[Raptor831]

As the title says, I'd like some feedback on a mission I just FREDed. This is my first mission, so I thought I'd ask the community what I could improve.

Mission requires Blue Planet WiH. I played through the BP campaigns and loved it. But, I got tired of Serkr always getting away, so I wanted to give myself an excuse to blow them up. Brought me closure...

I'm looking for two things: 1) Did I FRED well; as in am I doing things well/efficiently? 2) Does the mission work; as in does it flow well, do the objectives make sense, do you get confused? I've tested the mission plenty of times, so I don't think there are any glaring errors. I've just played it so much that fresh eyes would be helpful. Here's a link to DL the mission: http://cl.ly/2b2t1U3y2V1c

This is my first post here, long time lurker. Sorry to ask favors the first time out, but you all seem nice enough. Thanks!

[General Battuta]

If you want to give Serkr their due (and make the mission significantly more challenging), don't forget to up their AI class and set subsystem and hull armor levels. You could reference the mission Collateral Damage.

[Raptor831]

I hadn't gotten to those stats yet, but it was on the radar. I'm still getting the hang of SEXPs so this was an entry point. But I will look at that mission and look at steal the stats and adjust.

Also, is there a way to make the bombers not get shredded when they attack? The opening salvos are fine because the range is far enough that the PD beams don't touch them. But when the furball starts, the bombers get pounded. I imagine that would happen anyway, but I'd like there to be something to do or command by the 5 minute mark.

Also, since you're here, do you have an in-universe time for their drives to cycle? I guessed at about two minutes...

[mjn.mixael]

I intend to play this for you the next time I get a chance. Hopefully sometime in the next day or two.

[Raptor831]

Thanks! The mission takes around 5-7 minutes, so it's not too bad.

[Solatar]

I downloaded and played it.  I'm not a great reviewer of missions, but I'd love to see this board more active, and testing is something I can easily do.  This is what you get until someone else comes along.

The Good:

It was a good mission.  I liked the simulator simplicity of it, and it's a great story environment to set up isolated battles in.  There were enough messages, I think, that I was never confused.

The Ehh.:

After the initial fighter skirmish, I didn't feel like I had a lot of agency in the mission.  The operation itself seemed like it was militarily plausible (from my standpoint...), but I had no idea what to do with myself while the corvettes were being disabled.  The bombers weren't really under attack from anything I could protect them from, and getting anywhere near the frigates in the default fighter is a suicidal move.

Suggestions from the peanut gallery:

Maybe rethink the player's role in the operation.  Perhaps the player could do the disabling (how fun would First Strike have been if Alpha 1 flew Valkyries while the AI disabled the Taranis), or have to more actively defend an assault force.  Maybe you could put the player's wing - by default - into fighters more suited to picking off the corvette's anti-fighter weapons?  How would a real military respond to the threat of having their bombers shredded? 

 

I think it's a few very well-thought-out tweaks away from a fun, satisfying assault mission.

[Doko]

- The fact that the player starts in front of the tev warships and the disable wings plus the indus show up behind them is pretty bad. The player has to go around the ships to protect the indus while basically doing nothing because getting close to those 3 corvettes = instant death.
Try putting the player about 70-90 degrees off where the indus will show up.
To add some flavor you could add an awacs that is calculating jumps to relay to the strike package and give yourself an excuse for the wing of fighters guarding serkr to break away from the main group

- I dint check the events but if the player kills the wing that triggers the arrival of the uriels at an appropiate time the disabling of the 3 ships should be forced (in case the ai goes completely retarded like it happened to me one time).

- The indus could show up with some Y axis loving, the entire mission is basically in the same plane.

- The second wave of bombers that arrives with the 3 or so extra nyx spawns way too close to the indus to not get instagibbed by some random nyx while killing 16 cyclops if the indus took a good chunk of damage.

 - The uriels are basically sacrificial lambs or make the mission a joke if you order them to form on your wing and then defend the indus and ignore the corvetes. Either take the player's ability to control them and balance accordingly or force the player to use them himself to accomplish another objective like I don't know killing some cruiser that shows up or something.

- If one of the corvettes is not disabled before the timer ends but the others aren't the mission is not declared as failure and the indus will not appear.

- Splitting the ships a little more would go a long way to making the player not feel so useless beyond playing babysitter for the indus and minimize the amount of missiles serkr can intercept making the mission take much longer than it has to.

[Flak]

Technical wise, the land on the fighterbay order immediately show up to be completed, even though it certainly haven't.

I am also expecting more escorts there, or was it really designed with using the default Kents in mind? I swapped it for an Izra'il with triple racks of Sidhe, which made it too easy, unless I decided to leeroy into the corvettes' point defenses.

If you want to add more difficulty, maybe you want to add something else that you need to protect, like an Oculus or Upanishad that relay jumps or jam the drives and communications. Or perhaps you want to add capship reinforcement, like an Aeolus or Hyperion coming from the Indus' broadside that you need to destroy, or some Cretheuses arriving at the Serkr's flanks.

Story wise, I am not sure if it is appropriate to use the Indus there, (fine if it is just a simulation though). I think the Serenity or one of the other second fleet ships would be more appropriate.

[Raptor831]

First off, thanks everyone for taking the time to do this!

Solatar:

I too was wondering what to do in those times. That's why I added the enemy waves in to give you something to do while the corvettes get taken out.

In my first iteration, the player did disable the corvettes. After that, though, it wasn't all that interesting. I guess changing from heavy fighters to interceptors didn't really change that. I think I just like the Kents better!

Your suggestions sound good. I'm re-building the mission into something more complicated, so I'm considering not using Kents and letting the player take a more active role in defeating the corvettes.

Doko:

I should have added some 3-dimensional interest in there. At this point, I was trying to get the mechanics of a mission down. The waves of bombers were supposed to come in close, since that was something they could do in the BP campaign. Plus, if you really screwed that up the Indus was in actual danger. The mission pretty much plays itself, which is something I'm trying to avoid.

I didn't run through all possible outcomes to check for success/failure, so I need to do that and make the mission a bit more robust.

Flak:

Hrm. That command shouldn't show up until Serkr is destroyed. I'll have to check that. I did design it with the Kents in mind, but I'm rethinking that. I just like that fighter, so it clouds my judgement.   I wanted to use something we've seen in the missions before, so I skipped the Izra'il. But I guess, story wise, if they were going to start using those bombers, this would be a good test.

In my next iteration, I do have an Oculus there jamming beams and calling jumps. I also do have the Serenity in addition to the Indus. It takes too long with just one (maybe unless you help with the destroying), and I imagine that the UEF wouldn't mind sending 2 frigates in to destroy an advanced shock jump corvette team. I'd actually like to hear your reason for not using the Indus, if you wouldn't mind. I'm curious!

[Flak]

About the fly into fighterbay command? No, I mean it is already grayed out when it appears, as though it is already completed. Maybe just leave it white all the time since it is the final command for the mission.

On the Indus, I am just thinking that considering the damage it suffered in Sunglare, I don't think it is fit for action anytime soon. Though I won't rule out the possibility, the others are probably in better position for the job. It is just a story issue otherwise, though I do feel a little out of place explaining that here, but you get the idea now I suppose.

[Raptor831]

About the fly into fighterbay command? No, I mean it is already grayed out when it appears, as though it is already completed. Maybe just leave it white all the time since it is the final command for the mission.

On the Indus, I am just thinking that considering the damage it suffered in Sunglare, I don't think it is fit for action anytime soon. Though I won't rule out the possibility, the others are probably in better position for the job. It is just a story issue otherwise, though I do feel a little out of place explaining that here, but you get the idea now I suppose.

I'll check the fighterbay command. And that's what I was thinking about the Indus. Thanks again for your feedback!

[mjn.mixael]

Good premise for a single mission.

I don't actually have a lot of feedback. The mission played OK (Could use some balancing), and I didn't encounter any bugs. One thing it could use is a warning for the player to steer clear of Serkr team cause it's anti-fighter beams are killer. I'm sure most BP players know this already, I certainly didn't... and a good FREDer will give all the clues the player needs to survive at least once somewhere.. whether it's in a message or in the briefing, or even in a directive.

[Raptor831]

Thanks again for the feedback, everyone.

I reworked this mission, essentially from scratch. Same concept, but different followthrough. I wanted to post it here in case anyone wanted to play with the improved version.

I still think it needs balancing, as it's somewhat self playing. I have a feeling that balance will come with time and practice with FRED. But, I'll leave it here. If you play this mission, let me know your thoughts!

Link: http://cl.ly/0f3k2J1w1s1M

Still needs Blue Planet WiH to play, as before.

[Suongadon]

I had a chance to give the new version a whirl yesterday. A couple things stood out and I had a (sort of) bug, but on the whole it was very good.  Plenty to do for the course of the mission, dogfighting difficulty was good, (I used a relatively-standard rapier-gattler Kent. I suppose it would have been on the easy side if I used a fairie-death-cannoned Izra), briefing and directives were clear on what I should be doing.

The Hesperia was almost incapable of landing hits with its main guns on the M. Glaive, I don't know if that is due to the use of set-immobile keeping it from orienting properly or something else, but the glaive was still at about 70% hull, and the other two basically untouched by the 10 minute mark. Once the Indus turned back from dealing with the Diomedes and cruisers, it managed to take it out almost on its own. After the Glaive was down, the Hesperia oriented properly and destroyed the other two without any trouble.

And some various thoughts from the peanut gallery, feel free to ignore as desired:
-While I'm thinking about the Nara, having it stop immediately out of the subspace tunnel seemed odd. I think it'd look better if it jumped in further out and came to a stop naturally.
-The apocalypse torpedoes weren't getting through the point defenses of the two Tev capital groups. Maybe use Hydras from the Hesperia for a few volleys to strip off point defenses? (though I don't know that they would get through any better)
-The Indus not firing its gauss/rail guns before the Hesperia arrived seemed odd. If I were one of the Tev captains, I'd be thinking 'trap' if the frigate turned to engage but held back its best weapons.
-Hotkeys for the Tev fighter and bomber wings would be nice, though it wasn't much of an issue without them.
-The Tev bombers didn't pose much of a threat to the frigates, even when I pulled the friendly fighters away. Maybe have the reinforcement wings come in closer/arm with maxims to peel away turrets on the approach/supplement the rhea/artemis flock with some helios-armed Boanerges?

[Raptor831]

Thanks for checking this out.

The Hesperia has always seemed to have Storm-Trooper-syndrome when it fired, but it's usually at about 50-60% when the Triteia group jumps in. That number makes it look like a joke... I can't figure why it does that, because its immobile for the whole mission. It shouldn't make a difference, but something's going on. I may have to back it up a bit and let it roll in a bit more to get it's gunners working. Capship battles are tough! The Glaive has a bit more armor than the other two by nature, so she always takes longer.

As a funny note, at one point the Hesperia got her prow through the jump and stopped dead, the warp circle just spinning amidships. That looked odd... 

Tev missile defence is pretty good anyway. But I may try some other missiles to see if it helps, or at least make it more interesting. And I debated about the Indus firing from the beginning. I was thinking that the Indus didn't want to risk driving them off too soon, but the odds of that aren't very good I guess. I figured that a lone frigate standing up to Serkr might seem a trap as well. I may have the Indus "run" for a bit, or I may just free her guns up. Fresh eyes always catch these things!

Hotkeys are a good idea. I'll add those.

Getting those bomber runs to actually be threatening is tough. The Karunas and Narayanas are pretty well defended by themselves. Heck, I use them for cover! I haven't messed too much with the armaments of the Tev fighters, so this might be the time to do so. I thought about a Tev AWACS and SSM missile strikes until it's destroyed, but I have to actually learn how to FRED that still! I'll be looking at some BP missions in the near future, I think.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts!

[Flak]

Did you uprated the ship AI?

[Raptor831]

Ok, another update to this one. Link: http://cl.ly/2c2T151i1Q0C

The Indus fires from the get go, albeit a but wildly.

The Hesperia now actually hits individual ships. I wish there was a "fire-turret" SEXP, but I hear that's a bit harder than it sounds. I essentially tagged the ships in order, and used the excuse that I have an AWACS in-battle to provide targeting data. Seems plausible... I did figure out that the reason the Hesperia couldn't hit a blasted thing was because the turrets are trying to hit multiple targets. Apparently when you give the ai-chase command it doesn't apply to turrets, so they try and fire on anything in view, even if they can't deflect to hit them. Go figure.

Added hotkeys, so it's a bit easier to pick out enemy wings.

I changed the loadouts of the Tev bombers...and had to rebalance the fighters. Boy, Maxim strikes are effective! UEF assets are in actual danger from fighercraft now.

There's still some "bugs" in the mission, like if either the Indus or Hesperia are not on scene, they still send messages. Also, the tagging mentioned above doesn't stop if the Lyon is destroyed. The Hesperia isn't slaved to the tag at that point, but yellow brackets are still around. Debriefing still is pretty basic, and there are some quirks with the message text.

Did you uprated the ship AI?

All of the fighters have at least BP-Major AI, so it isn't a complete cakewalk. Also, the battle scales with difficulty. If you play on Hard or Insane, you'll probably loose assets.

If anyone else has some feedback on the mission, please do let me know. I appreciate it, as it helps me make this better!

[General Battuta]

Wild fire can be caused by damaged weapons subsystems on the warships.

[Raptor831]

Wild fire can be caused by damaged weapons subsystems on the warships.

Did not know that. That's quite a nice feature. It shouldn't be that, though, as this happens from the outset. And once I started tagging the ships and slaving the turrets, the accuracy goes way up.

Edit: Although, I am giving those ships multiple ai-chase orders with priorities, so that may do it.

[Flak]

A little bug, if you haven't finish off the fighters before the Serkr team is finished, the mission didn't seem to end.  The land in the fighterbay order didn't show at all.
Lastly, the final two enemy wings (Theta and Sigma) seems a little oddly named, though that is not a major issue.