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New Campaign Idea

Hola everyone,
First off I'd like to say a big hello from everyone over at the Independence War forums (at least, some people there... ok, just me and a couple other people who like FreeSpace there... )

Now to the subject of the message-- a couple months ago I came up with a kind of strange idea for an FS2 campaign called the "Chimera Factor"... my storyline follows;

November 27, 2336

<Mission 1 - Patrol Duty>
You've been assigned to the GTD Excalibur, one of the GTVA's defences in Epsilon Pegasi. In the past 12 months, the Neo-Terran Front has been pounding the system's defences pretty hard, and has damaged the Excalibur. You're first mission is to escort the ship to the shipyards in Deneb. All is going fairly to plan as the ship jumps insystem and you pick up escort. You encounter a few fringe NTF forces, but nothing you can't handle. As the Excalibur comes into dock with the main shipyards facility, the station starts picking up some anomolous subspace readings off of the nearby Regulus jumpnode.

<Mission 2 - Into the Fire>
It's been a grueling hour as you help the techs refit a wing of Myrmedon fighters with intersystem jump drives, but you're finally back out in space, in the subspace wormhole between Deneb and Regulus. You're picking up the same subspace fluxes that the station had seen starting an hour ago, desparately trying to track down the source of the anomolies. Finally, you reach the end of the wormhole...

<Mission 3 - Treason>
...and emerge straight into the fire from a Shivan Cruiser the likes of which no one has ever seen. Your sensors take a deep hit and your entire wing is down. Desparately, you break for the Deneb jumpnode and make your way back to the station.

<Mission 4 - The Usual Suspects>
It has been determined that you are a traitor to the GTVA and an NTF sympathizer. Your story of the Shivan cruiser doesn't fit as the Shivans disappeared over 30 years ago, and your flightlog recorder was "convieniently" destroyed by aforementioned ship. You are en route to the Beta Aquilae system on a prisoner transport, along with one other supposed NTF sympathizer. He tells you that he managed to get a bomb in the main communications array, and that there will be a three minute window between the time the bomb goes off and when the crew will be able to initialize the secondary system, during which time you and he can take over the ship. He can't fly at the moment, so you're going to have to take the controls. The plan goes off flawlessly, and you're in command of the ship, 10 minutes out from the Beta Aquilae node. All goes well until about the 5 minute mark when a patrol wing comes by and queries you. Barely, you manage to sneak under their noses and make off for the node. Two minutes and counting, and a Hacate class destroyer comes through the node. "Prisoner Transport, you are out of your assigned vector. Stop now."
Desparately, you break for the node, dodging fire from the destroyer and the now reappeared patrol wing, barely managing to jump out in time.

<Between mission developments>
You made an insystem jump and are now in the Delta Serpentis system having scuttled the transport and made it to ground. Your mysterious friend reveals that he was an operative for the Special Operations Command, and that he had been undercover in the NTF when he was captured by the GTVA. As far as the GTVA is concerned, both of you are escapees or dead, and since they're in the middle of the NTF civil war, they don't have the resources to hunt you down. You explain to him what had happened to you, and he contacts his superiors. After a fair bit of convincing, he's managed to get them to let you into the SOC.

<Mission 5 - Anomolous Readings>
You're back in the Regulus system, analyzing the subspace energies of the system. Sure enough, there's a distortion in the subspace node that matches the readings you had detected. After fighting off a couple NTF scout wings, an enemy cruiser comes insystem and you and your wingman decide it's time to jump out.

<Mission 6 - Where am I?>
Maybe you didn't do such a great job jumping out as you thought. While your intended destination was an insystem rendevous point with SOC, you have no idea where you are. But you're not alone. Ahead of you is what looks like a Shivan version of a GTI Arcadia, with a fleet of shivan fighters (powered down), a couple cruisers, a Demon class destroyer (also powered down), and several patrol wings. There are no nebulae or defining constillations, although your wingman just spotted what looks like a subspace node about 15 klicks distant. Fortunately for you, you'll only have to skirt the patrols, and if you play your cards right, you think you might not even be spotted. Suddenly, there's a surge of subspace energies, and the unknown cruiser jumps in, the shivan patrols spot you, the destroyer and fighters power up, and you have an entire Shivan armada on your tail with a mysterious (but incredibly overarmed) cruiser in front of you. If you're good, you fight off the first wave of fighters and make it to the node alive. If you're not lucky, well, what's one more dead terran?

<Mission 7 - With Intent to Kill>
SOC has reviewed your flightlog recordings and has determined you accidentally jumped through a subspace distortion generated by the cruiser (Designation Chimera), ending up in an unvisited section of the Regulus system. They've dispatched a Corvette and two wings of bombers and four wings of fighters to take out the installation and every shivan ship in sensors range. You show up in front of the Installation again, almost exactly as you saw it before, only this time the Chimera is not in evidence. This is the only real "Classic" FS2 mission, basically consisting of destroying everything in sight.

<Mission 8 - Chasing Chimera I>
A GTVA Science Cruiser has been picking up some srange subspace readings, and has been in pursuit for the past couple hours. They've called in for some reinforcements as the strength of the readings is increasing. You and Beta wing jump in to assist, escorting the cruiser and helping verify readings. Suddenly, a wing of NTF fighters jumps you, pouring fire into the cruiser, taking the thing out in one pass. More NTF fighters jump in, followed by a NTF destroyer. Everything goes white in an EMP burst as the Chimera decloaks and opens up on the NTF forces. You barely manage to get a scan in of the ship before jumping out.

<Mission 9 - A Close Encounter>
It's been a couple months since your encounter with the Chimera, and there have been no further subspace anomolies, which leads you to believe that the NTF must have managed to take out the ship. SOC scientists are still analyzing your scan data, unable to determine what made the cruiser tick. The GTVA has entered the endgame of the war with the NTF, divided between the civil war and the nebula beyond Gamma Draconis. There have been some sketchy reports on a massive shivan craft, something to outmatch even the Colossus. Command has assigned you and two wings of fighters to a cruiser to investigate the flightpaths of all GTVA craft to see if you can find any evidence of this craft. The first two of 50 waypoints turn up clean, although you've been reading some subspace surges nearby, similar to the readings of the Chimera. All hell breaks loose as several wings of shivans start jumping in, keeping you from your task. You barely manage to hold out, but you finally take down the ships and are waiting as your fighters and the cruiser jump out, but just as you're powering up your jump drives, you think you see something on your radar. Subspace does nothing to clear your thoughts.

<Mission 10 - Chasing Chimera II>
SOC has released data on the Chimera to GTVA command, and they have determined that the ship does have a weakness... a directed surge of subspace energy should be able to temporarily disable the ship's reactors. The GVD Pta'nu has been fitted with a device that is similar to a Subspace field coil, only it does not create a wormhole, but a burst of subspace energy. It will disable the subspace drives of any craft inside the 5 kilometer damage radius, but it should be enough to also disable the Chimera's engine's long enough to take it down. As you and several fighter and bomber wings and the GTD Aquitane follow the Pta'nu from a safe distance, hot on Chimera's trail, the ship suddenly appears in front of the Pta'nu. The Destroyer barely manages to get off a pulse before the Chimera vaporizes it. You now have about three minutes to destroy the Chimera before it recloaks. As the ship goes down, a huge shockwave streaks out from the ship, crippling your ship (if you're lucky) and probably taking out most ships in the area (except the Aquitane). Everything is good and happy again. The end.

Since I wrote this storyline I've come up with some new ideas, but I'd like to run this one by everyone here first so I can get some suggestions.

Thanks!
Astral

I think your dates are off.....the NTF isn't around until like 2360-something.

My apologies... I forgot what I was doing and copied my mission story off of my old .txt file... I had fixed it in a later draft. The actual date is something like 2367 I think (2335 + 32yrs)

[This message has been edited by Astral (edited 04-07-2001).]

50 waypoints?!?
The storyline seems fine.
You´ll make a new MOD for the shivan cruiser?

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Also known as Dark Lazarus and Lighter02.
Leader of the Stealth wing, 3rd Cryabouts.

i have a cool idea for a new shivan cruiser.its in my head but i dont know how to mod new ships.

how do i mod anybody??

As soon as I figure out how to myself...
I can build/texture the model, but I'm not sure as to the coding side of it in order to get it into the game itself.

I've also got an idea for a slight change to the story (I'm beginning to realise just how disjointed it is) to seal up some of the holes, make it a bit more interesting, and maybe add a few missions. Of course, I've also got to figure out how to write SEXPs fluently, but I guess it would help if I worked on it a little more.

Astral

For MOD design check out ¨The fighter tutorial¨(a nice job, but a little difficult in the beginning). But making a cruiser with that tutorial can turn into a problem.

------------------
Also known as Dark Lazarus and Lighter02.
Leader of the Stealth wing, 3rd Cryabouts.

I've got about a page of concept sketches for the Chimera... I'm thinking either have a botched together job with the prongs of a Lilith cruiser sticking out of a Vasudan chassis with maybe Terran engines (or something along those lines), or a pure shivan design that looks sort of like a flattened Lilith cruiser that looks kind of like a miniture Lucifer with a sort of glowing energy pulse look to it... I'm not sure yet, but it will probably shape up interestingly (assuming I can get the poly count low enough )

Thanks for listening to me,
Astral