Author Topic: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)  (Read 141151 times)

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Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Google Plus but evil.

 
Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
With BP's tenth anniversary coming up, and our minds still on our promise to finish this story one way or another, we think it's time to start revealing some of the secrets that await in the BP story.

I'll answer questions, although in an oracular sense. Ask anything. Yes, knowing what's coming could change the experience if we do ever finish Acts 4+5 and BP2 - but knowing is never the same as playing.

Fire away.

ANYTHING?!

Okay, give us the spoiler to rule all other spoilers: When will War in Heaven acts 4 and 5 be released? :p
« Last Edit: August 01, 2017, 05:16:59 am by Erebus Alpha »
"Obviously the meson bomb is a form of cat-toast-device, with the buttered toast inverted, so that the cat and toast both fly in the direction of gravity much faster than expected. By introducing artificial gravity, a pair of cat-toast perpetual motion accelerator units can be made to collide with one another, and they produce an unimaginably devastating explosion. Both cats are named 'Meson'."

 - Wikileaks 2383

 
Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
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Everybody will be getting more ships (except maybe the Vishnans?) Prominent highlights include next-gen Vasudans, the Tev drone bombers, and various late-war UEF wunderwaffen.

oh great oracles please bless us with more info on these ships

Quote
They'll be Laporte's prime movers to get the events of Acts 5 rolling, and the ones most directly privy to her plans. They won't be highly effective during Act 4 due to Steele's countermeasures.

Can we get any details on the countermeasures Steele has taken against the Fedayeen? Or, rather, any besides just rolling over the Masyaf with beam bombs?

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In addition, the UEF hasn't been able to make beam weapons work; the recoverable bits and pieces of the Lucifer they got their hands on weren't enough to make replicating that tech feasible.

Didn't they get the front end, where the beams came from, though? (Well, not the claw beams). Wasn't the tail end left in Delta Serpentis, and somehow the GTVA managed to make beam weapons from that?

I mean, I could buy the front end blowing up so badly that there's nothing scannable and recoverable, even though it looks fine in the .anis. But then how did the GTVA make beams with the bit that had no beams? Scan data from that one mission? Wouldn't the Sol part of the GTA have had that data too?



I'd also appreciate clarification on a few things from earlier on - apologies if they've been answered somewhere before and i've just failed to find the answer in the fiction

-What were the Fedayeen doing before they found Laporte? Al-da'wa begged the council to antimatter bomb Beta Aquilae on day 1 of the war, but what's he been up to since then? It mentions in the fiction text that they have access to "significant resources", after all, and we can see that with things like the Custos-X - surely they haven't been just cooking mystery space meat over the radiator coils? What details on their operations can we get?

-The debriefing at the end of UT2 implies that the Fedayeen were unaware of the existance of the Vishnans until that point - or if they were, it was only basic knowledge. What level of knowledge did they possess on the Vishnans?

-Why was Severanti left in command for so long? There was an entire thread on this topic not long ago, but it never went into much detail about this. If Sol's economy and population is about as equal to the entire GTVA (Or, at least Terran half) - and they know they can't fight the Shivans with pure military might - shouldn't it be a priority to get access to the resources in Sol? Why would Command continue let Severanti fight a slow war of attrition, possibly causing more casualties and resources, as opposed to just blitzing Sol outright and incorporating it into the GTVA as soon as possible? There's complexities with drawing elements from other areas to fight in the Sol theatre, but given it's pretty foolhardy to fight the Shivans with force of arms, it shouldn't matter anyway and the short term positional loss for the long term quicker gain and solidification of Sol should be worth it, right?

-Does the Solaris really sit in Earth orbit surrounded by a bunch of Narayanas and cruisers and such?

-Is it just me, or does Byrne really come off as useless?

 

Offline Mito [PL]

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Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
For all my life I have thought that:
1. The rear part of Lucy got totally vaporised inside the node when the subspace-space rift collapsed on the superdestroyer and that the energy produced from vaporising that chunk (probably including a few reactors blowing up) destabilised the node,
2. Lucifer's beams are completely different tech than typical GTVA armament or FS2 Shivan beams. I was under the impression that while normal beam weapons fired a flood of plasma at its target, Lucy's beams were pushing a stream of some exotic particles, insulated from any outside matter until they hit their target. And that these exotic particles (or even antimatter) dealt ridiculous damage to the enemy when they reacted with hulls, compared to typical plasma beam.

And recovery of equipement from Lucy might have been problematic too, since it would seem that in the piece that made it to the other side some kind of reactor failure was triggered and everything went boom. And to catch out the fragments GTA would need a lot of ships, which seems that were unavailable at the moment. War and stuff. Plus, there weren't many Vasudan reactor engineers on the Sol side of the node, that's why it seems that UEF doesn't have the same energy output of their ships compared to Tevs.
How do you kill a hydra?

You starve it to death.

 
Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
For all my life I have thought that:
1. The rear part of Lucy got totally vaporised inside the node when the subspace-space rift collapsed on the superdestroyer

That's always what I would have thought happened too, but I do remember reading somewhere (I must stress somewhere, since it's been a long time, and a lot of mods/posts, and i've forgotten a lot that I used to know) that the other half ended up in Delta Serpentis otherwise, giving the GTVA stuff to reverse-engineer beams and such from. If someone has a source to say otherwise, i'd love to hear it, as i'm only citing from my failing memory.

That does raise a good point, though - if the Hades was able to equip itself with beams with only scans to go on, shouldn't the UEF have been able to have theoretically been able to produce beams as well? Wasn't GTI Headquarters in Sol?

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Plus, there weren't many Vasudan reactor engineers on the Sol side of the node, that's why it seems that UEF doesn't have the same energy output of their ships compared to Tevs.

While that's true, isn't that also a result of UEF ships not needing as much energy output, because of the nature of their ballistic weapons (and not needing to invest as much in ships because they're not being chased by an angry army of 80 saths)?

 

Offline QuakeIV

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Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
I mean, they had Orion destroyers, which were shown to mount green beams just fine with their terran-bog-standard rectors.  I don't think power output was a problem.

 

Offline Aesaar

  • 210
Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Quote
Everybody will be getting more ships (except maybe the Vishnans?) Prominent highlights include next-gen Vasudans, the Tev drone bombers, and various late-war UEF wunderwaffen.

oh great oracles please bless us with more info on these ships
The Murugan is one.

Quote
I mean, I could buy the front end blowing up so badly that there's nothing scannable and recoverable, even though it looks fine in the .anis. But then how did the GTVA make beams with the bit that had no beams? Scan data from that one mission? Wouldn't the Sol part of the GTA have had that data too?
The possibility of another war with the Shivans was a strong incentive for the GTVA to develop better weapons with which to fight them.  Total isolation in a system full of resources provided no such incentive for Sol.

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-Why was Severanti left in command for so long? There was an entire thread on this topic not long ago, but it never went into much detail about this. If Sol's economy and population is about as equal to the entire GTVA (Or, at least Terran half) - and they know they can't fight the Shivans with pure military might - shouldn't it be a priority to get access to the resources in Sol? Why would Command continue let Severanti fight a slow war of attrition, possibly causing more casualties and resources, as opposed to just blitzing Sol outright and incorporating it into the GTVA as soon as possible? There's complexities with drawing elements from other areas to fight in the Sol theatre, but given it's pretty foolhardy to fight the Shivans with force of arms, it shouldn't matter anyway and the short term positional loss for the long term quicker gain and solidification of Sol should be worth it, right?
Severanti's strategy was effective.  It was slow, but it was excellent at minimizing risks to Allied warships and preserving infrastructure.  By contrast, since Steele's taken theater command, infrastructure damage and civilian casualties have increased significantly, which Steele believes is offset by the speed with which he'll achieve victory.

 
Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
How many Orion combatants remain in service, and in what capacity? What about Typhons?

Do the Vasudans have a next-gen destroyer?

 

Offline AdmiralRalwood

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Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
How many Orion combatants remain in service, and in what capacity? What about Typhons?

Do the Vasudans have a next-gen destroyer?
The tech room provides partial answers:
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Some Orions remain in service, including the storied GTD Carthage, now a Combat Evaluation Destroyer with modified jump drives.
Quote
The Typhon-class destroyer is a veteran of the Great War, an old soldier still doing the Emperor's work.
[...]
Modern doctrine keeps the Typhon as a garrison destroyer, watching over the buzz of Vasudan trade and intrigue. A number of Typhons also serve as arsenal ships, armored with heavy ship-to-ship torpedoes.
Quote
The Hatshepsut serves as an elegant front-line combatant alongside modern heavy warships such as the iKhemu-Sek.
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: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
The Murugan is one.

So we actually get to see Murugans out in combat? And there's more then one? Here I was thinking from this description that it got byrne'd.

This is a good day.

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The possibility of another war with the Shivans was a strong incentive for the GTVA to develop better weapons with which to fight them.  Total isolation in a system full of resources provided no such incentive for Sol.

So the UEF could have made beam weapons, but just didn't (because they didn't see the need)?

 

Offline Darius

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Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
No, it definitely got Byrne'd.

 
Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
No, it definitely got Byrne'd.

Just when you guys build my hopes right up you shatter them to the ground again. Truly the masters of stealing men's feels and making them your slaves.

Byrne is like that one guy on your team that goes off and does his own thing, hogs all the resources to himself, and then when all of your bases are in ruins, he goes "What? No, you guys are the ones that didn't follow my plan." And he never did anything all game to begin with.

E: Guess I shoulda brought Byrne heal
« Last Edit: August 02, 2017, 04:14:51 am by Neptune »

 

Offline Gray113

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Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
I remember a thread where Battuta said we would get the back story for the Phoenicia regarding the actions of the C.O. during bear-baiting and the reputation/service record there after of the vessel. Any chance this could get posted soon?

Also did Steele suffer an event linking his mind to the Shivans in a manner similar to Lieutenant Ash during the events of Capella? Are the Vishnans, Vishnan influenced Feds or Shivans actually trying to contact Steele in his dreams or is he just really that paranoid?  :nervous:

 

Offline Darius

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Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
That's quite an uncharitable description of Byrne.

Calder's the warrior hero who fought off the Gefs and is currently dealing the most damage against the Alliance but Byrne is the administrative expert. Calder wins the battles but Byrne keeps the military alive. If your aim is to delay the enemy long enough to initiate a time-critical plan while holding a defensive advantage, the last thing you want to do is spend assets on offensive actions.

Though it's true he could be less vague to Calder and Netreba about the nature of his victory plan though.

The Murugan was a white elephant that at the time wasn't worth the cost when compared against cost equivalents for multiple cheaper smaller ships (given the vastness of space needed to defend, and the lack of hard targets that the Fleet was expected to face). She would have been sold for scrap long before the Tevs arrived in Sol.

 
Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)

What is the canonical fate of Freespace 2's Alpha 1, alive or dead? If alive, is he (almost positive it was a he) Steele or another named character in BP so far?

Bump on this, which got lost in the echo!

Unless....the oracle has spoken, and Alpha 1 = BYRNE  ;7

 

Offline Homura

  • 24
Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
The most common belive is that Alpha 1 is Al Fadil from the Orestes.

In My brother, my enemy, Laport is against some SOC named Xinny and Zero who flew with Alpha 1 in Shivan territory to discover 8 more Saths.

These pilots came to save Al Fadil from Feds.

 
Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
If Steele is Alpha 1, I will switch sides and root for the Tevs!

...Unless Al'dawa is the Alpha 1 that helped blow up the Lucifer.
"Obviously the meson bomb is a form of cat-toast-device, with the buttered toast inverted, so that the cat and toast both fly in the direction of gravity much faster than expected. By introducing artificial gravity, a pair of cat-toast perpetual motion accelerator units can be made to collide with one another, and they produce an unimaginably devastating explosion. Both cats are named 'Meson'."

 - Wikileaks 2383

 
Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
The most common belive is that Alpha 1 is Al Fadil from the Orestes.

In My brother, my enemy, Laport is against some SOC named Xinny and Zero who flew with Alpha 1 in Shivan territory to discover 8 more Saths.

These pilots came to save Al Fadil from Feds.

I've also heard a theory that it's Kovacs.

EDIT: Oops, wrong Alpha 1! Don't theorize before coffee, kids.

 
Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
That's quite an uncharitable description of Byrne.

Calder's the warrior hero who fought off the Gefs and is currently dealing the most damage against the Alliance but Byrne is the administrative expert. Calder wins the battles but Byrne keeps the military alive. If your aim is to delay the enemy long enough to initiate a time-critical plan while holding a defensive advantage, the last thing you want to do is spend assets on offensive actions.

Though it's true he could be less vague to Calder and Netreba about the nature of his victory plan though.

The Murugan was a white elephant that at the time wasn't worth the cost when compared against cost equivalents for multiple cheaper smaller ships (given the vastness of space needed to defend, and the lack of hard targets that the Fleet was expected to face). She would have been sold for scrap long before the Tevs arrived in Sol.

I think that's the thing. Byrne has his own Agenda and he pursues it but he doesn't give Calder and Netreba much to go on, apart from "Do what I say and trust the elders". If he gave them more of a reason why, then they'd be more inclined to do what he says. After all, they want to win the war and reclaim their system, and unless Byrne has some kind of super plan or something up his sleeve, they're totally right in thinking that a defensive battle of attrition would just get them wiped out eventually.

I've been replaying WiH part 1 - and perhaps this is because it's from the perspective of Laporte, who is all about Calder's philosophy of striking back of the tevs? - but to me it seems to make Byrne out to be this guy that's just sitting there doing nothing. Worse still is that he only deploys the bare minimum of assets - which makes sense from his point of view, but he gives no reason for why he's doing it to anyone else, which seems to cause a lot of needless casualties from everyone else's point of view. Furthermore, unless you plunder the depths of the techroom - which not everyone might do, and if they don't, it's their loss - you don't that much indication that Byrne's an "administrative expert", except for mentioning his MBA and his "Management skills". For comparison, you never have to read the techroom to get the impression Steele is a badass ruthless tactical genius, or that Calder is the man, and he gets stuff done by shoving torpedoes down the throat of the nearest tev he can find.

Was it intended to be written this way (because of the perspective of Laporte), or is this my faulty interpretation?

  

Offline Darius

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Re: The Blue Planet Oracle (full BP2/3 spoilers within!)
Byrne's actions are definitely supposed to be interpreted as frustrating -- from the perspective of the player as Laporte and as an active agent with the gameplay's emphasis on action (the Tevs are out there! All we need to do is go out and shoot them til they die!)