[Black Wolf]

Have you played the Vasudan Imperium Demo, X3N0-Life-Form? I'm guessing you will have done, but if not, it will be an excellent source of inspiration for your campaign.

Oh, I did play it. In fact, I've been thinking about borrowing the Vasudan HUD, even though it's closer to the FS1 HUD. It's a shame the full mod couldn't be finished, it would have been most interesting.

Indeed. I actually had thoughts to do a small campaign, based around stopping the "vulture squadron" as I would have called it that you start out with, you know, where you're hitting soft targets in an Anubis. But then I settled on my WoD campaign.

That might actually be quite cool, for a few missions. Low stakes, low numbers of enemies, but made challenging by the rubbish, afterburner and shield free Anubis. Could potentially lead to the derivation of new dogfight strategies, or other cool little tactical variations. Might not be able to do a full campaign from an anubis, but a minicampaign, sure.

[Lorric]

Ah, you misunderstand me there Black Wolf. In the Vasudan Imperium demo, you start out in an Anubis squadron of rookies hitting soft Terran targets behind Terran lines, before the Shivans show up. Now you're right yourself in that a continuation of that would be nice, but what I was driving at is a campaign as the Terrans trying to put a stop to it. Your resources would also be low, due to the real assets being on the front lines, so it would be an interesting campaign. The Anubis fighters were being deployed by a Typhon, so there was more than just Anubis fighters to deal with. I pictured a game of cat and mouse trying to find the raiders or rescue what they were striking at, and ultimately culminating with forcing the withdrawal of the Typhon from the system.

So if you haven't played the Vasudan Imperium demo Black Wolf, go play it. You'll get to experience some of what you describe.

[Deepstar]

I remember that there was a package named "Shivans" out there... no i do not mean the FSPort campaigns.
It was a set with playable Shivans ships and shivans primary and secondary weapons, cbanims, comm-anis, and a shivan interface and hud, mainly for fredding own shivan campaigns. But it contained some demo missions that take place during FreeSpace 2.

Also there was a shivan campaign called "Hidden Terror" for retail, even years before the SCP. It was never finished, but i remember also a sort of demo release back then.

I don't suppose you happen to have either of these campaigns (or modpacks) downloaded, do you?

Shivans is also on FSMods
http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.261

But this is an old version, only with shivan interface, i remember that there were a newer one with animated cbanim and comm anims and an individual HUD, but it has the same missions. But after i saw the main menu, i think that Tides of Darkness based on this package, so i think Tides of Darkness is a more complete base to fred shivan campaigns than this.


Unfortunately i lost all my files three, maybe four years ago. Together with this newer package and some other freespace campains.
And i have to say, i never played the Hidden Terror demo... i was not able find a working download link, because i looked around only after i heard the music tracks in Inferno and because i played Inferno the first time around 2003 or 2004, Hidden Terror was already dead for years. So i only know, that there was a demo, or something like that, but i actually never played it myself.


There were also some FS1 and FS2 campaigns i downloaded from a german space-sim site (even most of them were german ) that take place on the vasudan side. If i still had them, i think that i have translated them already to upload them on FSMods.
Unfortunately this site is also down... nearly for a decade, now ^^.

[Black Wolf]

Ah, you misunderstand me there Black Wolf. In the Vasudan Imperium demo, you start out in an Anubis squadron of rookies hitting soft Terran targets behind Terran lines, before the Shivans show up. Now you're right yourself in that a continuation of that would be nice, but what I was driving at is a campaign as the Terrans trying to put a stop to it. Your resources would also be low, due to the real assets being on the front lines, so it would be an interesting campaign. The Anubis fighters were being deployed by a Typhon, so there was more than just Anubis fighters to deal with. I pictured a game of cat and mouse trying to find the raiders or rescue what they were striking at, and ultimately culminating with forcing the withdrawal of the Typhon from the system.

Sounds good! Make it.

[Lorric]

I've got my hands full here:

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=83179.0

But anyone else can feel free to take my idea and run with it if they want to!

[Phantom Hoover]

I think a Shivan campaign would work best following the formula NGTM outlined in the previous page. Don't start trying to imbue a sense of mystique by making all the dialogue sound weird, just keep it impersonal, terse and formal. There is obviously a temptation to try to explain the Shivans' mindset and motives, but by doing so you are setting yourself up for failure.

[CT27]

I played this two-mission "mini-campaign" where you played as a Shivan.  There was a degree of "hive-mindedness" and individuality.  If you failed the mission they said your mind would be recycled back into the hive; if you succeeded the debriefing said you could maintain your individuality as long as you continued to serve well.