Hi all!
FYI I have taken up my old mantle as ‘the social media guy’ - its not like I can leave the house for the foreseeable future so I might as well make myself useful.
As part of these duties I’m going to make a suggestion. This being adding a sort / filter function for Knossos.
At the last count there are 123 entries on Knossos. This is an amazing achievement, and props to everyone who has worked on these campaigns - and of course everyone who has contributed to making FS SCP, HLP and Knossos what it is today 😊
The only problem is that there are now so many mods / campaigns / single missions etc. that it can be tricky to work out;
A – which campaigns/mods a player has already played
B – which they should play next.
This choice is made slightly trickier by some of the mods being tech demos (Soundscape Enhancement, Size Based Explosions, Rail Gun Bombers, etc etc.) which might confuse some people.
Battuta’s ‘Topic: Battuta's Guide to Finding Your First (Or Next!) Campaign’ is helpful, but it is perhaps getting out of date considering how many new mods, TCs etc. have been added recently, and it wouldn’t be fair to ask the General to keep updating the list.
I’m concerned that Choice Paralysis might become a problem, especially for anyone new to all this. Sort / filter options on Knossos could overcome this by allowing players to narrow down the list to show only the sorts of games they feel like playing. Off the top of my head useful search criteria could include:
Status
Not Played
Played – in progress
Played – Campaign completed
Franchise
FreeSpace
Battlestar Galactica
Babylon 5
Wing Commander
Solaris
Wings of Dawn
Cloak & Dagger
Dusk Wars
Dimensional Eclipse
(Apologies if I missed any - it is not always instantly apparent which are FS and which are not, which illustrates the point about confusion.)
Campaign Length
Tech demos
Single missions – (Ross 128 etc.)
Small campaigns (say, less than ten missions)
Long Campaigns (say, ten to twenty missions)
Very Long Campaigns (say Twenty-one missions and up)
Era
Pre-History (Ancient - Shivan War etc.)
Pre-FS1 Era – Pre Terran-Vasudan War
Pre-FS1 Era – During Terran-Vasudan War
FS1 / Great War Era
Reconstruction Era – GTVA Space
Reconstruction / Isolation Era – Sol system
FS2 / Capella / 2nd Incursion Era
Post-Capella Era
Far Future (Shattered Stars / Wrecked Galaxies etc.)
Continuities
Retail FreeSpace
Blue Planet
Inferno
Stormfront
Memories of the Great War
Just Another Day
(Again, apologies for any I have missed.)
Tone
Humour (Just another Day)
Anime (Wings of Dawn)
Retail FS
Bombastic (As in very fast OP ships, massive explosions etc. Perhaps Aftermath Reboot?)
Semi realistic (BP, Solaris etc.)
Surreal (Sync, Transcend etc.)
Experimental / Non-FS-standard Gameplay Mechanics
Capital ship combat (BP, BP: The Battle Captains, Bolitho Command etc.)
RTS elements (BP, Windmills? Etc)
Resource management, branching missions, choosing which missions to play etc. (Scroll of Atankharzim, Bem Cavalgar etc.)
These are merely suggestions, I’m sure you fine folks could think of many others.
It would be especially useful if the filters could be combined. For example:
Franchise: FS
Campaign Length: Very Long
Era: Post Capella
Continuity: N/A – leave blank
Tone: Retail FS
Experimental / Non-FS-standard Gameplay Mechanics: N/A – leave blank
Result = Derelict (And probably several others that fit the criteria which I haven’t played yet. I’m using Derelict as an example since I played it last year so it is still fresh in my mind).
If this is not possible on Knossos, then a downloadable spreadsheet might serve as an acceptable workaround. I would be happy to maintain it so long as everyone gives me the info I need.
What are people’s thoughts on this?
