I would not be surprised if you've found a "bug" in the campaign stuff. My impression from both the UI & reading around here is that you are supposed to "go along for the ride" in terms of how each scenario-game is set up. The game might even be ignoring your efforts to set attributes for the Terrans.

Also, IIRC, tech development is not one of the "continuity" points across the campaign scenarios. The lack of "pick up where you left off" is one of the main reasons I've never managed to work through the campaign stuff even though I'm very interested in the back story.

Having your research reset from mission to mission is actually pretty common for a strategy game's campaign. Largely because not doing so makes the later missions too easy since you could just research everything in the first mission and breeze through the rest with your REAL ULTIMATE POWER.

Why can't the AIs start their first campaign games against me with the understanding that we'll be playing different maps as we move along the scenario chain?

i don't get it?

Are you saying that that would be a case for carrying over research, ships\units, money etc. from one mission to the next

Sort of. I guess I'm backing into what I thought I was going to say, and doing it badly.

I'm no coder, but it seems like building a campaign system that let you maintain tech (& fleets?) as you progress through scenarios would be really hard.

I figure that if continuity were easy to build in, Stardock would've done it already. They seem to value making a game "immersive," and this restart-per-scenario thing definitely gives the campaign a jerky feel, like brand new power brakes can have.

I'll take your word for it, but that leaves me really curious about why Stardock built the campaigns to have the restart thing in them. Perhaps it is By Design because they meant the campaign as a possible form of "training" for the full, sandbox game.

Well, Red Alert had a mission where you're base was kept as you left it. Granted you only had pillboxes, but you could set the ground work up for this mission a couple maps later....

One thing that is nice is that in DA, you DON'T start completely from scratch. I am on the one where you and the Iconians are taking on the Korath and DL (if you chose to ally) and I started with a rather large amount of techs. Planetary Invasion, Impulse Drive 2 I think. So they did change that somewhat, for which I am very thankful.

If they were to do a direct carryover, there would end up being very limiting ceilings on almost every category. You could only take with you 25 logistic points of ships, for example. Or any research above X level would not be saved. You can take 15,000 BC with you. Otherwise there would no balance to the campaign.

One thing that I would like to see, is some of the ships crossing over (ala Battle For Middle Earth). That really sweet ass medium frigate I designed that worked Korath fleets over? Ya, you can keep that one. It would also make naming individual ships (to a point) worthwhile. I know that this may not be terribly balanced, but o well Maybe make it that when you re-research the technologies behind X ship you that you chose, you get that one as reinforcements.