[Phantom Hoover]

<Anaximandros> Well I am leaving for a bit. Don't tell me if something cool happens while I am gone.
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<Phantom__Hoover> battuta, you're going to have to outline the plot for bp3 now he's gone btw
<ShivanHunter> yes yes yes
<ShivanHunter> feed us spoilers
<battuta> the protag is a vasudan
<IronBeer> YES! I've fixed it
<IronBeer> oh sorry
<SpardaSon21> wow
<IronBeer> do continue- I'm actually going afk, so unload at will
<Phantom__Hoover> battuta, do they have a name, if so what is it
<battuta> yes
<battuta> nabirasul
<Phantom__Hoover> :O
<Phantom__Hoover> how tall is nabirasul
<battuta> between half and three kareem abdul jabbars
<BritishShivans> what is his favorite snack?
<LapsedPacifist> be interesting to see if the Vasudans have come up with some good fighter designs since the SSI
<battuta> yeah that's a pretty major priority
<battuta> i believe design-wise we're currently thinking about their military as a sharp divide between line and medjai ships
<battuta> line ships will stick closer to the traditional vasudan strengths and weaknesses
<BritishShivans> idk
<battuta> medjai ships are crazy hot rods that benefit from the vasudan technological and economic explosion
<BritishShivans> Vasudan fighter designs are pretty good
<BritishShivans> Just not the Serapis
<SpardaSon21> wait
<SpardaSon21> so
<BritishShivans> or the Platypus-nose bomber that I can't remember the name of
<Phantom__Hoover> battuta, you'd better let us in the medjai ships
<SpardaSon21> the Vasudans are going to have a kickass-fleet thanks to their huge economy and the like and the Tevs just have the TEI stuff?
<battuta> 'just'?
<SpardaSon21> well, you made it seem like the Medjai stuff was going to be absurdly awesome
<battuta> it will be pretty ****in awesome
<SpardaSon21> so, BP3 is after WiH concludes?
<BritishShivans> what is nabirasul's favorite snack tho?
<battuta> yes
<Phantom__Hoover> BritishShivans, vasudanflakes
<SpardaSon21> gotta be next-next gen Terran warships then
<battuta> no
<LapsedPacifist> two more segments of WiH to go yet
<Phantom__Hoover> battuta, is darius secretly a vasudan fetishist
<battuta> no he only loves excellent beats and his wife
<Phantom__Hoover> is his wife a vasudan
<battuta> no
<BritishShivans> does nabirasul have friends, or does he just have a shelf of severed heads that he talks to when he feels lonely
<Phantom__Hoover> do vasudans actually have male and female genders
<battuta> he has the emperor's ear and is a big deal
<Caiaphas> male/female is a pretty solid combination, evolutionarily
<battuta> but he also faces certain difficulties, which you can probably glean from his appearances in the existing bp fiction
<Phantom__Hoover> cooool we're playing a posh aristovasudan?
<Phantom__Hoover> wait...
<Phantom__Hoover> are we going to be playing the jester
<battuta> y
<SpardaSon21> does the Jester have facial scars?
<SpardaSon21> no wait, that's the Joker
<BritishShivans> oh my god
<Phantom__Hoover> what
<BritishShivans> important question
<BritishShivans> will BP3 expand/elaborate on zod biology in addition to their culture?
<BritishShivans> perhaps give an interesting reason why vasudans can chill with humans in the same kind of atmosphere?
<battuta> probably not in massive depth
<Phantom__Hoover> battuta, so wait what why is the emperor's nagari prophet flying fighters
<battuta> the gender question is an interesting one - i am like 90% confident that vasudan genders are not the same as ours
<battuta> but
<battuta> their sexes may be
<BritishShivans> huzzah
<BritishShivans> what is the emperor like?
<Phantom__Hoover> battuta, why is the jester a pilot help
<battuta> good question
<battuta> he's a member (by elevation if not by birth) of the vasudan military superelite
<battuta> their approach to authority and how it should be deployed isn't particularly similar to the terran ideal
<battuta> khonsu's reinstatement of the medjai involved a lot of appeal to traditional heroic values
<Phantom__Hoover> isn't keeping your command staff somewhere safe just universal good tactical sense? or oh is it some deliberate subversion of that based on an honour system
<Phantom__Hoover> man i really want you to make bp3 now
<battuta> the vasudans have a long tradition of go-betweens who interface what the terrans would see as traditionally isolated 'staffs'
<battuta> see the ambassador class that ran intermediation between parliament and the imperium
<battuta> nabirasul isn't command staff, he's a - combination troubleshooter and banner-bearer
<IronBeer> humans are historically also very bad at understanding Zod culture
<Phantom__Hoover> as, hopefully, are zods of human culture
<battuta> zods are good at analysis of complex systems though
<battuta> but yes they've historically thought of humans as stupid and aggressive which is probably not wholly fair
<LapsedPacifist> especially not if manipulated into doing so by a certain admiral..
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<BritishShivans> bosch came at least 42 years after the terran-vasudan war damnit
<battuta> 32 right?
<Phantom__Hoover> i guess i'm a bit paranoid that bp has settled into portraying zods as unilaterally better than humans
<battuta> hahahahahaha
<battuta> have you no faith
<The_E> Well
<battuta> i mean just look at act 3
<The_E> Thing about being really good at understanding complexity is that you do not see complexity as a bad thing
<battuta> right
<battuta> vasudan society is ****ing -
<battuta> malignant would be the wrong word since it's not all bad
<Phantom__Hoover> is complexity a bad thing if you can understand it?
<battuta> but boy is their society neither parsimonious nor usefully integrated
<The_E> Phantom__Hoover: Being able to understand it, and being able to rely on others to be able to understand it, leads to complexity where a simpler approach may be more advantageous
<battuta> in act 3 you have the hammer of light resurgent _inside_ the vasudan military
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<battuta> a forward deployed logistics ship in a critical theater has an HoL operative as a captain
<Phantom__Hoover> that... is a very good point which i completely overlooked
<BritishShivans> idk why people seem to think the zods are innately better?
<battuta> well they have a giant military and a monstrous economy so
<battuta> they have some perks going on!
<BritishShivans> bah
<BritishShivans> milwankers
<battuta> but when you view history as a space occupied by the living and the dead it can take you to some straaaange places
<BritishShivans> do they see?
<battuta> no they don't have any unusual mystical time biology
<BritishShivans> (not a serious question)
<battuta> but they can conceive of systems as having some teleology that's very alien to humans
<battuta> they grew up wholly at the mercy of an incredibly hostile environment and - on the one hand - this must contribute to the legendary vasudan fatalism
<battuta> climate's changing and there is _nothing_ your pretechnological society can do but die en masse and try to move
<battuta> on the other hand this gives them a deep appreciation for what they've made
<battuta> leaving vasuda prime wasn't a tentative climb out of the cradle, it was a bloody-fingered ascent up a cliff face out of a snake pit
<Phantom__Hoover> that seems to suit the freespace universe far better though
<battuta> well depends
<battuta> if the shivans turn up and the reaction of a large portion of your populace is 'it's time for us to die'
<battuta> not super useful from a pure utility standpoint
<BritishShivans> khonsu seems pretty different in that regard, then
<Phantom__Hoover> i presume the vasudan reaction to VP getting glassed had an element of "well FINALLY we never have to go back there again"
<battuta> they lost a lot, but - i think some of the bp fiction describes their specific resilience
<LapsedPacifist> Sounds interesting. Obviously still a lonnng way off though
<battuta> if you had to ask me to describe the sort of high-level strengths of terran vs vasudan in a very intuitive formalist way
<battuta> you're going to see in the terrans a lot of contingencies, a lot of flow-graph planning, if this then that, a lot of focus on marginal efficiency and optimization, a capability for calculated sacrifice and top-down directed action in which individual agents are expected to obey tight constraints
<battuta> in the vasudans a strength for holistic analysis, for finding points of disproportionate effect, for maneuvering systems via acts of symbol and bottom-up influence, a comfort with both manipulating and being manipulated by a very complex multivariate environment
<battuta> a ****ty metaphor
<battuta> a terran moves a bunch of birds by sorting them into cages and shipping them, a vasudan figures out the rules the birds use to identify and follow a flock leader
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<battuta> if you're the terran the vasudan's system seems arcane, inefficient, and kind of a waste of time
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<battuta> if you're the vasudan the terran's system seems wasteful, inelegant, far from parsimonious, and prone to failure since it doesn't leverage existing systemic tolerances
<battuta> low level instance: vasudans are excellent at power systems!
<battuta> high level problem: vasudan government is really roundabout because everyone involved is much more agentic than terrans
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<battuta> maybe we should put this on the forum so luis can see it

[Veers]

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.lnse3.ken.bigpond.net.au

.ken.

 

[An4ximandros]

Why you little ****s, I spake in jest!

[niffiwan]

hahaha - well, at least you still got to read it (if not participate)

[MatthTheGeek]

Guys, WHAT DID I SAY

You KNOW you're forbidden to have such discussions when I'm not here.

[m!m]

I should really put #bp on my auto-join list...

[AdmiralRalwood]

That was a fascinating read. Now I am way more excited for BP3 than I should be, given that we're still only 3/5ths of the way through BP2.

[An4ximandros]

I can't help but imagine a Vasudan standing on top of a fighter craft holding a banner while yelling charge! in space with the flag being moved by wind. :\ :/ :|

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Well, we've already had Shivans on a plane, a Vasudan bannerman on a fighter doesn't seem all that strange.

[Luis Dias]

Nice. The big reveal here is that the protagonist is not just a random Nagari sensitive Vasudan, as previously established, but it is the Jester himself. It's a detour from the previous BPs, where the protag is a relatively nobody who has to prove himself / herself, now we would get to play a famous Vasudan.

From the insistence on the characterization of vasudans as holistic byzantines, I'd speculate we would see that kind of politics over and over in the campaign, intruding in the missions themselves. What I am more curious about is what kind of relationship will the Jester have with both the Shivans and the Vishnans. Bei was manipulated by the Vishnans, and Laporte is being manipulated by Ken, and I wonder if these vasudan characteristics will prove an asset in managing the complexities in the relationship between those two godlike species.

<battuta> if the shivans turn up and the reaction of a large portion of your populace is 'it's time for us to die'

This seems a tad strange to me. If it is true that the Vasudans had to deal with climate change before we even met them, and then they had to deal with the glassing of their home planet, it seems to me that the vasudans that survived those catastrophes would be precisely those who wouldn't be fatalists, in fact all those who were are already dead. The zods who struggled to fly to the stars, and afterwards the zods who fled their home planet are those who would struggle again. There's a really strong case to be made here in genetic and cultural natural selection cleaning out fatalism due to these holocausts.

[General Battuta]

Right, but you have the canonical fact of the Hammer of Light.

[Bryan See]

That's cool. BP3 is open to contributors right now? Who should I pick to help? FREDding and making use of "death cams" showing destruction of hostile ships like in Ace Combat Assault Horizon, in addition to checkpoints. OR I can help with fiction viewer/command briefing/briefing/de-briefing cutscenes which are absent in the first two BP installments?

[The E]

No. BP3 is not open to anything right now, as we're still producing BP2. At this time, we are not looking for any contributions for BP3.

Regarding previous BP installments: We're not generally looking for contributors. If you want to produce content for those campaigns, feel free to do so; but do not expect us to actually use it in official releases if it doesn't match our standards.

We are very definitely NOT interested in killcam bull****. That stuff does not fit into the aesthetic we're going for. As for additional cutscenes, what do you have in mind? How are they supposed to work, and what are they supposed to show?

[swashmebuckle]

I can join BP3 to make it BP/Starfox crossover. I have lots of HTL Starfox already made you just have to ask or perhaps I will invite you someday

[General Battuta]

If you can give us command briefing anims I'm down, but we haven't compiled a formal list.

[An4ximandros]

Oh my guts.

[Spoon]

Information breadcrumbs!

[Bryan See]

With regards to command briefing cut scenes, it shows shivans and vishnans and their monologues to add depth in the story.

[The E]

With regards to command briefing cut scenes, it shows shivans and vishnans and their monologues to add depth in the story.

And what would they be talking about? And why would the player be witness to these discussions? Consider: BP's storytelling is very much centered on the player character, and so any briefing text you see is something the player character has seen or is reading (Except for maybe one instance).

What you want to do is have us spell out the entire metaplot for BP as it happens. We have no intention of doing that. We believe our audience is intelligent enough to figure these things out without us having to spell it out, and as the discussions on this board prove, that belief has been confirmed over and over again.

[Luis Dias]

Going back to the subject, there's clearly a big question unanswered thus far which is, who will the Vasudans be fighting in BP3?

Consider that the GTA in BP2 is superior against the UEF, merely being bottlenecked by politics, commitment and node logistics. If the UEF wins against Steele in BP2 (I can reasonably assume this), it will be a victory that will come with costs, further weakening the UEF's assets. Without any exterior inputs (by Ken, Vishnans, etc.), it would be easy to infer that Nabirasul would start this war against the UEF as an american soldier against Iraq forces in 2003, i.e., leading a complete pwnage campaign due to the Vasudan's Medjai's and the crippled left-overs they have to battle against, etc.

But as we face an "existencial threat" in BP2 against the tevs, the odds against the UEF vs Steele, thus increasing the natural reward when we finally win them, so too should Nabirasul face such stress (a meta-comment about what the writing itself demands to happen).

So the relevant question is, what *is it* that we will face as Nabirasul as a compelling adversary?

My mind keeps invoking Shamballa as the answer to this question. As a "weapon", it might change the odds so much into UEF's favor that when it comes online, it ends the war with Steele in minutes, and then as Vasudans we will have to face this new tactical, technological threat against our "amazing" new Medjai ships.

This is escalation 101, and it follows from Freespace 1 and 2. It might even be something that inquires our minds about whatever it is we will be fighting should still be called "human" or not. I have a picture in my head of this kind of thing, and it might be driving my analysis off from what will actually be the case. But I do think the questions are intriguing nevertheless.