Hard Light Productions Forums
Community Projects => The FreeSpace Campaign Restoration Project => Topic started by: Clawandfang on February 24, 2008, 03:12:17 pm
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What I've always wanted to see is a short campaign about the Taranis, knocking out it's fighter escort, destroying transports which intend to re-supply it etc.
Is there one?
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Yeah it's called FreeSpace lol. Good idea though.
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No what he means is the initial missions against the Taranis before the one in FS1 where you capture it. In fact, according to the reference RBible, there was supposed to be a series of missons against the taranis which ultimatley culminated in the Taranis being caught. T
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I find it odd that they went to so much trouble for a single Cain-class cruiser...
For that matter, why did the Shivans place so much importance on it? It's like their weakest capital ship!
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As to the importance placed on the Taranis, I feel that the shivans would destroy any major captured ship, given time. The only other ships I can think of which get captured by the GTA/GTVI/whatever are the SF Dragon, the four SF Mararas and the freighter in the Hall Fight scene. Did the GTVA manage to capture anything else I've forgotten?
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I meant why did the Shivans make a cruiser, and a Cain at that, their command ship for that sector? This makes no sense to me.
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I meant why did the Shivans make a cruiser, and a Cain at that, their command ship for that sector? This makes no sense to me.
How big was the sector again?
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I don't know that it was the Shivans placing any specific importance on the Taranis as much as it was them taking advantage of an opportunity to strike at the GTA in a particularly overwhelming fashion. The Shivans had to assume that the captured Taranis would be taken to a large installation of some sort, so tracking it and attacking its destination would be an easy way to cause some damage. I don't know that the Lucifer was deployed in this situation for any specific reason other than its ability to get the job done easily (and, of course, for dramatic storyline effect); it would have to show up sooner or later anyway.
I'd definitely be interested in playing a mini-campaign of the lead-up to the Taranis's capture; it always felt like a bit of a letdown that we went right from learning about this incredibly daring plan to seeing its conclusion. A creative campaign maker could probably come up with 3 or 4 good missions detailing the elimination of the ship's support and escort.
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So the Taranis was bait... that does make more sense, I'll admit.
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I don't think a craft has to be terribly big to be the source of command for a sector. All you need is a group of shivans who have the time to pour over maps and make decisons, not immense firepower.
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So the Taranis was bait... that does make more sense, I'll admit.
No it wasn't, since Shivan fighters attacked the Taranis after it was captured. Play the mission if you don't believe me. A few Basilisks do try to blow it up.
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They could have been doing that for show, though.
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I figure it had intel on the GTA/PVN fleet movements and/or info about the positioning shivan forces. Therfore shivans chose destroy rather than destruction
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They could have been doing that for show, though.
I suppose, but they went a bit too far when they blew it up entirely. :P
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They could have been doing that for show, though.
I suppose, but they went a bit too far when they blew it up entirely. :P
No, what he means is that the fighter wings were attacking the Taranis for show, so that they could then track the Taranis to where a GTA base was.
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Yeah but if in mission you let 'em blow it up, they will :nod: i reckon if the Shivans know how to find a homeworld a station should be pretty easy once in system to track down :)
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Reading that made me think; did the Shivans actually know they were headed for our homeworld, or were they still looking for it? We were in a race against them, but did they realise they were in a race?
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They could have been doing that for show, though.
I suppose, but they went a bit too far when they blew it up entirely. :P
No, what he means is that the fighter wings were attacking the Taranis for show, so that they could then track the Taranis to where a GTA base was.
Sounds plausible. Attack the Taranis so that the GTA will stick to it even tighter, instead of becoming suspicious. Then again, I suppose it is possible that the fighter wings were actually attempting to destroy the Taranis. They failed. Then, the Shivans simply tracked it and, for some reason, deployed the Lucy. Maybe it was in the vicinity. Maybe they really wanted to prevent the GTA from acquring data from the Taranis and decided that excessive firepower was the only option. Maybe that was a show. Taunt the GTA with the Lucy to make them understand why capturing Shivan capital ships is not tolerable.
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If it was bait, then why the hell would the Basilisks destroy it if you fly away and don't defend it?
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If it was bait, then why the hell would the Basilisks destroy it if you fly away and don't defend it?
This is probably a gameplay issue rather than a plot issue. After all, why make a mission to protect a craft if the enemy arn't even going to destroy it?
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The mission was mainly capturing the Taranis, not protecting it. The mission designer could have just sent the Shivans to attempt to kill the Terran fighters near it.
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Okay, I concede.
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But they reds WILL blow it up if you give then free reign to. :beamz:
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Some clarification here from the FS1 guru.
Originally, the largest ships in Freespace were designated cruisers (like in real life navies.) If you watch the Briefing cutscene you'll see that the Taranis icon is that of a capital ship, like the Galatea or the Lucifer.
Therefore we can assume that the Taranis was supposed to be a Demon or some other capital ship. The FS Reference Bible backs this up. For some reason, though, it was scaled back to simply a Cain, and that part of the campaign was never completed.
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:necro:
I think that they realized that they wouldn't have been able to tow a Demon, or disable/disarm it for that matter, so they scaled it down.
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maybe the Taranis is something like this here:
english Wikipedia on Oste-class (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oste_class_fleet_service_ship)
ps . I think I'm interested on picking up this campaign idea
EDIT: ooohhh ... I think I've enough mission ideas together to call it mini-campaign - but I've to check if and how it would contradict "Hellgate Ikeya"
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Meh, I think people forget that Cruisers in FS1 were actually a bit of a force to be reckoned with, instead of the free kills they are in FS2.
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SAH starts in FS1 time. Well, a bit post-FS1. Anyway, you are killing cruisers en masse.
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Meh, I think people forget that Cruisers in FS1 were actually a bit of a force to be reckoned with, instead of the free kills they are in FS2.
It was the advent of fighter shields that made cruisers a bit useless. Even so Lilith cruisers were still a threat with their 12 turrets with decent placement, though the FS2 version really scaled that down to 9 weak ones in favor of that anti-capital beam
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On medium, even a Cain was a threat, hell, the Ramses was hard to disarm without getting damaged.
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Yeah if you install the FSport and make a mission with no shields, ml16s, and whatever the heatseeking missile was for the FS1 campaign and then go try to attack any cruisers with fighter escorts, you'll respect them a little more.
Anyway, I think the old posts were overthinking things. Even though the taranis was given the destroyer icon etc, all you need is a cruiser as a command ship and some support fighters and some freighters to make a little scout force to look for nodes to interesting systems with planets to bombard.
So you have the taranis scouting around what the shivans consider an uninteresting area with low threat potential, and then the GTA bounces it, blows its escorts away, and tows the thing off. Shivan high (?hive?) command gets irate and sends the lucy over to show those pesky humans what it thinks of attempted theft.
Anyway, this would make an awesome mini-campaign to track it, bait it out, steal it, escort it to the station, and then be part of the evac escort when lucy shows up.
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So I spent all day thinking about a Taranis campaign. That's what I always liked about freespace, that you can think about the side stories and mods and plots, and then go try to fred them up.
Anyway, I have some questions about Taranis Canon. I need to play the fsport again to check some things, so I figured I'd ask in case anyone knows off the top of their head.
What system was the taranis in? Do we have any more info other than sector command ship and it has a few fighters and bombers escorting it when it is captured? Were shields rolled out to the whole fleet at the time of the taranis, or were they still in prototype phase? Were valks or hercs out yet? I figure a good campaign for this should stay true and not have silly planes showing up that haven't been invented yet.
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Valks were out before the Shivans hit the Avenger prototypes. Hercs were out roundabout the time the big G got blowed-upski. *doffs hat in mark of respect*
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Valks were out before the Shivans hit the Avenger prototypes. Hercs were out roundabout the time the big G got blowed-upski. *doffs hat in mark of respect*
*Starts playing the bagpipes*
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What system was the taranis in? Do we have any more info other than sector command ship and it has a few fighters and bombers escorting it when it is captured? Were shields rolled out to the whole fleet at the time of the taranis, or were they still in prototype phase? Were valks or hercs out yet? I figure a good campaign for this should stay true and not have silly planes showing up that haven't been invented yet.
The Taranis operated in the Ikeya/Betelgeuse/Beta Cygni/Ribos area. When it was captured, it was in the Ikeya system. The Valkyrie was fully deployed and all fighters on board the Galatea, at least, had shields. The Athena was available, but not yet used until the actual capture operation. The only weapon fully capable of breaking through shields was the Avenger. The Interceptor missile was just developed a few days before the capture.
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and then be part of the evac escort when lucy shows up.
Rain on Ribos IV.
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*cough wholefrickins41tstorm cough*
I'd play that branch / skewed campaign reality :yes:
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well, I have a working outline that I can turn into a campaign of the 5-7 mission length variety. Now I have to remember how to fred things that don't suck.
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What about the "Ship of tears" mod ?
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hmmmm.... I hunted those down. I'll play them and check them out.
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The reason the lucifer was sent to tombaugh is because otherwise they might have taken losses. Tombaugh station was described as a fortress plus the detroyers and cruisers present, the shivans would have needed more ships then they had available to get there on time unless they sent good old lucifer. At least thats my opinion.