[ryanchealth]

I have posted these before but have spent the last day reworking them.  I THINK I have all the bugs out and made them a bit harder.  I have 2 other missions that I will post to this thread but I have not done a doublecheck on them.  Let me know what you think.  I have only been doing this for about 6 days so I am pretty darn new to this.  This are for Blue Planet 3.2.3.  Not sure if there is someplace specific I am supposed to post these too.  Let me know if I need to change it

[ryanchealth]

Here are the two other missions that are not 100% complete or even tested all that well

[Strygon]

I very, very strongly urge you to make your uploads to Knossos rather than leaving them around as loose files via temporary forum attachments, especially if your campaign has a specific dependency.

[ryanchealth]

I am so new to this I was hoping for some test runs by more experienced people.   Once I get about 10-12 missions flushed out I plan to put in on Knossos. 

[Colonol Dekker]

Don't be afraid to play through it yourself too bud.  You'll k ow if the pace is too fast or slow 

[Strygon]

I'm currently playing through it myself right now. I'll give more detailed point by point critique once I'm finished with all eight missions, but I'll give the cliff notes version I got right now (as of writing I have finished all the way up to mission 5)

For the good, the missions were competently designed, they're all completable so far and I've had a decent amount of fun for some of the missions. I'm not entirely sure where the plot falls in with BP but I'm moderately intrigued by what I'm seeing so far.

General Critique:

Mission design as a whole so far seems fairly competent. Haven't fully stress tested the missions yet but for a general playthrough it seems mostly all fine.
The writing however, leaves a lot to be desired, between the weird random ALL CAPS words, the.......... long dot chains.......... between words or General mispelings and Weird random capitalizations. I'm going to assume English isn't your first language, so I strongly recommend having someone proofread your writing first before any official release.

On the actual story itself, it seems pretty standard aside from some really weird specific points I noticed on first reading (are we part of the GTVA or are we independent mercenaries under TCS? Why are the Kilrath- sorry, the Kitaari just randomly attacking us? If we're not under the GTVA, then why aren't they doing anything?).
Since you seem to be going for a more character focused story, I will however say that the characters do leave a fair bit to be desired. There's not much dialogue coming from them so I can't really peg down who they are as characters, and there's no interaction between them between missions (hell, there's hardly any interaction WITHIN missions, Mike does 95% of the talking) and when Little John died, I genuinely forgot between Missions 2 and 3 that he died because literally no one remarked on it safe for Mike exactly once.

On the note of gameplay, I do have some small grievances overall (and much larger grievances with missions 3 and 4 but we'll get to that later), such as the fact that none of your missions use Directives, meaning I often ended up not knowing what to do in missions.
Also for waves, since I noticed you like using them, I very strongly recommend you use the Wing Delay feature to space out the arrival of wings to give players a breather between attacks. It also makes it a lot less obvious that you're using waves because nothing makes it instantly clear that there's multiple waves than Omicron 5, 6, 7 and 8 immediately jumping in after I shot down Omicron 4.

Now for the ugly, I really hated Mission 4, simply because you gave the Tritons a bunch of AAAf beams while also telling the player to destroy a Leviathan while ALSO dealing with a wave of Erinyeses (where did a pirate gang get those anyway?). If you're not aware, the difference between AAAf and AAAh is that the AAAh beam is meant for hostile ships and has a much lower firing rate than AAAf, because fighting against AAAf beams is HELLISH and unfairly difficult on any difficulty besides Very Easy.

Furthermore, as a player you're not told that you have to destroy the Tritons in-mission, only to capture the containers. However, most players know by now that if you blow up a Triton holding a TC-TRI, it will almost always destroy the container as well, so I was trying my best to disarm, disable and otherwise cripple the ships without blowing them up, which lead to a couple restarts because those damn beams got me shot down.

My overall verdict so far is that this campaign can go places, but it will need a fair bit more time in the oven for some aspects (and also just more playtesting). I will post my detailed point-by-point critique once I have all my notes together for missions 5-8.


EDIT:

So I played through the remaining missions and, hm, I have to admit missions 1-3 were a lot better than 5-8.

Now, I understand 7 and 8 are unfinished and untested, so consider this simply a "playtester's note".

Mission 5 is broken. It can't be finished properly as far as I tried. The transports I was ordered to protect jumped out with not a single word said, and the entire area was empty safe for some allied fighters. No one was saying anything and I didn't have any directives so I just assumed the mission was over, except I got a debriefing saying that we lost "that SHIP!?!?!?!?". What ship did we lose? What even happened? There's a serious lack of vital information being given to the player here.

(As a side note, the weirdly silly debriefing, general dialogue throughout the campaign and especially the command briefing in Mission 8 has made me wonder: What tone is this campaign even going for? Between weird remarks about the commanding officer's disappointed wife, a "sneeze-fart" destroying the GTC Integrity and the bizarre rant about Texas Instrument calculators in Mission 8 I really struggle to take the campaign seriously.)

I have nothing really to remark on about Mission 6 that isn't rehashing my previous complaints about the lack of Directives, in mission dialogue or not putting the sun directly in front of the player. It works, it's fairly decently designed overall.

Mission 7 is plainly unfinished but that's to be expected. Balance wise it's a bit evil to put the two cruisers so far apart and send bombers after both when you typically only have one wing of fighters left to command.

Mission 8 is... incredibly unfair. You're flying the GTF Pegasus by default, a fighter known to be comically fragile in sustained dogfights and you're expecting the player to take on multiple wings of Erinyeses, transports and an Aeolus? Nevermind the reinforcements, they typically don't live long enough to make a major difference, but that's a lot you're putting on the player and it's absolutely not winneable with the Pegasus.

[ryanchealth]

I initially ran everything through Word but then did some edits (Which were not the best but my initial dialogue was even worse).  Make sure you don't breeze through Command Briefing because there is a lot of information and backstory in it.  I agree I need to add some dialogue from the other guys but Mike is a bit of a narcist and a smart ass. The tone of it is this. Retired from GTVA and they don't have to follow the rules and they don't give a sh!t.  They do and say whatever the hell they want.  This is NOT the military.  They have their own transports and fighters and there is minimal law (1st Command Briefing).   I will recheck add in a litle more.  It supposed to be serious, stupid, fun, and on occasion hard.  I don't like the old hard setting where you have less power for your guns and afterburner.  Always bugged the crap out of me.  Ya I like those powerful beams, but I use others initiall but even I couldn't beat the mission and I knew how the mission was laid out.  I want them to kill you and probably going to make it harder.  I played them all on medium (Though I know were everyting is) and it was okay.   I need to figure out out to do Directives next.  I think I have 6-7 days of experience with Fred so it's a work in progress

[Strygon]

Make sure you don't breeze through Command Briefing because there is a lot of information and backstory in it.

No offense but I think you put a bit too much information and backstory in there, to the point where it was too much for me to absorb at once, so it's quite easy for things to get lost. It'd certainly help to make the opening paragraphs more concise and cut the unnecessary information away so the player is only told the important bits.

Let's take the first two pages of the Command Briefing for example:

The fight with the Shivans cost the GTVA dearly in both men and ships.  The Terran segment of the GTVA Fleet suffered losses in excess of 50 % while the Vasudans lost close to 40%. The ships that were left were damaged and short on supplies.  Over the course of the last 5 years the GTVA military doctrine changed.  The GTVA would no longer be the police force of the inner systems.  It's primary goal will be to protect GTVA systems from external threats only, leaving the systems to Police themselves.. This coincides with the Proteus Mandate and the push for 3rd generation fighters and capital ships.  As the new ships are developed and commissioned the older 1st and even 2nd Generation War Ships would be sold off to local governments for use as In-System Security.  With the GTVA Military no longer required to monitor internal threats it opened up Billions in Funding for the development of 3rd generation ships.  Ships with the power to take on the Shivan Juggernauts.   
The Larger, Mid-Sized, and even a few smaller (Well Financed) systems were quick to purchase the old military equipment.  Unfortunately, many systems were ill prepared for the financial responsibility to man and maintain a fleet.  Many of the ships purchased by the mid-sized and smaller systems were quickly sold off to corporations and even unknown parties. Overall, the Inner systems have done an adequate job of maintaining order.  This has not been the case for the Mid-Sized and Smaller Systems.  Mid-Sized Systems have turned into the WILD WEST where the Law is present but not well established or funded.  The Smaller Systems have been left to themselves.

Quite a bit of a doozy to read right off the bat, no? How about something like this:

The Second Shivan Incursion has left numerous scars on the Alliance. The painful losses incurred throughout this conflict have forced a change of doctrine within the GTVA, reducing its ability to police its inner systems and instead focusing purely on fending off external threats to the Alliance as a whole, leaving these systems to fend for themselves in other matters.

Thanks to the increase in use for 3rd Generation craft, older ship models would find themselves in the hands of system governments, primarily for use in internal security. Many systems would happily join in on these acquisitions, naturally not wanting to find themselves completely unguarded. However, this money cannot buy the experience needed to put these ships to proper, effective use, and as a result, the smaller half of these system governments would end up selling these ships off to whoever was interested, be it corporations, rich individuals, or entirely unknown third parties.

While the inner systems did well enough on their own, lesser, further out systems struggle to properly enforce the law even within their own territory, leading to an increase in lawlessness and illegal activity.

The point I'm trying to make is, a lot of details get lost in an endless sea of information and weird comedic remarks that make it hard to discern whether this paragraph I'm reading contains important information or just a weird remark about the Commanding Officer's wife.
I strongly suggest keeping the information to the necessary in the command briefings. If it's not going to be relevant to the campaign, you can probably safely leave it out.

It supposed to be serious, stupid, fun, and on occasion hard.

I'm not entirely sure you understood my question, because the answer seems contradictory.

Am I supposed to take the story as seriously as, say, Blue Planet or the regular Freespace campaigns?

Or is it all just intentionally goofy and silly, like say, Just Another Day, Ridiculous or Deus Ex Machina?

You have to pick one because it is nigh impossible to do both at once and make it not extremely bizarre.

Ya I like those powerful beams, but I use others initiall but even I couldn't beat the mission and I knew how the mission was laid out.  I want them to kill you and probably going to make it harder.

Yes, the mod developer has a very strong information and experience advantage compared to the average player. If even the developer cannot finish a mission, it is probably time to make it less difficult.

[ryanchealth]

Think Thor Ragnarok but without all the talent of those writers.   Funny but literally his entire planet blows up. Don't think of Thor Love and Thunder because that movie sucked.

[ryanchealth]

It's still a work in progress.  It's serious but I want some humor and sarcasm.  Besides I am sure I will get to mission 15 and then go back a rewrite some stuff.  As I learn more I will probably go back and rework the missions.  Now I need to figure out Directives!