Agreed. An act of God is the only thing that would save Humanity from assimilation into the E.I.'s fold of species. That is the problem with wargaming universes. In order to keep all the factions in-play it requires you to slow down or halt the story so one or more factions don't get taken out. Or you are forced into more Dues-Ex events to keep factions from going kaput. There should come a time where a wargame has to stop or a set time where the story doesn't advance further. That in itself would be unsatisfying to some. Especially those who really like the game. But it is either that or continue to move the goal posts so the game doesn't end. Story sacrifices need to be made to keep a wargame going. Mercs is one example of a faction being severely weakened from a worldwide story campaign results. The faction wasn't erased but the Merc company behind them was no more. That is an example of the story moving forward in a meaningful realistic way. But while the faction is not removed from the game it means portion of teh player base's choice is weakened on the global/universal scale. Likewise in 40k they have so many factions that destroying one is unthinkable due to the love & amount of people that play each faction. Plus GW wants to make money and thus makes sure that the constant warfare is going just-as-planned in order to rake in the excess funds. The more factions are placed into a wargame, the more gears are added into the structure/machine, the harder it is to move the story forward in the future without Dues-Ex events or removing/greatly weakening factions. Too many gears that need to be greased/up-kept for the fans/players of those factions will hurt the wargame lorewise in the long run. But the temptation of new playstyles, model types, greater notoriety & profit margin compel companies to expand their universes until the bloat hinders the creative paths the lore can realisticly take without removing something from the equation. I feel that Infinity would be fine if the alien elements were removed. That or limited exposure to Humanity. Focusing on Humanity alone with different factions on Psy-Ops/smaller scale combat would work out for this setting. The Tohaa & the Combined alien forces, while flavorful, are not necessary for this universe to stand out from the crowd or necessary to succeed in the market.
I feel there's a problem with having an "enemy" faction in a game like this. The CA are not interested in himan sphere intel, doesn't send diplomats (besides the Morat kind but those doesn't count) and won't even play a part in any of the interpolitical games through indirect means either. While Shasvastii exists, they're underutilized. Why have a faction that doesn't interact with the others except through gunfire. I get why all the plot centers around CA, how else could one include them? I wish they were less "evil" and actually had a stake in the Human Sphere's interests.
I agree with a lot of what's said here. The alien stuff taking center stage really detracts from what is to me the main appeal of the setting (the black ops shenanigans). The whole thing feels like they're writing themselves in a corner, or already did at this point. If the Combined Civilization really had to be a thing, it should have been more ambiguous, with attempts of subversion and other objectives that do not involve large scale warfare, because that's not really a war when one side is superior to the other by every measurable metrics. Or if each of the faction of the CA was separate, the Morat being the aggressive rival small empire, the shasvastii the hardcore survivalists and core Ur stuff being the unfathomable, elusive aliens with mysterious goals. Ah well, missed opportunities, as my friend put it, this is a Lord of the Rings type of scenario, where the baddies actually don't really needs to get the mc-guffin to win, they can just crush the good guys with pure military might if they wanted, but the plot demands something else.
If they were more like the Tohaa, an alien civilization trying to woo Humanity into joining their cause instead of outright poundign them into submission, then I think it would fit the universe better. That could be interesting. Having Infinity being Humanity reaching out into the stars coming across various species and the small scale behind the curtain conflicts of various factions' goals butting heads. Seems like that is the way it should have gone. I'm tempted to try and write/think up this alternate universe and how things would be different in full scope.
Or all groups are part of an alliance and the battles are smaller scale. Everyone wants a piece if the new found planet full of resources, no one wants open war so all faction try small sabotage acts, assasination etc to secure the biggest piece for themself. More corporate espionage and sabotage than open warfare.
Combined is entering human space through an unstable worm hole, correct? If so, what if a small team of the best heroes humanity has, say roughly 7 to 10 of them, were to engage on a mission to bring a device to the threshold of the worm hole in order to destroy it? Maybe they can destroy it, maybe they can damage it to be even more unstable, maybe they can prevent EI from stabilizing the worm hole. Would that be a deus ex machina?
isn't that the premise of defiance but deployed on the other side of the wormhole? and the reason behind the Cerberus gate construction?
Yeah, it would have been much less obviously resolved if the CA were mostly surgical teams trying to stay under humanity's radar by using proxy mercs... Sure, you could have shasvastii, a morat or two, even aspects of the EI, but the bread and butter of the CA's lists would have been similar to NA2. As things are, it's simply harder and harder to justify the human factions keeping the infighting when the wolves are no longer at the doors, but in the kitchen ready to pounce to everybody's throats... In theory that has already happened (CB has promised yet another NA2 army formed by the Defiance survivors), the problem is that while the Tohaa have a secret faction within who knows how to alter and collapse wormhole connections, they don't want to close the EI access to the Human Sphere because that is a distraction to the EI's conquest of the Tohaa nation. So what the Defiance did was simply to sabotage enemy installations (space dock, wormhole stabilization platform, make your choice...), which means "getting some breathing room". The truth is simple, however. As long as enough Shasvastii infiltrate the Human Sphere, the question is of when they will find what the EI wants and raise an army able to conquer humanity.
Or they run out of plot armour and the Sphere makes a ghost-ship sensor that actually works. Or the HS finds out about the Tohaa Illuminati and declares war to get that wormhole-collapsing tech that could end the war- or even better, tries to steal it!
That would be work, although it would make humanity’s “victory” condition be isolation, rather than actually defeating the threat. The EI would always be lurking in the background, looking for another way in. Also they would have to not immediately undo the progress made by the crew of the Defiance in the ITS 12 tournament packet, released only a couple months after N4. After a brief decline in violence on the Paradiso Front following the temporary shutdown of the Acheron wormhole thanks to Operation Defiance, the conflict has erupted yet again. The arrival of new reinforcements after the Combined Army’s reopening of Acheron has increased the pressure on the Northern Front in Norstralia.
Well... the Shasvastii ghost-ships are not perfect... the problem is that enough shas ships go through (heck, one is enough XD). As for the wormhole collapsing tech... The Tzechi digestor in the Toybox can provide it. It was the one who did it, after all... well, it wasn't tech to close a wormhole, but to redirect it... and as a side effect, it closed up XD
Totally agree. Defiance was a big enough event (CB release wise) to justify a plot redirection. Closure of the Acheron wormhole; reducing CA presence to smaller forces sniffing around the edges looking for a way in (i.e. forces with a similar power to a single sectorial). Possible unrest within the CA justifying conflict between CA sectorials (those games presumably happen...) And just like that the lore resets to the shadow conflicts and espionage we love, now with the aliens having a stake as well. But no. Lost opportunities as others have mentioned. I’ll have to just keep ignoring the published fluff and stick with head canon that justifies the inter faction conflict and plays down the alien threat.
We know from Betrayal that there are divisions within the Shasvastii, and dissension between at least some part of them and the main Combined leadership. We also know the Morats are reluctantly subservient to the EI, and might well try to break free if they sensed weakness in the EI’s dominion. Even if a Morat revolt was doomed, they might still try it, which could be disruptive to Combined operations. There’s a small but nonzero chance of internal strife among Combined Army sectorials throwing a wrench into the EI war machine.
Since people have mentioned the Defiance plot line, I can’t help imagining if there would have been an online campaign centered on giving players choices on how to support, sabotage or manipulate the preparations for the mission. “Here are these candidates. Play and win missions to get a vote in who goes.” Or “Evidence has been presented that there’s an infiltrator among the candidates. Do your part to either uncover the truth, frame your enemies, or protect the infiltrator.” I’m not sure, but I think the unstable wormhole and the resulting travel hazard is there as the answer to “How come the CA doesn’t just crush humanity straight out?” It doesn’t because it can’t: a galaxy spanning artificial intellect may control vast amounts of power, but it also has to spend that power performing a vast number of tasks at once. The Exrah, Shaasvastii and Morats aren’t going to keep themselves in line without reminders, after all. That’s the same thing that the Tohaa narrative relies on: The El are coming to crush you, but they aren’t in a hurry so you might be able to save yourself if you can figure out something first.
The travel hazard was there. The Defiance op success prevented its removal, and in theory won extra time... But the main writer loves to insert a "but X happens and the CA..." as we read in Third Offensive (half the frigging book is just that...). The CA was already pressing and winning with very limited resources, and somehow the idiot ball holders in the Human Sphere seemed to think this a zero-sum game (the winner is the one that won't be wiped out... because an enemy it takes all factions to barely contain surely is survivable by a single faction, yeah...). The Tohaa are playing the Gondor game: hold out as much as you can, but it's a doomed fight, with the extra problem of dying of old age not being an escape. Their idea was to force the EI to leave them alone enough time for the Tohaa to come with some sort of solution, and that was the Tzechi digestor... The problem with the Tohaa narrative is that there are three ways to face the CA. First is to run where it can't reach you, which is doable with the tech to redirect a wormhole that then closes after the transit is complete. Second is to throw another space empire against the CA and hope they blow each other apart (Nemesis' return, for example, or forcing a split in the EI's consciousness so the empire splits and goes to civil war), which is less ideal than one might think because the CA is known for blowing up stars and planets. Third option is to find a Silver Bullet that will remove the EI, and it's also the laziest solution: infect the EI with a virus that corrupts her distributed network protocols, and voila! Suddenly the CA is not combined anymore, and each instance of the EI is separated from the rest, balkanization assured. Obviously the virus will require some sort of sacrifice, and the delivery will be made in extremis in an epic narrative that will be done by the most badasses of the badass... and then we are back to shadow ops without the EI looming as a giant, but as a broken swarm interested in the Digestor but unable to focus entirely in either humanity or the Tohaa, involved as it would be in a mexican standoff. yay.
I do think they would be better served with the alien races not being in open war with humanity. A deep space 9 idea with the edges of the two empires coming together and an uneasy cease fire with political games going on, on fringe planets which opens up for the black ops style. Different factions wanting control of space stations/ planets with particular resources, outposts to spy on each other. Just dials it down a bit from the open war they have just now. They could even have a section of the EI all but cut off from the main bulk. Large enough that the actually have their own space of significance and own worlds which humanity couldn't take down in open war but not strong enough to bring the full strength of the CA down on them. Gives them a reason to be on the face of it willing to co-exist with humanity for just now but still have the threat just under the surface Sent from my SM-G973F using Tapatalk
All this doom and gloom is not that surprising considering that Infinity was in it's origins a very successful mod of Mutant Chronicles Warzone: The main factions from the HS are the Corporations, the EI is the Dark Legion with a different hat and so on. It has a nice coat of grey paint all over the good-evil axis and the fantasy element has been (mostly) replaced by more sci-fi and weeb stuff... but c'mon now, we know. We can see it. It shares the same narrative structure as many other settings: "Despair, mortals, for the armies of destruction come, loaded to the brim with bullshit powers and advantages and resistance is futile! But no, it would be possible to triumph if only the factions of "order" stopped infighting for a goddamn minute and got their shite together... and lo! It is the hour of the heroes who are about to assemble the seven pieces of the forgotten relic and collapse the Dark Vortex from where the evil gushes into the world and-.... what the hell are you doing Mannfred you imbecile? Remember the thing about getting our shite together and not betraying your allies out of petty rancor for a damn second?" Let them keep churning out the grimdark. Just use the rules and have your own head canon, one where hopefully the "good guys" have grown a brain and the "baddies" have to deal with stuff like logistics and a limited budget or personnel. Hell, I wanted a manga that was Spy Game with chain rifles and the PanO version of Robert Redfort, but nah, it's just not-Kerrigan having fun at the expense of the diversity quota guy while yet another human base falls to the subtle tactic of "drown humans in big ball of red murdermonkeys". Sigh.
