Final note...
With regards to too many allied NPCs wandering around, that's mostly for, well, the RP value and so on. As you say, I put a high priority on atmosphere and effect. I might go back and slice out any patrols with no dialog, tho - the second mish in particular still has some, I suspect. Most of them are vehicles for text gags tho. So it is a question of what matters more - the strict caveats of gameplay, or what I'm trying to put across. To some degree the two are compatable; I think the last mission's better for it, right now, for instance. But in others, I don't know.
It does seem different folks react differently to what I did - some people seem to really enjoy seeing actual battles on the map that aren't over by the time they get there.
EDIT: After some review, I've gone with Sofa's suggestion and trimmed the allied patrols in Mission 2 - where I think the density was most obvious.
Difficulty wise...it is possible to swap Sister Psyche for an EB/AV in mission 1, Doc Delilah to an EB (she's actually a very carefully replicated custom, since the real Doc Delilah is level-capped), and for me to turn up some enemy spawn sizes...a lot of my spawns are, after all, controllable objective points. The question is whether I should - I'm reluctant to add more EBs, but the spawn sizes could go up. Thoughts?
-- Acyl
With regards to too many allied NPCs wandering around, that's mostly for, well, the RP value and so on. As you say, I put a high priority on atmosphere and effect. I might go back and slice out any patrols with no dialog, tho - the second mish in particular still has some, I suspect. Most of them are vehicles for text gags tho. So it is a question of what matters more - the strict caveats of gameplay, or what I'm trying to put across. To some degree the two are compatable; I think the last mission's better for it, right now, for instance. But in others, I don't know.
It does seem different folks react differently to what I did - some people seem to really enjoy seeing actual battles on the map that aren't over by the time they get there.
EDIT: After some review, I've gone with Sofa's suggestion and trimmed the allied patrols in Mission 2 - where I think the density was most obvious.
Difficulty wise...it is possible to swap Sister Psyche for an EB/AV in mission 1, Doc Delilah to an EB (she's actually a very carefully replicated custom, since the real Doc Delilah is level-capped), and for me to turn up some enemy spawn sizes...a lot of my spawns are, after all, controllable objective points. The question is whether I should - I'm reluctant to add more EBs, but the spawn sizes could go up. Thoughts?
-- Acyl