Battlezone Wiki

[Ded10c]

No, but It probably wouldn't hurt to have it up there. PDF is amongst the supported file types. It's being treated as a source under the name of "NSDF Field Guide" or whatever it says rather than "Battlezone manual".

[SUB-0]

AHadley or Nielk1

do one of you guys have a e mail or location i could send all that bz related stuff to?
i know its been a long time ....lots of O.T i couldent pass up big bucks and bills to pay ....now i'm off hopping to get some of that stuff scaned or photographed
which ever one does a better job of making clear images ....gona try to give you quality pics of all the stuff i have in boxes..... over my days off
Since i have 4 days off ....I'm done my firewood for winter still have some things to do b4 winter up here in north ...but at night i have lots of time on my hands by the wood stove i work inside ...kinda like Red Devil does just hes a (moutain man) lol which is cool .... btw its been snowing on and off up here the last few weeks red devil i bet you got your shair of light snow fall 2.

my email is comandersubzero@hotmail.ca if youd like to pm me

regards SUB-0

[General BlackDragon]

Pro tip: don't post plain email address on a public forum where bots can fish it and add it to their mailing list. Seperate it out with spaces or something so they don't detect it as an email addy.

[Red Spot]

Do you use hotmail and know about its filters?
As it is there are people who find it fun to post others adress online or feed it to some spam-spewer. In turn Hotmail has become pretty darn good at sorting out the junk and trowing it away for you.

Not saying that the advice is bad though.

[Ded10c]

In my research of old archived material, I've discovered two long lost sections of the FE backstory.

The first is something of a synopsis:

Code: Select all

Two years after Braddock is killed and the in-system Dark Planet transformed into the Scion-settled Core Planet in Battlezone II, a post-mortem "surprise" planted by Braddock uses a massive barrage of nuclear weaponry to destroy virtually all of Core. The Scions, losing all faith in the Human race, move back to the Mire system, moments before the Portal to Mire on Core is destroyed. Earth, frightened by Braddock's insane legacy of destruction and realizing just how dangerous biometal can be in the wrong hands, mothballs its AAN and ISDF biometal-based forces, and restricts all use of biometal to extremely high-security and secret military applications. The ISDF died with Braddock; the AAN is disbanded. Biometal components in all active forces are reclaimed and replaced with less dangerous conventional weaponry. Three recyclers and the StormPetrel starcarrier are mothballed on Mercury.

After several decades of relative peace, a heavily damaged Scion interstellar Carrier, the Ark II, warps into the Solar System, and enters orbit around the dead planet Core. Its commander immediately begins broadband transmissions of a warning - an invasion of the Earth system is imminent. The Ark II has narrowly escaped from the warlike Hadean faction of the Cthonian race, losing half their complement in a daring raid to travel through a newly constructed Hadean portal from their system to Earth, and managing to destroy the portal after them. The Scions then descend to the ruined surface of Core to try to find sufficient resources to repair their ship.

You are Lieutenant Joseph Corber, part of a Special Strike force of highly trained future commanders within the newly christened Earth Defense Force. Through simulation after simulation of warfare using biometal craft, you have become one of two hundred persons on the planet Earth that have authorization to pilot and drive certain biometal-based vehicles... if there were any to drive. Your fingers are itching to get behind the command console of a real Sabre, but you've never even seen one.

The word comes down. The minute you hear General Miles Hardin is looking for volunteers to accompany him to Core and obtain further details from the Scions, you and your old buddy Jay Schulz jump on board. Maybe, just maybe, you'll finally see some real action.

But you don't go to Core - your in-system transport takes you to Mercury. Wondering what is going on, your commbadge beeps.

"Hello Lieutenant. This is General Hardin. You should be on your final approach to Mercury right about now, so we have a bit of time to go over some things you should know.

"We're it, son. I've got about two hundred and thirty volunteers that may be going to help me on this, and I'm hoping you'll be one of them. Earth isn't going to give us any more assistance than that.

"The boys back home don't believe the Scions. Some think its a trick. It's been peaceful so long that others don't even seem to care. But nobody else is sending any troops to help the Scions. And they won't even authorize me to use Biometal in this assignment.

"These people never fought in the Scion wars, son. They never met people like John Cooke, or Yelena Shabayev, or Padisha Burns. They don't believe they're telling the truth. But I know these Scions well, and I know how they fight. If they've lost this battle, we're in deep trouble.

"My fellow Generals have forgotten how great a weapon Biometal can be when used properly. And these Hadeans the Scions told us about have it. Lots of it.

"So I'm gonna go get some. Back at the end of the Scion wars, I hid my old command, the StormPetrel carrier, at one of our secret caches on Mercury. We're going there now to demothball it. We're going to load it up with the old recyclers I've got there. And then we're going to visit Core and the Scions.

"You have a choice, Corber. What I'm doing is exactly against my orders, and there is no doubt that I will be court martialled when I next set foot on Earth. You can come with me and maybe take part in an operation that has some real meaning. Or you can stay behind, and follow your orders like a good lad, where it's safe and people don't believe there could be a threat."

You, Schulz, and one hundred sixty seven other souls board the StormPetrel carrier and ship out to Ruined Core. Halfway there, the demands for an explanation and threats to your career start pouring in from Earth. And you realize you're completely on your own.

Hardin's first discussions with the Scion survivors that have deployed on Ruined Core do not go well. They've heard Earth's refusal to believe their warning, and are incensed that the only thing offered to assist them is a single thirty-year old Star Carrier with a small complement of men.

But Hardin is persuasive. The Scions eventually show him a portal on Core that enables transfer to the Labyrinth system, a staging point and probable invasion route that is halfway between Earth's system and the Hadean homeworld. And they say they don't know who built it.

Hardin takes the StormPetrel through the portal on a scouting mission.

You're now in an unexplored solar system about forty thousand light years from home, on a star carrier with a rogue General, with three recyclers and just about enough men to make a baseball league. And you're about to meet an enemy that went through Scion's best soldiers like they weren't even there.

What in the hell have you gotten yourself into?

The second is a transcript of the briefing given to Corber by Hardin's aide Lt. Jameson.

Code: Select all

Recording 20240911-132453-SP-G
Mercury Surface Transport Vessel PressureCooker Three

* Transcript *

Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please. Thank you.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Mercury, soldiers. I have good news and bad news. The good news is we won't be staying on this ball of rock very long. The bad news is, if you decide to come with us, where we're going ain't gonna be a whole lot better.

My name is Lieutenant Connor Jameson, and I am General Miles Hardin's executive assistant and personal adjutant. I'm supposed to be here to tell you just what the hell's going on and what we hope you're going to do here. What I'm going to do instead is tell you one of the reasons I’m betting you’ll want to stay.

Over the last forty-eight hours, seven other groups of soldiers have been given the same tour that you're now receiving. Each was given two opportunities to make the decision General Hardin told you about on the inbound shuttle - to either join our mission, or to go back to Earth. You've already passed the first decision point by getting on this transport instead of staying at the starport. You get one more chance at the end of this little tour. If you decide not to follow through with this assignment, you will be sent back to the starport and a preprogrammed shuttle will depart for Earth in one day with you onboard. With you will go a dispatch from the General that indicates you are not to be held responsible in any way for this situation, and have followed your orders to the letter.

I know some of you have families on Earth that this assignment would force you to be away from for months. I know none of you have experienced live combat or seen one of your companions fall in the line of duty. I know for a fact HQ is going to be pissed when they find out about this little jaunt we're talking about here. And I know our leader, General Miles Hardin, is pretty much a stranger to all of you. These are four good arguments to walk away right now, and I can't do anything about the first three. But I can and will tell you about the General. It’s going to take a while, so be patient.

Almost twenty-two years ago, Braddock's little nuclear surprise turned the planet Core into a dead ball of scrap, and ended our truce with the Scions. As you all know, certain factions on Earth took advantage of the chaos that followed to denounce biometal as a weapon, saying it was simply too dangerous to use. What you don't know is that one of these factions came damned close to neutralizing the World Government. What you also don't know is when we started up the Earth Defense Force twenty years ago, we were the ones who created the biometal ban.

Oh, and don't tell your friends - unless you happen to like getting court martialled.

Anyone here know anything about the Terran Nadir Group? No? Didn't think so. They were a coalition of international billionaire businessmen, who'd made their fortune by controlling all the distribution channels in the early days of the general release of biometal circuitry . Some of 'em knew about Braddock's little nuclear gift to the Scions well in advance. One hour after Core died, they mobilized.

You've all seen the newspictures of what the anti-biometal rioters did, right? The car-bomb crater outside the Government Building main gate? The wreckage left after the crazies stormed the Central Command facility? The blastholes created by the headcase with the bazooka inside the World General Assembly Hall?

The car-bomb crater was caused by a shaped charge sufficient to blow the tungsten-carbide-titanium alloy main gates clean off their ten-inch-thick hinges. The so-called "crazies" that charged the central command facility knew exactly how to destroy or disable every automated monitoring and defensive system in the complex. The bazooka nut - well, um, maybe I better not use the word "nut" like that. The er... the guy with the bazooka was actually General Hardin. And the bazooka? Well, that was actually the cannon on a Sabre.

The Terran Nadir group had bought into Braddock's vision of a human race that was totally knowledgeable of and in control of the science behind biometal, and they didn't really care how they got the knowledge. Like Braddock, they had started working with experiments on humans to try and build a better body, as it were. Unlike Braddock, they weren't having a lot of success. So they decided to accelerate their research program - by raiding the World Government Building's top secret datacentre under the pretext of a terrorist attack. Knowing the big bang was coming exactly two years after Braddock's death, they outfitted and trained up a bunch of mercenaries, acquired the plans to the WGB facility, and staged an elaborate terrorist cover story in order to perform their little raid while everyone was busy.

You all thought Braddock was the worst guy ever to be born in the twentieth century, right? Well, he was in good company with these clowns. Two years - two YEARS those assholes knew about the bombs on Charon that would wipe out Core. And rather than help out the Scions, they sat on this information just to take advantage of the chaos it would cause.

Exactly twenty minutes after an emergency council session was convened to discuss the situation on Core, with every delegate in the country either in the World Government Building assembly hall or on their way to it, two strike teams from the Nadir group entered the building. One, the so-called 'terrorists', blew the main gate, gunned down the guards, and entered the assembly hall in a big made-for-TV diversion that worked like a charm. Meanwhile, the second smaller group employed a biometal-adapted torchcannon to carve a man-sized entry hole through a three-foot slab of rebar-reinforced concrete in a little under two minutes. Their job was to enter the underground research level and swipe all the top secret stuff while everyone else was paying attention to the fruitcake pointing a shotgun at the WGB chairperson.

Who, by the way, is my father. No, you idiot, not the fruitcake with the gun. The chairman! Which is why I was in the building that day.

When the riots started earlier that day, Dad thought it'd be safer for me to kick around in his office than to go home. So I got to hang out with Commander Hardin, who had been called back to report on the situation on Core. For a ten-year old and a combat veteran, we got along pretty well - he told me stories about the biometal war, and I showed him some Worldnet twitch shooting games involving women with little clothes and less modesty that I probably shouldn't have known about at my tender age.

Now if you decide to accompany us on this little adventure, you'll learn a couple things about Hardin. First, he's smart. Second, he's resourceful as hell. And third, he notices little things other people have a tendency to miss.

That day, as soon as the so-called terrorists nailed the main gate, he picked up on a bunch of stuff going on that just didn’t seem right. Like the fact that all the guards were suddenly ordered to move to cover the external entrances when the enemy was already in the building. And the fact that the lights hadn't dimmed a notch, which should have happened when the security systems autoswitched over to high alert status. And he got really concerned when he brought up the live feed from the vidcam in the secure archives main corridor, and watched it show the same guard walking down the hall over and over again.

Hardin locked me in my dad's office closet and told me he'd brain me if I so much as moved without getting an okay from him first. Then he flipped the lights off, and disappeared for about five minutes, which seemed like five hours to me. The only sounds I heard were a couple dull thumps, and one Daywrecker-sized jolt, from somewhere else in the building.

When the main door to the office creaked open, I was about to open the closet and yell at him for leaving me in there, when I spotted the guy through the slats in the door.

It wasn't Hardin. I couldn't see much in the little bit of light spilling in from the corridor, but the outfit was all wrong. Solid black, with no orange armstripe. Balaclava to hide the face. Big-ass M16 shortnose variant. And thermal-sensor night vision goggles.

I could just barely see him. And when he turned on his goggles, he could clearly see me through the door. His gun came up...

...and Hardin was there behind him, firing some security guard's handgun twice into the back of the man's head. It's how you make absolutely certain someone wearing a Kevlar vest is neutralized.

Hardin grabbed Dad's desk and pulled it over, and then yanked open the closet door and dragged me out, throwing me behind his makeshift shield.

"You okay?", he asked, as he checked the clip in the man's rifle and scanned the door for more hostiles. I didn't answer. I was in shock. Ten year olds aren't supposed to see a man get the top of his head blown off.

Hardin himself was in rough shape. Somewhere, he'd picked up a pretty massive bruise on his right temple, and was favoring his right leg, which had a makeshift tourniquet to stem the flow of blood from a bullet wound in his calf. His dress-whites were ripped and covered with concrete dust, and his hair was singed. Something had gone boom recently, and he'd been standing way too close to it.

Hardin told me to check the phone, but I didn't even hear him. All I could do was stare at the dead man. And watch the pool of blood slowly soak into the carpet...

"Atten-SHUN!", he screamed, right into my ear, and my military school training took over.

"Sir!", I replied automatically. Suddenly, I could think again.

"Check the phone, Connor, NOW! See if you can get an outside line."

I grabbed the upended phone while Hardin continued to watch the door. No luck. No dial tone. Phone cord was still plugged in. They'd cut communications.

"Crap", he swore. "All the blast doors have engaged, and we're sealed off from anyone that's still left alive in here. I think I took out their entire second team in the research area, but they're still in full control of the assembly hall, and they're gonna start getting nervous in there when the second team doesn't report in. I need some reinforcements, damn it!"

I blurted out "How 'bout a tank, sir?"

"Connor, does your dad have a cellular anywhere in - WHAT? What did you just say?"

"A tank. The experimental dualpilot Sabre. Prototype's downstairs in the indoor testing lab."

Hardin suddenly grinned at me, and it wasn't a pleasant thing to see. "That big covered thing in the simulation room?"

"Yessir! Dad says the hoverfield's installed and they're demoing ammo consumption for the VIP's this week, so it might actually be loaded up."

"What the hell are waiting for? Stay behind me, and let's go!"

The lab was a mess. There were maybe two pieces of unbroken glass in the entire testing area, and most of the computers were in little pieces. Hardin, scanning carefully for movement as we exited the elevator, mumbled "Glad I don't have to pay for this." I deliberately didn't look at the security guards and black-clad men lying on the floor as we moved toward the covered tank.

"Area's clear", Hardin announced as he jerked the tarp off, and he reached for the wall-mounted rack of morphbracelets that allow you pilots to pass directly through a tank’s cockpit wall as if it wasn't there. He tossed me one.

I caught it, not understanding.

"Put it on, Connor. I can't leave you here, dammit! Get in, and don't touch ANYTHING!"

So I got to ride in a real Sabre for the first time... inside the World Government Building. Hardin throttled up the main delivery corridor and headed straight up over the escalator, throwing me all over the inside of the tank until I could finally buckle in. Then I sat there and held on as best as I could. The Sabre screamed up to the main level, crushing the armed sentry at the top of the stairs, then careened off the ceiling, and pulled to a stop in front of the Assembly Hall's main blast doors. They looked like they could have withstood one of the bombs that Braddock hit Core with.

Hardin flipped a switch, and instantly the wraparound console was replaced with a black-and-white radar view of the room ahead of us, with all the people in the room clearly visible. "Love those SITE Cameras!", he said to himself.

The only people within a hundred feet of the blast door were a couple machine-gun toting militants just on the other side. My dad was sitting calmly in the Speaker's Chair in the exact center of the room. The terrorist standing next to him was clearly very upset, shouting into a two-way radio and gesturing wildly with an assault rifle. Four other terrorists were stationed at various points throughout the room.

Hardin thought furiously for a moment, and then punched some buttons. Crosshairs popped up on my viewscreen, and the words "Laser Active - 1% Power Level" flashed once on my console, and then "Fire Control Active".

"Connor, listen carefully. I'm going to break us in there. When I do, I want you to start shooting the light bulbs in the ceiling. One at a time, firing at each as soon as the laser recharges. Do not miss. And only... shoot... lightbulbs. Got it? Do NOT aim at people!"

"Yes sir!", I replied.

Hardin smiled. "Good lad. Here we go". He punched another control, and a deep growl started building inside the tank, quickly rising to a wail.

"Now cover your ears!", he shouted above the noise, and then the world went white.

Later on, I found out the name of the cannon he used to blow the doors - it's called a MAG. It also pretty much disintegrated the two armed invaders on the door's other side.

The tank jolted to a stop forty feet from Dad's chair, crushing one unlucky terrorist and leaving four others still living. I saw the shocked expression on one's face as he dove for cover.

Hardin nudged me. "Light bulbs, Connor". Oh, right. I started zeroing in on them one at a time. Focus. Fire. Focus. Fire. They made little popping noises when they burst.

Hardin switched to Public Address mode, and spoke in a matter-of-fact voice like he was just doing his laundry. "Hello, gentlemen. Please excuse the interruption. I just thought I'd take a minute to demonstrate this new tank for you. My favorite thing about it is the precision fire control . Could pick off a fly at a hundred paces, actually. But the big gun, well, that's pretty amazing too."

Hardin slowly swiveled the main turret so it pointed at the man standing behind my father. He initiated the MAG cannon's chargeup sequence at a very slow rate. The entire room could hear the hum get louder as the area deep in the barrel started glowing.

"Now, I've got all day here.", he said. "And you haven't.".

The man behind my dad screamed "No!", and began backing toward the rear entrance while dragging my father with him as a shield. His rifle was pointed squarely at my dad's head.

Hardin flipped off the speaker. "The gun, Connor", he said, calmly.

I drilled a hole right through the terrorist rifle’s stock, slicing off two of the man's fingers in the process. My dad took care of the rest with a perfectly placed elbow. And as soon as the leader went down, the other terrorists dropped their weapons.

I found out later that Hardin had singlehandedly taken out twelve hostiles in the research wing, including nine by appropriating their torchcannon and rigging it to overload. The collapsed concrete walls took five weeks to dig out and replace.

So there you have it, soldiers. The true story of the Biometal riots. The rest is just filling in some blanks. We couldn't go to war against the Nadir group without destroying the world economy, so we recommended total control over private research into Biometal instead. This would have worked great, but the World Government pretty much overreacted and banned the stuff altogether. Hardin, newly promoted although smacked with a petty reprimand for destruction of public property, knew there'd be a day when we might need the stuff again, and convinced the powers-that-be to mothball some technology here on Mercury instead of decommissioning the entire defensive force. And that's why we're here – to get it back.

In three minutes, we'll be at the airlock to the hangar, where you'll meet General Miles Hardin personally, and receive a tour of the Storm Petrel, Earth Defense Force's last remaining interplanetary carrier.

Ladies and gentlemen, he saved my life and my father’s life. I will personally follow the man until the day I die. I can only hope that you find something in him that will make you feel the same way. I say this because he believes, and I believe, that the Scions ran into something damned serious, and if he's right, we're going to need you out here.

Earth is going to need us ALL out here, whether they know it or not.

Thank you.

* /Transcript *

[TwinShadow]

Wow, those were some good readings. One minor question. I thought that at the end of BZ2, Cooke and Shabayev went with the Scions for their own reasons (never to be heard from again it seems), so I'm curious as to how did he receive the transcript there? Still a good read either way.

[Vassili]

Can you duplicate your wiki for do some different languages.
I propose to you to start translate your wiki, in french.
I also have the BZ2 cardboard box with the manual and the keyboard/interface paper, all in french.

[Ded10c]

One minor question. I thought that at the end of BZ2, Cooke and Shabayev went with the Scions for their own reasons (never to be heard from again it seems), so I'm curious as to how did he receive the transcript there?

Ooh bugger. Resolved.

Can you duplicate your wiki for do some different languages.
I propose to you to start translate your wiki, in french.
I also have the BZ2 cardboard box with the manual and the keyboard/interface paper, all in french.

Very little I can do personally, I'm afraid; the only language I'm remotely articulate in bar English is German, and I'm nowhere near good enough in that either. I might be able to launch a translation project (essentially a seperate wiki with the address fr.battlezone.wikia.com), but I'd need to feel I had enough dedicated translators and enough users who would appreciate said translation to make the effort worthwhile. For example, every edit made on the English version would have to be mirrored in the French translation, and vice versa. Maintaining such a wiki would be a massive undertaking that I would be unable to help with outside the initial setup.

[Vassili]

but I'd need to feel I had enough dedicated translators

I'm asking to be one... why you think it's an obligation to have 100 translators?
Two articles translated is better of zero.

and enough users who would appreciate said translation to make the effort worthwhile

I actually have the time and the desire to do it, so that make the effort worthwhile, and that will teach me the story of BZ/BZ2.

every edit made on the English version would have to be mirrored in the French translation, and vice versa

Why? I speak to basicly translate in one-way, if some people will add content in french, it's a proof of what you call worthwhile, that mean more people can help to the wiki.
An edit of an article mean an add (i don't think somebody will put a false story of BZ2, not? and if the case appear, it's rare and you will signal it), so an add in english don't mean the french article is false, juste he can be more complete.
AND, it's a wiki, i hope the last edit date of articles can be displayed, and we can list articles per date of edition too;
so if you have tons of translators (because i don't think i can translate all in 2 days (and 6 months too)) they can consult this list for compare articles.

If you have not this options and if you absolutely want them (if you have a lot of translators), we can do a special log/page/site/program/whateveryouwant for organize that.

I would be unable to help with outside the initial setup

Do you mean:
a-you are unable to do MORE OF the fr.wiki website system.<<it's what i have understand.
b-you are unable to do the fr.wiki website system.

[Red Devil]

heh, always thought you were russian.

[Nielk1]

Once we get the English data into a good state we can get some translations going, otherwise there will always be the issue of being out of date.

[Vassili]

ya nie russki (i am not russian) ^^
Why? Yes i know why, my nickname...
So you really are alaskian?
"Red Devil is a census-designated place (CDP) in Bethel Census Area, Alaska, United States. The population was 23 at the 2010 census."cf wikipedia.org
Or you are devil and you think we forget you are red in 90% of your pics?

[Red Devil]

darn, now you've compromised me.

[Ded10c]

I'm asking to be one... why you think it's an obligation to have 100 translators?
Two articles translated is better of zero.

It is, but it doesn't justify the issues that will be raised by having two wikis out of sync (nor the effort it will take me to get it set up).

I actually have the time and the desire to do it, so that make the effort worthwhile, and that will teach me the story of BZ/BZ2.

Why? I speak to basicly translate in one-way, if some people will add content in french, it's a proof of what you call worthwhile, that mean more people can help to the wiki.

There is currently only one active editor on the English wiki, so your effort would be much better spent in adding to that. Once the English wiki is more complete I'd be more open to the idea.

An edit of an article mean an add (i don't think somebody will put a false story of BZ2, not? and if the case appear, it's rare and you will signal it), so an add in english don't mean the french article is false, juste he can be more complete.

Problems may arise when a mistake is changed on the EN wiki and not on the FR one, or the other way around, and the translators aren't sure which is the mistake. Communication is utterly essential.

so if you have tons of translators (because i don't think i can translate all in 2 days (and 6 months too)) they can consult this list for compare articles.

"More translators" won't do; one of the other problems we face is that translators must have knowledge of the subject material and its terminology in order to avoid translating incorrectly.

I would be unable to help with outside the initial setup

Do you mean:
a-you are unable to do MORE OF the fr.wiki website system.<<it's what i have understand.
b-you are unable to do the fr.wiki website system.[/quote]
I mean I can get the address set up, but can't do any translation myself.

I'm not denying your request, just asking that you convince me it's a good idea and persuade me to comply. Who would this wiki be for? How many active BZ2 players (or indeed potential newcomers) are there who don't speak English?

Once we get the English data into a good state we can get some translations going, otherwise there will always be the issue of being out of date.

This is the biggest problem we face. The main wiki has huge, gaping holes in it at the moment and filling them is not something I can do on my own. It has information from obscure sources I may be the only editor to have at the moment, and huge elements from the sources everybody has (the games themselves) are completely ignored. Please people, go fix it!

[SUB-0]

HEYA well vassili would be a great candidate for translating English to French ....all thow wiki has a boat load of stuff to translate seems like a huge task...


And i'm thinking of uploading that bz stuff we spoke about to media fire or something than you could download It from there AHadley or Nielk1
no I haven't forgotten ....i'm off as of today just need a way to send you the files.