Timeframe - Pre ANH – from a few months to literally directly before.
Known Rebel Fleet (Movies) Corellian Corvette, X Wing, Y Wing.
There must have been some other ships as well, presumably both larger and smaller. Z-95 is probable. Capships are harder – Perhaps Corellian gunships, defected imperial vessels, dreadnaughts etc. Modified freighters could also play a role.
Known Imperial Fleet (Movies) Star Destroyer, TIE Fighter, Extended Lambda Landing Craft.
The TIE Bomber can be assumed, as can the Lambda, and probably the DX9. The TIE interceptor and TIE advanced will need to be checked, but are probably unuseable. Other Capships – Victory? Carrack? Strike? Dreadnaught is probable.
Basis – The Rebel Alliance has been long established, but so far have had few major victories. Despite this, a small trickle of people and ships continue to enter their service, dissatisfied with the crushing rule of the Empire. You take the place of Saen Kessick – one such person. Currently a small time pilot in the Imperially monitored and sanctioned Generis Defence Force, you have witnessed time and again the brutality and hypocrisy of Imperial rule. Your chance to escape has come though – the Rebel Alliance had inserted a man into the GDF several months ago, and he has come to you, along with select other men in your squadron, offering you the chance to defect. You seize your chance, and prepare for your first act of open defiance against the emperor.
Flying – Z-95 Headhunter
Before you can join the Rebel alliance, you have to escape from Generis. To do this, you have to make it past the Imperial watchdog forces – by custom and law, GDF pilots cannot leave the atmosphere – in space, and any criminals become direct Imperial matters. As such, you cannot simply jump away from Generis. You’ll need to fight your way out.
You and five other pilots in your Z-95 squadron have been contacted, and all agreed to defect. You flee Generis at night (Thereby freeing us up from having to show what the planet looks like :)), the six of you in your snubfighters, newly fitted with single use (before they need to be recalibrated) hyperdrive modules, and your contact in a small Transport (Lambda is a possibility, though the DX-9 would be less noticeably imperial. Ideally, we’d have something more neutral, like a CEC freighter of some description, but I don’t think we’re going to have any of them modelled in time). Your primary objective will be to protect the transport - His is the only ship with enough computing power to calculate the jump away from Generis and towards the Rebels. To do this, you’ll have to defend against a few waves of TIEs launched from an Orbiting Imperial Star Destroyer, who questions your right to be out this far from the planet. Fortunately you’re out of Turbolaser range, so you won’t have to worry about that. You kill a few TIEs until you’re far enough away from the planet to engage the hyperdrive. He feeds you the numbers, you jump out. Easy.
Flying – Z-95
After passing through several systems to muddy your trail, you’ve reached the base of one of the major alliance cells, in Dantooine. While large, the Dantooine cell is critically short on trained fighter pilots. Your expertise, and that of your squadmates, is sorely needed. As such, you’re put onto active duty almost immediately, and you leave for a tour on the Eukros (Light Carrier – need something non Mon Cal with a decent sized Docking bay, available early in the war. Dreadnaught springs to mind as an old ship, but I’m a big dreadnaught fan, as you know. If there’s something more useful, let me know).
Your first mission takes you to the Elaris
system, where the Empire maintains a large Tibanna
gas mining facility within the dense atmosphere of the sixth planet. (Nebula mission). Your mission is simple and obvious –
destroy the six gas platforms that intelligence have pinpointed as running at
near capacity. As these are military platforms, they’re likely to have at least
a few turrets mounted somewhere. Of more concern, however, are the TIE fighters
that will be guarding the platforms. Take them out, and you’ll be fine.
Obviously, we’re going to have to model the Gas platforms
for this mission. If that’s a problem, I can modify it, and have you attacking
something else, but I figured this’d be a nice second starter mission – you’re
still fighting TIES, you’re still in a Z-95, but you’re also facing turrets for
the first time (on the platforms), and you’re in the nebula. How fun :)
Flying – Y-Wing
Dantooine, while large, is not the main bastion of the rebels, and relies heavily on captured Imperial supplies to stay alive. Many of the missions pilots, especially new pilots, are assigned are shipping raids.
You’ll be taken to the Booris system, which is quite close to Dantooine, but hopefully not enough to arouse suspicion, and through which regular imperial resupply convoys are run. In order to reach their primary base on Booris V, the Imperials need to drop out of hyperspace and pass through a volatile asteroid field. The imperials always pass through the narrowest part of the field, which is where you’ll be dropped. Unfortunately, if you are to remain undetected, you’re going to need to be dropped on the opposite side of the field, quite close to the edge. Your first task will be to take out the Escort – this will probably be in the form of some kind of very light imperial escort carrier and the few wings of TIEs it launches. You’ll then attack the Freighters with your Ion cannons (And possibly some “Specially modified Verpine Ion Cannons designed to do permanent damage to ships systems” ie. Disable the Transports/freighters) . As soon as they’re immobilized, either through repeated Ion blasts or proper disablement, a wing of assault transports (Again, we can use the DX-9, though some sort of Rebel variant would be preferable) arrives to dock with the freighters and steal their cargo.
--- Red Alert! ---
The imperials have discovered the Eukros in the Booris system, and have scrambled TIE bombers to attack it. Your wing is being recalled to defend it ASAP.
The Eukros is under attack from TIE bombers with TIE fighter escort, launched from a pair of Escort carriers. The Eukros has launched Z-95s to deal with the Bombers, but wants your Y Wings to disable or Ion the two carriers before joining the defence – if they catch up with the Eukros it wont survive. So you bugger off to handle that. (Out of curiosity, is there anything in SW Canon that mentions, one way or the other, whether repeated Ion blasts could permanently disable certain systems? If it’s OK, we may not need the “Verpine” Ion cannons after all)
Anyway, it’s a pretty standard anti bomber mission – taking down bombers and bombs while the Eukros gets out of the Gravity shadow of the planet it was orbiting and heads off. At the last possible second though, an Imperial Star Destroyer should arrive. Fortunately, the Eukros is able to escape before it can do any real damage (The only real reason to bring it in is because SDs are cool, and the Imps would send one as soon as they realized the Carriers weren’t going to be able to do the job.
NB – Since the player’s flying a Y Wing for this mission, we
should make the player calculate his own jump out – ie.
Press one about fifteen seconds before he wants to jump out (
we can use the never warp and free warp sexps
for this). We can explain away the last one by saying that the Eukros is feeding the numbers, and that you can jump
out as soon as you’re clear of the Asteroid field (again with never warp/free
warp).
Flying - Z-95
The exposure of the Eukros in the Booris system, so close to Dantooine, has forced the command in that system to evacuate. If the Empire decides to come looking, they could conceivably find the Dantooine base, and destroy everyone there. However, there’s a complication. A group of pirates has arrived in system, and are sitting in orbit of the systems Second planet, possibly for repairs – intel hasn’t been able to find out- the point is that they’ve set up a picket line that could scan the entire system, and they wont miss the evacuation of an entire rebel base. If they told the imperials, they could have ships here before the evac. was completed, and many lives would be lost. Thus, the rebels have decided to strike first, and assault the Pirate sentry lines. These would probably consist of civilian scout ships, a few uglies – It’s not a very complex mission for the moment. Part two begins when the Pirates main ship arrives (Class unknown – suggestions anyone? Corellian Corvette is a possibility) It’s reading at full hull integrity, which is confusing if they’d stopped for repairs. You’re ordered to do a sensor focus (Scan) to try and discover why they’re here, but everything seems fine. You destroy it and Rendevouz with the rest of the small Dantooine Fleet – you dock aboard the Eukros and the fleet jumps to rendevouz with the Small Ukio cell that was recently decimated by an Imperial assault.
The Campaign can end here if need be, though I would like to add a few more missions, where you do stuff like graduate to the X wing, do some serious damage to some imperials, and end the campaign with Escorting Leia’s Corellian Corvette through a barrage of TIEs as it tries to escape after being found in Ukio (This would be the mission that confirms she is a rebel – Vader seemed pretty damned sure in ANH after all – and gets the Imps on her tail so they notice her when they stop in Tatooine, partially to muddy their trail, also possibly to refuel.)
Needed Mods
- An Imperial Escort carrier (I'd've preferred the lancer, but they were designed post Yavin)
- A freighter of some sort, and a transport Or Lambda (though the DX-9 will hopefully be able to fill this spot at least a few times)
- A Dreadnaught or similar mid sized rebel carrier/capship (non Mon Cal though - too early)
- Gas platform
- Z-95
- TIE Fighter
- X Wing
- Y Wing
- Corellian Corvette
- Some form of Pirate
Ugly - TIE wing or Clutch or something.