Difficulty curve on Reimagined version Thread - TIE Fighter: Total Conversion (TFTC) mod for Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance

So far, I'm having a ton of fun, for it's first release, it's a very well polished.

While I wait a week for Amazon to deliver a new joystick for me, I found this game to be incredibly frustrating and difficult, even on Easy mode, playing with a controller. Experimenting with various bindings to the controller have helped a little, but I'm not able to kill things as quickly and precisely as I could when I had an actual joystick, so at times it feels like I'm playing a fighter sim for the first time.

The first mission I had issues with was "Red Alert." Failing the [SO] objectives actually fails the mission, so having to break away to inspect a shuttle 5km away while torpedoes are firing at the platform is pretty annoying. My usual strat of aggroing the bombing run ships by taking pot shots at all of them to cause them to break off their run doesn't work well because I can't fly worth shit using an X-Box controller (especially one that keeps drifting, but only in this game) or the mouse. The RNG is particularly bad because there are times when my dumb wingmen will get destroyed within the first wave of fighters.

I'm actually surprised there's no way to ask for reinforcements. While lore-wise, yes it makes sense, but this might be one of those times where gameplay trumps realism considering this is the first chapter. I can't imagine the hard time a newer player would have with this mission.

After about a dozen tries, I just skipped the mission.

Next mission Counter-Attack: the difficulty curve is on the other side. I don't even need to do anything. In fact, I start so far away from the action, most of my targets are destroyed before I get there and because everything is a mission objective, the O key is pretty useless in this for cycling through cargo ships because it keeps targeting starfighters. The droid is also very spammy to rub it in my face that the primary targets are getting destroyed too while I'm still 5km+ away from the nearest anything at max speed. By the time my ship is close enough to do anything, all that's left are Rebel cargo ships (that shoot down my torpedoes...damn smarter AI) and X-Wings to dogfight in a T/B.

Outpost D-34 Has Fallen: This one was very easy as long as I focus on inspection at the beginning. Again, the SO objectives are pretty much required (or give the impression anyway because the mission status says "LOSS" if something gets away). They were always optional in TIE Fighter, but I'm assuming now they're required.

Attack Rebel Task Force: Good balanced mission, no real issues other than everyone having a real problem retreating once "enough damage has been done" because everyone dies trying to get back to the nav buoy when they were kicking ass before that order was given...

Response to S.O.S.: At the start of the fight, the Ripoblus lambda shuttles are considered enemies when you press "R" to target nearest. It should only focus on Dimok and the Ripoblus escort shuttles.

Rescue War Refugees: Y/W-Bs against unshielded TIEs. That's just dirty. So much waiting around though, especially if the Glas gets disabled. All my wingmen leave and the reinforcements that come in just arrive and leave... so lonely...

Capture Enemies: The Imperial AI is a bit too overzealous to destroy the SHU Phantele we're capturing. "Target has been disabled...target has been destroyed..." I had to skip this mission.

[Other] Nav buoys: My targeting computer never wants to target the correct one. And near home base, there are always lots of "useless" ones about.

Thank you for the feedback! We are noting these things down and collating them with other users experiences. Please continue to give us your thoughts on the other missions as you get through them

Red Alert: This is meant to be a very tough mission, but it can always a bit of tweaking. There is also currently a bug where the reinforcingGunboats don't do anything and fly straight home. As for requesting for reinforcements, I've an idea on this one, more of a delayed reinforcement request, but testing will be done.

Counter Attack: I deliberately wanted this to be an easy milk run for the Player after Red Alert, making you feel like the Empire is back in control and stomping, but I concede the Player has little to do here.

Respond to S.O.S: We need to do some tweaking of the IFF. There are Ripoblus ships that attack you later on in the mission which is why all of them may appear as enemy ships currently.

Capture Enemies: This is a known bug in the mission where your gunboats decide to kill SHU Pantele and will be fixed in an upcoming patch. Our Discord server contains a quick fix for this mission if you wish to join.

Regarding Y-W/Bs: All I can say is you should've seen them before we nerfed them heavily

On "Capture Enemies," even on Easy--assuming you are able to tell your overzealous wingmates to ignore the shuttles, is it supposed to be "kill all the V-W attacking Omega 1 after shuttle capture on first pass or you fail because they instantly delete it?"

Hi, we are doing balance passes to missions where people are frequently running into problems or frustrations, this includes the mission Capture Enemies. We have posted a quick fix on our Discord server with this mission so the Gunboats attacking the Shuttle is not a problem anymore.

Redux B7M2 is really difficult - or at least, the hints in the failed mission debriefing are not helpful when taken literally. Defending Devastator requires player to target most damaged enemy capital ships (rather than just attacking them), order all wingmen to attack, use chaffs to ignore attacking fighters and still it's a lot of trial and error.

I LOVE figuring out how to beat a Tie Fighter mission (it's been to long ), but this one has potential to be really frustrating and leaves pilot more exchausted than satisfied when beaten.

(In contrast, I've found Battles 1-4 very easy - the multitude of friendly fighters rip opposition apart)

Edited by: Trupobaw

I do have the fix from Discord so my wingmates no longer maul the shuttles.

My other question still stands though.

I specifically camp near the capture operation so that I can protect Omega 1, but if my side misses even one of the V-W's that arrive in response specifically to attack the TRNs (I think there are 3-4) it only takes a single pass to delete the TRN. Is that the intent?

@Admiralsovereign, transports aren't very strong craft, so a strafing run by a group of fighters if its sitting still or not evading will usually result in its death, but as I said we are doing balance passes so we are looking at how hard or easy it is to deal with these types of events.

@Trupobaw, I've done a balance pass on this mission this evening by buffing the Devastators hp so it has better survivability allowing you more time to take down the enemy starships.

Edited by: AngelTFTC

Thank you for fixing B2M4, that was the only one that I had to give up on so far after around 10 retries, no matter what I tried, focusing V-Wings, Combat Shuttles or disabling the SHUs somehow Pantele always ended up destroyed, never did I think that it was actually my buddies doing this.

The only other reimagined missions so far that gave me a tough time was B1M5 and B2M2.
B1M5 where our gunboats were just eaten up before we had the chance to destroy enough fighters to clear the mission. I managed by cheesing the mission (full Engine and outrun everyone till I got enough space to recover shields and lasers and re-engage, destroying the last few required fighters).
B2M2 was a little tough when I inspected the container early on and then the V-Wings would overwhelm the transport that's supposed to capture Youst while the other cap ship also jumps in and draws attention. Also managed to cheese it by taking care of fighters first, then picking off the still non-hostile V-Wings and then inspecting the container and weakening Youst with my torpedos.

Glad to see those adressed as well. Except the little difficulties and unsolvable B2M4 I had a blast playing, fantastic mod! Looking forward to patching and finally completing B2M4 and continue on.