Standoff Fills In Episodic Blanks

Following on from Standoff's announcement a couple of weeks ago that the mod would be released in episodes, a few more details have been released about their intentions. Better still, the prologue missions are currently expected to be ready before Christmas. Here's the word from Eder, courtesy of this thread.

Our focus is more on replay value than on sheer length. Look at the progress page where missions are split into series for a better idea of length... I'll tell you that the possible paths go like this:

Prologue->Series A->Series B1 or B2->Series C1 or C2->Series D1 or D2

And that's really it, that simple. For example, if you screw up on Series A and get sent to B2, just do well in B2 and you can get to C1. There's no trapping players in a dead end path... and likewise, there's no amount of previous victories that will let you screw up the final missions and still win (Come on, we all know the final missions involve space kittens trying to bomb Earth ).

I think the shortest path takes 23 missions from the beginning of the Prologue to the end of Series D. Some will take longer because there are "transition missions" in some of the, well, transitions. For example, going from B1 to C1 skips a mission that you'd get to fly if your poor performance meant you were to go from B1 to C2 instead - these are not extra missions to reward successful players or anything like that, they're extra missions to make sure that all possible combinations of Series Bs, Cs, and Ds fit together into a coherent storyline. Going down the B1-C2-D1 path has to feel as seamless as going down the B1-C1-D2 path, etc.

The only way to get less than 23 missions (IIRC) before the credits is to let the Lionheart or Firekka get destroyed.