Suppression Campaign version 2
==============================

By Michael Sawicki, 1998/9


Contents:
1. Overview
2. Archive Content
3. Installation
4. What's new in version 2
5. Playing the missions
6. Difficulty
7. Bug reports and known problems
8. A request
9. Miscellaneous


1. Overview
-----------

"Suppression" is a five-mission campaign for Descent: FreeSpace (by Volition
Inc. and Interplay) made with FRED, the standard mission editor.

The missions take place after the defeat of the Lucifer and the Shivans, and
describe an escalating conflict between the Terran and Vasudans.

They are the result of tinkering with FRED, and are an attempt to create a
half-decent series of challenging missions.

These are NOT total-immersion missions insofar as do not pay too much attention to the time-line of the FreeSpace universe: you a random (veteran) pilot doing your bit for the GTA wherever it is necessary. The missions are bound with geopolitical and not individual events.

2. Archive Content
------------------

The archive Supress.zip should be about 720k in length and should contain the
files below, which should go to the respective directories in your FreeSpace
directory:

	Suppression.fsc				Data\Missions\	
	Pacify1.fsm				Data\Missions\
	Pacify2.fsm				Data\Missions\
	Pacify3.fsm				Data\Missions\
	Pacify4.fsm				Data\Missions\
	Pacify5.fsm				Data\Missions\
	S0_damn.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S0_getc.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S0_haha.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S0_pray.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S0_sorr.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S0_yeah.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S1_heat.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S1_jump.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S2_cont.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S2_dock.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S2_flin.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S2_geta.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S2_puls.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S3_bigb.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S3_fire.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S3_flyt.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S3_rokh.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S3_secu.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S4_fami.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S5_crui.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S5_esca.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S5_fami.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S5_fbup.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S5_fire.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S5_pest.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S5_play.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	S5_war.wav				Data\Voice\Special\
	Suppression.txt				Probably the Recycle Bin

Upon unzipping, the files will take up some 1.2Mb of space.

3. Installation
---------------

Simply extract the archive to your Freespace directory, e.g. F:\Games\Freespace\
The contents of the archive should go to appropriate folders.

4. What's new in version 2
--------------------------

Regrettably, not much. Seeing as recently released campaigns have become more ambitious - longer and more professional-looking (see, for example, Nathan Hoying's "Awakenings") - I had plans for adding another couple of missions and voiceovers to briefings and so on.

Unfortunately, because of teething troubles this has not happened. Instead this release only addresses the problems of the first version (I hope) - the changes are only cosmetic.

The annoying bug in Mission 5 which caused it to crash after wasting the Installation, apparently due to having too many ships simultaneously, has hopefully been fixed. The arrivals of new ships are now geared to the destruction of others, and I've got rid of a couple of (GTA) ships, so the crash should be less likely. It may also make the mission marginally more difficult, however.

I've changed the ship icons in the briefings - I didn't actually realise that you could see what the things were before it was pointed out.

Medals are available in only two missions now.

I've tweaked the mission loadouts - they are now broadly in line with what I wanted them to be in a seven-mission campaign, even though the last two missions aren't there. Which does mean that the ship choice is narrower - though hopefully this will make the missions play more like I intended them to. The big change, if anything, is that you can't play Mission 5 as a (heavy) bombing run anymore.

There are a few more in-mission sounds.

I've also rephrased/changed some briefings and debriefings.

5. Playing the missions
-----------------------

Choose the Suppression campaign in the Campaign Room. You should consider
cloning your pilot, such that you do not lose progress on any other camapigns
you may be playing.

You will only be able to play the missions in the Mission Simulator once you
complete them in the campaign.

6. Difficulty
-------------

The missions are designed such that they are tricky on Medium difficulty. They
are definitely not the kind of missions where you sit around and do nothing and
yet the mission completes itself anyway.

If you've completed the main FreeSpace campaign on Medium, then you are probably
ready to play this on Medium, too. Expect your wingmen to perish frequently,
however (not that it has any effect on your promotion prospects, etc).

On Hard setting, the missions are still doable. I have not tried Very Hard.
There are no additional ships or wings on the higher settings.

Certainly playing each mission a few times you will be able to glean all the
things that happen - don't expect to be necessarily able to do each one first
time, even if you're quite good at the game. One tip is to see where the hotkeys
are assigned - this can be really handy.

Weapons and ships are staggered as the campaign progresses, and some weapons are
not available at all (e.g. D-Advanced). Usually the default weapon and ship
loadout is well geared to each mission, but of course you can choose other ships
and weapons once they become available.

To progress from one mission to the next, you will need to fulfil the primary
objective. This also applies to the last mission of the campaign. Bonus
objectives never really matter, but secondary objectives can have a real impact
on some missions, whether in terms of information or firepower available. Medals
are available if your performance is sufficiently good.

7. Bug reports and known problems
---------------------------------

Mission 5 used to crash after the destruction of the station (for whatever reason), but hopefully it doesn't now.

There's one pretty useful imperfection you can exploit in Mission 2, via the hotkeys.

Apparently awarding medals causes problems on different-language versions, as they have different names. The only thing that can be done is the events referring to the medals, and the debriefings referring to the events have to be deleted in FRED.

If you want to do this yourself, then go to the Events editor in FRED, and for Missions 2 and 5 (i.e. Pacify2.fsm and Pacify5.fsm) delete the event called "Medal" - you'll find it at the top of the list on the left-hand side of the screen.

Once that is done, go to the Debriefing editor, and delete stage 8 in each mission.

If you are scared of meddling with FRED, or encounter any other problems, mail me at misio@sawik.demon.co.uk and I'll send you the fixed missions.

But don't pester me with nonsense like "It's too hard!". If that's the case,
choose an easier setting or try harder: practice makes perfect.

8. A request
------------

When trying to make more missions for the campaign, I have come up with a similar problem as in Mission 5: when you kill a big baddie (in this case a cruiser), the mission freezes a few seconds later.

And for one thing there are nowhere near 50 objects when this happens, nor do any more appear as its result. And the same thing happens when you order the thing to self-destruct with an event, at a non-critical stage of the mission.

I have tried rebuilding the mission from scratch, but exactly the same thing has happened, which is pretty damn annoying. I'm basically wondering if anyone has experienced this kind of thing before when making missions in FRED, and if so, how you overcome this problem.

I would be grateful if anyone could cast light on this annoying mystery by emailing me at misio@sawik.demon.co.uk

9. Miscellaneous
----------------

There is the usual copyright and trademark nonsense with regards to FreeSpace,
Volition Inc. and Interplay.

And of course you are forbidden by law (probably) to distribute this product not
in its entirety without my explicit consent, or alter its content and then
distribute it.

But you are welcome to use the samples that come with the missions (though I
can't see how), and to learn any editing techniques from the missions.

Thanks go to Ignacy Sawicki for use of his voice in recording, Peter Drake for
his document on using FRED, and Marcus Harris, the creator of the Nubian
Conflict campaign - one of the samples (S5_play.wav) comes from that source, and I learned a thing or two by dissecting the Nubian Conflict missions.

I'm still hoping to add a couple of missions to the campaign, once I know how to resolve the problems, but I'm giving up on briefing voiceovers - it's too much hassle.


Send any comments, bug reports, problems or suggestions to:

Michael Sawicki at misio@sawik.demon.co.uk
07 January 1999