Author Topic: BP: War in Heaven discussion  (Read 905894 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Torchwood

  • 27
  • Mechanical Templar
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
Not yet, anyway.

Wonder what the Fedayeen would sound like. Falconer, in my mind, would have an always-angry contralto, something like an irate Courtenay Taylor. Kovacs, he'd be a stoic baritone like Elias Toufexis or Tom Hall. Vidaura, she'd be the most serene, with a lovely high-pitched voice and a smile that hides a knife or ten. Al-Da'wa... I dunno... voice-of-the-legion thing? Or kind of a more ominous sounding version of Al-Fadil from AoA?

 
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
I imagined Al'da-wa switching voices every time it talks to you. :)

 

Offline Snarks

  • 27
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
I like the idea of the Fedayeen sounding like normal people for the most part. They're supposed to be sociopaths, who normally have to hide their anti-social tendencies from people. They shouldn't sound menacing, but they should definitely say some pretty crazy stuff.

I would say Falconer should sound like Kendra Shaw from Battlestar Galactica Razor. Al-Da'wa is stated to have different voices depending on whoever is speaking for him, although it would help in a narrative perspective for there to be a "primary" Al-Da'wa.

 

Offline Hjolnai

  • 22
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
Did Admiral Steele deliberately hand over the Agincourt to the Federation?

This would serve several purposes:
1) It lets him create a trusted source "leaking" to the Federation. Considering that same source lured the Wargods into the Carthage-Imperieuse trap...
2) It gives him a chance to take down Federation ships trying to hold the Agincourt (i.e. it's a catalyst to create a favourable engagement).
3) His objective extends beyond the war. The Federation gaining new technology at this stage won't make a difference in the war, but it will make their post-war uptake a bit faster - the Shivans are the real enemy.

More dubiously:
4) He may have some insight into Shambhala, and want it to proceed using the Agincourt's resources.
5) It may advance his political agenda back home, perhaps pushing through the logistics deal with the Vasudans.

So, he has three good reasons and two unlikely reasons to give the Federation an Anemoi.
His ships' actions seem to bear this out:
1) In Aristeia, the GTVA force does not attempt to sabotage or destroy the intrasystem gate. Certainly, destroying the gate too soon would let the frigates escape, but once the frigates were engaged there was no reason not to. (This is what gave me the idea in the first place)
2) The Agincourt does not apply any scorched-earth equivalent protocols. I'd expect the GTVA to be more consistent in applying those than the Federation.
3) The captive Agincourt crew sabotage some of the fighters, but not enough to make the Federation abandon the mission. This is consistent with wanting a confrontation rather than just getting the ship back.

On the other hand, there's some evidence against this:
1) Agincourt does play its trick with the escape pods.
2) Steele risks a large portion of his fleet and loses considerable assets. Assuming Calder didn't lose too many ships in his own engagement, the ship-killing objective doesn't seem to have paid off.

Also, maybe I should have posted this to the Oracle thread - but I'm wondering whether other people read it this way too.

 

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
It's a really interesting idea, but I think it's a level of 24-dimensional chess which pushes Steele a little far beyond credibility. He's very, very good at leveraging coincidences to secure his political standing, but actually arranging the loss of an entire logistics ship feels maybe too outre even for him.

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

  • 211
  • The Cthulhu programmer himself!
    • Skype
    • Steam
    • Twitter
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
the impression I got is that the loss of the Agincourt was not intentional, but that the leak was detected and then leveraged for the Wargods trap (IIRC the leaker was Rear Admiral Carey).
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Codethulhu GitHub wgah'nagl fhtagn.

schrödinbug (noun) - a bug that manifests itself in running software after a programmer notices that the code should never have worked in the first place.

When you gaze long into BMPMAN, BMPMAN also gazes into you.

"I am one of the best FREDders on Earth" -General Battuta

<Aesaar> literary criticism is vladimir putin

<MageKing17> "There's probably a reason the code is the way it is" is a very dangerous line of thought. :P
<MageKing17> Because the "reason" often turns out to be "nobody noticed it was wrong".
(the very next day)
<MageKing17> this ****ing code did it to me again
<MageKing17> "That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll assume it was being done for a reason."
<MageKing17> **** ME
<MageKing17> THE REASON IS PEOPLE ARE STUPID
<MageKing17> ESPECIALLY ME

<MageKing17> God damn, I do not understand how this is breaking.
<MageKing17> Everything points to "this should work fine", and yet it's clearly not working.
<MjnMixael> 2 hours later... "God damn, how did this ever work at all?!"
(...)
<MageKing17> so
<MageKing17> more than two hours
<MageKing17> but once again we have reached the inevitable conclusion
<MageKing17> How did this code ever work in the first place!?

<@The_E> Welcome to OpenGL, where standards compliance is optional, and error reporting inconsistent

<MageKing17> It was all working perfectly until I actually tried it on an actual mission.

<IronWorks> I am useful for FSO stuff again. This is a red-letter day!
* z64555 erases "Thursday" and rewrites it in red ink

<MageKing17> TIL the entire homing code is held up by shoestrings and duct tape, basically.

 
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
the impression I got is that the loss of the Agincourt was not intentional, but that the leak was detected and then leveraged for the Wargods trap (IIRC the leaker was Rear Admiral Carey).

There's a bit of prose somewhere or other that makes this explicit.

 

Offline Nissan

  • 26
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
the impression I got is that the loss of the Agincourt was not intentional, but that the leak was detected and then leveraged for the Wargods trap (IIRC the leaker was Rear Admiral Carey).

There's a bit of prose somewhere or other that makes this explicit.

It was in the "Conversations during War in Heaven" post from right before the WiH release. Rear Admiral Carey was the source in the GTVA who leaked the Agincourt's jump schedule to the Wargods. Eventually it was traced back to her, but instead of just throwing her in prison, they forced her to start feeding the Wargods bad intel.

The UEF decided to attack the Carthage because they believed the Imperieuse was still resupplying in Delta Serpentis several weeks after the blitz. With the Imperieuse out of play, they had the numbers to tie down Steele's other destroyers and leave the Carthage wide open. So they committed everything to what they believed would be a decisive blow.

They had no reason to doubt Carey after she delivered them the Agincourt... and Steele was counting on that.
"Uh, yeah, I mean it's tough to say, woulda-coulda-shoulda, ifs and buts like candy and nuts, you know, you never know.  This, that, and the other thing.  Who knows?  You know, there are a lot of what-ifs.  You know, my whole life is a lot of what-ifs."
- San Antonio Spurs F Matt Bonner

 

Offline Hjolnai

  • 22
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
Yes, I guess I'm reaching a bit too far. This information on Rear Admiral Carey makes it clear that Steele didn't leak the Agincourt's location himself. I still don't have a compelling reason for the GTVA force to not destroy or sabotage the gate in Aristeia, though.

The best explanation I can think of is the Hood's captain deferring to a standing order about not destroying undefended civilian infrastructure, and Steele not directly countermanding it. He was rather busy elsewhere, after all.

An alternative explanation is that the gate was indeed mined, and the mines were found and disarmed after Laporte left the field but before the Agincourt jumps (I don't remember whether it can jump before you do).

From the perspective of game design it makes perfect sense though. Dealing with any of that would disrupt the flow of an excellent mission.

 

Offline Aesaar

  • 210
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
I figured the gate wasn't destroyed because the Hood's CO had every reason to believe that two Karunas would be easy kills for the forces he had, and by the time UEF victory was obviously possible, it was too late.

The Medea in particular could have butchered the UEF forces on its own if it hadn't been for Laporte's tev comm unit.  Blind luck saved the Wargods.

 
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
Hey guys,

Just finished the currently released WiH content, and holy hell it was fantastic! I had way more fun playing this than with most of the AAA games out there. It is truly heartwarming to see that an almost 20 years old game, which is among my childhood favourites, is still alive.

Can I ask about the progress of act 4 and the voice acting for act 3? I'm really looking forward to them  :)

P.S.: I loved the Hungarian names for the two stations and the fedayeen pilot! :D

 

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
No Act 3 voice acting planned, I don't have the money and it'd take a LOT of time which I think we'd rather spend on act 4-5.

 
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
So I've been playing act 3, and got to the mission with Sam Bei making a comeback, and all of his dialog is voiced. Did you guys only do VA for him, or is all of act 3 finally VAed and I just didn't install something correctly?

Cheers

 

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
Just him.

 

Offline crizza

  • 210
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
So gentlemen, we all know you made a masterpiece, but lately something nagged at me.
GTVA claimed Ubuntu has made the UEF weak and unable to adequatly defend against the Shivans.
And now we're at war. While the initial force of the 14th foundered, the 13th took over. A battlegroup of Capella era ships.
But while they fought a conventional war, Steele came in and the blitz happened.
Beam jamming is a thing, but as seen in one intro, one out of three beams hit and the UEF don't have nearly enough Oculus ships to do this.
So, we know that the blitz damaged UEF infrastructure, but with the jumpdrives avaiable and TEI ships designed to mimick Shivan tactis... why not use them that way?
Serk is a good example: Jump in, charge beams, fire a signle time and then jump out.
The TEVs don't need to destroy FED ships, they just need to damage them repeatedly, spread Shivan inspired terror and force the UEF to divert critical resources to repair badly damaged ships.
A destroyed ship is a blow to moral, but badly amaged ships sitting in shipyards for repair should realy wittle the Feds down.

Just my two cents thou^^

 
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
Not a bad thought, Crizza.

From what I rememebr reading, it wasn't just that Ubuntu was a philosophy of peace and enlightenment that made the UEF unable to truly withstand a major incursion like what happened at Capella, but it was also the UEF's economic model, custom-tailored over decades to balance out the GDP of a single system. Any additional territories of significant size, the GTVA analysts believed, would drastically mess up their economic models, again, leaving them vulnerable to a high-intensity war of attrition.
Stardust, the Sword of Vengeance[A starship combat addict]

 

Offline Rhymes

  • Galactic Mediator
  • 29
  • Fatum Iustum Stultorum
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
Also, you know, MORPHEUS.
If you don't have Knossos, you need it.

“There was a button," Holden said. "I pushed it."
"Jesus Christ. That really is how you go through life, isn't it?”

 

Offline Bryan See

  • Has anyone really been far as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
  • 210
  • Trying to redeem, but under Tiger Parents
    • Skype
    • Steam
    • Twitter
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
Total occupation of Sol by GTVA forces.
Bryan See - My FreeSpace Wiki User Page (Talk, Contributions)

Full Projects:
Shattered Stars

Campaigns:
Lost in the Mist - Cyrene vs. Psamtik
FreeSpace: Reunited

Ships:
GTS Hygeia, GTT Argo, SC Raguel

Tools:
FSO TC/Game template

I've been under attack by Tiger Parents like Jennifer Pan...

 
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
THIS!

IS!

SPARTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Stardust, the Sword of Vengeance[A starship combat addict]

 
Re: BP: War in Heaven discussion
I just finished Delenda Est, and wow. I've been planning to play BP for years, and I'm very glad I finally did. This has become Freespace 3 to me - I can't imagine anything else, now.

I feel a bit guilty to admit it, but I can't stop myself from rooting for the GTVA, even when they're toasting Karunas left and right. Maybe my recent playthrough of FS2 retail is coloring my sympathies more strongly than I expected. I was thrilled when the Imperieuse jumped in, even though I'm also tremendously attached to the UEF characters thanks to the fantastic writing. How conflicting!