- Devils
Advocate – the Advocate has arrived back in EP from Mirfak,
but is being pursued by pirates. Its subspace drive is damaged and an Orestes
is called in to pic it up.
- The Advocate has been asked to provide Blackwood station with fighter cover.
Scan a suspicious freighter as it pulls out of the station. You find contraband
substances, and pirate fighters begin attacking your wing, trying to cover
while the freighter escapes?
- Atlantis (convoy?) pulled out of subspace, you
arrive too late and must fend off a few pirate freighters and Golems.
- Convoy of Refined Deuterium being shipped by the Starr corporation
requests escort into Blackwood. The pirates want the fuel for themselves.
- Liner pulled
out of subspace. You arrive quite quickly, and encounter and engage the Strike
carrier, but it escapes.
- Join the
Hazardous Environments Operations Squadron. Your first few missions are in Adhara, seeking and eliminating ground based pirates on the
main Vasudan colony world in that system (3 missions? Flip’s Desert mod)
- Ocean mod
mission – Another squadron was pursuing the Virtuoso class yacht Infinity over EP 4, damaged it, but it
managed to make a semi controlled ditching into the shallow oceans in that part
of the world. Find the yacht and defend it against local pirates who can’t let
the captains information fall into GTVA hands.
- Based on intel from the
pirate captain of the Yacht, one the pirates largest capship,
a strike carrier, is attacked, but flees into a gas giant to escape from the
GTVA. The HEOs are called into assist and manage to
disable the vessel. The SOC move in and take control of the ship before a
boarding party from the
- Assaulting the Pirate base, the Aesir arrive.
Act 2
Analysis of
the vessel that attacked the Pirate installation has shown that it was of neither Terran, Vasudan nor Shivan origin, nor did it
have any of the technological characteristics of the
It is
highly probable that the advanced technologies employed by the Pirates came
from the Aesir, wither through trade or, more likely, through theft. With their
vessel gone, there is no longer any way to confirm or deny this, but if their
technologies were obtained by theft, then it is possible that the Aesirs act was purely retaliation against the pirate
threat, something the GTVA does every day. If so, it is entirely possible that
friendly contact can still be made. As such, Command has prepared a diplomatic
mission, which will embark through the node in approximately six hours. The
As a
precaution however, the GTVA is deploying as many warships as it can to the EP
area, to guard against a possible incursion, and preparing the preliminaries
for a civilian evacuation of EP and its surrounds.
OK.
I actually
want to avoid direct contact with the Aesir here. Instead you’ll be doing
standard non combat stuff – placing buoys and the like. Maybe you can scan some
Aesir cargo. Either way, you meet up with a band of pirates, who have been
stranded here since soon after the pirates made first contact with the Aesir.
Their inter system drive went, and they’ve been wandering around, evading the
Aesir and hoping to be rescued ever since. They warp out, just as an (team
unknown) Aesir vessel warps in. Preferably something
reasonably big, maybe a carrier or Chantico.
Either way, it sits there for a few seconds, then
warps out.
So far, the
vast majority of our missions have been unsuccessful. While we have
occasionally seen Aesir vessels, we have made no direct contact, and the Aesir
vessels have so far not seemed willing to make their own contact. Therefore,
we’re heading for a more direct approach.
We’ve
identified what appears to be a colony or outpost on the systems third planet.
This planet is primarily water, with oceans covering approximately ninety two
percent of the surface. What few structures there are appear to be clustered
along this small chain of islands, a few degrees south of the planets equator.
We’re sending you in, along with a wing of transports, to make contact with the
inhabitants.
Whee,
atmospherics. You knew I couldn’t hold out for long, didn’t you? Anyway, this
is the first Aesir combat mission, and it should be fun. You’re basically just
doing flyovers of the islands, looking at them, trying to determine where all
the Aesir are. The computer returns multiple signatures from under the water,
suggesting the Aesir are an aquatic or at least amphibious species. Either way,
you fly for about three or four minutes before you come across the first Aesir
structures. These are presumably the ones Flip’s included with his atmospheric
pack, surrounded by banana cannons and stuff. Very alien looking hopefully.
Either way, it’s pretty quiet for awhile, while the transports you’re escorting
send messages and greetings, trying to establish communication. However, these
quite obviously fail. The banana cannons all open up at once, shredding your
transport, as several wings of Opoctlis arrive from
somewhere above you and start trying to do the same thing to your wing. You
fight and evade as best you can, trying to get scan data on at least one of the
fighters before taking off to an altitude greater than, say, ten or fifteen
thousand meters up before jumping to subspace. (Note – Command should have no
idea where the Opo’s came from, but I reckon I can
FRED it so that they came out of the ocean a fair way behind the player. Should
be pretty cool, especially if someone goes and actually watches them come out :D
Act 2
Mission 3
After our
disastrous attempt at direct communication on the surface of the colony world,
the Aesir began attacking all of our scout and exploration wings. Many of them
did not survive. It is only a matter of time before they try to attack the ####
(Carrier) herself. As such, we are abandoning operations within Aesir space and
falling back to EP, where we will fortify the node against further attacks, or
Aesir incursions into our space. But first, we have to make it there. The ####
is currently en route to the asteroid field through which we arrived. Any
survivors of the scout wings have been ordered to rendezvous with us there for
a final push through the node. We can not wait for stragglers. We will reach
the Asteroid field in approximately twenty minutes, and your mission to defend
the #### will begin as soon as we arrive. Good Luck, pilots.
OK. The
thing here is that the complement of the carrier is royally screwed. It’s lost most of its fighters and transports, leaving it
with only a handful of able defenders, but the ship itself is actually in
fairly good nick. Which is useful, because the player is
going to have to defend against an active asteroid field and rampaging Aesir
fighters. These should include both Opos and
drones, launched from Drone carrier that sits well behind the action. NB, it
should be noted that at this point, the GTVA are not aware of the fact that the
Tillians are drones, nor that they are totally
dependent on their carrier to operate. It should also be noted that the Drones
should be deployed in overwhelming numbers – at least twelve or eighteen in the
first batch. You escape through the node, if you’re lucky the carrier even
escapes with you. Note also – None of the other large ships have made it back.
Act 2
Mission 4
The HEOs took heavy losses in Aesir space and as a combat unit
have effectively ceased to exist. While a new unit is being trained to fill its
role, the survivors have been transferred to other units. You’re being placed
with the 199th Wardogs. They’re a heavy
assault squadron by trade, so they fly either the Herc
2 or the Artemis bomber, depending on the mission. Your first mission is to
join the blockade at the newly discovered node into Aesir space. Our last
transmitted record from recon buoys left at the node indicated a significant buildup of ships on their side – this could be a prelude to
an invasion of our systems. Your task will be to intercept any capital ships
that pass through the node and do what you can to assist the
OK. Similarities here to other blockade missions. Centralized
around the
NB – this
mission could be split into two, one where the Aesir fail, but damage the
blockade, a second one launched soon after, where the damaged blockade is no
match for the Aesir forces.
Act 2
Mission 5
Aesir
penetration into EP has led to GTVA command to give the final civilian
evacuation orders for the surrounding systems. With the preliminaries already
underway, the actual process is relatively simple and well organized, but there
are still tens of thousands of people fleeing bout out of and into EP (from the
surrounding systems) The GTVA is taxed, and the Aesir seem to have few qualms
about attacking civilian transports. While our larger forces prepare a counter
attack, our cruisers are guarding regular convoys out of Mirfak
and Adhara. While we cannot relieve the cruisers at
regular intervals, we are keeping our fighter wings as well rested as possible
– a different fighter group guards the entry into and exit from EP into
Polaris. Your wing has been assigned to an evacuation convoy from Mirfak. We’re running heavy assault wings with more
traditional interceptor and Space superiority units in the convoy guards to
counter the Aesir’s reliance on large, powerful
vessels, such as the AeBB Itzli.
Right. Very non-standard convoy guard. You start out fighting off
the standard array of Opos, and possibly some of
Flips new gunships, when a pair of Itzlis arrives. Command send Alpha wing in to eliminate
them, but they are soon followed by a Chantico, which
stays very close to them, leading to major headaches for Alpha wing, and leads
to relatively free reign for the Izlis to attack the
convoys
Basically,
you lose, possibly lose the cruiser and are called back through the Polaris
node to where the Advanced GTVA fleet is massing.
Act 2
Mission 6
The GTVA
has taken heavy losses in EP, and while large numbers of refugees did manage to
escape, the Aesir recently took control of the EP node, and that flow has been
abruptly stemmed. Fortunately, the GTVAs counter
Aesir fleet, which has been assembling over the last several days, is finally
ready to engage, and the retaking of the Aesir held EP-Polaris node will be its
first skirmish.
OK.
Fortunately, we wont need to worry about the entire
fleet this mission, Aesir or GTVA. The Aesir blockade is basically centralized
around the Xolotl, with a few Itzlis
assisting it, as well as a pair of Drone carriers. Basically, a good cover of
the lower range Aesir ships. (Note – at this point, the player has seen no
Frigates, no Cruisers, and no large carriers). The GTVAs
fleet should be focussed around some large vessel – possibly a Hecate or Hatshepsut. For the
assault on the node, the entire fleet isn’t being marshalled however, the
central ship is supported by at least one Charon, and
probably some other vessels. Basically, these ships should eliminate the Aesir
with a fair degree if simplicity, and regain control
of the node.
The next
couple of missions will be determined by the mods we get. The players job will be simply to escort the GTVAs
counter Aesir fleet about, winning stuff. This is the GTVA’s
fightback, and, for awhile, they seem to be winning
the war. Then the frigates arrive.
Anyway,
during this period, the GTVA will have to discover that the Drones can be
eliminated if you take out the communications subsystem(s?) on the carrier, and
we will also have the mission where you’re hunting down the cloaked vessels.
(Note – we may want to consider TAG missiles here a well as standard weapons)
Note – VA’s pushing Interdictor mission should go in here somewhere.
Act 2
Mission 10
The Aesir
capture of the Polaris node several days ago prompted the sudden cessation of
the GTVAs evacuation plan, and as such thousands of
civilians are still trapped in the systems around EP, with Aesir blockades
holding the near sides of both those systems nodes. GTVA forces are also
blockading the node, though obviously from the opposite side to the Aesir.
Unfortunately, while the Adhara node has held, the
Aesir did manage to get a few ships into Mirfak while
the blockade was still being consolidated. As such, GTVA high command has
placed the Liberation of Mirfak at the top of our
priority list.
Yay. More blockades. Anyway, the Aesir
blockade here should be similar to the last one we destroyed, but different.
Perhaps this blockade is somewhat weaker, or focussed more towards anti fighter
roles (ie. more chanticos).
Whatever works. Anyway, the Assault force arrives
intending to bust it up and they proceed to do so – it’s
standard far for the last two missions – until a frigate warps in. Should be
suitably dramatic… “We’ve got a massive vortex forming…something’s coming
through… what the hell is that!” We can make the jump seem longer by using the
Subspace effect thing at the exact point of the frigates entry, and make it
last a lot longer. This’ll just be for drama, it wont
mean much in the scheme of things. Anyway, the Frigate proceeds to wipe the
floor with the GTVAs assault force, including
whatever ship you launched from. The player is ordered to escape into Mirfak. Your debriefing should come from the CO of the SOC
Ship (Are we calling that a carrier, a Destroyer or a Corvette?)
Act 2
For the
moment, all pilots who escaped the battle in EP have been given temporary
assignments in the SOC. Your experience in as a HEO (That’s H.E.O. – three
letters as opposed to one word) has earmarked you as a pilot of some skill, and
so we’re offering you a position with the 354th Cobras – they’re an
electronic warfare squadron, and a damned fine one
too. There’s only six dedicated EW squadrons in the
entire GTVA, all working for either Vasudan intelligence or the SOC, and the
Cobras are the best of the bunch. Which is good,
because we’re going to need the best tyo pull this
off.
OK. I’d
like to see a new fighter here, though we can use an Erinyes
if need be. An EW fighter needs three things – A massive secondary Capacity
with three banks, Two types of primaries with no less
than 4 gunpoints, and overall high marks in both
major categories (i.e. Speed/Manoeuvrability and Hull/Shield strength). If need
be, we can put
some limitations on it – eg. Low general speed, but with good
overclock and Afterburner speed, or weak hull, but
with powerful subsystems and very good shields. – but
the main balancing factor will just be cost – the GTVA simply can’t afford to
put these fighters in the hands of any but the best.
Anyway, the
first mission is to defend your home ship and the meagre Mirfak
blockade against the Aesir assault – it should be made clear to the player that
if they send the frigate, it’s basically going to be up to the fighters to drop
_everything_ to go to try to either destroy or disarm the ship. Fortunately,
they don’t have to worry about that just yet. The players role while the
Frigate is not around is to do whatever he can to shock incoming capital ships
with disruption missiles so the SOC vessel and the other ships in the blockade
can deal with it. All goes well, since the Aesir do not send their frigates
against you. NB there is no “Command” in this mission – the SOC ship is running
everything.
Act 2
Mission 12
The (SOC
Ship – needs a name) has run desperately short on supplies – previous to the Aesirs capture of the other side of the node to EP, the
**** was running standard anti Aesir missions, and after that we had to chace
down the Aesir that made it into Mirfak. The fact is, we’re down to a bare minimum of weapons, repair materials,
even fighters. While most of our pilots have managed to eject safely, we have
lost many machines in the last several weeks fighting. Some of our more
important systems are also heading towards dangerous situations – we have run
out of certain replacement components for our main beam cannons for example,
which cannot be replaced by standard GTVA forces, and are used only by the SOC.
In short, we need to get out of Mirfak, to the SOCs supply base in EP. It feels bad to just leave he
inhabitants of Mirfak here with half a blockade, but
hopefully with the dent we put in them last time, the Aesir will have neither
the ships nor the morale to rush us again. We’ve also jury rigged a few RBCs – they can’t manoeuvre very well, nor are they likely
to be too reliable, but they’ll do the job – as long as nothing too big comes
through.
Punch
through the blockade basically. Alpha wing will have to concentrate as much
fire as possible on the Aesir frigate to try to neutralize it’s main gun long
enough to let the SOC carrier get through – since the Carrier will be wounded
from its last engagement, too many shots will be fatal, and Alpha will be being
harassed by drones and Opos. This will be a short,
furious mission, but relatively easy to FRED.
Act 2
Mission 13
The local
SOC supply dump is situated on a moon of EP 10. We’ve taken steps to
have it removed from the official survey, and we’re so far out here I doubt
anyone else has ever bothered to come check. Most people don’t even know the
moon exists, let alone our base. Despite that, the SOC still has some of the
best security in the business – when the rest of the GTVA pulled out of EP,
this base would have gone into lockdown, with powerful defences to keep the
both the inquisitive and the malicious away. The reoperation
code changes hourly, and I doubt anyone outside of SOC
headquarters knows it, but they did prepare for the situation we’re in now –
there’s another way in.
VA’s Moonbase mission, and a nice break
from fighting the Aesir – at least for the first half. This will be hell, but
at the same time fun to FRED. First step – the player is dropped off on the
craggy, dangerous looking surface of the moon with a big, inviting metal
cylinder in it. Going down this cylinder should result in near instant death
from Anti fighter beam turrets. So it’s a bad idea. What you’re supposed to do
is follow a canyon until you come to a natural looking fissure in the rock, and
follow that down. This should basically look like one of Flips asteroid
tunnels, except with the odd bit of plating – and the odd turret – to
differentiate it. Anyway, his tunnel eventually opens up into a large canyon,
with a massive metal door that connects to the main tunnel, and a smaller door
that gets you deeper into the base. However, the SOC aren’t going to le you in
that easily, and they dispatch combat drones to eliminate you. By giving these
guys decent slide speeds, we can make them fly in a way that should be totally
different to the standard FS flight model (more like descents), which is good.
Anyway, you
scan the door (i.e. transmit the secret code, and that gets you in to stage
2.). This area has a lovely little feature – shield strippers. Basically, as
long as you’re a certain distance from a central generator, and within the
walls of the base, your shields wont work. You need to
destroy the (Shielded? :D) emitter, while being
harried by more drones, before you can scan open another door and keep going.
This last section should just be a maze, with turrets and drones going crazy
waiting to kill the player. Success here gets you into the Inner control room,
where the scanning of a final control module will put in a master code that
will override security and let your elysiums
in. You Head out through the now disarmed main tunnel, to find that your ship
has come under attack from the Aesir. The Elysia are
being pursued by a wing of Drones that you have to deal with before you get to
the surface to find your (by now very damaged, from the Mirfak
attack and the push through the node) under attack from drones and a Xolotl. You deal with the turrets on the Xolotl, and do what you can about the drone carrier,
basically just keeping the carrier alive until the Elysiums
and fighters get out of the hole. NB – if the carrier falls, you red alert out
of there, with the Elysiums and the additional
fighters for a different series of mission – campaign branching… I like it :D.
Act 2 -
Alright
pilots – we’re now fully stocked up, and our weapons systems are running at
full capacity once again. Unfortunately, we’ve had three battles with the Aesir
and very limited repair time between each one. It’s been hard enough keeping
our turrets and subsystems operational, let alone maintain
our hull, and that’s started to show. If we try to break through the Aesir
blockade and return to Mirfak we’ll fail and be
destroyed. We can not risk another run against that Frigate. However, there is
another option – Starr’s Meteor repair Facility.
As you all
know, most major repairs in EP take place at Blackwood station, but, again as
you well know, this station is currently held by the Aesir, and has quite
possibly been eliminated. However, the Meteor class repair facility maintained
by the Starr Corporation in the Outer asteroid belt is much smaller and harder
to find, and has quite possibly not been discovered by the Aesir at all. That’s
our destination. Obviously, the facilities aren’t as advanced as those
available at Blackwood, but it has a ready supply of armour plates that we can
have the worker bees fit to crucial parts of our outer hull. It’ll be a patch
up job, and it won’t fix everything, but it should be enough to get us past the
blockade and into the more specialized repair facilities available in Mirfak.
The only
enemies I can justifiably put into this mission are asteroids, if we make the
field active. Basically, it’s a filler mission, short and simple – get the
carrier into place, and get out. The Aesir come later. NB – if the Carrier dies
here, you’re just stupid. No branching – the mission ends in the hanger bay of
the Starr facility, and you’re told basically how screwed you are by… I dunno, I’ll make sure someone else survives as well.
Act 2
The local
worker bees are an old model, and have only applied about half of the available
armour plates available, despite our protracted stay here. However, it’s far
too risky to stay any longer. By now, the Aesir will have replenished their
forces and will almost certainly be capable of pushing into Mirfak.
It’ll be chancy, but we’re going to have to rush the blockade and try to make
it back into Mirfak again.
*RED ALERT*
Pilots…
change of plans – we’ve just received a distress call from a GTVA Aeolus class cruiser here in EP. God only knows what the
hell it’s doing this deep behind enemy lines, but we have to assist it. Your
fighters are already prepared for the Mirfak assault
– if we’re lucky this wont delay us by too much, and
we might even pick up some extra firepower.
Have you
guessed what the Aeolus is yet :D
That’s right, the unkillable
Advocate is back from the dead. It was jumped on one of its scouting missions
and had to make an emergency jump to get away. It was pursued through several
Aesir systems for several weeks until it finally managed to make it back to EP,
just to came under attack again… but not from the
Aesir. The Advocate is being menaced by a Rakshasa
cruiser and a wing of
Anyway,
this is the historic Aesir meeting mission, where the Aesir arrive to destroy
the Shivan cruiser, realize that the enemy of my enemy is my friend and
approach us with an offer of peace. Act 2 ends.
Act 2
Right pilots. The **** is dead. We can’t dwell on that. Right now, survival is our
key objective. We’re a small number of fighters with nowhere to refuel or
repair. The GTVA bases in the area have been overrun, and trying to break out
of the system would be suicide, even if we had the fuel to sustain an intersystem
jump. So we’ve come here, EP VIII.
It’s a
large, blue green Class 3 gas giant, and if prewar intel is still correct, then it’s
also the backup base of the Survivors pirate group. While it’s possible that
they abandoned with the rest of the Civillians in EP,
it’s also equally possible that they’re still here, trying to stay hidden from
both the Aesir and the GTVA. If they’re still here, we make contact, and see
what we can do about getting some sort of sanctuary. If they’re not, then we
make use of whatever facilities they’ve left behind. Either way, we’re going
in.
This
mission is going to be a lot like As lightning falls, except with Snipes’
transport replaced with a pirate base (We can use the LK one from OR, nobody’ll care/notice, as it’ll only be onscreen for at
most a minute or two). Anyway, you’re following a series of nav buoys that’re transmitting very weakly on an unusual frequency
(the first one is found by accident, the player has to follow the rest. Anyway,
you’re routinely attacked by Pirate fighters (which answers the question about
whether they’d abandoned or not), who don’t want any kind of attention at their
base, but you deal with them and eventually reach the base itself, where you
manage to negotiate the ability to land, in return for your helping them with a
little something.
Act 2
In return
for their questionable hospitality, the Survivors have requested our assistance
with a raid on a GTVA supply dump. They’ve been supporting themselves through
such raids since the Aesir invaded, justifying it with the odd attack on some
Aesir transport. They’re calling themselves freedom fighters now, but
essentially there’s little difference.
OK. The
mission should start off with the whole secrecy bit – you arrive in concert
with a wing of Golems, Another of Tyrs and two SOC wings, as well as a pair of gunships and, of course, a pair of freighters. It seems
like a hue task force for a simple materiel raid, but apparently the Aesir have
been occupying GTVA supply depots on occasion, and it’s better to be prepared.
This depot is half GTVA, half Aesir – they’ve been dumping their own cargo here
as well. The SOC wing leader tries to get the pirates to try to take some of
that, but they refuse, citing how useless it’d be compared to a GTVA crate that
would have immediate advantage. Anyway, the freighters start in, and that’s
when the first Aesir ships arrive, a wing of Opos
supporting a drone carrier. The gunships prove fairly
effective at taking down the Aesir fighters, and Alpha wing are primarily
concerned with taking out the comms on the carrier. If you can destroy it, all the better. You then basically
just have to defend the freighters against a few Opos,
then escape to subspace.
Act 2
Pilots –
we’ve just received a distress call from what appears to be a friendly source.
This deep it’s garbled, but we could pick out a few words, among them GTVA. We
must respond – if we can rescue this vessel, we’ll pick up some extra firepower
and might be able to convince our new allies to step up their attacks on the
Aesir. Our fighters are prepped and ready – let’s get out there.
And we’re
back with the Advocate again. The two missions will be essentially identical,
except with some messages changed. Whee, act 2 ends again.
This
puts the Aesir in rather a bad situation – they lost a significant fraction of
their fleet in this assault, they’ve shown blatant disregard for their allies,
and they’re now severely overmatched if they had to go one on one with the
Shivans. And so, the onus of the alliance has now shifted slightly, and the
GTVA have to become a more major player. This prompts the Aesir to finally give
up their somewhat paranoid approach to technology exchange and offer an deal – they need beam technology, and they’re willing to
trade to get it. While the specifics are yet to be worked out, GTVA command has
accepted, and sent a bunch of combat systems engineers out to an Aesir shipyard
in Arcturus. Your wing will defend this convoy. (NB You’re presently operating out of the Aesir installation
where the
You're flying the uberfighter captured
earlier. it might be an idea for a use of persistent
variables here: if the player captured more than one uberfighter,
he can have a wingman?
Being in the uberfighter gives us a good
excuse to flood him A1 with shivans. ie, the shivans
don't like one of their ships being used, so you become the focus of much
unwanted attention.
Mission
9a – Eliminate the reactor and escape before the nest blows up around you.
First note – these are all optional. We don’t need cutscenes to tell the story, but they kick arse, so if we happen to get some, that’d be nice.
Intro
VA’s intro Plan:
Interdiction
This will be the hardest cutscene to do by far, since it requires complex human interaction provided by poser characters, possibly a moving Aesir, lots of complicated effects, multiple internal environments etc. etc. Flip’s already posted a basic script for this’n, I’ll add it in when I find it.
The Pirate base goes down at the hands of the Xolotl. This should be a relatively simple cutscene to make, since there’s no human interaction required. We start this up when the Pirate base reaches 0% in the final mission of Act 1 (using an end mission sexp and with “no debriefing” defined in the mission parameters.
Basically, all we need to show is the Xolotl firing the final few shots onto the Pirate base, the base itself blowing up, then the Xolotl turning around and jumping back through the node into subspace. Fighters flying about’d be nice, but try to avoid showing too many GTVA ships as it’ll be difficult to tell with the smaller ones which might have been destroyed. The Xolotl, or possibly the Opos escorting it, should blow some pirate fighters away as well, just to prove that they can. The whole cutscene probably won’t have to last more than a minute total, if that. I may even be able to render it myself, though it’d take me awhile to work up to the necessary level of competence in Max.
Nest (Outro)
Similar to the above, this will only need to show the destruction of the nest. Relatively simple to do I’d imagine, though the level of difficulty will depend on the level of complexity, which will in turn depend on how busy the renderer wants to get. At minimum, the nest needs to blow up and the camera needs to pan around a spacescape for awhile (to be narrated to… “The Third Shivan war ended in the XXX system that day etc. etc.” The narration can be written later; though obviously we’ll want to finalize it before the cutscene itself is done). At maximum, a shot of the escaping Alpha 1, maybe a few shots of the Aesir/GTVA and Shivan fleets exchanging fire, fancy debris/shockwave effects etc.
Those are the cutscenes I’d like to consider as ‘essential’ though with something as complicated and time consuming as cutscenes, I’ll be the first to state that nothing is truly indispensable, including having cutscenes to begin with. With the exception of the Interdiction thing, everything there can be done via in game cutscenes and/or command briefs, and I’m more than willing to accept that. Other optional cutscenes are:
- Uberfighter eliminates a terran cruiser.
-
Lucifer exiting subspace to be pounded by (but not
without itself pounding) a group of Aesir Frigates.
Weapons
Krayton MD-11
“Developed at the Krayton labs in Deneb, the MD-11 is one of the first practically deployable weapons developed as a part of the Alliances meson research program. Designed to fire a controlled burst of high energy Meson particles, the MD-11 disrupts the delicate networks within the subsystems of enemy vessels at a rate far greater than that of the old Akheton model. It is, however, difficult to stabilize the meson Particles in the reaction chamber, limiting the weapons rate of fire considerably. It is also insanely expensive, meaning it is deployed only when absolutely necessary, and to pilots with specially granted clearance.”
Status – Complete, though I think I need to up its energy usage a bit.
This will not be introduced until very near to the end because it’s simply too damned powerful. This takes around 2 or 3 shots to eliminate even the heaviest turrets. Useful in missions which require the player to defend against ridiculous amounts of Shivan Capships, or for blunting the Chantico’s advantage over fighters.
You all should have the Tantalus – it’s basically going to be our staple gun in the first half of Act 2, supplemented by the kayser in the latter half and in Act 3. (Act One’s will be the Subach)
GTW PL-22 Lockdown
“The Lockdown is an electronic warfare weapon capable of temporarily scrambling the systems on enemy fighters and capital ships. Its exact specifications are classified, but its effectiveness is undeniable. Each shot has only a limited amount of power however, and so is more effective when used against smaller ships than larger.”
Lockdown will be your basic Electronic warfare primary – it will probably be an EMP based weapon rather than a true disruptor, which I want to keep limited to missiles. I haven’t designed the other EW weapons yet, since they’ll be crucial to mission balance, and should probably be designed as a part of the mission making process, rather than as separate entities.
GTW-36 Punisher Spreadfire cannon
“This is an Aesir derived rapid fire weapon developed as a part of the technology trade that saw the Aesir gain plasma beam technology. The Punisher spews out a vast gout of plasma bolts in rapid succession. It’s accuracy is somewhat suspect over long distances, and its range limited, but in short range engagements the Punshier is capable of doing significant damage to any enemy fighters or turrets. Though susceptible to overheating if continually fired, the Punisher is nonetheless a highly dangerous and effective weapon.”
Semi completed – it works, still needs sounds/visual effects etc. Props to VA for this one.
GTM-19 Hurricane
“The GTM-19 Hurricane bomb is the next stage in the evolution of medium payload ordinance delivery systems. While destructive strength of weapons such as the Cyclops has never been called into question, review of any major engagement will show that more than half the bombs launched will not reach their intended target due to enemy fire. Previous efforts to counter this have focussed on speed – faster bombs, and faster bombers. The Hurricane, however, has taken another approach. By adapting the accuracy increasing corkscrewing that was first implemented on the Tornado missile, the Hurricane’s designers have created a bomb that evades enemy fire through agility rather than sheer speed. While the additional fuel requirements have forced a slight decrease in payload, and a similar decrease in range, the negatives of this technique are far outweighed by the increased likelihood of scoring a hit.”
Corkscrew bomb. Cool huh?
GTM-12 Splinter
“The Splinter is an extremely light, extremely fast locking aspect seeking missile with poor manoeuvrability, almost no shield penetration and an extremely small payload. The Splinter, however, may be the most significant development in GTVA defensive technologies in many years. The Splinter is, of course, not a true combat missile, but the first secondary weapon specifically designed to aid in ordinance interception. While long range, hugely powerful weapons like the Trebuchet are far more effective anti-bomber weapons, they are far too slow and unresponsive to use against the bombs themselves. The Splinter, with is rapid aspect seeking, impressive top speed, and significant effective range fills this niche superbly.”
Assuming bombs can be targeted with aspect lock, we’ll use this one. If not, err… super rapid dumbfire then, though that’ll only be useful for the player I expect.
You’ll note there’re no new uberkaysers or whatever. If anyone has an idea for an interesting, unique new sort of weapon, post it up on internal and we’ll probably end up making it available to the player, but doing up hundreds of guns slightly more powerful than the Kayser, Prometheus R etc. is kind of pointless IMO, especially if we’re planning on animating all their loadouts (and we are).
Ships
Ye Gads. This won’t be a complete list, but it’ll have the key stuff in it.
OK, grouped together:
GTVA Advanced Fleet
GTVA Non advanced Fleet
Pirates
Other ships
Aesir Ships
Shivans
We can fill this section in later methinks, when we finally get everything nailed down.
Q - What the hell’s
up with that weird Black and Green ship in Act 3?
A – The Aesir have been in space a lot longer than we have. They’ve encountered a lot more races than we have too. The simplest way to describe this thing is as an allusion to that fact. There’s a lot more to it than that, but for the moment we can leave it at that. Keep in mind that it is 100% optional, and if we run out of time to insert it, we run out of time.
Q – Uberfighter? What?
A – The Shivan uberfighter is a subplot sorta thing – essentially it’s got the manoeuvrability of a Drago, the offensive punch of a Nephilim and the hull and shields of a Seraphim. Completely implausible, but almost certain to be fun, right? They’ll be balanced by showing up in no more than a few individuals per mission, and basically being as rare as rocking horse crap, but getting somewhat more common towards the end so that the addition of things like the Kayser into the arena don’t make the Shivans into a big mob of targets. It’ll also have the occasional additional debrief or Command brief stage to discuss the study of these things, or the amount of damage they’re doing to the fleet. It’s something that I can do almost entirely after the missions have been done, though a few crucial missions will have to be designed with it in mind.
Q – Err… are you on
crack? The last few missions are crazy BoEs – what
the hell are you thinking?
A – BoE syndrome occurs in big battles when the actions of the player have no outcome on the overall outcome of the battle. Our two big battle missions will combat this tendency, rather than avoid big combats altogether. For example, in both cases your objective is to defend the Aesir caps, frigates in mission 8 and the beamship in mission 9. If you fail in your little mission, the entire big operation will fail. The actions of the other sub battles (ie. around the ramanaths, confronting the weapons of the nest itself etc.) will be determined by the FREDder rather than by the players actions, but the key part of the mission will be entirely player oriented.