OT: Somebody\'s critique of my story
 

Okay so I let someone (names won't be mentioned here because it's rude) read my story to give me a review just for kicks and here's what they said!

That hurt http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif but now that you've seen someone else bring up those points is there anything about them that is true, I figure you guys will be a lot more constructive about it then he was and it may help me out because as it stands I kind of lost the whole zeal and excitement about writing a book in the near future because I read my stories again and am worried that he's right.

Re: OT: Somebody\'s critique of my story
 

Neh. I can spot alot of influences in the Icarans, but it is no carbon copy. There's always going to be some deliberate or unintended parallels and similarities as its damn hard to be totally new.
Bollocks. Loads of engineers and scientists are god botherers so ignore this point.
So he doesn't like the name. Meh.
It seems pretty straightfowards: There xenos so you can kill 'em as they're not people. I do admit the wars on other human empires do need fixing a bit as the approach is inconsistent.
I've gotta agree with him here. I did just skim that bit and wouldn't recommened you do it again. There are better ways of getting human interest in there. It was slightly cheesy sorry.
Again he does have a point, I can't offhand think of any reason they might be losing the war, other than some unsupported dialouge. There may be reasons but they weren't obvious.
Game mechanic problem there I think. SEIV ain't that realistic on that front. There would be long running guerilla type problems, unless you have some clever reason to fix it OR the old rule by fear OR something.
Uhhhh I think he's just plain wrong here. Read some British history and understand what a monarchy actually is.
9 and 10 are game mechanics things. Don't describe combat as SEIV does, describe it as it should/could/might be. Loads of fighters, semi-suicidal bombing runs, NO talismans, something like that. Just a suggestion.
Meh, personal preference think. Depends what you want to do with story and were you take it.
You are always going to get hit with this. No matter how carefully you explain the dozens of SS acronyms that aren't Nazis some people will just jump to that conclusion. I think you will need to change it or accept that.
Well laughing at Stormies is funny. No idea why he put it in here. Ahhh watching the emperors finest being beaten by teddybears. It still makes me smile just thinking about it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif
Game Mech again. Although 400 ship fleet would be frankly unweidly, it would be difficult to have any real grasp of what would be happening everywhere. Now you could just focus on one small group of ships or a ship bet then you'd lose the whole epic scale. On the other hand a big fleet means pages of description and a risk of lack of connection. A ship you've never heard of gets blown up. Meh. A fleet in the dozens say you can get at least some connection to the ship, even if its just the flagship or carrier or whatever. It's a decision you'll have to take.
He has no sense of history, no tradition in his soul clearly. Ah well. Local units=better morale, or so the last UK defence reviews said. No reason it shouldn't apply in the future.
Gotta sort of point here. You say Icaran you think Greek. Almost all the names are western, yet there are the odd eastern name/reference thrown in. Little jarring at times and seems a little vauge in the story. I'm sure the backstory is solid but it doesn't come across well in the writing.
Game Mech again. Last comment is just a bit cruel but again the glimmer of a point. The speech does need a bit of sharpening in places. For very senior admirals some, not all by any means, but some bits didn't seem to fit.
When was that mentioned? I can't recall off hand any shield dropping to fire weapons. However if it was there it shouldn't be, or a damn good reason why. Consistency is important and will wind people up.
Yeah the long periods without leave are going to kill morale. Of course if you've got a long distance/emergency campaign its OK, but as a general rule long periods without planet side leave do seem silly.
No idea about naming, he could be right, he could be wrong. Absolutely no idea at all. Sorry
Style thing, if your going rule by fear the names are good, if not then you do need the nice propaganda names. Plus don't name every ship and make sure that the ones in combat have suitable names for whatever your going for.
True. Fix it. But it's a minor point. If they mean the same thing then say so, but really its not important how much a ship costs, its how much blam it can deal out http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
Ummmmm I am a bit torn on this one. On the one hand its what the charchter is, there will be some people who are whining about it. And the alternative is to have someone who is enjoying being in deepspace killing people. On the other hand - Admiral and a war for ages. They probably should at least not mind it as they can't complain everything has changed. But a character who is, well not enjoying the war, but appreciating it has to be done, liking the adrenlin/challenge/defending people. Not all your senior staff are going to want to get it over with and go home. Honestly I'd probably have to re-read it all for a proper comment on this part.
Uhhh "smarter sci-fi" readers..... And you just know he's including himself in that don't you.


OK overview: It ain't perfect, there are problems and I do think certain viewpoints/charchters and quite a few other things have drifted over the course of the story.

However drop the game mechanics, read and inwardly digest the usefull comments and start again with no reference to this (except the backstory). It has drifted and certain contradictory views need to be either tied down, or kept and explained how you end up with the two sides. A proper review would require me re-reading it and sadly I ain't got the time.

In summary your not going to please everyone and there will be people who don't like it, so take the usefull criticisms, ignore the rest and keep on trying.

Edited for lots of reasons really. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: OT: Somebody\'s critique of my story
 

I've read what this guy says and over half of it is just TOTAL HORSE CRAP. That guy knows NOTHING about the background, so that clears out over a dozen of his arguments.

He asks why all your ships are DN or bigger. Excuse me? Has he ever played against the AI? When I start a game with High tech level, the AI uses only DNs for years, then they start using Baseships, but still that means they're not using the smaller ships, not even for the defense modifier.

FLEETS of 400-500 Superdreadnoughts??? Man, this guy must be on the side of the Andermanians, if he wants you to kill off the Icaran economy entirely!

Re: OT: Somebody\'s critique of my story
 

Yeah but I hope he was reviewing it as a story independent of the game. Now alot of things make perfect sense only in the context of the game, but not so much as a story. You'd be crazy to use a mixed fleet in SEIV, but for a story it seems better and more realistic.

Which brings me back to the point. Lose the game mechanics. Make it realistic of course, but unless you want to sell it to just SEIV players (and there ain't that many of us http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif) take of the straitjacket of the game and have some more flexibility. Variable sized ships in the fleets, different more elaborate space battles, fighters/bombers, worlds that have rebels problems even with loads of troops on them, ships that will surrender and no stupid suicidal attacks by small inferior fleets. That's just off the top of my head.

Re: OT: Somebody\'s critique of my story
 

El Phil, was it really necessary to quote that quote?

This guy clearly knows nothing about history or realism. The Roman Empire was rather religious... Gigantic space ships would never be able to just zoom around like fighters as they do in Star Trek.

Re: OT: Somebody\'s critique of my story
 

Uhhhh probably not. I was going through point by point so it was at the time, I could of tidied it up I suppose.

Re: OT: Somebody\'s critique of my story
 

Oh... didn't notice that it had responses interspersed. Perhaps remove a few quote tags from it so that others will actually see them? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: OT: Somebody\'s critique of my story
 

You know that's an idea. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: OT: Somebody\'s critique of my story
 

See that's what I was thinking Rome was religious and why does everyone think that in the future everyone is going to be an atheist and all governments are going to outlaw religion?

And same goes with massive warships, they would NOT zip and zoom like mad because no matter the fact that gravity doesn't effect you in space necessarily inertia still does as does mass.

El_Phil:

1. Thanks! I mean come on they are not nearly as amoral as the "evil universe" star trekkers.

4. The Xeno-vs-Human thing is as you said seemingly streightfoward to me as well, Xeno=sub-human thus not worth worrying about losses to them.
As far as the "inconsistent" approach to the other human nations it depends on which Admiral is looking at it, overall if your human and you surrender you'll be treated well, yet the Anderman and Mantis don't even relent in fighting back which earns both respect and hatred at the same time.

5. Well it was in part to show that the Icarans are still very much like us when it comes to interpersonal relationships.

6. Well remember he didn't say that I made it seem like I was "losing" just "struggling to win", he basically told me to just portray the invasions as an easy victory.
I did show in the story that Icara is meeting with some problems, remember the 2nd fleet was effectively disabled from the fight for months while their damaged ships were repaired.
The first fleet's offensive into Anderman territory was halted after a 105 ship Anderman fleet showed up -fortunately they didn't invade my bridgehead system as that would have caused serious losses-.
And the 3rd fleet suffered a 14 ship loss and was forced out of the Mantis invasion fortunately I got really lucky and pulled them out to Risa before Corellian went BOOM!

In fact both due to economic strain and enemy resistance I am struggling more then the individual battles make it sound like, besides that in the last three turns I've lost 11 planets.

7. It's part "rule by fear" and part "appealing to the masses", if you are a dissenter or government leader who resists or tries to get others to resist your shot plain and simple, if you are just an average citizen they appeal to your "sense of equality" among other things.

8. Yeah no kidding I mean Icara is a slightly modified monarchy.

9-10: BIIIG reason I don't stick to star trek like zippy zoom crap is because I wanted a deliberately "retro" style of fighting, if you've ever seen videos of WWII battles they're hardly "boring".
Ships of the Line (AKA Dreadnought and Bigger) in the Icaran universe are the only ships that can withstand streight up to to toe energy weapon battles because I lasers destroy cruisers and battle cruisers in about four good clean shots.
Light Raiders do exist in my fleet as stated but they are obviously not main combatants and fighters are useless.

I explained away "Talisman" as an advanced sensors suite, think uber Aegis.

11. Well IMHO the only side of Icara you see in the wars is the brutal merciless conquerers you don't see the culture the heritage or why they are brutal.

12. Yeah I'll get used to it lol

13. Considering there were real stormtroopers in this universe in the past, and considering that "stormtrooper" definately fits a force of elite soldiers who are used to capture fortified worlds....George Lucas didn't invent the term yah know?....well I guess he doesn't.

14. Well no offense but considering each SINGLE SD requiers a crew of 6,100 a fleet of 1,000 would be 6,100,000 people, doesn't this guy realize that the ammount of trained military personel you can raise is limited? I mean yes I have 480+ billion people in my empire but think about how many would be in the Merchant Marine the State Security, and the ground forces not to mention civilian sectors.
Now if he wants tens of thousands then the numbers just keep getting higher on personnel, not to mention how much money it costs to even build a single SD.

15. Thanks http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I liked the way I chose to name my regiments, I mean it's a sense of historic pride to the Icarans, they've been naming their units like that since the dawn of their Empire why would they quite after all that time?

16. Okay I actually did explain this, two ESS transports crashed on Brandenburg and were later rediscovered by the Icarans, the ESS was entirely ASIAN which means chinese/japanese all the others. And unlike many other cultures Asians tend to be much more concerned about "pure blood" so they'd likely be among the last of any peoples to change their ways and start intermingling blood and culture with the Icarans.

17. I don't know a lot of people must have been led into stupid ambushes in history, even good military commanders so it's not just a "game dinamic" it's reality.
And what do you mean "sharper"?

18. Actually heh, I sort of did make mention that Icarans have to drop their shields in the section where they are firing guns, because of the way their energy fields interact, it's ahem explosive....we ain't talking star trek/star wars shields where things can magically go out but not come in.

19. Well they do actually get R&R, I have mentioned that offhand but when your spending 90% of your time in a system that once belonged to the enemy and still has the occasional Riot it's best no to go planet side eh?

20. In a lot of places in Asia (including parts of China) the family name comes before the "First name" or if you have an extended family it goes from "clan-you-family" thus Yu Lin Pe, her family can trace it's self to the Yu's but her family direct is Pe her given name is Lin.
At least that's how I understood it when the Asian name thing was explained to me I may be wrong.

21.I actually name all my warships, and it depends on a lot of things I mean I have a ship named "Salvation" and a few others, my ships are named after, Places/Famous Icaran leaders/Battles/scary things/predatory animals.
It's actually not designed in the "Star Wars" way where it's to show you how pure evil the Empire is it's just that no navy would go around naming their ships "Kind and Cuddly or Fluffy Bunny" the Royal navy choses to name mainly after something that would make you think Power and force.

22.Crown= Five credits

23. Well the Icaran soldiers have seen millions and in some cases billions of people die in front of them practically, Ross for example was involved in several planetary purges.....no matter how long you've been fighting it still would have to ware at you every now and then, especially if your not a heartless killer.


Any other comments?

Re: OT: Somebody\'s critique of my story
 

That guys is just plain wierd. I may be harsh when I critique, but at least my comments are reasonably well-informed -- and it probably helps that if I see something that doesn't jive, I assume that there is an explanation if I just ask for it!