[Flaming_Sword]

I think I've found other error in tables (fixed version by Flaming Sword):

Spoiler:

The Vishnan Seeker (the bomber) has:

$Allowed SBanks: ( "Vishnan Missile" "Unknown Megabomb" )
$Default SBanks: ( "Vishnan Missile" "Unknown Megabomb" "Unknown Megabomb" )

but I suppose you wanted to put "Vishnan Megabomb", as "Unknown Megabomb" is not "player allowed".

Also in BP-16.fs2 loadout, ("Keepers of the Hell"), you've got available Seekers and Vishnan Megabombs but you cannot load them because of the ship definition.

OTOH I'm stuck in this mission because Sacred Keeper is always destroyed. Too many beams over it... (I have to change my strategy).

Darius, please, confirm it.

Ah, that might be causing my crash. I'll check that when I can.

[Darius]

@Darius

Spoiler:

About the Dante and Preserver. Are they the only ships of their class in existence? Also, does the Dante and the Shivans being a universal force exist only in this alternate universe or did you entend them to be in the normal universe too? Do the preservers exist in the normal universe too? The Shivans have bodies though, so their ships can't be a universal force.

Spoiler:

The Shivans can have bodies and still be a universal force The Vishnans would be in this universe too, but since there's no imbalance to be corrected at the moment, you wouldn't have seen them.

Thanks for pointing out the table error ARSPR, I think you might have pinpointed the crash for that mission. I'll get an updated table in the patch.

Regarding Keepers of Hell:

Spoiler:

Priotise the Ravana front beams over everything else. Your fighter is powerful enough to pretty much take anything on by itself, so get your wingmen to protect the Keeper against bombers, and afterburn to the destroyers. A few shots should be enough to take out each cannon.

Next, go for the main beam of the Liliths that pop up in the flanks. If you want, get some fighters over to take out one cruiser beam while you go for the other.

After that it's just normal escort and bomber interception. The Moloch's SBeams shouldn't be able to do much against the Keeper, but you can take them out if you want to.

There have been several wars in history where a government has chosen to abandon diplomacy and invade a country for no great reason, sometimes even going against the wishes of its citizens. I can think of a couple in recent history where this has happened. However, a smart government would address the different reasons for different aspects of its civilisation: that is, give the military benefits in terms of conquest, sacking, etc. Demonise the enemy using propaganda for the public to tolerate the war. Promise benefits to corporations and military hardware providers to appease the commercial aspect.

That reminds me, is there a Terran President of equivalent of the Terran part of the alliance?

[Flaming_Sword]

Regarding the table fix:

Spoiler:

Alas, with the fixed table, I still have the crash. However, when I pick the seeker, I actually have bombs this time, which is a definite improvement. They're fun to use too. 

[Snail]

Three questions.

Spoiler:

The Shivans got banished from the council by the Vishnans. Does this mean they are banished from the council in the alternate universe only, or seeing that they are universal forces, from both universes?

Spoiler:

The Vishnans said they would find "another caretaker" or something like that. Does that mean they will find another species? Will it be the Vasudans or something sweet like that?

Spoiler:

Why did the Shivvies follow the orders of the Vishnans? Couldn't they have said "Bah you're not Brahma so screw you!" and then fry them?

[MarsNeedsWomen]

What I want to know is:

Spoiler:

Does the United Earth Government have any other ships beside the one we see at the, like maybe some fighters. Furthermore, wasn't there mention of other "nations" in the solar system? What could that be all about?

[Snail]

Spoiler:

I would say they do but Daz didn't want to add them into the modpack because they wouldn't really be needed for the situation. They'd only appear for one mission anyway, and I don't think he wanted Bei's wing engaging any United Earth forces.

[Darius]

Daz

 

Three questions.

Spoiler:

The Shivans got banished from the council by the Vishnans. Does this mean they are banished from the council in the alternate universe only, or seeing that they are universal forces, from both universes?

Uh, sure...whatever 

Spoiler:

The Vishnans said they would find "another caretaker" or something like that. Does that mean they will find another species? Will it be the Vasudans or something sweet like that?

Or us Terrans, depending on where our actions take us over the next few millennia...

Spoiler:

Why did the Shivvies follow the orders of the Vishnans? Couldn't they have said "Bah you're not Brahma so screw you!" and then fry them?

Spoiler:

Did the Shivans follow the Vishnan orders? Or were they just resigned to having lost the current battle (destroying humanity) and were just gathering their forces for the next move against them?

Else they could have followed their orders simply because they knew that the balance of power was tipped against them. The Vishnans were not created to destroy, so they needed some leverage against the Shivans in order to avoid destruction eg superior firepower to offset the Shivan's superior numbers, or a psychic property that nullifies the Shivans in some way.

I'm not deliberately being obscure and ambiguous here, I'm trying to see what different readings and analysis people got from the campaign

Spoiler:

Regarding High Max's question before regarding the uniqueness of the Dante and Preserver: they don't have to be the only ships of their type, nor the biggest used by each race, but they are there at that point of time in that part of the galaxy because radical forces were needed. Once they aren't needed, or if larger or more specialised ships are required...

[Snail]

Daz

Spoiler:

The Shivans got banished from the council by the Vishnans. Does this mean they are banished from the council in the alternate universe only, or seeing that they are universal forces, from both universes?

Uh, sure...whatever 

I see I asked the right question...

Spoiler:

The Vishnans said they would find "another caretaker" or something like that. Does that mean they will find another species? Will it be the Vasudans or something sweet like that?

Or us Terrans, depending on where our actions take us over the next few millennia...

Spoiler:

I considered the Vasudans since they hadn't appeared in Age of Aquarius. I thought they may play a bigger role in Blue Planet, but I see that Blue Planet is mostly Terran-centered.

Related to this, the name 'Vasudan' possibly comes from the god 'Vasudeva,' also a Hindu deity. This is another reason why the Vasudans could become the new 'Great Destroyers' to replace the Shivans.

[RedBaron]

I think your campaign ends at the start of it^^

will there be a Blue Planet2??

and i think the end suckz.... first i was happy and then dissapointed. But it was a GREAT campaign...better then the FS2 story..... and your ships are beautiful^^

[Jeff Vader]

will there be a Blue Planet2??

Indeed there shall be a sequel to finish the story.

and your ships are beautiful^^

Technically they're not Darius' ships. If you're referring to the Terran capital ships, which I also like, quite a few of them are made by Stratcomm

[Roflcore]

Am I the only one frustrated with the difficulty curve? (low, then suddenly impossible, then low again?) and with those stupid shockwave missles? Seriously, I can't play anymore, its a shame but its too frustrating

[Snail]

Hey, Darius, where'd you get the Karuna?

[ARSPR]

Well just in case anyone wants it, a new re-fixed of tables and packed in an VP.

I contains Flaming Sword tables:

Well, I decided to take some time and grab the tables from the latest patch and mess with them myself.

I'm not sure which version of the mediavps everyone's supposed to have (haven't kept up, really, but 3.6.8 zeta with the 710 patches here) but I changed them a bit to point to textures I actually have. Changes listed below with comments.

Changed for FS2 Open 3.6.9, 3.6.8 zeta mediavps with Lightspeed's nebula pack.

Changes to weapons.tbl:

• Added missing double quote to line 149 (Balor tech description)
• Removed "fire down normals" flag from all weapons
• Replaced "Kayser_Bitmap" with "Kayser_AniBitmap" (missing texture, Huge Railgun)
• Replaced "glow08" with "2_laserglow03" (missing texture, Terran Turret)
• Replaced "HVasuden_Bitmap" with "VasTurret_Bitmap" (missing texture, Vasudan Huge Turret, not actually referenced in ships.tbl)
• Replaced "Shiven_Megafunk" with "Shivan_Megafunk" (looks like a typo, Shivan Megafunk Turret)
• Changed "Vishnan Ultra Bomb" to "Vishnan Ultrabomb", since that was the name in ships.tbl
• Replaced "beamwhite" with "beam-white" (looks like a typo, HRed, the messed up beam)

Changes to ships.tbl

• Removed Hornet Retrofit references, no longer exists in patched weapons.tbl
• Removed duplicate GTSG Mjolnir, had same values except for tstrings.tbl references set to -1

I know some other problems were pointed out when starting missions with the debug exe, but I'll get to those later.

Plus one small change in ships.tbl:

+ Vishnan Seeker uses Vishnan Megabomb instead of Unknown Megabomb.


OTOH I've just finished the campaign and overall it's pretty DAMN good.

Spoiler:

It has some of the better Battle of Endorish missions I've seen:
+Forced Entry is just incredible. You do feel like a marshal, ordering your pilots cover this ship, attack those cruisers. Hey it's impossible to pass this mission with the right commands so that's a very good point.
+Universal truth is also really fun. Even if the balance doesn't count. I mean it's impossible to fail this mission.


Also you've made pretty good story telling cutscenes.

OTOH, now I'm going to tell what I haven't liked:
+ There's no explanation or just a hint about why the ships moved to another parallel dimension.
+ The speech between Shivans and Vishnans is quite unbelievable. I feel you could have found another way of suggesting what was going on...
+ Keepers of Hell is nearly impossible. The Shivan cruisers are too far from destroyers. You nearly don't have time to reach them before Sacred Keeper is destroyed. Even ordering one wing to destroy one of them (or its forward cannon) doesn't make the mission easier. I get the feeling I've just passed it by luck.
+ A lot of Vishnan ships don't have engine glows.
+ Vishnan Preacher is unbalanced. It's slower than the bomber (Seeker) and it has pretty low energy recharge rate. It feels quite underpowered...


If you do a sequel, I would exploit one fact.    Sanctuary people are going to meet themselves in Earth!!!

[attachment deleted by ninja]

[Snail]

Spoiler:

+ There's no explanation or just a hint about why the ships moved to another parallel dimension.

Spoiler:

IIRC, there's a Command briefing which explains there was some kind of burp during the transit to Sol.

[Jeff Vader]

Spoiler:

... where 'burb' = a disturbance/fluctuation/whatever in the big ships' meson reactors.

[Snail]

Uhhh... Yeah, a burp is that.

[ShadowGorrath]

I think Darius retextured some parts of the ships , right ? Cause , for example , I've seen the Raynor in a few other campaigns and in Blue Planet . They looked different . The one in Blue Planet looked awesome , the Raynor from the other campaigns pretty much sucked .

[Jeff Vader]

I hear that. The Raynor on ITHOV looked... well, terrible, once I had seen the Raynor Darius apparently used as the base for the model in his campaign. I had to get the entire Stratcomm's fleet pack and start fiddling around so that I got ITHOV using the purdier version. Then, it was once again cool. Yeah.

[Snail]

Was the ITHOV one the HTL one?

[Jeff Vader]

No. 'It' was something... unspeakable. Which is why I had to start punching the HTL version's files in ITHOV's data folder so that I could admire it instead of that 'thing' that came with the campaign.