[ShivanSlayer]

One thing I thought might be neat to see in a campaign is a new game plus, where the player can go back and use any weapon and any ship they want on any mission (barring missions that are scripted to fail.) Would that ever be possible

[Strygon]

It's probably possible but, specifically in regards to weapons, it'd be easier to just enable cheats mode and switch to the desired weapons. As for ships, it is not possible to edit the loadout data within a campaign once it's out, so it'd have to essentially be a "new" campaign entirely.

EDIT: That being said, I think it might be possible to force an unlock of the ships in every mission, if at the end of a campaign (and presumably at the player's choice) a scripted promotion/medal could be given, which would then have every mission check for the existence of said medal/rank and thereby unlock all ships and weapons on a campaign replay. However, I'm not sure how this would work for mission simulator replays, if at all.

However, this is kind of hacky, cannot be turned off short of making a new pilot, and I'm not too sure on how easy it is to work with in practice.

[0rph3u5]

Loadout restrictions are imposed in two ways, per-mission basis and campaign restrictions.

"Per mission basis" means that the need to be in the mission loadout as defined in the mission file under "$Ship Choices:" & "+Weaponry Pool:". If they are there they can be accessed outside of campaign mode already.

"campaign restriction" means that a campaign sets a number of options which are valid for your progression in the campaign from the pool set in the mission. There are SEXPs that allow a mission in the campaign to expand said list (e.g. when the Ares is unlocked for playing the second SOC loop in FS2).

So technically you could set all missions to feature any weapon and ship, but the campaign progression would still lock you out of them.
With an "eternal" variable you could then introduce a 0/1 switch into the first and final missions, so that when the final mission would be beat it would go a value of 1 and when the first mission is loaded after reseting the campaign it reads that value of 1 and triggers an event that unlocks all ships and weapons. (No need for any scripting or hack using proxis, like medals or ranks)

Needless to say, it would be a balance nightmare.

EDIT: But you could then use the same variable as number instead of 0/1 switch, creating a NG+ tiers which then also could be used to scale the difficulty of the campaign with additional enemies, tighter windows of action etc etc.
That is of course, if you are willing to add that layer of complexity to stuff.

EDIT2: heck if you are willing you could go full on Rogue-lite if you are willing. (a circular campaign structure requires hacks because FRED won't let have you non-linear campaigns without complaints)

[Novachen]

I actually had something like a NG+ in the initial draft of my 2367: Supernova campsign which is based upon the rank progression you have in the game.

Second playthrough would begin in the same role the first one ends, as a squadron leader where you have another view on the missions, as you would have to command other wings to fulfill their mission objectives.
During the second playthrough the player would reach a rank where he will actually command his wings from a cruiser and would have another role then.
The third playthrough would be the campaign in a cruiser role.

So the game and its missions would be more tactical in every successive playthrough.

Unfortunately the project is in development hell right now due to personal life  , even most of its missions for at least a first playthrough are finished, some of them still even have parts of the NG+.
But I have to admit that I think that the development of a New Game+ was always a waste of time in the gaming industry, as all statistics tell, that only a very small amount of players are finishing a game even once.
This is not applicable for a Fan-Community of course, but I also still not see that a NG+ mode would be played very much by players.
So I still think on my end, that a NG+ will be most likely dropped completely.

[Colonol Dekker]

Isn't as simple as a variable change in the campaign file upon completion of a final mission which unlocks everything?

[Kie99]

For a new campaign you could do it easily.  Say it's a 20 mission campaign, just make copies the 20 missions and enable all ships/weapons in them.  Have mission 20 allow everything in the campaign file and lead on to the copy of mission 1 then progress through the copies.  You could use the SOC check for it.

Or you could just include an alternate version of the campaign with everything unlocked from mission 1.

I'm sure it wouldn't take too long to modify an existing campaign like this.  Main problem would be that without further modification it would probably make the earlier missions way too easy.  Imagine fighting the NTF Herc Is with a squad of Ares with Kaysers, Trebuchets and Tornados.

[Strygon]

Oh by all means, if it's a new campaign it's piss easy to do.

As far as balance concerns go, I'm pretty dead certain in every game that features New Game+ systems, balance is basically completely thrown out the window because the main purpose is specifically to go ham with the various weapons, items (and in this case, ships). Ace Combat Zero lets players play through the whole campaign with the ADFX-01 Morgan with the MPBM which is essentially an all-purpose MOAB on steroids. Does it make the campaign extremely easy? Yes. Is it incredibly fun? Also yes.

[ShivanSlayer]

Ace Combat handled New Game Plus very well.  I remember getting the Falken in Zero after a few playthroughs and rampaging through the game. I recently proposed on the Spiderweb Software forums that the Geneforge game remakes should have New Game plus as the series is notorious for giving you access to powerful equipment when there is very little or nothing left to use them on

[0rph3u5]

There are different approaches to NG+ - Neir Automata & Nier Replicant have an approach using the concept of the NG+ to remix the story, e.g. by adding new scenes into the story as it is replayed - which re-contextualize some events (e.g. in the case of Replicant, following Ending A additions to the story make the Shades less arbitary force in the world).