I am not very happy right now

[Insane Ruffles]

I just spent the last hour reloading saves to position the Angelwing just right so that it destroys all 4 incoming torpedos that destroy the station on the Back to Earth mission... just to see one of the ships shoot a magic data beam that destroys it anyways. Why put a secondary objective that you cannot accomplish?

[DrewUniverse]

I went through the same thing many years ago. I tried my best, failed, tried new tactics again and again. Only to determine that it was an auto-loss condition. At the time I let it go, but it still sucked.

Later, as I became more interested in game development and related studies, I came to appreciate such a strange design choice. Sure, the "possibility being ruled out" can be seen as misleading (it is). However, for what risk that brings, I think it is worth it if only for one reason: There is "value" in not being able to save or do everything.

Think of a game where a character you really liked was killed off early in the story, just as things were getting good. Or even if it didn't happen till late in the game, it still hurts. But you carry it with you, because you don't want their death to be in vain.

That may sound a bit tangential but I think it applies. Technically things like these background relay stations and allied ships we know nothing about are less important because, well, we know very little about them. But it adds up, and when you can't save everything there is a lesson in learning to deal with that.

I think Nexus had a subtle tinge of design mastery in this regard. You could save some things, like the crew member aboard the Razor, but some things were out of your control. And for me that's kinda realistic or immersive in its own way. As a bit of a completionist I can say it certainly sucks that I can't finish a playthrough with ALL secondary objectives achieved. However, I can look past it because of the careful use of hope being extinguished in little ways like that relay station's destruction.

[GeoModder]

Me and a few others have at some point managed to save the relay satellite... only to see the mission stalled. Appearantly it is coded that Angel only returns to the nearby Northstar station, and the communication with Northstar is coded to only start once all Earth ships and the relay satellite are destroyed.

[Insane Ruffles]

Originally posted by DrewUniverse:

I went through the same thing many years ago. I tried my best, failed, tried new tactics again and again. Only to determine that it was an auto-loss condition. At the time I let it go, but it still sucked.

Later, as I became more interested in game development and related studies, I came to appreciate such a strange design choice. Sure, the "possibility being ruled out" can be seen as misleading (it is). However, for what risk that brings, I think it is worth it if only for one reason: There is "value" in not being able to save or do everything.

Think of a game where a character you really liked was killed off early in the story, just as things were getting good. Or even if it didn't happen till late in the game, it still hurts. But you carry it with you, because you don't want their death to be in vain.

That may sound a bit tangential but I think it applies. Technically things like these background relay stations and allied ships we know nothing about are less important because, well, we know very little about them. But it adds up, and when you can't save everything there is a lesson in learning to deal with that.

I think Nexus had a subtle tinge of design mastery in this regard. You could save some things, like the crew member aboard the Razor, but some things were out of your control. And for me that's kinda realistic or immersive in its own way. As a bit of a completionist I can say it certainly sucks that I can't finish a playthrough with ALL secondary objectives achieved. However, I can look past it because of the careful use of hope being extinguished in little ways like that relay station's destruction.

Theres plenty of other ways to achieve this without making it seem like BS to the player. Me destroying all 4 incoming missiles only for a data beam to shoot out across a great distance anyways and destroy the station is BS. There should have been more missiles, or missiles coming in at different directions, etc so its actually impossible.

[GeoModder]

I don't know if there's only one missile salvo, but even if so, all the Earth ships are bearing down on the relay station anyway. So even if there weren't a beam doing the deed, normal ship weapons can destroy it too.

[Xautos]

i never bother to save the relay, i know it's scripted to be destroyed in both in the original and in this updated version on steam. So i just move the Angelwing to the Northstar right away to cut down on travel time between the various ships that have been hijacked by the entity and leave the missiles to do their thing.

unfortunately the chatting between the ship commander and several of the crew slows down the pace of the action in the mission.

The real difficulty in the mission is saving that person (on one of those doomed ships) and dealing with the anti-fighter beams that can and will destroy your commando team quickly leading to an instant fail condition. so picking and choosing your moment is key to getting your commandos back whole or losing the round and starting over listening to those crew members droning on about the AI motivations and goals.

[DrewUniverse]

Originally posted by Xautos:

unfortunately the chatting between the ship commander and several of the crew slows down the pace of the action in the mission.

I felt that way after a certain number of playthroughs. Are you aware that you can merely click on the text boxes for the audio messages in order to skip them? The ships will spawn right away. You can cut to the combat portion of the mission much quicker this way, which would also be useful in a speedrun for those of you who are into that. This method doesn't always speed up scripted events, but in this case it does!

[Deadly Shadows]

Yeah, I tried. Even moved my ship right where the ships spawn and destroyed them before they could shoot missiles or use the radio frequency. The relay station just dies then. So it is not possible at all.

[Soul]

This was actually a common thing in some old space flight sim games like wing commander. It was called failing forward, the idea being that even if you royally screwed up a mission the world moved on if you survived and your campaign took some scars to carry with it. I liked it back then it added realism and consequence to the gameplay. Its really not well done here in the jupiter incident, i really feel like the second half of the game was slapped together in a get it done and get it out crunch session and quality went out the window. Freespace 2 has some really good examples of the failing forward concept if you want to see it done really well download Knossos for freespace 2 and spin up the blue planet mod series.

[Tilen]

Games should be more open to such storytelling through loss.