Your Dream Mission (As a Builder)

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Your Dream Mission (As a Builder)

The Saxman
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Post by The Saxman » Thu Apr 20, 2017 3:27 am

For some reason I randomly started thinking about an aborted campaign I wanted to make but never ended up doing. In particular, I was thinking about one specific mission I had planned and it got me wondering for the rest of the builders out there:

If you could build ANY mission for X-Wing: Alliance, what would it have been?

The one I think about most comes from what would have been a trilogy of campaigns with the player flying for the New Republic. The final mission of Campaign 1 would have been a massive pitched battle where the Republic suffers a crushing defeat and must withdraw. Now, while that mission would have been pretty cool, the one I'm thinking about would have been mission 1 of the next campaign:

In the aftermath of the previous mission, the player is now flying patrol during the retreat. The idea is that they would be directed to jump between the various regions to provide reinforcements to various elements of the battered Republic fleet as they fall under attack by Imperial Remnant forces, and it's the player's job to safeguard them en route to their jump points.

Now, all that sounds rather cut-and-dried, right? Basic escort mission type of stuff. But there's a couple rubs:

1) First, some of the ships would already have damaged hull or weakened shields, some might have their weapons out, etc., making them much more vulnerable to attack.

2) The player would be leading a flight of four X-wings, and that's all the ships you get on the mission, aside from any fighters already on-station with the various fleet elements. If your wingmen went down, no reinforcements for you. Also, there would be few opportunities to land and rearm. So yeah, save those torpedoes.

3) It would be a BRUTALLY grueling endurance mission. The player would be CONSTANTLY jumping from region to region to safeguard transiting Republic ships as they made their escape from pursuing Imperials. As soon as you left one region, any remaining AI ships would exit so the regions could be reset and reused later. The idea was for it to take HOURS to complete.

4) Just to be even more evil, I'd likely throw in an Interdictor or two that the player would have to deal with.

5) The mission would culminate with the player answering a distress call from a severely damaged ship that lost its hyperdrive, leaving the player to fight an intense holding action until reinforcements can arrive (this would set up an extended series of missions like Destroy the Intrepid from the original game, but in reverse. This time you're trying to save the ship).

I had it in mind to call this mission, "The Longest Day."

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DTM
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Post by DTM » Thu Apr 20, 2017 10:26 am

Very nice mission!

It's very difficoult to set up an entire campaign. I do know! I think people should consider the option to build single mission. I think it's more funny and easy to release. My upcoming Rebels campaign will be also a platform for missions made by different people who want to share their own little adventures. I would like to create a new section in my site to collect the missions sent by different authors.

I think that good mission must not necessary be complex mission. My favorite mission made by myself is very simple, with few ships. It's very inportant to create a good rythm, with a succession of events that involve the players. Even the backdrops and the entry position in different regions is important to create a great scenario.

Avarice1987
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Post by Avarice1987 » Thu Apr 20, 2017 5:48 pm

A good Campaign is the Assault on Yaga Minor Campaign Pack, Timeline is Years After Endor, target: 2 Superstardestroyers and their Task Forces

My Dream Mission is the battle of Thyferra with the SSD Lusankya, Freedom, Virulenz

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Jaeven
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Post by Jaeven » Thu Apr 20, 2017 7:30 pm

So many. If I had to pick one though, I'd love to make a battle around Kuat Drive Yards. The problem with that is, of course that, a) you'd need the shipyard ring surrounding Kuat, b) it would probably make the game crash. Another thing is that Kuat, behind Coruscant, is probably the most fortified planet in the galaxy, so it would be quite a big and complex mission.

As for missions and campaigns in general, I think it depends. Complex missions can be incredibly fun, but are not required, nor should they be overused. For me personally, one of the most important things is the question of the mission being realitic (canon wise). For instance, one of the things that often bother me in user made campaigns is that they go over the top.

Consider this: Throughout all of X-Wing, in around 70 missions, we see exactly three Imperial Star Destroyers going down. On all three occasions, it took several missions to even get into the position to be able to attack the ISDs.
Unless I'm mistaken, the only ISD that canonically gets destroyed in XWA is the Corrupter. (Excluding the ones at Endor)
Yet in many user made campaigns, there's often nearly a dozen ISDs that get destroyed. For me, taking down even a single Imperial Star Destroyer should be a monumental achievement that happens only very, very rarely.

Other things that I enjoy are good dialogue and challenging missions. I think it's very important that the mission isn't self-played, and that the player is absolutely required for the success of the operation.

The Saxman
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Post by The Saxman » Thu Apr 20, 2017 9:14 pm

The problem with taking out capital ships in general is that they're incredibly weak in XWA. The AI is lacking, and because of engine limitations they're SEVERELY undergunned, meaning you're not facing NEARLY the volume of fire you should be. Furthermore, the guns they DO have are often underpowered (IE, XWA doesn't have anything the equivalent of the Star Destroyer's big broadside batteries). Even if you radically boost their shields and hull it's pretty trivial to take out Star Destroyers especially, due to their Shield Generators.

I honestly still find frigates a bigger challenge than the bigger ships; since they have so much more firepower for their size, they have much better fire coverage and can bring more guns to bear on you.

But I'd LOVE to see what a fully-armed Imperial Star Destroyer could do in a game like Star Citizen, where you're not constrained in the same way as the old X-Wing games.

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Jaeven
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Post by Jaeven » Thu Apr 20, 2017 11:47 pm

Agreed on the bigger capital ships. I try to counter-act some of that by screening the ISD with Lancer frigates or other smaller capital ships or force the player between going after the ISD or failing the mission. If by some miracle that doesn't work, I suppose there could always be that one extra Super Ace TIE Avenger squadron that launches once the hull becomes critical.

Provided of course the mission explicitly states not to engage the ISD.

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JaggedFel
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Post by JaggedFel » Sun Apr 23, 2017 12:12 pm

I always wanted to build a dynamic campaign, where your actions in one would modify the following mission files via the use of a companion utility that I never got around to working on. The closest we could probably do is using regions as separate "missions", since then the FGs would be persistent and could arrive depending on what happened in the last region.
Ye Olde Galactic Empire Mission Editor v1.15.6
Current software WIPs: TIE Layout and Cutscene Editor, TIE/XvT Cockpit Editor
Libraries / Format specs: *.tie, *.plt, *.tfr, *.lfd , *.act, *.dat image files, *.fnt

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Vince T
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Post by Vince T » Sun Apr 23, 2017 8:11 pm

My dream would probably be a full scale Battle of Endor or Coruscant.
The battles so far only were a scaled down version of them, with vanilla Endor mainly using background DATs to simulate the imperial fleet and my Coruscant battle only working to a capacity where only a few capital ships would actually be firing at each other while the rest seems to do nothing.
Your ship, Captain. I need a drink. - Vince Trageton
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Mark_Farlander
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Post by Mark_Farlander » Sun Feb 04, 2018 3:37 am

A full scale Battle of Endor with 7 MC80 Home One type star cruisers, 6 MC80 Liberty type star cruisers, 5 Nebulon B frigates, 8 CR90 corvettes, 30 Imperial Star Destroyers and the Executor would be one of the best upgrades ever.
However the original game could not support all the ships firing together at the same time, causing the turrets of the Falcon to slow down too.
Even with the new mod that increases the number of simultaneous weapons firing that would probably be too much firepower to menage, but considering many ISDs and the Executor were out of position and did not attack during the first phase of the battle... maybe it could be done.
The AI of the TIEs in the Battle of Endor should be increased a bit, since I found them too easy to defeat comparing to other missions.

By the way, where can I download the mod that increases the number of objects in the same region from 96 to 192 (I heard of such thing)?
All the said things require it of course.
I don't judge tactics. The Battle is the best and only Judge.

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JeremyaFr
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Post by JeremyaFr » Sun Feb 04, 2018 9:03 am

Mark_Farlander wrote:By the way, where can I download the mod that increases the number of objects in the same region from 96 to 192 (I heard of such thing)?
All the said things require it of course.
Here: https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=A ... 94FB%21116
Download XwaExePatcher-1.0.5.zip, open XwaExePatcherWindow.exe and apply the "crafts count per region" patch.

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Mark_Farlander
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Post by Mark_Farlander » Sun Feb 04, 2018 12:32 pm

Thanks a lot.
I will enjoy so much modifying the missions I created by adding more starships and fighters at the same time.

What's the difference between XwaExePatcher (2015/10/27) and XwaExePatcher-1.0.5 (2017/2/20)?
I can't find it in the readme.
I don't judge tactics. The Battle is the best and only Judge.

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JeremyaFr
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Post by JeremyaFr » Sun Feb 04, 2018 12:48 pm

XwaExePatcher-1.0.5 is the latest version.
It's XwaExePatcher (2015/10/27) + "disable S-Foil model filter" patch + "lasers count" patch.
The source code is here: https://github.com/JeremyAnsel/XwaExePatcher

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