Been suggested, though I don't remember what the developer response was. I think it was either "working on it" or nothing at all.
More to point, the size limit is there for a reason. Arbitrarily rising it to potentially five times its current number isn't something I'd hedge my bets on. I'm not very positive on exactly what kinds of negative effects too big a download has, but I do know that the Architect was causing significant load at one point. Hence, if ever you get branching story arcs, you're likely to be using up the same file size and number of missions, which as low as it is, wouldn't leave much room, unfortunately. I guess the number of missions could be relaxed, expecting you to use fewer custom enemies if you want more branches. But then you KNOW that people are going to make 12 custom critters and still try to cram 32 missions in anyway 
I'd like to see branching story arcs as a general thing in the game, though. Plenty of CoV stories already try to emulate this on the cheap, and plenty more would do REALLY well with giving us a choice. Betraying Ghost Widow because Daos threatens is top on my list of things I wouldn't do if I had the choice. For player arcs, I suppose some kind of system that links your own arcs together so that at the end of one, you get to pick between the other two depending on your choice could work (and is emulatable right now with proper contact text), but then given the restrictions on number of arcs, that also seems dubious.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Based on the size limit, it sounds like they load the entire arc into memory at once. If they could just redesign it to load only the following into memory:
1) The list of branch links that the current mission can chain to
2) The current mission details
it would possibly alleviate the memory constraints they have in place. The size limit should be per mission, not per arc.
131430 Starfare: First Contact
178774 Tales of Croatoa: A Rose By Any Other Name ( 2009 MA Best In-Canon Arc ) ( 2009 Player Awards - Best Serious Arc )
This is probably where Standard Code Rant applies. We just don't know enough about how arc files are handled in memory and transmitted over the 'net. Remember the good old days of I9 when clicking on a Wentworth's representative would time you out of the server? Well, the Architect seems to hold a LOT more information than that.
We're really going to have to hear from a red name before we can discuss how things are or should be set up, because until then, we just don't know.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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So far my favorite 'Branching Path' arc is one my boyfriend made.
Generation S
You're fighting against a Vigilante hero named Sovreign and his allies Shocklet, Pietra, Snowflake, and Maelstrom.
SPOILER WARNING
You start out on a Call to a Crey facility where a group of outcasts, trolls, and Skulls are killing Crey employees by the dozen. You learn over the next several missions that the 'Villain" in charge of them is actually a hero gone rogue. The hero team Generation S is made up of people who believe the only way to succeed at defeating evil is to destroy it utterly.
They became disillusioned after coming across the Revenant Hero Project, and some fun stuff on Malta.
However it's not just them. They've recruited outcasts, skulls, trolls, rogue arachnos, freakshow, and others to their cause of stomping out the evil in the world.
And now they want to recruit you.
In the final mission you have 2 options. In the former you can fail the mission, intentionally, which gives you a different end-text from the contact. Or you can go on and complete the mission for a whole other ending.
SPOILER OVER
Frame it right and it seems like a choices/branching dialog. =-3
-Rachel-
The problem with that is that failable missions don't give rewards.
What shall claim a Sky Kings' Ransom?
PPD & Resistance Epic Archetypes
But the Architect only gives tickets on mish complete, not XP. And the failable part is right up at the front, so you don't lose a lot of potential tickets by choosing to fail.
-Rachel-
You lose all the tickets you get from a storyarc's final mission, which have a 1.something multiplier.
It should also be noted that those "only" tickets are double or more what you earner already.
What shall claim a Sky Kings' Ransom?
PPD & Resistance Epic Archetypes
<QR> There is another way to do it, which is kind of a workaround, and it only allows you two choices.
Have your "moment of decision" be at the end of your first arc. At the end of the arc, break the fourth wall a little with some "choose your own adventure" text:
Do you accept Dr. Nefarious' assistance against your mutual foe, Professor Evil? Or do you finish off Dr. Nefarious, confident in your ability to defeat Professor Evil by yourself?
Accept Dr. Nefarious' help? Play ARC ID XXXXXX next!
Go it alone? Play ARC ID XXXXXX next!
The downside to this method is that it would eat up all of your publishing slots for a single, albeit large, story with only two branches. 
New story arcs coming soon (ARC IDs will be aded when I finish the arc):
So, you want to join the Hellions? (level 1-14 Villainous arc)
Sparks & Steel (level 5-20 Heroic arc)
and
So you want to join the Skulls? (level 1-14 Villainous arc)
I have a few ideas for MA story lines, but they all depend on the user having the option to make CHOICES. Do I take path A or path B? How do I respond to the contact?
It would be nice to have in-mission decisions effect the outcome, but for now it would be ok just to have 2 responses to the contact to decide which of two missions to branch to.
The cap size of arcs would have to be increased quite a bit to account for this. Starting with mission 1, you could potentially have lists of 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 missions in each chapter slot - for a grand total of 31 possible missions (16 outcomes) if you took branching to the extreme. I believe this would substantially add to replayability of arcs - it would be interesting to me to replay an arc to see how it would turn out if I made a different choice.
Note: I'm assuming an implementation of binary branching. Potentially you could do more, but I think binary would be sufficient for the majority of story arcs.
Edit: It would also be nice to be able to switch contacts for both the mission briefing and debriefing. Example: My initial contact is Dr. Aeon, who sends me to do something "dastardly". I decide to double cross him, and now I have a new contact. If I don't double cross him, he remains my contact.
131430 Starfare: First Contact
178774 Tales of Croatoa: A Rose By Any Other Name ( 2009 MA Best In-Canon Arc ) ( 2009 Player Awards - Best Serious Arc )