A major issue with any sort of significant role play of villains is when you are role playing (in the sense of creating a story for them) one, they are by definition a protagonist since the story is from their perspective. The examples you listed as archetypal villains are great for the story they serve, I wont argue that. But the story is never from their perspective, so there is no reason to expand on their motives unless it serves some narrative or thematic purpose (which in the case of the Reapers, their motivation had neither of these so the reveal fell flat on its face).
When one spends a significant amount of time developing Gallia, it is very limiting to role play it as a one note villain if your role play and stories are from its perspective, since it is the protagonist in this situation. So in order to provide a satisfying story you need to expand and explain the motivations behind it. Even a protagonist with a flat-arc will have their motivations and ideals expanded on.
Though I will concur that Gallia has been rather poorly written, and personally i've found it difficult to role play it either way and make it feel reasonable. That being an antagonistic but otherwise rational nation-state that is mainly just operating with good ol imperialism, or completely flat 'evil empire' villain. As either side begs questions of how exactly they could survive and function in Discovery's world which despite some silliness does operate on a level of realism.
Tbh, i wish to know motives of Pol Pot. I could track Stalin logic (not hard, since most of documents were released) dunno about Hitler, tho its traceable from views of ideology...
But problem, that Gallia is not People's Republic of Kampuchea. With leeds tbh problem was just in poor explanation of logic behind. Why fleet? Why not just atmo nukes, some amounts of 100MT charges on 5000 m would've pretty enough. What it was? Mutiny of land forces? Resistance pushed marines? why use Fleet Triumphs for it?
Destruction itself have sense, in WW2 every side used wide strikes on cvilian and industrial targets, due of strategic agendas.
But always those destruction had target to minimise losses of your own military forces, by diminishing enemy industrial potential, or try to force enemy side leave politically, by shoking its population. So you see, there agenda behind - save your side. Just by price of other side civilians, but this is much more understandable than how it was written in gallia case. I pretty sure destroying of leeds is ok with further retreat in edinburg (kinda that you can see on that pic with germans breking rails). But in story it was showed as evil for sake of it.
P.S. I dont complaining,just do hope gallia will have more free space for RP after this war ends. Current stance terrible. We understand that this needed for end asap, but just uhhh..
To quote Donald Rumsfeld... You go to war with the army you have, not with the army you wish to have. Meaning even if some sort of planet nukes and superspecialized neurotoxin might have been more efficient, they'd have to have them ready right then right there before they can use them. They already had cruisers with energy weapons.
Sacking Leeds serves two purposes: 1. Making an example of populations that resist, to discourage others from resisting 2. Create a huge humanitarian emergency that Bretonia and Liberty will have to deal with if they dont want millions more to die, draining resources and binding ships/troops away from their offensive capabilities.
And then there's me who believes the best plot arc a Freelancer-like setting can support is a place that neither a hero nor a villain can call home.
A place where "heroic" (from human POV) steal legacy of another species which insists to fight back to reclaim what was promised them - and I will leave it up to interpretation of others whether it is perpetual tug of war or humans/aliens are going to be beaten back inevitably. We have no sympathy to the Nomads but attentive viewer will draw his own conclusion. After all, you can pity the monstrosity you slay even if you are perfectly aware it was 'you or me'
The Zoners who claim neutrality and desire to live in peace yet continually pour jet fuel into a fire for everyone else by fetching supplies to anyone, including North Korea mode rogue pirate states.
Mollys who fight for their freedom but end up committing acts of unspeakable atrocities, planning even MOX bombs in vanilla Freelancer. Yet it all started by overthrowing a tyrannical corporate commander who traded miners lives to line up his own pockets.
i suppose this is a question aimed at more RP oriented people (atleast it seems so to me). playing the villain is exciting for some and not for others. though i agree a simple straight forward classic villain character is boring.
to me a anti-hero character is more relatable, where motives aren't clear and susceptible to change. in dragon ball z i liked vegeta more than that classic good guy goku (i liked goku too but to a lower extent), how he was introduced as the bad guy but then changed over time.
this gallia now seems like a child who breaks the toys if he can't have them, a anti-climatic end to a decade long war
I suppose it's ironic because I usually intend to write deep characters with motivations and inherent conflict to make them more compelling and yet the character I have the most fun with is the one with no real reasons to be as radical as he is. Slipping into a life of crime because the straight and narrow was "boring" and thereby instead living according to the whims of the moment. And with the character being fun-centric, I end up having a lot of fun myself. No longer having to think on moral lines but instead of which choice would be most entertaining is such a breath of fresh air compared to the roleplay I've usually done.
I'm deviating from the topic at hand just slightly. But the point I'm trying to make is that neither approach to the writing of villains is really better than the other. They just offer a different experience, and sometimes that can be refreshing or simply boring and restricting. Half of the result is derived from the setting and the other half from the writing. Using that basis as a conclusion and with the observations of the recent resurgence of proper terrorist factions, I think Discovery has too many protagonists pretending to be an antagonist than it does pure antagonists.
Previous iterations of the Xenos used to fight the various Liberty unlawfuls because "they were hurting their home" - it told a compelling story at the time given the extreme popularity of senseless piracy, but it also mangled the core concepts of how a faction like the Xenos can or should operate. There's always a risk when you switch out the key ingredients, specifically the niche of the faction. Base Freelancer does a decent enough job of giving each region's factions a flavor and a place to occupy, this prevents them from being eclipsed by other factions. However with the freedom Disco offers, I've seen many a faction decide to change their themes and the end result is that they are all virtually behaving the same. There have been a few iterations of the Rogues who behaved nothing like the Rogues, Outcasts who act like the good guys and so on and so forth. In their attempt to add more depth or more likability to a concept, they just end up making them all feel the same and it becomes exceptionally boring incredibly quickly.
One of the first "arguments" and I use this word loosely because the conversation was quite civil, which I had upon assuming XA- leadership was with @Karst about why I was changing the themes of the faction to match more closely, if not exactly with the vanilla source. A few things that came up were the above quote regarding how other criminals hurt Liberty and that the Xenos should protect it from them. And then of course the hot topic which is always the relation of Xenos and Cardamine. Again, it's one of those things that are meant to just be more ambitious than it is feasible, it makes sense for a faction like the Xenos to want to rule everything when they currently have nothing. Instead people will try to argue on the merits or demerits of such a thing and its philosophical implications on the.. - I think you get my point here. The Cardamine aspect exists purely to give the Xenos as a faction an ambitious endgame to work towards, it's also what puts them at odds with their regional rivals.
Code:
"The main drug-smuggling routes cross the eastern part of the Jersey Debris Field, which will be our turf someday. This would let us interdict the drug shipments headed to and from Rochester. If we could control the Liberty drug trade, we wouldn't have to scrape by." - Howard Boone, Ouray Base
It's one of those things that I'd just end up terming a Discovery trend. People seem to have a phobia of playing the villain and will go so far as drastically mutating the lore of a vanilla faction to try and debase such a concept from ever being associated to them. And for the life of me I couldn't tell you why people are so hellbent on doing this, when they could just as well tell a compelling story without changing a thing.
A good antagonist doesn't have to be someone with deep motivations or who you can sympathize with. If they present a fun and contrarian experience to the norm, that much on its own would serve as a compelling narrative. Shallow waters are always safe, depths can sometimes drown you in their tidal complexity. Apply that to either characters or factions and you have a nice bit of analysis that can be done with Discovery's diverse roster of people and groups. Of which I can assure you, most of them congregate on the lawful side of the spectrum and almost always have the best intentions. Even when they shouldn't.
To be fair, I think it's unrealistic to expect villainous or antagonistic factions to remain consistent at doing/being those things. A thought that crossed my mind, which might contradict my earlier post, and sort of expands on something else Omi said in a way, is that it's difficult to maintain a consistent image of a faction as time goes on. It's like how as ideas get passed down through history they get muddied, or like some sort of really faux game of Chinese whispers which started with someone saying the f-word several times and ends with people interpreting it as a wholesome and cheerful greeting. That sort of is what happened to Gallia really - it debuted as a big bad unstoppable evil and now by today's standards it's fairly tame and almost indistinguishable from the other Houses in terms of diplomacy.
People can't help but impose themselves in what they create (that's essentially what art is) as it's human nature, and therefore they default on just playing as normal, mostly do-gooding people. The moral of the story is, the perfect and most consistent villains/factions have been people who IRL are shitters as when they impose their human nature into the game for better or worse, it's more morally grey and even black.
Realism? In a game about spaceships? Just have fun with it. Enjoy your anime feeling where you can be a goofy good guy or a dastardly bad guy. I was at the event taunting Bretonians left and right and it was such a blast!
"THE HULL HAS BEEN BREACHED AND THESCIENCEIS LEAKING OUT!"