Registered: Oct 2001
Location: Nottingham, England
Posts: 1470

EA Civil War Campaign

Will you be making missions of all of the battles seen on the show in the final campaign or just picking and choosing the best?

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Vancouver, WA, United States
Posts: 1290

There weren't many EA civil war battles shown on TV that would make "good missions" (these were just some of the ones I could think of).

1.) Point of No Return - The battle between General Hague's forces and Earth Alliance loyalists at the Io Transfer Point (?) over Jupiter. Not a very decisive conflict; two loyal warships were disabled and all three of Hague's ships at the battle made the jumpgate.

2.) Severed Dreams - Big battle. If you haven't seen the episode you're missing out on, like, space combat.

3.) Moments of Transition - Not really a battle, but this was where the EAS Pollux killed thousands of refugees trying to escape the Proxima Centauri (?) system.

4.) No Surrender, No Retreat - (See "Severed Dreams" above)

5.) The Face of the Enemy - A minor conflict was shown in the beginning between Sheridan and more loyalists. This was where several of the loyal EA ships withdrew leaving the cracked up EAS Cadmus to argue with Sheridan for awhile. Then the Vesta comes in and assures the Cadmus' CO all the rumors he heard were false.

6.) Between the Darkness and the Light - I can't believe I forgot the exact episode name......oh well. This is the one where the Omega-X destroyers make their first appearance. Also a minor skirmish in the beginning between Ivanava's forces and the Omega destroyers Damocles and Orion.

7.) Endgame - numerous battles between Sheridan's allies and the EA, most notably the ones over Mars and the final sequence against the Orbital Defense System.

There are probably a few I missed. Please correct me if I'm wrong or you think something's out of place.

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Registered: Apr 2001
Location: yes
Posts: 1184

I am aware of all these battle events. I am the scriptwriter for the EA Civil War. I have Babylon 5 on tape.

I won't give out information on the campaign, what I can tell you is that the campaign starts with the death of Santiago and ends with ENDGAME.

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Registered: Jan 2001
Location: UK
Posts: 1185

Lines of Communication also has a reasonably large battle between a couple of wings of White Stars and a Drakh battle group.

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Registered: Oct 2001
Location: Nottingham, England
Posts: 1470

That sounds cool

If Omega-Xs are being used then 'Between the Darkness and the Light' must be used as it is the only canon time they ever see combat.

Also 'Severed Dreams' is the one battle I think that everyone has been waiting to refight. Even if there is a version in the campaign, I'm sure several people will remake/modify it so that there are even more fighters present.

BTW Skullar, will you be toning down ship numbers so that the missions are playable on slower computers, like in the First Release for the Battle of the Line?

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Registered: Apr 2001
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Well , the number of ships ....
The SEVERED DREAMS mission is planned , there will be lots of fighters , the question is if they will all come at once or in several waves ( the plan would be not to make it too obvious that there ARE waves )
I am the scriptwriter, I am not the mission designer who sets up the mission in FRED2.
It is too early to say what Severed dreams will look like in the end, and as scriptwriter I always leave aspects of balancing to the mission designer. Therefore the exact strength of enemy fighter wings is NEVER fixed in the mission script.

Have faith... The mission will be cool. You will have enough fights in the whole campaign.

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Registered: Oct 2001
Location: Nottingham, England
Posts: 1470

Thankyou very much that's exactly what I wanted to know

Can't wait to be able to kick some of those loyalist butts

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Registered: Oct 2001
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As script writer I assume you will also take into account the ships shifting loyalty in their according time periods. What I mean is in some missions there may be ships which will eventually defect to Sheridan's Liberation Force but until that point they can come out fighting on the side of the Loyalists such as the Vesta and Nemesis which switched sides after "No surrender, No retreat" but before that they could have taken part of battles against the defectors, mind you not slaughtering civilians but fighting amongst the defectors, then later joining Sheridan's forces.

Also this is just a suggestion for both the writer and mission maker. I know there is a way to capture ships in Freespace 2, something about destroying engines and weapons on a cap ship and then sending in a boarding party. I would suggest to both of you, to not have every enemy cap ship destroyed in every encounter. It takes away from realism when no enemies are captured and Sheridan's goal in every battle was to disable the enemy caps and only destroy when forced to do so. I also know that you can make certain ships neutral in a fight, that should help with the Vesta and Juno that didn't attack in "No surrender, no retreat".

The only other thing I would like to have seen but I'm sure can't be done is having enemy ships surrender when too damaged. Aside from capturing enemy ships by force, it would be realistic and canon to see enemy ships surrendering as the Cadmus in "The face of the enemy". I also would suggest having enemy ships running away from time to time, escaping when too many of their forces are lost. I know, not too much but every now and again it could happen.

I only mentioned these suggestions for Clark's forces because I am unaware if you are purposely planning Sheridan's forces to scriptedly lose battles. But it would only be realistic if the war wasn't as one sided as the Minbari War demo was.

A final note, I am uncertain if you are using AoG's Atlas of the Earth Alliance Wars, which contains every battle of the EA Civil War canon and non-canon, to script the campaign but I would like to see EA Liberation fleets do fighting and not just White Stars all the time as the series showed.

That's it, and if you ever need non-canon mission ideas I'd gladly give suggestions for good missions for any campaign.

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Registered: Jul 2000
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Just remembered the minor dogfight in Epiphanies. Not directly civil-warish, but this was where Clark sent the Psi-Corps Black Omega squadron to wipe out the loyalist forces blockading Babylon 5 to make it look like the rebels had done it. Ivanava's flight intervened in time, nuked the dirty teeps, and saved their loyalist friends.

One thing I do hope to see are some missions involving the Black Omega squad. I don't care if I fly with or against them. BTW Ghost Rider, I believe all the stuff you mentioned is doable in FRED2. While things like a ship surrendering when it's hull integ gets low aren't programmed into FS2's source code, it could easily be scripted into a mission.

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Registered: Sep 2001
Location: Estonia
Posts: 1362

well then the mission designer could make 1 more mission not for campagain but 1 that u acsess through the mission simulator and that there all ALL the fighters would come and go at once i want that cause im getting A GF2 and 256 more ram so my pc wont make a sound

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Registered: Apr 2001
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Posts: 1184

People , you have no idea for how LONG I am writing on the Civil war script. So far you didn't suggest anything I didn't think of before

Ghost writer mentioned "realism" . Both sides of EA won't slaughter each other without remorse.


And slasher , there will be BlackOmegas. No more info.

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Freespace 2 : The Babylon Project team member
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The sun is quite warm,
the universe is fairly large
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