[starbug]

i was just wondering how long do you think the NTF and second Shivan Conflict's lasted for months or years? i know the when the player joins the game the NTF has been going on for a while, i was just curious because no real time frame was giving, ie dates. I am thinkin of doing a campaign after FS2 and was just thinking on how long it lasted.

[Thor]

i think personally that the battle with the ntf is maybe spread out over a few months or so, but when the shivans show up things move extremely fast. like over the course of weeks.  a much tighter timeframe then what your thinking

[NGTM-1R]

NTF Rebellion was 18 months long from start to finish; so says Admiral Petrarch.

However, this means it was around the 17-month (maybe 16 and 1/2?) mark at the point Alpha 1 entered the picture.

[karajorma]

Petrach's comments amongst others actually indicate that the entire campaign between Surrender, Belisarius! and the end of the war took less than a month actually.

From Surrender, Belisarius!

After 18 months of fighting, Admiral Bosch's Neo-Terran Front has become the most significant threat to regional security since the Great War ended 32 years ago.

From Into the Maelstrom

The Vasudans have dispatched a wing of Serapis fighters to guard the $f Jooyun. You do not have command over this unit. However, the 242nd Suicide Kings are responsible for the $f Jooyun's safety. Eighteen months of civil war are beginning to strain Terran-Vasudan relations

From The Fog of War

The NTF rebellion is over. Polaris, Regulus, and Sirius are now under allied control, and we begin the process of rebuilding these systems after 18 months of bloodshed.

[Goober5000]

Petrach's comments amongst others actually indicate that the entire campaign between Surrender, Belisarius! and the end of the war took less than a month actually.

I think that's a bug in the storyline, though.  18 months is an easy figure to remember, and the mission designers probably threw it in whenever they needed a nice round figure.  Then nobody thought to check the time differential when the campaign was finished.

The fact that the FS1 campaign took three months, plus the fact that after more than two weeks you'd start saying "eighteen and a half months" or "nineteen months" indicates to me that they probably didn't mean to do that.

[starbug]

right so 18months is a year and a half with the ntf, so i wonder how long the Shivan encounter was, i think it had to be more than a few because of the evac of Capella, to evac a whole system i would be more than a  month surely?

[Galemp]

I tried to set down dates in the timeline found in the Wiki, but the canon's been mixed with the conjecture there. Most of that is 'fanon', extrapolated from the canon and generally accepted because we don't have anything official to go on and it's nice to have internal consitency.

[karajorma]

I think that's a bug in the storyline, though.

I don't doubt that for a moment. I was merely pointing out that you can't use the dates given in the briefing for any kind of estimate of how long the NTF campaign actually lasted as they're all the same

We have no idea whether 18 months is the time taken for the entire campaign or just the time up until the start of FS2. Personally I tend to use the latter.

[Eishtmo]

Going by the cycles of the clock spoken of in game, I figured that the entire game could have taken place over the course of two weeks.  A very hectic two weeks, mind you, but it could come in at two weeks.

I think it probably took 3 months (FS1 is actually closer to 2 months than three).  That would keep it around the time span of 18 months since the start of the confilict for the bulk of it (17, 18, and 19 months could still be refered to as 18 months without it being too off).  After the rebellion is finally crushed, then all bets are off on the lenght.

[Goober5000]

Well, FS1 went from 1/9/35 to at least 3/29/35, so that's almost three full months.  (The campaign in Altair took place between 3/2 and 3/29.  Must have been a lot more involved than just what we saw in those few missions.)

[Ace]

Keep in mind that they had to rescue those researchers and then attempt to discern data on a completely alien technology from completely alien and ancient technology

FS2's main events happening within 2-3 weeks does make sense. Probably there's a bit of a slowdown after the NTF is crushed, with the Capella missions being pretty much 24-7 flying.

[Carl]

However, this means it was around the 17-month (maybe 16 and 1/2?) mark at the point Alpha 1 entered the picture.

Too bad. If he had been there from day one, the war would have lasted two weeks tops.

[ionia23]

Karajorma,

Would you consider adding into the timeline, events from some of the fan-made campaigns such as those made by Blaise Russel? (Homesick, Derelict-Revisited, etc).  I figure any campaign that is apocryphal would fit in nicely to 'fill in the blanks', as it were.

[karajorma]

A lot of people have raised that question but it's generally considered a bad idea. There are problems like what to do if Inferno and Homesick disagree about something? I think it's best to leave it free for anyone who wants to follow a particular campaign to simply do their research