[InsaneBaron]

Well, I'm looking at making my first campaign. The title:

Shadow Rising

15 years after the destruction of Capella, a sudden assassination and a horrific act of terror spark off a new war between the Terran and Vasudan races. Warmongers on both sides push their own species toward the threat of extinction as Shadowy figures follow their own agenda. Join the 490th Foehammers, on board the SOCv Maccabeus, as they fight to defend the Terran race... and discover the truth behind the War.

Anyway, I'm not here so much to hype a campaign that's still in the early stages as to look for suggestions on a few points.

First of all: Big Bad Ship Missions. Lots of the major campaigns have that epic mission where you have to take down the enemy's super-capship. Sometimes, they're epic (Good Luck, Last Stand, Hail Mary, A Time For Heroes), but other times they fall flat (Secrets Revealed, High Noon). I'm looking for advice: What makes a good Big Bad Ship Mission? Clearly it's not as simple as sending a ton of bombers at the ship. What are some missions that do it right, what are some missions that do it wrong, and what makes the difference?

[MatthTheGeek]

1) Make the player want to take the target flagship down. You need to have encountered it before, and better if it's taken down some of your friends before. This one ain't hard.

2) Make the player fear the flagship by having it play smart. A big bad ship full of beam is impressive ; a big bad ship that is under the command of someone smart that will use it to its full capabilities instead of just parking it there and shoot beams, is fearsome.

3) Similarly, use tactics to take it down, not just regular superior firepower. If you can kill the enemy flagship just by parking your own flagship right on front of it, it's boring.

4) Since your enemy commander isn't stupid, don't have it fight to death without excellent reasons. If they see they're in trouble and have a way out, they should use it. Consequently, if you have a plan to take it down, a major part of the plan should be about making sure the target can't just jump out. Disabling the target is the most obvious, but you can get creative.

That's just basic advice though, there's of course more to it but you can start eliminating the most boring ideas there.

[InsaneBaron]

Thanks Matth!

1) Make the player want to take the target flagship down. You need to have encountered it before, and better if it's taken down some of your friends before. This one ain't hard.

Definitely agree on this one. It will have already appeared in 5-6 missions beforehand, and caused a lot of grief. That's where the writing & previous missions come in. What I'm focusing on right now is sketching out the mission itself- HOW the big ship dies.

2) Make the player fear the flagship by having it play smart. A big bad ship full of beam is impressive ; a big bad ship that is under the command of someone smart that will use it to its full capabilities instead of just parking it there and shoot beams, is fearsome.

Good advice. So it should be mobile, launch fighters, and have a good reason not to warp out.

3) Similarly, use tactics to take it down, not just regular superior firepower. If you can kill the enemy flagship just by parking your own flagship right on front of it, it's boring.

Definitely necessary, since the All... "Good-Guys" don't have anything this big. Knocking out beams, engines, et cetera would have to be important.

4) Since your enemy commander isn't stupid, don't have it fight to death without excellent reasons. If they see they're in trouble and have a way out, they should use it. Consequently, if you have a plan to take it down, a major part of the plan should be about making sure the target can't just jump out. Disabling the target is the most obvious, but you can get creative.

A good point that a lot of older missions (Secrets Revealed) miss. Yes, the enemy commander has good reasons for not warping out. (And I might add, we're not talking about Shivans here.)

That's a good start!

[Black Wolf]

I haven't made too many of these missions in the past, so I'm only running on limited experience here, but I'd offer a couple of thoughts.

First, pick a good ship. What you ideally want is a big, complex ship with lots of things for the player to do on the way to blowing it up. Lots of turrets, subsystems and destroyable submodels. I'm also a fan of geometry that provides a degree of mission scenery, in the form of large scale detail that gives good geometric contrast. It's a hard concept to explin, but basically if the geometry provides lots of places for the player to manoeuvre, and relatively few areas of long flat expanse, it's probably got it. This makes the actual flight mechanics more interesting, and is one of the good things about, for example, Slaying Ravana

Second, and again before you even start the mission, do what Matth said and set it up. Have the player encounter the ship at least once before, get him to become familiar with the ship. This can be achieved by telling in Command briefs or cutscenes, but is better done through in-mission events. [V] did this well for both the first Sath and the Ravanna. Having the player recon the ship can also be a good idea, like the Lucifer, if it's got particular attributes of interest (generally either very high detail or a very large scale works). Avoid the recon for well known or small ships, IMO.

Thirdly, when you come to make the mission, ensure that the player has a task at all times. This often means targetting specific subsystems (engines, turrets and hostile fighters mostly, but whatever else you can make work with the model and the story is OK too) rather than just being given a huge number of hitpoints to chip away at.

Fourth and finally, balance is, as always, probably the most critical thing.

So, those would be my suggestions. Some of Matth's plot related points are important too (the opposition choosing to escape and being tactical), but from a pure FREDding perspective they're less important (much more important to the narrative though). IMO, get these four right and you'll have a reasonable mission, most of the time.

Some additional points you might want to consider:

You don't always need a capship on your side. Maybe keep the friendlies out of the battle for awhile while the player is disarming the big guns.

One way to break up the inevitable monotony of attacking the same ship repeatedly would be to give it some backup. Hostile capships arriving halfway through the battle give the player a new target, and if they're relatively easy to defang or otherwise eliminate, they shouldn't be too diverting from the main job.

Remember that you can rebalance your hostile super-ship for this mission, and you'll probably want to. The first time you see it, consider special-hits, mission-specific weapon variants, adjusting the armament or a unique armour type (if you're using it) to make the battle harder or easier than other battles that might feature this class.

[Luis Dias]

Well my fav ever BoE mission "kill the bad boss" is that last boss fight in Inferno. That soundtrack was bloody brilliant and the mission too. In a sense, Delenda Est kinda reminds me of it in some structural analysis, although the ends are different.

The thing that set apart that Inferno mission was how the first part of the battle where you have to fend off defending bomber squadrons from all sides of your fleet really expresses how big the effort of the strike is. Then, there's the "margin of failure" that they give you with the Fenris class corvettes serving to fend off enemy wings till they blow up (serving as input data on how you are performing on your strategy, kinda like in a "flowers vs zombies" thing).

The different timings and syncs of your fleet (some warping out others warping in) whenever some particular objective is achieved gives us the 4D aspect of the strategy. Makes us feel not the commander of the op (like in Tenebra) but as just the commander of the ship wings who will defend the fleet (and then bomb the beam cannons of the BigBoss), that gets a front seat in a well conceived battleship strike.

The fact that the last blow you have to make against the bigbadboss is a kind of a last-minute emergency resort given the enemy's being a smartass is also good. Conveys the enemy intelligence and minorizes the "alpha 1" aspect of everyone planning on depending on your tiny ship, all the while giving you more things to do and being actually given the task to engage the boss.

Also, the backdrop was the best of the entire campaign, and did I mention the soundtrack was good?

[InsaneBaron]

Thanks!

I haven't made too many of these missions in the past, so I'm only running on limited experience here, but I'd offer a couple of thoughts.

First, pick a good ship. What you ideally want is a big, complex ship with lots of things for the player to do on the way to blowing it up. Lots of turrets, subsystems and destroyable submodels. I'm also a fan of geometry that provides a degree of mission scenery, in the form of large scale detail that gives good geometric contrast. It's a hard concept to explin, but basically if the geometry provides lots of places for the player to manoeuvre, and relatively few areas of long flat expanse, it's probably got it. This makes the actual flight mechanics more interesting, and is one of the good things about, for example, Slaying Ravana

The Golden Rule I set myself for making the campaign: [angrychef]No, no, no, no, NO MODELING![/angrychef] So that I can focus on FREDing, and because modelling is... a little outside my skillset... I'm making this entirely with publicly available ships. However, I do have a supership picked out that looks good and complicated geometry-wise, with plenty of well-placed turrets.

Second, and again before you even start the mission, do what Matth said and set it up. Have the player encounter the ship at least once before, get him to become familiar with the ship. This can be achieved by telling in Command briefs or cutscenes, but is better done through in-mission events. [V] did this well for both the first Sath and the Ravanna. Having the player recon the ship can also be a good idea, like the Lucifer, if it's got particular attributes of interest (generally either very high detail or a very large scale works). Avoid the recon for well known or small ships, IMO.

I definitely plan to build it up. A recon mission... that's a good idea!

Thirdly, when you come to make the mission, ensure that the player has a task at all times. This often means targetting specific subsystems (engines, turrets and hostile fighters mostly, but whatever else you can make work with the model and the story is OK too) rather than just being given a huge number of hitpoints to chip away at.

So more like Nemesis and less like Secrets Revealed.

Fourth and finally, balance is, as always, probably the most critical thing.

Can't argue with that.

So, those would be my suggestions. Some of Matth's plot related points are important too (the opposition choosing to escape and being tactical), but from a pure FREDding perspective they're less important (much more important to the narrative though). IMO, get these four right and you'll have a reasonable mission, most of the time.

I'll keep that in mind. Thanks!

Some additional points you might want to consider:

You don't always need a capship on your side. Maybe keep the friendlies out of the battle for awhile while the player is disarming the big guns.

A good idea, but not quite workable in this case.

One way to break up the inevitable monotony of attacking the same ship repeatedly would be to give it some backup. Hostile capships arriving halfway through the battle give the player a new target, and if they're relatively easy to defang or otherwise eliminate, they shouldn't be too diverting from the main job.

By the time this mission comes around, the enemy flagship is going solo. However, there are more than two sides to this war...

Remember that you can rebalance your hostile super-ship for this mission, and you'll probably want to. The first time you see it, consider special-hits, mission-specific weapon variants, adjusting the armament or a unique armour type (if you're using it) to make the battle harder or easier than other battles that might feature this class.

Hm. A good idea. The last mission would definitely require a slight loadout change for plot reasons alone.

[InsaneBaron]

Well my fav ever BoE mission "kill the bad boss" is that last boss fight in Inferno. That soundtrack was bloody brilliant and the mission too. In a sense, Delenda Est kinda reminds me of it in some structural analysis, although the ends are different.

I assume you mean Nemesis? (as opposed to Gigas). I agree, that was a great mission

The thing that set apart that Inferno mission was how the first part of the battle where you have to fend off defending bomber squadrons from all sides of your fleet really expresses how big the effort of the strike is. Then, there's the "margin of failure" that they give you with the Fenris class corvettes serving to fend off enemy wings till they blow up (serving as input data on how you are performing on your strategy, kinda like in a "flowers vs zombies" thing).

The different timings and syncs of your fleet (some warping out others warping in) whenever some particular objective is achieved gives us the 4D aspect of the strategy. Makes us feel not the commander of the op (like in Tenebra) but as just the commander of the ship wings who will defend the fleet (and then bomb the beam cannons of the BigBoss), that gets a front seat in a well conceived battleship strike.

The fact that the last blow you have to make against the bigbadboss is a kind of a last-minute emergency resort given the enemy's being a smartass is also good. Conveys the enemy intelligence and minorizes the "alpha 1" aspect of everyone planning on depending on your tiny ship, all the while giving you more things to do and being actually given the task to engage the boss.

Also, the backdrop was the best of the entire campaign, and did I mention the soundtrack was good?

A lot of good stuff in here. Lead up to the attack, avoid Alpha 1 Syndrome, add a margin depending on skill.

[FuzzyDarkMatter]

This goes along with the 'encounter the ship previously' idea, that I completely endorse, but personally I'd go a different direction than a reconnaissance run or it jumping in and blowing up your buddies.

What has always, and will always, cause my instant hatred and need for vengeance is a traitor. Somebody getting command of the biggest ship in the fleet, then in the middle of a border skirmish turning its guns on his allies and jumping away with the enemy. You could have a mission where your home-ship is escorting the shiny-new-toy on a shake-down cruise and get ambushed, only to have the ship turn traitor and blast your home-ship to oblivion and jump away. A few additional encounters throughout the campaign where it always gets away before you can finish it off or severely damage it (personally would make me positively furious) and the payoff of finally blowing that traitorous jerk into atoms is that much sweeter.

Just my $.2 on the subject.

[Lorric]

Maybe instead of just shooting/bombing it until it blows up, you could have it either blow up after certain components are destroyed, or become vulnerable after certain components are destroyed. Heck, you could even have something like the first part be needing to escort a ship packed with explosives into colliding with it to make it vulnerable, or the destroyed components regenerate, so you have to keep destroying them to make the ship vulnerable.

[InsaneBaron]

This goes along with the 'encounter the ship previously' idea, that I completely endorse, but personally I'd go a different direction than a reconnaissance run or it jumping in and blowing up your buddies.

What has always, and will always, cause my instant hatred and need for vengeance is a traitor. Somebody getting command of the biggest ship in the fleet, then in the middle of a border skirmish turning its guns on his allies and jumping away with the enemy. You could have a mission where your home-ship is escorting the shiny-new-toy on a shake-down cruise and get ambushed, only to have the ship turn traitor and blast your home-ship to oblivion and jump away. A few additional encounters throughout the campaign where it always gets away before you can finish it off or severely damage it (personally would make me positively furious) and the payoff of finally blowing that traitorous jerk into atoms is that much sweeter.

Just my $.2 on the subject.

Hm... now THAT's a really neat idea, albeit one that doesn't quite work for this campaign- at least not for this specific ship in that exact form. However, there is some really despicable treason involved.

[InsaneBaron]

Maybe instead of just shooting/bombing it until it blows up, you could have it either blow up after certain components are destroyed, or become vulnerable after certain components are destroyed. Heck, you could even have something like the first part be needing to escort a ship packed with explosives into colliding with it to make it vulnerable, or the destroyed components regenerate, so you have to keep destroying them to make the ship vulnerable.

This ties in well with stuff we discussed earlier- the reasons Secrets Revealed failed. Having to knock out specific subsystems would certainly make it better.

The kamikazi ship idea is pretty neat- a la Derelict- but wouldn't exactly work here.

To give a little more background on the mission structure (with too many spoilers)

1. This is a very big ship, larger and more technologically advanced than anything the good guys have to pit against it.
2. The person commanding it is not a Shivan. There are specific motives at play here.
3. It's a defensive mission. Unlike, say, Last Stand, where YOU are actively attacking the Hades as it tries to defend itself. The big ship is trying to complete a critical objective. On the one hand, this serves as bait to prevent it from warping out; on the other, it puts a time limit on the player, because if the big ship accomplishes its goal, all is lost.

[MatthTheGeek]

Somebody getting command of the biggest ship in the fleet, then in the middle of a border skirmish turning its guns on his allies and jumping away with the enemy. You could have a mission where your home-ship is escorting the shiny-new-toy on a shake-down cruise and get ambushed, only to have the ship turn traitor and blast your home-ship to oblivion and jump away.

This fails a basic fact: a commander going rogue while aboard a ship with several thousands crewmembers that aren't going rogue is a stupid commander, and soon a dead commander.

Mutiny involving a larger amount of crewmembers is a possibility, but again, aboard a ship housing thousands of crewmembers, the number of "loyalists" left is bound to prevent any kind of effortless mutiny. Not saying you can't do mutinies right, but you certainly can't have a ship with a large crew count go wholesale rogue. It just doesn't work.

Having the mutinees disrupt a capital ship long enough for the enemy to board it would be a good starting idea for making a mutiny right.

[InsaneBaron]

Somebody getting command of the biggest ship in the fleet, then in the middle of a border skirmish turning its guns on his allies and jumping away with the enemy. You could have a mission where your home-ship is escorting the shiny-new-toy on a shake-down cruise and get ambushed, only to have the ship turn traitor and blast your home-ship to oblivion and jump away.

This fails a basic fact: a commander going rogue while aboard a ship with several thousands crewmembers that aren't going rogue is a stupid commander, and soon a dead commander.

Mutiny involving a larger amount of crewmembers is a possibility, but again, aboard a ship housing thousands of crewmembers, the number of "loyalists" left is bound to prevent any kind of effortless mutiny. Not saying you can't do mutinies right, but you certainly can't have a ship with a large crew count go wholesale rogue. It just doesn't work.

Having the mutinees disrupt a capital ship long enough for the enemy to board it would be a good starting idea for making a mutiny right.

That's one reason it didn't quite work in my case, the other being the very unusual natures of the ship, the captain, and the crew.

[FuzzyDarkMatter]

Somebody getting command of the biggest ship in the fleet, then in the middle of a border skirmish turning its guns on his allies and jumping away with the enemy. You could have a mission where your home-ship is escorting the shiny-new-toy on a shake-down cruise and get ambushed, only to have the ship turn traitor and blast your home-ship to oblivion and jump away.

This fails a basic fact: a commander going rogue while aboard a ship with several thousands crewmembers that aren't going rogue is a stupid commander, and soon a dead commander.

Mutiny involving a larger amount of crewmembers is a possibility, but again, aboard a ship housing thousands of crewmembers, the number of "loyalists" left is bound to prevent any kind of effortless mutiny. Not saying you can't do mutinies right, but you certainly can't have a ship with a large crew count go wholesale rogue. It just doesn't work.

Having the mutinees disrupt a capital ship long enough for the enemy to board it would be a good starting idea for making a mutiny right.

Stop bringing logic into my world, there is no place for it here!

Logically, however, one would only really need the bridge crew on their side to take a ship in this manner. Once everything is up and running; seal the bridge, vent the rest of the ship into space, jump away to rendezvous with personnel transports carrying the new crew members and off you go.

[General Battuta]

That's...debatable, depending on the rules of your setting. I think it's very unlikely that the ship can even move without a sizable crew. The bridge/CIC is functionally a brain - you can't expect everything else in the ship to work when you push the buttons up there unless it's got its own staff.

[MatthTheGeek]

Yes, if you could control the ship from the bridge, why would the GTVA bother training and paying all those thousand crew members?

[FuzzyDarkMatter]

It isn't that far fetched, actually. A large portion of a ship's crew function in a support capacity and aren't vital to operations. Modern IBS (Integrated Bridge Systems) allow for a single crew-member control navigation, maneuvering, and communication. Once the engines are going, this guy pretty much does it all, the rest of the crew are mostly along for the ride (from an operational standpoint). For a simple grab-and-go, that's all you would need.

I actually got the idea from an episode of Star Trek (Brothers), in which Data commandeers the Enterprise, alone, by locking out all ship controls located outside of the bridge.

As for the thousands of crew members, they are really only necessary for long duration cruises and are largely redundant due to needing several crewmen to fill a single position (24-hour rotations). You've also got all of the non-critical jobs aboard a ship that make life livable (mess, laundry, clerks), the flight personnel. And, if I'm honest, the crew-count of a Hecate is woefully tiny compared to what it takes to run a military vessel today.

Example: the Nimitz-class carrier, which measures 342m in length and carries 90 combat aircraft, has a crew of nearly 5,700. The Hecate-class Destroyer is a smidge over 2.1km in length, has a complement of 150 combat aircraft, and features a crew of 10,000. To me, that indicates a whole-lot of automation on-board the Hecate, meaning more of the ship-control is centralized.



Edit - I'm actually going to drop out of this line of discussion, as it is rather off-topic. Apologies for derailing


On-topic: Have the ship captain, at some point, tell the player that they are scruffy looking.

[ShadowWolf_IH]

Have the takedown last over the course of a few missions.  The easiest way is red alert status.  "Since we have ships but are short on pilots, part 1 of operation wreck the damned ship will involve Alpha wing flying in light bombers on a weapons removal mission.  Once this is complete, Alpha will return to base, and immediately launch in fighters to provide cover and to act as escort while we bring the mains online to deal with this threat.  In the event that they try to run, Alpha may be directed to escort heavy bombers in a disabling action, or to disable Big Damned Ship.  Load out accordingly."

In this scenario you have a two part red alert mission.  Enemy big damned ship has red alert carry status, Alpha doesn't.  Part 1 of the series is the weapons removal in light bombers.  Part 2 is in a fighter.  In each mission Alpha plays an integral role in the removal of the threat, because of course in the second part, Alpha will be directed to disable the ship. 

Not every mission needs to use the player as a sole reason for victory, but the player must be able to affect the outcome of the mission.  In essence, keep in mind that the player is the lynchpin.  He can't do it alone, but without him it won't be won at all.

[InsaneBaron]

It isn't that far fetched, actually. A large portion of a ship's crew function in a support capacity and aren't vital to operations. Modern IBS (Integrated Bridge Systems) allow for a single crew-member control navigation, maneuvering, and communication. Once the engines are going, this guy pretty much does it all, the rest of the crew are mostly along for the ride (from an operational standpoint). For a simple grab-and-go, that's all you would need.

I actually got the idea from an episode of Star Trek (Brothers), in which Data commandeers the Enterprise, alone, by locking out all ship controls located outside of the bridge.

As for the thousands of crew members, they are really only necessary for long duration cruises and are largely redundant due to needing several crewmen to fill a single position (24-hour rotations). You've also got all of the non-critical jobs aboard a ship that make life livable (mess, laundry, clerks), the flight personnel. And, if I'm honest, the crew-count of a Hecate is woefully tiny compared to what it takes to run a military vessel today.

Example: the Nimitz-class carrier, which measures 342m in length and carries 90 combat aircraft, has a crew of nearly 5,700. The Hecate-class Destroyer is a smidge over 2.1km in length, has a complement of 150 combat aircraft, and features a crew of 10,000. To me, that indicates a whole-lot of automation on-board the Hecate, meaning more of the ship-control is centralized.



Edit - I'm actually going to drop out of this line of discussion, as it is rather off-topic. Apologies for derailing


On-topic: Have the ship captain, at some point, tell the player that they are scruffy looking.

The funny is that you guys are striking something I was going to explore in the campaign.

Have the takedown last over the course of a few missions.  The easiest way is red alert status.  "Since we have ships but are short on pilots, part 1 of operation wreck the damned ship will involve Alpha wing flying in light bombers on a weapons removal mission.  Once this is complete, Alpha will return to base, and immediately launch in fighters to provide cover and to act as escort while we bring the mains online to deal with this threat.  In the event that they try to run, Alpha may be directed to escort heavy bombers in a disabling action, or to disable Big Damned Ship.  Load out accordingly."

In this scenario you have a two part red alert mission.  Enemy big damned ship has red alert carry status, Alpha doesn't.  Part 1 of the series is the weapons removal in light bombers.  Part 2 is in a fighter.  In each mission Alpha plays an integral role in the removal of the threat, because of course in the second part, Alpha will be directed to disable the ship.

This is an interesting idea. In the original plan, I had the good guys put the Big Bad Ship through a sort of Bismarck Chase, but in the final mission the BBS was still mostly functional. The weapons removal part won't quite work- it needs to have at least its main weapons, and engines, online for the grand finale. However, I'll consider splitting the action up for the actual takedown- maybe it warps out partway through the battle.

Not every mission needs to use the player as a sole reason for victory, but the player must be able to affect the outcome of the mission.  In essence, keep in mind that the player is the lynchpin.  He can't do it alone, but without him it won't be won at all.

This makes a lot of sense. After all, you need a lot of bombers and probably a destroyer to take out a BBS. I would replace "player" with "alpha wing", though; the player is part of a 4-pilot wing who build up a reputation as the SOC's best over the course of the campaign.

[Mito [PL]]

Heh. If you look for some ideas, i recommend reading some FS fanfiction. I would like to see a friendly Lucifer "breaking apart after being hit by about 80 purple beams" (FS: Devastation) .