[S-99]

It would be nice if there was something more than just one mission where you go up a sathanas's ass hole with a camera.

More stealth missions would have been nice. We have one barely used decent vasudan stealth craft, and a basicly never used human stealth craft. I really think stealth missions were probably scrapped, or nothing much was brainstormed of them when the game was being made.

[Colonol Dekker]

A game of tag?

[Sololop]

In a game of TAG, you fly the Ulysses.

[Colonol Dekker]

There are stealth fighters in it though!

-1 point to gryffindor for mean spiritedness.

[Thisisaverylongusername]

You're thinking of Proving Grounds, Dekker.

[TwoCables]

You're thinking of Proving Grounds, Dekker.

Yep, that's Proving Grounds.

Anyway, let's not forget about Endgame where you are able to use the Pegasus. I always give my entire wing the Pegasus for that mission, and I will often repeat the mission several times in order to satiate my desire to play almost EVERY mission in the Pegasus.

There's another mission where you get to fly the Ptah stealth fighter if you do desire, but I forget the mission's name now (I think it's the one where the subspace portal is destroyed by the Meson bombs). The problem with that mission though is you're supposed to lure the enemy away from the subpsace portal back toward the Renenet (spelling?), and that's not exactly easy if they can't see you on their radar! So, I usually resort to using Taurets or something else that I like for that one just so they can track me. lol Don't get me wrong, I am able to get them to follow me and my wing in the Ptah, but I sometimes just don't feel like working that hard.

[NGTM-1R]

I've toyed with actually building a whole campaign where you fly in a recon wing and trying to make a stealth game out of FreeSpace, but the truth is it requires a more talented FREDder than I.

That said, it probably wouldn't have played like the canonical stealth missions in FS1/FS2 because I didn't often enjoy them.

[TwoCables]

I've toyed with actually building a whole campaign where you fly in a recon wing and trying to make a stealth game out of FreeSpace, but the truth is it requires a more talented FREDder than I.

That said, it probably wouldn't have played like the canonical stealth missions in FS1/FS2 because I didn't often enjoy them.

I have to admit that I don't like the stealth recon missions either because there's no action. I'd much rather just be able to choose the Pegasus in any mission - at least from Proving Grounds onward, rather than only in Endgame. Either that, or have an entire user-made campaign where the Pegasus is available in every single mission.

[S-99]

Anyway, let's not forget about Endgame where you are able to use the Pegasus. I always give my entire wing the Pegasus for that mission, and I will often repeat the mission several times in order to satiate my desire to play almost EVERY mission in the Pegasus.

There's another mission where you get to fly the Ptah stealth fighter if you do desire, but I forget the mission's name now (I think it's the one where the subspace portal is destroyed by the Meson bombs).

I'm talking about stealth oriented missions that require the use of a stealth craft to achieve mission goals (typically where you sneak in and out undetected performing the role of stealth scout), there is only one such mission in fs2. End game where you have the option to fly a stealth craft just because it's there as an option is not some such mission type that I am talking about.

[TwoCables]

Anyway, let's not forget about Endgame where you are able to use the Pegasus. I always give my entire wing the Pegasus for that mission, and I will often repeat the mission several times in order to satiate my desire to play almost EVERY mission in the Pegasus.

There's another mission where you get to fly the Ptah stealth fighter if you do desire, but I forget the mission's name now (I think it's the one where the subspace portal is destroyed by the Meson bombs).

I'm talking about stealth oriented missions that require the use of a stealth craft to achieve mission goals (typically where you sneak in and out undetected performing the role of stealth scout), there is only one such mission in fs2. End game where you have the option to fly a stealth craft just because it's there as an option is not some such mission type that I am talking about.

I realize that it doesn't look like I knew what you were talking about, but I did. Like I said in my most recent post, I have to admit that I don't like the stealth recon mission because there's no action. I didn't like scanning the Sathanas' subsystems one bit, nor did I like trying to destroy some of its turrets. To me, it's extremely boring. I'd rather be a bomber than a stealth recon pilot. Y'know? I hate being a bomber too, but at least there's some action.

If I'm going to a fly a stealth fighter, then I want it to be in a normal mission where there's a ton of dogfighting that's even mixed with having to destroy beam turrets. To me, nothing is more fun than not showing up on my enemy's radar and also having a "razor-thin profile" that's "hard to hit at medium range"! The first time I flew the Pegasus in Endgame, I did far better than I had ever done in that mission. So then I gave the Pegasus to my entire wing, and for the first time, all of them were still green at the end of the mission with a hull integrity of above 90%!

[Phantom Hoover]

Stealth is very tricky to get right and very frustrating when it's done wrong, and, to be frank, Freespace never did it right. You need to build the interesting mechanics yourself, and Tenebra is the only good example I can think of.

[Torchwood]

Stealth as a gameplay concept really took off after the Thief series. Ever since then, games occasionally tried to implement some kind of stealth mechanic, but there were plenty of cases were they just fell flat and it didn't work out.  It's wonderful if you can get it working right, but if it's not done well, it'll become an overrated or even despised gimmick, just like QTEs.

[S-99]

Why not stealth assist missions? Fs2 already changed the whole stealth thing for the game. In real life we have stealth bombers, in the game we have super tiny light stealth scouts that you can dog fight with.

Several things have changed here. The stealth bomber to a scout that can barely hold it's own without being invisible. The whole stealth thing needs to be revised for this game. There could've been stealth assist missions. Get behind enemy lines undetected to paint a target for a major beamage that somehow get's through a sensor jammed area. That would be fun.

[tomimaki]

Vassago's Dirge - Con Fuoco? 

[Goober5000]

The whole stealth thing needs to be revised for this game. There could've been stealth assist missions. Get behind enemy lines undetected to paint a target for a major beamage that somehow get's through a sensor jammed area. That would be fun.

We have something along these lines planned for Scroll of Atankharzim.

[karajorma]

With both the Stealthstar and the Blackbird, we obviously are going to have to have stealth missions in Diaspora. The trick is to make stealth missions which don't end in insta-death if you **** up.

[S-99]

The whole stealth thing needs to be revised for this game. There could've been stealth assist missions. Get behind enemy lines undetected to paint a target for a major beamage that somehow get's through a sensor jammed area. That would be fun.

We have something along these lines planned for Scroll of Atankharzim.

badass

[riomaki]

With both the Stealthstar and the Blackbird, we obviously are going to have to have stealth missions in Diaspora. The trick is to make stealth missions which don't end in insta-death if you **** up.

Bingo.

The question with stealth - and this isn't just in FreeSpace, but in every game that uses it - is how a game responds when things go wrong.  The better stealth games allow the player to salvage the situation, usually by turning it into a free-for-all where we can fight our way through, or allowing the player to get back to cover.  Unfortunately, most games respond with some form of instant failure.

I think for FreeSpace, which is fundamentally an action-oriented game, you need to play fast-and-loose with stealth and assume that either a player will screw up, or they may even invite the challenge that comes with going in guns blazing.  The new Wolfenstein is a great example of a game that accommodates both styles pretty well.

[S-99]

In fs, it would really matter if you could program in the attention span of a deer. That's sort of extreme to say, but it's essentially how the metal gear solid enemies work. You hide for long enough and don't find you, alarms turn off, life goes back to normal hunky dory.

[qwadtep]

I think the unfortunate reality is that spacesims aren't really suited for stealth. We can handwave by saying that you can't let any fighters escape or they'll alert more or that you have to do as much damage as you can before the enemy figures out what's happening but you can't really make a compelling mission out of not entering a three-dimensional bubble around enemy fighters. Maybe if there were LOS SEXPs or something.