[The E]

Then please solve the problem of how to show a process of reasonable negotiation between friendly parties using the gameplay formula and tropes of FS. I can't see a way to do it that would be actually interesting to play; can you?

[Luis Dias]

You can borrow the most used trope in FS, the "allies vs common enemy" trope. You can do so many different things. You can even have a conscious campaign that is luring you to think "this is gonna twist and go bonkers at one point and this alliance is ruined", but never does! You can have a campaign where you are actually a small rebel force in Sol, getting more and more support from distrusting factions to get the GTVA out of your systems (and have the local government purged from its seat for their treacherous act of allying themselves with the GTVA!), you can even make this rebel forces create a tension between sol and gtva to the point of breaking (but never really reaching it entirely), but nevertheless peace and cooperation makes it!

Man, that was just top of the head and I'm a lousy writer! Come on you are the writer I know you are capable of thinking about 10 like these in a moment's reflection.

[The E]

Which works as a tragedy, you and your band of brothers vs the force of history, but I believe that we're still not at a point where gaming (and gamers) can handle tragedy very well. We're so conditioned to playing through heroic stuff that we feel disempowered, disenfranchised when confronted with tragedy; how do you end a story like this in a way that is actually satisfying? When you know that, no matter what you do, you will not win the day, and that your death will just be a footnote in some history book?

[Luis Dias]

Well I would say that FSO modding can work a little bit around the margins of the AAA gaming tropes and traps. Sync is pretty much a disaster in the end, and everyone loves it, even despite the godawful gameplay. So yeah.

Even still, "winstate" can be redefined at any point in the story. First image that comes to mind is the ever present redefinition of "winstate" in Ian Banks' "Consider Phlebas", always going smaller and smaller (like the contrary of any epic game I know), to the point of meaninglessness. But it could vary quite a lot. It could even become a spy thriller, with the "rebel heroes" figuring out that the whole rebel movement is a false flag operation in order to get the Sol forces and GTVA working together towards one goal, forcing everyone to accept this alliance and so on. You can have both the hero accept this role or rebel against it. Gods, you can have so many variations!

[Lepanto]

Not to spoil too much, but instead of waging full-scale war against Sol for REASONS, you'll be playing peacekeeper, trying to stop different factions in Sol from killing each other. It'll be hard to get FS players to buy into a gameplay style that's about killing as FEW things as possible, and I'll really have to sell the experience with a quality narrative, but I'll try to make it work.

[Luis Dias]

I actually think that's an excellent gameplay, shadows of that brilliant mission in WiH where you have to control yourself *not* to shoot. You could have several "failstates" that feel like winning where everyone just starts killingspree everything in sight if you are unable to control the situation with precision and rigor. Placing the pilot under a kind of ops unit where subtlety, manipulation, cunning, etc. are valued while killcounts are seen with derision would have the potential of creating an entirely different setting to what we are used to.

Brainstorming without permission sorry about that Lepanto. I like what you wrote so far, and it's annoyingly* very like one half-baked document I did recently about a campaign that "I would do" in a spare time that I had never the illusions I ever had, and it reads really really close to what you wrote here, down to the structure of GTVA's post-capella multi-threaded strategy (I can give you the google doc link if you think I'm bluffing here).

*annoyingly because you got there first, better and with an actual chance of delivering it!

[Lepanto]

It'll be a challenge to see how far you can keep that kind of gameplay going, and have people still like it. But I want to set an honestly optimistic tone, where you're really trying to get everyone to stop fighting. No convenient rogue splinter factions or conspiracies that let you write a high-minded narrative about peace and understanding, while still having cool fight scenes and solving your problems by killing a bunch of bad guys. Though I love blowing up evil ships as much as the next guy, I want this particular campaign to be more like RL peacekeeping and diplomacy.

I'd like to see what you've written, if you don't mind. Yeah, it must be a bummer to come up with a kewl idea, and then find out that someone else independently came up with a similar idea.

[Gray113]

Problem is how to tell such a story using the framing devices given by FS gameplay.

Something that I feel has yet to be explored in regards to Terran unification is the effect this will have on the Vasudans. In most scenarios they are doing much better than the Terran militarily and economically. How will they react to becoming, almost overnight, a minority power within the alliance? Would the Vasudans want a reunited Terran race seen as this would put them at a massive disadvantage in the event of the Terrans becoming more Xenophobic (a strong possibility given recent history).

Some of my personal ideas have the voting block being split 3 ways between Earth, the Assembly and the Imperium but with special voting privileges being granted to the Vasudans as well as a priority given to finding worlds suited to Vasudan habitation in order to appease disgruntled the Terrans disgruntled Vasudans but this could also be a vehicle for introducing a conflict storyline in to reunification.

(sorry if this post is a mess but I am getting ready for work and had to type this quick)

[Lepanto]

Problem is how to tell such a story using the framing devices given by FS gameplay.

Something that I feel has yet to be explored in regards to Terran unification is the effect this will have on the Vasudans. In most scenarios they are doing much better than the Terran militarily and economically. How will they react to becoming, almost overnight, a minority power within the alliance? Would the Vasudans want a reunited Terran race seen as this would put them at a massive disadvantage in the event of the Terrans becoming more Xenophobic (a strong possibility given recent history).

Some of my personal ideas have the voting block being split 3 ways between Earth, the Assembly and the Imperium but with special voting privileges being granted to the Vasudans as well as a priority given to finding worlds suited to Vasudan habitation in order to appease disgruntled the Terrans disgruntled Vasudans but this could also be a vehicle for introducing a conflict storyline in to reunification.

(sorry if this post is a mess but I am getting ready for work and had to type this quick)

Good points. Hadn't considered how the Vasudans would take this sudden shift in power. It's a dynamic worth at least mentioning.

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For anyone who cares, I'm making a 2-mission demo minicampaign, named


-Follow the GTCa Phoenix, first of a new class of medium carriers, as it runs into unexpected trouble while passing through Deneb in 2374.
-Introduction to the Terran and Vasudan fleetpacks, including full techroom entries
-High-maneuverability combat with high speed, auto-aim, sliding, and gliding
-Awesome music

Release date: SOON, hopefully before month's end, but whatevs.

[General Battuta]

Slow combat model? Say it ain't so. 

[woutersmits]

do you need a tester for your campagins add friend on Skype WouterSmits

[Nyctaeus]

Looks like you have big colection of cool ships, good storyline and of course, a lot of good ideas. Your tech entries are awesome!

I want to see some eyecandy

[Lepanto]

Looks like you have big colection of cool ships, good storyline and of course, a lot of good ideas. Your tech entries are awesome!

I want to see some eyecandy

Thanks! 

Screenshots, and eventually the Phoenix demo, will be coming Soon^tm.

[Lepanto]

Work on the demo has progressed slower than I'd hoped; motivation has been low, I'm working on other FS and non-FS projects, and building a detailed modpack is tedious. I still hope to release the demo by the end of the month, but no promises.

In the meantime, here's a little WiP model. The GTFl Horae is the first operational Beam Flare drone in the GTVA arsenal. Beam Flares screen allied capital ships from enemy beam fire by tanking incoming enemy beams. Beam flares will make shock-jumps much less deadly, draw out capship fights which would otherwise be over in a couple volleys from the new Terran and Vasudan beam cannons, and add a new level of tactical dynamism to missions as fighters try to strip enemy capships of their flare screens while preventing enemy fighters from doing the same to their own warships.

It looks better in Blender; take my word for it.

[Rodo]

Beam flare?

Interesting concept. 

[Scotty]

I rather like this solution more than I do the beam jamming concept in BP.  While BP definitely gives mission designers a little bit more leeway in tailoring an engagement, this is something that a player and strikewing can influence more easily than disabling or destroying an AWACS.

[General Battuta]

They both have advantages and disadvantages. Beam jamming is much more flexible in implementation. BP already has an excess of flare shaped things spewing out of warships.

These would be better fluffed as decoys like AN/ALE.

[General Battuta]

(physical objects in the mission space also need to be tracked and handled by your event logic, which is obnoxious if you are ship-creating them)

[Lepanto]

As I'm currently planning them in-game, beam flares will be non-respawning wings of ships, deployed from beam flare racks attached to capships' docking points, or (eventually) warped in from offscreen carriers. They fly in FRED-managed formations, so they don't get between the enemy beam fire and the ship they're supposed to protect, which would (for obvious reasons) invalidate the point of their existence. Their beam redirection will be activated via SEXP on a per-mission basis, for easy FRED flexibility, and because I cannot into scripting.

Fluff-wise, they operate by physically attracting incoming plasma beams via plasma-physics space magic, so they're not a standard ECM decoy, FWIW.

[General Battuta]

That's pretty much how the beam jamming in BP works too. 'Flare' sounds like a misnomer here, but whatever works.