Lyle's mini-campaign

[agentlyseria]

Hello all,

As the forum dwellers of the Ship Building forum might have noticed, I have constructed a fleet's worth of different ships based on roles and size categories.

The ships themselves are pretty swanky, and have all been combat tested, and work quite well for their intended purposes.

Now, it's time to introduce them into the game, making maps.

And... since I have so many ships, that could all be introduced in an incremental manner, it is not at all unrealistic for me to set them all up as a mini campaign, that builds up on itself from one mission to another.

Here are some of the facts:

Ship designs that are ready to go:
-Combat Ships:
--Gunboat (#950)
--Patrol Boat (#951)
--Corvette (#955)
--Frigate (#956)
--Destroyer (#969)
--Cruiser (#973)
--Battlecruiser (#970)
--Battleship (#971)
--Dreadnaught (#972)
-Other Combat Ships:
--Strip (#961)
--Outpost (#962)
--Airbase (#963)
--Turret (#965)
-Support ships
--Van (#953)
--Truck (#958)
--Outlet (#954)
--Transformer (#959)
--Nudge (#974)
--Gadget (#960)
--Multi (#964)
-Lathe-type ships
--Shovel (#952)
--Backhoe (#957)
--Borer (#968)
Which all totals:  23 ships combined total

Format of the missions I am going for:
-I was thinking of 4 missions, each which introduces approximately 25% of the ships a pop
-Missions 1 to 3 would each introduce a trio of warships, one or two support ships of adequate size, and a lathe-type ship.  Mission 4 would round up whatever remains.

The missions would need a sufficiently diverse selection of obstacles to overcome to feel varied and fresh each time, as well as an adequately balanced distribution between what has become available, and what gets thrown at the players.

Each obstacle would need to be resolvable using whatever new ship has just recently been introduced to the player, in a manner similar to how the campaign works.  That way, by the time they reach the end of the campaign, the players should have a comfortable grasp on the capabilities and purpose of every ship at their disposal.

Theme of the campaign:
I was thinking my fleet design would be the result of a precursor civilisation.  I lost track of the precise numbers specified in the actual campaign of the game, but it would be basically "that number minus 3 or 4".
The command ship would mis-jump into a distant part of the galaxy (or a different galaxy altogether) because of some sci-fi mcguffin, have another sci-fi mcguffin lock them out of the standard fleet deployment (because of, say, being too far to use the acquired licenses, or something), and basically need to rebuild their fleet from the ground up using the resources available to them in their current location, until they could jump back to "redacted space" (wherever that is in relationship to this mini-campaign).

Differences between my ship designs and the campaign's default ships can easily be explained by "this is a different precursor civilisation, so they had a different design philosophy".

Speaking of, my ships are designed to all be partially self-sufficient (with utterly liberal use of reactors plus generator ships, and relatively light use of guppies and transport ships).  This could be justified by having "this place" be much less resource rich (because of... whatever.  This is storytelling stuff.), requiring ships having greater autonomy to accomplish their missions.

I'm going to make liberal use of "triggered events" (for example, whenever a ship design gets picked up, whenever a spawner gets blown up, and other easy to isolate events) to trigger an awful lot of ship board communication between the crew members.  It's great to set the mood and world-build, I feel it really adds a lot to any map.

Here's what I'm NOT going to be doing:

-Using custom assets
--My skills in programming are really limited.  I am aware lots of skilled coders have made lots of cool shit for maps and ships, and maybe in a future "Gen3" fleet / campaign I might try to tackle this.  But I'm already in over my head with the mini-campaign, know thy limits.  Not going to use those this time.
-Asking other people to "do the work for me".
--I will happily accept player contributions and assistance, and never look a gift horse in the mouth.  But I will never ask anyone to do anything for me.  For one, because I wish to maintain editorial control over my creation, and for two, because relying on the work of others for your projects cheapens your own accomplishments and exploits others.  If YOU wish to help, I'll say yes, but I'll never ask for help myself.
-Bitch and whine if Knuckle Cracker does things to my things.
--Knuckle Cracker created the games, created the editors, and host the servers on which all of this happens.  This is their baby, and if they wish to use the stuff I have created, it's all theirs.  If they wish to shut me down, that's fine too.  All I request is an email saying why.

That's enough for now.  Further updates to come as the project begins taking shape.

[FOXX]

The fleet is made -> the thoughts are here -> let the mapmaking begin !

If you run into some issues with the editor or have other question you can post them here.

Good luck with your Campaign!