Mission balance

Tips for mission balancing

It is the author's general experience that several FS missions suffer from a well-known virus of Bad Mission Balance. To avoid BMB, you don't have to spend a penny on a special medicine or waste any seconds waiting in the queue of the chemistry, you only have to open your favourite FRED and make some changes. Let me start with very general advice: Make the mission rather easy at first. Mission balancing is something you don't have to urge doing. First, make sure all your messages show up, debriefings appear over the condition they are expected, nobody can cross your calculations by ordering transports and cruisers around etc. So, in a word, you can halt balancing the mission until it works very well. It is easier to reach the end of an easy mission than an unbearably hard one. Sometimes the thing you want to test is at the end of the mission and you simply cannot reach the end if your mission is very hard. Some real hints to fiddle with if you want to extinguish the BMB virus:

• Adding more enemy/friendly fighters or increasing the number of enemy/friendly wings can easily result in unwanted results. Do this if one of the sides have significantly higher chance of winning. If the difference is relatively slight, this step can suddenly make the mission turn to the other side's favour. Do this only when one of the sides have significal advantage.
  
  
• Changing weapons on fighters. The AI uses the Tornado quite well, this can also be good or bad. Bear this in mind. Make sure the fighters are compatible with the weapons you want to give them.
  
  
• Wing arrival delay: Not only can you make your mission longer/short by changing the arrival delays, but you can normalise the number of fighters the player and his/her wingmen are going against, too.
  
  
• Changing weapons on capital ships or transports. Removing or changing the warheads on capital ships means a lot. Take the Lilith as an example. It is much easier to attack if it does not have warheads. You can also do the same with flaks or anti-fighter beams. Do not remove or change a significant amount of weapons, modify a few of them and test. Be patient, exagerating the modifications can end up with something nasty.
  
  
• Distances: Its importance most apparent at escort missions: you stand better chance of defending something if the enemy bombers do not arrive right in front of your defendant. However, enemy bombers can be well-armed and there can be a hell amount of them, but if you place too far them away from the target you have to defend, the mission becomes too easy.
  
  
• Ai skill. Has little importance at attacking capital ships, but you can balance some fighters vs. fighters parts by cleverly using the Ai skill. This option does not have any effect on turrets, it only sets how effectively the Ai uses its primary weapons or evades missiles and any incoming threats. You must change the Ai of a turret individually in the Weapons editor. The higher the Ai level the better the rate of fire and accuracy in the case of laser turrets and flak guns. The writer of this part detected no impact on beams.
  
  
• To achieve better wingmen, you can play around with events. Try doing an event that does the following: When Alpha 2's hull drops below 50%, recharge its shields and repair its hull. Do the same for Alpha 3, 4 and other wingmen. No one will notice this trick unless they play the mission just to discover how your wingmen are so powerful. :). I personally do not suggest you to do this, only when you know nothing better to lengthen the life of your beloved wingmen. You can also make events which gradually regenerate your wingmen's health. For example by 5% every second. Make sure that no regeneration will be done after your wingman in question's hull drops below 50%. People will notice when your wingman's dot turns grey from red.