How good/complex is the official TW Mission editor?

[Flapsfull 2]

Hi everyone,

been thinking about buying the official Third wire SF2 mission editor,either as standalone or within the expansion pack.
However I haven't found that much information about the editor itself, so I wanted to ask around here.
How good is it, or better put, how much ability to design does it give you?

In a practical example, can it be used to design a simple aggressor mission, where both Player and Adversary
start on the ground,  the adversary then taxis past Player's aircraft to the runway ,takes off at a specific time and then flies to
a perform CAP at a training area at specific altitude , where the player can meet up with him again?

Is there an option to set triggers, i.e. when Event x happens start behavior y?

 

Thank you,

Regards,

Flapsfull

 

Edited January 29, 2020 by Flapsfull

[+guuruu 5,909]

 

[Wrench 9,848]

enemies cannot launch from friendly airfields, and vice versa. the game is divided into the red and blue sides. you'd have to start on 2 different airfields, and fly towards an "engagement zone".

[jeanba 1,920]

I think that what you request is a little too complex for the mission editor.

I use it, most of the time to edit a mission created "randomly" (mission menu):

Change planes, change some waypoints, objectives, but not much more

[JohnLewis141997 33]

You can do it the old fashion and do it by notepad

[Stick 773]

17 hours ago, Wrench said:

enemies cannot launch from friendly airfields, and vice versa. the game is divided into the red and blue sides. you'd have to start on 2 different airfields, and fly towards an "engagement zone".

On some maps e.g. SWUS, if you switch sides after designating the airfield, you can. Done it for Aggressor squadrons flying out of Nellis runways - great for parallel take-off screenies.

[Flapsfull 2]

Hi everyone,

 

thank you all for your replies.Ok seems the editor is maybe a bit more limited than I thought.Guuruu thanks for the video ,that gave some insight into its workings.

@Stick: Sorry I'm not understanding that completely.What do you by switching sides after designating the airfield?

 

Kind regards,

Flapsfull

[+yakarov79 11,089]

On 31/01/2020 at 11:58 AM, Flapsfull said:

thank you all for your replies.Ok seems the editor is maybe a bit more limited than I thought.

Despite evidence of the contrary I would recommend using the editor as this is a very useful tool and changes gameplay for better. Playing single missions out of the box will make you bored after a short time. Maybe the editor is not so complex as you would wish, but it has lot of advantages in single mission gameplay. 

 

Edited February 1, 2020 by yakarov79

[TempestII 262]

6 hours ago, yakarov79 said:

Despite evidence of the contrary I would recommend using the editor as this is a very useful tool and changes gameplay for better. Playing single missions out of the box will make you bored after a short time. Maybe the editor is not so complex as you would wish, but it has lot of advantages in single mission gameplay. 

 

Seconded. I don't even play single missions anymore without editing them with the editor. I now wonder how SF2 managed without it.

IMO, it's biggest flaw is that I take probably more time setting up the missions than I do flying them - maybe a copy / paste feature or units templates would speed this up but probably won't ever happen. 

Being able to save individual missions from Campaigns to then use in the editor is a really great tool too. If I remember correctly, it'll even remember the that campaign mission's "borders", meaning that Soviet forces might be deep into West Germany (or vice versa) depending on how your campaign was going at the time. 

[jeffyb 21]

Sorry for the dumb question, Ive bought the campaign and mission editor downloaded them, but how do I use them??

Cheers

Jeff

[+EricJ 4,245]

For the mission editor, you look at the bottom right when selecting a mission and click the little pen icon, that'll bring you into the mission editor. On the upper right are icons you can use to edit the mission.  You can change the aircraft and it lists all the available aircraft flights for that given mission. If you want to edit a flight click the airplane icon and select that flight. You can delete the flight (unless it's an intercept or Fighter sweep mission) and add flights to the mission if you want some more enemies or if you want to add friendly flights to the mission. There is a map that is shown and a crosshair. Move that crosshair around to place a flight. There you can specify what base it flies from and so on. You can also add ships and ground objects to the mission (other than the target) by placing them with the crosshair and moving the map around. Next, you can place a ship in the ocean or lake with the ship icon. Next, you can place a naval fleet by placing that in the ocean or whatnot.