CREATING MISSIONS
What is a Gunship Mission
A Gunship mission consists of a single file written in plain text. Written into the file are the co-ordinates for the map, details of the weather and time of day and instructions and commands for every unit taking part. The file should also include a briefing at the bottom detailing the instructions to the pilot/player.
Mission Design
A good Gunship mission does not need to be complex, nor does it need to involve large numbers of troops. In fact, including too many units, can result in the game making demands that are beyond the capabilities of your system. An early indication of 'unit overload' is blank firing. The mission seems to run OK, but nobody actually dies. Your PC is being asked to process so many movement actions that it drops the fire resolution. As your PC's workload increases when vehicles are in motion, try to avoid huge numbers of units, all moving at the same time. A suggested design limit is a maximum of 20 platoons per side and most of the Gunship campaign missions manage with around 20 in total (the average is actually 21.45, although the maximum used is a whopping 44!). This is obviously not a hard and fast rule, as it depends on many factors, including the abilities and performance of your PC and the number of moving vehicles. But do remember that if you intend the mission to be shared with others, then it will have to run on their PCs too.
A good Gunship mission should have a reason, or a storyline. Simply 'fly there' and 'shoot this' is not very satisfying. A mission needs an idea and these can come from almost anywhere, book, film, TV or just 'what if'. In fact many good ideas can come from within the game itself.
Whilst playing Gunship, I was once shocked by the ease with which a single platoon of T80s scythed their way through a defensive line of APCs without harm. I decided to set up a simple test mission, one on one, in relatively open terrain and started to experiment. How many M113s does it take to stop three T90s? After watching three platoons of M113s burn, I added a platoon of Bradleys, just to open up the range a little. They still all died, but managed to stop one T90. So an extra unit of Bradleys went in the mix and this time, all three T90s were stopped. To re-adjust the balance, I added a platoon of BMP 3s and then moved the Bradleys back to a neat ridgeline I'd just noticed........ I never did find the answer I was looking for, because I was off in a completely different direction and I was mission building.
Use Notepad to read through the missions included in the game. Once you understand the structure of the mission.text files, you can create perfectly valid new missions, just by editing units within an existing campaign mission. Microprose did this themselves.
All missions in Gunship will be either Reactive or Active. A Reactive mission is one that is already 'happening' as soon as the game launches and your role is to influence its outcome. An example would be the protection of a rear guard under heavy attack. You will often have to act quickly to avoid losing the rear guard and therefore the mission.
An Active mission is one where your role is to instigate the confrontation. For instance, a long range strike against an airfield. Here, nothing happens until you make it happen. There may be some enemy movement in the form of random patrols, but there is no real time factor involved and the game can continue in this state indefinitely. A raid on an enemy convoy may at first seem to be Active, but if the convoy's movement is programmed, you would have to hit it before it leaves the map. So it's a Reactive mission and you will loose by doing nothing. Reactive missions are often much more 'seat of the pants' where you have to get in there fast and kick butt, whereas the more sedate Active mission will usually give you time to think and plan. That said, it can allow you to perform a stealthy approach and can often provide more tension than a gung-ho Reactive one.
Another thing you may notice, is that a mission may evolve in an unexpected direction and your original storyline starts to take a back seat. Quite often the actions of a small group of units on one part of the map will suggest a new mission entirely. (I hope I'm not alone in saying that this happens to me quite often). Simply save the mission.text file under a new name and then develop and build it as a separate mission.
Battle Builder
This is the easiest and quickest way to create a new mission and is the usual place to start. BB can be used to build the entire mission, or can be used to set up the framework for something more complex. The only real drawbacks are that the BB only uses a limited library of platoon types and all orders are written in waypoint mode. Anything done in BB can always be changed later, so keep things simple at this stage and you won't lose track.
Click the BB button and before anything else, check the side boxes. Do this first and you won't forget. Click 'Nationality' to Red or Blue as desired. I always build the initial mission as Blue, even if the intention later is to fly as Red. If you create the mission as Blue, you have access to UAVs, which are an incredibly useful way of overviewing both unit placement and mission progress. Click weather to 'Clear' and time of day to 'Daytime', or you'll be literally working in the dark and lastly give the mission a name and press Enter. If you use a name beginning with 'A' it will appear near the top of the mission list when Gunship starts. This avoids scrolling down to find it every time you re-run the mission (and you will need to re-run the mission many times). The name can be changed and given its correct mission title later. Alternatively, just put a '1' in front of the name.
Allocating and positioning units in BB is very straightforward. Left/Right Click the unit box to scroll up/down the list and then left click the map and drag the icon into place. Orders, objectives and time delays all can be selected at this stage, but if you intend to develop the mission beyond BB, these are best kept simple. Putting too much into the mission at this stage will just give you a lengthier text file to work with later on.
Even if you are using BB to build just the framework of a mission, always include at least one enemy unit. Pick something non threatening, like a platoon of Trucks and place them well out of harms way. If you don't do this, you'll be repeatedly interrupted by the 'Frago...mission accomplished' message. With an enemy unit on the map, the game will leave you alone.
Saving the mission
When you're finished in BB, hit the 'Build' button and your mission is saved and ready to go. It appears in the 'in game' mission list under the name you just gave it and you can click on it to play. The first BB mission is saved as a text file in the Gunship\Data\Battles\Player folder under the name battle00.txt. Any additional missions created in BB will be automatically named as battle01.txt, battle02.txt etc.
Editing the Mission
To develop the mission beyond the limits of the Battle Builder, the mission.txt file will need to be edited, either to change positions and orders of the platoons or to add new ones. The only tools needed for editing are the game itself and Notepad (or any other text editor). Oh...and a pencil and huge amounts of patience.
You will also find this useful.
At left is a compass showing 360 degree headings. North always points towards the top of the map. Although only eight points are shown, all intermediate settings are valid. These headings are used throughout Gunship to determine the direction of facing of individual platoons and the orientation of engagement lines. Draw this on a Post-it and stick it on your monitor. You will refer to it over and over again.
Though its quite straightforward, it's surprisingly easy to confuse yourself when dealing with an east/west oriented mission.
From the desktop, use Explorer (or similar) to find the Gunship\Data\Battles\Player folder and double click the battle00.txt file. The file is a text (.txt) document and should open in Notepad. Do not try to edit the file using Word. To help avoid errors and as a memory aid, a Template is included, which contains all (I hope) the commands you should need. Copy this and keep it open on the desktop when editing. Just click on the template and copy and paste back to your mission. All the rest is basic tpying.
The Mission Header
The top section of the file is the mission header which determines the map and defines the overall scope of the mission. It should look something like the example shown below (This is the 2nd mission from the 5th Panzer Divn Campaign):
TITLE (Essential) This shows the name that appears in the game's on screen 'Single Battles' list (although campaign missions don't have titles as such). Initially this will not be the same as the name shown in the Player Battles folder (battle00). It makes things much easier if you rename the file with the mission title. Right click on the file to rename it, but make sure it remains a .txt file.
BATTLEFIELD (Essential) This shows the name of the World Map followed by the X and Y co-ordinates of the centre point of the mission map. These co-ordinates can be changed in the header, to 'nudge' the playing area in any direction. BB only allows you to pick a spot from a large scale map, but when seen in close up, you may wish to move it in order to include (or exclude) certain terrain features. Two zeros follow and their function is unknown, so leave them alone. The 6 indicates the time and weather, in this case a cloudy day. The Meteorology section includes examples of all 25 possible options. The last two numbers are the Battalion callsign. This is the HQ from which radio reports are received and can be any of the 4 HQs listed. In the example shown, all reports originate from 'Hunter'. A Battn HQ unit with callsign 26 could be included as a unit on the map, but is not actually required.
ENGAGEMENT (Optional) These usually come in pairs; one Blue and one Red and define the type of encounter for both sides. Following the Engagement type are two zeros. These can apparently be used to input XY co-ordinates to determine the point of Engagement. In mission ger2, this is used to set up the red attack. Apart from this single occurrence, zeros are always used. At the end of the line comes the 'axis' of the Engagement. This is the overall direction that the force should be facing. These should be complimentary and Blue 0 should be matched to Red 180. A full list of the Engagement pairs used in the campaigns can be found HERE and whilst some pairings are obvious (Blue attack/Red defense) they seem to be usable in almost any combination. I haven't tried all of them (not yet anyway). Although missions will run without Engagement lines, units with Logic commands can sometimes display 'strange behaviour' without them.
OBJECTIVE (Optional) Single or multiple fixed overall Objectives can be set for either or both forces. See the Objectives section for further details.
FRIENDLIES/ENEMIES (Optional) This is also used as a mission objective. It defines the maximum % of friendlies that can be lost and the minimum % of enemies that should be killed and is any number up to 100. This % denotes vehicles, not platoons, so a lone flight of 3 Apaches with BLUE_FRIENDLIES: 30 would loose if it lost one aircraft. Red friendlies and Blue enemies appear to be two ways of saying exactly the same thing, so only two lines should be needed. I don't know why three or sometimes four lines are used.
RUNAI (Optional) If this command is present, then the AI is activated for that side and all units will make use of any support available. If you don't use RUNAI for the enemy side, non of their aircraft or artillery will be used. If you use RUNAI for the friendly side, don't rely on being able to call artillery when you want it, as the AI will always get there first.
SIDE (Essential) Absolutely necessary in any mission. Side 0 means Blue is friendly, Side 1 is Red. Whichever side you choose, must have a 'flyable' Helo unit in the mission for that side. If not, the game will crash. If a flyable unit is included for both sides, you can switch sides simply by changing this number.
MACHINE (Optional?) This has been described as having something to do with multiplayer, although it's true use is still unclear. Referring to the original missions, Machine: 0 is used for all of the 74 Campaign missions. 6 of the Player missions use 0 and six use 1. All the Fly Now missions use 1, whereas only 2 of the Multiplayer missions use 1. The remaining 2 miss out the command altogether. I have absolutely no idea what all this means, but I suspect that Microprose knew something we don't, so I err on the side of caution and use Machine: 0. That said, missing out this command 'appears' to make no difference.
A printable quick reference sheet, showing the Header structure and commands can be found in the GS Mission Building pdf file. This can be downloaded HERE.
_____________________________
Everything below this Header refers to the platoons (units) used in the mission and this is where the fun really starts. The section on Placing Units covers this in some detail, but it may help to read the section on Vehicles and Platoons first.
At some stage, you will find it useful to print the mission text file. This will quickly become covered with pencilled notes and co-ordinates, but is useful when comparing screen positions. When it becomes too cluttered, simply print another, up to date one.
Game Settings and Skill Levels
It's worth pointing out here that the game settings you choose in Gunship's configuration screen, will have a huge effect on how your mission plays and on how it will be viewed by others. If you build the mission using the Resistant player vulnerability and others play on Realistic, their game will have a very different balance and could even be unplayable.
I built a mission using 18 Apaches to raid a coastline and suppress shore defences. I ran it with the Resistant setting and let the mission run itself, watching from the map screen. All the objectives were achieved with the loss of only 1 Apache. Running the mission again on the Realistic setting, resulted in all 18 Apaches shot down and only 3 of them actually made it to the coastline. Same mission............ massive difference! This mission eventually became 'Apache Dawn' and can be downloaded HERE.
Gunship provides two ways of adjusting the skill levels of units within the game. The first way is to adjust the individual skill level of platoons in the platoon Header and this is done by the mission builder. Each platoon has a skill level ranging from 0 (poor) to 3 (Elite) and as the mission builder, you must set these relative skill levels to produce the 'required' outcome. A small change to just one or two platoons, can often mean the difference between an attack's success or failure.
The second is through the global "Enemy Skill" box in the configuration screen. This level can also be set from Poor to Elite, but only effects the way that enemy units respond to airborne threats.....ie YOU. It's inclusion is probably to allow a 'player difficulty' adjustment, without having to change the overall balance of the mission. Many players have pointed out that rather than 5 different levels of skill, this only in fact produces 2 and that any setting above Poor is quite lethal.
These two settings perform different functions and do not seem to interact. Setting a high 'global' skill level in the configuration screen does not make the enemy more efficient when killing tanks. They just shoot you down faster. Usually a lot faster.