[CT27]

It's always good to hear about a new campaign.  Since it's been said that there's a patch coming soon, I'll probably wait about a week or so to try this out.  I am looking forward to it though.

[Phantom Hoover]

I really wish you'd shaken up the shieldless dogfighting formula a bit, to make the attrition rate a bit less frustrating. It's not like you have to exactly recreate the mechanics of the first missions of FS1; this is still new territory! Otherwise, it's a great mod.

[Black Wolf]

Hi everyone - thanks for playing! Sorry I've been a bit quiet on this thread, have had a really busy weekend, hence the Friday release. I'm sorry to see that thjere have been minor bugs (and some more serious ones, like the M4 Aten collision) but I think that the primary response has been a fairly positive one, and for that I'm pretty stoked!

There are a few posts I want to deal with specifically:

Betrayal, Direwolf, Luis: Thanks for the reports. That's all actionable feedback - as Lorric has said, there's a patch coming for the typoes and dialogue errors. Direwolf - I will make an effort with M4 - that has been a pain for awhile. Unfortunately, it's hard to test, sicne the fight doesn't play out the same way twice. But I think clever use of waypoints and is-in-box should prevent that in future.

InsaneBaron: I hadn't really thought there'd been too much hype... But hopefully you've not been disappointed.

And finally:

I really wish you'd shaken up the shieldless dogfighting formula a bit, to make the attrition rate a bit less frustrating. It's not like you have to exactly recreate the mechanics of the first missions of FS1; this is still new territory!

Actually, we were actively trying to make these missions as similar to the first few missions of FS1 as we could. Everything - the mission design, the ship designs and the mods chosen, the lack of Fury AI and other things - were designed to make it feel, stylistically and tonally - as close to FS1 as possible.

The idea behind that decision was to provide a contrast between 2334 and the earlier FL minicampaigns that we3 have planned, which will depart much more significantly from FS1s style. In theory, at some point in the future, there will be several Frontlines minicampaigns, and a player playing through all of them will notice a gradual tonal, stylistic and gameplay shift from the start of the war to its end, which will flow as seamlessly as possible into FS1.

To put it another way, if new, significantly different gameplay is what you're after, then Frontlines 2334 isn't the mod you're looking for. But hopefully FL 2322 will be!

[Black Wolf]

Have updated the missions to fix the errors talked about in this thread. If you haven't DLed it yet, the link is the same and it's already updated. If you have already DLed it, grab an updated missions vp here:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/skmtbm2m9o2cp9y/FL2334-Missions.7z

[Lorric]

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/undefined/

It doesn't work...

[Black Wolf]

Doh! It's late here

[Lorric]

Doh! It's late here

It works fine now I can confirm.

[Spoon]

This campaign plays just like Freespace 1... and I'm not sure if I can really call that a good thing.

The campaign seems competently made and accomplishes what it sets out to do well.
Its just that I'm having a hard time getting excited over unshielded combat that has the enemy attack in waves, with hardly any loadout options and retail ai.

[Black Wolf]

That's fine - we were absolutely going for as close a mimicry of FS1 as possible, so if you don't enjoy the way FS1 plays, I can see that it's going to be tough to get excited about this.

I can imagine that it probably feels a little dated and restrictive coming from something like WoD, where pushing the boundaries of the FS engine is a core goal. This campaign was never shooting for that - instead, it's more of a callback or a homage to the classic FS1 gameplay. For the same reasons I mentioned above, we're going to be far less restricted with the way we approach making earlier campaigns - 2322 will have heat management, more diverse weapons, and different enemy AI behaviour (including Fury AI, which was deliberately excluded from 2334). That one might be more suited to your tastes.

[Nyctaeus]

That's fine - we were absolutely going for as close a mimicry of FS1 as possible, so if you don't enjoy the way FS1 plays, I can see that it's going to be tough to get excited about this.

I can imagine that it probably feels a little dated and restrictive coming from something like WoD, where pushing the boundaries of the FS engine is a core goal. This campaign was never shooting for that - instead, it's more of a callback or a homage to the classic FS1 gameplay. For the same reasons I mentioned above, we're going to be far less restricted with the way we approach making earlier campaigns - 2322 will have heat management, more diverse weapons, and different enemy AI behaviour (including Fury AI, which was deliberately excluded from 2334). That one might be more suited to your tastes.

...and that's the best thing in Frontlines. Most of the modern campaigns are sometimes too big departure from classic gameplay. War in Heaven, for example, despite awesome gameplay, graphics and the best possible quality of the mod, I can barely feel that this is still Freespace. Experiments like WiH and most of the modern projects are essential to keep the community alive, but old-school projects are necessary to make old-school players satisfied.

[General Battuta]

I'm 100% in agreement. Diversity is strength - there's no one correct type of campaign.

Obviously individual interests will differ, but what's important is that we have a lot of different styles for a lot of tastes.

[Droid803]

So I've broken my never-actually-play-campaigns stint and given this a whirl...

...and I just reinforced the idea that the early missions of FS1 were easily the weakest of the entire FreeSpace franchise from a gameplay perspective. Sure, got a bit of nostalgia kick out of one or two missions of it (not much though, since the first time I played FS1 as FSPort I had already completed FS2's campaign several times), but the prospect of 7 more missions consisting of waves of slow, unshielded fighters with retail AI using a very limited weapon loadout just wasn't inspiring.

This is what it set out to do, I suppose, and it did it very well.  Just...not appealing to me. Really looking forward to the later installments with new mechanics, though! Quality is superb, just the mechanics here I found I had little to no interest in.

As a side note I did like the sarcastic line that says "You're in command, use your wingmen!" when you fail a mission as a stealth way of saying "Git gud nub".
Because, you know.
>retail AI
>orders
good joke.
And I admit, I do suck - was never any good at the first missions of FS1, just good enough to squeak by on easy. Being accustomed to shielded fighters with autoaim, all-axes thrust and reverse AB certainly doesn't help. Because of this I felt like I was fighting the limitations of the way I could control my fighter more than I was fighting the actual enemy/AI, and seeing as it was using retail AI (which, the last time I played a FS2-style shielded fighter campaign against retail AI and found them laughably easy turkey shoots) I probably was. This is all my problem though, and nothing wrong with the campaign.

[Black Wolf]

...and that's the best thing in Frontlines. Most of the modern campaigns are sometimes too big departure from classic gameplay. War in Heaven, for example, despite awesome gameplay, graphics and the best possible quality of the mod, I can barely feel that this is still Freespace. Experiments like WiH and most of the modern projects are essential to keep the community alive, but old-school projects are necessary to make old-school players satisfied.

It probably wont come as much of a surprise, but I'm also in strong agreement here. I suppose, reading my post, it might seem like I'm not entirely enthusiastic about the choices we made - that's 100% not the case. I think that this sort of a nostalgic campaign is still an awful lot of fun, and, even if I do say so myself, Frontlines is one of those fun campaigns. Clearly it's not to everyone's tastes (Droid's given a much more detailed rundown as to why) but I don't want to give potential players the impression that this is somehow less enjoyable than those other styles of campaigns. Especially if you've not played FS1 in awhile, the shieldless dogfighting alone makes the campaign different enough, IMO, to be worth a whirl.

Obvious bias notwithstanding, I really do think that the majority of FS players will find something to enjoy here.

[CT27]

Have updated the missions to fix the errors talked about in this thread. If you haven't DLed it yet, the link is the same and it's already updated. If you have already DLed it, grab an updated missions vp here:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/skmtbm2m9o2cp9y/FL2334-Missions.7z

Did this fix an error I had in the third mission "Bandits" (I believe that's what it was called)?  The problem was I defeated all five enemy convoys and was told to jump out.  However, the GTSC Echo (protecting it was one of my primary objectives) never did jump out.

I had a directive to jump out, but when I did I got failure music and text (and was criticized for leaving the battle before I was authorized to).  However I did get a medal and was allowed to proceed in the campaign.

[Black Wolf]

Argh. Annoyingly, probably not. :/ This mission was a prick of a thing to test, and I'm pretty sure I know exactly what will have caused that particular error. It's on me for linking the debrief to the symptom (the Echo jumping out) rather than the cause (successful mission completion). Still, it should be an easy fix... Once I get home from work in a week or so to my main computer anyway.

I'm glad that you still got the medal and were able to continue though. I hope that the rest of the campaign was fun/bug free.

[Lorric]

@CT27

Spoiler:

Pssst... you're not supposed to be able to kill them all! I couldn't even get past the fourth one, and am shocked to learn that there is a fifth one, and that you were able to defeat it. The mission was set up to account for the possibility of a player wiping them all out, but the intention was that it would not be possible. I'm very interested in how you did it, and I congratulate you. I even went into FRED just to see if there really was a fifth convoy, and indeed there is. I'm glad the campaign was able to proceed for you despite this error.

[CT27]

Admittedly I was playing on Very Easy.

[Lykurgos88]

I really enjoyed the 2 campaigns. The sense of vulnerability puts some additional weight on good and evasive flying. The missions were reasonably well made considering the limited possibilities of pre-FS1 weaponry and ships (and of course, the new assets in the mod helped too). There is a fair amount of challenge in most of the missions. For some reason I found the second mission of 2334 to be the hardest.

Spoiler:

Oh, and in Frontlines 2335 I almost crapped my pants, when Lucifer rammed my face just as I turned around. Good job!

[Lorric]

I really enjoyed the 2 campaigns. The sense of vulnerability puts some additional weight on good and evasive flying. The missions were reasonably well made considering the limited possibilities of pre-FS1 weaponry and ships (and of course, the new assets in the mod helped too). There is a fair amount of challenge in most of the missions. For some reason I found the second mission of 2334 to be the hardest.

Hey, thanks for taking the time, this put a smile on my face and I'm glad you enjoyed the campaigns. What really made me smile though is that I feel exactly the same way about the campaigns. Right down to mission 2 of 2334, it is by far the hardest mission imho.

[FIZ]

I had a really great time with this campaign.  I still hate the ml-16 but lurrrrrved the Phoenix.  Grabbed an Athena whenever I could.

My only stand out critique is a few missions had aweful wingman fatigue.  The mission

Spoiler:

where you disarm the Zod installation

stands out the most.  I know that some missions where you are the only one to return alive really works in some missions, but also in other missions I think some missions it really soils the victory when you ARE ALPHA 1 and you only win by hugging a support ship and making long range "HARM" runs. 

I don't really know a good way to fix that, invulnerable flag feels cheap, maybe some strike runs would make the mission more dynamic... Alpha Wing is in flight all the time, clears the way for waves of bombers to come in quick, do their mission, and warp out.  I know its standard AI which limits your options, but being the only pilot to survive a disarming mission out of 12 also has a similar spoiling effect.

It's a critique out of love, had I not enjoyed the campaign wouldn't be harping.  I know you are planning some more campaigns with [JOY!] Fury AI which will open some doors and windows.  I afraid not for having no shields, because I was told if I avoid the beams I won't get hit by command himself!