[Doctor Robert]

Thank you for review :]. As you noticed, the writing is being completely rewritten at this point. Several proof-readers were working on grammar, but apparently some of them put more effort into this, then others. Currently Su-Tehp is doing his best with great results. You can already see his work in form of rewritten history entries.

As for the Admirals, it's 2367 and they are all very rich guys. The technology to postpone the process of getting older is widely available. We never estimated the age of characters aside Fives and Echo, but I remember some brainstorming inside the team during development process. Fleetmaster Tessandras has something about 120 years. Fleetmaster Raji is way younger. Something about 70, but she is widely known in the Fleet for very attractive physical appearance. She looks like in her mid 30-ties. Fleetmaster Tyrone is the youngest of the Fleetmasters. I imagine this technology as quite expensive and not without limits. The max lifespan a human can achieve is something like 200 years. I have no proof, but I believe it can be achieved via genetic manipulation rather then medications taken.

Thanks for the reply!    Wow, I knew they were old (given Glenzmann looked like Space Pirate Santa Claus) but not that old. I now want to see Tessandras say to Fives "Pilot, I'm old enough to be your Great-Great Grandpa! Now protect my Galahad!!" And his character does make much more sense now when you add "cranky old dude" to the "ex-GTI guy." 

It's also interesting that a lot of people who were around to fight the Shivans back in the Great War are still in charge (including, conceivably, Raji) which is an interesting contrast to Blue Planet (Which went something like: "And everybody who had a frame of reference of the GTA days conveniently died of old age (excepting that one Admiral)!    Totally not a purge!!") and contributes to why I also liked this as a solid alternative to Blue Planet's canon (I won't get too far into the weeds there, but suffice to say, Exiles makes more sense to me as to what might've happened after Lucifer in Sol than BP....)

And geez, Raji, way to rob the cradle.../joke

[Su-tehp]

I myself am only a recent addition to the Exile team (and Nyct is the only person of the Exile team I've (knowingly) corresponded with here on HLP) and I still haven't played through the entire campaign (in fact, I've only played through the first three missions), but as Nyct said, I'm making myself familiar with Exile's story by copying and editing anything and everything written down about Exile's story, from mission briefings and dialogue to database entries (editing Exile's historical entries is where I started this whole thing) and more. I've been working on this since at least March of this year and there's still quite a ways to go.

Considering that Exile's first mission starts completely in medias res, I really wanted to read Exile's backstory. But holy damn, when I first tried to read it, I saw right off that it badly needed editing to make it comprehensible. Nyct was nice enough to say yes when I volunteered my services. The good news is, Exile's backstory is almost completely edited; I just have to finish the Shivan Invasion of Sol and convert it from seeming to take less than a day (my initial impression when I first read it) to a few weeks between the opening of the Beta Volantis jump node and Exile Mission 1 (which is what Nyct tells me is how it actually happened). And to write that, I need to understand the details of what Rossendarch, Tessandras and Caliphtys et al. were up to and when. I thought I had something good written the other day, but I had to delete it when I realized it might have contradicted some prior details if Exile's story. This writing fiction stuff ain't easy if you want to avoid embarrassing retcons. Acknowledging consistency and verisimilitude is the greatest bane of authors. If you can't make your story consistent enough to maintain your suspension of disbelief, then you ain't gonna be a good author. 

Anyway, the work (slowly) continues.

[Doctor Robert]

I myself am only a recent addition to the Exile team (and Nyct is the only person of the Exile team I've (knowingly) corresponded with here on HLP) and I still haven't played through the entire campaign (in fact, I've only played through the first three missions), but as Nyct said, I'm making myself familiar with Exile's story by copying and editing anything and everything written down about Exile's story, from mission briefings and dialogue to database entries (editing Exile's historical entries is where I started this whole thing) and more. I've been working on this since at least March of this year and there's still quite a ways to go.

Considering that Exile's first mission starts completely in medias res, I really wanted to read Exile's backstory. But holy damn, when I first tried to read it, I saw right off that it badly needed editing to make it comprehensible. Nyct was nice enough to say yes when I volunteered my services. The good news is, Exile's backstory is almost completely edited; I just have to finish the Shivan Invasion of Sol and convert it from seeming to take less than a day (my initial impression when I first read it) to a few weeks between the opening of the Beta Volantis jump node and Exile Mission 1 (which is what Nyct tells me is how it actually happened). And to write that, I need to understand the details of what Rossendarch, Tessandras and Caliphtys et al. were up to and when. I thought I had something good written the other day, but I had to delete it when I realized it might have contradicted some prior details if Exile's story. This writing fiction stuff ain't easy if you want to avoid embarrassing retcons. Acknowledging consistency and verisimilitude is the greatest bane of authors. If you can't make your story consistent enough to maintain your suspension of disbelief, then you ain't gonna be a good author. 

Anyway, the work (slowly) continues.

Thanks so much for your work, man. It's a crazy-detailed mythos and it deserves it.

I'd say complete the bloody campaign.    Lots of Rossendarch's and Tessandras's backstory (and just what they've been doing during that cold, long winter of 2367-68) are revealed as it goes along and more Tech Room blurbs on the Exile fleet are unlocked once you finish the first third of the campaign (and even more blurbs are revealed after you finish the campaign detailing the lead-up to the Beta Volantis node opening... pretty well thought out).

(And you'll like the Heretic. The speed. THE SPEEEEED!!)

[Su-tehp]

Oh, through the vp-viewer, I already have access to all the Fiction entries (as well as all the dialogue and techbase entries), so I know most of what's happened/happening, and Nyct has answered a bunch of my questions concerning clarifications I needed, so I already know most of what's happening in Exile. Yeah, I may have spoiled myself, but that was the risk I took when I took on this editing job.

But yeah, even in its current raw form (sorry, Nyct, but you know Exile's story is currently raw or else you wouldn't have accepted my services! ), I saw that Exile has the potential to be a great story for the Freespace universe (multiverse?). I wouldn't have volunteered my services otherwise. I still can't quite define it, but Exile strikes me as unique among all the Freespace fan campaigns (though keep in mind that that's totally subjective on my part as I haven't played very many Freespace campaigns). It was that ineffable quality that drove me to ask Nyct to edit and improve this story. It might take me a while to finish this project, but I'll take as much time as needed to get it right.

[Nyctaeus]

Sad truth about Exile is the fact, that majority of development process happened when I had very good period of my life, but afterwards some unfortunate things happened, and I've fallen into hard depressive state, when campaign was 90% done. I disappeared for half of a year for this very reason.

When I partially recovered, I was still powerless and my mental capabilities were severely limited, but at least I was capable of working again. So I assembled whoever lefr from the old team, and pushed this thing hard to release. Some things still require polishing tho. Sadly there are no people to push whole project forward, with me as the only remaining leader and Starwolf as writer and effect designer. Now Su-Tehp joined as second writer and proof-reader.

I had lots of fun working on it. Tons of assets, tons of writing, tons of fredding... Exile team was a band of old friends, so there was this unique chemistry between us. This fact spawned incredibly expanded lore. We had much more then we actually included in ItDW, but lots of ideas got dropped or relegated to Act II, to have convinient first Act. In my opinion, the best stuff is still in design docs and in my head, awaiting for Exile to awake and spawn Act II one day.

Unfortunately it's not likely to happen soon.

[CT27]

Nyctaeus,

I've finished the final main chapter of Exile:  Alternate History (involving "Sol Invictus"), can I PM it to you now?

[Nyctaeus]

Anytime, man. I'm superbusy atm and overally, but you know the drill. One day I will dig it out and review.

[Su-tehp]

Nyct, my apologies for being away for so long, I've been super busy these last 2 years, what with working on the front lines of the COVID pandemic and all (not to mention a bunch of other editing projects I'm involved in), but I just got a PM from Admiral Nelson asking about my Exile edits. I just PM'ed both you and Nelson with my reply. I still have all my edits but they're only about halfway done. It's gonna take me a couple of months to finish the rest as I'm currently busy helping fan-edit the new Terminator RPG corebook (take a gander here if you're interested).

I'm gonna let Nelson do his thing with the FSO ports for Exile and once he's done, I'll edit the messages of the new mission files myself (I can't trust anyone else to do my edits for fear of a crapton of typos). It might take a few months (or longer). I can't make any promises just yet, but we'll see.

CT27, I'm curious: what's this Exile: Alternate History you mentioned?

[CT27]

CT27, I'm curious: what's this Exile: Alternate History you mentioned?

It's a fanfiction I wrote based on a 'what if' in Exile.  I finished the main plot but may write a small epilogue later.

The premise is that a small group of EFN officers and ships that fought to the death in Exile canon decide (in this alternate story) to actually try to break out of Sol.  However, they aren't able to leave with the main Exodus Fleet and have to try to catch up with them. 
Another difference is that one of the ORS destroyers that was destroyed in official Exile by Sathanas beams actually was a few seconds faster in this version of the timeline.  Those few seconds make a difference because the Sathanas beams only barely caught the engine instead of gutting/destroying the whole ship.  This caused a massive radiation spike in the ship that killed most of the crew but left the destroyer mostly intact.  The EFN remnants I mentioned earlier find this ship and use it as part of their group to try and catch up with Exodus Fleet.

[Su-tehp]

CT27, I'm curious: what's this Exile: Alternate History you mentioned?

It's a fanfiction I wrote based on a 'what if' in Exile.  I finished the main plot but may write a small epilogue later.

The premise is that a small group of EFN officers and ships that fought to the death in Exile canon decide (in this alternate story) to actually try to break out of Sol.  However, they aren't able to leave with the main Exodus Fleet and have to try to catch up with them. 
Another difference is that one of the ORS destroyers that was destroyed in official Exile by Sathanas beams actually was a few seconds faster in this version of the timeline.  Those few seconds make a difference because the Sathanas beams only barely caught the engine instead of gutting/destroying the whole ship.  This caused a massive radiation spike in the ship that killed most of the crew but left the destroyer mostly intact.  The EFN remnants I mentioned earlier find this ship and use it as part of their group to try and catch up with Exodus Fleet.

That's actually a cool story. Where can I find it? And do you need an editor to (eventually) edit it? (I think it needs a punchier title than "Alternate History" however... )

[CT27]

I've PMed 13 of the chapters to Nyct so far.  I haven't posted them publicly on this site.

Would you like me to post one of the chapters here so you can see what you think?



(And actually it's not written in a traditional story sense.  I wrote it in kind of a combo between a regular story and a mission script.)

[qweqwe321]

Finished the campaign. The mod is fantastic, and the equal of Blue Planet and Between the Ashes.  It was really, really excellent, and captured the Battlestar Galactica meets Freespace vibe perfectly. Gameplay was a ton of fun, and it really was a great take on the FS/FS2's universe. I really enjoyed the classic Freespace "go around, blow up huge numbers of Shivan ships" gameplay. Like FS2, it doesn't making the Shivans seem underpowered, as in Aftermath.

All told, it's a really good palate cleanser after being in the Blue Planet-verse and Between the Ashes-verse for so long.  Blue Planet's Shivans are Cthulhu-esque cosmic horrors but you get to peep into their world; when you're fighting humans, you are made painfully aware that there is another human on the receiving end of your plasma fire.  Between the Ashes does the same.  But in Exile, the Shivans stay mysterious and continue to keep their own counsel.  Even if they're individually easy to kill, they're impossible to stop collectively, like being swarmed by hornets.

The cutscene work was really impressive as well.

My one complaint is that the checkpoint system doesn't seem to work on most missions, so I switched to playing on lower difficulties and it was fine.

Fantastic job, guys.

[Mobius]

Though I was not involved in the development of Exile, I still find it amazing that people are enjoying it following the recent upgrade and fix.