Not quite. So, in the original release, everything was just vanilla weapons. (Well, some of them were altered by BP, but you know what I mean.) This included green Prom Rs, as the starting weapon. When I started modifying assets to make them more HoL-appropriate, I eventually decided to create variants of all the weapons that didn't have red, orange, or yellow effects. (Well, except the Akheton, but nobody cares about the Akheton and it's never really used in the campaign. Also I forgot it existed.)
So I made a Hammer of Light variant of the Prom R, which shoots red bolts. You are supposed to be, by default, equipped with this red Prom R in all of the first seven missions of the campaign -- up until you retrieve the supplies containing Mekhus from the Revelation and Witness in Mission 7, "The Bitter Scroll".
Now, in the version I released last month, I left the original, non-HoL variants of all those weapons -- including the green Prom R -- as options in the mission loadouts. I figured giving the player extra options couldn't be a bad thing. In retrospect, this was a stupid decision -- it just creates pointless confusion, especially since I'm not even sure it's possible to tell the variants apart in the weapon select screen.
So, in the version that I uploaded (or at least tried to upload) a couple days ago, I fixed that -- the mission loadout options only give you access to HoL variants.
But for some reason the version you guys are getting is different from the version I uploaded. (Both times. Borked loadouts involving Akhetons were never part of anything I uploaded.) It sounds like what's happening is that my HoL weapon variants are missing from the mission loadouts for some reason, which is why they only appear in the red-alert missions -- in those cases they're forced in by the mission's red-alert status. As for why they'd be substituted with Akhetons...my guess would be that it's because you're required to have at least one primary weapon, and...maybe the Akheton comes first alphabetically...?
Based on some other things Mito said, I think what might be going on is that the game is using old mission files, from the original release. (But maybe only partially, or something? If the old missions are being used, the weapon variants shouldn't be present in the red-alerts, either. It kind of sounds like the game is trying to mash the two versions of the missions together, but I don't know how or why that would happen.)
For reference, could you guys tell me some other things about the missions you're getting? Specifically, what color are things? All of the HoL ships, from warships to fighters (with the exception of the Bes-class Witness), are supposed to have red glows, rather than the original blue. Which are you seeing? If they're red, are all of the ships red, or is it just the Typhon and Aten, with the others still being blue?
Similarly, what do the blobs from the HoL's turrets look like? They're supposed to start yellow and gradually turn red, as well as having a slightly different texture from the standard blobs. Do they look like that, or do they look like the normal ones? (Or are they starting-yellow-turning-red, but still using the regular textures -- the way they look in the OP's second screenshot? I ask because the different texture was a very late addition, so if you're seeing an intermediate version that might shed light on what's happening.)
I really do apologize for how much a ****show this is. Unfortunately I'm genuinely not sure what's going on here or how to fix it.
Ok, so now that I've had a chance to finish the campaign without the loadout issues, I just want to say that that was some amazing writing and characterization there. Use of the BP soundtracks helped a lot in building atmosphere and emotion, which I've always thought was one of its a singular strong points. Also, the rapid-fire turrets and BP AI profiles really help turn the final few battles into works of art, and I can't believe I've never tried loading a Sekhmet with all Harpoons before, that was a lot of fun.
I did have a few issues, though; the all-Akheton loadout was the biggest, though I didn't realize it was a bug during the first mission and thought it really made for a unique challenge. There were also some occasions on which ship or subsys guardian would have been advised, like when I (actually pretty easily) disarmed the Orion in the jump corridor before it opened its broadside
and got to sit there for a minute or two before noticing it had borked. (I'd also recommend subsys-guardianing the player's weapons/sensor/engine systems on missions where support is disallowed, and comms on all missions because the dialogue is so important to the story.) Also, on a later mission, I got the order to retreat before I'd finished offing my traitorous wingmen
, which made some of the later dialogue a bit weird.
So, when's the sequel coming out? I want to talk with this Adabraxis Clade fellow myself. Story suggestion: Given that you're using the BP mod anyhow, why not borrow a bit of their story and make Father Runihara a Nagari-sensitive who's been picking up Shivan transmissions? He wouldn't have to be a full-blown Laporte-style agent, but a few hallucinations would go a long way to explaining his "prophet" status and why he was free of the sort of qualms many other HoL faithful had about firing on the Shivans.
Right. So, Mantle was envisioned as a...probably something like forty-mission-long campaign. What I released was just the first section -- it was never intended to be the complete story; I just released it the way I did because I wanted to put something out and it made for a decent stopping-point.
Now, as for what the rest of it was going to be like...
The story picks up with the Apocalypse and its crew in the system designated "Eden". After a few days of regrouping, Alpha wing is sent scouting. Deeper in the system, they find a debris field -- the remains of a planet. Investigating energy signatures, they come upon another Knossos device -- heavily damaged -- and two groups of primitive alien craft engaged in battle. Fearing that the second Knossos will be destroyed, potentially trapping them in-system, Amenophis orders the alien ships wiped out.
They report back, and Runihara sends out some more scouting missions to capture one of the alien craft so they can gather data. It turns out that the aliens are a species of quadrupedal reptiles who live in the debris field -- it used to be their homeworld, but it was destroyed hundreds of years ago during a huge conflict. The two warring factions are still carrying on their battle in the ruins.
The aliens are quite technologically backward compared to Terrans and Vasudans. They have no subspace capability, no shields, no energy weapons -- just rocket engines and mass drivers, basically. Runihara announces that these aliens must be blasphemers, and that the Shivans brought the Apocalypse here to destroy them.
The HoL launch an extermination campaign against the hapless aliens. It goes very easily, even after the two alien factions stop fighting and join forces. The only hiccup for the HoL occurs when the aliens manage to ambush and capture the Witness (that's the Bes-class freighter). Regardless, the Apocalypse wipes out the last of the alien habitats, secures the Knossos, and jumps through.
A tiny number of the aliens evaded detection, however, and they launch a strike against the Apocalypse in subspace using a light carrier rigged up with the Witness's subspace drive. But the HoL kill them anyway.
So the Apocalypse makes it back out into the next system, which, surprise surprise, is full of more Shivans. Including the same Lucifer that was chasing them before! So basically, the Eden system was this inaccessible island with only two nodes out, both of which were blocked by nonfunctional Knossos gates. But outside of it, everything is interconnected.
Anyway, they fight the Shivans some more. They start capturing and retrofitting Shivan fighters to replace their own destroyed craft -- then Shivan cruisers, then corvettes. Eventually they actually manage to attack and disable the Redeemer (the Lucifer-class), and then they gut the thing and stick its shields and armor and beams onto the Apocalypse.
They dick around with the Shivans some more, and go through a couple more systems. They run into some Sathanases, run away from them, and -- having hastily jumped through a subspace node -- they find themselves in the outer reaches of the Sol system, with the Shivans nowhere to be found.
Naturally, the HoL proceeds to murder everyone in sight. This goes on for a while. Amenophis starts to lose faith a bit. Maybe Dakarai dies or something? I dunno. Anyway, the Apocalypse blows up everything and then glasses Earth. This is basically the final combat mission.
Then -- well, I didn't have this planned out all that specifically, but the idea is that the player is meant to think the HoL are obviously delusional, and that they're spinning this whole grand tale about how the Shivans are shepherding them around when clearly they're just trying to kill the HoL like they try to kill everyone. Somehow or another, this idea would be driven home in the aftermath of Earth's destruction -- maybe with Amenophis renouncing the HoL.
Then a huge armada of Sathanas juggernauts shows up out of nowhere and starts talking to them, telling them that they've passed the test and the Shivans are going to take them into their fold.
So the campaign could have ended there, with a huge orgy of destruction followed by a stupid twist. There's another idea I came up with, though, in an attempt to make the whole thing at least somewhat thematically cohesive...at the cost of being an even stupider twist than the last one. In that version most of the same events would happen, but spooky stuff would start showing up during the last combat mission. You'd finish the mission, but then you'd somehow be unavoidably killed, and the mission would reset -- but the characters would remember the first attempt. This would happen a few times, and the whole thing would be really surreal. And then eventually the Shivans would show up and start talking.
The Shivans would reveal that things aren't quite as they seem. See, during the second-to-last mission of the released section -- the one where you're escorting the Apocalypse to the node while all the bombers ever are trying to kill you -- the Shivans had actually jumped all their capital ships in at close range and disabled the Apocalypse, along with all the fighters and other ships. Then they captured all the HoL pilots and crew, brought them aboard the Lucifer-class, and stuck them in a simulation where they basically let the HoL do everything they wanted to do, in an attempt to show them how empty and pointless it was. It didn't take at first, but they've been in the simulator for years -- running through the same series of events, over and over.
See, the Shivans in general have the goal of destroying all life, albeit in a somewhat roundabout way -- but the ones in Gethsemane are a breakaway faction, who no longer share the values of their brethren. They've decided to recruit the Hammer of Light (for some reason) as a guerilla force to use against the main Shivan faction, and did all that stuff with the simulation in order to teach them what they should value.
The HoL finally comes around and accepts the offer, probably. Except Runihara, I guess. He probably dies somehow. Also maybe there were some people who died during the later parts of the campaign but are actually alive because it was a simulation? Or vice versa? I dunno.
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So that's what it was going to be like. You can probably see why I'm not super invested in finishing the campaign: it never really goes anywhere. All the stuff with the warring aliens, and then the HoL starting to use Shivan tech, is obviously about the HoL symbolically becoming the Shivans -- taking up the mantle, if you will. But I struggled to fit that into any kind of larger thematic framework. After all, the HoL becoming Shivans is a fine idea, but it's pretty one-note -- that alone isn't enough to sustain a whole campaign, not without some kind of punchline to it.
The whole destroying-Earth thing was conceived as a sort of black-comedy type deal -- "those wacky doomsday cultists"! But that didn't fit the tone of the story all that well, and over time I kept trying to figure out how to give it some kind of actual meaning. I didn't really want the story to just be "the HoL get really good at killing and kill a whole bunch of people, the end". But the best I could come up with was that nonsense about rebel Shivans teaching them the meaning of friendship by showing them how unfulfilling simulated genocide was.
Oh, and I was also sort of wanting to incorporate this into my larger ideas for the FS universe, which don't involve Earth getting suddenly glassed by random Hammer of Light lunatics from nowhere. That was part of the reason for the simulation thing.
Anyway. Maybe there'll be some interesting discussion of this. I think the alien arc was a pretty solid concept -- a reenactment of FS1 with the HoL as the Lucifer fleet. I had plans for what ships I was going to use, too. And the whole "stealing all the Shivans' stuff and retrofitting it" bit would have been fun from a gameplay perspective -- getting cool new loot is something I really enjoy in FS campaigns. But I don't know if I could have spun it all together into a satisfying story, so I think maybe it's best Mantle stays where it is.
Oh, and clearing up one quick thing: I'm not sure if I made it clear in the campaign itself or not (well, obviously I didn't make it clear enough), but Abdaraxus Clade isn't a person. It's a small group of Vasudan engineering savants that serve aboard the Apocalypse. The idea is that some Vasudans innately have these bursts of crazy high-level skill in certain areas, and so you get stuff where a Vasudan will go into an engineering trance and then end up with some awesome new piece of technology, or an unreasonably quick repair job. I thought it was a cool idea, and also a good way to handwave how easily the Apocalypse seems to deal with technology and logistics.
I was even thinking of trying to incorporate it into gameplay -- have Amenophis be a battle savant, who could do this bullet-time thing. I didn't get very far trying to implement it, though.
(double post sry)
... and now for the conclusion:
Gameplay notes on Mission 13 and 14:
Mission 13 could really benefit from a less swarmy approach to both sides, simply so that you don't get as many "run-away gap"-scenarios, where the difference between the player's forces combined power and the enemy forces combined power suddenly widens. Yes, these are the final mission and both sides put everything on the line but if you can sell that without getting yourself into mechanical trouble that's enough.
Mission 14 plays considerably better once battle moves away from the Knossos, however the fighters you do not command never actually do that - with the bombers you can actually help youself a bit because you can order them guard the Revelation or the Apocalypse.
The campaign as is very much a gem in need of polish - both in terms of balancing and narrative. But I encourage you to keep going, there is start of promising style here.
On the balancing side, I already pointed out a few things - and maybe looking at more in-depth at how other campaigns do their balancing, will provide more context.
In terms of narrative, I think you are working with a quite limited toolset here. You are probably going to benefit a lot from trying to expand your pool of references when it comes to the protrail of the Hammer of Light.
If you want to do an Apotheosis-story, maybe use the Labours of Hercules (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labours_of_Hercules) as foil. It's not unprecedented to interpred the contents of labour as "the perfection of man" in reinissance and neo-classical reworkings... or maybe take some of the Dionysus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysus)-mythology for inspiriation... just a thought