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Custom campains - ideas and suggestions

Discussion in 'General' started by Lucian, Jan 23, 2022.

  1. Lucian

    Lucian Catgirl Nation

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    Anyone got to actually making custom missions yet? If so, please share your suggestions!

    Okay, so first things first - I think that the whole structure of the basic and outcast campains are kinda meh. I have a sort of an idea of a homebrew campain, but it's still in a concept stage. Perhaps someone will have a better suggestion on that matter.
    So, here's a thought - WHAT IF after Defiance's success (?) in raiding "Non-human sphere" all kinds of bounty hunters and mercenaries thought - "We can surely test our luck over there". And so a new golden rush begins. Or that is just another TOP SECRET mission, with plausable denial and all, so you are on your own. Or some PMC decided to acquire alien tech. Or maybe that would be just a generic "adventures in a human sphere" (as a mercenary) type of a campain. Something like first 2-3 books of the Expance series with a bunch of entrepenours for hire on a ship.
    Key things:
    - No linear mission structure.
    - Buying/upgrading stuff is not that easy. You don't get stuff out of thin air.
    - Just for the sake of convenience healing/repairing will stay the same mid-mission step. We just assume that a crew crazy enough to attemt this has enough equipment to sustain long-term enemy territory raids.

    What you do:
    - Old X-Com like managing of your base (ship).
    - Similar to outlined in Paradiso books "wolf packs" stuff - raiding ships and outposts, looting woodootech and cashing it out.
    - You are on your own.

    Campain structure:
    It should be somethig similar to an old PC games like Blietzkrieg or C&C tiberian Sun:
    - You have a main mission, side missions and a TIMED deadline. So time is a new resource. Some missions might not require it, while others do.
    - Missions take time to complete (i.e. you take time to get there,recon and prep.)
    - Some side missions can give a bonus stuff/alter main mission
    - Mostly like assault mode. Easier side missions might help with newbie characters.
    - Some missions may lead to additional missions (like missions 1 and 2 in core campain)
    - Getting new equipment or escorts requires to visit a hub (so it eats not only money, but vauable time too)
    - Sometimes during campain, if you get badly hurt and can't go on, you might fall back into "Human sphere" or your base. You'll get to keep stuff, but lose some of campain progress.
    - Missions give you stuff, money and rating. Mercenary rating (something similar to a Revenant campain thing) should affect the quality of available equipment and escort troops. And ship upgrades and maybe some availability/discounts.
    - Aristeia-like sponsors/allegiances?
    - Some missions might give you a choice - do the objective OR loot stuff and get out. Or even better - some moral dilemma - like the thing totally missed in an Outcast campain. Shasvaasti attack O-12 facility? Well, lets sneak in and loot their armory! Without equipment thoy'll die for sure (And if you wipe all data they'll never find out it was you). Or help O-12 (gain rating). Or kill everyone and loot corpses.
    - Collect and sell enemy cubes? Maybe.
    - Humanity rating? Might be a good idea, just not in the way it is implemented in Outcast book, rather just a sort of karma system. Are you "good guys" (StarCO) or a bunch of mercantile d*cks (Ikari)? Karma level might affect the kind of troops (Characters?) that are available to you and local authorities' opinion on you. Maybe some merchants will even make a discount for you or give "special mission/item"!
    - Could have conflicting objectives on missions. Like loot stuff (get money, lose karma) / rescue personnel (gain karma, get troops, much less money) / just kill some *signature* alien (Like Charontid) to get a mighty plasma rifle and get out (which can be kept of sold later).

    Thoughts?
     
    #1 Lucian, Jan 23, 2022
    Last edited: Sep 19, 2022
    anaris, Daniel Darko and Abrilete like this.
  2. solkan

    solkan Well-Known Member

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    :tada: Congratulations and condolences on embarking on a period of life as a campaign designer. :tada:

    Only real complaint I've got about your list is
    You've posted two statements that are completely unconnected. You don't get stuff out of thin air.

    New stuff on board the ship is the result of one or more of the following (not exhaustive list):
    • Buying or trading for new things
    • Using the things you've found on the mission
    • Spending time adapting or fixing equipment on the ship
    But, more importantly, there's a really important design reason to have ship upgrades: It allows you to have group advancements, instead of just individual character advancements. Improve the medical bay, or buy new guns?

    If you want to claim that getting new equipment or escorts eats up not only money but valuable time, too, and not claim that character advancements require valuable time, that's completely unrealistic. You'd don't spontaneously become a better person after a mission, you become a better person because you spent time training and if you notice the difference during a mission it means your training just paid off. :triumph::v:

    What you typically see in campaign rules is that the designers assume there's a certain amount of time between missions, and that you'll be able to do enough training and maintenance and whatever to explain the advances between missions. That way they don't have to sit down and figure out how long each thing takes, and deal with arguments over whether X should take longer than Y (or argue whether training should take X days or Y days). For really big things, like the Defiance Engines, those get broken up into multiple upgrades.

    It's perfectly reasonable to say "If you want Ultimate Fancy Gun" you need to go on Shopping Mission and get a success, or you need a Fancy Loot Token from a mission to trade for it (possibly also using up your advancement time between missions). But that sort of thing should probably be reserved for important things, not Combi Rifles.

    P.S. If you try to steal a plasma rifle from a Charontid, the end result is at best a gun that you can't buy ammunition for, that you don't really know the mechanics of (and probably don't know how to operate), and that you can't replace. Even weapons that don't use ammunition degrade and break down over time. So does equipment and armor.

    Why doesn't the campaign make you deal with maintenance? It's boring, and it can be swept under the rug of between mission maintenance time. And the ship carries supplies, and has a machine shop because people have to do maintenance. (The ship is a mobile base, not just some sort of van in space used to get from mission to mission.)

    But it still means that being able to use a plasma rifle during a mission requires more stuff than just one stolen gun. You need a stolen gun and all of its support equipment and supplies (which is more than what the person carrying the gun is carrying).
     
  3. Wizzy

    Wizzy Well-Known Member

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    If anyone wants to start creating Shasvastii character sheets, there's this comic strip by bromadpropaganda that could be used as a campaign story :laughing:

    [​IMG]
     
  4. ChrisCenobite

    ChrisCenobite Member

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    I was thinking about sandbox game with a hexagonal map tiles (like Fallout board game). Imagine all characters/enemies/npc all stuck on a planet and different factions control different regions.
    You face many encounters that lets you trade, negotiate, gather resources etc. It could be similar to games like Fallout 1, 2, Tactics, Wasteland 2, 3 etc.
    Shadows of Brimstone has a big community that made hexcrawl system so it is possible to do the same with Defiance I think.
    https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1239257/shadows-brimstone-hexcrawl
     
    #4 ChrisCenobite, Aug 22, 2022
    Last edited: Aug 22, 2022
  5. Noir Kara

    Noir Kara Member

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    Aristeia! Is a hex system by Corvus Belli of course. I am using it at present with the RP game to advance my idea of Aristos taking part in the war (some like Taowu and Major Lunah have their own Infinity models). It seems to me that house-to-house fighting in invaded cities would be well suited to this kind of approach.
     
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