ScottishMartialArts Posted May 6, 2013 Posted May 6, 2013 As currently written, the UN campaign mission briefings leave a bit to be desired. Although you often enter the mission with an idea of what's going to happen, your exact route (the mission planner flight plan is often incomplete), the location of the objective, and most importantly your actions on the objective, are left to be discovered as you play the mission. While I understand the conscious design decision of keeping surprises hidden from the player, it makes no sense whatsoever to keep the mission plan hidden. I'm currently on mission 6 "Patrols" in which you transport some air assault infantry into various patrol bases so that they can search out and capture or kill the rebels. The mission briefing makes that much clear, but what it neglects to do is tell you which waypoints are LZs, which helicopters in your flight will drop troops at which LZs, and which helicopters will be providing cover in those areas. As a result, you're just flying blind, waiting for an audio file to trigger to tell you that you've reached an objective, and what your actions on the objective will be. In this case, it should not be a mystery to the player that he is going to orbit the LZ at waypoint 5, standing ready to provide cover with guns while flight lead drops troop, and that at waypoint 8 the player is going to land to drop troops while Springfield 3 and 4 provide cover. The fact that I'm having to dig through the triggers in the mission editor just to figure out what my PLANNED objective is is not good -- if nothing else, I run the risk of spoiling the legitimate mission surprises while trying to figure out what the mission objective is. My recommendation would be to amend the mission briefings so that the narrative style story information is in the Situation section, and then use the Objective section to detail the navigational plan, which waypoints correspond to the objective, and what the actions of the different flight elements will be on the objective. It wouldn't hurt to include a few more image files, as appropriate, so the player has a clearer sense of what's going on. Now some missions do in fact provide this level of information, but many do not, and that's a problem Again, I'm not asking that every detail, twist, and turn of a mission be spoiled in advance. What I'm suggesting is that operations orders, even for hasty missions, always make three things absolutely clear: the commander's intent, the location of the objective, and the actions on the objective. Keeping the player in the dark on these things isn't keeping him in suspense, it's simply obfuscation. Now maybe the objective gets changed when some unplanned circumstance arrises in mid-mission, but that's very different from putting a pilot in the air without giving more than the vaguest idea of what he's going to do.
pakfront Posted May 6, 2013 Posted May 6, 2013 (edited) Agreed. Even the intro mission is confusing - it's not clear whether you will be landing on the airstrip or at the helipads, and if so, which pad is yours. If you have icons ON, or really good eyes, you can follow the Hinds in, but otherwise it's quite easy to get lost. This could easily be avoided with a few short lines in the 'Objective' entry Edited May 6, 2013 by pakfront
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