Shadowcat on 19/10/2000 at 10:55

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It's funny... I'd played TN several times through, but never really spent much time with the random mission generator.

Now, the generator could _definitely_ have done with a little polish in the interface... simply remembering the previous settings would have been so nice -- I often want to use the same settings repeatedly, and have to configure them again after every mission! (this is especially a pain if you customised the enemy types are weapons to any extent.)

That irritation aside, the generator is really a lot of fun!! If you're after a challenge you can ramp up the enemies and go it alone with only a standard or scout PBA and see if you can survive. There are some good landscapes ('death valley' is a personal favourite, and there's a position atop a near-cliff on the 'peninsula' map where you can take a running jump and soar for an incredible distance towards the coast...) and it's a great way to spend 15 or 30 minutes in high-energy fire fights. It's always great when you come out victorious with your PBA a smoking wreck, and half your systems virtually inoperative :)

You know that feeling when you get in over your head, and are desperately trying to jump-jet to safety, with particle beams snapping all around you?

And then there's the cheats! If you've never tried them out, they're a hoot... you can set unlimited radar range, increased movement speed, unlimited ammo, instantaneous reload, and invulnerability. So you load up with a missile launcher (or M-B Accelerator!), run for the nearest group of enemies, jet over them and launch a continuous stream of missiles at them. I figure you must let loose about 20 per second with instant reload <g>

Generally the combined recoil of so many projectiles sends you flying backwards through the air, and the enemies are suddenly just not there any more :)

Instant reload is also fun with the Thermal Disruptor -- that distortion you get when you fire becomes a constant wobbly bubble effect that you can move around the screen :)

There are also 'search-and-destroy' and 'defend target' missions for variety. It's a really great way to get a quick fix without going through the normal missions.

Now if only the squad-mate communication interface was better... (i.e. _consistent_ function keys for each command regardless of the person's speciality, and being able to use the hot-keys with the selected squad mate (e.g. press F1 then ALT+A to send the aggresive attack command to only the first squad-mate)

SHIFT-F[1-3] to toggle squad-mate selection on and off would also have been lovely when splitting the team up. I always found that the tactical side of the game suffered due to the unnecessary awkwardness of controlling the team in any way other than as a group via the hot-keys :/

Oh well; this was a bit of a ramble, but do try out the random missions if you haven't done so. (But make sure you get the patch first -- apparently it's prone to crashing after a few consecutive uses if you don't do so.)

p.s. It's no wonder the poor sales of TN was such a disaster -- it sounds from the newsletters that development began on TN (then 'Freefall') even before they started on System Shock! The cost of making it must have been pretty huge after all that time...



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Shadowcat
One of Many