Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: General Battuta on July 14, 2015, 08:28:52 am
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The five sentence structure is a simple way to outline a story. Just hit up the Inciting Event, Ramp-Up, Peak Complexity, Burn Down, and Conclusion.
Let's pitch FreeSpace Threes!
Here's a guess at :v:'s likeliest story, from what we've learned over the years, including Jason Scott's interview and the artist who showed up on Kotaku:
A Terran Knossos device sends humanity home, triggering a civil war within the Solar factions.
Experts on Earth have analyzed the Lucifer wreckage, revealing a surviving Ancient population beyond Altair.
GTVA and Bad-Sol forces race to make contact, and a three-way cluster**** erupts as the Ancients' spaceborne colonies move towards a reconquista of Alliance worlds.
Ancient intelligence reveals the origins and purpose of the Shivans as novaforming machines with a command architecture in an extragalactic megaconstruct.
As the Ancients roll into Alliance space, Bad-Sol forces trigger a Third Incursion, and the Alliance deploys a task force into Capella to penetrate the supernode, follow the trail of Aken Bosch, and locate a lasting solution to the Shivan threat.
Five sentences! Go nuts!
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[pretext]
20 years after the Capella disaster humanity returns to Sol using Knossoss technology, prompting a long and demanding integration of the GTVA and Sol territories
[/pretext]
10 years later a new node is discovered in Sol which contains Knossos like readings..
Exploring the new node the GTVA discovers a new alien species which is militarily inferior but has an innate understanding of subspace.
During talks with the species a vast Shivan force is detected approaching sparking a system wide conflict which threatens to wipe out the new species and unleash a Capella scale invasion of the Sol system.
During the ensuing battles which push the GTVA to the point of abandoning the New Species, Aken Bosh makes contact revealing the location of a Shivan Hive World.
Combining co-ordinates from Bosh, GTVA technology and New Species intuition a fleet is fast jumped to the hive sector escorting Meson Ladened fireships with the intent of using them to blow up the Shivan hive world in a suicide mission that could free the GTVA from the shivan threat for decades if not centuries.
[Post text]
The destruction of the world silences the shivan vessels in the area, the move while costly creates a window of room to rebuild, expand and prepair, but for how long?
[/Post text]
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hey that's cheatin! :D
Here goes my silly attempt:
In porsuing mad crazy out-of-the-box avenues to figure out solutions against the Shivan Threat, GTVA scientists are developing a self-replicating artificially intelligent module ships.
Meanwhile, a third shivan incursion is triggered by local skirmishes under badly overseen GTVA space and they immediately collapse relevant nodes to prevent shivan infection to more central systems, player gets left behind with shivans and self-replicator machines.
Player / local remnant GTVA forces realise the shivans are about to break through collapsed nodes anyway, turn on the self-replicators as desperate measure to prevent total human and vasudan genocide.
Self-replicators slowly build up from small fighter-sized weak and not too bright machines to incredibly powerful and intelligent destroyers, and are able to fend off the shivan threat from the core Alliance systems.
Self-replicators never cease to increase power and intelligence to ensure Shivan forces won't trouble the Alliance ever again, leaving the player's system alone where he spends the rest of his days thinking how they unleashed a new Shivan species into the galaxy.
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Capella Node stabilizes after x years, Shivans return.
Someone pokes the nest, Shivans did create a portal in Capella to Shivan town.
The end is nigh, then Aken makes contact.
Super Secret Frigate released to make gambit for Shivan town.
You and Snopes jr. make it to Shivan town, upload virus with mac computer after fight with some big bad, Shivan's return to original, dormant state from eldritch abomination robots to Node constructors/ badass barbeque cooks.
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For sale: Colossus 2. Never flown.
oops wrong format
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Knossos device sends humanity home
A reunited humanity launch a counter attack
Straight into the shivan town
Edit: I have just been informed a haiku is syllables, not words. I am le terrible at this.
Edit 2: 9000 hours in paint later
Knossos device made
Humanity Reunites
ShivanTown: KA-BOOM
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GTVA plans and executes series of offensive operations using Knossos "door locks" against Shivans via Capella and Ross 128.
Finds out they can read Shivan communications, meaning the Shivans can only beat them with overwhelming force.
Find more routes into Shivan space and make more door locks preventing the Shivans from concentrating sufficiently to ensure they are kept away.
Decades or centuries of war as the GTVA slowly grinds their way through the Shivans until they've become even more powerful than the Shivans are and enlisted or accidentally destroyed dozens of races in the process.
No GTVA, you are the Shivans.
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A fleet starts getting nosy and starting trouble for the GTVA while they're preparing to Knossos back to Sol.
The GTVA send them on a wild goose chase into Shivan space to die.
While there, they pick up Admiral Bosch'tet's lel trail, and pursue him to a subspace colony of Terrans and Ancients guarded by friendly (ish) Shivans.
The rest of the fleet follows a chain of Knossi to Shivantown, which is in the middle of the galaxy.
Everyone's about to die but a giant not-quite-Shivan juggernaut rescues them.
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GTVA races to Sol, discovering advanced Terran military, society and devices for understanding Shivan communications as Bosch calls in with disturbing info on the Shivan species, an invasion of all GTVA worlds is imminent.
As the militaries start integrating, scientists on Earth reveal ways to stop Shivan ship multiplication crystal devices, as well as pointing out severe weakneses in already made replicas.
As full scale battles begin, SOC operatives scramble to destroy, jam, and alter Shivan devices in deep Shivan space, meanwhile discovering a wealth of knowledge about the aliens.
GTD Capella enters the picture in time to stop mounting losses, its superior manuevering ability and shields introduce a new variable to the battlefront.
As GTVA scores big but ultimately Pirrhyc victories as the attrition rate rises to the point of unsustainable, strange subspace activity occurs, Shivans are nowhere to be found, we are safe for now but will surely fight another day...
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Shoot fighter.
Fighter explode.
Beams.
Capship explode.
Alt-J.
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Shoot fighter.
Fighter explode.
Beams.
Capship explode.
Alt-J.
I think Droid nailed it.
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GTVA races to Sol, discovering advanced Terran military, society and devices for understanding Shivan communications as Bosch calls in with disturbing info on the Shivan species, an invasion of all GTVA worlds is imminent.
As the militaries start integrating, scientists on Earth reveal ways to stop Shivan ship multiplication crystal devices, as well as pointing out severe weakneses in already made replicas.
As full scale battles begin, SOC operatives scramble to destroy, jam, and alter Shivan devices in deep Shivan space, meanwhile discovering a wealth of knowledge about the aliens.
GTD Capella enters the picture in time to stop mounting losses, its superior manuevering ability and shields introduce a new variable to the battlefront.
As GTVA scores big but ultimately Pirrhyc victories as the attrition rate rises to the point of unsustainable, strange subspace activity occurs, Shivans are nowhere to be found, we are safe for now but will surely fight another day...
Or; we manage to destroy the Shivans but only by destroying their ability to multiply; our races are doomed and we know it: the number of Shivan forces wipes out Terran/Sol and Vasudan forces, leaving us the same as the Ancients, the record of our struggles and triumphs recorded for other races to find untold millenia from now... we are the great saviors of races to come, removing the promise of Shivan destruction from advanced civilization and warning of the folly of inter-species feuding over what in hindsight is petty misunderstandings.
EDIT: That wasn't five-sentence; more a response to IcemanFreespace because I had an idea while reading his post. :nervous: Sorry. :warp:
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A Gef Manifesto, Or, 'Lead On, MacDuff'
On breaching the system of Sol
The Tevs took their eyes from the wall
The Shivans returned
Every planet they burned
Left us homes in a comet for all
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Thirty-two years after the Capella cataclysm the GTVA finally established the way to earth and the Terrans found finally their home.
During this peaceful reunion, an expedition group in a distant star system is attacked by shivans, the old foe that vanished again after the fall of capella.
Even this news are worrying for many people, especially the inhabitants from earth that were safe for over half of a century, the GTVA answer this attack with their newest technology that destroy the shivan attack force without a problem.
After all these years Terran and Vasudan Military alike think, that they are even prepared for armadas of Shivan Juggernaughts.
But the Shivans returned to search for a knowledge to win a war, that started millenias ago and this time they do not send only a handful of scanning ships...
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I think Battuta probably has hit most of the major notes that V would most likely have gone with: Civil war with Earth, return of the Ancients, Shivans return, head to Shivantown through the Capella system for a final showdown.
But we don't have to predict FS3 here, we have to pitch it. So let's try a different approach. This story would pick up around two decades after FS2, when the GTVA have made contact with two other spacefaring species:
The GTVA are engaged with anti-expansionist (effectively anti-alien) rebels, when one of their new allies reports an encounter with a massive, powerful Shivan fleet (multiple Lucifers, Saths etc.)
The GTVA tries to stop the Shivans, but are outgunned, and the hostile fleet makes a beeline for DS, where the GTVA are building a Knossos portal to Earth.
The GTVA reveal that they have made radio-wave communication with Earth over the years and told them of the continuing and evolving Shivan threat, and believes that Earth, with its decades of studying the Lucifer wreckage and its massive economy and population, has the military prowess to defeat this Shivan invasion, if the GTVA can keep the Shivans away from the knossos long enough to open the gate.
After a massive battle to hold the portal, GTVA scientists manage to stabilize the node and the player jumps through, rallies the forces of Earth (who have been waiting for years following the radio communications) and returns with a fleet at good back to destroy the Shivans in DS and drive them out of GTVA space.
Jump forwards in time eighteen months, and Earth has retaken control over the Terran race, dissolving the formal GTVA by withdrawing from BETAC, imposing militaristic rule and anti-alien laws in line with the rebels the GTVA were fighting at the start of the game - will you, the player stand for this and assist Earth in return for security from the Shivans, or join the resistance and fight for the more egalitarian society you knew?
I know that it incorporates some of the elements of Inferno, BP, and probably some other mods as well, but I think it could be done pretty well, myself, and it keeps the Shivans at a realistic level (I never bought in to BPs whole "Cosmic superentities" thing - I see the future of the Shivans and the GTVA more like the future of earthquakes for people who live in active fault zones: They're an omnipresent threat that could strike at any time and do enormous amounts of damage, but if you're clever and lucky, you can survive these his, just hoping that the big one, when it comes, will be long after you're dead. In this scenario, this Shivan invasion is bad, but its not the big one. Not yet.
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That's pretty dope.
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1. Terran Knossos Device blows up on activation and creates a stable Singularity where subspace and real space mix and laws of space-time begin to bend.
2. Having chocked on it's own overblown military investments and their increasing deminishing returns, the GTVA has been disbanded and only an underfinanced joint agency of several governments is left with the task to venture out in the unknown and do more research on Knossos-technology to reverse disaster.
3. The Knossos-Singularity attracts Shivan ships en masse, it is revealed by remnants of the remnants of the Terran-Shivan Alliance that small scale incursions have been the norm since the Knossos-project took off but that the post-GTVA governments subpressed the truth to avoid public panic and foster their independence.
4. With info from the Terran-Shivan Alliance the joint agency is capable of finding an Inhibitor device used by the Ancients to shut down their network of Knossos Gates and supress the use of jump nodes, the interaction between a defective version of this device and the Terran Knossos is what caused the Singularity to form but can close it if used properly.
5. The Shivans who are mostly drawn to the Singularity like moths to a flame begin to destroy themselves in an attempt to pentrate it, a battle for the control of the Inhibitor device nearest to the Singularity errupts determining if the Shivans are allowed to perish before closing the Singularity and what fate befalls the Terran-Shivan Alliance.
Of course there is a massive workload in 4. since there a lot of exposition has to happen that would make the players care for either outcome.
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I think Battuta probably has hit most of the major notes that V would most likely have gone with: Civil war with Earth, return of the Ancients, Shivans return, head to Shivantown through the Capella system for a final showdown.
But we don't have to predict FS3 here, we have to pitch it. So let's try a different approach. This story would pick up around two decades after FS2, when the GTVA have made contact with two other spacefaring species:
The GTVA are engaged with anti-expansionist (effectively anti-alien) rebels, when one of their new allies reports an encounter with a massive, powerful Shivan fleet (multiple Lucifers, Saths etc.)
The GTVA tries to stop the Shivans, but are outgunned, and the hostile fleet makes a beeline for DS, where the GTVA are building a Knossos portal to Earth.
The GTVA reveal that they have made radio-wave communication with Earth over the years and told them of the continuing and evolving Shivan threat, and believes that Earth, with its decades of studying the Lucifer wreckage and its massive economy and population, has the military prowess to defeat this Shivan invasion, if the GTVA can keep the Shivans away from the knossos long enough to open the gate.
After a massive battle to hold the portal, GTVA scientists manage to stabilize the node and the player jumps through, rallies the forces of Earth (who have been waiting for years following the radio communications) and returns with a fleet at good back to destroy the Shivans in DS and drive them out of GTVA space.
Jump forwards in time eighteen months, and Earth has retaken control over the Terran race, dissolving the formal GTVA by withdrawing from BETAC, imposing militaristic rule and anti-alien laws in line with the rebels the GTVA were fighting at the start of the game - will you, the player stand for this and assist Earth in return for security from the Shivans, or join the resistance and fight for the more egalitarian society you knew?
I know that it incorporates some of the elements of Inferno, BP, and probably some other mods as well, but I think it could be done pretty well, myself, and it keeps the Shivans at a realistic level (I never bought in to BPs whole "Cosmic superentities" thing - I see the future of the Shivans and the GTVA more like the future of earthquakes for people who live in active fault zones: They're an omnipresent threat that could strike at any time and do enormous amounts of damage, but if you're clever and lucky, you can survive these his, just hoping that the big one, when it comes, will be long after you're dead. In this scenario, this Shivan invasion is bad, but its not the big one. Not yet.
This sounds like a really interesting campaign idea and it would be interesting if somebody made it happen.
...Not me, though. I've got too many active projects as it is. But somebody!
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Btb, it would be cool to evaluate this topic sometime to see the most common tropes and plot points that people bring to it ... with the short 5 talking points structure it is better suited to do something like this then the other topics which other more detailed ideas....
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One year after Capella went nova, and due to the NTF Rebellion, the Shivans attacks, and the final flee from Capella, the GTVA navy is decimated but still functional.
The thought of massive Shivan presence being only a jump away instills massive fear and paranoia in the populace, causing logistics breakdowns and crime/extremism exponentially rising.
The GTVA is tasked with reshaping it's military and protection of areas under reconstruction from extremism. Many stations, supply convoys, shipyards, and even planetary settlements are under threat in many systems.
A Knossos device to Sol begins construction, but many fear it is a waste of resources due to the possible threat of Shivans, terrorism is a very real problem for this project. However the GTVA insists it is imperative, it will regain trust of the people.
Knossos device is constructed, and the first ship, a small scout laden with scientific instruments. What it discovers, is what nobody expects. A world strikingly similar to Vasuda Prime.