[aledeth]

I think there's a bug with artillery target slaving, they stop listening to me after the first few minutes, so I make sure to give them all my instructions immediately. That said...

Spoiler:

Did you make sure to have all your reinforcements targeting the Carthage's engines? They will always jump out when the Carthage's HP falls to 20% if the engines aren't destroyed before then. It might be that the artillery is weakening the C too much so that you aren't able to knock out the engines? I solved that by Slaving the artillery and targeting every other capital ship in the area, so they wouldn't hurt the C too much before I was ready to finish her off.

[General Battuta]

The artillery bug is pretty well known and we absolutely cannot figure out what it is. It may be a deep engine bug involving repeating events.

[Luis Dias]

Those are all empty shells. What's your point ?

My point is that your sentence is meaningless drivel. I could rant all night long about how really astray your thought went there, but I'll just mention the word "Azad" and perhaps some passerby will understand what I'm hinting at.

[Axem]

Those are all empty shells. What's your point ?

My point is that your sentence is meaningless drivel. I could rant all night long about how really astray your thought went there, but I'll just mention the word "Azad" and perhaps some passerby will understand what I'm hinting at.

Obviously MatthTheGeek is not a player of games.

[manwiththemachinegun]

A game can be hugely immersive without having a ton of story.

Shadow of the Colossus for example is about as simple as it gets. Go kill some monsters. It's the gameplay itself that tells the story, including that butchering a bunch of solitary monsters who are content to be off in isolation may not be as noble as you first think.

[crizza]

Spoilers following:

I had no such artillery bug.
I used shrikes, orderd my wingmen to protect the serenity, two shrikes fired at the first mjolnir, ammo pack, second mjolnir, Narayanas went straight for the tankers(from mission start), called support ship, resupplied, killed the radar dome(honestly, I had more problems with the Auroras going for my Awacs), scanned the sensor systems, ordered my wing to destroy the Carthages radardome, all the while the Naras killed the minelayers. Once they are down I let them blast the Corvettes while I called in my reinforcments...now artillery bug, just the problem with the jump out command:
Jumped clear strikecraft was listed as destroyed, the Custos didn't jump out at all...

[LordPomposity]

Jumped clear strikecraft was listed as destroyed, the Custos didn't jump out at all...

I think the last part is intentional -- Custos are too big to cycle their drives near-instantly like fighters and bombers can.

[An4ximandros]

 I have to say I have enjoyed all this so far, so many choices and outcomes for missions! Learning more about the inner workings of what happens thought the BPerse have given me second thoughts about everything I had made up my mind about in AoA & WiH P1.

Spoiler:

Also, what the hell have you done guys?! You can't just take Soundwave, make his voice more badass and make him a "god"! The universe is NOT ready!

[LordPomposity]

It just occurred to me that Tenebra contains precisely zero directives to shoot beam turrets off of hostile warships. Was this a deliberate design decision?

[Axem]

Au contraire!

Spoiler:

Destroying the Mjolnir beam turrets is good enough to satisfy the Neutralize Mjolnir directive!

While not directly saying "kill the beam cannons" it still half counts, which is more than zero!

[LordPomposity]

I picked the term "warship" very carefully.

[^Graff]

In "Nothing is True," is there a certain event that causes the Gef fighters to break and run?  Because I once had them desert me even before the Awacs went down, and once they helpfully stayed behind to mop up most of the convoy before taking off.

[General Battuta]

In "Nothing is True," is there a certain event that causes the Gef fighters to break and run?  Because I once had them desert me even before the Awacs went down, and once they helpfully stayed behind to mop up most of the convoy before taking off.

They'll run under a few conditions:

-Lots of them blow up
-A certain amount of time passes
-You give them a lot of bad orders and make them angry

[Logrus]

Dear BP team! I know that it's "when it is done", etc. But at what stage is the development of acts 4 & 5 now? Will we have to wait another two years to know what happenned next?

[General Battuta]

Act 4 has good progress, and its missions are closer to those in Act 1 and 2 (and therefore simpler). The player is generally positioned as a squadron commander with some supplemental assets available, rather than a black ops ninja with a whole load of gear.

The new stuff to look forward to is the Izra and the bombers with their crazy gear and wild survival packages.

[[Wolf]Maverick]

Sounds Awesome!

[Hellzed]

I was thinking a graphic novel storytelling could fit well to some parts of Laporte's journal.
A bit like the Mass Effect 2 DLC, with a narrator voice over some scenes of life with the wargods and in the UEF. Not something fancy, just some few drawings, a bit like in fs2 credits and artworks in the techroom, integrated to the fiction viewer.

[SF-Junky]

Tell me what's the story behind Quakelive, Soccer, Table Football, Monopoly, Poker, RPG deck games etc.,etc.

Come on, that statement was utterly asinine and insane.

Well, firstly I hope we all agree that there is a slight difference between physical sports or mental exercises and video games. And between Jump'n Run or Shot 'Em Up games on the one side or space combat simulations on the other.

Secondly, my criticism was not aimed at BP having a story or not having a story. It was aimed at the way the story was presented. I don't have a problem with Act 3 being text-heavy. I think the quantity of text is still fine as it was in Acts 1 and 2. What I have a problem with is the distribution of that quantity of text.
See, you have four combat missions in this act which contain very little story and comparably little text. And then you have these dreamscape missions in-between which consist only of text. Seven to ten minutes long. And this is boring. In my opinion.

Let me again remind you of Aristeia or Post Meridian. I think these are my absolute favorite missions in FS ever. Because they are a nice synthesis of a classic space combat setting, well-written in-game dialogue that drives the story forward and develops the characters, and, in the case of Aristeia a nice new feature you haven't seen before. And that is why I liked Acts 1 and 2 so much and got so disappointed by Act 3. Again, I am not saying that Act 3 is bad. It's simply not meeting my expectations of what a really good Freespace campaign is composed of. I can understand the teams motivation to do why they did what they did. But I just think that they overdid it in quite a lot of regards.

To trace an arc back to my first point: When you go play football, you expect to kick a football into the other team's goal. When you play chess you expect to beat the enemy by strategic thinking. And when I play Freespace I expect to take a fighter with guns on it an KICK SOME ASS!

[Vidmaster]

Vidmaster's review
Loved the new release.  Awesome work you released there and although WiH Act 1&2 set ridiculous standards, it did not disappoint. However, amongst the great story and cool stuff typical for BP, there are enough flaws to prevent this new act from rising over the previous ones. I loved it, yes, but I loved Act 1&2 even more.

1.) I think your mission design relied to much on the "innovating element". With every mission possessing its own specific rules and not a single standard combat mission, you basically gone a bit too far. I know this has story reasons and you this Act is supposed to show of different types of gameplay but the issue with special mechanics is that each time one is not executed well, it hurts the experience. When every mission relies on such mechanics, the chance of screwing up is higher. Which brings me to...
2.) The dreamscape: The story here is superb, foreshadowing stuff and characterizing people, as well as opinions, forces, lore and the world in general. I did not miss any conversation and did not want to. But the execution is flawed: The necessity to fly around is boring, once you enter a conversation you sit still again.
I liked the solar system map (ignoring the crazy texture bugs I sometimes had with it) but the rest...   meeehh 
My recommendation would be to replace these sequences by a "ingame menu like level". Displaying the solar system texture in the background, the user could simply be presented with the "ships" currently present in the dreamscape. The "shivan ship scaling up" sequence in the last level shows promise. Basically, take us out of the cockpit, eliminiate the flying around part.
3.) Mission complexity: Providing options is awesome but sometimes you are demanding an insane amount of spacial awareness. I took about 4 shots at the first mission, 6 at the assassination and 11 at "Her finest hour". Really liked them, mastered them, conquered them in the end. The issue with these missions that you are thrown into those. For the first two, its okay because you are not forced to act at a moments notice. "Her finest hour" crossed the border, not because it was to complex into itself but because it took to many iterations to learn its rules. A short cutscene, establishing the battlefield would have helped. Add e.g. a camera sweep to that mission (skipable!) going from Neptune to the AWACS location, the Destroyer, its escort screen, the sentries and finally the friendly ships. And, like I said, a "standard" mission in between would have helped. I think the tower-defense worked really well although it was really easy while the capship mission did not add much, its not really tactical combat.

I personally am looking forward to new large scale engagements as part of a fleet, "Collateral Damage", "Post Meridian", "Darkest Hour" and "Artisea" (or how that was called) and of course "Delenda Est" remain my favorite freespace-themed missions on HLP.

Thanks for an awesome game nonetheless. No go make an even better conclusion.


EDIT: SF-Junky's post fits...

[MatthTheGeek]

See, you have four combat missions in this act which contain very little story and comparably little text. And then you have these dreamscape missions in-between which consist only of text. Seven to ten minutes long. And this is boring.

Well, a lot of the complaints about WiH1 were that there was too much talking during combat-heavy missions. So, we fixed that. Seems like we can't indeed please everyone.

The dreamscape: The story here is superb, foreshadowing stuff and characterizing people, as well as opinions, forces, lore and the world in general. I did not miss any conversation and did not want to. But the execution is flawed: The necessity to fly around is boring, once you enter a conversation you sit still again.
I liked the solar system map (ignoring the crazy texture bugs I sometimes had with it) but the rest...   meeehh 
My recommendation would be to replace these sequences by a "ingame menu like level". Displaying the solar system texture in the background, the user could simply be presented with the "ships" currently present in the dreamscape. The "shivan ship scaling up" sequence in the last level shows promise. Basically, take us out of the cockpit, eliminiate the flying around part.

People in WiH1 were complaining that we have too many fiction viewer sequences and wanted something more interactive. We gave em. Again, seems like it's a "can't please everybody" scenario.