[SF-Junky]

Well, the problem was that you made one BoE mission after another. A big battle now and then is okay but not 40 of them in a row. In the end it totally destroyed a good campaign and turned it into a shmup. Admittedly I just cheated through the last third or so of the campaign because it was just shooting down one wave after another. You tried to create epicness by just taking FS2-vanilla-style missions and making them 20 minutes long. It did not work, sorry. Usually, in my humble opinion, there is no reason to go beyond the 10 minute mark for a mission. Also I personally think you shouldn't make a campaign longer than 25 to 30 missions.

You had a fine story you could've told in 20 to 25 missions. I couldn't see any reason to stretch it to 42.

[Col.Hornet]

It may be strange but all the problems that I had with this campaign were caused by technical errors, not the gameplay itself. Both in beta phase and before the first patch. Most of missions in this mod are very challenging and that's cool! Surviving the battle over Aeon XII gave me huge satisfaction (in fact it really kicked my ass, even though i'm an FS veteran).  I needed more than two weeks to finish the campaign for the first time. There is no fun in finishing the game in a few days.

What I think about the hundreds of warship passing by the player throughout the gameplay... To me it was making sense because of one simple thing. That was a full scale war, especially it's last phase. Fleet had to carry out tones of military operations, which took a lot of resources and people, one by one. There was no time to rest, and theese missions shoved it well. Pilots had to everything they could because the situation was critical.

I can agree with FS-Junky that it was in fact a little bit too long. But all kind of a criticism will be needed to improve the quality of the next part. 

[Nyctaeus]

Indeed. The third chapter of the campaign is full scale invasion. It just forced us to incrase mission size, and as for the Nightmares, this guys are mostly like Shivans and don't care about single ship. Instead of, they are often swarming the enemy. We wanted to add some realism, as the alone destroyers doing suicidal attacks are rather bad side of vanilla FS2 missions. I do plans to rewrite some of the Shadow Genesis missions, including the Herschel blockade, Helping Hand, Long Way Home and the Harvest, but the length of SG will remain the same. 46-mission length of the Derelict was described as "impressive" .

[MatthTheGeek]

We wanted to add some realism

... pirate Deimos ?

[Col.Hornet]

Why not? Military equipment is often produced by private companies (we have such in FS universe). Such vessel as Deimos could be illegally bought by such organisations like Cerberus via black market(or directly from the corporations, some people's greed can make things easier), stolen during transport/ production and many other situations can appear.
 If Cerberus could afford possessing destroyers, then why not smaller ships? 

[MatthTheGeek]

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Pirates_and_Campaign_Design

Where are you going to find and fund like six thousand pirates willing to take on the GTVA military with obsolete tech ?

[Col.Hornet]

Pirates or Cerberus Legacy members? These are two different things.

[MatthTheGeek]

Pretty sure I'm talking about pirates.

[Husker]

It's not unheard of. I highly doubt a top-of-the-line warship would get taken by pirates, but the Deimos is nearly 20-30 years old by then. It also fits a pirate group, reasonably fast, well armed, very good at supporting, say, a raid on a convoy guarded by a couple cruisers and a wing or two of fighters. They could even attack unguarded convoys and intimidate them into surrender. It would fit a pirate's modus operandi if those pirates nabbed a Deimos, an aging warship at the time.

[MatthTheGeek]

Good job missing the whole "thousands of crew members" part. Have fun keeping even a few dozens pirates together in real life.

[An4ximandros]

This is why Blue Planet has the best 'Pirate faction' through the GEFs... because they are not pirates. They behave in ways that, in gameplay, mimic the niche use of pirates (hijackings, bombings, filler enemies, etc.) But storywise, as a terrorist cell, it works. They are fanatics of a cause. They are willing to go the extra mile and suffer a pointless death for it.

This niche role could be held by mercenaries (or PMCs if you are feeling 'respectful') as well.
Crysis' C.E.L.L. serves as an example. (Off-Topic: Killing their boss in C2 was so... satisfying. For the story and because of the things Crytek said about PC gamers.)

[Nyctaeus]

Many pirate factions were operating in the Wolf's System Group and 90% of them cooperated with Cerberus Legacy for big money, resources and other stuff. CL provided military support for many groups of pirates. With awesome financial resources and political connections of the CL, a few Deimos-class corvettes are not a big problem. As for the crew members, Wolf's Group was somekind of Caribean Islands after they were discovered and a pirate paradise with thousands of unprotected civilians. After massive Ancient ruins were discovered, GTVA created the Wolf's Fleet to protect all of this, but the pirate and CL forces were already strong in this sector. Everything is explained in Techroom entries.

[MatthTheGeek]

Nothing in there explaining how you would keep together thousands of intrinsically lawless and selfish pirates together in one ship without everyone just killing each other for control of said ship, which itself is undoubtedly worth a few orders of magnitude more than anything they'd ever steal from civilians with it.

Nothing either addressing how those pirates would even have the required competence to operate military hardware of this magnitude to begin with.

[Col.Hornet]

Nothing in there explaining how you would keep together thousands of intrinsically lawless and selfish pirates together in one ship without everyone just killing each other for control of said ship, which itself is undoubtedly worth a few orders of magnitude more than anything they'd ever steal from civilians with it.

Nothing either addressing how those pirates would even have the required competence to operate military hardware of this magnitude to begin with.

Just like the pirates did in XVIII'th century. Technologies used on the pirate and for example Royal Navy's ships were similar. Pirate sailors would have no problem with using military warships. The only differences here  are that they are using spaceships and the crews are more numerous (I can also argue here. Some ships don't need to have 100% of the crew aboard to remain combat operational). Sails changed into reactors and gunpowder cannons turned into laser and beam ones. And I have a question. If you were a captain of such vessel, would you like to hire a bunch of incompetent guys who don't know how the ship works or people who at least know the basics of space travelling and combat? Even if they are not as well trained as GTVA's crewmen, you can train them, it is your business to have an effective crew aboard (as long as you pay them).

Mutinies  were a common thing on the pirate ships but usually captains had enough skills and strength to maintain the discipline aboard (by force if necessary) . Even if a group of idiots would dare to raise the weapon against command staff on the bridge, then what? Would they know how to lead the entire crew  (it is very doubtful that everyone would listen to such guys) In such condition, a small mistake can put everyone's lives in much bigger danger than normally. Also if  you steal yours boss ship and you will make yourself another enemy.  What's a better business? Listen to your captain, do your job and get the plunder or try to play your own game, which will give you a chance to die much easier? Most of people (criminals especially) like their lives.

[SF-Junky]

46-mission length of the Derelict was described as "impressive" .

Sure, but Derelict was not a row of 46 20-minutes-long BoE-style missions.

[majorvader111]

Sorry to Bump, So Betrayal how is act 2 doing?

[Nyctaeus]

Actually we don't have enough time to push the project forward. I have mature exams and my brother has a lot to do in college. In the meantime, we are discussing how we're going to do some things. Currently I'm focusing my efforts in Earth Defence and Inferno.

[TheOutsider]

I have a very odd problem in mission "through the back door" ( think its mission 21 ). The Alexandria, after i escorted the civilian ships, won't jump or do anything, it just waits until it gets destroyed. I can't jump out and don't have new orders, so i can't finish the mission.
On one occasion also lambda 1 transport didn't jump out, and several times the Rieux too had trouble warping out. I tried to skip it by getting killed 5 times in a row, but it just sends me back to the same mission. Is there another way to bypass it, or to solve this bug? Everything else works perfectly ( apart from missing sounds on some weapons ), and id really like to finish the campaign 

[Nyctaeus]

Is this 1.1a patch or pre-patched version? I remember some problems with Alexandria in first release, but we fixed it in 1.1a.

[TheOutsider]

1.1, i downloaded it from moddb