[Guthan]

Hey, Im a newbie freespace 2/wing commander fan. When I saw this mod, I really appreciate the work that you guys did.

Heres just a suggestion for the SOC: It would be really neat if you guys can implement the well, in Wing Commander IV, the Dragon. Just to make it different for freespace 2, you can make it more shivanish, as its a result of a SOC experiment between the Shivan Dragon and various GTVA experiments.

As a result, this fighter would be the badass *excuse my french* and secret fighter.
Heres a schematic of what I would want for its specs:

Speed: 90 ms - Afterburners: would last for over 20 sec; up to 160 ms.
Armor: Heavy
Manuverbility: Extreme
Gun Ports: 6
Missile Ports: 3

Note: it will be radar invisible; or if you can implement the Wing Commander Cloak, that will be awesome!

Also; may you guys add a new weapon? Like the Flash bomb that the Dragon's in Wing Commander used to destroy ships in one hit?



To involve these ships in a storyline; you can have it where the UED forces mysteriously find one of their Destroyer's missing. What the player finds out is that the ship was destroyed, the Flash bomb works like a SABOOT round, where it sucks all the atmosphere out of the ship.

Eventually, you can make it where the player itself finds its production facilities, or make it where the player can even fly as one of these ships.


*shrug* just a suggestion and could add some drama in the game. Thank you for your hard work, and listening to me.

[General Battuta]

We've got some new hardware for the GTVA, don't worry. A lot of our innovations have more to do with ultra-skilled pilot AI than ultra-powerful ships.

And I'm afraid we couldn't make a whole UEF destroyer disappear because they've only got three of them and they all play a pretty critical story role. 

Glad to see you around. Stick around, join in the discussion! Have you played Age of Aquarius?

[headdie]

maybe a destroyer would be to much anyway but a cruiser i think would be more feasible both in more plausible technobable and storyline, it would alow you to introduce storyline aspects involving fear of using cruisers because of the risk of loosing them suddenly so relying on their small number of larger ships causing great strain on their manpower

[Guthan]

We've got some new hardware for the GTVA, don't worry. A lot of our innovations have more to do with ultra-skilled pilot AI than ultra-powerful ships.

And I'm afraid we couldn't make a whole UEF destroyer disappear because they've only got three of them and they all play a pretty critical story role. 

Glad to see you around. Stick around, join in the discussion! Have you played Age of Aquarius?

Yeah, i played age of aquarious, some of the missions gave me a headache haha. (meaning i failed it 2-3 times)

I just recently saw your ultra-skilled AI, and I am impressed.


Still, i know this is kinda pressing; but would it be too much if you guys might implement a storyline involving the SOC? Where some missions could be like a person flying as an SOC pilot. (Like in Halo 2, the switch between arbiter/master chief)

Anyways! Good luck with the designing of the missions!

[General Battuta]

Dilmah_G has FREDded a side campaign involving SOC pilots, and Foxtrot_Tango and eliex are working on a campaign involving the SOC.

However, the WiH story is very tight, very complete, and very far along in development. We aren't going to add a new viewpoint character at this stage.

All that said, once the modpack is out in the open, there's no reason why people couldn't FRED whatever they like. 

[Commander Zane]

More mods featuring these ships would be great.

[Vip]

Dilmah_G has FREDded a side campaign involving SOC pilots, and Foxtrot_Tango and eliex are working on a campaign involving the SOC.

However, the WiH story is very tight, very complete, and very far along in development. We aren't going to add a new viewpoint character at this stage.

All that said, once the modpack is out in the open, there's no reason why people couldn't FRED whatever they like. 

Do I sense a link to this:

The battle of Neptune was a preliminary engagement but it was still a significant one. However, it led into an even more startling event - a high-risk, deep-cover SOC operation that brought the war home to the UEF.

 

[General Battuta]

MY LIPS ARE SEALED.

[AugustusVarius]

My guess is that the "deep-cover SOC operation" is somehow related to the nuking of Luna mentioned in the WiH gameplay trailer.  In any case I'd like to see more campaigns with loops (SOC or otherwise) like the ones in the main FS2 campaign.

[General Battuta]

The problem with loops is that they're optional, so in a continuity-heavy campaign like Blue Planet, it means we'd have to write the rest of the story as if the main character had never experienced them.

Imagine if the Vishnan missions in AoA had been a loop!

[Scotty]

Well, loops are optional yes, but it stands to reason that if the player refuses, someone else will "volunteer."  The missions will still happen, and the story can aknowledge that (and maybe tease the player about not accepting, like with a "Previous-event-false" check and a little quip about the loop's subject).

[headdie]

I think what Battuta is getting at is that say you have an SOC mission to recon a potential mission area for an ambitious fleet action and when going in the SOC pilots encounter say a new weapon the enemy shouldn't have and embark on subsequent missions in the loop to discover the weapons source and/or capability there needs to be a command brief to explain all this just in case the player chooses to opt out of the mission and therefor doesn't know what the missions explained

a good example of this in FS2 would be the second loop which explains the source of the additional shivan saths

[General Battuta]

Actually, the problem that Scotty's missing is that the character herself will be now be missing a large chunk of her development - either that or the loop can't contain anything important to the character moving forward and can't be referred to again.

[Droid803]

Wait her?

[Scotty]

Why can't the SOC loops be used to further the story, or make it more in-depth, instead of advancing the character's development?  AFAIK, story != character development.  Just because it didn't necessarily happen to the main character doesn't mean it can't be referred to again.

[General Battuta]

Because, barring head trauma, people do not simply forget events that happen to them.

It would be silly for the main character to have a span of time that she never referred back to.

Why add an optional loop of missions, when you could just make the same missions part of the campaign?

[Scotty]

We seem to be talking past each other. 

What I was saying, is that when (if) the player declines the SOC loop, why can't it be assumed that someone else did it?  Then in later missions, any lines that refer to the main character having done that be determined by a "previous-event-true" SEXP (or a "not""previous-event-true" as it may turn out).  That way, the SOC loop still happens for the purposes of the story, but not necessarily to the main character (but the option still exists for the SOC loop to be taken).

For your last point, I have no idea.

[General Battuta]

I totally understand what you're saying, but you're talking about massive complexity added for minimal benefit. It's like somebody's suggestion that warship duels never be scripted, and that all possible outcomes should be taken into account by the campaign.

Adding a set of events that cannot be used to shape the character is narrative deadweight, especially when the same events could be shown in a way that does shape the character.

If the events are important enough to shape the story, they are important enough to shape the character, and thus the character must be able to refer to them. Events in a loop cannot be referenced by the character's later development because there's no guarantee the character experienced them.

Using hundreds of alternative SEXPs to change hundreds of lines of dialogue does not alter this, because the character's actions, as well as her words, are affected by what she has done in the past.

[MatthTheGeek]

What the point of having optional loops anyway ? I mean, who ever ran the FS2 campaign without playing the loops ? Having this kind of missions being a simple part of the campaign instead of a loop just makes more sense.

[Dilmah G]

Dilmah_G has FREDded a side campaign involving SOC pilots, and Foxtrot_Tango and eliex are working on a campaign involving the SOC.

However, the WiH story is very tight, very complete, and very far along in development. We aren't going to add a new viewpoint character at this stage.

All that said, once the modpack is out in the open, there's no reason why people couldn't FRED whatever they like. 

The battle of Neptune was a preliminary engagement but it was still a significant one. However, it led into an even more startling event - a high-risk, deep-cover SOC operation that brought the war home to the UEF.

 

AMG.

BATTUTA.
WE NEED TO TALK.