Season 2 I think we all know what we want -- a second go at the Second Cylon War

[gmuir77]

What if the Baltar backdoor didn't work and the Cylons jumped in on a prepared colonial fleet? If you think about it logically, if the Cylons had the humans outnumbered there would be no need for a sneak attack. They had to do this because they didn't have the numbers to win a slugging match -- or, if they did, it would have been at a terrible cost.

So, the sneak attack fails and we get to see Deadlock redux with the modern ships.

[gmuir77]

Just a few other thoughts. I really didn't like where the reimagined series went with the lore. When they announced that they're looking at doing another reimagined approach with a new theatrical movie, it got me to thinking about what I'd want to see in a new Galactica story. I realized that a rehash is not the place to go. I ran the thought experiment out and came up with a few ideas.

To avoid rehashing the RDM series, a new Galactica should go a bit further back to the Star Wars roots, have aliens and blasters and have an optimistic tone but avoid the cheesiness.

The other big change is to set it hundreds of years after the original Galactica exodus events. What I came up with is something like this:

1. Galactica saga is long established history. Colonies were destroyed, Galactica is last surviving battlestar. Goes off to find Earth. Pegasus encountered, joins rag-tag fleet. After encountering Terra and realizing there are a lot of human-inhabited worlds for the Cylons to destroy, a decision is made to retake the colonies. Alliances are made with other alien races at risk of Cylon destruction. A key weakness in the Cylon command structure is determined. Taking out this nexus means the Cylons can no longer operate as a unified force and splinter into factions. Pegasus is lost in this final battle and Galactica is legendary as the Last Battlestar.

2. Twelve colonies rebuilt, Colonies have formalized the alliance with alien races and it becomes a federated government for all free species.

3. Galactica is the flagship of new colonial fleet. (In the original timeline, these ships were meant to be hundreds of years old.) Is still known as the Last Battlestar even though there are hundreds now.

4. Cylons are still the big boogeyman for the Colonials and will be involved in sporadic encounters over the centuries. There's always the fear they will come back in force.

5. The next biggest threat after the Cylons is encountered and a sort of armistice is in place but they're the next big threat the colonials fear. And so the actual big threat hits them all by surprise.

6. The galactic government has an intense policy of colonization, founding new colonies and bringing discovered populations into the fold.

7. The general belief is life here began out there and the colonials have discovered signs of ancient astronauts setting up civilizations all over the place. There's many human and alien worlds, all settled with similar populations, all signs of the influence of these god-like tinkerers.

8. There's a theory of a common ancestral world for all humans, one even predating Kobol and it turns out Earth is it. It's not a lost colony, it's the lost motherworld. The greco-roman influences all actually indicate that this is the time period the sample stock was drawn from when Kobol was populated. Conflating this religion with the godlike aliens made it stick well and proper.

9. The Earth civilization is not nice and ends up being the big threat that the good guys have to face down.

10. The Cylons end up being a decoy enemy. We find out that they were created by a race of intelligent reptilians as in the original series. Their masters died out and the Cylons were left to their own devices. Faulty programming leaves them slaves to fulfilling their Imperative but it's unclear what the imperative should be, ascent their masters. And so they are searching for a purpose. This is what caused the war with organic life. When the nexus is destroyed, the Cylo forces are no longer able to operate as one and cannot rebuild a new nexus because that was the failsafe their masters counted on to prevent a machine rebellion.

11. There are outright hostile Cylon factions but there are others that made a study of their enemies to better understand them and ended up coming up with their own new Imperative, sort of riffing on Cavil's rant about wanting to smell dark matter and feel radiation and the like. These Cylons want to explore and experience the universe. And part of doing so is making a close study of humans. They end up creating colonies of humans and wiring them up to fully experience our subjective reality and also allow these humans to experience the Cylon mind. These agents will come across like the skinjobs at first and people will think it's a rehash of the whole RDM dynamic but it will end up being very, very different.

12. It's revealed that the ancient astronauts have pretty much abandoned their whole project with scattering the younger races across multiple new worlds. It was about giving them multiple chances at becoming a mature civilization since so many get it wrong the first time and die off on a single planet. There's only a few who still care about this project and are trying to mitigate the damage they caused.

So the actual storyline would be the Galactica out among the newer colonies on the frontier, helping to maintain order. There's rumors of a coming war and everyone is suspecting a comeback by the Cylons or a breakdown of the armistice with the last big bad and instead Earth comes out of left field.

Anyway, those are just some thoughts I've been mulling over. I won't say it's the best way possible to do Galactica again but it would be better than a straight up rehash.

[gmuir77]

Originally posted by Sabaithal:

Back on subject then: I want more stuff to do in the downtime between battles. The battles are good, but right now the game feels like its nothing but the battles and making more ships. Obviously the center of the game should be the battles but...how do I put this...it feels like a hamburger with good meat and bread, but no other toppings besides a bit of salt.

Maybe just making more diverse battlefields? Like massive battlefield-encompassing nebula clouds that you have to navigate through in a certain way or suffer penalties? Or fight in the gravity well of a larger planetary object and watch said gravity well wreak havoc with munition guidance.

I would suggest something like more complex planetary bodies, but unfortunately the vanilla campaign limits you to the vicinity of the twelve colonies. Maybe that's the issue? Maybe instead of constantly being on the defensive, let us go on the offensive, exploring the unknown areas around colony space and looking for the Cylon colonies to strike back?

Or just expand the ship limit so I could have 2 jupiters and some other nice ships as well, instead of having to downgrade everything in the fleet...

There's only so much you can do with the strategic mode of the game. We've seen this in other strategy games. You get to pick where to fight, what to build, tech to unlock, and managing the politics. You can add more fiddly details to this but it may not add value.

Regarding the idea of additional colonies, it never sat well with me in the RDM series how the whole first Cylon war took place in one star system. (They later clarified the whole quadruple star system later.) These ships have the range to travel to other star systems so nobody ever decided to take a civilian ship and go explore the stars? Kobol is part of their mythology and many people took it seriously. We've had people in our own era set out to find Noah's Ark or the Garden of Eden. Surely someone would have explored these worlds given that starships are feasibly purchasable. Also, that there are so many Earth-type worlds. It would be quite easy to imagine political dissidents fleeing to new worlds to setup colonies.

Anyway, there are nebulae in different battlefields but I've yet to use them tactically to much effect. It would make sense if you have a gunnery advantage to pick one that ruins munitions to pick your fight in. But it's hard to plan for this very well.

[Sabaithal]

Originally posted by gmuir77:

Originally posted by Sabaithal:

Back on subject then: I want more stuff to do in the downtime between battles. The battles are good, but right now the game feels like its nothing but the battles and making more ships. Obviously the center of the game should be the battles but...how do I put this...it feels like a hamburger with good meat and bread, but no other toppings besides a bit of salt.

Maybe just making more diverse battlefields? Like massive battlefield-encompassing nebula clouds that you have to navigate through in a certain way or suffer penalties? Or fight in the gravity well of a larger planetary object and watch said gravity well wreak havoc with munition guidance.

I would suggest something like more complex planetary bodies, but unfortunately the vanilla campaign limits you to the vicinity of the twelve colonies. Maybe that's the issue? Maybe instead of constantly being on the defensive, let us go on the offensive, exploring the unknown areas around colony space and looking for the Cylon colonies to strike back?

Or just expand the ship limit so I could have 2 jupiters and some other nice ships as well, instead of having to downgrade everything in the fleet...

There's only so much you can do with the strategic mode of the game. We've seen this in other strategy games. You get to pick where to fight, what to build, tech to unlock, and managing the politics. You can add more fiddly details to this but it may not add value.

Regarding the idea of additional colonies, it never sat well with me in the RDM series how the whole first Cylon war took place in one star system. (They later clarified the whole quadruple star system later.) These ships have the range to travel to other star systems so nobody ever decided to take a civilian ship and go explore the stars? Kobol is part of their mythology and many people took it seriously. We've had people in our own era set out to find Noah's Ark or the Garden of Eden. Surely someone would have explored these worlds given that starships are feasibly purchasable. Also, that there are so many Earth-type worlds. It would be quite easy to imagine political dissidents fleeing to new worlds to setup colonies.

Anyway, there are nebulae in different battlefields but I've yet to use them tactically to much effect. It would make sense if you have a gunnery advantage to pick one that ruins munitions to pick your fight in. But it's hard to plan for this very well.

Have you ever played homeworld by any chance? If so, the 'supernova station' level more or less is my general idea for navigating a nebula.

[Supreme Doge]

Originally posted by gmuir77:

Originally posted by Sabaithal:

Back on subject then: I want more stuff to do in the downtime between battles. The battles are good, but right now the game feels like its nothing but the battles and making more ships. Obviously the center of the game should be the battles but...how do I put this...it feels like a hamburger with good meat and bread, but no other toppings besides a bit of salt.

Maybe just making more diverse battlefields? Like massive battlefield-encompassing nebula clouds that you have to navigate through in a certain way or suffer penalties? Or fight in the gravity well of a larger planetary object and watch said gravity well wreak havoc with munition guidance.

I would suggest something like more complex planetary bodies, but unfortunately the vanilla campaign limits you to the vicinity of the twelve colonies. Maybe that's the issue? Maybe instead of constantly being on the defensive, let us go on the offensive, exploring the unknown areas around colony space and looking for the Cylon colonies to strike back?

Or just expand the ship limit so I could have 2 jupiters and some other nice ships as well, instead of having to downgrade everything in the fleet...

There's only so much you can do with the strategic mode of the game. We've seen this in other strategy games. You get to pick where to fight, what to build, tech to unlock, and managing the politics. You can add more fiddly details to this but it may not add value.

Regarding the idea of additional colonies, it never sat well with me in the RDM series how the whole first Cylon war took place in one star system. (They later clarified the whole quadruple star system later.) These ships have the range to travel to other star systems so nobody ever decided to take a civilian ship and go explore the stars? Kobol is part of their mythology and many people took it seriously. We've had people in our own era set out to find Noah's Ark or the Garden of Eden. Surely someone would have explored these worlds given that starships are feasibly purchasable. Also, that there are so many Earth-type worlds. It would be quite easy to imagine political dissidents fleeing to new worlds to setup colonies.

Anyway, there are nebulae in different battlefields but I've yet to use them tactically to much effect. It would make sense if you have a gunnery advantage to pick one that ruins munitions to pick your fight in. But it's hard to plan for this very well.

Humans did actually travel outside of the 12 colonies, it is well established that places such as Djerba and other locations did exist at some point. The thing is that after a declared ceasefire, the armistice line likely prohibited further colonial incursions or expansion of colonies. That being said, there have been various colonial settlements outside of the 12 colonies which were eventually annihilated during the 2nd cylon war. It should also be noted that colonisation or long term survivability on planets outside of the main 4 systems likely would have been too costly as you'd need to ship in resources or find ways to address those problems. The number of earth-type worlds is also up for debate as not all of them would be self-sustaining and just turn into a resource drain for other colonies.

[gmuir77]

You already have Kobol as an example, perfectly habitable. There's also New Caprica, the Algae Planet, Fake Earth, Real Earth, etc, that's like 16 habitable planets. The distribution of Earth-like planets in the Goldilocks zone is high in real life. Whether or not they would be compatible with human life is another question but, in this show, it seems common as dirt.

that's not to say there would not be a considerable effort involved in getting a new planet up to speed by colonial standards but, if they were willing to accept a lower standard of living, it would be possible to do this relatively under the radar. It would appear to be relatively similar to the difficulty of establishing colonies in the New World back in the Age of Exploration without the need for extensive terraforming.

I would also say that twelve habitable worlds in one star cluster damn well looks like divine intervention or planetary engineering by weakly god-like aliens.

[Sabaithal]

Originally posted by gmuir77:

You already have Kobol as an example, perfectly habitable. There's also New Caprica, the Algae Planet, Fake Earth, Real Earth, etc, that's like 16 habitable planets. The distribution of Earth-like planets in the Goldilocks zone is high in real life. Whether or not they would be compatible with human life is another question but, in this show, it seems common as dirt.

that's not to say there would not be a considerable effort involved in getting a new planet up to speed by colonial standards but, if they were willing to accept a lower standard of living, it would be possible to do this relatively under the radar. It would appear to be relatively similar to the difficulty of establishing colonies in the New World back in the Age of Exploration without the need for extensive terraforming.

I would also say that twelve habitable worlds in one star cluster damn well looks like divine intervention or planetary engineering by weakly god-like aliens.

The distribution of earth-like planets might be high in this particular universe, but not in real life. We have found a few earth-like planets, out of thousands of examined systems, and all two that I can recall are much larger than earth, and have different atmospheric and water content, ect.

The explanation as to why there are 12 earth like planets around the same area in this universe, well judging by everything already discussed, the explanation probably is 'godidit' again. That, or the people of the original kobol terraformed them somehow.

[Supreme Doge]

Originally posted by gmuir77:

You already have Kobol as an example, perfectly habitable. There's also New Caprica, the Algae Planet, Fake Earth, Real Earth, etc, that's like 16 habitable planets. The distribution of Earth-like planets in the Goldilocks zone is high in real life. Whether or not they would be compatible with human life is another question but, in this show, it seems common as dirt.

that's not to say there would not be a considerable effort involved in getting a new planet up to speed by colonial standards but, if they were willing to accept a lower standard of living, it would be possible to do this relatively under the radar. It would appear to be relatively similar to the difficulty of establishing colonies in the New World back in the Age of Exploration without the need for extensive terraforming.

I would also say that twelve habitable worlds in one star cluster damn well looks like divine intervention or planetary engineering by weakly god-like aliens.

The BSG bible states that inhabitable planets (with water, resources, breathable atmosphere, etc.) are extremely rare. Out of the planets throughout the show, only the real earth is inhabitable, while the rest lack certain conditions (or are under cylon control).

[23-Down]

Many lovely ideas here...

Personally what I would wish for at this point would be a sandbox mode (not skirmish).

I think what this game could benefit most of would be the development of a real economic system (for the AI) and and an extension of the galaxy map. In Blood and Chrome we've seen that the 1st Cylon war was fought far beyond the mere Colonies itself.

So add few Cylon occupied planets to the game. Allow them to produce ships on said planets and any conquered planet and vice versa for the Colonials and let them slack it out in a "conquer the battle zone" like game mode. Think of Star Wars - Empire at war. Just that is is now turn based and not rts.

The way Cylons just spawn every turn during the campaign feels somewhat simple. During the Campaign I eventually had maxed out fleets with officers sitting on every Colony and even the Jump points. I didn't even need to manually fight anymore as my fleets always won. (Captain difficulty)

But if we get a real goal that would certainly add up nicely to the game mechanics. Like annex all their planets & demolish all orbital Tyllium mining stations and shipyards.

Regarding 1st war assets. I'd love to get the Osiris & Bsg Valkyrie class in game seeing as they were part of the 1st war.

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Other than that I too would love to see Bsg - Cylon 2nd war fleet assets for both sides.

How about a secret war being fought prior the the invasion of the Colonies. Valkyrie surely wasn't the only ship participating in Black Operations.
How about a new 2nd mobile shipyard and couple of ships that survived the invasion like Galactica and Pegasus did. And they're running and eventually rebuilding and prepping for a
Counterstrike. There are limitless options on how such a campaign could look like.

[FOTUS (Felon of the U.S)]

I like the idea of an alternate timeline. Maybe with a similar outcome like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor where the Cylons seriously f!@# up the colonial fleet but they don't destroy every last ship except 2 or 3 battle stars, and so this time the 12 colonies set aside their differences and unite to counter the new Cylon threat.

[gmuir77]

Originally posted by LV MattXzK:

Originally posted by gmuir77:

You already have Kobol as an example, perfectly habitable. There's also New Caprica, the Algae Planet, Fake Earth, Real Earth, etc, that's like 16 habitable planets. The distribution of Earth-like planets in the Goldilocks zone is high in real life. Whether or not they would be compatible with human life is another question but, in this show, it seems common as dirt.

that's not to say there would not be a considerable effort involved in getting a new planet up to speed by colonial standards but, if they were willing to accept a lower standard of living, it would be possible to do this relatively under the radar. It would appear to be relatively similar to the difficulty of establishing colonies in the New World back in the Age of Exploration without the need for extensive terraforming.

I would also say that twelve habitable worlds in one star cluster damn well looks like divine intervention or planetary engineering by weakly god-like aliens.

The BSG bible states that inhabitable planets (with water, resources, breathable atmosphere, etc.) are extremely rare. Out of the planets throughout the show, only the real earth is inhabitable, while the rest lack certain conditions (or are under cylon control).

Well, the show never bothered much with consistency so we can take that statement with a grain of salt big enough to mistake for Lot's wife.

[Spartan Delta 27]

Originally posted by gmuir77:

Well, the show never bothered much with consistency so we can take that statement with a grain of salt big enough to mistake for Lot's wife.

Too soon, too soon for that kind of joke...

Nah, just kidding. Canon can be a bit messed up, so it is definitely important to use references as inspiration more than as a concrete set of rules.

[orcbuster]

No. I would be strongly against that.

[Spartan Delta 27]

Originally posted by orcbuster:

No. I would be strongly against that.

If you mean the "Another Go at the Second Cylon War", then you are most likely in luck. My guess is that we will either get a Cylon Campaign or a new portion of the First Cylon War.

As for me, I generally just like the idea because of the possibility of using modern ships. I spend so much time pretending that I am fighting a Second Cylon War and that everything is filled with Viper MK VII's and people with a Fourty Year hatred of the Cylons.

[Carnwulf]

I want for season2 to play as Cylons or play as somekind of underdog faction like the saggitarrion defense militila (forget how they were called in bbroken alliance).

Or i would like a Prologue DLC completly without cylons were you play the imperial wars between virgon and leonid. Would allow the devs to create more "venerable old ship designs". Could be a cool dlc with lots of colony politics and backstabbing and you having to fight with old fighters and old ship designs.

Originally posted by gmuir77:

6. The galactic government has an intense policy of colonization, founding new colonies and bringing discovered populations into the fold.

7. The general belief is life here began out there and the colonials have discovered signs of ancient astronauts setting up civilizations all over the place. There's many human and alien worlds, all settled with similar populations, all signs of the influence of these god-like tinkerers.

8. There's a theory of a common ancestral world for all humans, one even predating Kobol and it turns out Earth is it. It's not a lost colony, it's the lost motherworld. The greco-roman influences all actually indicate that this is the time period the sample stock was drawn from when Kobol was populated. Conflating this religion with the godlike aliens made it stick well and proper.

9. The Earth civilization is not nice and ends up being the big threat that the good guys have to face down.

I somewhat like these ideas. Especially number 7 and 9 offer the possibility of encountering hostile human civilisations.

However if slitherine dont wnat to break the lore frame they could at least introduce more human splinter factions of the 12 colonies of cobol. I would like to see human factions with their own colours/style and some unique ships of their own.

[gmuir77]

Depending on which way it goes with the Cylons in Season 2... Lachesis seems to have little interest in cooperation with the humans and so any Monotheist cult would likely just get massacred if they even tried to help. But I doubt Clothos is gone and she represents the potential for Cylons to disagree with each other. So there's a real chance of seeing human/cylon joint fleets.

Likewise, the Cylon campaign could be a Clothos backup firing up and trying to free her original. I believe the Cylons don't like running two conscious minds simultaneously but I don't think there's a technical limitation to that. So if our current Clothos' backup signal got triggered there may be one last backup and it cobbles together a Cylon fleet. That's our player character for the Cylon campaign. End result is freeing Clothos, Cain and the Agathons.

I figure the chance for blue on blue action will be after Colonial Fleet is freed and it comes time to clear house with Sen. Wentu and her faction. They'll likely not go down without a fight.

The thing about fighting with the Cylons, it seems worse than vs. the Germans in WWII. Collaborators could at least imagine a future under Nazi Germany. The Germans need loyal workers, loyal servants, and there's a future for those willing to sniff the glove. The English could imagine (stupidly) that a separate peace was possible and that the Germans wouldn't actually go and invade them after selling out Continental Europe.

If there were any doubt as to Cylon intentions at the start of the war, Lachesis seems to be pretty firmly in the kill-all-humans camp. Peaceful coexistence isn't really their jam, Holmes. You'd have better luck negotiating peace terms with a zombie horde.