Matrix Games Forums

If the poll doesn't have your answer, please reply with your wishes for single missions.

I like my missions and campaigns both to very, very challenging. I prefer to get my squad going with random battles, then jump into hard missions and campaigns, where you might lose often, but the rewards are great.

LOL Rosary, Thanks for the new thread on this topic...

Anyhow, on to my responce...

I would prefer single missions that can be played at any time with any squad. Where the enemy units would be "balanced" against my squads number/tonnage/rank (but not necessarrily equal to).

I'm somewhat confused by why missions/campaigns specify a specific rank for play since most seem to balance that against the squad that you are playing. I imagine that if you have a lot of specific titans/jocks defined to the mission then you might need to warn users, but if most of them are randomly generated you should be able to play any map with any squad.

I dislike using random missions for "filler" because to some extent they are not a good measure of how jocks/titans will perform in missions/campaigns. The AI in a random mission either runs at you full speed, or occasionally hides in the forest waiting for you to "find" them and then they run at you full speed. Where in a mission the AI's can be given various/multiple directives. I believe that Bblue mentioned in another thread how different it is to play a mission where you have a time limit because you can't just sit back and attack the units as they appear you need to allow your mission goal to override the appearance of enemy units.

My preference wasn't listed, so...

I would like Single Player Missions for any and all occasions. Specific rank, variable rank, doesn't matter. I agree with most of what MahaROGa said about random battles vs mission battles. It's nice to have an objective that isn't "Kill all the bad guys."

widowmaker

There is a reason why the predefined campaigns have specific difficulty levels, and why they're built the way they are. I have already partially explained this in some other thread. That included that you *can* play them with (almost) any squad.

The "mission AI" is the same as the "random AI", except if the map creator actually defines behaviour patterns, like patrol paths, stand ground, target titans/buildings, etc. But generally, the same.
There are no missions with a time limit (yet, hint - yes, asked for a long time ago). I made a mission in which you had a specific time to do something, and if you didn't you basically got fried - but that's about it.

About the disable all opposition objective, well, most of the time this *is* your goal, even if it's not the mission's goal. Experience, salvage, bounty, the more the better. It is the default victory condition in every map unless the map creator turns it off.

Exactly! The "behavior patterns" that a manually built map can have make the enemy AI seem more realistic and make the missions more interesting then the default behavior that the random map AI's use. I still like to do a random map every now and then, but I generally know what to expect. I don't have to "close the distance" very often with a random map usually the enemy will come running at me, even when they are long range they will close to their optimum range which is close enough for my short range units to move right in. As opposed to my short range units having to take damage from a GMH titan while they close the 24 hex distance in the open.

When I mentioned "timed" missions I was refering to the rescue mission in Metaborlator. The mission is not really "timed", but if you don't complete the rescue by a specific time you are not likely to complete the mission sucessfully. I've lost that mission several times now, it's fun yet frustrating, I'm really having to adjust my titans and tactics to meet that challenge.

BTW I understand that there is a good reason for the ranks on the missions. But I would equate that reason with the same reason that you may (or may not) put a specific tonnage recommendation on a mission. Yet the rank recommendation seems to be treated like it is more important than the tonnage recommendations. In that the tonnage recommendations are just part of the breifings, where the rank is listed with the mission title. That's what confuses me about it... Why is squad average rank treated as a more important aspect than the squad tonnage? I guess that at higher ranks your jocks tend to get larger and larger titans, so tonnage is somewhat a subfunction of rank. It's just different that I have seen in other games, I'm not saying it's wrong or right, just confusing to me.