with necroing this thread.)

Overall, it's a solid FS campaign. Nothing deeply original, besides the branching structure, but you've got the basics of campaign-making down.

I also just couldn't beat mission 1, even after multiple tries. I can hardly hit the Cordi, and they murder all the transports well before I can kill them all. Strange; I believe I beat it back when I played this campaign the first time. I understand if you made it deliberately hard, so players have a real chance of losing and therefore having to do the failure-branch missions, but for me at least, it's still a bit too hard if I can't beat it after multiple tries.

Yeah, mission 3 was a bit easy, if it matters to you.

Nice work with your characters and characterization; Firestreak and especially the Psycho Caliburn Guys stood out for me.

You've got a nice setup going with the success-failure mission branch structure. It kinda subverts the "Alpha 1 Syndrome" of FS campaigns, where the player has to complete difficult objectives every time, without fail, to proceed in the campaign. I'm almost inspired to restructure my own campaign like this, but it'd be a lot of work to change it at this point.

I like the branching structure you've got going, but I think you might get a better response from the community if you found a way to mostly keep your unique branching structure but use a conventional mod structure and campaign file. Keep going with your current format if you want to, but I'm personally advising you to switch to a standard campaign file somehow.

I'd advise using the standard WoD Alpha, Beta, etc... enemy wing names.

If done right, this could be an enjoyable WoD fan-campaign.

[Lorric]

Yes, that includes my own interest in it. When Spoon said he wants to go to a turn a week on the forum game, initially I was like awwww, but then after seeing potential positives to the game, it also got me thinking it will give me more room to try and get back to working on this thing again.

Anyway, I appreciate this feedback. Mission 1 I'm surprised you couldn't clear it, it's not that hard, it's designed so it's got a good chance of defeating the player the first time out and introducing them to the branching structure, but it's certainly well within a player's capabilities to win, I'd say I can clear it about 6/10 times at an estimate, and I don't like the Cordi. You were on medium difficulty, right?

Mission 3, I've looked into it since the last post here, and I think I'll leave it as it is, it can pose a decent challenge occasionally depending on how things go you see. Other times it's easy. I don't want it to be too hard that early in the campaign. Mission 1 is an exception, but I'd be aiming for roughly a traditional campaign difficulty spike after that.

I am quite surprised that you singled out Firestreak. I'd be very interested to know why if you don't mind. Spoiler tags will be necessary I guess.

That's kind of what I am aiming for. The goal is that you play the campaign if it's ever completed without replaying missions. You begin at the start and you try to get through to the end, with many of the missions allowing you to fail and not lose the campaign. But at the same time, you have the freedom to do it any way you want to.

This might be something to look into if I ever complete the job. For the future incremental releases, I think things will go smoother this way.

This is kind of a personal choice here. And different units could have different structures for such things. Every game does something "fancy" with this kind of thing, Alpha, Beta, Gamma / Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, or something else, like Aries, Virgo, Gemini... with me, the humble First, Second, Third get to shine

Well, that's the idea!

[Lepanto]

I think I would've been on Medium. I'm not great at aiming or dogfighting, for what it's worth.

Well, alright then. I find the Nordera easier than the Cordi, for the simple reason that they're a lot easier to actually hit.

I'm not a very attentive player sometimes, and his "rookie" characterization was the only one I noticed much during missions, for whatever it's worth to you. The Psycho Caliburn Guys for obvious reasons.

It's convenient that you can play the campaign as you will. I don't think most people will want to retry the campaign from the beginning if they fail, though.

On both campaign structure and name schemes, it's your design choice.

[Lorric]

It's meant to be played on medium, so that's good.

I was just curious why you picked out Firestreak over the others. And yes, obvious reasons, there's a reason I didn't ask you to specify about those guys!

Indeed. Me too. So it's lucky they don't have to. 

In other news, since Axem helped me out in the screenshot contest thread, it might be time for me to go and pick up a few screenies and spice up my OP with them sometime in the near future... 

Again, thanks for the feedback. Oh, did you see this?

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=85185

So don't worry about the necro thing if you want to comment on threads like this in the future.