[NGTM-1R]

My visions were basically revolving around ETAK-derived codebreaking and the GTVA's plans to win the battle at Gamma Draconis this time, and were for:

A GTVA probing attack, testing new tactics and weapons against the Shivans via the use of a Knossos portal, so that the situation is somewhat controllable.

The response to a Shivan incursion, starting with the system defenses trying to contain the initial strike, stepping up to the first out-system responders as the system defenses start to fall, and finally moving viewpoint to the main GTVA response. It would end with a node collapse, although my plans varied from simply collapsing the Shivan entry point to a limited offensive, in which the strength of the GTVA response crushes local Shivan forces and the GTVA is able to gain a system and collapse the nodes leading deeper into Shivan space.

[Lorric]

I wonder if I am alone/rare in thinking this, but I wouldn't mind a campaign where it could be roughly a dozen missions or something, and all of them are to fulfil a single objective. I know that's not what your driving at Battuta, but imagine 12 or so missions just to say destroy a single battle group, or secure the area around a planet. Draw it out and give it a story, make it seem like you're up against a wily enemy general, and both forces are being whittled down to the bare bones.

[General Battuta]

I wonder if I am alone/rare in thinking this, but I wouldn't mind a campaign where it could be roughly a dozen missions or something, and all of them are to fulfil a single objective. I know that's not what your driving at Battuta, but imagine 12 or so missions just to say destroy a single battle group, or secure the area around a planet. Draw it out and give it a story, make it seem like you're up against a wily enemy general, and both forces are being whittled down to the bare bones.

Play Vassago's Dirge!

[crizza]

I wonder if I am alone/rare in thinking this, but I wouldn't mind a campaign where it could be roughly a dozen missions or something, and all of them are to fulfil a single objective. I know that's not what your driving at Battuta, but imagine 12 or so missions just to say destroy a single battle group, or secure the area around a planet. Draw it out and give it a story, make it seem like you're up against a wily enemy general, and both forces are being whittled down to the bare bones.

Play Vassago's Dirge!

A realy great campaign
Would be nice if you do the 3missions/1 pilot thing, but going even further, like jumping between terran and vasudans pilots or being a vasudan pilot alltogether.

[NGTM-1R]

That's not really hard; the first idea I mentioned had, at one point, a plan to use the standardized interface against you by dumping you in a Shivan fighter as a Shivan pilot without warning.

I actually built the mission.

[bigchunk1]

VD's a good campaign, but sometimes I think people forget what other campaigns have been released.

A pretty decent minimalist campaign which has been put out there, probably one of my favorites for its simplicity and fun, is a 5 mission campaign called dreams. It begins set in the freespace universe and takes you on a short and fun trip into the unknown.


Another mini campaign based on the freespace universe which was released around the same time and was pretty solid was called Uncharted territory. It stations you aboard a light carrier charged with safeguarding a scientist team on their way to investigate far off shivan infested regions.

Both campaigns for the most part use entirely retail data and largely focus on retail style gameplay (from what I remember).

[Sushi]

A couple of things that I would love to do, given the dreamland time:

1. Re-do FS1. Same story, missions updated to take advantage of new AI, physics, and mission scale possibilities.
2. A "vignettes" campaign. Lots of single missions (or mini-arcs) completely separate from each other, not even necessarily by the same author, exploring a wide variety of themes and events. (I actually started this at one point, and wrote one mission, but for various reasons never released it or made more).

[Snail]

2. A "vignettes" campaign. Lots of single missions (or mini-arcs) completely separate from each other, not even necessarily by the same author, exploring a wide variety of themes and events. (I actually started this at one point, and wrote one mission, but for various reasons never released it or made more).

Wow that would be cool.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

That's not really hard; the first idea I mentioned had, at one point, a plan to use the standardized interface against you by dumping you in a Shivan fighter as a Shivan pilot without warning.

I actually built the mission.

I did that too once. I had an utterly boring mission against the NTF, so toward the end, *bang*, the player is in a shivan fighter attacking some SOC operatives in the nebula.
I also did this in my never-released demo mission, although you remain in the same mission area.

EDIT

1. Re-do FS1. Same story, missions updated to take advantage of new AI, physics, and mission scale possibilities.

Its not that hard actually, I sorta did that with the FS2 campaign when I was bored once, basically switching the AI profile to my mod's, and rebalanced afterwards, sometimes adding a ship or more wings.
Slaying Ravana and game of tag are still kind frustrating though. And the stealth fighter mission is unwinnable for some reason, although since I modified the missions out of the then-extracted-and-available-right-away retail missions, it might be an old bug against which the MVP missions have a failsafe or fix or something.

2. A "vignettes" campaign. Lots of single missions (or mini-arcs) completely separate from each other, not even necessarily by the same author, exploring a wide variety of themes and events. (I actually started this at one point, and wrote one mission, but for various reasons never released it or made more).

Wow that would be cool.

+1

[Molybdenum]

2. A "vignettes" campaign. Lots of single missions (or mini-arcs) completely separate from each other, not even necessarily by the same author, exploring a wide variety of themes and events. (I actually started this at one point, and wrote one mission, but for various reasons never released it or made more).

Awesome. I could see how this could work out with many FREDers contributing. If only everyone agreed on using a certain modpack and theme.

One of my ideas for a campaign featured switching the player narrative between pilots on different sides of a conflict. For example flying one mission as a GTVA pilot and then switching over to the NTFs perspective for a few missions. Since both characters would be placed in the same spectrum of conflict the player would often find himself attempting to undo the damage caused by his own actions in previous missions. Such a narrative has it's dwonsides it creates the possibility to flesh out the conflict far more then conventional one-sided storytelling.

[Goober5000]

1. Re-do FS1. Same story, missions updated to take advantage of new AI, physics, and mission scale possibilities.

This was pretty much already done in "What If - Another Great War".

2. A "vignettes" campaign. Lots of single missions (or mini-arcs) completely separate from each other, not even necessarily by the same author, exploring a wide variety of themes and events. (I actually started this at one point, and wrote one mission, but for various reasons never released it or made more).

Shrouding the Light: Origins is kind of like this.

[Sushi]

1. Re-do FS1. Same story, missions updated to take advantage of new AI, physics, and mission scale possibilities.

This was pretty much already done in "What If - Another Great War".

Yes, but it wasn't done my way.

[Ace]

One thing I've always sort of thought of as a conclusion type storyline (which BWO if ever released was supposed to hint at it being the GTVA/Sol Reunion to prep for this) was to follow some of the early FS2 promo plot details.

Basically it's been a generation since reunification with Sol. The Shivans haven't been seen or heard from in over 30 years. The GTVA has insanely fortified the nodes that directly lead out of their core space and have sent relatively self-sufficient task forces for scouting the Knossos network. All of the ships have returned but one.

You're part of a recon in force sent down the path of this lost ship. The plotline basically starts as somewhat Apocalypse Now like with the commander of that taskforce going rogue basically arguing along lines of Bosch that the humans and Vasudans can't stand against the Shivans without some form of alliance. You're following more or less their path, seeing the ruins of species that the Ancients built themselves upon, etc. (basically this allows for fighting rogue same faction ships as in the first two games)

The climax of the first act being this CO using a high pulse ETAK signal and detonating a star (using what appears to be a constructed device by the commander based on Knossos technology). This shunts everything to the second act where new nodes have opened and Shivans begin an assault on GTVA space following the routes your fleet took. A major set piece being the destruction of the main fortified node that leads to the core systems and the Shivans sending through a Sathanas fleet that seems poised to detonate several GTVA systems.

As a last ditch effort and the third act, there is a new node discovered that leads to Shivan space. "Shivantown" being a type of dyson grid with dense subspace node formations that they tap for power. (basically the entire system is densely packed with nodes and sneezing wrong changes its configuration)

Using GTI and GTVI information, a modified ETAK to scramble Shivan comms is used and a weapon to detonate the sun (the GTVA's hail marry weapon based on the crazy commander's design) in the dyson grid is deployed (the same tech the rogue commander uses at the end of Act 1). It's a last ditch effort thrown at the weakest point of the Shivans with the hope of forcing them to at least cut them off from the bulk of their forces or make them withdraw.

As for the very ending, well the cycle of extinction and preservation ends with some real conclusions that don't involve a star child and red/green/blue explosions

Things like the dyson grid and some new Shivan supercaps would add in the "basically fighting on spaceship that's more like planetary surface" thing that was hinted at as wanted by Volition employees in a third game. The ships being done in a way that taking out subsystems (reactors for shield sheaths, etc.) by fighters and bombers is crucial for surviving although capships do the killing blow.

[TrashMan]

You making a post FS2 story? But you don't have anytihng definitive yet?

Could be interesting. Heck, I'd freely pass on my story for FoW3 if it will help you. Lord knows it ain't moving.

[TrashMan]

The climax of the first act being this CO using a high pulse ETAK signal and detonating a star (using what appears to be a constructed device by the commander based on Knossos technology).

It took 80 Sathanases over a period of days to cause Capella to go nova. And some ship captain builds a sun-buster????
Methinks you like sun-busting far too much. Also, it's becoming a tiresome trope in sci-fi. Everyone and their grandma can blow up suns.

[General Battuta]

You making a post FS2 story? But you don't have anytihng definitive yet?

Could be interesting. Heck, I'd freely pass on my story for FoW3 if it will help you. Lord knows it ain't moving.

Sure, I'd love to see it.

[Molybdenum]

The plotline basically starts as somewhat Apocalypse Now

I remember toying with the idea of transferring Heart of Darkness into the Freespace setting but I felt it would probably end up feeling corny.

[TrashMan]

You making a post FS2 story? But you don't have anytihng definitive yet?

Could be interesting. Heck, I'd freely pass on my story for FoW3 if it will help you. Lord knows it ain't moving.

Sure, I'd love to see it.

I have a summary file somewhere on my PC. Will try to dig it up once the PC is back from the repair.

[Ace]

The climax of the first act being this CO using a high pulse ETAK signal and detonating a star (using what appears to be a constructed device by the commander based on Knossos technology).

It took 80 Sathanases over a period of days to cause Capella to go nova. And some ship captain builds a sun-buster????
Methinks you like sun-busting far too much. Also, it's becoming a tiresome trope in sci-fi. Everyone and their grandma can blow up suns.

FS is all about executing corny scifi tropes, but doing it decently.

Plus, there is no way of conventionally defeating the Shivans. So it's either a superweapon or giving them a Deathstar type weakness in Shivantown (one structural weak spot a fighter squad can blow up that destroys the whole superstructure).

So both are cheesy tropes. Of course the whole "superweapon fails and fighters have to do it anyway" worked well for Wing Commander 3...

[BengalTiger]

I have a summary file somewhere on my PC. Will try to dig it up once the PC is back from the repair.

ALWAYS have a backup, even if it's done once every 2-3 months.

It's also not a bad idea to create a backup after spending a single weekend if there's a lot of work done (such as balancing a species or two...).

I personally didn't learn this the hard way, but working a couple years on something only to be a couple years behind due to an HDD failure does not seem nice.