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[i]Everyone remembers that day, whether you were at work, at school, at home or on vacation, you heard the news soon enough. 
Our first contact with aliens; the skies splitting open high above Tokyo and hordes of unknown aircraft coming through. Swarms of them, alien in their looks and unearthly, sweeping through the air and strafing and bombing the buildings and anything that looked like a defence. It was only after that it was found out they'd taken hundreds of captives. 
The battles in the months following drove them back, on land and in the air, and eventually, years after, Humanity had long enough to take a breather - and draw up their plans to go through the hole in space to follow the invaders back.

Now, we've established our first base on the other side, the result of massive multi-national airlifts through the 'Isolation Zone' a hundred miles around the Hole in the Sky over Toyko, and the Joint Expeditionary Force is ready to take the battle to the unknown invaders - and to discover as much about them and their world as possible on the other side...[/i]

Inspired in part by GATE, Ace Combat and Yukikaze, as well as my love for alien invasion sci-fi where military technology [i]isn't[/i] useless, and my massive love of fighter aircraft, I've decided it's time to get back into running something on here. 

The game will take place with the players as pilots in a squadron of the Joint Expeditionary Forces, stationed at the new joint base complex on the alien world on the other side of the Hole in the Sky. 
The pilots will be from a multitude of countries - though will have been chosen [i]because they can co-operate and are good at their jobs,[/i]- but will be working together. They fly a variety of aircraft from their home countries, though will tend towards multi-role craft to better enable them to work together.
The aircraft and technology in [i]general[/i] will be modern-day/very-near-future based, though some reverse-engineered alien technology creeping in as things progress as part of the plot, especially as more is discovered about the aliens and their society, technology and origins - much like in Stargate SG-1, how the humans ended up with their own alien-derived tech and equipment. 

There will be a lot of other plot elements that come up as we go too, as I intend to a have a full story as we go, and a lot of other cool ideas about the alien world. For example, if you have seen GATE, it will be similar in that it has its' own races, societies and denizens that are subjugated by the aliens, and many of them will become allies and have an important part to play in overthrowing the aliens as well. 

In terms of the mechanics, I am looking to keep the group quite small, and things fairly simple. It isn't essential that you know [i]everyhing[/i] about fighter jets, or especially every tiny technical detail. In fact, I would prefer to keep things semi-realistic, but quite light on the technical side - however, I would say that at least a functional knowledge of some terminology and understanding on how fighter aircraft and their weapons, as well as the military, works or operates is kind of essential to a degree. However, there is luckily the internet to help, and I am also more than willing to offer assistance where it is needed. All of that can be gone into more though once I get some people who are interested. 

Before I inevitably get people asking as well; no you cannot play ground crew, ground combatants, non-combatants, bad guys or anything that isn't a fighter pilot for the Joint Expeditionary Forces. The game is about fighter pilots, flying modern (i.e. in service or recently in service) aircraft.

Non-real aircraft, like Ace Combat's 'super planes' or something cool you found on DeviantArt won't be in this game. 
The squadron the players will be part of will also not be the 'superstar' squadron - in fact, I kind of like the idea that they're just a run-of-the-mill, average squadron that keeps getting involved in things over their paygrade by sheer luck and circumstance. Not the worst, not the best, and certainly not bad... but somehow, luck keeps finding them. 
So, some of the more fancy aircraft - like your F-22's, T-50's and F-35's - will be reserved for those super-squadrons, and you're likely to have a bit more of a variety of aircraft. And then it gives everyone something to work towards, too. 

There will, however, be some cool super-tech around, as the game is set in a near-future setting, and a timeline that diverged from ours around the early-2000's too. There may be some unusual weapons options for your aircraft on some missions, and mentions of weapons tech that was only ever at the prototype stage in our world making it into production, as well as other cool and unusual things that have come to pass - not to mention the aliens' own technology.

Whatever else, if any of this sounds like it could be interesting to you as a game and a story - which, after all, will be the main focus - please let me know. I'm looking for a group of no more than six, and probably a minimum of four to get started (the Expeditionary Force has small squadrons!)