[General Battuta]

I believe you can get the full names of most of another Fedayeen wing if you pay close attention too.

I don't remember if this is actually true so somebody should go find out for me! The key will be Awheiringa's handler.

I hate Blue Planet ...

... every time I play another release I am absolutely blown away by the writing quality and the gameplay both ...  then it's over too soon and all other games or mods suddenly seem lackluster.

Anyone with similar problems know a remedy ?


(Finally got around to finishing Act 3 after getting a new flightstick ... and wow, well done. Well done. That mission with the Carthage .... damn )

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed.

[T-Man]

Aye must second Mikes; the written elements are superb both in planning and execution alike (you can tell there are serious writers on the team). What especially impresses me is how balanced you guys manage to keep the reasons for the war and the actions in it; even with my shameless fanboy-ness I read stuff like that GTVA Ubuntu FAQ and the invasion suddenly seems more than justified (hell, even made me question whether UEF victory would actually be a good thing ). You've managed to get it so there's no real 'right side'; no faction (except maybe the Gef, but meh ) is really in the wrong (even Steele is ultimately doing what he thinks will minimize casualties on the whole) and at the same time no faction is really flawless (UEF blowing up their own civs because of 'Scorched Earth' policy, GTVA dumping BETAC, Fedayeen tactics, etc). IMO it's a truly tough thing to do well, but you guys have really nailed it in BP.

Then the icing on the cake of course is the high-end assets and gameplay to go with it. I'm a fan of 'smarts instead of brawn' in battle depictions (spirit drives, ECM, viruses, pop-treb etc) so I loved the complexities of the fights (can imagine many of them brought sleepless FREDing nights, especially 'Her Finest Hour'... how much coffee for that one? ), and the ships your team make are works of art simple as that (I drool every time I see that new Draco in pics!). Hope you guys enjoy making this as much as we do playing.

[Torchwood]

The Gefs have an ideology but on insane troll logic, but if the wars escalates and planets are ruined, comet-dwelling life might become all that is left for the people of Earth. I think that is the reason why the Buntus didn't systematically exterminate them all.

[0rph3u5]

The Gefs have an ideology but on insane troll logic

The problem is that most of what is currently in the campaigns about the Gef is about Kostadin Cell (whose leadership has devolved into some kind of weird cult) ... There is only a brief glimpse in the mind of another group within the Gef subculture in Tenebra's dreamscape

Considering that there is an element of eugenics to (at least one faction of) the Gef they might just turn out to be just as questionable in their methods as the rest ...

But then again it was confirmed that there is at least one other Gef faction (Bloody March) which we have yet not seen...

[T-Man]

The Gefs have an ideology but on insane troll logic

The problem is that most of what is currently in the campaigns about the Gef is about Kostadin Cell (whose leadership has devolved into some kind of weird cult) ... There is only a brief glimpse in the mind of another group within the Gef subculture in Tenebra's dreamscape

That's true actually; I forgot the Gef are quite fragmented, and that Kostadin are meant to be particularly crazy as you say as compared to other groups so maybe one's like Greenfly or Blood March are not as much (i recall the former are mentioned as being calmer; even the Fedayeen are willing to consider deals with them). Torch's idea is an interesting thought; always assumed the Elders just didn't want to kill if they could avoid it but that idea of wanting them to survive is plausible.

[0rph3u5]

always assumed the Elders just didn't want to kill if they could avoid it but that idea of wanting them to survive is plausible.

So is the idea that there was no compelling reason to destroy them¹, that the Elders' projections anticipated a point when the militaristic form of the momement would decline and die-off leading to a peaceful end of the conflict, or it was just strategically unfeasable to mount an offensive that could cripple the decentralized GEF's war-effort

EDIT:
¹ - We have no data on how effective the Jovians were in keeping the GEF contained beyond Eris Base

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Warning - while you were typing 2 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post.
Drat, I'll do that after posting

The Gefs have an ideology but on insane troll logic, but if the wars escalates and planets are ruined, comet-dwelling life might become all that is left for the people of Earth. I think that is the reason why the Buntus didn't systematically exterminate them all.

Actually, I find the GEFs to be one of the most interesting and intriguing group in Sol right now. The few glimpses we've had regarding their lifestyle and ideology suggests that their society(ies) is widely different from that of any other faction in the setting, except possibly the folks from the Sanctuary.

Think about what we know regarding the other factions.
The Federation as a whole relies on predictive analysis of its environment to drive its market economy. Aside from that, I'd say it's a safe bet that the day to day lives of Earth or Mars citizens aren't that different from our own. The Jovians are different story, as they have to face the rigors of their artificial habitats (assuming none of the Jovian moons got terraformed).

On the other side of the node, the Alliance faces similar challenges, but with added constraints, such having to manage a system on an interstellar level, rather than an interplanetary one. In addition, as far as we know, the GTVA doesn't have predictive models nearly as effective as the Federation's. Add to that the fact that the Shivan threat is far more real in your everyday Alliance citizen's mind than its Federation counterpart, and you've got a pretty grim society. I don't think the Alliance and Federation everyman lives that differently, but while one probably feels railroaded by simulations, s/he has constent reminders that their society is thriving, whereas the other has constent reminders that their society is preparing to face another apocalypse.
Sure, the Federation has a comparatively more dense warship population in Sol than in your average GTVA system, but they can afford those warships. The Alliance's economy (Terran side) isn't doing so well and yet they are still injecting massive funds into weapons and military ships design and construction.

The Vasudans are a bit of an unknown variable, but I am percieving them as having a mixture of Federation and Alliance Terran trait: thriving economy in the Alliance's grim context.

Let's skip over the Vishnan and Shivans themselves, and go over to the GEF. The Gaian Effort is a fragmented society, divided in a cluster of cells with differing goals and philosophies. They don't live in any sort of market-based economy - I am assuming that what ever trade they make between each other (and Federation elements) is driven diretcly by their mutual needs rather than abstract profit. They are not relying on any sort of predictive machinery. They've got virtually no ressources compared to the might of the Federation and Alliance, suggesting that they make the best possible use of what they have, recycling as much as they can.

Makes me wish we had more info regarding the various cells' ideologies & lifestyles.

Note: a lot of this is based on my personal speculations, so feel free to poke holes in it. Also, I'm not sure I'm making a lot of sense, I can be rather bad at organizing my thoughts

[Soulrheever]

Perhaps I'm remembering incorrectly, but I recall seeing somewhere that the GEFs were intentionally left to their own devices (more or less) as a potential "last ditch survival" mechanism in the event of catastrophe, akin to the Sanctuary's purpose: a seed of humanity that may survive what would otherwise be the utter annihilation of the species.

[Veers]

There was a mention somewhere, if the UEF/GTVA fall than perhaps the GEFs would survive, therefore ensuring Humanity survives.

Was it Al Da'wa who mentioned it?, I just recall it in Act 3

[0rph3u5]

Was it Al Da'wa who mentioned it?, I just recall it in Act 3

It's Al-Da’wa, after One Future in the Dreamscape
(I've to admit I forgot about that part)

EDIT: BTW is it just me or is putting Transhumanists in charge of preserving humanity in chase the rest of humanity decides to off one another a bit weird?

[redsniper]

If the rest of humanity offs itself and the GEFs don't, then it won't be weird or not weird, it will just be what worked.

[0rph3u5]

What I was thinking about is related to the on-going discussion that "being human" is not limited to "being a member of the biological species homo sapiens sapiens" (there are even some positions claiming these are unrelated constructs on their own); depending on where you are standing on the issue that stance informs your stance on whetever or not the result of a Transhumanistic process (regardless of the method of said process) is still related to what is now understood as "human" and whetever or not it can be integrated into the context of humanity or has to be appricated as a destinct new entety that cannot claim humanity as trait.

As such it is clearly in the realm of the possible to think of Transhumanists being incapable of "preserving humanity".
Although it is also possible to think of Transhumanists being unable not to preserve a concept of humanity due to the fact that their thinking requires it as a sort of negative template.

I actually don't have a personal stance on the subject, as I have to do some further study into the matter before a conclusion can be made (currently I try to integrate ideas from the discipline of Disability Studies into the whole process; there is some good stuff to be had there, esspecially considerations about inclusiveness towards those who are not 'baseline').

[Luis Dias]

There's no "there there" in terms such as "humanity". It's such a fluid, limitless concept. Probably the most vague word ever invented.

[0rph3u5]

There's no "there there" in terms such as "humanity". It's such a fluid, limitless concept. Probably the most vague word ever invented.

Both the history of the word and its meaning and the present day debate sadly disagree with you. We'd all like to think that such a cornerstone of Philosophy and Ethics is an open, inclusive term but sadly that is not the case; sometimes this is part of a methodological problem (e.g. in Structuralism), in other cases it is simply the approiation of the term to justify priviledge. The problem with the term might not be all that appearent in the present day, due to the fact that most of the world (at least on the surfacce) attempts to build more inclusive societies. As such the problem isn't as much as with an explicit definition of "being human" but terms that reference back to a certain idea what "being human" entails (e.g. "quality of life").

Just look at debates that happen around things pre-natal diagnostics, assisted suicide or even animal ethics...


EDIT:
But to bring it back to the BP:
Question to the BP Team: In what relation do the GEFs' think the "Liberated Cometary Man" (LCM) to the rest of humanity? Is the LCM part of a "greater humanity" (= the group of all humans and decendants of humanity) or does the LCM stand apart?

[The E]

I don't think the GEF have a unified, singular answer to that question. That's the thing about them, they aren't a single faction, but a hodgepodge of factions with partially overlapping interests and goals.

[IcemanFreespace]

Hi, 2 missions to go and a huge post to follow when I finish the campaign. However, I have a quick question for now: in my last mission, the one with Carthage, in the debrief(last part of it) it says that most of the ships, 40+, were lost, etc. That isn't really true I'd say, I only used them to kill the engines of Carthage and ordered departure. But I still get that debrief, the same one I got when in a previous try I kept them in the battle until there really weren't more than a couple of survivors. So I guess the question is, is the debrief text always the same, is anything more than a couple of ships lost unacceptable, or more got killed than I think. Btw, all  the extra stuff was done by the time they got called in, and I only called in maybe 4 wings.

[General Battuta]

That debrief isn't working properly. Unfortunately the problem is very hard to repro in a test environment, so I haven't pinned down a fix yet. But it's probably something really simple!

Don't worry about it, it's a bug.

[IcemanFreespace]

Thanks for that, thundering on then! I must say this topic has been a lot of fun as well along with playing the campaign, at page 100 atm.

[IcemanFreespace]

Campaign done.
First of all, big thanks and congratulations to all the people in the team. As many have said, this could easily be sold in shops. Objectively, BP is much stronger than FS2 retail. If you go past the obvious technical improvements owed to the mod being 10 years younger than the game, BP beats FS2 in terms of variety, depth, design and sophistication. I'll always gladly go back and play the original campaign, it will always be special, but those are facts.

In the first 100 pages of this topic, a lot has been said, so nothing new here but my personal thoughts are as follows:

-the official reasoning for starting the war is irrelevant. It doesn't need to go beyond:  It's our homeplanet too. We also, badly, need it, as far as economy and development go. Rollover for us? No? we're stronger. We're gonna take it. Ubuntu and other stuff are a good sell to the GTVA public, and also could sound genuinely scary.

-the other big point: Vishnans, Shivans, Capella etc. I just hope you're not making a web you can't untangle from. It will be quite a task to explaing everything and make it believable. I never liked those creepy Vishnans. Also, Shivans being simple enforcers with a clear agenda and without emotion either way makes a lot of sense. Otherwise, there's no explanation for them not destroying us, all of us, decades ago. So, I guess, so far so good. Reminds me a lot of today's politics and the struggles of small countries and societies.

-AoA-it was a revelation but I didn't really like it, story-wise, and it seemed that most battles were, in all their glory of variety, one-dimensional. Take out beams. Take out bombers. Take out beams, again.
Sit back, as teammates do the work. Doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it though.

-WiH was much more enjoyable. Strategy on a bigger scale, something you can really get into. Great missions, a lot of variety, a lot of ways to play, a lot of new and exciting ships and weaponry, great tactics and counter-tactics...just a masterpiece. My favorite was the last act-stealth missions are what I imagined ever since the first pegasus deployment in fs2. Oh, speaking of Pegasus, we were on the receiving end but man did that assasination look cool or what. Brilliantly executed, SOC, good job.

-I imagine Steele as an aging greyish hair-tough as nails-swears a lot-veteran fighter. Definitely my favorite character in the game.

-I don't particularly like either of the two main characters, maybe I prefer Neomi.

-The other dimension stuff in AoA was a total turnoff. I can imagine everything else in both the original games and the bp story, but the alternate universe stuff, no.

Can't wait for voice acting to finish. That will bring a whole new dimension (pun intended) of awesome.

[qwadtep]

I don't think there's anything wrong with the alternate dimension stuff. It works, there's precedent in other mods, and perfectly within the expected capabilities of what we assume to be Type III+ civilizations.
You're messing with dimensions every time you subspace jump anyway.

From the mockups posted whenever, Steele looks like Benjamin Sisko with a bionic eye.