Author Topic: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread  (Read 46243 times)

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Hoo boy, you are right. It was indeed a dumb question. Thank you for answering!

By the way, this campaign is amazing!

 

Offline Cyborg17

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Totally late to the party -- Knossos really helps -- But this is really well done!  I haven't finished it yet, but I love the mission variety.  :yes: :yes: :yes:

 

Offline CT27

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
I've heard it said this campaign would be part of a trilogy.  I'm not making demands for it to be like this but just for fun I was thinking on what the next two chapters could be about:

Part 2:
You would play as a pilot in the newly independent Antares Federation and deal with leftover HOL forces and some renegade GTA people who are trying to restart the conflict.

Part 3:
The player character would be a GTVA pilot and the campaign would be about bringing the Antares Federation into the GTVA.

 

Offline QuakeIV

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Having just finished it, I vaguely note that that was a freaking amazing campaign.

 

Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
New version of BtA released updating for 3.8 compatibility... includes APNGs, H264s, TrueType font, and lots of bugfixes. Enjoy!
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Offline Black Wolf

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Awesome. Looking forward to this.

I have been playing BtA again, and managed to get past a mission I was stuck on and progress a bit. Wow!

I don't quite recall the name of the mission, but, not to be too spoilery, it's the one with the abandoned Endymion between the two stars. That whole sequence, where the story line kind of comes into focus, is super cool, and changes the way in interpret things as far back as the demo.

Damn this is a well done campaign.
« Last Edit: July 02, 2017, 12:53:13 am by Black Wolf »
TWISTED INFINITIES · SECTORGAME· FRONTLINES
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Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Thanks, BW! I know which mission you're talking about. It can be a tough on, for sure.
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Offline Bryan See

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Thanks, BW! I know which mission you're talking about. It can be a tough on, for sure.
What though? What mission are you referring to?
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Offline The E

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Thanks, BW! I know which mission you're talking about. It can be a tough on, for sure.
What though? What mission are you referring to?

it's the one with the abandoned Endymion between the two stars.
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I really need lifе to touch me
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Offline Black Wolf

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
To be absolutely clear, this was a follow up to a message I sent to mjn on IRC the other night. I was stuck on... the one with all of the transports heading for the node (pretty sure it's called "To Steal a March On"), and you have to disable as many as possible. I finally got through that one, and a few missions later, the mission with the abandoned Endymion was the one that made me so happy with the campaign again after having gotten more than a little frustrated when my progress stalled out - without spoiling anything, the motivations for characters as far back as the Mephistophele demo are revealed, and the whole campaign sort of comes into focus. It makes you realise that things are happening on a much deeper level than was apparent to that point. Moreover, the setting is creepy and tense, the... inhabitant in the mission is cool - everything really works superbly well in a mission that , at first glance, seems to have very little going on. It's a real testament to the power of setting and storytelling.
TWISTED INFINITIES · SECTORGAME· FRONTLINES
Rarely Updated P3D.
Burn the heretic who killed F2S! Burn him, burn him!!- GalEmp

 

Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
It's posts like that which cause me to sit at my computer day after day, doing mundane tasks for 5 years like converting audio files, positioning ships in FRED, or meticulously modelling the cockpit of a fighter. <3
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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
First off, Im' very impressed with the quality of this campaign.  The storytelling is amazing, and the originality of the missions is a refreshing change from standard Freespace missions.

That said, I'm having an absolutely terrible time with Gerar's Judgement.  I cannot for the life of me complete the mission.  I've been working at it for the past two days, with maybe twenty attempts so far.  Between the three critical ships that need to remain alive, the need to destroy the Cardinal's systems (missile launchers, Nav, and Weapons if I can pull it off in time), the need to destroy bombers and some of the escorting cruisers before they hammer the Trafalgar, the need to protect the Intrepid from incoming bombers/warheads, the general uselessness of my bomber wingmen, and the endless waves of enemy fighters that all seem to zero in on me as soon as they appear, I always drop a critical ship, usually the Trafalgar.  The couple times I've managed to keep the Trafalgar alive, the Intrepid goes down.

I've resorted to dropping from Medium difficulty to Easy, and I still can't seem to keep things alive.  The Medusa is terrible at bomber intercept, and next to useless dogfighting, so I end up getting distracted from bombers for too long while trying to keep entire wings of enemy fighters from pounding me to death.

If Gamma wing (which I can't order around) would actually destroy some of the Cardinal's missile launchers, it might make the beginning of the mission slightly easier, but it still wouldn't help with defending the Trafalgar or the Intrepid.

What am I doing wrong here?

 

Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
My advice for that mission is to take the first few minutes and aim your bombs at the Cardinal torpedo launchers. With good timing, you can destroy 3-4 of them before they suggest you hit the nav system. Throw everything you can at the nav system then focus on other cruisers/objectives. The key is destroying the torpedo launchers early.
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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Been doing that with Phoenix V's and a tsunami, taking out the lower right wing, dorsal, and upper front launchers on my way to the Nav subsystem (which pretty much needs to be hit from the front quarter).  I've got that down to a science, but the rest of the mission is what gets me.  I can't defend against four fighters and take down cruisers and intercept bombers.

I'll give it another shot, this time maybe lob some tsunamis at the turrets from distance and pray that they hit, that way I can reload before things get too hectic.

Edit: I got it, finally.  Had to repeatedly order Beta to cover me and Alpha to protect the Trafalgar, but things finally worked.

...except I "failed" because I jumped after being given the go-ahead to RTB :-|  I assume I need to head back to the Intrepid's fighter bay, instead.
« Last Edit: July 03, 2017, 12:02:23 am by StarfuryTH »

 

Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
...except I "failed" because I jumped after being given the go-ahead to RTB :-|  I assume I need to head back to the Intrepid's fighter bay, instead.

Well that's a bug. That was originally intended behavior but it's a dick move so we changed it to just disable the player's jump drive at the end of the missions where fighterbay departure is required. Apparently I missed one. :(
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Offline xenocartographer

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
...except I "failed" because I jumped after being given the go-ahead to RTB :-|  I assume I need to head back to the Intrepid's fighter bay, instead.

Well that's a bug. That was originally intended behavior but it's a dick move so we changed it to just disable the player's jump drive at the end of the missions where fighterbay departure is required. Apparently I missed one. :(

In those cases, I turn Alt-J into an "autopilot towards the hangar" function :) player-use-ai, trigger the departure cue, fade-out, wait a bit, and end-mission.

 
Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
That's alright, had I been paying attention to the goals, I would have seen the "return to Intrepid's fighter bay" goal.  Instead, I listened to the comm chatter and did the default Freespace alt-j to leave the system.  I really do like the ability to return to the hangar, which makes much more sense than jumping out of the area when the carrier is within reach.

 
Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Just wanted to say it's awesome seeing campaigns of this scope and quality still being released - I just finished 'Bringing down the Gavel', and like others, found it deeply amusing.  It was also, importantly, *cathartic*.  Like most campaigns with a lot of grit and worldbuilding, this one has the player's side 'losing' a lot, or at least only achieving partial success at various points in the story.  It's for the better, of course, but it also means that missions can wear you down. (DAMN YOU OZYMANDIAS!)  Having this mission come so soon after Gerar's Judgement was smart. In fact, pacing has been excellent throughout. 
It's also really great seeing how collaborative this campaign is.  Hearing familiar voices, seeing fully integrated briefing cutscenes, and some major FRED judo, all speak to the labor of love these sorts of campaigns can be.
A heartfelt thanks to everyone involved for giving your time to this project.

so, small gripes because they were asked for:
*like others, noted a few grammar slips here and there in the newsroom. nothing embarrassingly bad*
*not to whine, but damn Gerar's Judgement is a rough one from a player-attention standpoint.  Freespace 2's core gameplay is at odds with the logistics of space combat sometimes, as more challenging missions typically have more and more enemies, but this mission is happy to send whole wings of fighters and bombers towards the player, long after the original player wing is destroyed.  I finally got through it by giving my wingmates flails and phoenixes to disrupt dive bombers and then spent most of my time nuking cruisers and fending off horus wings.  It feels a little strange for Alpha wing to get so many divergent tasks - I think I got 3 directives in 5 seconds at one point, delivered with equal urgency.  Perhaps Intrepid could launch some fresh fighters on arrival to take a little pressure off?  Then again, as I said pressure is kind of the point...I'm just not sure I buy that HOL has this many fighters and goes so long undeterred by their heavy losses at each engagement.  I really hope I get to burn that ship down.
*Could we get some consistency with function key and special action buttons?  I don't use a HOTAS any more for ergonomic reasons, but if I did I would be baffled at the number of mission-unique key-presses.  Alt-X, no wait alt-n, no just use the number buttons, wait no on this mission every item is on the F-keys.   I greatly appreciate the mission variety, but 'key command inflation' seems to be a growing problem with more ambitious campaigns.
*better use of secondary objectives vs primary ones would make it a bit more clear which tasks to prioritize on certain missions, particularly the 2nd stealth mission (loki visiting an outer rim cargo depot, the one with that lovely cargo pilot chatter.  Great stuff!).  I couldn't tell if I would lose the mission if I missed some cargo or ships and then the priority ship warped out while I was dallying.  Can't have the objective screen spoiling plot points of course, but sometimes tasking can be unclear.

Again, this is minor nit-picky crap written in comfortable ignorance.  I've been enjoying the heck out of this campaign...reminds me a lot of BSG with it's emphasis on the postwar refugee experience, and may be the most successful use of the (largely community-enhanced) reconstruction period.  Every plot point so far has felt like a natural progression.  Thanks again for working so hard on this, I look forward to finishing it in the next few days.
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Offline Lepanto

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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Pleased to see you enjoyed the project. Feedback is a creator's lifeblood; thanks for the infusion.

Did you ever check out the System Viewer?
« Last Edit: August 20, 2017, 02:25:04 pm by Lepanto »
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Re: BtA: Slaves of Chaos Discussion Thread
Wow.

I just wanted to say that I just finished playing through this and I'm completely blown away. The storytelling, world-building, art design, and mission design are all just brilliant. So many inventive ways to push the boundaries of what a FreeSpace mission can involve, while also being consistently well put together, and enjoyable despite being really, really hard.

I have now been thoroughly disabused of the notion that I am any good at this game. Damn. I'm just glad that after getting back into FreeSpace a couple of months ago, I played a few other campaigns (including all the canon/retail ones) before tackling this one. If I'd come to this having not played FS for several years, I don't think I'd have got very far at all.

But yeah, really impressed.