[Assassin714]

I just had several more (or maybe it was one dream with multiple parts? I'm not sure).

Anyway, for the first part, there was a setting in the menu that was (according to the dream logic) well-known and had been there since the retail version, which was an 'autopilot' setting. It let the computer control your ship, although you could override it at any time by using the controls yourself. This was generally considered useless by the community, as the autopilot couldn't fly well at all, and it wasn't programmed to try to achieve any specific mission objectives (it would just dogfight whatever enemies were in the area even if you were supposed to be doing something else).

So I decided, just for fun, to try to play through each mission in a campaign using only the autopilot setting and see if any of them were actually beatable that way. The campaign that I chose was Blue Planet Age of Aquarius (although in the dream the missions were nothing like the real BP:AOA). The first mission actually had more in common with the first mission of the main FS2 Campaign, as you were fighting NTF forces, although this mission was significantly harder than the real 1st FS2 mission.

When it started, the autopilot flew in formation with my wing and there were multiple NTF wings attacking a small group of cruisers, freighters, and transports we were supposed to be defending. Like I mentioned, the autopilot was not very skilled at all, so it just went head-to-head with a wing of NTF Lokis, missing most of its shots (I remember it killed one but I was thinking that if I was flying I could have killed all of them), and once they passed by my wing, we just kept flying forward, allowing the enemy wing to come around behind us for another run. I saw Subachs and Prometheus Rs being shot at my fighter (mostly missing, although some were hitting) but they weren't doing much damage. Finally the autopilot lazily turned around to engage the enemies and we exchanged fire a bit. At this point, I was thinking to myself that maybe the reason we weren't taking that much damage was because we were playing on Very Easy, where the enemy weapons and stuff were nerfed. A bit later, an NTF Leviathan cruiser jumped in, and a scripted message warned us to stay away from its AAA beams, but of course the autopilot ignored this, chasing an NTF fighter right near the Leviathan. Luckily for me, when it fired its AAA beams, it was targeting other allied fighters, and didn't target me.

Eventually, an allied fleet jumped in (there was one Deimos, the GTCV Vengeance, and one Typhon, the GVD Hedetet, I don't remember the other ships) and they destroyed the NTF fleet and the mission ended successfully. I considered this to be a lucky and unusual result as I avoided dying. There was also the idea that the way the mission was normally supposed to go, you were supposed to destroy at least two NTF cruisers and most of the NTF strikecraft, and the fleet would just show up to mop up the survivors, but the autopilot was so incompetent that it only killed 1 Loki and all of the enemy cruisers were still there when the allied fleet arrived.

Then I tried the second mission, which was very weird as it wasn't much like a Freespace mission at all (it took place on the surface of a planet) and as soon as I moved more than a few dozen meters above the surface, this weird robot would start chasing me and it was invulnerable and would kill me with one hit if it rammed my ship. I think it was supposed to be a stealth mission, but of course the autopilot didn't realize that so I just died.

For the second part of the dream, I was running a weird version of Freespace that caused the ships to physically appear in miniature in my house. There was a three-way battle between an NTF raiding group, a GTVA convoy, and a Hammer of Light raiding group that took place a meter or so over my bed. After the mission was over I went downstairs without turning off the game, and then I saw two Orions (they were about the length of a human hand) jump in near the door to my kitchen (it was implied that different rooms in the house served as different systems, and ships could jump between them), and they started heading towards the downstairs bathroom, which was implied to be where the Shivans would appear from. I considered shutting down the game as I was a bit nervous about having all of these miniature ships flying around my house, but I wanted to see what would happen. Then the dream changed to a bunch of weird non-Freespace stuff that's not really relevant.

[Assassin714]

Another one. This was supposed to be a mission in the new Blue Planet Chanticleer campaign (which I haven't actually played yet, all I really know about it is that you're flying for the GTVA against the UEF). We were supposed to ambush and raid an enemy fleet and destroy at least 4 capships before the fleet jumped. The fleet was huge, with easily dozens of ships, and they didn't look much like UEF ships either. They had a strange look, a slightly red color and extended shapes with rounded curves, not like any type of ships I was familiar with. They ranged from about the size of an Argo transport to Juggernaut size.

I destroyed one of the smaller ones but then got distracted by something else in the mission and flew far away from the fleet, and a new group of ships jumped in close to me. They registered as hostile but they didn't shoot at me, even when I attacked them. So I figured maybe these could count for my 4 required kills. I began firing on a corvette-sized ship, but when it was down to only 8% hull integrity, some dialogue happened and that entire small group of ships changed IFF to friendly. After that, we were suddenly engaging a bunch of Shivan fighters, including Scorpions, and it took a while to deal with them all.

By this time, the enemy fleet was almost ready to jump and I was still quite far away from it, so I used afterburners to catch up, but I ended up needing to cheat to destroy enough ships in time.

I forget what I was flying for this mission, but I remember that it was some kind of heavy fighter with a turret.

In the debriefing, there was some strange plot information revealed. Some of the ships in the enemy fleet formerly belonged to the NTF, while some didn't, but they were all being commanded by a rogue GTVA admiral who was trying to sell out humanity to a faction of AIs that wanted to stop the GTVA/UEF war, but also enslave the human race (and supposedly make things peaceful and everyone happier).

It was never explained why the enemy ships looked so weird, or why there were Shivans there, though. I think there might have also been some ships from the Wing Commander universe in the mission, but I'm not sure.

[Assassin714]

Another one. Don't remember as many details about it as some of the previous ones, but I was flying a rather slow ship, yet I still had to defend a Typhon class destroyer against enemy bombers. I think they were some kind of Terran or Vasudan rebels, not Shivans, and I don't remember what their ships looked like, but they were launching warhead types called 'Thanos' and 'Sunderer'. Only a few warheads from the first volley got through, and brought the Typhon down to 92% hull.

Then I was attacked by some Vasudan fighters, including a Horus which I really couldn't hope to catch in my slow ship, and the next volley of enemy bombs brought the Typhon down to 53%.

At this point, some friendly capships jumped in, but there was also a Sathanas that was controlled by the rebels. As soon as it jumped in, most of the allied ships retreated, and the Sathanas jumped out after them. But then, less than a minute later, it jumped back in for some reason.

Then the Shivans, who were apparently upset that one of their juggernauts got stolen, appeared, with a massive superjuggernaut that dwarfed the Sathanas (the design wasn't like any fanmade ship that actually exists, it was sort of shaped like a larger Sathanas in the aft, but the bow was more like a Demon, but more black). I remember the model was very detailed and my game started to lag a bit.

There was also a friendly Orion that was trapped between the rebel Sathanas and the Shivan superjuggernaut.

At this point I figured I should get out of there, and tried to head away from the action, but even using afterburners, my ship was quite slow.

Then the Shivans sent in another Sathanas to trap the rebel Sathanas and surround it, and I barely avoided being hit by it as it jumped in. It was firing flak at me, but no fighters were pursuing me, as I kept trying to get away.

After a while, the friendly Orion was destroyed, and I still wasn't far enough away to completely escape the shockwave (although it didn't actually damage my ship).

I then saw that there was a Leviathan and some smaller ships in front of me, observing the battle from a distance. They were hostile, and apparently belonged to the NTF.

I kept heading in their direction, and when I got there, I decided to destroy the Leviathan, firing two bombs that brought its hull down to 50%. I then finished it off with a second salvo, and kept trying to escape from the main battle.

Shortly after that, the game was interrupted by a very strange ad for some other fanmade campaign that seemingly didn't have much to do at all with Freespace, and then the dream changed to something completely different.

[Trivial Psychic]

I think you might've just invented the next JAD campaign.  Also, you know you're a hard-core Freespace player, when even your dreams have lag.

[Assassin714]

I think you might've just invented the next JAD campaign.  Also, you know you're a hard-core Freespace player, when even your dreams have lag.

Also I came up with a name for the Superjuggernaut in the dream, I call it the Angra Mainyu - class.

[Assassin714]

Had another one, I was playing some weird Star Trek/Star Wars/Freespace crossover mod. I was flying for the GTVA or a sort of remnant faction after all of the ST and SW factions had taken over local space. We were sort of the underdogs/resistance trying to get our space back.

This mission involved a raid against a battle that was already in progress between a Borg cube and a space station and its defenses and support craft (it wasn't really made clear what faction they belonged to, except that they were also our enemies).

There was also a group of cargo containers that was near the station, we had somehow hidden some important equipment in two of them.

Our plan was to attack the Borg cube and distract it and the station defenders while we used the technology hidden in the cargo containers to help open some kind of portal through time to the past, then go through it to try to prevent a major defeat in the past. The briefing emphasized that we had to be careful of the Borg's ability to adapt to our weapons, but that didn't really come up much as an actual factor in the mission.

The mission started, but instead of a Borg cube, there was an Imperial Star Destroyer, but apparently the Borg were still in control of it and deploying their ships from it. In the dream, I acknowledged that as weird, but not too hard to believe. Later in the mission, the ship changed back to a Borg cube again and it was sort of glossed over as now being the way it was supposed to have been from the beginning.

Anyway, I was flying some kind of GTVA heavy fighter with stolen technology from both the ST and SW sides. I had 8 or so gun mounts in 2 banks, 1 was a bank of 4 of some kind of new GTVA cannon, and the other was a Borg weapon called "Power Glow". Both weapons were powerful against both shields and hull. I didn't recognize most of the other GTVA ship types, because this was years after the GTVA had integrated the ST and SW technology, but I do recall some GTF Nyx fighters on our side.

The mission wasn't going well, even though we had killed a lot of Borg fighters (I don't really remember what they looked like), the two critical cargo containers were damaged, and we were losing a lot of ships. At one point I remember that I was attacking a GTM Hippocrates medical frigate (I think it was allied with the space station) but I felt bad about attacking a medical ship and kept wondering if there was something else I should have been doing.

Just when it looked like we might finally pull off our objectives, a group of Imperial ships jumped in, including a Star Destroyer and two smaller capships, and a lot of fighters and bombers. They were on a fourth side against us, the station, and the Borg. I think the Borg cube (which was already weakened from the fighting) got destroyed, and we had to abandon the mission and jump out.

The debriefing clarified that the unexpected arrival of the Imperial ships meant that we never had a chance to win in the first place, as our cargo containers got destroyed and we lost most of our ships, so now it was a very grim situation going into the next mission, but I didn't get to see what happened next.

[Assassin714]

Had one again, although the details were pretty sparce this time. I was playing some kind of mod with a completely new main hall and interface and 3D cutscenes (including a cutscene that played when you tried to exit the game, which involved the player character landing their fighter on a base on some planet, then getting out and walking around and chatting with a bunch of other pilots, and petting a dog that was inexplicably there). There were also a bunch of random aliens walking around in the background, including some that looked like weird blue sasquatches... (I remember thinking that if this is supposed to take place in the Freespace universe, where did all of these unknown aliens come from?)

At one point, the game tried to run some program to download some files and update itself, but it glitched out and ruined my computer. And the craziest thing was that at no point in the dream do I ever recall actually flying a mission.

[Trivial Psychic]

If somebody ever gets the rights, the capital, and the inclination to create a Freespace 3 (not that I ever anticipate this happening), which would probably require a whole new game engine, I could see them incorporating something like an RPG to add immersion, in lieu of everything we have outside of flying missions.  Have your character have to navigate the halls of a ship to reach the briefing rooms, barracks, techroom, simulators, maybe the bridge, as well as other environments.  For example, if someone were to re-imagine FS1, when recovering the Vasudan Scientists in chapter 3, have the player required to land their fighters and navigate through chambers to find where the Scientists are holding up, and possibly deal with Shivan resistance, HoL fanatics, or even Ancients' internal security systems.

I know, that detracts from the essence of Freespace, the space combat, but I could see someone making that leap.  I just hope they make it as modeable as what we have now, including some version of FRED that works for both space combat, and the RPG areas.

Sorry, but that's the direction your dream sent me towards.

[übermetroid]

What does this dream about the Freespace 2 community's creative contributions and reinterpretations of Shivan warfare say about your own feelings towards how narratives are shaped by fandoms?

[Assassin714]

What does this dream about the Freespace 2 community's creative contributions and reinterpretations of Shivan warfare say about your own feelings towards how narratives are shaped by fandoms?

You mean the first one I posted on the thread? Well  has not made anything Freespace related in decades, so I guess all the new narrative we get is from the fandom these days.