Campaign *story ideas*

posted on December 2nd, 2009, 6:28 am

Okay, I've done some searching and not found any topic in this particular forum, and I've been on the forum for several hours now, (I only registered about an hour ago...)

And the only references to campaign mode are as offtopic mentions if it was possible, and the response of 'low priority, no tools' etcetera.

No, the purpose of this topic isn't "can we have a campaign", but, "If we did get a campaign, what would the story be?"
and ideas for missions.

I have an idea where instead of the missions split between factions i.e. do all fed then klingon then romie...

there's a bit of mix-up with them. And you start with a Romulan-based mission.

Here's my idea of a first mission...

"In the shadows of the Dominion"
Intro Sequence:
"10 years have passed since the end of the Dominion War, 10 years since I lost most of my family." A fairly-old looking Romulan woman is speaking, to a small crowd of young romulan officers. She is wearing a hooded cloak, the hood not quite hiding her aged appearance. She takes a sip of her ale, then continues, "For most, today is a day of celebration. The anniversary of the dominions' surrender. We forget the cost of that victory. The cost of joining the Federation and the Klingons in fighting the Dominion. Had we not joined them, they would have won... and we would have been a subservient to them, just as the Cardassians did. So we had many a reason to join in the fight against them. Was it worth it? to loose so many sons and daughters of romulus?"

She looked up, and toward one of the people at the back of the audience, were a non-romulan pointy-eared old man stood. "Some would say, the needs of the many, outweighed the needs of the few." She chuckled darkly. "Or so was the unspoken argument of one Captain Benjamin Sisko."

Flashback:[/b] Sisko creating the fraudulant 'recording' of a dominion meeting to get the Romulans into the war on their side. [u]end flashback

"War is coming, one day someone somewhere will rally the troops, calling out for blood on those who brought us into the war, though willing we were."

Mission Intro:
A Tal'shiar vessel, Shrike class, approaches the neutral zone under cloak, and enters one of the systems within the 'zone, to find an old colony destroyed. Evidence reveals the federation...

Change to federation territory, and the briefing is a strike on the nearby federation outpost. Your warbird, 2 norexans and several shrikes are at your disposasl. your shrikes are to draw away the ships, before the heavy-hitters are to attack.

Ingame
You start off with about half a dozen shrikes, supposed to split them into 2 groups of 3, and draw away the guarding sabre-class ships...

But then some construction ships are 'warped in' when you intercept a message from starfleet to the outpost reporting your presence beyond those shrikes, and intent. you then get construction ships yourself, and it's like in instant-action, sort of, build abase, build a fleet... only the feds have the upper hand and can send those sabre ships after you AND already have their outpost built, where you got to build one first before building the resource and shipyards etcetera...

Tech is limited though to 3 or so ship classes, no research ships. The warbird (a 'hero' unit) is a little stronger than standard to 'balance' out the lack of upper-techs...

And so kicks off a Fed-Rom war.

The war could be, 3 or 4 missions, and involve fighting both Fed and Klingons, when Martok brings in his fleet to support the federation.

If possible, mission select so that if one mission is done, then it gives the next mission extra starting units, or vice-versa, each mission giving different starting unit advantages.

The 4th mission would be the discovery that the attack on that neutral zone planet wasn't the feds, of course. BUT by then starfleet are starting to produce a few ships with cloak. one rom mission could be defence.

THEN it switches to Fed for 3 missions. say, the 2nd be a strike deep into romulan territory to cut off supply lines... And this would make use of capturing a romulan ship or base to make use of 'mixed-tech' aka building defiants for cloak to get past lots of defence turrets that dont have cloak detection. The initial capture being from a loaned cloaked klingon vessel.

Then the klingons withdraw from assistig the federation for unknown reasons, and only help from ODO in the next mission with the dominion help drive off the romulan attack. big 'OMFG' moment, when dominion ships appear as allies warping in to save the Enterprise-E and Defiant (and maybe the USS Titan too) or 3 'hero' ships made up for FO.
Then it goes to playing as the dominion, with their big anti-cloak-focused tech to combat the romulans. two missions for the dominion... and then a fed mission, sending a fleet to klingon space after a garbled signal is recieved from them.

That mission starts with arriving to see a fleet of disabled ships, (the token "arrive and lots of uncrewed drifting ships" map.) and sensor ghosts on long range sensors that dont make sense. the klingons arrive and attack, assuming your fed fleet did this, but only when your drive back and have their outpost shields disabled, does it go to cutscene where it's revealed the BORG were responsible for the attack, this time going for the klingons rather than the federation (which I honestly haven't seen. We do know from VOY: 'Unimatrix Zero' that they've assimilated klingons before,... and technically, the klingon empire is a Beta Quadrant superpower...)


What do you guys think so far?

posted on December 2nd, 2009, 6:57 am

Welcome to the forums!

I think you're enthusiasm for a campaign is great!  Having some stories played out in the FO universe as campaigns would indeed be fun.  I don't mean to offend, but could you simplify your ideas?  I tried to read through them, but there's just a lot there.   Most mission objectives were pretty simple, like "Get Resources", "Destroy that thing", or "You can do whatever you want, but don't let that guy die".  Maybe having a short list of what your campaign's objectives would be might aid in understanding the story.

The good news is campaigns will become possible pretty soon.  Then your dreams of Romulan wars might be fulfilled.

posted on December 2nd, 2009, 9:49 am

But be warned the devs have their own ideas about what the "official" campaign should be.

posted on December 2nd, 2009, 10:47 am

cheers guys for the response.

Basically, there might be say, as many as 8 or 9 missions for each race, but they're not all in order of race, but more Chronological order...

as the only people who would play FO likely already know FO fairly well, it'll be easy for them to slip in, but the Campaign would also help some newcomers to FO learn more about it too, not just the setting but gameplay itself.

The sort of objectives that you'd find in the various missions: build a taskforce of whatever mix of ships, Repel a fleet, Clear the Warp-In 'spawn point', for non-combat ships. This last one many of you would find familiar with ground-based RTS games, like Command And Conquer, where the starting units are all combat units, and you clear the 'LZ' for your conny yard. in this case, you clear the area where the construction ships automatically warp-in too on completion of the objective.

Somewhat like the 'destroy all ships' objectives work in AII's campaign, only would be tied to a second enemy 'team', if it can't be tied to "Destroy all these ships here to complete objective" alone. I don't actually recall that being used, but I vaguely recall something along those lines for the timetravel mission with spock on a galaxy-class ship in A1 where at the end Spock brings the Klingons and romulans into alliance to fight the borg....

Anyway.

Hmm... sorry just got distracted by making a guide to what I imagine the FO campaign first mission was by just doing a custom map and ctrl+alt+p screenshotting I'll try to post them if I can :p

posted on December 2nd, 2009, 10:56 am

Also, check this for relevant info

The Campaign - The Hitchhiker's Guide to Fleet Operations

posted on December 2nd, 2009, 11:23 am

You can still design your own campaign. I seem to recall it was said that player-designed campaigns could be added to the game. How and when, I don't know, though.

posted on December 2nd, 2009, 11:49 am

Yeah, the "MMM" Megaman's Mission Mod I think. He has a WIP wiki up at the moment:

MMM

Eventually, there will be a dev campaign, and probably lots of player campaigns too

EDIT: Next patch the campaign switch will be switched back on, it was disabled in Fleet Os previously.

posted on December 2nd, 2009, 12:29 pm

So, even if "your" campaign is not an "official" campaign, you will still be able to create it and let other users add it to their games and play it.

This way, you don't need to spoil any surprises you might have planned for your campaigns. When you have it ready, post an installer and everyone will be able to play.

posted on December 2nd, 2009, 12:58 pm

I think it may change our versions though, so we may need separate installs.

posted on December 2nd, 2009, 1:10 pm

It's too soon to know for sure, but I'm going to speculate that any campaign that doesn't change any ODFs or ship/station related files shouldn't change version number. So you should be able to add the campaign without losing compatibility with Multiplayer.

But, as I said, this is speculation, one way or the other.

posted on December 2nd, 2009, 1:12 pm

Either way, custom and official campaigns = win

posted on December 2nd, 2009, 6:17 pm

I wonder if there will be any cinematic sequences in the official campaign? hmmm i mean like people not just starships. Although it could be done in maya i guess.

posted on December 2nd, 2009, 9:17 pm

I wonder if there will be any cinematic sequences in the official campaign? hmmm i mean like people not just starships. Although it could be done in maya i guess.

There will indeed be cinematic sequences (at least, that's what Optec last said - if I didn't misunderstand anything)

You can still design your own campaign. I seem to recall it was said that player-designed campaigns could be added to the game. How and when, I don't know, though.

Indeed, the Devs welcome this . Once the MMM is fully capable and the switch released, Mark was planning on beginning to put out campaigns I believe (seeing as his old way of doing assault maps required much odf modification - which has its own problems obviously - as well as not being nearly as nice as a sequence of games that can be played against the AI).

posted on December 2nd, 2009, 9:20 pm

I'm not a modder,... well I've modded a few ODF's before, (Like my install of FO of the stationary cloak from 'energydrainrate' to 'specialenergyuse' *snicker* I had quite literally, every unit and station except the construction ships cloaked. and about 8 disrupter turrets, cloaked, around the wormhole, the only entrance to the base.)

and I've created two maps in two days for FO, but nothing special..

posted on December 2nd, 2009, 9:29 pm

Will the MMM be released as a part of FO or is it just campaign tools?