[Gray113]

1. Learn/improve your FREDing
2. Join the team
3. Make it happen

See? There are no excuses.

Fair point, I should give FREDing another bash now the kids are a bit older 

One last question just to be greedy, would the players choice regarding the fate of the Carthage have had a direct impact on plot/gameplay?

[General Battuta]

>ponders for a day or so

Does the Indus ever return to some kind of service?

Yes.

One last question just to be greedy, would the players choice regarding the fate of the Carthage have had a direct impact on plot/gameplay?

Possibly! Probably nothing huge though, it might alter available intelligence in some mission, or a diplomatic outcome.

[Rogue Assassin04]

Any status on Solaris and 1st Fleet wrt to the War perspective?
Why arent the Fedayeen using the CASSANDRA for the predictions? Why didnt Al Da'wa push CASSANDRA to limits and tell that Calder was about to die?

IIRC, all the time, it was told that the loss of a Solaris class Destroyer would be a major loss for UEF. The destruction of the Toutatis is a blow, why wasn't it tried to stop? Why didn't Laporte advise Calder that Steele was a mind messer?

If Al Da'wa had planned well along with LKFV, like in Tenebra, they could have used the experimental weapons and tech to turn the tide of the war. Why didnt that happen?

How is the sanctuary involved with Shambhala? What happened to the civilians on board the Sanctuary?
Why arent the shivans getting involved and entering the GTVA space?

Does Shambhala use GTVA Tech?

[Logrus]

What is Laporte's fate after failure-success of Shambala's first stage? Would she still be a protagonist of Act 5? If not she, then who? Will she get her armada eventually?

[Iain Baker]

Something has occurred to me recently. The Shivan’s Modus Operandi  as preservers seems a little inefficient. If they only intervene when a civilisation; A) is hostile to others and B) has access to subspace, then potentially worthy species may get wiped out.
 
The ancient’s monologues suggest they had wiped out civilisations before they discovered subspace. It was only when they continued wiping out species after they discovered subspace that the Shivans got involved and wiped the ancients out.

What if one of the species the ancients wiped out could have gone on to become the ‘new Brahmans’?

Is this due to the Shivans having limited resources and being unable to be everywhere at once? If so could they not seed the galaxy with  self replicating von neumann probes which would alert them if a species evolves in that system, 2001 style?

Or is it due to some other reason or criteria, such as pre-subspace species being considered too insignificant to bother protecting or some such?

What would happen if a peaceful species has to become warlike due to the aggression of another, this other species being immune to any attempts at peace, co-operation etc? Would the formally peaceful species also be attacked by the Shivans due to being forced to take up arms to protect themselves? How does this translate to the UEF / GTVA situation? Do the Shivans differentiate between different groups of a species, or is it a simple kill / not kill decision applied to a species as a whole?

In the original black and white film of ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ the robots basically forced everyone in the galactic community to get along under pain of death, and they made sure civilisations were aware of this before they were technologically capable of leaving their home world. Why do the Shivans (or indeed the Vishnans) not do something similar? Is it a question of free will?

It seems a little unfair on any developing race to be judged without them realising they were even ‘on trial’ so to speak. Not that I’m implying lovecraftian species and intelligences would much care about our notions of morality 

[Asteroth]

As far as I'm aware, being a defect hegemon is a little more complex than some thing as simple as "are they fighting" (regardless if it's in self-defense) and more fundamental than something you can stop being when told not to, i.e. as far as the Shivans are concerned telling you to stop being a defect hegemon doesn't actually stop you from being part of the problem, regardless of your actions afterward.

With regards to the questions about the ancients, I would say simply that Shivans are more sensitive to subspace in general, and that they simply didn't even know about the Ancients till they futzed about with it. Which, yeah, definitely means they might miss a "New brahman" being taken out by a defect hegemon.

[Iain Baker]

As far as I'm aware, being a defect hegemon is a little more complex than some thing as simple as "are they fighting" (regardless if it's in self-defense) and more fundamental than something you can stop being when told not to, i.e. as far as the Shivans are concerned telling you to stop being a defect hegemon doesn't actually stop you from being part of the problem, regardless of your actions afterward.

Though it might be something  like that - "If you have to be told not to do some thing when it should be obvious its a bad idea then you are beyond help."


With regards to the questions about the ancients, I would say simply that Shivans are more sensitive to subspace in general, and that they simply didn't even know about the Ancients till they futzed about with it. Which, yeah, definitely means they might miss a "New brahman" being taken out by a defect hegemon.

[Iain Baker]

Quick technical question regarding BP - WiH in particular.

There have been several points where I have noticed severe drops in frame rate - like less than ten frames per second. This appears to be when its gets very busy, when new ships and wings are arriving and when there is lots of flack near the frigates. I'm not sure if it is due to the CUP/GPU/RAM being overtaxed by all the eye candy, or if it is due to assessts being loaded when new ships arrive. I never had this problem with any other FS game/mod, and I don't recall having it in AoA either. I have tried turning off shadows and V-sync which makes a marginal improvement on this. The slowdowns are rare but a little annoying if you are in a dog fight.

I'm writing a review of BP so it would be very useful to know what causes this and potential fixes. If it is a loading assets issue, would a SDD help?

FYI my fairly modest rig has:

AMD A8-6600K 3.9 Ghz CPU
Nvidia GTX 970
8 GB Ram
2TB HD


What specs would someone need to run it at 1080P with everything maxed out inc shadows and V-sync with zero drops below 60 FPS?

Cheers :-)

[General Battuta]

My experience has been that changes to the lighting engine have really hurt performance on mid to lower end systems, especially when lots of stuff is warping in. Otoh BP2 was never well optimized. Really don’t know.

The FSO engine in general performs badly, I would never expect to get 60 FPS with all those features on. Shadows didn’t exist when BP2 was designed.

[Iain Baker]

My experience has been that changes to the lighting engine have really hurt performance on mid to lower end systems, especially when lots of stuff is warping in. Otoh BP2 was never well optimized. Really don’t know.

The FSO engine in general performs badly, I would never expect to get 60 FPS with all those features on. Shadows didn’t exist when BP2 was designed.

Figured it might be something like that. I get 60 FPS with all the eye candy at all other times, its just the occasional blip that only happened about three times during the whole campaign, and it only lasts a second, so its not really a problem, (especially for someone who plays a lot of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. MISERY mod - that thing hitches every 30 seconds or so  )

[Asteroth]

So there have been many questions about Act 4, but what about Act 5? Does phase 2 of Shambhala work? Does Noemi really "Destroy the GTVA"? It's the act where you play as that vasudan princess right? What exactly is the conflict for her in Act 5?

[hardcorecrush]

How many (and which) 2nd and 3rd fleet assets survive act 4? Are they surrendered to the GTVA or do they go into hiding on the edges of Sol?

[Phantom Hoover]

Quick technical question regarding BP - WiH in particular.

There have been several points where I have noticed severe drops in frame rate - like less than ten frames per second. This appears to be when its gets very busy, when new ships and wings are arriving and when there is lots of flack near the frigates. I'm not sure if it is due to the CUP/GPU/RAM being overtaxed by all the eye candy, or if it is due to assessts being loaded when new ships arrive. I never had this problem with any other FS game/mod, and I don't recall having it in AoA either. I have tried turning off shadows and V-sync which makes a marginal improvement on this. The slowdowns are rare but a little annoying if you are in a dog fight.

I'm writing a review of BP so it would be very useful to know what causes this and potential fixes. If it is a loading assets issue, would a SDD help?

FYI my fairly modest rig has:

AMD A8-6600K 3.9 Ghz CPU
Nvidia GTX 970
8 GB Ram
2TB HD


What specs would someone need to run it at 1080P with everything maxed out inc shadows and V-sync with zero drops below 60 FPS?

Cheers :-)

I think I had a generally smooth 60 using Icarus as a stress test with a GTX 1060. A 970 is IIRC a little worse in most benchmarks. AMD cards are basically a write-off because AMD writes ****ty OpenGL drivers. Shadows were at setting 1, though, not 2; there's a big drop between the two. This was also on Linux which probably means a performance hit just because nobody cares much about Linux gaming.

[General Battuta]

So there have been many questions about Act 4, but what about Act 5? Does phase 2 of Shambhala work? Does Noemi really "Destroy the GTVA"? It's the act where you play as that vasudan princess right? What exactly is the conflict for her in Act 5?

No, the Vasudan princess is your sidekick in BP3.

Act 5 is about Laporte leading a mutiny and a breakout to Beta Aquilae. While the main thrust of the mutiny fights there, she steals the nodeship and goes to Capella to fulfill Ken's mission and release the Shivans on the GTVA. You can make some major choices about what to do here (including just not doing Act 5 at all), but only one of the outcomes leads to the canon BP3.

How many (and which) 2nd and 3rd fleet assets survive act 4? Are they surrendered to the GTVA or do they go into hiding on the edges of Sol?

There's enough to make for a significant force in Act 5, plus possibly Gef assistance if you handled them well.

[Nightmare]

Act 5 sounds really mean FRED wise. Is there a mission outline for Act 4 and 5 yet, and if yes how long are they?

[General Battuta]

Yeah, it's all been outlined for years. But stuff usually splits/merges and reshuffles during production as we have good ideas and throw out bad ones.

Sunglare went through several drafts before it became a cutscene, for example.

[CT27]

Does Steele survive Act 5?

[General Battuta]

Probably, yeah.

[Phantom Hoover]

you cant anneal the steele

[QuakeIV]

you cant anneal the steele

get that **** out of here