[Dilmah G]

Keep in mind though Fury, that was FREDed by two people who had some damn good chemistry, supported by yourself and a few others. And as far as VA goes, do we really, really, need it upon release? I don't object to it sometime down the road and if everyone else thinks VA on release is a good idea I'm for it, but I'd rather see you have a team going and up and FREDing before that.

[Fury]

That's exactly my point, there is no need to have VA right on release. It can be done afterwards, even if it takes years.

[SpardaSon21]

Err, keep in mind that ST:R overhauled a campaign that was only one-third the size of FS2 (or half the size, if you go by the end result).  And it still took us six years.

Doesn't someone have a quote by GalEmp in their signature about you silently putting things back the way they were, and that being why it took six years?

[BlueFlames]

Err, keep in mind that ST:R overhauled a campaign that was only one-third the size of FS2 (or half the size, if you go by the end result).  And it still took us six years.

Doesn't someone have a quote by GalEmp in their signature about you silently putting things back the way they were, and that being why it took six years?

Don't underestimate Goob's ability to take his time.  He's been judging the first annual HLP FRED contest for almost five years now.  (Forty-three days to go, until that anniversary, in fact, Goob.  Not to say that I'm keeping track.  )

[Goober5000]

That is entirely due to laziness, rather than repeated polishing.

[Black Wolf]

Keep the VA. It's too awesome to go to something fan made.

[Klaustrophobia]

there can't ever be an ST:R type of remake for retail FS2.  ST:R worked because the original was **** and it wasn't going to step on toes. 

[Dilmah G]

Perhaps a few table changes and implementation of Furian AI would be alright.

[QuantumDelta]

there can't ever be an ST:R type of remake for retail FS2.  ST:R worked because the original was **** and it wasn't going to step on toes. 

I don't see the problem. 

- On a serious note, we can throw out any of the VA we wish, and keep any of the VA we wish.
It's whoever's running the projects rules, not anyone elses.

[Klaustrophobia]

i'm not saying nobody can make their own version of it, it's just never going to pretty much universally replace the original. 

[Grizzly]

I want to make my wingmates fire Trebuchets

Me too. This sounds more like a bug then a feature (and therefore, should be fixed)

IMO.

[The E]

It is a bug.

However, it's also a gameplay feature of the retail campaign. At several points, the AI gets weapons it can't use to make it easier on the player. Allowing these weapons must be accompanied by a close look at the missions affected to make sure they're still playable on all difficulties.

I should also note that that "bug" has been fixed in the code, but that the fix was deliberately left off by default so that the retail campaign plays exactly like it did during the retail days.

[NGTM-1R]

Well, 17 missions of BP2 R1 only took roughly a year to fred. So that'd be about two years for FS2 campaign.

BP2 was working to a single vision, Darius', but there was also room for flexiblity, in that regardless of BP1 it's all basically new and therefore you are not bound by previous canon.

I think you'll find about twice as many ways to interpret the main FS2 campaign as the number of people you enlist in any project to upgrade or improve it. Or possibly three times. Hell, I personally have gone through about five major variations.

ST was so minimalist in depth and scope that you could get away with almost anything as long as the Hades, cruiser group Hellfire, the Krios, and Jotenheim Installation got whacked.  How you did it was pretty much up in the air anyways. In FS2, the way you accomplish certain Stations of the Canon will have a serious effect on how the campaign works as a narrative.

So yes, if you want to find new and interesting ways to piss people off...go ahead?

[mjn.mixael]

Since there is so much disagreement, this will probably die.. I'm ok with that because I wouldn't want FS2 to change much. The one thing in this topic that I would love to see is table changes, implementation of Fury AI and mission re-balancing.

But I doubt a team wants to get together and do just the boring part of MODing.

Basically, FS2 should stay FS2, but with wingmen firing trebuchets.

[TopAce]

The one thing in this topic that I would love to see is table changes

Tables have been thoroughly discussed somewhere else. There's no disagreement in this field as well: Take the Myrmidon's compatibility issues for example. Some say that with Harpoons, it's gonna be overpowered.

mission re-balancing

Beware of veterans doing "rebalancing". What's easy for you on Medium is a challenge for new players on Easy. Unless you have something else in mind.

[MatthTheGeek]

I think he meant mission rebalancing in regard of improved AI. Mainly some mission involving Trebuchet-equipped enemies.

[SpardaSon21]

Shouldn't some of the missions get re-worked though?  Mystery of the Trinity is mostly time compression until you actually get to the Trinity and As Lightning Falls isn't much different, except with added random EMP effects, and Bearbaiting and High Noon could use some more ships, High Noon especially since the player has little to do after de-beaming the Sath and can just fly around, especially since I believe the beams-not-granting-kills bug was fixed so there's now no chance the player can get a Sathanas kill on his pilot record.  There's also the unused waypoints in Their Finest Hour..., and aren't a bunch of allied ships beam-locked too?

[Mongoose]

I'd argue that Mystery of the Trinity and As Lightning Fall work just fine as atmospheric missions.  The whole point of the former is to introduce the player to the alien and forbidding nebula environment and throw in the Trinity as a plot nugget, and the latter introduced a disorienting environmental challenge that the player had to fight through.  We may be able to time-compress them when we're replaying them for the twentieth time, but I think they're very effective for the first-time player.  I will agree that High Noon was rather anticlimactic, and I'm sure would have thrown a few more wings of fighters into Bearbaiting if they could have swung it at the time.  (Goober's take on this is rather impressive.)  And I think tweaking Their Finest Hour to utilize the present waypoints makes perfect sense, since it's fairly clear that wanted the mission to use them in the first place.

[Droid803]

The one thing in this topic that I would love to see is table changes

Tables have been thoroughly discussed somewhere else. There's no disagreement in this field as well: Take the Myrmidon's compatibility issues for example. Some say that with Harpoons, it's gonna be overpowered.

It's overpowered already, with Helios compatability :/

Shouldn't some of the missions get re-worked though?  Mystery of the Trinity is mostly time compression until you actually get to the Trinity and As Lightning Falls isn't much different, except with added random EMP effects, and Bearbaiting and High Noon could use some more ships, High Noon especially since the player has little to do after de-beaming the Sath and can just fly around, especially since I believe the beams-not-granting-kills bug was fixed so there's now no chance the player can get a Sathanas kill on his pilot record.  There's also the unused waypoints in Their Finest Hour..., and aren't a bunch of allied ships beam-locked too?

Trinity is fine.
As Lightning Falls...is aggravating. They're both quite atmospheric though.

But yes, Bearbaiting, High Noon, and Their Finest Hour could all use spicing up (and quite a few people have done their own takes on it already).

[Trivial Psychic]

How about shortening High Noon by having additional warships jump in to assist the Colossus, giving added incentive to knock out the Sath's ventral beam turret if you didn't get to it during Bearbating.  You could even have the Phoenicia jump in, with critical hull, determined to make a difference, now that it actually has a chance of surviving an encounter with the Sath.