The spartan 3's were also not as capable as the spartan 2's, though.

Hmm. That story is good, I need to look it over again to be certain about any changes I would need to make but I might well use that. Good one!

I'll get back to you guys after I've done some work today. I'm gonna work on the story a bit, then work on the guns and missiles.

(edit)

I thought of a couple of criticisms. First of all, the reason the planets are rebellious is because they've never been attacked by the Covenant, and are beginning to feel resentful of supporting the UNSC. The UNSC demands a lot from those colony worlds. If it were possible for them to come under attack they'd probably be more supportive of the UNSC. Though, see point three.

Secondly, if a 'huge covenant fleet' entered the system, why were they there? If it were an unimportant planet what were they doing there? Out away from the front lines like that... See next, though.

Unless you are suggesting that they were LOOKING for that planet? Which might make sense. Yes, I like that idea. Then you could have some newbie missions involving hunting down arms traders and such before the Covie fleet jumps in in search of.... whatever. Maybe there WAS something valuable on that world that the Covies didn't want the vermin to have. More interesting yet, maybe that way a covie 'blackops' fleet. Probably an arm of the religious caste.

Good ideas! You are making me think. I should hire you!

This post has been edited by Shlimazel : 03 November 2007 - 10:08 AM

Well, remember, there are Forerunner artifacts on Earth, and the Covenant would be looking for them, right? So wouldn't it make sense to have them on some backwater planet, far away from the battle front, as it goes against everything you'd think? And the point is that these planets have never been attacked before this. They were rebeling, and they are still rebeling, because ONI doesn't want anyone to know that this planet has been attacked. It would cause morale to go way down. Or they would have portrayed it as a huge victory somehow, and that would encourage the other rebeling planets to continue rebeling, because they think they are safe. Then later we can find out that some of these planets are working with the Covenant or something like that.

EDIT:
Oh, yeah. The Spartan 3's got most of the same surgical "upgrades" that the Spartan 2's did, but did not get MJOLNIR armor. That would have blown the price out the roof, so they got powered infiltration armor, with active camaflouge. The last company also got illegal chemical additions to help them survive.

And I think something neat would be that when you land on a planet, you actually don't land so much on the planet, but get transported to another system, where you can choose what city to land at. So one city might be a military base, but another city might have an objective you need to complete, like delivering something there. It would make coordinates more complicated, though, because it would be system, planet, city.

This post has been edited by 101181920 : 03 November 2007 - 11:55 AM

There were 900 SPARTAN-IIIs. Now there are only 300. That's what happens when you send your troops on suicide missions. Only about 30 SPARTAN-IIs survived training and augmentation.

Three companies of 300 each, and actually I think that they are all gone. They had nearly a 100% survival rate for the surgery, but they were sent on the most awful missions. And more than 30 spartans survived. 33, I believe, was the number that was not disabled or dead, and there were a bunch of the others who survived, but were disabled. They were shunted to other areas of the military.

A plot idea: If you go into black ops, then you have the job of inserting and rescueing spartan forces. You could have it so that you have to deliver them to a certain point on the planet, and then later pick them up from a differant point, but they go into trouble, so they are running away. Your job is to board them, basically, and get them in your ship.

EDIT:
Oh, yeah, some of ONI should be working with the Covenant Prophets. When the elites seperate from the prophets, then ONI should have two factions: on for the prophets and the other for the heretics. You can choose either side. Although it wouldn't be nice to be on the prophet side, because they would probobly assign you to kill master chief, not that you'd suceed.

This post has been edited by 101181920 : 03 November 2007 - 03:19 PM

Quote

Oh, yeah, some of ONI should be working with the Covenant Prophets. When the elites seperate from the prophets, then ONI should have two factions: on for the prophets and the other for the heretics. You can choose either side. Although it wouldn't be nice to be on the prophet side, because they would probobly assign you to kill master chief, not that you'd suceed.

I'm not so sure I want to get in to stuff like that. Anyway, I'm not gonna work on ONI right away. That'll come later.

Sorry, gang. Today has been really, really busy. I couldn't get a lot of work done today. Expect something tomorrow.

Clear something up for me: Is the Chief a Spartan II or III?

II. And you don't have to do anything we suggest to you, Shlimazel.

IIIs are inferior to IIs in basically every way, but they got a lot more of them. That way they could use them as reliable shock troops, as compared to having just a few here and there to raise morale and take out a handful of people.

This post has been edited by Consul Bob : 03 November 2007 - 05:59 PM

IIs have a higher survival rate and are the cream of the crop genetically. Their armor doesn't hurt either. IIIs were meant for suicide missions. As far as we know, all 300 Spartans in Gamma Company are still alive. They were deployed from Onyx shortly before it's destruction. Oh, and Blue Team is stuck in a micro-Dyson Sphere. So Master Chief isn't the only SPARTAN-II still alive. I recommend that you read Fall of Reach, First Strike, and Ghosts of Onyx before you make this plug. They are chock full of juicy details about Spartans and Halo space combat.

Alright. Something of an update. I got a real map of nearby stars and I'm using it to get ideas for system placement in what is currently using the working name of EV HALO. Catchy, huh? In the left side you can see Reach (or Epsilon Eridani).

I'm still working on system placement, so bear with me.

This post has been edited by Shlimazel : 04 November 2007 - 04:54 PM

@shlimazel, on Nov 4 2007, 04:54 PM, said in A Halo TC may be in the works:

Alright. Something of an update. I got a real map of nearby stars and I'm using it to get ideas for system placement in what is currently using the working name of EV HALO. Catchy, huh? In the left side you can see Reach (or Epsilon Eridani).

Picture_1.png

I'm still working on system placement, so bear with me.

Out of curiosity, where'd you get the map, Shlimazel?

Oh, and I see you got the placement of Alpha Centauri correct. One minor thing that bugged me about the stock Nova scenario is that they put the Centauri System two jumps from Sol.

And, the Spartan-IIs were never meant to be front-line troopers. They were trained to be an elite UNSC commando unit, originally for use against rebel elements and crime lords, and later deployed against the Covenant.

This post has been edited by StarSword : 04 November 2007 - 05:00 PM

Reach is the name of the planet in the Epsilon Eridani system.

Quote

Out of curiosity, where'd you get the map, Shlimazel?

Oh, sorry; I should have said that I HAD the map. I found it a while ago when I was visiting a forum I used to go to fairly often. I don't know what site it was anymore. I'll add the map on this post. A couple of notes;

1: I think most of the stars are real ones, I looked them up fairly thouroughly on Wikipedia.

2: The edge of the map is a distance of 20 light years. So I'll need to do the placement on the other systems manually

Quote

Reach is the name of the planet in the Epsilon Eridani system.

Uh, yeeeah? I know that, that's why I have the system named Epsilon Eridani.

@starsword, on Oct 27 2007, 02:35 PM, said in A Halo TC may be in the works:

Don't get too down, Shlimazel; I forgot to mention that the Covenant AI was much less advanced than Cortana. One of the things the UN knows about the Covenant is that they're imitative , rather than innovative like the humans. The shields on the Spartans' Mjolnir VI power armor are based on reverse-engineered Covie personal shields, and are in fact better than their Covie counterparts. As for the AI, it overplayed its hand not long into First Strike , and Cortana turned it into digital mush. (After getting a dump of its source code, that is. She even learned a few new tricks from it.) To make a long story short, it wasn't so much a deadly threat to Cortana as a dangerous annoyance.

Basically, the only reason the Covenant has such a devastating edge over humanity is that they've been around longer.

I would emphatically recommend you read the novels. In addition to the trilogy I mentioned in my earlier post, there's also a new one called Ghosts of Onyx. (I haven't read that one, though.)

I have recently begun reading the novels (finished the first one a week or two ago, just sat down and read it straight through one day). They are no masterful works of fiction, but they are pretty darn good entertainment, and they give a lot of information. I would say you should read at least the first one before you start making too much plot for your TC.

@starsword, on Oct 28 2007, 04:35 PM, said in A Halo TC may be in the works:

I'm not sure I like the idea of making all the ships inertialess. For me, that was the second most annoying thing about SFA's alpha (after the amount of space you had to cover to get anything done): Every ship, with the exception of the shuttles, was inertialess; it made it damned hard to fight. With all front-facing weapons, an inertialess ship has to get behind the guy to shoot him. That's fine for Ravens and Javelins; they can maneuver worth a crap, and the opposition generally isn't also inertialess. But when you're talking about dozens of ships with no inertia... it just doesn't work. Not for me.

One thing made clear in the books is that they exist in a realistic physical universe, and a lot of the tactics and weapons used depend on real physics. Your ships should not be inertialess.

@crusader-alpha, on Oct 29 2007, 11:16 PM, said in A Halo TC may be in the works:

I would recommend doing some more research. Honestly, if you can, play the next two games to figure out what they did with the story. Also, read the books. Also, don't tell me what happens in Halo 3.

Also, read the Cortana Letters: http://marathon.bung...ry/cortana.html. Check out how (or if, perhaps) Halo relates to Marathon. Do some character analysis on characters from the books. Read everything bungie has ever posted on Halo details or the Halo story.

"THIS... is how the world ends."

Of course, if you do that too much, you'll probably spend the rest of your life reading about the Halo games and Marathon, and you'll never even start writing missions and such. There is waaay too much out there to read about.

@shlimazel, on Oct 30 2007, 01:53 PM, said in A Halo TC may be in the works:

Yes, but the Pillar of Autumn lead the Covenant away from Earth. Right? I don't know how the Covies found the location of Earth, or when. That would be useful information.

Just thought of another source: http://www.ilovebees...mptydumpty.html

That there is all the sound files from the Halo 2 ARG. It tells you what life is like on Earth, who the Spartan Is were, and directly leads up to the events of Halo 2. It's also pretty entertaining.

Well, if there is something you don't know, and can't find anywhere, that opens up possibilities. Just make it up, make it dramatic, make it exciting, don't make it a cookie cutter story line (eg, they went to earth because they had been told that they would find the ultimate power there), and people won't notice. Creative licence. You could even submit it to the producers, and if it is good enough, maybe it might be in Halo 4. They can't not make Halo 4, they have made too much money to abandon it.

0101181920, if I may interject a statement taken from one of Bungie's own websites:

Quote

Imagine a painting of a horse, a marvelous white stallion. This stallion happens to be lying in a crumpled heap on the ground, dead. And Bungie employees are standing around it in a semicircle, beating the horse with various blunt objects. The painting is titled "Marathon 4."

Well, okay, that's overstating things. We're very proud of the Marathon series, but it's not the only thing we can do. Rather than getting into a rut and spitting out a new Marathon game every year, we're going to try some new stuff.

The same thinking applies to the Halo series; if they keep spitting out new Halo games every year, they'll fall into a rut.

I use that quote a lot in connection with EV4

Um, I will note that at the end of Halo 3, it leaves a lot of questions un-answered.

Spoiler

Does the Master Chief get rescued? Does Cortana "die"? (To that last one, I think it would be a shame. After all, the Master Chief has killed about 50000000000000 flood to save her, she can't just go away and become rampant).

This post has been edited by 101181920 : 06 November 2007 - 09:43 PM

They can't make Halo 4. Microsoft kept the rights to Halo when Bungie split off, and they split off because all that MS was going to do was keep them making Halo games forever. Now I'm expecting them to do something that I tentatively refer to as "über-awesome".

@crusader-alpha, on Nov 5 2007, 09:00 PM, said in A Halo TC may be in the works:

They can't make Halo 4. Microsoft kept the rights to Halo when Bungie split off, and they split off because all that MS was going to do was keep them making Halo games forever. Now I'm expecting them to do something that I tentatively refer to as "über-awesome".

Pathways into Darkness 2!