Battlezone Universe

Since the previous thread seems to have devolved into simply respelling the current stories, The Management is going to try something different.

The story authors for the current stories should post here first, with a highly distilled version of their story.  Basically what we want are the main points of the stories, basically a, "What sets one story apart from the others?" kind of thing.  Once we have all of that out on the table, we can start seeing exactly what aspects of a story are liked/disliked, and from there we can begin weaving the 3 stories into one coherent plot.

One rule in this thread: Don't beat a dead horse.  If your point has been refuted before, don't bring it up again, without good reason.  On that note, don't beat a live one, either.  If something's already been said, don't repeat it.  If a point has been neglected, you can bring it up again, but don't just say, "I like/dislike time travel, do something else," endlessly.  That will simply earn you the ire of everyone involved, and will cause your posts to disappear.

Go at it.

The poll will be edited once we get replies from the authors.

EDIT: Once AHadley responds here, I'll go through and distill everything some more, and enable/edit the poll.

The following is the story proposal which has my full backing.
Sorry, this is about as distilled (I would say: unthorough) as its going to be from me...


Call it: ScrapPool's "Blend"

This is mostly a re-post from the "Creating a plot 2" thread... mostly.

"The blend goes something like this: it could be presented as a three "act" or "part" story.

PART I: EXTINCTION OF THE THIRD FACTION AND HIDING OF THE DRIVE

This part would be concerned with the extinction of the Third Cthonian Faction in a fight with other Cthonians over the Third Faction's superior technology.

This part is rather vague to me... and so I kind of want to nod to Mr. X's history of the Third Faction for this part... but it might be centered around the Hadeans trying to get their hands on a significant piece of Third Faction technology: the Alcubierre drive. The third faction hides it successfully, and then are killed off (but not before activating their gravity well to bring the cthonian moon down, more on that later).

One might play as a Third Faction Cthonian (in the "past"), as one of the last defenders of the team hiding The Drive on the a distant and ancient world accessible only by a special portal. (If it fell into the hands of the Ancient Hadeans, they would surely become the dominant race in the universe.)

The Cthonian's homeworld's moon might be partially terraformed, the Third Faction would have culturally separated from the other two cthonian factions because they are accustomed to the day-night cycle of the moon. The Cthonian Homeworld itself does not have a day-night cycle, it is tidally locked, and so has one side of the planet in constant night (home to the olympians) and one side of the planet in constant day (home to the hadeans). As the third faction is exterminated, it activates a gravity well designed to crash the moon to the planet.

PART II: CERBERI HUNTING AND DISCOVERY OF THE DRIVE

Part 2, we jump ahead to the future (possibly after Perfidious, just so that that story might remain in tact) and we join the Scions (player=the ambassador from full circle (http://www.bzuniverse.com/forum/index.php/topic,9683.0.html), on EDF oversight duties) as they are hunting the last of the Cerberi.
Our scions follow the retreating Cerberi through modern Hadean space portals, fighting and exterminating them, until finally the Cerberi discover a rather more-ancient, buried portal, activate it, and retreat through. The scions follow, and once they reach the other side, discover a wold filled with Cthonian relics. Here they exterminate the very last remnants of the Cerberi, but at the end, discover the Alcubierre drive hidden by the third faction in the distant past. At this point, all seems calm and concluded, and the scion forces return to mire with their prize.

NOTE: There is potential, before the Cerberi start to retreat through Hadean portals, that they have spread to SOL worlds, eg., Mars, the Moon, Europa, Titan, etc, and so, we could, for a few missions, go Cerberi hunting on the worlds from BZ1 as scions! This possibility excites me the most.

PART III: CONSTRUCTION OF THE ARK III AND MODIFIED "FULL CIRCLE (http://www.bzuniverse.com/forum/index.php/topic,9683.0.html)"

The Third Faction's Alcubierre drive, discovered by the Scions at the end of their Cerberi hunt, is the centerpiece for the construction of the ARK III...

Here we resume the plot of Full Circle (http://www.bzuniverse.com/forum/index.php/topic,9683.0.html) to conclusion with the following suggested modifications:

The ARK is brought out of warp by the gravity well activated by the third faction on the cthonian homeworld, not by crashing through the moon.
Cthonians DO NOT reverse engineer biometal, instead they use fallen pieces of the ARK as their source, just as the scions do.

There are some other suggested modifications to full circle that I wanted to include but I cant remember what they are at this time... they were really good too... if yall could er... re suggest them, id like to have them in here....

IMO: -this plot reconciles the "portals/no portals" discussion, because portals are included, but are not the main recurring theme of the story.
       -this plot reconciles the "cerberi/no cerberi" discussion, because there are cerberi, but they are exterminated.   :lol:
       -we would (eventually) get to play as each of the three proposed races of cthonians, in addition to the scions. (the third faction by default, and either the hadeans or olympians when you are prompted to join each of these factions in the eventualities of FULL CIRCLE (http://www.bzuniverse.com/forum/index.php/topic,9683.0.html))
       -we would get to re-visit mars, titan, europa and even the moon as we go cerberi hunting. and so, this plot could solve one's desire to return to those worlds.

The one bit this plot does not include, and the one discussion this does not resolve is the time portals. But you already know that I am anti-time portals. So their exclusion in this draft is very explicable. HOWEVER, I BELIEVE that if the cerberi are causing trouble and inciting damaging shenanigans as they are retreating through these hadean space portals, that the same plot-sense effect is achieved (as if they were traveling through time), and that is: lets follow these guys through this portal and stop them from causing trouble. Same thing as the time cop, but without the time portal. "



DISTILLED SUMMARY:

Play As:           Third Faction Cthonians (Name TBA), Scions, Ancient Olympians or Ancient Hadeans.
Play Against:    Ancient Hadeans, Ancient Olympians, and Cerberi.

Contains:
-"BZ2 Mission 14" Campaign fork, in which one must join either the ancient Olympians or ancient Hadeans in order to defeat the other and escape the falling moon. (See FULL CIRCLE (http://www.bzuniverse.com/forum/index.php/topic,9683.0.html))
-SPACE portals
-Cerberi
-FTL (faster-than-light) "accidental/relativistic" time travel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_than_light#Possibility)
-Cthonian Homeworld (Possible)
-A closed timelike curve (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_timelike_curve), or "time loop" (NOT PARADOX! (@ VSMIT)) in which the events of this story cause themselves to happen.
-Scion-Human Love Story
-Possible channels through witch the nature of biometal might be reavealed (third faction's expertise w/ etc...)
-Possible re-visitation of Mars, Venus, The Moon, Europa, Titan, etc...
-Possible channels through witch the history of the Cthonians might be fleshed out
-A moon crashing to a planet
-The possibility of an epic boarding party/defense mission.
-LOTS OF FASCINATING SCI FI SHENANIGANS LIKE: the Alcubierre drive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_Drive), Faster-than-light  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light)"time travel", Habitable tidally locked planets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_locking), and Closed timelike curves (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_timelike_curve), amongst many many other great and numerous possibilities (perhaps biometal is another version of the Monoliths (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolith_%28Space_Odyssey%29) from 2001 (that is, inorganic, self-replicating machines designed to explore the universe, alien space probes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_probe)) or an inorganic life-form (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry#Silicon_biochemistry)) ...
If you're bored, thorough reading of each link in the above list might prove a boredom-resolving and maybe even mind-blowing activity.

And if you haven't read  this (http://www.bzuniverse.com/forum/index.php/topic,9683.0.html) yet, I highly recommend that you take the time to accomplish a thorough reading of it so that you might have a little bit of context for this blend. But I think I've made that quite apparent by my extensive linking to it in this post.

Virtually everything is possible with this framework except direct time travel.

-Third, neutral, Cthonian faction called the Metians creates incredible technology. Including Biometal and Time-Space portals. Hadeans find out about this technology and want it. The Metians are wiped out but the Olympians come to the planet in an attempt to stop the Hadeans getting the advanced tech.
-To destroy the Hadean armada that followed them the Metians create a gravity well to bring their world's moon crashing into it, obliterating it completely.
-Scions, much much later, discover a  time portal in deep space that takes them back in time to this Hadean-Olympian war for the planet.
-The two factions open fire upon the scion vessel, the missiles destroy the ship along with the portal.
-The scions must join either the Hadeans or Olympians. (campaign splits here)
-Hadeans find a master portal that can connect to any other at any point in time. If you joined them you must hold off the Olympians until it recharges. If you joined the Olympians you must break through the Hadeans. All of this must be done before the moon hits.

Summary:
Play as: Scions, allied with either ancient olympians or ancient hadeans.
Against: Ancient Hadeans or Olympians.

Includes:
The scions are finally in the starring role!
Time portals
The origin of biometal
The obliteration of the metians
Both Cthonian factions

I really think the third faction should be destroyed like this, because there are already two warlike cthonian factions, I don't want another.

Incidentally, who on Earth has already voted!?

I think I like SP's Blend best, and I'm not sure I can make many changes to it.

I do, however, have plans to integrate Perfidious even more with this storyline, possibly even as a direct prequel to it (though not a Community Project), filling in the events between Forgotten Enemies and Full Circle (if it is to be called that) in a similar way that BZC may be filling in some of those between BZs 1 and 2. I've put these changes below by way of my input:

---

Adam is the main character of Perfidious. Since he doesn't have a surname yet and will need one, I would like to suggest Corrigan. He meets Eve during the campaign and they become friends, their relationship does not reach the depth it reaches by the end of Full Circle). Similarly, I would like to suggest Collins for Eve's surname. Of course, this will probably have some major effects on the Project's relationship development.

When the Humans, Scions and Hadeans attack the dead Cerberi planet, they immediately step up their attack and launch an attack from a force which was already poised to invade Sol. These are the Cerberi you fight during Full Circle. This probably won't change the storyline too much.

---

I know, it's not much, and it doesn't particularly pertain to the stories we are suggesting, but I really can't think of how to improve Scrap Pool's blend. The fact that my mod will remain intact whatever the outcome doesn't exactly help either.



Here comes the big part. I would like to put myself forwards to play Adam (Corrigan?). I'll have to record a sample of my voice acting though, I don't have any handy.

I plan to get some significant work done on the third factions history tomorrow, seeing as its going to be in there either way and they seem to be popular.

Incidently, I have an idea for Scrappool's cereberi hunt, there are two A-drives (easier to say, I think this should be the nickname. I've been thinking though, if the Metian Cthonians invented it, shouldn't it have a completely different name?), the last part of the cereberi acquire one and so do the edf-scion alliance, they both find that it can only function on pre-determined routs, with only one programmed in. The co-ords lead them to a world where they can obtain information required for another trip, this carries on for a few missions with you visiting different planets chasing the cereberi until you reach the Metian homeworld, just in time to watch the last Metian city be destroyed from orbit by Hadean forces. (Important note, there are Metians left, but only a handful of small bands that refused to go quietly, they have turned their intelligence to war and are quite effective, but only limited by the numbers, they do ambushes to aid the Olympians.)
 
From here you get shot down along with the Cereberi. You pick one side and the cereberi fool the other into thinking that they are friends.

In the last mission you are to escape along with your allies through a starportal, but events alter this. One of the last Metians begs that the EDF and Scion forces move through the portal before anyone else can, destroying it behind them so that all the Cthonians on the world are killed (along with the last of the cereberi) when the moon crashes down, he also asks you to take with you two drives(the A-drives) and hide them. In the last mission your only help comes from a Metian force with some awesome tech. Only the Human and Scion main characters survive and their ships are damaged because the portal didn't have time to reach full functionality, so the two must abandon their craft, destroying all hope of finding another portal and passing through it. Stranded on an inhospitable planet in the distant past they hide the drives and die of starvation and dehydration.

We need to have everyone killed because otherwise Cthonian history would record the existance of the Scions and Cereberi. It also helps to explain why Humanity never found out about the Metians.

What does everyone think?

BTW Ahadley, would you mind letting me and SP help you work out the plot for perfidious so that we don't end up contradictiong each other?

Hold on, people.  Let me get this story stuff straight before we start discussions.

I've removed the relationship portions of the stories, as they can be added later.

Full Circle:

• 3rd (not so peaceful) Cthonian faction
  
• Player race TBD (3rd Cthonians, Scions, Olympians/Hadeans)
  
• Cerberi Enemies
  
• Time paradox loop
  
• Relativistic time travel
  
• Possible "History of Biometal"
  
  Mr X's Unnamed story:
  
• 3rd (peaceful) Cthonian faction
  
• Direct time travel
  
• Play as Scions
  
• Ally with ancient Olympians or Hadeans
  
• Cthonian enemies
  
  Perfidious:
  
• Human/Scion/Modern Hadean Alliance
  
• Cerberi Enemies
  
  Consolidated (These will go into the poll):
  
• 3rd Cthonian faction
  
• Relativistic time travel
  
• Direct time travel
  
• Cerberi enemies
  
• Cthonian enemies
  
• Time Paradox loops

I have voted for the following and here is why:
3rd Cthonian faction - Yes
Relativistic time travel - No (Not as the key)
Direct time travel  - Yes
Cerberi enemies - No (This hurts EPIC rather bad and the Cerberi are still somewhat a mystery.)
Cthonian enemies - No (See Below)
Time Paradox loops - No (Those supposed already are not very good paradoxes or loops and screw up much of BZ story in the process.)

Here is my description of time portals. The Hadean Crown bases their portal technology of of a now destroyed 3rd faction. It is this technology that spurs the conquest of the Mire and Sol systems for the space time nexuses that would allow for intra and even inter galactic travel. The Hadeans don't succeed of course. Now, the portals are never well explained, we know biometal can travel from 1 point to another, and even allow non biometal to transport too, but not at such a scale. The space time nexuses might be required to use this inefficient method to go as far as stated in the FE story.

The 3rd faction of Cthonians should be alive in the past with knowledge of the future, as in, they escape into the past. Now, to have them exist this way they had to have time portals, and this is how I propose they worked. The time or super long range portals make matter loose coherence so it is in a quantum state. Any observer becomes incapable of observation, even of itself, when it enters this state. The quantum form information is then re-established by an artificial observation provided by a brain in the portal. This brain can be dead, and you have to replace it. Talk about a moral letdown if you have to do worse than kill a crew member to place them in the portal. And how do you program the brain to overpower it's native intelligence and feelings?

Now, the time portal can get to whoever in many ways. Here is an example. If the key to time portal technology was sent to the scions by a probe moving at light speed or near it (because under siege and with some portals captured the 3rd faction cannot list letting the Hadean Crown see the true power of the portals). If the portal was to beam something from the probe while moving at light speed, it could conceivably beam the object to the time when the object entered light speed (even if it is not a time portal). Noting this, instant travel would occur even if the portal itself cannot attain the range, but the item teleported would have existed a long time in that instant moment. Also the shell of such a probe would still exist far in the future, though it's entire travel time even, and could be collected and studied. Thus the Olympians could, for example, attain the portal's true secrets and some of them escape like one of the Stargate Episodes with an Alpha/Beta site. Now, that would mean some level headed Cthonians still exist, weather they escaped way back then or much later, perhaps after helping the Scion Ark II escape. Now, depending on the time the probe can reach the Olympians and give the portal technology, or the true key to it, personally without use of a portal. It could be that the Cthonians used something like subliminal speed (near the speed of light) to travel before portals, and thus traveled with SOME time dilation but still traveled. Also, the Olympians, back in the time of the fall of this 3rd group could, could be a larger group and have traveled with the Hadeans, secretly, to defend their 3rd faction Cthonian brothers. They could be the one who sends the secret of the true portal technology's power to themselves. Maybe the Ark II could escape with it, since I am sure the Olympians would have offered to send the Scions though it if it worked. This would help make the Scions the lead in the story.

Now, on the topic of the enemy. I do not know if the Cthonians have to be enemies. I kind of like the idea of ending up in a war suddenly, but I don't know. In ANY case the 3rd Cthonian faction should become an ally at some point in time. Perhaps there should be a new menace to the stability of time itself. Something that would have destroyed their small section slowly, but upon registering time travel they attacked the 3rd Cthonian faction and clocked them in war (Daleks anyone? Just kidding, but you get the though). Thus they would get the Scions dragged in too, MAYBE some Olympian survivors who escaped on the Ark II or all those years ago with the 3rd faction. Being a time war with the theoretical ability to make a lifeform unable to establish its own existence, this would be a darn dangerous war. Now, as a result of being included the Scions can cause a time cop style story to occur as a secondary arc to the main struggle against this horrible force. Being time related, if there is really an issue of which FE ending occurred (I think both can occur without or without the user) time travel could allow Corbin to do BOTH at the same time. With a Time Cop story, you could have people who should have never existed, a Canadian Space Army member for example, who was never born in the normal time line, join your team.

I want to know the thoughts on this. Details from the other stories could be added mostly easily to this story frame as it allows for the time travel required for paradoxes and also provides a reasonable limit to the time travel. It is quantum based, on a living brain for establishment and targeting. Who knows WHAT could happen when you try to use it?

What would happen is the player and the storyboard conceptors would get very confused very fast. It looks like as soon as the time travelling plot begins, it hits the ground running and the story will unravel quickly from there, hopefully not leaving players grasping for air. Like those books with time travel.

I like the idea of the fighting against the Hadeans or Olympians,

my reason for this is simple, its a part of established BZ history, so it would be very interesting to get to be at the forefron of the Hadean-Olympian war.

Also, I've created another topic with my backstory for the 3rd faction.

I too think a story based on NK1's above statement would be extremely confusing. I am getting confused myself, and I'm going into A-Level physics. Not a good sign, for me or the suggestion :lol:

lol, ya know I used the pseudo physics in 90% of modern scifi movies. The stuff that is oddly true half the time?

EDIT: As a side note, who here REALLY knows what happens in BZ2 and FE? I know I do, but with how many people think the Dark Planet became core and then the ISDF blew it up or some other poppycock combo ending has no chance in hell of following what I wrote above.

EDIT2:
for double reference for those smiting me for this, sarcasm is not a forum sin, and I explained the comment literally 2 posts later, so come off it and grow up.

I think you've helped me get a grasp on most of it.

Quote from: AHadley on August 29, 2009, 10:23:02 PM
I think you've helped me get a grasp on most of it.

for refference
/me was referring to many You-tube videos that have come and gone about BZ2

howcome votes can't be changed?

Quote from: Rocket on August 31, 2009, 06:02:36 AM
howcome votes can't be changed?

Ever voted in an election? Try going back to the ballot box and pulling out your vote card to change it and see what happens (with the security staff).  :-P

A) VSMIT forgot.

or B) So people will be more careful with their voting

or C) So voting is faster, as things won't be as "up for grabs" after everyone's voted.

I suppose though votes could be re-counted at a certain stage in voting. I.e. blow everyone's votes into oblivion and everyone votes again for what they want.

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.

The whole backwards in time paradox is what I have been shooting down this whole time without explanation and there it is for you. It is so much more mysterious to start the whole game off in the past and drop clues like "wait..wouldn't this be like this" or so on, they gradually reveal their identities to you, and near the very end you are like "...! This is THE FREAKING PAST!" At which end the game is already over... now you are stuck to the past and hear your character's final thoughts before he dies... So emotional.

As far as the movie goes...movie files need to have much greater compression before they can even be given a thought. How big was the initial movie file? 50-100MB? And the quality was (No offense intended to any creators, I know there were limitations at the time) terrible in full screen to the point it was hard for me to see what was happening. Lots of people have very high speed internet upwards of 7-10mb/s and faster, but even more are still stuck on DSL and probably lower. Big movie files look nice but are hard to distribute (a mod where 75% of the data is movie seems absurd to me unless distributed via CD or such) while small movie files are hard to watch and enjoy.

This is all considering there is no win-all compression out there, but for all I know there could be some miracle compression lying around. If so, sign me up for the cinema section as I love making rendered movies ;)

I agree entirely about the past thing. Just saying. :-)

Quote from: bb1 on September 03, 2009, 10:45:57 PMAs far as the movie goes...movie files need to have much greater compression before they can even be given a thought. How big was the initial movie file? 50-100MB? And the quality was (No offense intended to any creators, I know there were limitations at the time) terrible in full screen to the point it was hard for me to see what was happening. Lots of people have very high speed internet upwards of 7-10mb/s and faster, but even more are still stuck on DSL and probably lower. Big movie files look nice but are hard to distribute (a mod where 75% of the data is movie seems absurd to me unless distributed via CD or such) while small movie files are hard to watch and enjoy.

Just be sure that whoever is doing the compressed movies, they keep the raw uncompressed originals.  This goes without saying in these times with faster/better PC's and file capacities.   I recall that people were still clamoring to see the FE trailer in an even much higher resolution, even after Chipotle rendered and supplied 3 versions of the trailer, each at a different compression level, primarily to satisfy different download rates.  My recollection is a little hazy, but I think he also stated that his PC wasn't able to render the trailer at a higher rate, or something like that.    In any case, I think that if we aren't satisfied with the compressed ingame movies, as movies themselves, then at least supply them in the highest quality possible as separate downloads, to satisfy our eye candy curiosity.    I agree, the beginning Bink movie of the FE single player (the one with the ships in space) was rather crap because of compression. 

Quote from: Retroboy on September 03, 2009, 07:27:26 AM
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.

Well the moral of Terminator is actually quite the opposite effect you suggest. The story suggests that no matter what someone thinks once they know the situation, that is the only manner in which the events could have transpired if they were to occur at all (if they were to cause themselves to happen via time travel), ergo: one cannot say "why didn't they just go back in time and stop it all from happening?" because if they did, there would be no story, and you would never have asked that question. It finally comes together in T3.

Although this is exactly the same reason I am against time portals and "easy" time travel, instead favoring realistic/relativistic "difficult" backwards time travel. Because they inevitably lead to that credibility busting "wait, this story should never have existed because a smart alien would use time travel as a very effective weapon. it is after all, time travel."

Time travel could mean immortality.

What if they didn't create biometal but where given biometal from say...a deity?

hey, just a shot in the dark here... do you think it is possible to include some sort of playable space battle?

Quote from: Clavin12 on September 07, 2009, 02:08:56 PM
Time travel could mean immortality.

What if they didn't create biometal but where given biometal from say...a deity?

Thats some seriously theological territory that I really don't want to get into...

It is, but it would be exciting too.

I don't think we should, no offence but gods have no place in sci-fi :P

Maybe they were given biometal by the Promethians, who they mistook for deities?;)

QuoteI don't think we should, no offence but gods have no place in sci-fi

Not remotely true, they are rare, very rare, but they are out there. Usually they are fairly localised gods, they may or may not actually exist, the ones that do tend to be very strange and not at all friendly, caring, or loving, usually a bit obsessive about whatever they are Godding it over.
In a way scifi and religion are the same thing, but only one of them admits to being fiction.

Quote from: Mr X on September 07, 2009, 07:33:44 PM
I don't think we should, no offence but gods have no place in sci-fi :P

Ever seen Battlestar Galactica?

No. But anyway the problem with Gods is, you can't shoot them or blow them up. So their role in a game like bz2 is going to be fairly limited, now Demons are a different matter... :-D

Or even Stargate for that matter. (They posed as gods, but still falls into the category.)

BTW: From the Info Lizard was kind enough to release the Promethians killed themselves and much of the ancestral "First Swarm" by exploding their sun.
Only the probes that they sent out are what is left of them, and even then the probes do not have biometal inside of them, just info to create it.

OK, so maybe the third faction discovered a probe? Could even show it in a mission as an object that the Hadeans are after.

Like the mission originates as a battle for the probe. You fight back the Hadeans and claim it but the third faction comes out of nowhere and steals it.

Exactly what I was thinking.

Quote from: mrtwosheds on September 07, 2009, 11:26:48 PM
No. But anyway the problem with Gods is, you can't shoot them or blow them up. So their role in a game like bz2 is going to be fairly limited, now Demons are a different matter... :-D

Sure, if you want to start ripping off warhammer 40000... :P

Quote from: Clavin12 on September 08, 2009, 01:27:19 PM
Like the mission originates as a battle for the probe. You fight back the Hadeans and claim it but the third faction comes out of nowhere and steals it.

Quote from: AHadley on September 08, 2009, 04:05:29 PM
Exactly what I was thinking.

It could be a good way of establishing how good their tech is, and introducing them to the other two factions. It would be like them saying "Its seems pretty stupid to let either of you have it." ;)

But why exactly do they want the probe?

Because it will grant them to build the Biometal, the Gods' Alloy. And possibly some other tech, with Lizards' blessing.

Another reason for the Phoenix name... they could see themselves as the Prometheans reborn.

The other tech could include time travel.

Could do indeed... but we can't take all their discoveries away from them!

They could have gotten the biometal and using their already discovered portal technology nvented time travel.

The "Fish Ship" found in Fleshstorm IS one of the probes the Promethians had sent out.

So...  It's been a little over two weeks.  What have we come up with so far?

How the new race got its biometal and we've also filtered out the unpopular aspects of the stories with the poll.

It's been two weeks, and that's all you've come up with?  You guys need to get your act together.  The purpose of this thread is not to determine insignificant details, but how the story as a whole is going to work out.

How bout we get rid of the poll, and list the chosen factors and concepts in a new thread for serious plot planning.

Clavin, that's what this thread was supposed to be for...

Well then we could just get rid of the poll and list what we have so far.

i say we take the top three or four things, open a  new thread and find a way to make them work together.

Direct time travel, Cthonian enemies, Third Cthonian race.

I'm going to wait for some of the others to post before discussing a new development direction.

Quote from: Clavin12 on September 09, 2009, 01:23:18 AM
Direct time travel, Cthonian enemies, Third Cthonian race.

You missed Cerberi Enemies.

I guess. It was sort of a vague poll anyway.

How about we start with some basic question now that we know what we want in this mod: Where does the mod start?, Who is the Antagonist?, Who is the Protagonist?, What is the major struggle?, and How is the struggle solved?

Right, just to give some framework and include the top rated ideas.

Scions are fighting some cereberi.
Both sides find a wierd drive.
The cereberi use theirs and the scions give pursuit. (don't figure this out 'til near the end but have gone back in time)
They arrive at a previously unknown world and find the ancient Cthonians fighting each other over the ruins of a third faction(see other thread for more, not important here) that they have obliterated.
Scions take a side, cereberi take the other.
Towards the end you ditch whichever side you were previously on and join the remains of the Phosphornii (third faction) who have offered you a way of escaping before the natural disaster they have set in motion (moon colliding with the planet) occurs.
Only the two main characters (1 human 1 scion) survive the destruction of the world, they die when their life support runs out.

Is this good enough?

Here's my take on it:

Scions are clearing up the Cerberi
A destroyed Cerberi mothership is discovered to contain an Acclubierre drive.
Scions duplicate the Acclubierre drive, or maybe transplant it.
The last Cerberi mothership uses its drive to escape. Scions pursue.
Arrive at Cthonian world.
Ancient Cthonians are seen fighting each other. Cerberi trick the Hadeans into an allegiance, while the Scions respond to an Olympian plea for help. During the fight the Cerberi are destroyed.
You join with the Phosphornii to escape back to your own time.
Adam and Eve reach Earth, dying in the young planet's inhospitable environment, thus bringing life to the planet.

I still think you should be able to join your choice of either the Olympians or Hadeans. The cereberi could trick whichever side you turn down.

Yeah, I guess. Interesting MSN discussion we were having, shame I crashed out :lol:

You might need to post that stuff, I can't remember it.

Ok, not much time right now so a lot of cut-pasting is involved:

I think there should be 2 story arcs, but 1 ending for the purposes of sequels.

I think in a mod like this, you should have a chance to play as all of the races included (except maybe the cereberi). Given that the only truly evil side is the cereberi.

and I'm sure the cereberi are smart enough to fool either main cthonian faction.

towards the end the cereberi could convince both main factions to unite against you and the Phosphornii, realising that the scions are the only ones with any real knowledge of how to fight them so with the scions out of the way they could completely reshape history so that they rule all and completely control the universe's biometal.

at some point the cereberi would be the first to realise that they are in the past

if the cereberi found the drive first they'd probably have the full instructions on how to use it.

in a previous suggestion I made, the Phosphornii made the drive and get Adam and Eve to hide it at the end, given that this is in the past it wouldn't be unreasonable that the Cereberi would later find it. Yes, its a time loop.

I'm going to save the whole conversation in case I've missed something.

I think I had some differences. for a start, i would never explicitly explain how the drive came about. cant remember any others XD

maybe post the conversation up here

Quote from: Mr X on September 14, 2009, 06:30:16 PM
Right, just to give some framework and include the top rated ideas.

Scions are fighting some cereberi.
Both sides find a wierd drive.
The cereberi use theirs and the scions give pursuit. (don't figure this out 'til near the end but have gone back in time)
They arrive at a previously unknown world and find the ancient Cthonians fighting each other over the ruins of a third faction(see other thread for more, not important here) that they have obliterated.
Scions take a side, cereberi take the other.
Towards the end you ditch whichever side you were previously on and join the remains of the Phosphornii (third faction) who have offered you a way of escaping before the natural disaster they have set in motion (moon colliding with the planet) occurs.
Only the two main characters (1 human 1 scion) survive the destruction of the world, they die when their life support runs out.

Is this good enough?

Rock solid story except for the part I striked out. The cerberi should either be wiped out early in the story before they get a chance to join or their numbers are low already, for the sake of keeping the focus of the plot on the Cthonians. The cerberi had their story; they shouldn't have another.

Scions take a side: hopefully you mean one dictated linearly, not by their choice...double the work is always a pain in the butt. It would be interesting to make maybe the first three missions or so the branch (like you choose the side based on user interface choice, but three missions in you go to a conjoined story and maybe branch again later). What makes it hard to believe is how would the only human with little influence get to choose a faction, unless every higher up was dead?

The Cerberi are rather important to EPIC.

Also of note is when EPIC was conceived... wasn't FE a little more fresh in people's memory when that came around?

Ignoring that, you reinforce the notion that cerberi already have another story in the making... would you really want to do something that could force EPIC to be rewritten (partially at least)?

Maybe have the Cerberi that travel back destroyed and leave some remnants in the original time... ideally, we need Slaor.

Leave the Cerberi out of the major plot points.  They had a mod already, and are part of more than one other mod currently in development.  Drop the point.

Quote from: VSMIT on September 15, 2009, 07:42:10 AM
Leave the Cerberi out of the major plot points.  They had a mod already, and are part of more than one other mod currently in development.  Drop the point.

More than one mod... Mine, Perfidious, Cerberi Revenge, QF. Hell even fleshstorm had a mention of them.

I agree with V, stop quibbling over little things and come up with something.

How about this then for a story without cerberi (btw, someone could have said something earlier, it would have saved a lot of time :P):

Instead of the scions pursuing the cereberi, they find the AC drive with a distress message (from the Phosphornii) and head to their location using the drive immediately.

The third faction have just been eliminated when you arrive and have set the moon on a collision course with the planet.

You pick a side, you help it fight the other.

Towards the end the Phosphornii step from the shadows as it were and offer you a way to escape before the moon hits (starportal thats still need to be charged up) but they say the Hadeans and Olympians must not be able to escape with their new weapons tech. The Hadean and Olympian commanders team up, realising its their only hope of survival, and so you and the Phosphornii must join forces to hold off the Hadean-Olympian forces.

In the end, Adam and Eve escape together and the story ends the same as in my previous suggestion.

Everyone happy now?  :roll:

I don't mind it. but what is the major struggle?

Quote from: Clavin12 on September 15, 2009, 06:59:25 PM
I don't mind it. but what is the major struggle?

The main struggle would be the battles between the hadeans and Olympians for control of the newly created biometal.

Looks good to me, but remove the Adam and Eve part.

Quote from: Mr X link=topic=9788.msg151814#msg151814 date=125304*stupid*
The main struggle would be the battles between the hadeans and Olympians for control of the newly created biometal.

And the Hadeans win because it fits in with FE.

Quote from: Clavin12 on September 15, 2009, 07:21:06 PM
And the Hadeans win because it fits in with FE.

No-one really wins, in the end everyone involved winds up dead.

except for the main character because he escapes with the help of the Phosphorii. How does it fit in with FE if all the Cthonians die?

Only one change I want to make from that, which is that the scions already have the drive built into the Ark III. This will make things fit with Perfidious. I don't destroy the Cerberi. But, as my plans are at the moment, the allied races find an Acclubierre drive amongst Cerberi tech at the end.

Maybe the Scions just receive the distress call targeted at them by the Phosphornii, who somehow (dont give an explanation) knew they would get the drive.

How about when the both the scions and cerberi go back in time, you get to chose between Hadean or Olympian. However, the cerberi don't pick a side and wage a war on all of them
[Becuase the Cerberi are programmed to eradicate all threats to thier survival]
Though most of the cerberi are destroyed near the end of the game, they manage to rebuild thier drive and escape back through time, or they shut down and hide in a secret underground complex.

Quote from: Clavin12 on September 15, 2009, 07:33:02 PM
except for the main character because he escapes with the help of the Phosphorii.

He dies because he is alone on a non-life supporting planet in the ancient past.

Quote from: Clavin12 on September 15, 2009, 07:33:02 PM
How does it fit in with FE if all the Cthonians die?

I said all of those involved,

it isn't the case that every single Cthonian is on the planet that gets destroyed.

The point is that no record of the incident ever survives. The Cthonians of both main factions on the planet are only a small fraction of the race as a whole.

Quote from: AHadley on September 15, 2009, 07:57:12 PM
Only one change I want to make from that, which is that the scions already have the drive built into the Ark III. This will make things fit with Perfidious. I don't destroy the Cerberi. But, as my plans are at the moment, the allied races find an Acclubierre drive amongst Cerberi tech at the end.

Maybe the Scions just receive the distress call targeted at them by the Phosphornii, who somehow (dont give an explanation) knew they would get the drive.

Not a bad idea, and of course it could be revealed that at the end its you who sends the message.

Maybe Adam and Eve could be included, but they don't end up on ancient Earth.

They could end up on some distant alien planet and instead of mankind evolving from them... something much bigger did.

QuoteMaybe Adam and Eve could be included, but they don't end up on ancient Earth.

They could end up on some distant alien planet and instead of mankind evolving from them... something much bigger did.

sounds good to me

I believe that would be scrap pool's jurisdiction for that part...

Quote from: bb1 on September 15, 2009, 09:51:02 PM
I believe that would be scrap pool's jurisdiction for that part...

The person who makes an idea is not required to dismiss it.

Yeah. One of the rules of the CP is that the story belongs to everyone... and anyone can change it.

Quote from: Mr X on September 15, 2009, 08:55:10 PM
Not a bad idea, and of course it could be revealed that at the end its you who sends the message.

Yes, I like it!

And BBB, I think we should stick with the original time loop really...

Quote from: bigbadbogie on September 16, 2009, 02:31:30 AM
Yeah. One of the rules of the CP is that the story belong to everyone... and anyone can change it.

Provided that enough people agree of course.

Quote from: Mr X on September 16, 2009, 05:58:37 PM
Provided that enough people agree of course.

NO!

#1 - Majority.
#2 - Leader gets sick of it and writes it for you all.

Those are the two possibilities.

And it's going to be written for you if no one starts working on it!

That's what we've been doing for the last several posts. Getting our main story points straight.

if someone can please work out and finalize the main idea's to the story i will start writing the main plot. Please someone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here are some possible main points.

Protagonist: Scion Ambassador (not named yet)

Antagonist: Cthonians, that you happen to be caught in the middle of, trying to get at the newly discovered biometal.

Major Struggle: You trying to get back to your time.

the scion ambassador's name is Adam.

He was human, though, right?

Nielk, #2 generally ends up more successful than #1... see last CP attempt for details.

I have a story that I have just recently written and i think it contains all that you want. I will post it very soon but its on my other comp and I can't find my flash drive right now.

 Here is a complete storyline all the way through the last missions. I'm just going to call them Phosphorii for now.

• Hadeans are restricted to their home planets.
  


• Hadeans mysteriously disappear.


• Hadeans attack with a large fleet.


• Scions retaliate with defense force.


• Scions are beaten back and retreat to the nearby planet Varsh (or whatever other name)


• The Hadeans follow but both fleets are shot down by missiles from the thought to be deserted planet.


• The Hadeans and Scions crash land hundreds of miles apart.


• the scions recuperate from the crash and build a base from what remained of their fleet.


• The Hadeans are attacked by a mysterious enemy and are mostly destroyed but they managed to get a couple messages out about what attacked them.


• The Scions discover not so ancient Cthonian ruins belonging to the Phosphorii.



• The Scions are attacked and destroyed and the Scion ambassador is captured.


• The Ambassador escapes and learns of a super weapon that this new enemy has built.


• The Ambassador is rescued by a Scion recon ship.


• The Hadeans learn about the Phosphorii super weapon and launch an attempt to claim it.


• The ambassador tells the scions of the third Cthonian race and their super weapon.


• The Scions reveal the Ark III with its A. drive.


• the Scions travel back to ancient Cthonian times to stop the development of the super weapon.


• The Scions find themselves in the midst of the Hadean/Olympian war.


• Junction: Chose between fighting for the Hadeans or the Olympians


•   Choice #1    If Hadeans are chosen then you fight with the Hadeans and win over the Olympians going on to fight the Phosphorii


•   Choice #2    If Olympians are chosen you lose the war and go on to fight the Phosphorii alone.


• The Phosphorii capital is located.


• The Scions attempt to attack but a defense system goes up all around the Phosphorii bases.


• The Scion ambassador infiltrates the enemy base, with the help of a Phosphorii diplomat (female) sympathetic to their cause, in an attempt to shut down the defense system.


• The Defense system shuts down of its own accord and the Ambassador is forced to retreat.


• A Phosphorii Ambassador offers for the Scions to join him, explaining that the "super weapon" is a binign technological gift for all races.


• Junction: Choose between joining the Hadeans , the Phosphorii, or remaining alone.


•   Choice #1    If the Hadeans are joined the scions go on to fight the Phosphorii with the help of the hadeans.


•   Choice #2    If the Phosphorii are chosen the Scions go on to learn that the "super weapon" is a real weapon and not a gift and are forced to flee the Phosphorii and fight alone.


•   Choice #3    If it is chosen to stay alone then you fight the Phosphorii and possibly the Hadeans.


• Large Battle with the Phosphorii army.


• The Scion Ambassador Confronts the Phosphorii emperor. Eventually it narrows down to a one on one battle with the Phosphorii emperor.


• The Scions win the battle but the Emperor escapes and flees on a small star cruiser (this is to set up for a future mod), but not before setting the moon on a collision course for the Cthonian home world. The Ark III also happens to be in its path.


• The Scion ambassador escapes with the help Phosphorii diplomat through the Ark's drive just before it is smashed into the planet by the moon.

P.S. Is there any quicker way to make a list?

2 things:
1: That is a complete storyline.
2: That is the only way to make lists.

I liked the story better when the third Cthonian race was pacifistic.

We could make it so that the "super weapon" really was a technological gift and joining the Phosphorii was the right thing to do but that's kind of like the original bz2 storyline.

Or we could make it that the "super weapon" isn't a weapon at all.

I'm just going to out and out say it: I liked Mr X's original story submission.  And I'd prefer if that was the story used.  But that's just my opinion, and you are free to debate it with me.

Didn't we kind of rule out Cerberi?

How about this.

The Same beginning of the story I just posted but instead of finding a huge Phosphorii population they find a capsule containing a distress message from the long extinct Phosphorii. The message explains that the Phosphorii were wiped out  when the moon collided with the cthonian homeworld. The Moon was set on that course by the Cerberi of the future who managed to build an Alcubierre drive and went back to wipe out the Phosphornii whom if not wiped out by the Cerberi would go on to threaten the Cerberi in the even farther future.

Quote from: Clavin12 on September 17, 2009, 06:47:43 PM
Didn't we kind of rule out Cerberi?

and thats why I re-wrote it without them, read the whole topic  :roll:

Clavin, we've been going on for some time now about troubles in getting in agreement over the details of the story, and you do a re-write that puts us back to square one...it has nearly nothing to do with anything we've already discussed :headdesk:

Quote from: Clavin12 on September 17, 2009, 07:11:58 PM
How about this.

The Same beginning of the story I just posted but instead of finding a huge Phosphorii population they find a capsule containing a distress message from the long extinct Phosphorii. The message explains that the Phosphorii were wiped out  when the moon collided with the cthonian homeworld. The Moon was set on that course by the Cerberi of the future who managed to build an Alcubierre drive and went back to wipe out the Phosphornii whom if not wiped out by the Cerberi would go on to threaten the Cerberi in the even farther future.

And now you try to bring the cereberi back into it? I'm confused...

I'm sorry I just was thinking about that myself. What if we start from the beginning with submitting stories but each story has to contain the main points that we have defined.

One thing I absolutely want kept is the third faction being good guys, I've written a backstory and people seem to like it.

What if we made the Olympians the bad guys?

Quote from: Clavin12 on September 17, 2009, 07:55:45 PM
What if we made the Olympians the bad guys?

No... It goes against their very history.

We can't have Hadean bad guys. Thats already been done. Want to make a new non Cthonian race?

Quote from: Clavin12 on September 17, 2009, 08:21:04 PM
We can't have Hadean bad guys. Thats already been done. Want to make a new non Cthonian race?

Yes, I find new races quite fun to make. Their histories, how it intertwines with the story we already know in ways you could have never thought. How everything is connected.

Tsurani, from a very low gravity planet and are thus very tall.

just to help anyone who wants the cerebri in the project, i refer back to an earlier post in which the ancient Hadeans or Olympians find a large force of Cerberi shut down on a remote part of the planet. whichever faction finds them turns them back on, however the Cerberi break free and begin to war over the time travel drive. at the end, a few remaining Cerberi escape through a time portal to just a few years before forgotten enemies, so that the Hadeans at that time period begin to build more of them before the events of FE.

OR........

while the Scions, phosphorii, hadeans and olympians are fighting, one of the time drives goes haywire and cuases a rift in space and time, resulting in the Cerberi coming through it. This would mean the cerberi are a race from another solor system, galaxy, perhaps a whole different universe. they would then proceed with the rest of the story listed above.

I do not think the Cerberi should be in this mod. I think they should however be allowed in the back story.

my point exactly, they don't need to be a major race, but one or two levels fighting them would be rather fun. It gives a perfect explanation as to why the Cerberi exist.

I agree entirely. But who to be the main antagonist?

Quote from: iron maiden on September 17, 2009, 09:04:04 PM
my point exactly, they don't need to be a major race, but one or two levels fighting them would be rather fun. It gives a perfect explanation as to why the Cerberi exist.

I agree with this. It will give the player a sense of satisfaction from FE saying, "hey, I've fought these guys before in FE!"

since, as mentioned in FE that the Cerberi have a self defense mechanisim to defend themselves, it would be a good idea that they wage all out war on all. Besides, if i were a demented machine that appeared in the middle of all out war and wanted to defend myself, wouldn't it be a good idea to defeat all the other violent factions?

Quote from: iron maiden on September 17, 2009, 09:13:06 PM
since, as mentioned in FE that the Cerberi have a self defense mechanisim to defend themselves, it would be a good idea that they wage all out war on all. Besides, if i were a demented machine that appeared in the middle of all out war and wanted to defend myself, wouldn't it be a good idea to defeat all the other violent factions?

No, no. Not having them a huge part of the mod. Maybe the player visits a planet that just happens to be Cerberi-infested, so for that ONE mission the player has to deal with them.

Know that we've dealt with the Cerberi how about the main antagonist. The Phosphorii are supposed to be benign so we can't use them. The Hadeans have been used and the Olympians have been used. We could either make a new race or...ISDF anyone?

or perhaps the protagonist fights the cerberi once they arrive for a level or two and defeats much of their force, then returns to fighting whoever he's fighting[i lost track.] the cerebri are there mainly so that it gives their existence in FE more body, they don't have to be a main part of the story.

Quote from: iron maiden on September 17, 2009, 09:29:54 PM
fighting whoever he's fighting[i lost track.]

Thats what i'm trying to come up with. Whoever he's fighting.

how about, when he lands, the scions play solo for a level or two, raiding Hadean and Olympian outposts before joining up with the phosphorii. Resulting in the protagonist, the Phosphorii, and perhaps the Olympians or rebel Olympians in fighting the Hadeans. Sometime in the middle of the story the Cerberi arrive for a level or two before going to hiding and planning on escape. near the end, the phosphorii betray the Olympians and Scions and evacuate the planet, setting the moon to collide with it. The scions then join up with either the Hadeans or Olympians to help either side escape through time, though whichever you help, a small group of the other team manage to escape as well. Following the Cerberi escaping, your faction leaves via a massive convoy yet your ship is shot down, crash landing on Earth, 3 billion years ago.

What drives the Phosphorii to do all this? why do you go back in time in the first place? Just trying to ask the necessary questions.

In my eyes, the answers to your questions would be,

A. The phosphorii are looking for a way to escape their losing war with the Hadeans and Olympians.

B. The scions travel back in time by rebuilding the time travel mechanism used by the cerberi to escape the war they stumble into as i mentioned earlier in a fleeing cerebri cruiser in the years following FE.

I agree with the Cerberi being used like they are in QF. Just something that exists out there in the world.

question, when the cerberi appear for those two levels, should we have some new units since the story is 3 billion years ago?

Cerberi units are fun. Lets. But one more useful question. Why do the Scions want to reassemble this drive and go back in time?

P.S. Maybe we can arrange a meeting on game surge with all the writers. It would go faster that way.

who DOSEN'T want to go back in time? its one of mankinds [and scionkind's] ultimate fantasies.if i were to tell you i could zap you back to the Renaissance, wouldn't you want to go?

[and no smart alleck reponses!!!!!!!]

That's not a very good reason for them to go back in time and get in this big fight. If i told you i could zap you back in time to the middle of a battle between Rome and Gaul would you want to go? Lets come up with a more compelling reason than that.

but the scions did not know they were going to be caught in the middle of this big battle. we could say that the drive malfunctioned as it was supposed to bring them back to before the events of BZ2 to try and stop the war from ensuing. instead, they are dropped in the middle of a war.

How bout we make it so that Something happens in the present time that will threaten the welfare of humans and cthonians alike and the Scions send the Ark III back to stop it. And since the poll indicates that we want cthonian enemies how about we make a group of hadean/olympian rebels. We could name them the Confederation. And they could have built up an army or built a weapon and the Scions have to go back and stop it. The Phosphorii ( just gonna call them that for now) could be made to have left a distress message in a capsule or something about this Confederation right before the Confederation wiped them out. The Confederation could have gone into hiding and was forgotten by the rest of the cthonians but then it comes out again with its weapon/army.

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. :D

I agree I just try not to talk about it.

Alright everyone, here is my plotline. Please ask all questions in a single message, overall i think its pretty solid.

The scions pick up a strange transmission from a cerberi warship to ruined core
A cerberi cruiser appears near Mire.
It is shot down by the Ark three and crash lands, the survivors setting up an outpost awaiting rescue.
The protagonist attacks and destroys the outpost, hauling a strange device found at the ruined cruiser back to his base.
The device appears to be a warp drive capable of bending time and causing any ship it is placed on to move forward or backwards in time.
The scions attach the device to the ark three and decide to test it. The first mission, head back to core just a few days prior to the scion attack on the Cerberus base and stop the bloody human-scion war.
The drive malfunctions and sends the ark back three billion years to the once planet of Icarus.
The ark comes under attack by hadean and Olympian fighters and is forced to land on a large island near the equator.
The protagonist helps in defending the ark and attacks several Hadean and Olympian outposts before coming upon a phosphorii base.
The commander of the base and captain of the ark meet alone and agree to aid each other in fighting the Olympians and Hadeans. The scions discover there is also a faction called the federation composed of Olympians and Hadeans against the war. However, they cannot simply switch sides as this would require a public declaration to the persons clan, which at this time would result in death.
The protagonist makes his rounds with his various allies and the scions, causing great trouble for the imperialist Olympians and Hadeans while uncovering very interesting information on both of them as well as the phophorii, who, as said by a captured pilot before his death"watch them, they will toss you aside like a toy."
While the time drive on the ark is being repaired, a second malfunction occurs, causing a rip in the time space continuum, from which the cerberi pour a regiment through.
The protagonist repells several cerberi attacks and destroys the cerberi's main base of operations, after which the cerberi make off with several stolen pieces of phosphorii time travel equipment.
shortly following the cerberi's with drawl from battle, the phosphorii finish one of their time drives, attaching it to their own version of the ark and leave the planet. Setting the moon to collide with it.
The protagonist then joins either the hadeans or olmpians,either way the story ends the same.
The protagonist then battles his former ally, the confederation, which have raided several outpost's belonging to the Hadeans and olympians, causing the two to put aside their differences to save their species.
After many battles, the protagonist learns that the cerberi have constructed their own time drives and have left the planet as well, the Hadeans and olympians, having readied a massive fleet to evacuate the solar system, give chase.
The protagonist boards his own ship with his personal lietenant and other friends and prepares to jump with the rest of the fleet when the cerberi shoot down his ship, forcing it to crash into earth.
The  natural cells in his and the other scions body's slowly duplicate beneath the a shield of biometal that was once his outer skin, keeping it safe from the powerful radiation of the sun until they are capable of going out on their own, and slowly evolving into life on earth
The cerberi ship jumps in to the labyrinth sector a few years before the events of forgotten enemies and convince the Hadeans in the future to build more of them, resulting in the events of FE

what do you think? by the way, i think a good name for the protagonist would be Lawrence Hughes, i have always liked that name.

The Cerberi come from the Cerberus AI on the Dark Planet that is awakened and views humanity as an enemy because Braddock, a human, nukes it.

that is only one of two existing theory's of the cerberi's origin's. who says we have to keep the theory's at two, why not make another theory. The cerberi still haven't been explained in full so making another theory is no big deal.

What is the other theory? I only know the 1 even after gathering info from Slaor and others.

The question was not where they came from but why they were there.

the second theory is that the cerberi were just another  fury style race that destroyed its master. the cerberi were mainly nomadic pardon a sporadic base on miasma. the cerberi simply attack an outpost of another faction just to bring in biometal to make more of them. the cerberi came across the cerberus computer and rescued it, the computer told them to eradicate all threats to their survival in order to live unapossed. this is why the cerberi view humanity as a threat that must be destroyed.

Still, neither of these theories has been officially proven so creating a third theory will do little in terms of turmoil in the community.

Actually...  Wasn't the Cerberus AI version the "official" one that the original CP guys used?

true, but consider this, when the cerberi make the jump from icarus three billion years ago, they arrive soon after the destruction of core and rescue the cerberus AI, locking in with the events of FE.

there's a major/minor problem with your story there...

QuoteThe drive malfunctions and sends the ark back three billion years to the once planet of Icarus.

icarus is the supposed planet between jupiter and mars, (now asteroid belt) that was exploded by the cthonians blowing it up because of infestation of the furies. So having it being blown up by the moon, causes the story of bz1 to be disrupted enormously.

ok, this is what happend: the cthonians originally lived in a solar system "very" far away, and their original planet was destroyed by the moon crashing down on it, which was triggered by the third cthonian faction "phosphorii".

the phosphorii died, but successfully built a portal that the scions, hadeans, and olympians escaped through (they escaped to our solar system), but the scions died in a space battle against the hadeans and olympians after exiting the portal, and their bodies landed on earth... the hadeans and olympians found the fifth planet from the sun, which they named Icarus, was perfect for cthonian life, and remained there, until the furies.



incidently, i've written a story, going to post it in a little.

this is a draft of the full storyline, written by me. It is written from the viewpoint of the main character.



you start off as a scion killing cerberi in our solar system.

you find a relic, and it is taken back to another planet (planet in our solar system or one in the mire system probably)

they do small imitation tests of it, and determine that it is a new type of "Space" travel, not realizing there is also a time element.

they set the portal up in full scale, only to find the cerberi are inbound to the base, the scions send for immidiate reinforcements, but the reinforcements are still far away, the cerberi arrive, and the scions and the cerberi fight. the cerberi break through, and take control of the base for a couple of minutes, and then the reinforcements arrive. (incidently all of these forces are in massive scale) the cerberi realize that they are doomed if they stay where they are, so they all race through the portal. you are ordered to go through the portal in persuit in order to kill the cerberi before they get set up too well in the location they portaled to.

the scion (leader?.. general?..) orders you to follow through the portal with a force with enough firepower to destroy two cerberi bases, also with a device that will allow you to return. while the general speaks to you, about 30 dropships land around the base area, open their doors, and you and the rest of the forces go inside the dropships, and... (///movie///) the dropships take off, and fly through the portal (the portal is enormous by the way) (you could have the general saying, "i want every one of those cerberi devils destroyed, and don't you come back until they are!") and the camera follows the dropships as they fly through the portal, with dramatic music... and the camera goes through a flash of light and a few seconds pass, and you then see an arrangement of stars and planets........... a few seconds pass as the sound fades back in..... you then hear yelling over the intercom as dropships explode left, right, and center, as cerberi craft shoot projectiles flying everywhere, you then realize that a race on the planet below has fired ground to space missiles to destroy the cerberi, and you!

someone yells, "they got the dropship with the return device!" as the camera looks at the exploding dropship across the way... the space battle lasts about a minute...the battle cools off with all cerberi's ships being destroyed by the missiles fired from the planet below which are cthonian missiles, and your damaged dropship escapes with about 7 other damaged dropships and they manage to land on the planet below, which happens to be the one that has the moon coming towards it to destroy it.... (MOVIE END)

you establish a base and find that the enemy's craft are not made of biometal at all, instead they seem to be made of metal and wood with gaspowered engines and gunpowdered weapons. (thus none of their craft are hover, all are tracked) they are quite easily destroyable, atleast they would be, if your ships weren't damaged so much by the fight of the cerberi that occured in outer space, and the crash landing on the planet....

relatively soon, the third cthonian faction reveals themselves to you. And you find that their ships are hovering, which is one of the first things one of the scion pilots exclaims... and the suprising thing is, that they speak english!... they tell you that they have been monitoring your communications and have made a translator so they can communicate with you..... their ships tech are about the tech of the ISDF during the times of the AAN and braddock's regime. but some of their ships are rather primitive. you and them unite to form an alliance against the other cthonians (Hadeans and Olympians) of the planet. they then lead you to their base, and you notice that as you get closer and closer to their main base, their tech gets more complex the closer to the base you are. until you arrive at a towering base of awesome towers and walls. you are taken into their base with the rest of the remaining scion forces (insidently, i'd like to make for a character change, i think it would be better for the main character to be an officer in the scion army, i think a kernel would do good, or the scion equivelent. thus you are one of the commanders of these remaining forces.)(i say one of these, because obviously, there is going to be more than one kernel in such a large force)

they show you that they have been working on a portal in order to escape the falling moon which was triggered by computer, and they can't stop it... when they show you the portal, a scion pilot whispers to you, "that one looks just like the one we had on Core..." they tell you that the portal will be finished in a couple of weeks, and they need you and the rest of your forces to stay here and defend from any incoming hadean or olympian forces. you then say, "what!.... hadean??? olympian?? i thought they were all dead!" a few seconds pass.... scion pilot says, "well.. i guess we were wrong.."

debriefing: the debriefing for this one will be something like: scientists have found that the phosphorii's ships are made of biometal, and we have also found that their biometal is very similar to ours. after all the kernels (including you) have taken a vote that we will take turns patrolling outside the fort, with orders to kill anything unfriendly that is within firing range. meanwhile our scientists and the phosphorii's scientists are working stuff out and helping eachother on the portal, we have determined not to tell the phosphorii that the portal they are constructing is similar to the one we had, since they say they are creating it the first time and we don't want to slow work down with arguing, they also said that they invented biometal, apparently they are telling the truth, and we are both confused by this phenomenon.

next mission, you find yourself patrolling around the base with a few other scion units destroying enemy craft, as the enemy invents new and even peculiar units to try to destroy you and the other patrolling units, but after awhile the cthonian enemy craft get harder to kill after they find a way to plate their vehicles with biometal they found lying around...

pretty soon the hadeans and olympians have a temporary cease fire, and concentrate their inventions and ideas, and then you find yourself fighting against big blocky pieces of machinery with primitive cannons, similar to the ones in the days of pirates (LOL). soon, small hovercraft are emerging, and are quite easily destroyable.

next mission, you are back out there in the field, the scientists' work is coming along very well, and they say it will probably be done later in the "week"...

the enemy craft is now much tougher then it was before, and have the equivelent of light tanks, the enemy craft is coming faster now, and they still have wooden, metal, biometal plated vehicles, and have developed primitive armor. their bullets don't shoot very far, and fall to the ground within about 60 metres, but every day, their craft improves..............

a couple days later, the scientists announce that the portal shall probably be done later today, and they will power it up and do tests later that day.

you then fight large hovercraft, with heavier armor, and they are about as tough as a scavenger.

(during this period, scientists manage to give you new craft and weapons, to better destroy the hadeans and olympians that have temporarilly united against us)

later that day, the enemy units become tracked, and aquire amazing firepower, which are very hard to destroy.

later, you are ordered to investigate a "gathering" of units in an area relatively close to the fort, you go there with a fleet of units.... you find an enormous vehicle the size of 15 recyclers! with the most awesome and deadly cannon mounted turret cannon on it!

you open fire upon this beast, and soon the enemy units around it start attacking you, after little bit, you are told that the gigantic vehicle is still being built, and we have a chance to stop its construction! but just as you destroy the thing building it, they announce, "we're too late! they have finished building it! get back to the fort before it's too late!" you race back to the fort with it firing deadly lasers and missiles at your fleet, you and a few others just make it back to the fort, the deadly beast is now firing upon all forces that come out of the fort, and the beast has the most amazing armor ever seen! apparently it is so large that it is self healing, and more hadean and olympian forces have come to join this beast in its fight against us.

the scientists announce that the portal is finished. but the amount of firepower that the beast outside the fort is billowing out, will soon destroy every ship we have. we are going to charge the teleportal, and do some tests and then we will escape, we hope that the portal works, if it doesn't, we will all die.

next mission you find youself leading another squad of units out of the base, only to be destroyed by the beast a few minutes afterwards...... after awhile they announce that they don't have many units left, and they are running out of scrap. but there is also good news too, the portal is fully charged, and they will be doing tests immiadiately. a few seconds pass and (MOVIE) the beast, shoots a devastating shot at the wall, which it has been shooting at for some time, and a large section of the wall falls, enough so they could get inside the fort! a phosphorii commander announces, "apparently, we have failed, they have broken through, we must get to the portal before they do!" (MOVIE END) you then race towards the portal as one of your guys says, "wait a minute, we haven't tested it yet!" the phosphorii commander says, "we don't have much choice.. unless we go through there right now, we are doomed!" one of your kernels says, "ok, everybody in, except me, (your name), and the displacer (the displacer is a ship that pushes/pulls things in order to move them), i've got an idea..  we're going to try to slow this beast down, he's coming too fast!" you follow them until they reach a safe distance from the beast, and it is coming towards you, the kernel says, "ok displacer, push the beast away!"

the displacer shoots out a beam of energy at the beast, the beam slows the beast down, but he is still coming! after a few seconds the kernel says, "ok, it looks like it isn't enough to stop him.... lets try plan B.." you say, "what's plan B?" he says, "follow me.."  (the displacer follows aswell) )you follow him retreating back to the base and there is a pass (a tall hill with a cliff) in the fort (the fort is pretty big by the way...) you follow him up the hill, until it reaches a cliff where the beast is coming towards, on your right there is the portal with dropships (phosphorii and scion) going through it. and on the left, the beast is coming slowly towards the portal area, and you say, "what now?" the kernel says, "you see this boulder?  (he turns towards the boulder sitting on the edge of the cliff..) we're going to crush him..  let's hope this works.....(waits until beast is under the cliff) ok displacer, crush him!" the displacer fires a beam on the rock, and a few seconds pass... the rock tumbles onto the beast, completely crushing the turret on top, also leaving the beast stuck there.

you hear quite a bit of whooping and cheering over the intercom..(about ten seconds later) then the kernel says, "wait a minute... what's that on my radar!" (you get a target painted on your screen) you turn to the left, and two more beasts come rumbling over the previously fallen part of the wall with a new assortment of small and large hovercrafts racing through aswell. the kernel says, "ok, everyone to the portal NOW!" all units are now racing towards the dropships.... (///MOVIE///) you and many other craft are racing through the base to get to the dropships, and you stop and turn, the beasts are almost to the portal, the phosphorii commander says, "there isn't enough time for all of us to go through..we will have to make time.... all phosphorii units, attack!" the scion kernel says, "hurry up (kernel), we haven't got much time!, get in the dropship!" the camera watches you go into the dropship, and then with an angle, allows such that the camera sees the beasts mercelessly destroying the brave phosphorii, and now, grizzly narration something like, "these brave warriors have given their lives for us, and i just hope, that some day, we could repay them..."  your dropship is the last to go through, and (MOVIE END)

the phosphorii died, but successfully built a portal that the scions, hadeans, and olympians escaped through (they escaped to our solar system), but the scions died in a space battle against the hadeans and olympians after exiting the portal, and their bodies landed on earth... the hadeans and olympians found the fifth planet from the sun, which they named Icarus, was perfect for cthonian life, and remained there, until the furies....

this storyline has a mission span of about 15 missions.

i hope you liked it. tell me what you think.


-Rocket3497-

Rocket, the story seems to fit together well enough except you put much emphasis on intricate details, not that that's a bad thing. perhaps if the two of us were combine our story's, your great use of dialogue and secondary detail, and my main body of the plotline, perhaps we could a way to make them work together.

I hate "that's what they told you but" things. The Cerberi are related to the Cerberus AI. That is not only what they told us, but is critical to their existence and very actions in FE.

and i repeat nielk1, the cerberi jump through space and time to after the cerberus computer is ejected from core, rescuing and continuing on with the events of FE.

About the Cthonian thing. There is NO way they could be from outside out solar system. The Hadean and Olympian technologies to even EXPLORE space were only made possible after a close call with a biometalloid from which they discovered biometal.

If they had the technology to travel vast distances in space with relative ease in the FIRST PLACE we would probably find indication of such. We dont, we find the remains of biometal war machines all over the solar system and an asteroid field where their planet once was located.

The obvious and possible ONLY conclusion is that they were the "first" intelligent life of the solar system to encounter biometal and that a great war with their own creations wiped them out... apparently leaving very few survivors to attempt to rebuild on another planet.

Since this topic seems to be going nowhere quickly, i have an idea.

everyone personal message your plotlines to me and i will open up a topic poll so that the community can vote on which one they like the best.

deadline is 5 days from today.

good luck, and may the best plotline win!

i don't think 5 days is long enough...

QuoteIf they had the technology to travel vast distances in space with relative ease in the FIRST PLACE we would probably find indication of such.

they didn't!

the third cthonian faction made the travel portal.... NOT the hadeans and olympians... hence why the hadeans and olympians were not able to replicate it, because the phosphorii died and the planet exploded.....

QuoteThere is NO way they could be from outside out solar system. The Hadean and Olympian technologies to even EXPLORE space were only made possible after a close call with a biometalloid from which they discovered biometal.

or maybe they just "Rediscovered" it.....

Rocket, are you saying that about getting the story to me or voting, 5 days is the amount of time you have to p-message me your plotlines, i will keep the poll open for two weeks at the maximum.

I am making an executive decision.

Story development by the community at large is being halted.  Absolutely nothing is happening.  I have appointed a few people to write a storyline for the CP.  If I did not contact you directly, you are not one of those people.  Do not ask to be included, because you will not be.

Once the story is near completion, it will be posted, and the community will be able to make minor suggestions.  Attempting to change the main point or the central theme of the plot will not be tolerated.

Yes, I have consulted with others on this matter.  They did not have any objections to what I am doing.

This topic is finished.  If you'd like to comment on this post, feel free.  If you'd like to comment on what happened earlier in this thread, don't.

so i'd take it my collective poll of plotlines won't be coming out.

You'd take it correctly.

oh boy, maybe i'll be able to make a

Quote from: VSMIT on September 19, 2009, 02:42:20 AM
minor suggestion

!!

not too sure what you expected to happen though... not sure what you mean that nothing was happening either....

Things were getting stagnant.  There was no real movement in the story ideas.  Many of the "writers" had moved off of writing the story and moved on to arguing about what the new race is going to be called.  That is not conducive to the way things need to work.

QuoteThings were getting stagnant.  There was no real movement in the story ideas.  Many of the "writers" had moved off of writing the story and moved on to arguing about what the new race is going to be called.  That is not conducive to the way things need to work.

I must say i am taking a stiff stance against that statement. As i told you in a personal message, our problem was that we could not agree on the minor details of a story. That is why i wished to make the poll, so that we could bring the arguing to an end. Each one of us had a unique plotline which is also why we were stuck, we each wanted our idea to be the one. Through a community poll, we could get the views of those not involved in the writing.

Oh, and by the way, i left trying to figure out a name so that i could help more with this.

Quote from: iron maiden on September 19, 2009, 03:01:28 AM
I must say i am taking a stiff stance against that statement. As i told you in a personal message, our problem was that we could not agree on the minor details of a story. That is why i wished to make the poll, so that we could bring the arguing to an end. Each one of us had a unique plotline which is also why we were stuck, we each wanted our idea to be the one. Through a community poll, we could get the views of those not involved in the writing.

Thats how we got here in the first place isn't it? Everyone submitted ideas and we voted and after voting had ended more people came and made their suggestions, and we ended up at this stage of non-agreement because we didn't know what to about the new suggestions that hadn't been subject to any kind of vote to see their popularity,

You won't solve the problem by repeating the cause, the problem will just happen all over again.

Ever heard the saying "too many cooks spoil the broth"?

True, however if we were to close plot submissions now and THEN have the poll, the plot could have been selected by the month's end at the latest.

And then everyone would start making suggestions and complaints about the one that gets chosen,

you see the problem?

somewhat, but no matter what we were to do, they would criticise us. It would be best the writer of the winning plotline and the other major writers in the project simply made a few tweaks to it once it was selected to satisfy the majority of the community. we can't satisfy everyone, so why bother to argue over the one that satisfies most of the community. If we tried to impress everyone, we'd be here years on end.

Quote from: iron maiden on September 19, 2009, 01:16:46 PM
somewhat, but no matter what we were to do, they would criticise us. It would be best the writer of the winning plotline and the other major writers in the project simply made a few tweaks to it once it was selected to satisfy the majority of the community. we can't satisfy everyone, so why bother to argue over the one that satisfies most of the community. If we tried to impress everyone, we'd be here years on end.

Which is why I've done what I've done.  Stop complaining about it.

After going over this thread fairly quickly it seems obvious to me that several ideas keep coming up...

You all want time travel.
You all want that time travel to head waaaay back to the origins of biometal.
Most want to involve the Olympians and Hadeans but want to do so by introducing a third faction we weren't told about in BZ1.

It also seems like this may be too late, but it takes a LOT of time and patience to even get to the start of such an ambitious project...  so I thought I'd toss this out.

As someone who's spent waaaay too much time thinking about the Ancients...  what do you think about this? 

Why have anyone/anything travel back from NOW to THEN?  Why not have an advanced force, very powerful and mysterious but of limited numbers travel from the future to NOW?

They appear, hit both the EDF and the Scions, gather up some resources and then disappear again.  Their goal is unknown, but they have a definite agenda.  They leave behind a huge Portal like object but it's dead.

We figure out it's a time travel portal, and that the enemy continued on backward in time.  This is disturbing, so a mixed group of EDF/Scions go through to find out what these guys are up to.

They come out on Icarus, at just the time the full-out biometal wars are starting between the Olympians and Hadeans.  The enemy is nowhere in sight, but our troops have enough to handle with the war that's raging around them.

Trying to keep a low profile, to keep from causing damage to the timestream, is difficult, but we track down the mysterious enemy and find they're creating a huge biometal machine.  It's obviously a time portal but it's huge compared with the one they used to get there.

It looks like they intend to take the whole planet, or at least a big part of it, somewhere else in time.  The time stress will most likely kill all living, non-Fury-type creatures on the planet.  Sortof a 'Neutron Bomb' solution to the fighting.

We scout them and find that they're ultra-advanced cerberi intending to take the Furies forward in time to destroy, well, pretty much everyone.  They figure the originals will be able to do what they weren't able to.

These troops are the Elite Cerberi, and were a backup plan should the Cerberi be defeated.  They're basically 'getting back to basics', gathering the original Furies before the Olympians and Hadeans destroyed the planet to defeat them.

Now, if you want a third faction make it the group that steps up to help our boys wipe out the Cerberi...

-Av-

A while ago I was working on hybrid ISDF/Scion ships. They had some crazy tech in them too. For example the stealth carrier Oasis (as in Stormpetral like, not a fighter carrier). These things had everything from armored plates with biological undersides that allowed some cool morphing effects (picture biological morphing combined with armored plates shifting). None of these models ever made it out of concept phase, but I would love to make the attempt again. I take it the ISDF/Scion mix is partly to confuse their enemies?

The original story had time travel, but I never did see them touching the Cthonian home world. I always saw them as a future race living in the past of a planet they had yet to colonize after the neo-Hadeans attacked them, thus gaining at least the positional equivalent of their portal technology. Then the insanity started and every wanted to be in the past with the ancients, YUCK. After reading Mr. X's story I was all in for time travel as an obstacle rather than a plot device.

@Av; That is the single best storyline that I have read for the CP!!!

Avatar, what do you think of this: (It is what I recall from way back when we started)

There was an ancient break off of the Cthonian race. It formed during the war, but did not see action. It consisted of both Olympians and Hadeans that disagreed with the war. They found their own planet and started a golden age. With no enemies and no civil war they developed portals and massive leaps in quantum physics that even allowed time travel. Then the modern Hadeans found them, and razed the planet, steeling the portal technology and creating what we had in FE. But this faction was not destroyed, it protected itself by escaping into it's own past. There was a portal or something, a probe, IDK, that was launched and was the key starting part for the mod from there.

I always LOVED this first story. I even came up with some weird explanations for things that fit our understanding of physics for use in the story. (If the probe was fired at light speed, and when it reached the Olympians lets say, it acitvated a portal and gave it's message to them, that portal could give them the message at about the very moment in time the probe entered light speed. Then the probe would slow down and be collected, YEARS later. The ISDF blockading the Hadean world get the probe, but years and years ago the Olympians got the message and even the key to the time travel.) In that version, the Modern Olympians are still alive, secretly, because they could escape with portal, TIME portal tech well before the Modern Hadeans had portal tech.

Quote from: bigbadbogie on September 19, 2009, 11:15:01 PM
@Av; That is the single best storyline that I have read for the CP!!!

Gawrsh, well, thanks, but it's just what I see from what's posted above.

Quote from: Nielk1 on September 19, 2009, 11:32:12 PM
Avatar, what do you think of this: (It is what I recall from way back when we started)

Hmmm...

First off, I like anything that seamlessly weaves into the current story arc as shown in BZ1, TRO, and BZ2.  Whatever story is done shouldn't do anything that conflicts with the original story.  (so, I agree, that I don't like the 'that's what THEY told you' bit...)

Now, if the faction that left was the best scientists from both sides I guess that would be possible...  I usually have trouble when a small group outperforms a larger group in issues of brainpower unless they were the brainy ones to begin with.

I'm none too keen on the idea of this race going far away, making an advanced utopia, and then getting wiped out by the modern day remnants of their own original race, (who have supposedly degenerated a bit I thought...).

So I'd rather see them just create an underground city somewhere in the solar system, (Atlantis?) but as long as you're introducing Portal technology they can follow the Chinese and move to some distant planet... (Elysium, even?)  That would be a nice tie-in to TRO and possibly help explain some of the Chinese tech...

And I'd think the third race, if they had all those cool things, wouldn't have been wiped out by the modern day Hadeans...  It's hard to imagine AND isn't anywhere near dramatic enough... How about instead the modern day Hadeans show up and find a dead planet?  Everything where it was, food on the table, coffee still warm, but nobody around?  This leaves not only a mystery, but a whole planet full of treasures for the modern Hadeans.

Still, that would leave some questions:

Where did they go?  Why, back in time!  How did it happen?  Why, it was an accident!  Where did they end up?  Earth, maybe?  Lol...  they all end up naked, unarmed and without their beloved technology, standing dead center in the garden of eden on a prehistoric Earth.   :)  Very BSG ending...

You know, with that story you end with everything going full circle in a nice little spiral...

Cthonians create Furies with the DNA of a primitive race on Earth, that was itself descended from the brightest minds of the Cthonians who trapped themselves on Earth in the distant past when their own temporal technology malfunctioned, technology that was then taken by their own degenerated ancestors (modern Hadeans) one day far into the future...

:)

-Av-

Well they didn't go THAT far away. Just enough. Also, the point was they were pacifists, or at least preferred to be, so the just 'left' in a way that made the Hadeans think they wiped them out. I do see tons of flaws though, and I do like the chance to revive some of my older modeling ideas with my new skills (vertex animation).

Avatar wins.

Good think Avatar came by, he's dropped off some genuinely rather clever ideas... I'll have to get on to Mr X again sometime soon.

I'm on Messenger right now Ahadley,

I do have one major problem with avatar's suggestion though, if these guys came from the future, wouldn't they know that they would lose and not bother?

I don't think we should dabble in the future, because if we have it set in stone now then we seriously restrict what we can do in future mods.

I'd quite frankly like to put my foot down here actually, because the story has gone back to the drawing board to be completely rewritten so many times that I'm not amused in the slightest by it any more. I'm certain I'm not the only one.

I'm having trouble connecting, but I should be on later tonight. Time for a serious brainstorm, I think.

I'll probably not be on later, but I'll try,

if not I'll try to come up with some ideas,

I should be on tomorrow from 7:30 UK time.

Mr. X has a point. One of those big outlines made by him was a perfect plot outline, and should be the one used in dev.

Quote from: Mr X on September 20, 2009, 02:05:25 PM
I do have one major problem with avatar's suggestion though, if these guys came from the future, wouldn't they know that they would lose and not bother?

The future is not set... there is no Fate but what we make for ourselves.
-Kyle Reese-

:)

I would take it that such a backup plan would mean the Cerberus AI believes history can be altered.  

I also feel for you all, it's VERY hard to get a Community to agree on anything, especially THIS community.  I'm glad you do have an outline to work from.  As for my ideas, I may just have to use some of it myself after the Ancients campaign is done. :)

-Av-

The Cerberus AI, now two entities, the Mother God and Shultz, have become increasing unstable since they began to assimilate living beings to acquire their unpredictability in combat. Those living components, IMO, would not only be needed to make the insanity that is time travel and option, but to allow any form of observance in the first place critical to any quantum physics description OF time travel.

While I do like Avatar's story it is a complete rewrite from the way we were headed before everything got shat on with nitpicks and changes.

It's been a while. Has the plot been worked on by the secret committees?

The deimos wants an update.

Yes, I will post the stuff we have tomorrow unless I get a dire message from one of the writers.