[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]OK since we have a lot of people who are excited about this lets kick off the plot thread. Unfortunately those who are looking for a 50 mission behemoth can calm down for a minute, I think we should keep this one more realistic for the present. 10 missions is the current limit unless someone can give me a very good reason to choose a bigger number.

As such your plot proposals will have to be restricted to this mission limit or very close to it. The plot of course can be anything of your choosing, but it has to take place in the freespace universe and it has to be flexible enough to cope with the fact that we're working with a new shipset, so describe everything in terms of fighters, bombers and whatever 'class' of capship. Any special ship types will have to be well described in order to have a chance of being included, you need a transport or a science vessel then describe it's attributes lucidly.

I'd also highly advise that you make your plot open ended, it gives us space for further expansion. I am of course completely open to suggestion so if anyone has any ideas they think would be useful/fun/necessary then post them here and we'll see what the community consensus is.

Remember we're looking for originality here, unleash your imagination.
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[Black Wolf]

How detailed/revealing do you want us to get? After all, if everyone knows what's going to happen, there's no fun. But if only a few people know what's going to happen, it's not a community project, just a big campaign.

[Tiara]

Make people send it to a email address that only a "jury" that is yet to be chosen can visit.

[Nico]

I apply my OTT story and ships
nah, seriously, I have no idea for a FS2 story anymore.

[Martinus]

Originally posted by Venom
I apply my OTT story and ships

[color=66ff00]Don't even joke about that.

I like the idea of the jury, perhaps if the jury was to split the missions up between groups of modders that only worked on  single mission we could keep some air of secrecy to the story?

Who would you guys want on a possible jury?
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[kasperl]

pretty much some randomly chosen volunteers. of course, there should be some category's, like modders, fredders, storywriters, users, and some admin.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Maeglamor

[color=66ff00]Don't even joke about that.
[/color]

well, it'll go to waste anyway, so it doesn't matter

[Galemp]

We could always recruit everybody to work on BWO.

[Stryke 9]

Shall we ban the ordinary cliches?

[kasperl]

can i sunmit something i am going to use for a campaign?

[Martinus]

Originally posted by Stryke 9
Shall we ban the ordinary cliches?

[color=66ff00]There's no question that originality is key to this, people are more likely to play an interesting and engaging campaign.

Kasperl: Can be be any clearer?
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[kasperl]

me and solatar got an idea from KT about using project Seed, a piece of story from Derelict IIRC.

i really like the idea, it just needs to be deepened out a little.
edit: it's from BWO

[an0n]

Hows about having the GTVA over-run by Shivans and largly wiped out bar a few fortified systems.

Then the campaign puts you as an SOC operative. You go about blowing up Shivans and doing recon for a mission or three, then you find out about some Shivan shipyard that's almost complete so you and your elite SOC buddies set off to destroy it. The finale mission being something akin to one of the later Starlancer missions where you use hijacked super-bombers and sneak through the fleet doing waypoints, then you move into position under the invincible super-ship, torpedo the **** out of it and run like hell. Then the fleet jumps in and wipes out the rest of the fleet and the yards.

[Knight Templar]

Originally posted by Black Wolf
How detailed/revealing do you want us to get? After all, if everyone knows what's going to happen, there's no fun. But if only a few people know what's going to happen, it's not a community project, just a big campaign.

Isn't it kind of hard to submit ideas though? At least if you have your own post FS2 campaign going? I mean, as much as I know me or whatever project leader can't be as canon, hot, good, wahtever as V, still, the campaign you make more or less feels like your FS3. That having been said, you'd then need to either submit your campaign idea, thus spoiling your own stuff, or come up with a second idea, which is either 'the other idea that you had in mind, but wasn't as good as your campaign idea' or its better, and puts your own story to shame.

I feel like i'm going off on a tangent here, so what I'm saying is, why not get together as a sort of 'council' or commitee or whatever, and do it old school. Throw in all the cool story ideas, plot twists you'd like to see, things happen, whatever, and we can logically string something out. Make it flow, not just through something together that's uber cool looking and fun to play, but make it a viable part of the FS timeline. And on the previous note, by creating the sort of melting pot, the Project becomes a community project, not 1 guy's really good idea, which would essentially be just any other campaign. You want something like this to be the communities baby, that way no one is seemingly ditching their own creations.  

Now for the story, there's a few things I'd like to bring up to begin with. Whatever we eventually do come up with, imposing limits now isn't going to do much good. Yeah, be realistic, but 10 missions is a lot less room to play with than you think. That seems more of an intro imho, or a first half. Anyways: Really we should decide where the story is going to go, what is this going to be? Do we want it to be another FS2, comming in with questions, and leaving with a lot more? Or are we going to conclude the series to speak, make a tell all story that wraps everything up and ties all the loose ends? Are we going to bring in new races, make a huge jump in the timeline, etc. ?

I guess the main question I have to everyone as a whole, are we aiming for an Action packed sequel, or an ending to the series?

[Stryke 9]

Plotline by committee? Great idea! Hitting yourself in the groin with a mallet repeatedly in the hopes that candy might come out! Whee! Dipping your head in sulfuric acid? Fantastic!

Could be something done from the Sol side running concurrent to FS2 (a bit cliched, but would allow a lot more freedom in the plot), something like an0n's idea (though I think there's a campaign doing that)... anyway, should definitely have humanity back solidly as the underdog again, which wasn't really the case in FS2.

[Unknown Target]

I'd say 30 missions is a better idea.
10 missions is like having 10 15 minute TV episodes to explain the entire cause and history of World War II.

[Kamikaze]

Maeg specifically indicated a need/hope for open-ended plots, so a 10 mission "intro-plot" to a bigger piece would be the best way to approach this imo.

[Knight Templar]

Originally posted by Stryke 9
Plotline by committee? Great idea! Hitting yourself in the groin with a mallet repeatedly in the hopes that candy might come out! Whee! Dipping your head in sulfuric acid? Fantastic!

Well good luck then. Odds are it'll degenerate into an RPG fight between you or Tiara and someone else just like everything else around here does.

Could be something done from the Sol side running concurrent to FS2 (a bit cliched, but would allow a lot more freedom in the plot), something like an0n's idea (though I think there's a campaign doing that)... anyway, should definitely have humanity back solidly as the underdog again, which wasn't really the case in FS2. [/B]

And yeah, that'd more or less be Mindgames.

[Black Wolf]

Are you after a back story, or mission outlines? I've almost finished a couple of Timelines for my entry, I've still got some more specific information segments to do up.

Actually...couldn't that solve the problem? If the ideas and backstories are public domain, so people could choose from those, and get an accepted general idea, but the actual mission outlines are restricted to the staffers?

[Shrike]

First order of business.  It will star me, pilot ordinaire!