[procdrone]

Hello, I said about making on my own mod in the welcoming topic, and yes I try to do it!

There is a first player-controlled mission I can give out without any files to it.

The campaign is actually before my mod main plot (think of it as a prelude), tell about a civil war between Laramis Supreme Reign and the GTVA.
I was working on the story line for some time, and I can give it out too, to know your opinions, if you wish to

But the purpose of this topic: the mission.

I cannot give on the initial entering cut-scene mission (it requires music files to have any meaning of testing, I release it with my mod-pack .vp files).
There goes the second mission: Take off!
I would like to know your opinions on it!

Tested with 3.7.0 FS2O build.
And to notice, I'm aware that errors will pop up saying about missing table files. You can normally ignore them, none of them is used in this particular mission, so it's clearly FS2O retail data. Everything should be OK.
Another notice, English is not my primary language, so minor/bigger language issues can be present, just point them out to me!

Full criticism on it are welcome, I want to shape my missions in the best way it is possible.

[Black Wolf]

This subforum is okay - generally this is for technical FRED stuff, while the missions and campaigns subforums is more typically for releasing new missions/campaigns or asking about existing ones. An open beta type release like this is kind of in between, so either forum is fine.

[EDIT]Forgot to mention, I am away from my FS compy for the moment, I will DL and have a play ASAP.

[procdrone]

I'm all but sorry for all the chaos I stirred up.

I just gone over Fred, and made all the missions correct. No table errors any more.
I uploaded a .zip package with all the data needed for all my 3 missions, 2 first done, and last one in progress now (WIP).

Because of Hard-Light attachment restrictions i uploaded a file to external host, here it goes:

Mirror 1: http://speedy.sh/gmMGd/VeneceMirror-Laramis-Civil-War.zip
Mirror 2: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dfygofk1mt2hryt/VeneceMirror%20Laramis%20Civil%20War.zip

All you need to do, is to unzip the file, and folder that was in it, place in your main FS20 folder. (just like any other mod).

Missions are accessible from the tech room, missions-> single missions. All of them have names starting with "lcw_" + the number of the mission, starting with "lcw_00.fs2".

Feedback on all of them is welcome.


EDIT: Mission in this pack are outdated (new can be found in attachments down the posts), I will post a new pack when I end finishing the lcw_01!

[Luis Dias]

My two cents.

lcw_00 is fine for what it is except for the camera placement. It's just too far away. Get closer to the action, let the sound effects do their work on the beams and missiles. Try to capture the bombers doing their run, etc. I enjoyed the soundtrack selection (from bp2).

lcw_01... ok. Things happen too slowly. I should get control a bit sooner. But I like the fact that I'm being forced to look at that gorgeous Orion. OTOH, I don't appreciate that there is a lot of other ships somewhere behind me. Give me something to look ahead of my ship so that I don't get confused at what I should be doing here (at least it distracts me from the fact that I have nothing to do... other than wait for orders and then be jumped out).

lcw_02 is obviously half-done. I'm thrown into the middle of a fight without knowing very well what I'm supposed to do, except there's a lot of myrmidons and I guess I have to shoot them. So I just kinda mindlessly frag everyone that appears, and it just somehow works alright. I kinda understand the skirmish I'm involved here, but there's just not much into it. The rhythm of appearing wings keeps the fight at good rhythm, but there's never an indication that there are some tactics involved here. Perhaps give those bombers a bit more strenght and a heads up that a (medium level fight) is gonna appear, and design that part of the game in a different way than the rest (so you can play with different speeds and mindsets within the mission).

edit I kept writing rythm and I knew there was something wrong about that.

[procdrone]

So... yes.

1st. cut-scene, I'll rework the camera, camera movements are a pain for me, but I'll try to do something.

That is correct! I used the soundtracks from bp2, they are so awesome (sure Belasarius (the author? I encountered this music in a couple of mods) will be mentioned when this is complete! HE'S A GOD)

2nd. Well, it's action just after the initial cut-scene, there are bunch of ships to show that a fleet is moving it's position around the node... but the idea of getting something in front of that Orion is a great idea, I just know what to add there!
Yes, that is an invasion force, that is meant to attack on Ross 128 system.
And yes, there is hardly anything more to it, just launch, and jump to the said fire-fight.
I think of increasing the traffic from the node, and to it, add more conversation to stationing and patrolling ships?

3rd. I will rework this mission a bit. I press to much difficulty on the beginning, BOE (Battle of Endor) syndrome I suppose I'll work more on it.
Yes, this is hardly given any tactic, just because it is in progress, plainly the goal is a capture of the station (if I would to tell). I must add things in there.

Your feedback is well appreciated, every one is If you will notice anything else, just let me know.

[procdrone]

I know, that totally noone was waiting for this, but I totally reworked the camera in the first cutscene, I hope this time it's good
Reworked mission attached, all what you need to do, to overwrite this mission with the mission that is in the pack included earlier.
Have fun and please give some feedback.

[attachment deleted by an evil time traveler]

[Rodo]

some feedback:

lcw_00: ok, nice use of cameras, I found no particular flaw in the use of those. The only thing I'd recommend is to check the dialogue to make it more plausible and interesting to the player.

lcw_01: Good execution, but the mission lacks purpose other than being a practice mission. I'd have you consider merging this one with lcw_02 using it as a prelude and at the same time learning to use those cool ingame warp effects Axem showed us on recent tutorials

lcw_02: Messy combat, never knew what I had to do. I've seen this on a lot of missions and from lots of different fredders, it's a consequence of wanting to add a lot of action and fun stuff for the player to do yet what it accomplishes is making the player dizzy. My personal approach on this is turning missions in a series of tasks the player must accomplish to win. The tasks are almost everytime sequential and tend to require the entire focus and skill of the player.
Eg: on your mission setting you've got 2 cruisers. I'd make and objective to keep both alive so they can do their "magic" against other capital ships, thus your wing objective is to negate fighter and bomber wings.

1st task, fight an enemy wing already in the field that's targeting them (easy first step)
2nd task, fight a bomber wing that arrives after the first wing is destroyed, when the player is 1000m away from the bombers make an enemy wing jump behind him. (hard step)
3rd task, help cruisers disabling an enemy corvette or maybe disarm it, half way through the task make an enemy wing jump in to disrupt the players work. (medium difficulty step)

And finally some FRED random advices:

Try not using waves, if anything the use of this feature means that the role of the player in the mission is nothing more than an automatic fighter grinder, you should try avoid that and implement the task approach I mentioned earlier.

Try keeping chat as short as possible while retaining relevance, and make chat interactions happen only when fights are not happening, this is hard to achieve but possible.
Don't take this to the extreme though, it will be necessary to use chat on fights eventually but be mindfull about when to use it.

Don't use chained events with time delays to decide when enemy and friendly wings arrive, this should happen only when certain things happen in the mission. If you do this you'll have greater control about what the player does, when he does it and you'll know exactly how to react to that.


I'm actually glad to see someone trying to learn fred again, it's refreshing. I'll be cheering for you Hound! hope your get the experience to become a great fredder, HLP can use one more for sure

[procdrone]

Accually, my first idea was to make these missions as one, but later given up the idea.
I could try to do this however, effect is amazing and could be some fun to FRED up, and add the mission later.

Plainly, when I finish the merge, the mission will appear more tactical because now... it was just made up like it is, unfinished and hardly tested.
I've yet to learn about working the chains (actually, It's the one of the first missions I've started using them), or using the arguments.

But, thank you on the feedback, for some part, I lost the faith that anyone even looks into my missions.

[Rodo]

It's true, freder's life is a lonely life. Normally no one gets to see what you are working on until you actually have a finished product of some sort.
This is I believe the main reason why we have so few fredders, it's a hash task from which you'll never see results until your work is completely or almost completely finished.

Don't be discouraged though, I assure you fredding one of the 3 sets of skills most wanted here on HLP. For me it brought a lot of good experiences, got me in awesome project teams and up to today keeps pulling me back to these forums.

[karajorma]

I've always said that a FREDders life is the most thankless because you don't get praise on a good mission very often. Usually the best compliment is no complaints at all about the mission.

That said, FREDding is indeed one of the highest demand skill sets here on HLP. Once you've established a name as a competent FREDder, most of the big name projects here on HLP would happily take you on board.

[procdrone]

That's nice to hear, because I like Freding.

I took on your advices Rodo, and merged both missions, made the second part more tactical, and there is in-game jumping with all those flashy subspace vortexes!

It's mostly completed and ready by now - but I ask everyone that might help. Go crazy about the second part, check out all possible ending scenarios (HELL YEA, SHOT DOWN EVERYONE!) I'd like to know if debriefings are done correctly, and if there is a "never ending mission" problem in there.

Also do say if the combat part is properly designed (not to hard, not too easy, not pointless and logic-less, but it's not planned too be somewhat challenging [it's the first combat mission that takes the GTVA off by surprise])
Thank you in advance!

Mission file in attachment, just replace it with the existing file, and you can delete the lcw_02.fs2 - it's no longer needed. (Obsolete)

[Rodo]

I could not finish the mission, Omega got destroyed by the Herc II wing and I got the RTB for failed mission, yet I could not warp out.
This is probably related to some sexp that you used to disable warping and did not trigger back on.
Good use of directives list, nice short and to the point

On the mission progression itself, pretty solid work.
-I'd fill in the time between player travelling to station to engage the first wave with some pilot chatter just so it doesn't feel so empty.
-Again try not using waves, those hercs II's got the transport because I was busy with the Arcadia's subsystems. Got the first wave and though I had them all, yet there was another wave waiting and the sneaked behind me and obliterated that transport without opposition.
-Add messages for every wing arrival, and update the player on the situation when necessary.

I'd say this mission is in good shape, you might want to think how to add a little thrill to the first parts of the action, fighting a single wing of enemies is not a challenge for seasoned FS players.
I'd try increasing those wings IA levels a little and then add something that will distract the player from fighting them, or maybe something that will put some pressure on him.

[procdrone]

OH MY... I just looked over in FRED, and! JUST THIS ONE, the fail events for the Omega down were blank true - do nothing -.-

Just repaired that, and will add some polish.

Hey, I stated, the stages has to be so easy, it's not aimed to only veteran players (beginners also) but, well, these bombers could jump in along the fighters, I'll just change the arrive cue.

Chatter... well I also thought about planting some musing as they warp. It's dull I admit.  Herc's wing is added so it makes it difficult to save Omega. I can disclose that there is a secondary objective, to keep it intact while the boarding occurs.

Well, I must see how I do this for next waves, there should be standard game messages. If they are not. I'll work it out.

[Luis Dias]

I'll look into your improved missions when I get home.

[procdrone]

Then look on this one, I've finished a bit of tweaking to it.

File attached.

[Lepanto]

This one certainly plays smoother than your original iteration did; overall, good work for a new FREDder. Nice touch with the cruiser blasting the Naeros's fighterbay.

One thing: The Leviathan moves a lot slower than the Omega transport does, so the transport quickly outpaces it. If you want them to keep pace with each other, use the cap-waypoint-speed SEXP (under AI) to slow the Omega to a speed of 15, and have them arrive a bit closer to the station (so they don't take longer to get to the station).

Also, I'd second Rodo's recommendation about not using waves. Waves might make the FREDder's job easier, but trust me, most players want their missions to be faster-paced and less repetitive.

[procdrone]

I'm aware that the cruiser stays back of the transport. It's planned, because they are so far away, player has to be more careful with the transport. No AAf's for this one. (Cruiser does only long range beam shooting)

Usage of waves bad. I really can't see why but I will try to do something with it.

Any feedback with the debriefings? Do they work correctly with you?

[Phantom Hoover]

Usage of waves is frowned upon these days because it doesn't really make very much sense as a tactical decision by the enemy ("let's send our fighters in four at a time so they can be picked off, rather than sending in an overwhelming assault!"). It's obviously not going to ruin your campaign or anything, retail did it and was still fun, but your missions will be better off if you try to avoid using them and come up with something that makes more narrative sense instead.

[swashmebuckle]

To avoid confusion, you might wanna consider giving your campaign a different name before release. TopAce released a post-Capella campaign just a couple years back called Luyten Civil War, so a title that makes yours stand out a bit more might be a good call.

[Luis Dias]

So I finally got to play them!

My two cents.

lcw_00:

The pace and cameras are 10x better! You improve a lot between iterations. I love the bomber and fighter focus, the first green beam flashing from the Orion perspective, etc. I still have some quirks about them, (mostly weird camera movements or staring too much to the sunflare) but that's just perfectionism getting in the way. The scene is simple (good), the setting clear and the narrative perfectly relatable. The only big problem I see there is that there's a metanarrative dissonance here: the scene is played from the GTVA point of view, but then the next mission is played from the "rebels" point of view. That is awkward, but perhaps dealt with correctly with your briefings / debriefings. Watch that potential problem in the long run.

lcw_01:

Still slow pace at the beggining, and the whole attack. Good fredding with a lot of it though. Seems almost like a slow motion heist movie, with one, two, three, four, etc. wings coming down on us with little care for their own lives, strategy or tactics... If the GTVA has no good answer to the heist, perhaps it is way more thoughtful of their part not to sacrifice wings and wings of fighters just to keep the player doing something other than slowly staring at the transporter moving around... and making weird movements around 8:00 (I saw it clipping through the station...). I'd design something along the lines of someone saying "It's all so quiet around here, why don't they send their standard fare of wings so we can have some fun? (which is poking fun at the cliché)... which in turn tells the player (metanarratively) that something big is gonna happen. Then have a cruiser and bombers jumping just in front of your transport and Leviathan. Something smart tactically speaking.

Instead we only have boring waves after waves of sacrificed fighters... that never even have the upper hand. (In this respect I preferred your original version where you had cruisers defending the station... at least you had some opposition!)

All in all, good fredding and best of luck going forward!