[niffiwan]

   I like it, it's really whetting my appetite to play the campaign

[Lorric]

  I like it, it's really whetting my appetite to play the campaign

Watching with interest.

[Rheyah]

Slow week this week.  Been too busy with project work to make any real progress beyond fixing a few events.

However I will be posting something on the GTVA soon - the Distributed Warfare Protocol otherwise known as the Petrarch Doctrine.

[Rheyah]

CLASSIFIED LEVEL RHO:  ACCESS PUNISHABLE, DENEB CONV: 21-3-5
Presentation:  GTVA Security Council Central Chamber
September 18th, 2369
Distributed Warfare And The Concerted Response
Fleet Adm. R Petrarch

**WOULD YOU LIKE TO VIEW THE RECORDING?**
**PLAYING**

Thirty four years ago, we defeated the Shivan armada which presented an existential threat to our home systems.  This victory came at a materiel cost but the effect upon the stability of the GTVA has been lasting.  Our holding action in the Capella system was a success in so far as we managed to cut off an overwhelming military incursion with relatively minimal losses compared to the scale of the aggressor.  However, as the members of this Council are no doubt aware, this opinion is not widely shared.  We lost the bulk of our fleet defending Gamma Draconis and Capella including the Colossus.  These materiel losses have had a documented effect upon GTVA civilian morale.

Our fleet strength stands at 27% of its pre rebellion readiness with the loss of the Psamtik and the Colossus particularly notable.  Our corvette and cruiser fleet assets have diminished significantly in number and the damage inflicted on the Vega yards in the recent bombings have resulted in both a backlog of repairs and an inability to project power over wide areas of GTVA space.  At present, GTVI considers 79% of our territory to have ceded to locally vested interests.  While these vested interests are limited in scope and power, they provide a logistical difficulty in that they are both wide spread and have control over local supply lines.  In a number of theaters (CASE REPORTS ATTACHED) NTF squadrons have begun to act as local mercenaries and represent an effective deterrent and challenge to any small scale incursion our forces can present.

GTVI Numerical Operations have determined that without an effective solution to this logistical dilemma, the GTVA will effectively cease to exist within thirty six months.  Further, our chances of successfully resisting a third Shivan incursion should this occur become vanishingly small.  The situation is clear.  We must return our political, economic and military control to contested theaters while simultaneously exacting a solution to future Shivan incursions.  To do otherwise would be to doom both of our races to extinction.

To this end, we present a feasible solution to this dilemma:  The Distributed Warfare Protocol.

**STOP**

[Luis Dias]

So they only came up with this new protocol 2 years after Capella? Man, these suits are as incompetent in 2367 as they are in 2013!!

[Rheyah]

Today's update.

I have almost completed mission 2.  Missions 3, 4 and 5 are planned and mapped out.  Still working on the story emphasis since I have about four or five competing plot-lines that I am sorting into place within the story line.  Just a case of preference for the most part.

[woutersmits]

if you need a tester count me in
my xfire username is: wssmits

[Rheyah]

I have levelled up in FRED!  On the mission design front I completely redesigned the second and third missions to avoid what I have come to term Story Creep which is six minutes of talking and 20s of action.  As such I have made certain encounters more interesting and reward good players more.

The tone I want to set is one of limited resource.  You will not find unlimited waves being thrown at you in this.  You don't have military grade weapons and fights are slower and based around support craft.  If you take out a target the attendant fighter wings will withdraw and so on.  The numbers should make sense.

Recently I have been occupied with The Big Move but am now settled in my new place with deadlines behind me.  As such I have begun determining the extent of branching I want within the campaign.

[Rheyah]

As I journey deeper into the abyssal realm of the Destroyers, I cast my mind to my successes and to my failures.

With each transition into the realm that the Destroyers seem most at home within, I grow further and father from my own.  I do not know how long or how far we have travelled.  The Shivans have little need to inform me.  As a young pilot, I battled the GTI and their insurgency.  Their secrecy and their singleminded intent are familiar to me.  Their motives and morals, their dream of a mankind freed from the chains of a rudimentary, primate existence.  Elevated beyond Gods and emperors, masters of subspace and the phenomenal forces that the Destroyers control.

My greatest success was achieving that which no species had ever accomplished.  A dialogue with the Shivans.  For a moment, if nothing more, the Destroyers were halted.

My greatest failure is that I may never know if my sacrifice and the sacrifice of the millions that suffered under the unavoidable tyranny of the Neo Terran Front is ultimately to bear fruit.  An alliance may be beyond my ability to provide.  I was always little more than one man.  A man with power, yes.  An Admiral and a soldier for humanity with a love eclipsing that of any self effacing patriot.

However, I  believe I have awakened something that I did not expect within the Destroyers.  In sifting the ashes of their prey, they have grown curious.  I believe that curiosity is why I still survive.

Perhaps, then, I may awaken enough of a curiosity such that when the Shivans return to the crumbling GTVA, they may only wreak vengeance, not genocide.  I have yet to determine if the Shivans can feel hate, despair, anguish or anger, if they can feel at all.  Their unblinking visage is a haunting one.  Their eyes do not appear to recognise my existence.

What are they?  What is their purpose?  Are they nomads?  Wanderers without a home?  Or are they something else, something more fundamental?  Are they a force of nature or of entropy?  If so, why do they take the form that they do?  What if the Shivans themselves are not Shivans?  I have considered for a moment that perhaps the Shivans are not who they appear to be.   Perhaps this is a cosmic facade. some avatar of a greater power.   I chasten myself at such thoughts.  They lend more of their rationality to the irrational than to the science that brought me here.

Perhaps then, the answer lies not in who the Shivans are, but in what makes the Shivans.

My greatest regret is that I share these thoughts with myself.

[Husker]

Whoa. That's pretty deep.

[Rheyah]

I am having a rare few days of being able to work on creative projects for once.  I reworked part of Mission 2 that I didn't like on playthrough - I may need some balance testing, however.  I've also had to replace the Spinning Claymore of Death fighter because it kept killing me on collision.  I'll use that in later missions once I've sorted out why it is spinning in circles.

Fixing the HUD this weekend I think.  Also working on missions 3 and 4 simultaneously since 3 is not too complicated and 4 is just an interesting mission.

Question I'd like to ask:  what methods do mods use to keep you involved with the combat?  I am struggling with this in my own head because what is happening is I am losing track of what is going on because of creative use of geometry.  I'm not sure if I'm over analysing or not.  I may release a mission so people can judge for themselves.

[MatthTheGeek]

I've also had to replace the Spinning Claymore of Death fighter because it kept killing me on collision.  I'll use that in later missions once I've sorted out why it is spinning in circles.

Try to recalculate the moment of inertia in PCS2, or increase the mass of the ship in PCS2.

[Rheyah]

Thanks!  You also mentioned HUD files.  I've been looking for them but I'm not sure what I'm looking for.  Any chance you could point me in the right direction?

[niffiwan]

Here's the wiki page that describes the HUD gauges that are available: http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Hud_gauges.tbl

Some example tables are attached to this ticket: http://scp.indiegames.us/mantis/view.php?id=2672

Lastly, you can open other mods VP files to see what they're using (data/tables/hud_gauges.tbl or data/tables/xxx-hdg.tbm)

[Lorric]

<Bosch talking>

So is Bosch actually going to show up in this?

Intriguing take on the Shivans.

[Luis Dias]

Not necessarily. Might well be just a background to Shetland's main story, and if it isn't I don't want to know until I see it.

[Lorric]

Not necessarily. Might well be just a background to Shetland's main story, and if it isn't I don't want to know until I see it.

Hmmm. Yes, on second thoughts it might be best if my question goes unanswered. Let the intrigue build.

[MatthTheGeek]

Thanks!  You also mentioned HUD files.  I've been looking for them but I'm not sure what I'm looking for.  Any chance you could point me in the right direction?

What Niffman said. BP, FSPort, Diaspora and BtA are examples on top of my head of mods you can find HUD tables in.

[Rheyah]

Sorted the HUD now.  It scales properly.  Only thing I need to figure out now is how to get it to do what Blue Planet does - warble text in a readable font, other text in BankGothic.

As for Bosch, as I previously implied, Bosch has become a mythical, pseudo-religious figure amongst some Terrans.  However what I would like to explore is why and how he formed the Neo Terran Front.  Bosch was obviously criminally charismatic, but I loved how he represented himself in Freespace 2 as a tyrant who felt he had no choice but to condemn himself to history.  The Boschites themselves are only a generalised term for what has become a wide spread but largely secretive cult that believes Bosch ascended and become an avatar of the Shivans consciousness and that he will return to deliver them all into the salvation the Destroyers offer.

As such they have friction with the Hammer of Light (who saw a post Capellan resurgence).  Further, in the Red Zones where GTVA governance is not an absolute, these doomsday cults run rife.  They join the array of mercenary bands, extralegal operations of stellar corporations, independent operators, miners, frontier stations, deep space exploration probes and pirates that exist beyond the Petrarch nodes.

In tone, I'm aiming at exploring the world after Capella a little more than events after Capella - more I War 2 than Blue Planet.  The civilians know everything the military does about the Shivans.  Both civilizations underwent an existential crisis known as the Disillusionment.  We are now 20 years post that event.  The Shivans are a bogeyman used to frighten children.  The GTVA has fortified her walls, but it hasn't secured them yet.  You are far beyond those walls, part of the Ornkey Array, a region of mining and way stations spread through the Oort cloud of a system four jumps beyond the Petrarch node at Altair.

That's the background of Shetland.

[Rheyah]

CLASSIFIED LEVEL RHO:  Unauthorised access punishable under the GTVA Security Act, Deneb Convention:  Section 21-3-5

Structural And Materials Analysis on Shivan Beam Cannon System Noting Heuristic Patterns and Crystalline Indices
Nature 2368-Vol 34-2324(124) - REDACTED
P Malgan, S Alan, L Anubisan (Institute of Plasma Research, Vega III Research Outpost Omega)

Abstract:  We subjected a captured Shivan large scale materiel plasma beam acceleration weapon to heuristic analysis.  The general structure of the material surrounding the weapon mount is probed using neutron analysis and a QF3D  QED plasma wakefield beam acceleration system with high energy electrons.  The mechanical and material structures of the weapons system are found to be uniform to an extent never before seen on a large scale construction effort with magnetic domains aligned down to the atomic level with little loss in domain energy.  Subspace domain probing efforts suggest large scale energy conservation violation occurs in unusual crystalline circuits with no known superconductive properties.  No method of projecting of magnetic field without entropy loss of stochastic plasma particle selection is found.

Body:  REDACTED