Very simple missions

What missions are considered simple?

A mission being simle is not an official naming for a mission which needs some requirements, it's a general description.

Simple missions normally have only a needed amount of messages, debriefing stages and a limited number of ships and even fewer ending possibilities.

If you are making a campaign and have some missions which play little part in the plot, it is not advised you make them overly complicated. For these missions, you are advised to make them simple. This way, you get more time to work on more important missions.

Hints

• Make only a limited number of messages. Do so by making sure none will overlap one another. The more messages you make the higher the possibility that they will overlap. The following messages are a must to every FreeSpace 2 mission:
  • Notification about mission failure and success
  • Notidication about permission to return to base
  • Report about big friendly or hostile ships destroyed or, when the goal is such, disarmed or disabled
  • Arrival and departure message for mission critical ships
• Limited number of ships: Do not place so many larger ships than a cruiser or corvette. Placing a destroyer demands that fighters should be launched from it. Destroying the destroyer sooner or later badly affects the number of fighters present in the mission unless there is only one wing to arrive from the destroyer
• Stages: Say that the mission consists of three parts. Each part is triggered by the arrival of a hostile or friendly ship. You have to set the arrival cues of these ships so that they only arrive after a previous stage was completed, often by the destruction of a hostile ship or the departure of a friendly one. This makes it sure that the three stages won't intertwine, saving the FREDder from a lot of time to test each possibility in case the stages overlapped.
• You still need to test the difficulty of the mission and optimize it for game balance. The simplest way to do this is to keep the number of fighters and bombers low.
• Avoid the use of random numeric variables. The fact of randomization is rarely apparent and to make it so requires additional testing time.

Example

A Leviathan cruiser ran the GTVA blockade and is to be hunted down. Command sorties a Deimos corvette and some fighters. The corvette arrives six clicks away from the Leviathan, but since the Deimos is faster, they have a chance to catch up with it and destroy it with their beam cannons. In the meanwhile, the NTF attempts to disarm the forward beam cannons to give chance for their cruiser to survive. In the first part, the player must destroy some bombers which come from the front and attempt to take down the beam cannons. The second part is about the battle between the Leviathan and the Deimos. In the third part, the Deimos is to be escorted back to the node until it makes the jump to subspace.

This mission has

• Three to eight friendly fighters
• The two warships: A Deimos and a Leviathan
• Enemy bombers and fighters, as many as makes the mission acceptably difficult.
• A jump node, where the Deimos comes from
• Two waypoints

In the mission happens

• The Leviathan follows a waypoint. When it reaches it, it jumps out and fails the mission
• The Deimos has the order to attack the Leviathan, when it is down, it changes orders and starts moving towards a waypoint, which is placed inside the jump node. When the Deimos is inside the node after the Leviathan is destroyed or departed, it jumps out
• Ten-thirty seconds after start, enemy bombers start jumping in from the front with the orders to attack the front beam cannons. When both cannons are down, the bombers depart and stop arriving. (The Deimos still stands a chance with its rear beam cannons, so the mission is still not lost).
• After the Leviathan has been destroyed or has departed, new wings of hostile targets start jumping in and attack the Deimos. They cease their attacks when the Deimos has been destroyed or departed.