Niiiice mission. I haven't had time to play too many missions these past few months, but I'm glad I took the time to play this one. The layout is truly creative and makes for challenging and varied battles. At one point I think I had five seperate battles raging across the map.
It was also impressive how you managed to keep the Free Radicals and the Freebooters producing such large ammounts of troops without their production stalling for lack of galaxite or units waiting for others in their group to emerge. It seemed that as soon as I destroyed the units guarding a base's gate that their replacements were immediately on the way, often arriving before I could bring my cyclops up to take out the towers.
Great job! I can't wait to play your other missions!
I only have a couple things, bugwise, to report:
The ecom that they have found the first pad always appears twice.
I sort of forgot my objective of taking over the HQ's, and after destroying everything in my path the mission didn't end... I would suggest (first) that you include an ecom reminding the player that the HQ's are to be taken over that is triggered after one is destroyed, and (second) let the mission end one way or the other once everything is either taken over or destroyed: if the HQ's weren't taken over then that objective would still be incomplete and maybe Olstrom's end ecom is different.
Contrary to what was already reported, I think the galaxite is pretty good, but may be a little heavy. My suggestion here is to thin out the galaxite (by about half) around the first downed shuttle the player comes across, to the north of the plateau. This makes Olstrom's suggestion of building a base on the plateau make more sense (I found it much easier to just build around the start area - got left alone longer
) That field, along with the southern galaxite field, are the fields the computer never touches, and so is left to the player and unbalances the late game slightly.
Of course, if you decided not to change anything,this level would still rock!
EDIT: DOH!
After posting I realized that I'd been playing on easy! (I thought I mowed'em down pretty easily!) Soooo I went back and played on hard. I made sure and captured my HQ's before destroying everything, and the mission ended with a win. Couple of things, though:
Did you have the Free Radicals produce different unit groups based on difficulty? It seems like I didn't have
nearly as much problem out of them on hard, which is odd. In fact, I never saw the first Free Radical Patrol.
They were sure enough making units, judging by the unusual congestion inside their base (we're talking about ALOT of units, here, but not necessarily packed beyond the point of mobility). Once I'd gotten inside their base, I could see them producing unit groups, but they just sat there once produced.
When the mission ends, the "destroy all enemies" objective still reads incomplete, even though I laid the smack down on them in a big way.
Well, that's it, this time! Great mission!
Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2004 7:39 pm Post subject: Freebooters
