[CT27]

I'm having a really hard time with The Hornet's Nest.

Spoiler:

It just doesn't seem possible to save the Kamikaze once the Nahemas jump in. Even if I can stop the first Nahema wing from destroying the Kamikaze, the second Nahema wing just swoops in from the other side and finishes the job. And that's if I can stop the three wings of Maras from ganging up on me and stopping me from shooting any Nahemas down in the first place. Trebuchets don't reload fast enough to shoot down all the bombers at standoff range (and I don't have enough of them for all the bombers anyway), and it certainly doesn't help that one of my gun banks is inexplicably occupied by a Subach, making it take even more time to shoot down a bomber at close range. I don't know why I'm not allowed to customize my loadout. The briefing doesn't give any explanation why. Being able to load up on Widowmakers might make this mission doable. Hiding the wing names on the HUD is another inconvenience. No recommendations in the debriefing, either.

Is the Kamikaze supposed to activate that deflector shield the briefing mentioned? Because that's not happening. I did find that the comms menu has ships called "protect", "detonate", and "escape", which I thought might mean that I can order the Kamikaze to turn on the shield by choosing "protect", but that doesn't seem to work. I'm guessing they're stealthed Pegasuses at the edge of the mission area that are there for some FRED thing and aren't meant to be communicated with.

Really great campaign up to this point, but this mission just doesn't seem winnable.

If you're talking about the mission where

Spoiler:

you escort a captured Rakshasha through the remains of Capella to blow up the remaining Shivans there

how I got through it was my wingmen and I defended the cruiser from enemy fighters for a while then the bombers came in.  I had my wingmen defend the ship then I focused on enemy bombers (Nahemas first).  After about eight minutes no more enemy craft came in and a dialogue started where the cruiser commander said he was activating the shield and then I had to bolt to the node.

[SL1]

If you're talking about the mission where

Spoiler:

you escort a captured Rakshasha through the remains of Capella to blow up the remaining Shivans there

how I got through it was my wingmen and I defended the cruiser from enemy fighters for a while then the bombers came in.  I had my wingmen defend the ship then I focused on enemy bombers (Nahemas first).  After about eight minutes no more enemy craft came in and a dialogue started where the cruiser commander said he was activating the shield and then I had to bolt to the node.

Yeah, that's the mission. And that's what I've been trying to do, but there are just so many fighters that I can't see a way to not get overwhelmed. Three or four wings of Maras jump in before the bombers, and I can't kill enough of them before the bombers arrive to make it possible to go after the bombers without having an entire wing of Maras shooting me in the back. I don't think I'm terrible at Freespace (I've been able to get all the medals in this campaign so far), but this mission is really kicking my ass. It sounds like there's no particular trick to completing it, though, so I guess I'll have to keep trying until I either get lucky or skip it after five failures.

[theperfectdrugsk]

You could always just lower the difficulty for that mission.  Or cheat (I kinda prefer that to skipping a mission, honestly).

[CT27]

If you're talking about the mission where

Spoiler:

you escort a captured Rakshasha through the remains of Capella to blow up the remaining Shivans there

how I got through it was my wingmen and I defended the cruiser from enemy fighters for a while then the bombers came in.  I had my wingmen defend the ship then I focused on enemy bombers (Nahemas first).  After about eight minutes no more enemy craft came in and a dialogue started where the cruiser commander said he was activating the shield and then I had to bolt to the node.

Yeah, that's the mission. And that's what I've been trying to do, but there are just so many fighters that I can't see a way to not get overwhelmed. Three or four wings of Maras jump in before the bombers, and I can't kill enough of them before the bombers arrive to make it possible to go after the bombers without having an entire wing of Maras shooting me in the back. I don't think I'm terrible at Freespace (I've been able to get all the medals in this campaign so far), but this mission is really kicking my ass. It sounds like there's no particular trick to completing it, though, so I guess I'll have to keep trying until I either get lucky or skip it after five failures.

Sorry I can't be more help.  Maybe try ordering some wingmen to attack bombers and you focus on some fighters?  Otherwise I would echo the previous suggestion and try lowering the difficulty for one mission.

[SL1]

Hah. I went back to give it another shot, and completed the mission on the first try. I guess I just needed to know it was possible. I think another problem is that I'm never quite sure how to deal with bomber attacks - specifically, whether I should concentrate on shooting down the bombs or the bombers. I've had some bad experiences with focusing on the bombs - even if I get all the bombs in the first salvo, the bombers will probably launch another salvo at point-blank range that will be impossible to shoot down. So my general strategy has been to get as many bombers as possible and delay going for the bombs as long as possible. The Hornet's Nest seems to favor concentrating on the bombs.

Anyway, I finished the campaign yesterday, and I really enjoyed it. Fun missions, really good aesthetics, lots of cool ships/stations/weapons, good music. Nice cutscenes, too. Only real problems were some small but frequent grammatical errors and the HUD frequently appearing in cutscenes when I don't think it was supposed to. Those are minor issues, though, and the HUD thing could very well be my fault, because I've been screwing around with HUD modding without knowing exactly what I'm doing. I wasn't sure that flying a capship would work well (I think War in Heaven's capship-flying mission gave me a bit of PTSD about the concept), but I was pleasantly surprised. It was actually pretty fun. Now I kind of want to play an entire campaign as a warship captain.

[herkie423]

The most important rule: Bomb first then the bombers.

In that mission, there are only 2 wings Nahema bombers to worry about. They are packing Shivan Mega Bombs! Shoot as many bombs as you can to shave off some damage to the Kamekazi. Don't worry about the Shivan Astaroths and Dragons they do very little damage. But be mindful of the Maras, I armed them with Mega Lasers which equivalent to the Maxims...Yikes!

Originally, this was suppose to be a "story" mission with 100% chance of success but I changed my mind and turned into a sadistic mission.

[herkie423]

To SL1:

You will have plenty of Capship missions and fleet maneuvering missions in the sequel.

And about the HUD thing, I have that too in 3 missions actually, perhaps a mission code error. I will look into it. I may release a minor update for that.

[herkie423]

You could always just lower the difficulty for that mission.  Or cheat (I kinda prefer that to skipping a mission, honestly).

Oh. Please don't cheat. You might mess up the "journal" entries and entries in the techroom and some weapons or ships will not be unlocked.

By the way, how do you do that?

[core1401]

do what? cheat?

[herkie423]

do what? cheat?

Yeah, I heard there are cheat codes but I don't know them. It would be useful in debugging missions.

[theperfectdrugsk]

http://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/Cheats

[herkie423]

Thanks. One of my debugging method is to actually fail the mission and see if the correct debriefing is shown. There are several levels of both the good and the bad debriefs in some missions I'm working on right now.

[Mito [PL]]

It's actually better to cheat through a mission than just skip it - if you do the latter, some campaign persistent mission-specific variables may not be set and you'll end up with some strange things later in the campaign.

[JSRNerdo]

Will the player be summarily executed if they fail the mission so badly they get the worst possible outcome?

[herkie423]

Will the player be summarily executed if they fail the mission so badly they get the worst possible outcome?

No, not this time. That was war time in the Reboot. This time, it will discribe an actual disastrous outcome because of that failure, to the GTVA, to the fleet, or to the protagonist's life. Ex. Many have died because of the failure, the fleet  was destroyed as a result, or the player will be stranded alone in space, something like that.

[herkie423]

It's actually better to cheat through a mission than just skip it - if you do the latter, some campaign persistent mission-specific variables may not be set and you'll end up with some strange things later in the campaign.

This I completely agree.

[herkie423]

I am doing another update. Some fixes in the cutscenes/HUD  problems in 3 missions. Spelling/ gramnar (I found only 4 in 4 missions) and some minor tweaks.

I actually find it very difficult to defeat my own creation or maybe it's just me. Now, my question is. Is the difficulty factor  (medium) OK for you guys? Or is it way too easy?

I really don't want to frustrate players but a little challenge is needed.

[CT27]

I am doing another update. Some fixes in the cutscenes/HUD  problems in 3 missions. Spelling/ gramnar (I found only 4 in 4 missions) and some minor tweaks.

I actually find it very difficult to defeat my own creation or maybe it's just me. Now, my question is. Is the difficulty factor  (medium) OK for you guys? Or is it way too easy?

I really don't want to frustrate players but a little challenge is needed.

I think the difficulty is fine.  If people want more challenger, they can always raise the difficulty level.


Since you mentioned a HUD/cutscene issue, I found one in the final mission "Final Confrontation":

Spoiler:

  After the Archangel gets Grond's hull to zero %, a cutscene triggers that shows Grond's explosion.  However the HUD is up during this and I have to manually turn it off for the cutscene and turn it back on when the cutscene is over.

[herkie423]

Thanks, CT. So that will be 4 missions with that problem.

[IidoTheMageFox]

Hey, I've played through this campaign a while back, and I really enjoyed it. Easily one of the best Freespace campaigns I've ever played. A few missions gave me a LOT of trouble (not that i can remember the names of many of them at this point) and I wound up lowering the difficulty for many of 'em.

Right now, I'm replaying it, and JUST passed The Adhara Exodus again. Thankfully this time, I managed to do it on my second try, on Medium; Medium's my default difficulty for most campaigns. Last time, I'm pretty sure I had to lower the difficulty to easy or very easy...and even then, it was close IIRC. It often feels like some of these defense missions rely a lot on luck, sometimes the target you're defending gets through okay, other times it just gets annihilated and it feels like there's little you can do to prevent it. In the Adhara Exodus's case, I can usually do well and keep the Damascus up to 60-80% integrity until near the end, where the final few waves of enemies come in, one of them being Taurvi bombers. This part threw me off the first few times as at this point, the Damascus would get utterly obliterated, and I couldn't figure out what was doing so much damage to it. Certainly not the larger, slower Shivan bombs that you can shoot down. But this time, I realized they were firing much smaller, faster missiles at it that were doing like 5% damage a pop. At least, I think it was the Taurvis that were firing those? I think there were 2 or 3 Taurvis left, I was facing the Damascus and trying to figure out what was damaging it so much, and saw those flying into it from behind me.

So maybe not so luck based after all, just gotta figure out what enemy wing is shooting those missiles... Haha, truth be told I'm not the best FS player, maybe because I don't use the mouse for movement...Ever since I was a kid, I always played using the numpad. Mouse movement lets you aim easier, but it also makes it much slower to turn around, at least for me, even with the sensitivity at max. Never had a joystick either..

Anyway...phenomenal work on this campaign, again, it is a joy to play. I read in a post up above you're making a sequel?