[Lepanto]

Calder, Byrne, Steele, Lopez, Severanti: these are the great battle captains of the age, whose commanding prowess has shaped the war in Sol. Before they matched their fleets against each other in Sol, the great admirals of the UEF and GTVA won victories against overwhelming odds and forged their own reputations.

-Hans Maxwell Calder leads the 3rd Fleet to victory against the Kostadin Cell in the Kuiper Belt.

-Robert Byrne proves his cool-headed commanding talent in the INDRA fleet exercises.

-Chiwetel Steele and the 99th Skulls charge through heavy Shivan resistance to attack Shivan supply lines.

-Anita Lopez and the GTD Carthage cover the GTVA's retreat from the nebula, while holding back overwhelming Shivan attacks.

-Cyrus Severanti captains the GTCv Steadfast, defending Luzon Station from an NTF assault, staying in command despite heavy personal injury.

Step into their shoes, and fight the battles where their legends began.

======================

After reading about the various battles described in the WiH admirals' dossiers, I thought it'd be cool to make them into full-fledged missions.

The Battle Captains will consist of five single missions depicting the above battles, released as their own separate campaigns, The Blade Itself-style.

The first two missions, Severanti's and Lopez's, are out. The remaining three missions will be finished When They're Done.

DOWNLOADS:

GTVA: Severanti and Lopez - patch 1.1

Patch 1.2 is attached, for anyone who's already downloaded the campaign.

NOTE: Please play on a recent RC or nightly, NOT a BP build. Some people have reported the Carthage being invincible to beam damage; some bug in the BP builds may be to blame. If the Carthage is invincible to beam damage, try different recent builds until you find one that works. You need some compatibility stuff. Sorry, but that's the only way to play the mission properly for right now.

SCREENSHOTS:
Severanti - No Time to Bleed:


Much thanks to Battuta and TheHound for beta-testing and suggestions! Full credits are in the readme.

[attachment deleted by an evil time traveler]

[General Battuta]

Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhollllyyyyyyyyyy ****

[General Battuta]

I'm happy to test, and I can hook you up with Pro Abilities Tech if you want to give your warships butan to press.

[niffiwan]

Sounds like a really good concept, I can't wait to see the end result 

[An4ximandros]

Hnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng

Them objectives, Did you...

[yuezhi]

Nakura
Nakura
Nakura
Nakura

Somebody's popular, but I thought he'd be more fitting to be on the side of the tyrannical GTVA.

[The E]

Please do not bring silly forum squabbles into an awesome mission concept.

[An4ximandros]

Well, Nakura is an Eritrean island that was used as political prison...

But E is right, I think this kinda stuff should stay on the forums.

[Lepanto]

Thanks, guys, for the positive responses!

I'm happy to test, and I can hook you up with Pro Abilities Tech if you want to give your warships butan to press.

I'm honored! I'll certainly take you up on your offers.

Them objectives, Did you...

Objectives?

----------

BTW, for any BP team members who know, what is the "MSR" referred to in Steele's dossier here:

. . . Whilst carrying out interdiction of Shivan supplies along the MSR, Lieutenant Commander Steele's wing encountered heavy Shivan resistance prior to engaging the mission target.

[General Battuta]

The main supply route - GTVI's assessment of the primary Shivan logistical axis in the nebula, presumably during the period of the nebular campaign (post-defeat of Sath 1, pre Sath 2) during which collapse of the Shivan 'front' seemed imminent.

[Lepanto]

Bumping 'cause the first mission, Severanti's, has been released. Play, enjoy, critically dissect!

[Shivan Hunter]

Quick note: You should remove the alpha channel from your bclogo.bmp since the launcher whines about it. (the message is "please make image 255x112" which isn't helpful given that it is in fact 255x112, but it can't handle bmp alpha)

[Shivan Hunter]

Awesome mission! I absolutely love the idea of doing these capship command missions as backstory for the BP commanders, and this one was brilliantly executed. At first I rushed headfirst into the cruisers and got owned by bomber fire - and the idea of health as Severanti's personal health on the bridge is excellent, btw - so then I actually read the briefing and kept bombers in range of AAA, and did mostly fine. Good capship command missions have you considering the whole mission tactically, more so than fighter/bomber missions, and this one pulls that off well.

I'm very much looking forward to more missions! This is a great idea and it can go places.

[An4ximandros]

Just finished playing it. Fantastic work. Looking forward to what you can do with more practice and the foundation laid on here.

[niffiwan]

This is really cool, I've just played this through 10+ times    I like that you forced the player to close the distance (i.e. within fusion mortar range) in order to protect the fleeing transports, otherwise the Deimos with 3x TerSlashes on target totally owns the 2x Levi's in a long range gunnery duel. At the same time, you made a simple rush towards the station dangerous due to the bombers coming from the front where the Deimos is most lacking in anti-fighter weaponry. It's a good tactical problem to solve. And there's effectively a bonus goal of destroying the Kiowa which adds some replayability.

Just a few small nitpicks (and despite all the words I really mean nitpicks) - you can call in a support ship which docks with you but doesn't seem to do much. Also, I found it a bit hard to work out how to overload my beams correctly, I had several attempts where I thought I did the correct thing (i.e. in manual mode, with Track set to my target, press fire in the 5 secs after the 30 sec charge-up time completed) and nothing happened. Maybe removing the requirement to manually fire the overloaded beams would make it easier? (or maybe I just forgot something/made a mistake! )  Mind you, it was extremely satisfying to get it working in the end, I cored the Kiowa with 2x beams from close range   While I'm talking about destroying the Kiowa, I somehow managed to disable it once even though I thought I saw a ship-subsys-guardian-threshold on its engines?  And lastly, the afterburn option seems a little bit too powerful since you can maintain your top afterburn speed even when putting all power to weapons. I guess it's countered somewhat by the fact that FSO's beam targeting doesn't seem to handle rapid movement of the firing ship very well - I noticed when I was afterburning towards the fighters that most (or all?) of my beams shots at the cruisers were missing.

Having said all that, I found this a very enjoyable mission to play and I look forward to seeing the rest of your Battle Captains 

[crizza]

Playing as the Captain of a Deimos Corvette?
DAmn, I'll reinstall FS2 plu the latest stuff and give it a try.

[General Battuta]

This is addictive and engaging. The difficulty's in exactly the right spot and it's fun to try out different tactics. I'm with Niffiwan - I like how the situation incentivizes you to get right up close with the Leviathans and eat their hurt in the name of keeping the transports alive. Narrative-gameplay assonance!

I couldn't get my main beams to fire on manual mode, and never got any messages from Gunnery about them. Couldn't quite figure out how to get my overloads to fire either. But the regular TerSlashes did the jorb.

This mission feels very FS2. It does a great job of capturing the gameplay atmosphere - the slower ROF and more direct tactics. And I loved the little bits of narrative. The failure debrief in particular will certainly be provocative to certain Steele fans 

If I learned one lesson about captaining a Deimos, it's this: point your nose at capships and your ass at fighters.

[Soulrheever]

That was FUN! 

Seems like the trick to firing the overloaded beams is to manually hit the primary weapon fire key during the 5 second window, correct?

[General Battuta]

That was my thought too, but no dice. I swapped it to manual before trying that, maybe I should've left them on auto.

[Soulrheever]

Ok, on this last run I got the beam overcharge to work once, crippling one of the cruisers and forcing it to withdraw, but then I couldn't get it to work again on the other one...