Fan Mission: You Only Fly Thrice by DeTeEff (2024/10/16) [15th Anniversary Contest]

[DeTeEff]

1 hour ago, Melchior said:

Onwards, with the deranged Mr.Peabody... part ⅔:

Once you are 'familiar' with the layout of the airship, mission execution is just a matter of planning...Or once you know the tricks - its easy to cause mayhem. Too easy, infact - the real trick isn't to go berzerk and make a bigger mess than even a ruthless pagan warrior can handle.

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Once the arms are acquired - you can either visit the engineering bay to pull fuses, or just start clubbing bridge officers wandering around aimlessly...(no need for ME to bloody my hands - gravity does the dirty 'work' ). Seems the lantern search patrol isn't quite able to deal with an actual sabotuer. Surprised there isn't an engineer's mate - or other 'greasehand' to do "joe" jobs like replacing a fuse. Having ONLY 1 ENGINEER IS FATAL TO A SHIPS OPERATIONAL SAFETY! that airship co. is SO going out of buisness!!
Guards don't "check in" - either so after you've tossed a few overboard - life is easy, but short for some. I did find it odd the 'Helmsman' left his post on-duty...oh well.

Thoughts on the Airship ("defects") itself:

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1. Lack of Intercom Voice (speaking) Tube system: MAJOR DESIGN FLAW.
2. Lack of Fire-Alarm System: CRITICAL DESIGN FLAW.
3. No Indicator system on Flight-critical systems: Fault Alarms on Hydrogen-generator, Steam-Turbine(s), and Electrical buss. [Would be visible on engineers post in bridge] MODERATE FLAW.
4. Engine bay has no access controls (numeric padlock, or guard-station) MINOR FLAW.
   In general most ships have a dedicated "Engine Control" room - usually with monitor equipment and a Engineering-officer plus technicians on standby.

General thoughts one TDM (engine) features that are now needed / apparent:

• Guard patrol end/start loop "check-ins": accomplished however - verbal ack. from a guard captain, or the 'Punch-Clock' system (yeah actual time-sheets, I bet they have metrics to meet in 1760 still)
• Remote 'alert' system; possibly Intercom - to alert non-local NPC's that somethings amiss elsewhere...
• The information Aggregator entity (NPC?); to whom all these bits of status/events go - and who reacts upon them...somehow. [Sending patrols? altering map-state, making other envrionmental changes? ]
• Also; proper support for NO-BOW player starts. Meaning: until you get a bow - any arrows CANNOT BE USED. And - I guess any "Taffer" with a bow visible - even with a fine silk smoking jacket on, would be considered a hostile villian. [Could be implimented as a 'Anti-Bow' object in inventory that is 'removed' when a "bow" is obtained.]

 

I will interpret this critique on the ship on a more fluffy level, more than actual critisism on the level design, am I right?

Yes, when you get the layout strait, it's not that hard to navigate the mission.

The AI in TDM is quite advanced but it is difficult (if even impossible) to steer the AI anyway you want via scripts etc.

I'm aware that the player magically get a bow if picking up arrows. Therefore I added a bow at the place where you obtain the arrows.

[Knüppelaufdierübe]

How do I open the locked crates without keyholes in the cargo area (with no prybar'ish tool nearby)?

[DeTeEff]

Just now, Knüppelaufdierübe said:

How do I open the locked crates without keyholes in the cargo area (with no prybar'ish tool nearby)?

There in fact is a "prybar'ish" tool nearby.

Spoiler

Check in the engine room nearby 

 

[Knüppelaufdierübe]

47 minutes ago, DeTeEff said:

There ... is

Hahaha, I'm an idiot. Went through the room 3 or 4 times and didn't see the obvious thing in the obvious place.

[The Black Arrow]

Here we have another amazing mission by...Weren't you called Fieldmedic before? You've made a great horror-ish fan mission once, I remember something like that...Huh, well anyway.

As per usual from you, Mr. Moose, it's so complex and that's what makes it great.

- Amazing graphics, I really enjoy when the thunder hits to light the place up, the volumetric light is to die for. Literally, even, since these people can see you from that flash, hah!
- Very well done layout, it is very tight and there's no corners but for a huge flying ship you must make expenses anyway.

- I LOVE the idea of all passengers having keys, it means I can lock them in their own rooms, thereby not interrupting my thieving!
- However, the gameplay is still EXCRUCIATINGLY FRUSTRATING at times. There's always more than 3 AI ready to corner you, making you have to load another save. Pray that you make saves constantly and not just quicksaves.
Also, if that isn't enough...
 

Spoiler

Some guard, the Moorish one, noticed the painting missing then told everyone "There's a thief about". I GOT FUCKED! You're lucky I save often.

So, anyway, after all the intense mental pain, I just "surrendered" and got myself caught up, all I wanted to do is get out of there with the parachute, which I did.

 

This really is a great mission, I love it, the fact there's two more playstyles adds to the replayability and that's great.
In short; this is another Fieldmedic--I mean, DeTeEff, mission that's complex, amazing and totally worth playing. Just be patient, I tried and I reaped great rewards.

P.S. I've rather enjoyed the recorded messages playing on the megaphone, she has a very pleasant voice!

Edited October 30 by The Black Arrow

[DeTeEff]

3 minutes ago, The Black Arrow said:

Here we have another amazing mission by...Weren't you called Fieldmedic before? You've made a great horror-ish fan mission once, I remember something like that...Huh, well anyway.

As per usual from you, Mr. Moose, it's so complex and that's what makes it great.

- Amazing graphics, I really enjoy when the thunder hits to light the place up, the volumetric light is to die for. Literally, even, since these people can see you from that flash, hah!
- Very well done layout, it is very tight and there's no corners but for a huge flying ship you must make expenses anyway.

- I LOVE the idea of all passengers having keys, it means I can lock them in their own rooms, thereby not interrupting my thieving!
- However, the gameplay is still EXCRUCIATINGLY FRUSTRATING at times. There's always more than 3 AI ready to corner you, making you have to load another save. Pray that you make saves constantly and not just quicksaves.
Also, if that isn't enough...
 

  Hide contents

Some guard, the Moorish one, noticed the painting missing then told everyone "There's a thief about". I GOT FUCKED! You're lucky I save often.

So, anyway, after all the intense mental pain, I just "surrendered" and got myself caught up, all I wanted to do is get out of there with the parachute, which I did.

 

This really is a great mission, I love it, the fact there's two more playstyles adds to the replayability and that's great.
In short; this is another Fieldmedic--I mean, DeTeEff, mission that's complex, amazing and totally worth playing. Just be patient, I tried and I reaped great rewards.

Haha. Yes, I'm the old Fieldmedic with only strange missions where I try to push the boundaries beyond playability...

Glad you liked it! Yes, the painting will be missed and therefore trigger the guards to start searching for a thief. I thought about making more loot noticeable but as you experienced, there is a lot of ruckus. It wasn't what I wanted but I thought it would be strange/silly if nobody had realised that the painting was missing...

Yes, I went for replayability so the story may be a bit lacking. I hope at least there are some fun and quirky things to find in the readables.

/Mr Moose

[tapewolf]

I recognised the "difficulty level=different character" approach from "Not an Ordinary Guest", and it was nice to see a return of the tension meter from "Reap as you Sow" (which I love, partly because of the novelty of a daytime mission).

I had a lot of fun with this, the large number of NPCs packed into a small space made life a lot more interesting in terms of avoiding detection.  Challenging, but fun.  I have a tenuous relationship with stealth anyway, so annoying the guards and locking them in the passenger cabins worked out quite well, although one or two of the rooms (Room 5 and one other) didn't seem to want to lock afterwards.

Having played the thief it threw me for a bit when playing the saboteur because I was too used to being hunted on sight, and being treated as a regular passenger took a little getting used to.  I only tried out one of the assassination targets and will have to play the other two at some later stage.

I particularly liked the way the other playable characters were handled, e.g. the change of name on the manifest, the thief failing his mission etc.

[MirceaKitsune]

This FM is quite the experience. I'd say I haven't finished it yet as this is one of the fewer cases where I'm going to do all the difficulty levels. From what I can say so far so that I don't lose my thoughts till then, starting with my runs so far:

Spoiler

My first run was a more frustrating one. I decided to first play as the thief, thinking that's the easiest difficulty while in reality I think it's the hardest. There was no way to navigate the ship without getting caught: This is the only time I played with notarget on and just pretended to hide as it's the only way I could do it. Indeed I removed the fuses and shut off power to the ship, at least the first floor as the second floor still had the lights on; While that makes it somewhat bearable for a while, the guards with the lanterns appear so suddenly and frequently that getting around them was impossible... even if it wasn't for that it's often hard not to be surrounded and bump into someone, more on that below.

Then I decided to do the assassin. I noticed it gives you a tension meter instead of having everyone be hostile all the time including in the hallways: HUGE improvement! Still hard when entering restricted areas, but I at least managed a normal run this way. I did the first assignment and will likely play the other two as well just to mess around, after that I'll do the "TDM version of environmental activist" run last

Bugs I found and thoughts on the difficulty:

Spoiler

The main issue is the halls are sometimes extremely crowded: So much so that at times 3 to 5 AI get stuck in front of a single door, you need to wait a few minutes before one manages to find its way around or clip through someone else after which the congestion slowly eases. On a side note I've also seen AI get stuck inside walls or doors, they will clip halfway through and be stuck walking in place.

The other issue is the lighting: If you remove the fuses you can leave the lower floor in darkness, but there's nothing you can do when a guard with a lantern comes around too fast and there's nowhere to hide in time. There's also the issue of the upper floor still being lit, the schematic suggests there should be a way to turn it off there as well so I might need to look more carefully.

If you're considering further changes: Maybe check if the number of guards wielding lights can be reduced slightly, otherwise path AI's so they don't all run into the same place at once. It might help if some of the special arrows (water, moss, noisemaker, etc) can be offered in appropriate locations: For example I can imagine water arrows provided in the form of a fire extinguisher with the note "guards use this in case of fire on board", those can at least put out the fireplaces though I don't think they disable handheld lamps.

That being said, I absolutely love the concept and the way it was implemented! This has an oddly relaxing and pleasant atmosphere, and the way characters and objectives are designed around it further make this a great experience.

Spoiler

I love how each difficulty is an unique character with different objectives and mechanics, that's a fantastic use of the difficulty system and something I'd love seeing more often. The way you can interact with the ship's systems and every action has a consequence further adds to it: I loved how if you don't play the thief, his character is killed by the spider and you even find a different outcome if you go to his spawn location. The custom character skins are also quite beautiful and very well done, not to mention the megaphone announcers though it would be nice if there were more songs for variation.

 

[DeTeEff]

8 minutes ago, MirceaKitsune said:

This FM is quite the experience. I'd say I haven't finished it yet as this is one of the fewer cases where I'm going to do all the difficulty levels. From what I can say so far so that I don't lose my thoughts till then, starting with my runs so far:

  Reveal hidden contents

My first run was a more frustrating one. I decided to first play as the thief, thinking that's the easiest difficulty while in reality I think it's the hardest. There was no way to navigate the ship without getting caught: This is the only time I played with notarget on and just pretended to hide as it's the only way I could do it. Indeed I removed the fuses and shut off power to the ship, at least the first floor as the second floor still had the lights on; While that makes it somewhat bearable for a while, the guards with the lanterns appear so suddenly and frequently that getting around them was impossible... even if it wasn't for that it's often hard not to be surrounded and bump into someone, more on that below.

Then I decided to do the assassin. I noticed it gives you a tension meter instead of having everyone be hostile all the time including in the hallways: HUGE improvement! Still hard when entering restricted areas, but I at least managed a normal run this way. I did the first assignment and will likely play the other two as well just to mess around, after that I'll do the "TDM version of environmental activist" run last

Bugs I found and thoughts on the difficulty:

  Reveal hidden contents

The main issue is the halls are sometimes extremely crowded: So much so that at times 3 to 5 AI get stuck in front of a single door, you need to wait a few minutes before one manages to find its way around or clip through someone else after which the congestion slowly eases. On a side note I've also seen AI get stuck inside walls or doors, they will clip halfway through and be stuck walking in place.

The other issue is the lighting: If you remove the fuses you can leave the lower floor in darkness, but there's nothing you can do when a guard with a lantern comes around too fast and there's nowhere to hide in time. There's also the issue of the upper floor still being lit, the schematic suggests there should be a way to turn it off there as well so I might need to look more carefully.

If you're considering further changes: Maybe check if the number of guards wielding lights can be reduced slightly, otherwise path AI's so they don't all run into the same place at once. It might help if some of the special arrows (water, moss, noisemaker, etc) can be offered in appropriate locations: For example I can imagine water arrows provided in the form of a fire extinguisher with the note "guards use this in case of fire on board", those can at least put out the fireplaces though I don't think they disable handheld lamps.

That being said, I absolutely love the concept and the way it was implemented! This has an oddly relaxing and pleasant atmosphere, and the way characters and objectives are designed around it further make this a great experience.

  Reveal hidden contents

I love how each difficulty is an unique character with different objectives and mechanics, that's a fantastic use of the difficulty system and something I'd love seeing more often. The way you can interact with the ship's systems and every action has a consequence further adds to it: I loved how if you don't play the thief, his character is killed by the spider and you even find a different outcome if you go to his spawn location. The custom character skins are also quite beautiful and very well done, not to mention the megaphone announcers though it would be nice if there were more songs for variation.

 

Thank you so much for the kind words. It's funny that you are among the first to mention the music/ambience.

Yes, in hindsight maybe I should have reduced the amount of AI on this ship. But to be totally honest, the mission got scewed in the favour of the infiltrator difficulties and the thief got the short end of the stick. Most time was spent on the poisoning mechanic and different paths. The lantern guards may have been involved in a bit of unkilled darlings (because of the amount of time I spent on their individual path nodes and overall patrol adjustments).

If the mission gets an update I may very well remove the lantern behaviour on 2-3 guards, when playing as thief. The lantern fetching only happens after the lights have been killed (there are no fuses for the third floor btw).

[MirceaKitsune]

And I finally finished the last difficulty level.

Spoiler

Rupert's route and carrying out the sabotage was definitely exciting! I was just thinking to myself how cool it would be if you could see the ship go down but didn't expect that to be an actual feature: Once more you've thought of everything, it was very fun to run back while alarms were going off! Felt much like the shipyard level in the first DeusEx after you blow up the weld points and reverse the bilge pumps

I had no idea that triggers a timer after which you die unless you jump ship though. Thank goodness I had enough quick saves to go back to. A warning message would have been useful, unless there was one and I foolishly missed it.

Something else that came to mind, even if I know massive changes will surely not be done at this late stage.

Spoiler

It would have been nice if either of the characters could come disguised as a crew member. He'd have access to the entirety of the ship, useful to learn the layout before doing the harder modes. The benefit would of course need to be compensated with something else that adds difficulty, like instantly becoming suspicious after completing some objectives.

Also I can see this FM making use of the newly added debrief system. It's the type that leaves you wondering what happens afterward: Definitely feels like there could be a description of future events that unfolded for each route based on what the player did during that run.

[Knüppelaufdierübe]

On 10/30/2024 at 10:04 PM, The Black Arrow said:

...
Also, if that isn't enough...
 

  Hide contents

Some guard, the Moorish one, noticed the painting missing then told everyone "There's a thief about". I GOT FUCKED! You're lucky I save often.

 

 

If you don't mind the guards running around with their swords out, you can use that ship-wide alert to
 

Spoiler

• get the bridge empty for long enough to take a parachute (and possibly other stuff) without any danger of getting spotted,
• make most of the guards drop their lanterns (in case you took out the fuses)*, which usually helps a lot.

*) The number of guards with lanterns seemed to differ between missions, not sure.

 

Edited November 2 by Knüppelaufdierübe

[DeTeEff]

7 minutes ago, Knüppelaufdierübe said:

 

If you don't mind the guards running around with their swords out, you can use that ship-wide alert to
 

  Hide contents

• get the bridge empty for long enough to take a parachute (and possibly other stuff) without any danger of getting spotted,
• make most of the guards drop their lanterns (in case you took out the fuses)*, which usually helps a lot.

*) The number of guards with lanterns seemed to differ between missions, not sure.

 

The lantern carrying guards should be the same for all difficulties/contracts but the path changing system is a bit wonky so sometimes they don't fetch lanterns.

[Knüppelaufdierübe]

Just now, DeTeEff said:

but the path changing system is a bit wonky so sometimes they don't fetch lanterns.

Ah ok, I thought it was by design.

[DeTeEff]

7 minutes ago, Knüppelaufdierübe said:

Ah ok, I thought it was by design.

I may perhaps fix in a future patch that not all guards fetch lanterns. It has come to my attention that many players found it too challenging with all 5 roaming about with lanterns which I respect.

[Knüppelaufdierübe]

4 minutes ago, DeTeEff said:

that many players found it too challenging with all 5 roaming about with lanterns

It was frustrating the first time around, but as soon as I found out about the painting, it wasn't that much of an issue anymore (trade-off I'm totally OK with). But I can also see how that's not an option for players who really want to stealth it (beyond just a zero suspicion score).

To me, the bigger issue was the upper floors constantly crawling with people. If that could be decluttered or slowed down just a bit, like giving some of them a bit more resting time between their runs or something.

[MirceaKitsune]

1 hour ago, Knüppelaufdierübe said:

If you don't mind the guards running around with their swords out, you can use that ship-wide alert to

Spoiler

Wait, there's a ship wide alert you can trigger any time? How did I miss that? I presume it's on the bridge, I tried frobbing all the levers near the parachutes but none of them did anything. Would have been fun to play with. I presume it's the same alarm that rings when Rupert completes his objective and shuts down the remaining systems, but without requiring that or having a death timer.

[Knüppelaufdierübe]

55 minutes ago, MirceaKitsune said:

Spoiler

Wait, there's a ship wide alert you can trigger any time? How did I miss that? I presume it's on the bridge, I tried frobbing all the levers near the parachutes but none of them did anything.

 

No, not quite like that, bad choice of words from me (I was referring to @The Black Arrow's post):

Spoiler

If you steal the panting in the diner hall(?), the moor guard will notice it, say something and suddenly guards from all over the place as well as the helmsmen(!) will rush there on high alert ... leaving the bridge unattended for some time and also making the alarmed guards drop their lantern.

 

Edited November 2 by Knüppelaufdierübe

[DeTeEff]

Regarding the alarm

Spoiler

It's only possible for the saboteur to trigger the blaring alarm by sabotaging the engines

But I see now that Knüppelmann referred to the general alertedness of the guards after seeing that something's been stolen.

[grodenglaive]

Cool original fm. I just did the thief level for now and will return to do the other two once I've completed the other contest missions. It was very difficult to finish without knocking anyone out, but I persevered. I enjoyed locking everyone in their rooms. Looking forward to playing as the assassin and offing some guards in the process.  

[DeTeEff]

3 minutes ago, grodenglaive said:

Cool original fm. I just did the thief level for now and will return to do the other two once I've completed the other contest missions. It was very difficult to finish without knocking anyone out, but I persevered. I enjoyed locking everyone in their rooms. Looking forward to playing as the assassin and offing some guards in the process.  

Glad you like it. Haha, yes a lot of players seem to like the ability to lock in people

Hopefully you won't need to KO too many people when playing as assassin/saboteur as you may walk among people as an infiltrator.

[Keruah]

I played only through the easy/thief mode. Tomorrow, I'll try other characters. I think, I too got some problems with npc detecting me from at least one room away. The guy in the central corridor was constantly repeating "oh, this is not good" or something like that. The other thing, I got a bit tired of reading every journal in every room. Have never seen so many journals in any of the missions as of yet (but tbh, at the moment, I've only played around 15 missions). Otherwise, a great mission. It felt so fun to break into the hall and knock out all the guests in one blackjacking spree. I'll come back to it as an assassin, I really wanna see the difference  

[DeTeEff]

8 minutes ago, Keruah said:

I played only through the easy/thief mode. Tomorrow, I'll try other characters. I think, I too got some problems with npc detecting me from at least one room away. The guy in the central corridor was constantly repeating "oh, this is not good" or something like that. The other thing, I got a bit tired of reading every journal in every room. Have never seen so many journals in any of the missions as of yet (but tbh, at the moment, I've only played around 15 missions). Otherwise, a great mission. It felt so fun to break into the hall and knock out all the guests in one blackjacking spree. I'll come back to it as an assassin, I really wanna see the difference  

Glad you seem to like it I wouldn't consider Thief to be the easiest though. As assassin and saboteur you'll be able to move among the guests without problems, as long as you don't do anything illegal. But the thief is always considered hostile to everyone.

Spoiler

Most diaries are just fluff

 

[Keruah]

4 minutes ago, DeTeEff said:

Glad you seem to like it I wouldn't consider Thief to be the easiest though. As assassin and saboteur you'll be able to move among the guests without problems, as long as you don't do anything illegal. But the thief is always considered hostile to everyone.

  Hide contents

Most diaries are just fluff

 

I did. I read everything, just to get the lore, the story - the usual stuff, and I usually read tons of financial statements and documents during my work shift, so in the end of the day I get tired of seing letters. I really need to play thins on the weekend, in another mood. Cause, I loved the escape by jumping into the storm

And, thanks for the tip about the assassin/saboteur routes. I'll see into it and maybe leave another comment or two. Thanks for another reason to play TDM. Cheers!  

[MirceaKitsune]

There's a little something I couldn't help thinking about.

Spoiler

It's implied that regardless of who you play as, all 3 characters are onboard the ship at that moment conducting their respective missions in parallel, correct? In that case, doesn't the saboteur render the assassin's quest pointless? If he crashes the ship and everyone dies, what use then was the assassin's work? He wastes his effort doing something that will happen either way a few minutes or hours later! Imagine him landing only to hear the airship crashed and everyone on board died for him to be like "so I did all this work tracking down this one passenger and killing them myself for nothing?!"

[irisx]

3 hours ago, MirceaKitsune said:

There's a little something I couldn't help thinking about.

  Reveal hidden contents

It's implied that regardless of who you play as, all 3 characters are onboard the ship at that moment conducting their respective missions in parallel, correct? In that case, doesn't the saboteur render the assassin's quest pointless? If he crashes the ship and everyone dies, what use then was the assassin's work? He wastes his effort doing something that will happen either way a few minutes or hours later! Imagine him landing only to hear the airship crashed and everyone on board died for him to be like "so I did all this work tracking down this one passenger and killing them myself for nothing?!"

Spoiler

The readable about the thief having failed his task makes me think that neither of the "other" characters are supposed to succeed in their respective missions.

 

Edited November 8 by irisx