[niffiwan]

You need to select War in Heaven "Part 2" (which will eventually be acts 3-5, but is just 3 for now)

[CT27]

1. The GTVA

Your assessment is spot on, and that's exactly what the GTVA is in BP.  Bei thinks it's a UFP, and he's completely wrong.

So it would be more accurate to say Bei was naïve/wrong about the GTVA rather than the GTVA supposedly betrayed its principles?

[Aesaar]

1. The GTVA

Your assessment is spot on, and that's exactly what the GTVA is in BP.  Bei thinks it's a UFP, and he's completely wrong.

So it would be more accurate to say Bei was naïve/wrong about the GTVA rather than the GTVA supposedly betrayed its principles?

  That's my opinion.  The GTVA was the formalisation of an alliance of convenience/desperation made during the Great War.  If the GTVA has a guiding star, it's survival by any means necessary, not peace and cooperation.  Bei feels betrayed because the GTVA isn't and never has been what he thought it was.

[QuakeIV]

I can't seem to find Act 3 in the campaign window.  Do I have to play through all of Act 1 and 2 again to play it or am I missing a file/install?

Your campaign data is probably out of date.

[Rheyah]

I installed it wrong.  Played it through.  While I'm pleased and remain completely impressed with the way the campaign is designed, I do have a few points to make.

1.  I note that at no point did Laporte actually considering questioning to Ken why the GTVA HAD to be destroyed.

If anything, the GTVA correctly identified the threat the Vishnans posed, acted rationally throughout the entire story and proceeded to attack the Federation precisely because of the threat the Vishnans posed.  Surely the ideal situation now is for her "forces" to ally with similarly aligned forces ie. Steele, the Commander of the Carthage, Second Fleet.

While I take back my criticism earlier about the weird mysticism stuff, it remains in another form.  Laporte has selflessly killed anyone who stood in her way from Federation pilots to innocent civilians depending on how you play her.  The ultimate reality is that the entire civilization she fights for has been artificially molded.  It would be in her character to rebel, despite her hatred.  First thing I would have done is called Steele and let him know I know exactly why he's here and I want to HELP.  Ken says the plan has failed, but then says "Oh but you need to win anyway".  Why?  Ubuntu was meant to prepare the way, so to speak.

Defending it seems somewhat pointless now.  She knows what she's up against.  The GTVA, NOT the Federation, is the side which understands the most about this war.


2.  I liked the idea of what the Vishnans were but it still somewhat sits in my Shadows vs Vorlons bit.  Okay they're a bit bigger than the Shadows vs Vorlons but surely cross dimensional supercomputer species have more in play than one single species on a maximum of 10 systems.  I got no sense of scale.  Maybe that's something to consider.  It's all very well throwing around the word "layer" and "universe" and "quantum" but the kind of species that can successfully communicate across entire universes is going to have much bigger concerns than whether one little race of mammals is sufficiently enlightened enough to come play Space Chess with them.

An enemy of this scale is going to be concerned with the fate of entire realms.  Think the Minds from the Culture.  They consider the normal universe "mundane" and spend most of their fun time calculating entire universes of their own, tinkering with them and watching them collapse.  They aren't even particularly powerful by Shivan comparisons, really.  They toy with entire species or entire intragalactic civilizations purely on a wager, like bored Gods.  They devote fractions of a fraction of an infinitesimal of their virtually infinite span of attention to conversing with humans.  They crash start ships before humans can even register they're taking a footstep.

Shivans and Vishnans, essentially galactic minds, are far beyond even this point.  Further, what confused the living hell out of me is exactly why the Vishnans let the 14th go back there.  They say they can comprehend infinite possibilities or something similar.  Well if they simulated every possible outcome, why didn't they simulate one in which the GTVA knew what they intended to do?  To take the example of the Minds again, the Minds are considered so paranoid they are often accused of being Machiavellian.  They have plans within plans within gambits within plans.  They take risks when they can compute the long odds, they make back up plans for if the long odds prove too long.  They never assume anything about anyone.

Surely a virtually universal intelligence is going to think on this level.  Even humans make the walls of ants nests thick enough to not be burrowed through.


3.  This is actually a mission design thing.  The weapons on the Federation side of WiH have become far, far too powerful.

I'm not the best Freespace pilot in the world but a stealth ship + shotgun mechanism pretty much just renders every mission "get up close, shoot once".  Not to mention the damn ship is faster than anything else so you break off for 15s and then insta kill anything you want.  Never mind that if you turn about and actually engage a ship that should, in theory, pummel the living crap out of you (like a Perseus or a Nyx) you can still kill it in under 3s.  Tone it down a bit, guys.  It's no fun being an incredible pilot if every single weapon you have can kill a small moon.

Of course I can't take away from the mission design.  I remain incredibly impressed at how far FRED can be pushed to do things.  My only concern on this front is that I didn't feel there was very much actual gameplay.  I mean we had Tower Defense, Making Up The Numbers, a Capital Ship Mission (which I enjoyed, but still) two full story segments and all the time we were flying in invisible, virtually unstoppable Shotgun Ships.  I even considered playing another ship for a bit and then thought "eh, why bother.  I can just shotgun everything to death and if someone sees me I run off."

I'm not saying I didn't die but that was because I wasn't flying the stealth ship properly.  The moment I started to fly it properly, it was easy.


4.  I notice the Tech Room assets were missing, as well as any real description on the weapons.  As a player, I trust you guys to balance your weapons.  I don't need the raw numbers, they're meaningless except for as comparison pieces and best left to a wiki.  I want a nice short and sharp description of what it does and why I should use it so I can make up my own mind.

[Luis Dias]

A sad thing that Battuta isn't here to address or respond to your points, but I'm sure Darius and any other BP devs will gladly reply to you. You made quite the good criticism there Rheyah.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Indeed. In the meantime, I've got some spare time

Regarding #1: I think the problem is that a GTVA victory will prompt the Vishnan to order a cull - or do it themselves. On the other hand, we don't know what UEF victory through Shamballa would result into. Laporte, the Fedayeen and 3rd Fleet are, I think, trying to find a third option, a UEF victory that doesn't involve the Elders' - and by extension the Vishnan's project. It wouldn't exactly be an easy task for Laporte to ally herself with Alliance elements such as Steele. There's quite a few high-ranked Alliance members on Laporte's list, some which she is unlikely to let go easily (Steele again comes to mind).

Regarding #2: We still don't have a clear view on what the Vishnan or Shivan end goal might be, what gambits or plans they play on a universal multiversal scale, how many ant colonies they are monitoring, eliminating or otherwise interfering with. For all we know, they've got hundreds, if not thousands of other civilizations accross the universe that show some sort of "potential". Writing off humanity might just be that unimportant to them.

Regarding #3: I think the devs wanted the player to focus on using the assets at their disposal than shooting down ships, and thus kept the shotgun and mini-redeemer at their current power level. Also keep in mind that these are not standard issue weapons, so far the only Federation fighters seen carrying them are the Fedayeen's stealth fighters. Even an elite taskforce such as the Wargods didn't have access to that kind of stuff.

Regarding #4: Yeah, the devs forgot to re-give the tech entries at the beginning of the campaign. Hit alt+shift+s in the techroom opens up every mission and every intel entry, even for ship and weapons that don't have any.

[Husker]

Yeah, you saw how quickly the Shivans wanted to write off the 14th battlegroup and the last of the Terrans in that universe. Possibly they're working to the same goal, but with different means than they originally were set in. Ken stated that the old ways no longer applied, like they've lost their direction. It seems like they are searching for a replacement for "the Brahmans of old" as the Shivans put it. They've searched galaxies, universes even. Yet they seem divided on the humans. Even the Shivans seem to be divided amongst themselves.  Yes they may see humans as ants. But they see some potential in certain humans such as Commander Bei and Sublieutenant Laporte.

And I would like to see either Bei flying Laporte's wing or Laporte flying Bei's wing. That would be awesome.

[Torchwood]

Regarding mission balance, I think the insane power of the Ainsarii is intended and desirable. In a large scale battle where dozens of ships are fighting, there is a risk that the player's performance becomes insignificant, resulting in a mission that may fail even if the player performs exceptionally well or succeed even if the player does absolutely nothing (also known as the BoE syndrome). While victory doesn't always go to the most deserving party in the real world, such a mission would be decidedly not fun.

One of the ways to prevent a "self-playing" mission is giving the player a powerful ship. Take for example Wing Commander Saga, where the player gets the Excalibur superfighter when the time comes to go into large-scale battles. Her Finest Hour does a good job at making the player's performance highly relevant towards the mission outcome, in part because how quickly a few Sidhe bursts can waste the opposition, and by giving the player a number of things to do like designating artillery targets and deciding about which reinforcements to send.

[InsaneBaron]

Considering I beat WiH a month ago, I should have completed this survey a while back!

I identify with the Federation
Bei was right. The UEF might not be perfect, but the GTVA I saved three times from the Lucifer, Hades, and Sathanas is dead. The Tevs basically fell into despair; they've got no hope or future to offer humanity.

I never/could not figure out how to use a checkpoint
I found out about checkpoints during Act II, but I didn't really bother with them. I was playing on a comfortable difficulty, so surviving wasn't too hard (although completing the objectives sometimes was).

I called the bluff in M05
I knew beforehand that there would be morality choices, and this was obviously the first. "Just Fighting" sounded foolish, and "Taking a Hostage" would have been wrong, so I called the bluff and triggered some really tense dialogue. I eventually fired on the Gefs- I waited till the bomb was diffused, and at that point it looked like the stand-off had served its purpose. Later I looked up the other options, but I like the way I did it: no killing a hostage, no jumping the guy with the trigger, just quick thinking.

I thought Darkest Hour was just right
VERY cool mission. Had me in a crazy panic from the time I warped in the the time the Atreus warped out. Not having the "time to waypoint" timer on the Installation multiplied the intensity fivefold. Excellent display of modern Tev bombing strategy, guys! I got about half my rookies back alive, which seemed pretty good to me.

I killed Xinny and Zero
The first time I actually get shot down by them. I wasn't satisfied though, so I kept trying till I bet the mission. I lost Vin and Camerone though. Was I sad about Xinny and Zero? ...yes. But that's war. Besides, if they HAD to go down in this war, it might as well be against the UEF's new Ace of Aces.

I found the Simms conversation easy
I just took the Direct/Professional approach and said what came naturally. Not quite sure how that led to the awkward jump of logic at the end though. I liked War in Heaven as a whole, but the Laporte-Simms "romance" was a major blot on an otherwise awesome story. Perhaps if I hadn't done as "perfectly" on the conversation it wouldn't have been so blatantly stated? Anyway, after that mission it was thankfully apparent (or at least plausible) that Simms and Laporte had dropped all that and just become good friends/comrades-at-arms, a much better plot choice.

I thought the Nyx dogfight was okay
It was tricky, ya, but I beat it on the first try.

I understood the pointbuy system in Aristeia
The first time around I figured it out... too late. The second time I called in Strike bombers to kill the Medea and Interceptors for extra support, and it worked like a charm. On later techroom replays I even managed to save Torpedo Two (thanks to some advice from fellow players who told me to dump the Nyx and stick with the Kentauroi (you should get a medal for spelling Kentauroi right without checking the wiki )) Awesome mission, great cinematics, perfect music choices, intense gameplay, and plenty of strategy.

I thought the Vasudan Logistics incident was an act of treachery
After what happened on DiS... probably. If Steele has that much control over Kostadin, I didn't think he would let them hit his logistics unless he wanted it to happen.

One perfect moment...
was complicated. I had combination of "great comrade-at-arms story" with "I hope they don't start THAT again". In the end: I felt good. The dialogue was great.

I was shocked and appalled by the assassination
Steele's playing his own allies for fools! What, does he think he can fool the entire Terran and Vasudan species permanently?

I really loved the soundtrack at the end of Pawns
Are you sure you don't mean Delenda Est? Anyway, both had awesome music, especially Delenda Est (Preliator is now my homework BGM )

I thought Delenda Est was just right
And by just right I mean very challenging. EPIC mission, a complete seesaw, almost leaves you shell-shocked.

I want to kill Admiral Steele
After his first appearance I thought, "Hey, if the Shivans show up this is a guy that would be cool to work with." After DiS, I changed my mind.

Don't forget, today is 9/11.