Well, I haven't had a chance to do any mission design in the last day.
I will add some thoughts.
I have noticed that many "arena" style missions use high sea state to reduce detection ranges. This has made many of the missions we've run with the mod have VERY limited detection ranges, since now that we have turned down the sound inputs into the acoustics engine, all of the built in acoustical features, such as layers and more generally the type of acoustic environment, that previously had very little effect, now have a fairly strong effect in changing sonar performance. So I think now these kinds of missions can be defaulted to a more calm sea state and worked from there, rather than starting with the premise that the mission itself has to reduce detection ranges to compensate for the game engine.
Also, I'm not sure at this point which kind of missions provide the most satisfying experience in MP, arena or realistic. I can see how in the stock DB, arena style missions with conflicts occuring basically at standoff ranges would be prefered, with it being very hard to construct a MP mission that is fun, playable, realistic, AND balanced. However, encouraged by OKO's thoughts, words, and missions, I am beginning to think that designing realistic missions of MP, with each platform having specific mission tasking is a good way to go now for mission design, and also could put specific platforms in interesting situations (eg. you can play as the SW BUT you've got to deal with two bears and an Udaloy in addition to a minefield and three Akulas etc.).
I'm excited. I want to learn the Mission Editor well enough to start producing quality missions with names other than "Torpedo Seeker Test II" and "Detection Parameter Check IV."
