Author Topic: Exile - Discussion  (Read 58933 times)

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Offline QuakeIV

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de la snip

Partly I agree with you now that you mention it.  Even if they don't have a whole lot of agency in the grand scheme of things (I dont know that they had much of a choice about settling down before they finally got the cylons to stop hounding them) there is still plenty that they can change around without actually dicking themselves over.  For instance do military personnel get special treatment as you mentioned.  Yes the absolutely critical people should get priority for good treatment so they can stay functional (important civilians included), but the vast majority of personnel on a ship could probably be injured sick and hungry and not have all that huge an impact on readiness, at least if ye olde battlestar resembles current wet navy ships (which seems to have been something they were going for in that show).  To my knowledge most of the crew on a Nimitz is pretty much just keeping things clean, keeping an eye on semi autonomous systems and making corrections or minor repairs, and otherwise doing upkeep tasks that could in all bluntness probably be done adequately well by borderline slaves.  I also agree on abortion and forms of punishment and such.

However I still don't really see how they could have a huge impact on the high level decision making aside from which randomly chosen direction to flee in, or possibly priority for defense.  From what I remember, generally speaking they didn't seem to have a whole lot of choice when it came to obliging people to dedicate most of their effort to keeping the fleet running (at least on the ammo factory ships if nothing else), nor much choice in fleeing when the cylons showed up.  I could see a lot of tasks being executed autonomously, with the choice of how much that gets micromanaged being a civilian decision.  But I don't see the admiralty really being able to survive subservience to civilian policy.  Yes you could force the fleet to halt and try to hold a position for sake of some project, or force them to try their damnedest to save an asset that is near impossible to save, but I don't hugely see the difference between the civilians getting ignored there, or them not getting what they want anyhow because what they wanted wasn't available for the taking.

I don't neccesarily see the admiralty as having all that much influence over their circumstances either since they would also mostly be subject to necessity, but I think they are by far the most qualified ones to decide how long they can stay somewhere, or whether or not to leave something behind that they aren't able to protect.
« Last Edit: September 27, 2018, 10:40:37 pm by QuakeIV »

 

Offline General Battuta

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The admiralty's job is to execute policy determined by the president. If the president said 'disarm all ships and surrender to the Cylons' there'd probably be a military coup. But if the president said 'we will value passenger ships over industrial ships', or 'we will allow all ships that wish to leave the fleet to depart', or 'we will not allocate water to the garden ship, since we will rely on extracting oxygen from ice' or even 'the military will operate within this strict tylium budget, and all remaining fuel will be apportioned to civilian ships to ensure they are always able to jump', those are all vital survival decisions that do not fall inside the military's remit.

There are very important reasons the military does not set policy. When the people who decide on policy are also the people who have all the guns, they tend to become self-serving. Separation of powers also enforces a hierarchy of responsibility. And when the people whose job it is to destroy the enemy are in charge of the people, the people tend to become the enemy.

The military does not automatically make good (or even utilitarian) decisions. They are by necessity specialists in a narrow but important range of choices. They must be subservient to a civilian authority in order to isolate incentives. If the path to controlling all the guns is also the path to making all the decisions, you're ****ed. But if the path to holding all the guns involves abandoning key decisions, you have the foundation of a functioning decisionmaking system.

 

Offline General Battuta

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To get really BSG here imagine the admiral deciding 'our priority will be to establish a Tylium refinery to fuel our warships and to launch salvage and reconnaissance missions into the colonies. There is nothing to be gained by abandoning them.' That's a solid military decision, but you have to have a president to make the bigger decision of 'no, we are going to abandon the colonies, we are going to set out for deep space, and we are going to have babies.'

e: You have to have a president to order the admiral to cease SAR for a lost pilot and move on, because no matter how talented that pilot is, or how deeply entrenched the military code of 'no one gets left behind', the fleet has bigger problems. Etc etc.

 

Offline QuakeIV

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Yeah I'll agree with that, I have no particular liking for military dictatorships, I was mainly trying to argue that there aren't all that many decisions available for the civilians to make other than keep running and keep the warships going.  As you have pointed out there is still plenty they can do, which is a good point.  However generally you would expect the military guys to have a better concept of what fights are winnable, so they would generally be the ones saying 'yeah we are out of here' rather than the civilians.  Yes they might need to be told to abandon a SAR mission, but I'd note that generally speaking thats not the job of the civilian administration so much as other parts of the fleet command structure.  Occasionally people need a bap on the head to keep them focused.  On the other-other hand, they don't really have anything resembling a full military command structure.  They have a single battlegroups worth of captain up to admiral types, which is way below what you would usually need in order to keep things organized in the long term.  You could point to cases of US admirals in ww2 going totally off the rails and running off with their battle groups, leaving their landing and supply ships behind to get murdered by the japanse.  That sort of head bapping generally has to come from outside of the battlegroup.  Indeed the show does a pretty good job of showing organization totally breaking down at the top of the fleet command structure over the course of the series.

Spoiler:
For instance when they realise that Adama's bestie is a cylon infiltrator and then he gets to keep his job.  For me that was the moment of total collapse.

e:  Having re-read this a couple times I think I am at length coming around to the idea that the civilians would actually probably need to be the ones to deliver the afore-mentioned 'stay focused' reprimands.
« Last Edit: September 29, 2018, 11:08:07 am by QuakeIV »

 

Offline Woolie Wool

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There are a huge number of decisions that civilians can make, many of which military personnel are incapable of making effectively. People still have to produce food and all the various other things the fleet and its people need. People still have to take care of their families, maintain the ships, conduct business, live out their lives. Who produces what, when, and how much? How is it distributed? What laws or codes of conduct exist? What will we eat? How will we obtain it? Where will people live? How will they adapt wherever they have to live to be more suitable as a home? These things still matter even in a BSG or Exile type situation.

You have this idea that life has "NPCs", people with no interiority who just disappear into the background when the heroes take the stage. There are no NPCs among real humans. Something like the BSG fleet isn't a military convoy, it's a mobile nation. People live there.
16:46   Quanto   ****, a mosquito somehow managed to bite the side of my palm
16:46   Quanto   it itches like hell
16:46   Woolie   !8ball does Quanto have malaria
16:46   BotenAnna   Woolie: The outlook is good.
16:47   Quanto   D:

"did they use anesthetic when they removed your sense of humor or did you have to weep and struggle like a tiny baby"
--General Battuta

 

Offline Mito [PL]

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I doubt any high-ranking military officer would be dumb enough to decide that indirectly destroying what remains of humanity through really dumb decisions is a definitely good way to go. I mean, how can such a person not notice that both the military and civilians are in the same mess and without proper coordination none of them will survive?
Also, when compared to BSG, situation in Exile is just far more simple, at least for people like Adm. Caine - there's no taking home back, no survivors left behind in Sol, and the only thing that counts is the Fleet.

Besides, wasn't the idea of Exile Fleet actually originating from military? I played the campaign and read the fiction ect. but that was a long time ago, pls remind me.
How do you kill a hydra?

You starve it to death.

 

Offline Macielos

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Besides, wasn't the idea of Exile Fleet actually originating from military? I played the campaign and read the fiction ect. but that was a long time ago, pls remind me.

The main initiative came from the military, but the civilian authorities also played a major part. In fact, when Fleetmaster Tessandras alerted ORS about Sathanas armada and introduced the idea of abandoning Sol, ORS High Command refused because they believed Sol must be defended at all costs. Only Fleetmaster Caliphtys truly saw that Terran home system is lost, so he prepared the Exodus as a contingency plan and began executing it in secret. He closely cooperated in this with High Magistrate Al-Zardari, head of ORS government. When High Fleetmaster Glenzmann was killed at Europa, Caliphtys took command and redirected all remaining resources to the Exodus.

 

Offline Woolie Wool

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I've decided to give this another go to get more FRED ideas for Legion, and I recently finished "Overwhelming", which I think is getting near the end of the campaign. The first several missions were definitely the best, with a much more coherent sense of what was at stake (mandatory war crimes aside), and "Crossing the Red Sea" was an excellent mission I'll remember for a long time.

However, I still can't relate to or care about the Exile fleet or the ORS at all. Wingmen's actions and dialogue do not flow from motivations or personality, but what sort of canned character type they are--Harper is the Reasonable Authority Figure, Fives is the Precocious Energetic Kid, the Muslim guy is The Muslim Guy and never says anything unless he can work Allah into it somehow. The terrorist mission was so absurd it has made me vow to never again put "_____ does not negotiate with terrorists" in anything I write because for once Command decided to act on that princple--and got 800 civilians killed. Woooo! Characters don't really seem affected emotionally by the Shivans and all the terrible things that have happened, not even Fives, who, mind you is supposed to be sixteen ****ing years old. He lost his entire family during the fall of Sol but apparently his thoughts of seeing a subspace tunnel as he left Sol forever with everything he has ever known in ruins is "this is cool". Seriously? Who even are these people? What do they believe in? What do they value? Am I supposed to get all that from fiction viewer sequences with the Whatevermasters I've never met and have no investment in talking at each other? The "r*tarded shipmaster" only appears to talk strangely because he's seemingly the only character in the entire campaign who isn't a prick. Instead he's got the sort of dry matter-of-fact tone you'd get in any average FreeSpace mod that makes no pretensions of being "deep".

And even the mission design started reverting, after the transfer to the Ironclad, towards the sort of repetitive, bomber spam that blemished Shadow Genesis, made worse by several missions that put you in the pilot of the truly godawful Encantona, a fighter so poor I replaced it with the Apollo and the missions became considerably easier. But I'm on break and running out of time, so I'll get to the real biggest problem with this campaign--the themes--later.

Sure looks pretty, though.
16:46   Quanto   ****, a mosquito somehow managed to bite the side of my palm
16:46   Quanto   it itches like hell
16:46   Woolie   !8ball does Quanto have malaria
16:46   BotenAnna   Woolie: The outlook is good.
16:47   Quanto   D:

"did they use anesthetic when they removed your sense of humor or did you have to weep and struggle like a tiny baby"
--General Battuta

 

Offline Woolie Wool

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Exile Critique Part the Second, or Why the Shivans are Right This Time

Exile may have flat characters and often contrived dialogue and scenarios, but to me the really infuriating thing is the things it has to say. I'm not sure how many of these themes were intentional, but it doesn't really matter because they're there, they will affect players, and too many writers ignore the implications of what they are writing. So here we go!

Authoritarianism
The movie Judgment at Nuremberg has a famous speech from the presiding justice over the Nuremberg tribunals, Judge Dan Haywood, who says this to the Nazis when they claim they committed their atrocities for the good of the German nation:

Quote
There are those in our own country too who today speak of the 'protection of country,' of 'survival'. A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult!

Exile's narrative could not be more opposed to this way of thinking if it tried. The player's interests, the interests of his or her comrades, the interests of the Exodus fleet, and the interests of humanity at large are absolutely identified with the ORS and it's "fleetmasters" (BTW, if your faction is supposed to have rebelled against Earth because an oppressive military regime, new ranks that resemble the SS's -fuhrer officer ranks aren't a good look). At no point is it suggested that the ORS high command or any member thereof might be wrong, self-serving, corrupt, or incompetent, even when they do obviously incompetent, irresponsible, or outright evil things like the case of the ORS' deliberate provocation of the terrorist hijackers (who were not even given the dignity of telling the player what they demand, which for terrorists is rather important), after they had warned FightMaster Sledge Buttscream or whatever his name is what they were going to do if approached twice, on screen. Instead the terrorist leader is a cackling demented sociopath who freely boasts of not having a conscience, because defying lawful authority is all but explicitly evil in Exileverse.

Meanwhile, the player and wingmen are afforded no agency even within the limited authority they have as pilots. Fives questions, very gently, the behavior of ORS high command for two lines before immediately being silenced. Is there a fiction viewer entry concerning his feelings and doubts? They might be more interesting than all these ThighMasters foreshadowing furiously at each other.

Ends-centered reasoning
You will never hear somebody ask if a particular action or policy is worth the risks or costs in Exile, or what is becoming of the Exodus fleet from having "keep running" and "kill Shivans" as its only motivations. To Judge Haywood's question, the ORS seems to respond "as whatever, we don't care." But isn't the role of the Shivans in the FS-verse to get rid of civilizations who fall into that trap, and protect other civilizations from being dominated, destroyed, or corrupted by them? In that case, does the Exodus fleet deserve to survive? The GTA won the Great War by letting go of militarist paranoia and violent utilitarianism and embracing an alien and formerly hostile people as friends, learning from them, and growing with them (as for the Second Great War, the GTVA lost, and most mod authors seem to forget this). The subspace trick wasn't really the important part, the fact that they had to work with, not against, the Vasudans to figure it out, was. The ORS can't even trust their Earth counterparts in the Exodus Fleet, and with the way they withhold information from the EF, if I were with them I wouldn't trust the Rim either.

Come back later for part 3, where I ramble on about the Shivans.
16:46   Quanto   ****, a mosquito somehow managed to bite the side of my palm
16:46   Quanto   it itches like hell
16:46   Woolie   !8ball does Quanto have malaria
16:46   BotenAnna   Woolie: The outlook is good.
16:47   Quanto   D:

"did they use anesthetic when they removed your sense of humor or did you have to weep and struggle like a tiny baby"
--General Battuta

 

Offline Woolie Wool

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Bug War: Exile and the Shivans

The imagery and themes surrounding the Shivans (not so much the Shivan ships or organisms themselves, that's just aesthetics) are the secret sauce that makes FreeSpace a special game, distinct from many, many other shooty shooty bang bang military space operas that came before and after, especially in the space sim genre. This style of setting and storytelling has traditionally pushed a narrative and worldview where the universe exists for the taking by humans, who must overcome various forms of Scary Dogmatic Aliens or similarly scary and dogmatic human factions to become worthy of being a true space empire of rugged space frontiersmen. Wing Commander plays this narrative 100% straight, but FreeSpace? Not so much, and I think the fact that FreeSpace not only deviates from but actively condemns such a view of space exploration (a subject I keep meaning to write an essay about), through things like the Ancient monologues, the futility and pointlessness of the Terran-Vasudan War, and all the mythological and theological imagery surrounding the Shivans, etc. Consider Capella in the light of all that religious Great Destroyer stuff. The Shivans rolled up to Capella with 80 juggernauts and hundreds if not thousands of warships, blew Capella up, let the GTVA run away and hide, and walked away victorious. For all the GTVA or Sol knows, they could have 800 or 80,000 or n+1 more juggernauts. They are seemingly timeless and limitless. If they are not divine, they might as well be. Killing them only costs them time, and they have ages beyond measure. Sure, the Sol factions might not know that, but the narrative should. But the game takes the ORS' position completely for granted to such a degree that it feels like propaganda for itself.

Because that's really what's at the heart of Exile--this propagandistic, bombastic, Independence Day/Starship Troopers (the book, since it lacks self-awareness) crassness that creeps, in sometimes quite insidious ways, into nearly every aspect of the campaign. FreeSpace's Terrans were often morally ambiguous, sometimes cruel, but Exile puts you into that sadism, and normalizes it, and makes it feel like there is no possible alternative. The Shivans aren't half as awesome and terrifying as they are in FS2 or even Inferno, they're just bugs, splatters on your canopy. The support ship urges you on to kill some Shivans with a joy that seems absurd for someone who could be killed by Shivans in an instant with no possibility of self-defense. After the genuinely scary and fun battles of the first few missions, the Shivans slowly settle into their preferred tactic in Exile: throwing wings of bombers onesie-twosie at ship formations while you order your wing to cover you while you zip from one end of the convoy to the other like a murderous ping-pong ball. They can keep this up for five, six, seven minutes at a stretch. The early missions were long--too long--but they had a lot more choreographed story setpieces and tricky warship setups instead of long stretches of bombergrind, and they had the shock annihilation of the entire Sol system as their backdrop, so they never felt like the Shivans were stupid. The presentation of the ORS as vaguely fascistic butchers and the EF as overtly fascistic butchers, who exhibit none of the wonder, fear, and curiosity seen in the original games and, from their emotions and behavior, seem only vaguely aware that Sol has been destroyed and they're running for their lives. It's almost like a big violent vacation, and Terran characters refuse to learn any lessons or draw any meaning from what is going on, because they're only here for the explosions, or they are Fives and have had their brain surgically removed and replaced with a database of cute precocious kid tropes.

The Terran-on-Terran conflicts are much the same way--the Warhammer 40k Effect where brutal, stupid, vainglorious soldiers are made into heroes by the alternative being "savages" who kill people to collect Blood for the Blood God and Skulls for the Skull Throne because they "have no conscience" and will just as soon impale you as shake your hand. The giant slaughter aboard the civilian liner is narrated by marines who mostly report how many people they're killing. However corny those radio interjections might be in Blue Planet, it's all worth it if it prevents the senseless, preventable massacre (why not pay ransom? Make political concessions to EF nationals? Release prisoners? Just take your L and go home? You don't have to do this!) of 800 people from sounding like . The EF and ORS' former war is meaningless no matter how many layers of lore you have because the characters and factions have no consciousness of history. Two interchangeable Terran armies-possessing-states with similar-looking ships, similar weapons and tactics, and a uniform culture of paranoia, patriotism, and casual brutality. It could easily be a story told by the EF and almost exactly the same things would happen except that the ratio of Earth to Rim ships would be reversed and the ranks would not be a constant source of narm in every conversation (and of course all these people are ~*motivated*~ and love to stand on ceremony so the master-bation is nearly constant).

Playing Exile, especially during the really "edgy" scenes, to be frank, gives me some seriously creepy space-fascist vibes. If it were a novel series in the actual FreeSpace universe, it would probably top Sirius', Regulus', and Polaris' bestseller lists of 2366. Endorsed by the Neo-Terran Office for the Preservation of Terran Culture for its display of firm Terran courage, duty, and martial values. In fact it's making wheels turn in my head as to how to portray Boschism in Legion, so as for research it seems like my playthrough has been successful in a different sort of way. It also reminds me of how Twist of Fate delivered a very similar feeling, with all its Zod this and Zod that and dragging a 14-year war out to 26 straight years of grinding stalemate leading to the GTD Hades showing up with 71 turrets and glassing Vasuda Prime. If I had finished it, it would have been at least as bad as this, because problems like this are not things you can overcome with better models or tighter mission balancing or more complex scripting. It's a matter of mindset, of wanting the thrill of "dark" content and massive amounts of stuff blowing up without the responsibility, watching Hard Men make Hard Decisions, which are rarely hard except for the extras whose planets get glassed, and nobody cares what they think, anyway. Besides, whether or not your mother or your wife (women in Exile are a walk-on Amazon brigade wing and queer people are a cheap joke about Laporte and Simms that smashes through the fourth wall like the Kool-Aid Man--I wish they hadn't bothered) or your peers or society approves, their voices aren't what counts. Your fleetmaster, shipmaster, wingmaster, and various other people up the chain of command are the ones who make decisions. Jailers of a million hypersleep captives, living out a meaningless charade of fighting an unbeatable enemy to as close as forever as you can get before the last ship blows. People who try to disrupt this obviously barbaric and futile despotism are evil sociopaths with scary black fighters who say "no seriously WE'RE GOING TO KILL THESE PEOPLE if you do not listen to us" and Fleetmaster says "yolo im gonna **** u up either way" and ensures that his will will become reality, no matter how many people die (but it's their fault anyway).

They should envy the dead. They should have some idea of the gravity of what they've lost and how much danger they in. They don't. They don't care. They seem like the sort of person who would make a casual joke about al-Churi not knowing if he can pray towards Mecca anymore, and al-Churi seems like the sort of empty stereotype who would be genuinely amused by that and not just holding back his disgust with polite laughter. Leaving Behind: Shivanation Force, where the faithful will be redeemed after seven years of Nahema/Nephilim pincer respawns. I think it should be seen up to "Crossing the Red Sea" for its sheer scale, spectacle, ships that give big deck guns their FreeSpace due, and missions that make good use of turret artillery and its differences vs. Shivan beams. But it's too long and taxing, even in one act, to casually ingest and impossible to take seriously as a drama. Why shouldn't the Shivans win? If there was ever a defect-strategy hegemon, it's the two regional powers and their huge death fleets, with a fascist Earth thinking it's treading its similarly fascist Rim counterpart under its victorious heel, but really only setting the stage for years of horrible civil war and genocidal atrocities. If the Ancients were guilty, these guys sure as hell are.

Against this hellish and pointless war, in a system with enough resources for two GTVAs put together, where both sides could probably go home tomorrow and still sustain themselves but one's gotta be on top, the merciful Great Destroyers offer rest. A dreamless, fearless, profound sleep where you will never again wonder when the death squads will come knocking. Just gaze into the red light and you will be released F R O M  Y O U R  M O L E C U L A R  B O N D S - -
<TRANSMISSION LOST>
« Last Edit: March 26, 2019, 08:28:28 pm by Woolie Wool »
16:46   Quanto   ****, a mosquito somehow managed to bite the side of my palm
16:46   Quanto   it itches like hell
16:46   Woolie   !8ball does Quanto have malaria
16:46   BotenAnna   Woolie: The outlook is good.
16:47   Quanto   D:

"did they use anesthetic when they removed your sense of humor or did you have to weep and struggle like a tiny baby"
--General Battuta

 

Offline Mito [PL]

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Geez, that made me instinctually check if it isn't the PolDisc board that I have somehow tripped and fell into. It is not.

It's really nice that your posts contain constructive criticism, i.e. problems with characters, mission technicalities, plot criticism, maybe something about cliche factions. I mean, that's what these posts should contain, right? Something to let the developers know what to improve.

But that part about what did the author mean - hah, I'm not even going to try thinking it through, just because. But when it comes to themes, well... opinions are opinions, they're personal. You see a bunch of space fascists traveling with their own pack of frozen slaves, I see a fleet that managed to pack up everything and everyone they possibly could and just about avoid glassing by Shivans, a fleet that runs and fights with the goal of preserving what is remaining of humankind, fighting for the survival of our whole species (which is actually a very human reaction). You see Hard Men making Hard Decisions and not really caring, I see military commanders protecting civilians whenever they can, trying to escape the Shivans and attempting to use available resources as optimally as possible. You see too much bland higher-ups dialogue fiction and not enough personal moral essays, I see the thing that shows us that Hard Men making Hard Decisions are also human and have their weaknesses and concerns. You see a hostage situation where ORS happily acts so that 800 people die and then congratulate you for this, I see a situation where there is lots of shady stuff going on and a there's a decision between (I'm very sorry to say this) having some casualties or losing a thing that singlehandedly allows the fleet to survive at all.
People enjoying simple things while they can, "not caring" about what happened in Sol? I don't think this is out of the ordinary - the human psyche tends to detach from events of such a big weight, and that doesn't mean one can't be somehow happy about the fact he/she survived and that there are other people still around.
Also a technicality - actually it is the FTF/EFN who withhold some important info from ORS (and it was in-mission!) which could have had some really dire consequences if wasn't revealed. Oh, and then they tried to destroy some ORS frigate.
There's also one thing you might want to consider - the Navigators and a certain... outside influence - I don't think you mentioned this anywhere and it's a kind of a big thing in Exile. Besides, have you read the Intel tech entries? There are some interesting details there, too.
Besides, while your fascination with calling things in Exile "fascist" is quite... concerning, I'd want also to address one small detail. Nazis primarily fought other people over settling their domination in the world. Exile Fleet primarily fights Shivans (yes, with a quite important addition of internal conflicts) over the goddamn survival of the whole human species. This, in my opinion, is a large difference in perspectives and goals.
Also, about the "not enough personal moral essays", my stance here is simple. I think the player isn't just some kind of shooty AI that follows orders and nothing more. The player can feel the gravity of the decisions and events in the story and I think constant whining about how everything's bad and how many people are dead would only flatten the experience. It seems like many campaigns, including the original FS1 and FS2, use a similar way of this expression method to the one you can meet in Exile.

And just in case you wanted to again point out that I'm defending this creation only because it's made by "my people": chill, I may be biased, but I'm not that biased. I'm pretty sure I would take a similar stand against parts of the criticism in relation to different campaigns and authors. Also your post titles are on the fun side of clickbait, they're nice! :P
How do you kill a hydra?

You starve it to death.

 

Offline CT27

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I also thought the music was pretty cool in the campaign and fit well.

 

Offline Colt

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    • Steam
I also thought the music was pretty cool in the campaign and fit well.
Agreed. Was just watching Oboe Shoes Games' review of Tom Clancy's HAWX when I recognized the theme being the one that played during the Uranus mission (called Ready Aurora by Tom Salta). While I really enjoyed the campaign from start to finish, that exchange at the end of that mission was for me the most memorable part (out of many!) in Exile, especially because of the music choice.

 

Offline CT27

  • 211
I believe that Exile Act 1 ended in January.

In April of that year could Caliphtys pull an April Fool's Day prank on his pilots and announce, "I know we planned to mass produce the Heretic interceptor, but instead of that we decided to bring back the Encantona for you all!"?

;)

 
ok
im still trapped on a shame mission i going to kill myzelf 5 times becouse you goys wont fix it
ingame ofcourse

 

Offline DefCynodont119

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    • Steam
Just finished this, I'm not good at writing reviews for things so I'll keep it short:

Narrative/Writing: ehh, to be 100% honest, it didn't feel natural- the pilots seemed overly jock-ish in situations where any other person would either maintain professionalism and/or be silently terrified.  Overuse of F word. (Protip: swears lose meaning the more they are used both IRL and in writing.) Some of command's early decisions seemed over-the-top. Also I could barely stop myself from shooting down Nelson.   :beamz:


Ships/Weapons: The tech actually felt like it was derivative of GTA stuff but in a different direction then the GTVA went, and that's good.


Gameplay: Lots of escort missions, which is fine- The Mining mission and the subspace scanning ones were my favorites.
(despite the fact I never played Homeworld) The Mining mission gave me real Homeworld vibes, I enjoyed that; although you should make it more clear that the turrets are placed at the player current location, and please add a checkpoint after the mining is finished and the factory ship is leaving.


Bugs/issues: the fact that I can only use the exact 3.8.0 build and none or the nightlies work is pretty frustrating- and in the mission where we first find the Knossos the transport got disabled and the mission went into an Unending/Incomplete state. (Protip: disabled ships can brake escort missions if not prevented or otherwise accounted for)


Effects: Loved the weapon effects, the railguns looked sick.


Music: The Darius remix of "Darkside" means everything to me right now.



Conclusion: Pretty good mod, but it has some weakpoints.


NOTE: Someone needs to convince Darius to remix the entire Freespace (1 & 2) soundtrack.  :lol:
My gift from Freespace to Cities Skylines:  http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=639891299

 

Offline Su-tehp

  • Devil in the Deep Blue
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NOTE: Someone needs to convince Darius to remix the entire Freespace (1 & 2) soundtrack.  :lol:

Slightly OT, but I heartily agree with this. :yes: :nod: :yes:
REPUBLICANO FACTIO DELENDA EST

Creator of the Devil and the Deep Blue campaign - Current Story Editor of the Exile campaign

"Let my people handle this, we're trained professionals. Well, we're semi-trained, quasi-professionals, at any rate." --Roy Greenhilt,
The Order of the Stick

"Let´s face it, we Freespace players may not be the most sophisticated of gaming freaks, but we do know enough to recognize a heap of steaming crap when it´s right in front of us."
--Su-tehp, while posting on the DatDB internal forum

"The meaning of life is that in the end you always get screwed."
--The Catch 42 Expression, The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast

 

Offline Nyctaeus

  • The Slavic Engineer
  • Moderator
  • 212
  • My "FS Ships" folder is 582gb.
    • Minecraft
    • Exile
Thank you, guys. I know ItDW needs some small update, some chatter sucks and some things needs polishing. I plan to take care about this when I get some more free time.
Exile | Shadow Genesis | Inferno | Series Resurrecta  | DA Profile | P3D Profile

Proud owner of NyctiShipyards. Remember - Nyx will fix it!

All of my assets including models, textures, skyboxes, effects may be used under standard CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

 

Offline DefCynodont119

  • 210
  • Ascended GTSC-Faustus Artist
    • Steam
NOTE: Someone needs to convince Darius to remix the entire Freespace (1 & 2) soundtrack.  :lol:

Slightly OT, but I heartily agree with this. :yes: :nod: :yes:

It's not off topic because that was the most important part of my post.   :D

Really tho, Darius is incredible.
My gift from Freespace to Cities Skylines:  http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=639891299

 
NOTE: Someone needs to convince Darius to remix the entire Freespace (1 & 2) soundtrack.  :lol:

Slightly OT, but I heartily agree with this. :yes: :nod: :yes:

It's not off topic because that was the most important part of my post.   :D

Really tho, Darius is incredible.

That sounds more like an insult to the team actually...