mission idea

[mcnorth]

I guess I'm not going to use this so I may as well pass it along.

I thought it would be cool to do a mission where the player and his squad was part of a larger operation. Or a series of missions are all the same operation only played from the perspective of the various parts. I thought of it after reading about the Ranger operation to liberate Cabanatuan prison in the Philipines. The Rangers conducted the primary assault while two Philipine guerilla units provided security. One guerilla unit was fortunate that it didn't have to engage as enemy troop strength was in the thousands but the other one was faced with wave after wave of Japanese troops attacking over a bridge. (fortunately the bridge was successfully blown) So there's three parts that could be put in a mission. 1 - the primary assault, 2 - the security force in one direction and 3 - the security force in the other direction. Just so it doesn't get too dull you could throw in a secondary objective like fighting a rear guard action to enable the other elements to withdraw.

[ACF]

I thought it would be the easy option to get several 'games' in a single mission.  The result is here:

http://www.ofpec.com/missions_depot/index.php?ID=1038

And no-one's said it doesn't work, yet!  I hope it's not considered 'advertising' to refer to my own OFPEC-hosted mission; but 'blatant self-promotion' I can accept.

The main structural issue is that you can't rely on synched WPs with groups that can be player-led.  Early attempts used switch triggers but I went off these and, er, switched to using WP conditions to control the flow.  Feel free to have a look at the .sqm but bear in mind that it has evolved (i.e. it's an untidy mess) and I would now do it differently now I know how I did it.  Not sure I can face it, though, I'd have to learn dialogs as that'd be the expectation nowadays.

Game-wise, the problem is that the bigger the operation gets, the more irrelevant the player becomes and/or success becomes a lottery.  To be a good game the player needs to either make a difference or, at least, feel like he does.  I don't know how close I've got to that ideal in 'A Touch of Frost'.

I can't actually see myself making [m]any 'one-off' missions because of the work involved in overheads like cutscenes,  realistically dressing the set or whatever.  That's where the savings in effort are made.

I have also got a 'works in progress' that uses the 'series of missions' approach as well.  This'll be a pair of missions:  one played as East, the other West.  Time will tell on that one but don't hold your breath . . .