[TrashMan]

Having played trough half the campaign on Knossos, there a few things I noticed that trigger my tism - and that is the enemies you can fight.

While constantly fighting shivans can be boring and it's fine to want something else, that something else should be credible.
Mercenaries or a megacorp going to open war against the GTVA? That makes zero sense. How will the company or merc operate when their homes, logistic, families are all living under the GTVA?
If there were multiple power blocks and those mercs or companies operated from a different one, then it could work....maaaaybe. Even then the power could just demand the other power do something about it. A mercenary company from China declaring war on the US would not really survive.

In other words, no one would betray the GTVA and draw a big target on their back unless there's a VERY good reason for it or they believe they could REASONABLY get away with it.

[Nyctaeus]

Pirate Superdestroyers anybody?

The problem kinda lies in rather minimalistic worldbuilding of FS. It features fery few factions and this far, the secondary antagonist was always derived from the deuteragonist species. FSverse features only 4 canon species, of which one is extinct and another is the primary, eldeitch aliens enemy of the entire setting.

Oh, and there is Sol, so either Inferno or Blue Planet style.

The solution of simple: expanding the lore, crush the FS2 balance of power defined by Volition, introduce new things, go crazy.
I feel like the recurring theme of OP mercs/pirates with hundreds of fighters lies in people being rather shy at adding new things to FSverse. I'm reluctant to say that people lack creativity. I feel like they actually lack... Hmm... Courage? Adding new things is balancing the risk of FS being not so FS anymore. Adding new things that are actually good is... Even harder.

My own 2 cents added to the problem is portrayal of Shivans in fanmade campaigns. One may like or dislike what Blue Planet did with Shivan lore, but everybody should fairly admit: BP Team made risky choice, but they made it. They vastly expanded Shivan lorebuilding, even if the price was taking entire mystery away. Anyway it's much more then every bulk majority of other campaign did, which is pretty much: Shivans have returned, they destroy things, we're risking extinction again, they steal our bicycles, milk our goats, we beat them, same **** as always, the end. Meanwhile FS2 itself adds a lot to Shivan worldbuilding, even if V did so very carefully.

Kinda makes me regret that I didn't really expand Shivan worldbuilding myself in Exile and rather focused on post-apocalyptic survival theme instead. I wanted Shivans to be scary and do really scary things, but all the material that would add to the mystery was spared for Exile 2... That never happened and is unlikely to ever happen.

[SilverAngelX]

While the minimalist world building may be one thing, there's a another reason for the lack of diversity in enemies, a more practical one: the available assets. Since one of the campaigns mentioned is mine, I can attest that this is one factor in my decision making process. We have tons of Terran assets, a lot of Vasudan assets and a lot of Shivan assets. And besides that there's comparetively little for other species. You'd have to go to the full conversions for more of something different, and then you have to put in a lot of effort to make it work. I'm no 3D artist and I barely have time to write and fred my campaigns, so I cannot design a full set of new models for some new faction and have to make due with what is available. I guess the same is true for a lot of campaign authors. The result is a lot of campaigns with some form of Terran, Vasudan or Shivan adversaries (or adversaries using these ships) and several different attempts to make that work narratively. Is that the most creative or maybe even credible solution? No, but it's the most economical, if you don't want to use Shivans, which are an extremely simple, but somewhat overused and sometimes even boring adversary.

[0rph3u5]

Turn that issue on its head:

The enemies get ridiculous because they are proportional to the toybox the designer/writer wants to give to the player's side.
So in most cases that means the threat has to be start with warranting the deployment of a capital ship.

But what if you run scenarios at a more restricted scale?
"You have four fighters and a aupply tender, that's plenty. Now go solve this."
... you just dont get big spectacle out of that

[Nyctaeus]

New species are indeed difficult in this situation, but if the community asset pool is abundant [it is! I swear ], then there are plenty of options one can remix/recolor/retexture/kitbash to make something that looks fresh. Back in the days, in the tilemapping era, people were going crazy at recoloring, retiling, returreting and reworking existing assets to get something new and provide their custom factions with fresh identities. Sadly, most of those projects never got finished and released... I miss those times.

This opens at least an option to have GTVA fracturing scenatio or an original Sol-based faction.

Does this require effort? Yes. Does this require modpack-making skills? Hell, yes. But it's worth it. I built several medium to enormous modpacks in my life based on conviction, that even if reusing the same canon designs over and over again may provide entertainment if the writing and worldbuilding is good, it does not bring anything new for the eyes... And sight is dominant sense of bulk majority of humans.

But the pirate/mercs have another problem: They are pirates/merc, like Trashman said. They have no right to roll enormous warships and hordes of fighters into the battlefield, vastly limiting possible options. Experience from Shadow Genesis made this clear for me. An enemy should be at least NTF-sized, with access to economy, logistics, command structures and stuff. Both HoL and NTF feel small, but even HoL alone has access to multiple destroyers and more resources, then modern US. NTF on the other hand is actually a fully-fledged, interstellar superpower, controlling multiple fleets, several star systems and has capabilities to wage a war against a stronger neighbour. Therefore both generate political environment to FRED cool missions around.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with setting the scale small and focus on civilian side of things... But most of the campaigns like that, like Twisted Infinities, Friends and Foes and also New Path, decide to go for big things anyway, generating the issue described in the op. This style of campaigns creates very limited creative space for interesting gameplay. I personally see no need for limiting myself so much and prefer to put my creative juices into larger conflicts because plots of larger conflicts provide me with all the creative freedom I need, without risks of entering "unbelievable" territory.

[0rph3u5]

There is an untapped wealth of stuff you can do without going big - whoever it requires at lot of experimentation and iteration. Iain Baker and I both are doing parallel development on ways to make individual fighter combatants more meaningful. Iain's approach is to overhaul the flight model, while I am getting geared up to massage the AI for all that it can give me, my eliminating the hierarchical vanilla structure and hopefully winding up with a full realized Archetype-system.

If you can make a smaller elite force of pirate or merc fighters scary in an encounter, e.g. by having not x-times the same behavior but with complementary behaviors that would be make them seem less ridiculous. Some of the tools are in the vanilla toolbox, e.g. kinetic, emp, and drain effects are all part of FS2 retail but are really underused in enemy weapons.

[Kie99]

I don't mind it that much.  The GTVA's monopoly on force isn't so great that it prevented the NTF taking hold of three systems, in FS1 the Hammer of Light was a significant force, in Silent Threat an intelligence agency fancied its chances in open rebellion and somehow managed to make their own superdestroyer.  It's a bit of a wild west setting.

There are some absurdities that you have to forgive in the name of fun mission design.  I love Homesick, but they have a couple of pirate cruisers deploying dozens of fighters and bombers.  If you want realistic numbers you're going to have missions where you just jump in, escort your corvette, and nothing happens except chat between the characters until the mission ends.

[TrashMan]

Pirate Superdestroyers anybody?

The problem kinda lies in rather minimalistic worldbuilding of FS. It features fery few factions and this far, the secondary antagonist was always derived from the deuteragonist species. FSverse features only 4 canon species, of which one is extinct and another is the primary, eldeitch aliens enemy of the entire setting.

Oh, and there is Sol, so either Inferno or Blue Planet style.

The solution of simple: expanding the lore, crush the FS2 balance of power defined by Volition, introduce new things, go crazy.
I feel like the recurring theme of OP mercs/pirates with hundreds of fighters lies in people being rather shy at adding new things to FSverse. I'm reluctant to say that people lack creativity. I feel like they actually lack... Hmm... Courage? Adding new things is balancing the risk of FS being not so FS anymore. Adding new things that are actually good is... Even harder.

Simplest solution is fracturing the GTVA into multiple power blocks.

But no matter what you do there needs to be a credible explanation of how and why.


And I honestly prefer for shivans to remain a mistery. Less is often more.

[qweqwe321]

This is a problem I ran into with Chanticleer, tbh - the Federals in Blue Planet are on their last legs, so you really do have to get creative to give the player a challenge without making the world seem ridiculous.

The Blue Planet Gaian Effort campaign I'm slowly writing tries to address it by keeping the player's force small. When your entire force is an Athena, two Apollos and a light cruiser, a couple gunship wings are suddenly a huge threat.

[TrashMan]

A relatively small force CAN hold a system due to nodes. A well fortified node means that even in victory losses may be unacceptable.

Again, the way travel works in FS2 can be both good and very bad in terms of mission design and lore. When it takes a minute for any enemy ship from anywhere in the system to jump right on top of you, you have to get creative with how a small force can ever survive.

[0rph3u5]

Again, the way travel works in FS2 can be both good and very bad in terms of mission design and lore. When it takes a minute for any enemy ship from anywhere in the system to jump right on top of you, you have to get creative with how a small force can ever survive.

Well, because Subspace has not many mechanics associated with it, there is a lot you can do with it.
There are literally only three canon rules, established in FS1:
- A jump from system to system requires a node
- A jump through a node requires a specific drive
- Tracking a ship during a subspace jump takes special tech

For MoGW, I actually went an wrote more fluff on subspace travel and communication, so there a lot more guardrails in it, e.g.
- Subspace has multiple "domains", which correspond to different energy levels  - the GTA/PVN/GTVA only can access specific domains; the Shivans can access more and even engineer access (the new finale of Rain On Ribos IV visualizes that by having one node blink out of existence and another appear as Lucifer makes the jump to Ribos)
- Not all domains can be accessed and left at the same spaces, which is the basis for nodes, but also creates "navigational hazards" that ships have to avoid, e.g. in Light of Antares, the GTD Myrmidon has to travel through normal space to access specific routes in subspace.

You just have to bother to write such rules into your treatment of subspace.

[Colonol Dekker]

Author imagination and willingness to break convention is the only limit in custom campaigns.

[TrashMan]

Again, the way travel works in FS2 can be both good and very bad in terms of mission design and lore. When it takes a minute for any enemy ship from anywhere in the system to jump right on top of you, you have to get creative with how a small force can ever survive.

Well, because Subspace has not many mechanics associated with it, there is a lot you can do with it.
There are literally only three canon rules, established in FS1:
- A jump from system to system requires a node
- A jump through a node requires a specific drive
- Tracking a ship during a subspace jump takes special tech

You're missing a few:

- communications between systems require a communication station. Messages are sent trough the nodes, so nodes are also required.
- jump drives need to be charged, but the time it takes in unspecified and varries. NTF destroyers needed 1 minute. Shivna seem to be able to jump again whenever.

Gravitic influences may affect subspace drives and we know for sure subspace emissions can (Psamtiks jump location being wrong due to Knossos)
We can also assume that jumping in an active asteroid field would be a very bad idea.

[0rph3u5]

- communications between systems require a communication station. Messages are sent trough the nodes, so nodes are also required.

Communication Terminals are only mentioned twice in canon, both FS1-era
- A Failure to Communicate in Act 3 of the original FS1 campaign
- Silence All Voices in the original Silent Threat campaign
Their exact function is not discussed but in both cases they might be more of a memory bank for asynchronous communication, i.e. a mailbox - which makes sense if you can't track ships through subspace jumps.

There is another single mention of communications into subspace not working and that's the audio distortion and sign of by Command in Good Luch but that is also the early days of tracking ships into subspace. So it might be obsolete after FS1.

For using the Communications Terminal as plot device in MoGW, a introduced some technobabble that about phase shifting radio signals as they enter/exit subspace and needing specialized communication equipment because of that. But that explanation was added 10+ years after the initial release due newer plot points.

- jump drives need to be charged, but the time it takes in unspecified and varries. NTF destroyers needed 1 minute. Shivna seem to be able to jump again whenever.

That is handled inconsistently:
- In Tenderizer it is described as "resting its coordinates" which implies that it is navigation system needing to adjust to the end of subspace jump before jumping again.
- King's Gambit goes "In the interval between jumps, they will re-energize their subspace drives." - That is a different technical detail and leaves the door open that it is contextual, i.e. that the cool-down only happens because the ships have been making several jumps in a row.

There might be a change in technology here but that doesn't make a rule.
I decided to write a rule to that effect but its justification has nothing to do with energy usage but with the drive components vibrating and needing to return to a rest state between jumps.

[TrashMan]

I always assumed communcation stations exist in every system and they basically send laser/radio messages trough subspace trough mini-subspace holes. They are main nodes of communcation.

If any ships can communicate with command at any time, from any place, then there's no way to really block them. A ship stranded behind enemy lines, left alone in an enemy held system would still be able to talk to command. That doesn't sound right to me.

[0rph3u5]

You have not accounted for the issue of actually aiming the signals at their targets when the targets main mode of traveling large distances is subspace. (this doesn't apply omnidirectional signals, but they also have limited utility because they are easily intercepted)

Beaming a signal to a ship that is moving in a linear fashion through space is easy if you know a) where ship currently is, b) the direction it is traveling in, and c) at which speed it is traveling. Than you account for the travel time of your signal and send the signal to the location where you calculated your target will be. It's all geometry really.

However if the ship is not traveling that way, such as using a subspace jump, there is no such predictable result - by the time of FS2 that is accounted for by the GTVA having acquired the means to acquire the information about a ship traveling in subspace but in the FS1 era that is all the newest of new tech. Essentially, until the finale of FS1 all information about the position, direction of travel, and speed of travel are lost during the subspace jump.
As such there is no good way to transmit messages to a ship before the jump and immediately after it. To get around that you allow all messages to the ship to buffer somewhere and to be retrieved once the jump is complete.

[TrashMan]

I prefer having com stations.
Instant, limitless communication is just as boring as instant travel for sci-fi. Less tension, less risk. Offers more satisfying narrative options.

Additional thought - if a ship is traveling trough subspace..would it even be able to get outside signals?
Alas, most sci-fi setting have no real workable foundation for their tech.

I can't recall - in FS1, does Command talk to you during the final mission? Even so, that was inside a fixed node with comm station on either side, so I guess comms would work normally in subspace there. I don't recall any canon instances of talking during in-system subspace transit, then again, the original game didn't have the in-mission jump mechanics.

[0rph3u5]

I prefer having com stations.
Instant, limitless communication is just as boring as instant travel for sci-fi. Less tension, less risk. Offers more satisfying narrative options.

Canon just doesn't mention them after those two instances. And logic is there, but not made explicit in canon.

The strongest evidence against it is the omnipresence of Command, even in the Nebula, that is more matter of narrative economics.
(And maybe Command is not a single person but an comms software avatar for multiple people, faking a single authoritative voice to grease the chain of command)

I can't recall - in FS1, does Command talk to you during the final mission? Even so, that was inside a fixed node with comm station on either side, so I guess comms would work normally in subspace there. I don't recall any canon instances of talking during in-system subspace transit, then again, the original game didn't have the in-mission jump mechanics.

(looks up the mission)
Bastion Actual gives you the briefing, Command gives you an intro and has some timer warnings. All audio from the Bastion and Command has a layer of audio distortion (electrical buzzing noise) added to it.

[TrashMan]

The strongest evidence against it is the omnipresence of Command, even in the Nebula, that is more matter of narrative economics.

We know science cruiers can be set up to work as temporary comm stations and there's several of them around the Knossos.

And I never took command to always be the same person.
Also, I don't think you are talking with someone from the HQ in Delta Serpentis, but rather with local command (for example, you might be talking to someone from 3rd Fleet Headquarters, and when you go to another system, someone else is your command contact) - someone relatively close. Either form the same system or neighboring one.

It makes sense that command is spread out across GTVA space, rather than everything being done from one spot. Even with instant, limitless comms.

[Nightmare]

Having played trough half the campaign on Knossos, there a few things I noticed that trigger my tism - and that is the enemies you can fight.

While constantly fighting shivans can be boring and it's fine to want something else, that something else should be credible.
Mercenaries or a megacorp going to open war against the GTVA? That makes zero sense. How will the company or merc operate when their homes, logistic, families are all living under the GTVA?
If there were multiple power blocks and those mercs or companies operated from a different one, then it could work....maaaaybe. Even then the power could just demand the other power do something about it. A mercenary company from China declaring war on the US would not really survive.

In other words, no one would betray the GTVA and draw a big target on their back unless there's a VERY good reason for it or they believe they could REASONABLY get away with it.

I think the goal is to set the scope accordingly. Twisted Infinities does that by setting a relatively small, local faction that does anchor in something trivial and credible (piracy and smuggle in a backwater system).

The only real option for large scale domestic conflict is the Sol war as it introduces a an entirely new faction with probably diverging goals.
Any domestic faction, no matter how radical, would face a 2-front war at one point; if there was say, a war of Zod succession by anti-GTVA zods it'll likely not only fight the loyal Zods but the Terran intervention at some point too.
Everything post-Capella is also overshadowed by an immeasurable Shivan threat what would make any civil war somewhat pointless.