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Have a look at the poll results. I think that unless a whole lot more people vote very soon, Time Travel as a plot element is an undesired issue.

Personally I think it would turn into a giant morass of people feuding about causality, paradoxes and unprovable theory.

Demetrians or Hestians, I'd say. Poll time?

Here's where I'd suggest going. One other caution about "Hestians" - sounds a lot like "Hessians", which are 18th century German soldiers.

The original BZ1 and CP projects were heavy into pure greek references. It's just a name and doesn't have to dictate the behaviour of the race it's applied to (unless it's extremely symbolic like, say, Cerberi), so go ahead and pick one. Other names can be introduced later as subfactions anyways.

How we handled voting for story in the original BZ2CP was through iteration. Everyone posted their concepts and a vote was held to see which held up. Then the top bunch were retained and discussed further and voting proceeded. The result was a couple that were tied so I blended them into a concept that stuck and resulted in a working framework. Then art got in there and started all sorts of interesting in-progress ideas to flesh out the resulting world. Looks like the first part of that's what sort of happening here too.

We also tried to stay more with the initial "backstory" and conceptual illustration of the races involved at the major-events level only, instead of designing an entire campaign with every event known at the beginning. This enabled people to create SP maps after the fact that could be slotted into the campaign, provided their starting and ending points meshed with the overall schedule of accomplishments that materialized later. It created the risk of disjointed storytelling, but allowed greater flexibility later and the mapmakers didn't feel like they had to be robots to some scriptwriter's wishes.


That being said:
- I'd vote against backward time travel of any sort. It's not a native concept to the previous BZ universe and can create a lot of headaches when people get into different visions and expectations of causality and paradoxes. It creates that horrible logical faultfinding Terminatoresque question "Well, if they could timetravel during situation A, why didn't they timetravel during situation B to stop A from happening?". Forward time travel is easily accomplished without invoking causality issues. Two possible substitutions are using distance, not time movement, to logically separate one foe from others until it's the right moment to bring them onto the stage (e.g. an ancient spaceship with a busted FTL drive on a 3000-year orbit drifts back into the solar system), or a cache or forcefield that freezes time within it until it's disabled or expires to reveal a new enemy or plot twist.
- Would be really good to revisit some of the original settings found in BZ1 and BZ2 as a nod to continuity and, at minimum, an opportunity to reuse existing models or assets. I still vividly recall the Mons Olympus missions on Mars and would love to see it again. Plus it closes the loop for players that might be new to the mod without spending a tremendous amount of time spelling out all the things that happened to get to where the races are today - pivotal historic events can be encountered and explained within the missions themselves as the players stumble across old wrecks or memorial plaques.
- Some concept sketches of major plot physical assets would be a good plot selling point. The art direction can help determine the race attitudes and aptitudes. As an example, you know from their appearance that the Cerberi are not the good guys, and the Hadeans' ship skins helped make them look very structured and regimented. If an artifact is central to a proposed plot, what will it generally look like? Sketches and early models can really contribute to ideas.
- Finally, the initial BZ2CP movie was a very good concept solidifier. When designing your concepts, consider how much work it would take within an initial explanatory cutscene or separate movie to actually explain to the audience what is going on enough for them to buy into the plot and game. The preamble to the first mission should be small and simple, and the work to get there light and easy to comprehend. If you have to take ten minutes of explanation to get to the point where the player can boot up a mission, that's too long.

Hi, all. Retro here. Was one of the principal initial organizers of BZ2:FE.

On music: my suggestion is also to hold off on decisions at this point, at least until the atmosphere of the mod is locked in. The music should match the major plot direction. Always good to discuss, but I wouldn't recommend devoting significant energy to it.

To see my point, boot up the original Battlezone and listen to the martial title track. It's a perfect fit for that game because it nails the setting and narration.

Username: Retroboy
MSN email (If one exists) - none. Use theRetroboy@gmail.com
BZU Jabber (Miranda IM or PSI can be used as Jabber clients) - none
Current skills (pertaining to BZ2) - Original BZ2CP conceptual approach, fiction background principal author, initiative coordinator, and project manager.
Skills you'd like to learn (pertaining to BZ2) - None. Here by request to poke my head in and say "Hi".