Haven't read any of the above, just hoping I've got the right version. (0.90)
Overview(Name the readme after the mission.) The second paragraph on the first page is no good. The idea of "first here's the basic idea, now here's some detail" is usually good but not for an Overview - it lacks punch. The story so far reads like a military history written 20 years later, not a quick update to somebody actually there. Add a date to your contact page.
IntroVery good. Few minor details. Don't put the mission name in text at the start, it spoils the graphic later. Just have "loading" or blank. The first cut, from tank view to tank view, doesn't work because the first lot of tanks are appear to be going out of town and moving from right to left, and the second lot appear to be already in the town and also moving from right to left. Try a different angle or an intervening shot of something else. There isn't enough movement of loons in the town - for example, there is a medic just standing over two bodies. He, and more of the others, should be doing something.
The first AT loon is not in any kind of cover: place a bush beside him. The tanks don't fire back at all - even in fog (which could perhaps be thicker) they'd have an idea of the direction of the rockets approach and might fire the odd round or some MG fire in the general direction. Would look better too, they are too static after the first hit. For the second hit, have the camera closer to the missile - you don't get the full benefit of the slow motion.
In the second part there was no bustling once the sergeant issued orders to gear up. The guys should start moving at once. Also the Chinook is turning and burning for an awfully long time, better to start him up halfway through.
But overall I wish all Intros were of this standard. Especially mine.
BriefingPlan - First para should be same size text as the others. Not sure you need both second and third, consider combining into one. At present the page says attack L'Espace Noir three times in four paragraphs, which seems excessive.
Notes - size thing again at the top. Add "commander, 1 Platoon" so we know who Lt Morris is.
partisan-like
comma after patrol
In Morris's notes have something like "As well as being in charge of supply you are second in command" to be consistent with the supply references in the Intro.
Gear - The grenadiers are both rookies, who should in fact probably be dispersed a little at the back of the squad. It's a pleasure to see somebody get the handguns and bincocs right, so easy yet so rare. I took a LAW and dished out a few bits and pieces.
Group - nice to see somebody actually thinking about skill levels.
Map - colour coding is not consistent. I'd use green for friendly and blue for anything directly to do with 1 Platoon. (Or the other way around.) Maybe yellow for Buffalo if you like.
Overall its all good stuff except I don't really know how I fit it. I seem to be commanding a rifle squad, which seems odd. Surely I should be a member of the HQ squad, or commanding an element of it or something. I'm assuming you have some medics kicking around somewhere since there are none in my squad.
MissionThe camera pans down and then moves up a little: this is probably unavoidable as I know from experience that the chopper height will vary a little. Think of something. Also the timing is wrong: the chopper should arrive sooner (to prevent boredom) or later (to increase drama). Love the sleeping bit. Try slower fades, and fading out while the fade in is only half complete.
Landed, followed the yellow dots. Like the idea, but make the whole thing a bit more subtle and less obvious - this is not Cadet mode, at least not for me. Maybe halve the number of little dots and make the cloud smaller. They should last a little longer though. Also mention in the hints that you can use command view to help keep position.
It appears that I am Alpha squad leader. That's fine, but mention it in the Briefing. Also that my squad will be on the left.
OH MY GOD! LT. MORRIS HAS BEEN HIT!
Well I've got my new squad and I don't much care for it. That Scott Akin is really annoying for a start. ;D Anyway, the M60 gunners should be my 2 and 3, or 3 and 4 if 2 is my runner. The assistant AT should be carrying a second CG missile and if there are supposed to be M60 ammo bearers they should have M60 mags. (If the game will allow that.) There should be two medics since there are none in the squads, I know that's not particularly realistic but if you have only one medic you should have morphine scripts for everbody.
We rearmed slightly from the bodies (Dragunov for me) and moved forward a little. My first impression of the command interface is that it is good. It's pretty clear and so far I have only two suggestions: make it more obvious that the whole platoon is selected; and place the platoons a little further apart. We are in Wedge and the last man of the lead platoon is only 30m away. I almost catch him up when we move. Just another 10 or 20m would seem better, but we'll see. Ah, you click to deselect squads, not to select them, that is what is confusing me. I would suggest a button for "whole platoon" which is selected at the start, in addition to buttons for each squad.
We headed west for a bit, then turned south to come at the enemy from the flank. I spotted the tower but we kinda ran into it a bit because I couldn't figure out how to stop everybody. The top left box of the dialogue needs a "whole platoon" box round it in the same way that the individual squads have boxes.
Second time round it didn't go any better really. We were further behind than I thought and consequently we were effectively flanked ourselves on making contact. Charlie reported casualties and then getting hammered ... I brought Alpha up from the back to their position but before they even got there the C on the map was legging it southwards, I presume fleeing. Ah, they have 8 KIA. Now its all of them, like it. ;D
Managed to get some kind of bounding overwatch going and the remaining squads moved in. Alpha and Bravo have have 3 dead and one wounded between them.
Cutscene. No comment necessary.
For the sake of tidyness I would recommend healing any wounded men in the platoon here. I can make it happen by moving them in the right way, but it would be a real chore. I only have 1 so it doesn't matter, but if I happened to have 4 or 5 ...
2 green ticks so far but no outstanding Objective at the moment. Was having a little explore (the place looks great) when everybody started getting killed by a BMP so I hit the retry and got an error, something about
OfficerWHG counttype .... units _grp .... # == ... error zero division
That's it for now, more later.
Edit: just skipped through the more recent comments. No probs with anybody getting stuck. The boss was killed in the first contact, a few hundred metres after we left the LZ. I heard one Dragunov shot, my 2 called the sniper as I hit the dirt. I didn't see anything but the squad on my right and the HQ squad were both popping away merrily as I headed to examine the boss's body. (Which is correct btw.) We appeared to have no other casualties which was surprising because there was a sniper with bizon, an AT4 loon, the sniper of course and I think one other. I assumed at the time that the Lt getting it here was inevitable but apparently not.
Later.
Picked it up at the retry. The platoon was disorganised and there wasn't time to get everybody in shape before the armour arrived. I pressed on anyway, passing through the roadblock just ahead of the first tank and walking straight into a couple of russkies. We exchanged casualties. I wanted platoon V, with Alpha and Bravo ahead of me on each flank. Bravo was fine, ahead to my left (where I expected Alpha to be) but Alpha was to their left. We were moving forward as I was figuring this out, staying close to the tanks. Repeated attempts to get Alpha into some kind of logical place failed. Eventually they kinda settled in behind me as if they were reserve squad. I ordered them manually up front right: there were four of them left now, Bravo was doing slightly better but calling casualties occasionally. I had about 5 loons with me, two wounded, and the armour seemed to be doing ok. Somebody took out the BMP. We approached the village and I and most of my squad were killed: the only mystery is that it hadn't happened sooner as I spent most of my time on the map and command interface.
We need more time after the retry before the tanks arrive to get in shape. You've taken away the normal opportunity to heal, rearm and reorganise with the cutscene, which is fine, but you have to leave us in good order positionally.
Retry. Got that error message again with a hint "error in rearm".
I see we start in sort of line formation with me on the right. A and B are charging forward without orders or reporting contact. We advance again, all goes well on the combat front but the formation thing is a shambles. A and B both move further and further left: when I try to go with them they run back towards me. Eventually I order platoon column and they get into the right sort of order, but there is something wrong with the V formation. Possibly the complete absence of Charlie squad is confusing things.
Having established column I order V and A moves back behind me, with B out front left. The map in the interface suggests A should be front left and B front right. Anyway, at least I know where I am. Since I'm buggered if I'm going in with only one squad up I order line, squads on line, and both squads head out to my left ... actually, its almost like what they were doing when they were mad, except now its a little wider out and more ordered. Anyway, the tank dust has long since settled so we'd better go and collect the tankers dogtags from over the skyline.
Actually the tanks aren't that far ahead. We move up, tanks doing the dirty work. I pause to let A and B catch up, they seem to have fallen far behind. While waiting, three US soldiers pass me on my right ... if they are in my platoon they are at least 70m from where they should be and 100m from where the map says they are ... anyway, they'll soon be dead either way. Yep. Fortunately one has an M203 which is more useful than my Dragunov. A and B seem to have advanced past me and have taken a spanking from the infantry in the village, which you would expect given their beautiful reverse slope position. My little gang is still intact, so we crawl forward cautiously.
Little bit of usual urban combat fun.... Is Arudy clear? Presumably not. ;D Damn. Nope. Try again. Bingo. Fade to black, mission accomplished.
3 green ticks
1h 3m
-800 *
2 kills
CommentThere's buckets of quality here, as ever. It's not just the cutscenes, though everybody talks about those, it's the base layouts and force balances and dialogue and things like that, that make the difference between good missions and average ones.
As a command interface training exercise for both player and mission designer it works very well. However, if you want to regard it as a stand alone mission, then I'd say take out the whole command interface platoon thing, thin out the opposition slightly here and there, give me a decent squad and let me get on with it.
The platoon thing is something which has always greatly interested me too, and in fact two of my three real missions are largely explorations of this whole idea. (Lookout!, complete and in the missions depot, and Regina Proeliorum, beta tested on this forum a long time ago.) There are always two core issues: the physical control of the squads, and the value of those squads.
Physical control is the easy one, so it goes first. The interface here is pretty good and functionally it works pretty well. I've mentioned a couple of things already and there are a few other possible improvements - reporting number of loons alive rather than dead; listing callsigns somewhere; listing weapon loadouts dynamically so you know if a squad has any LAWs left or whatever; making radio (colour) callsigns easier to comprehend (maybe calling the squads blue, red, yellow rather than alpha bravo charlie) - but frankly its all pretty minor stuff. The physical movement of the squads wasn't bad apart from that one terrible incident after the retry when it was a shambles.
The hard one is the value of those squads. The problem is that it isn't much. An AI squad is a pretty weak force, we've all taken out a whole one on our own many times. Giving the player a couple of AI squads doesn't actually strengthen his hand very much. You drop a couple more squads on the enemy side to balance it and what have you got - a total of four squads that wipe each other out. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the player and his squads are normally moving and attacking, which is a huge disadvantage in this game. In other words, you don't add two more squads to the enemy, you add one or less to keep the balance right. (For example I approached the final objective with A and B at almost full strength. To be true I didn't pay much attention to them but they were both wiped out by about three enemy loons just popping them as they came over the skyline.) If this whole thing only results in the enemy being marginally stronger, why bother? Why not just do that anyway and give the player a stronger squad or a better weapon? That's the problem.
In order to make the interface manageable the amount of information that can be communicated between player and controlled squads is quite small. This means that the player doesn't really have tactical* control of the squad. (They are happy to run over the hill and get shot, for instance.) Therefore, the best you can hope for is to give the player strategic* control of the squad. Therefore, to make a truly satisfactory mission of this sort, it must be possible to give a squad a simple, discrete mission which it can carry out with a fair chance of success.
Because the player is so much stronger than AI loons, this discrete (I hesitate to say detached) mission must take occur in a place where the player cannot excercise a direct influence.
An example. The player's platoon is ordered to attack a fixed position from a certain direction at a certain time. He has no weapons with optics. The attack axis is overlooked by a known enemy OP with snipers. A direct attack will result in most of the platoon, and probably the player, being taken out before the attack really gets started. Solution: send one squad to flank and destroy the OP, while the main body conducts the attack. Perhaps, depending on the ground, it may also be helpful to send one squad to act as fire support for the attack.
In any event, lots of time is required to allow the player to make his dispositions and correct the cockups which are bound to occur given the nature of the game engine. Coordination with other groups is very difficult and I was very impressed in this mission with how the armour moved forward at the end. They kept nudging forward, but kept in touch with us too. No idea how you did that, it was either brilliant scripting or luck.
I have neither the desire nor ability to create a command interface and in my missions I have approached the problem in a different way. In Lookout! the other squads were not really under your command: they followed a known pre-defined path and all you could do was control their progress to some extent. The mission was designed so that they would both take very heavy casualties whatever you did. In Regina Proeliorum you have more control over timing, and if you get it wrong you find it extremely hard to win the mission. It's not really a puzzle because the correct timings (and order) are fairly obvious. Later in the mission you control your own support platoon, but that's about it.
In other words, I believe that using any command system to direct a conventional platoon attack is unlikely to produce a really satisfactory mission. This is a constraint of the game engine and not a reflection on the mission designer. The trouble of controlling the squads is always going to outweigh the benefit of having them, given that the player is so much stronger than AI. That's not to say that it shouldn't be attempted - on the contrary. However, to keep it fun for the player, the mission ground and objectives must be considered even more carefully than for an ordinary mission. Moreover, the mission designer should think of the squads more as strategic assets than tactical ones.
Well that's enough wittering from me for now. I'd be interested in your response though, we don't spend enough time talking about stuff like this. And it's always a pleasure to play your missions Sui, the standard of workmanship is so high. :thumbsup:
* Tactics - how you conduct a particular engagement
Strategy - how you link engagements
Topic: (Review Completed) [SP] The Black Gap (Read 21958 times)