Author Topic: Campaign 1 Plotline  (Read 17784 times)

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Offline karajorma

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Not my work. Thank/curse at Battuta for this one. :p


Wargames: Limited Response to Regional Insurrection
SP/MP campaign

Colonial Fleet doctrine refers to the militarized elements of the Sagittaron insurrection under the blanket term 'Anti-Colonial Forces' (ACF). In this simulated exercise, Colonial pilots, warship crew, and theater commanders must coordinate to suppress an organized ACF takeover of civilian shipping. Expected ACF tactics in the theater include hostage-taking, counterforce operations using covertly or overtly repurposed spaceborne infrastructure, psychological posturing, navigational denial, and direct attack by means of captured or subverted military equipment and personnel.

BLUE FORCE assets include Colonial battlestars, support ships, and their embarked combat air wings. RED FORCE assets include hijacked civilian shipping, improvised conventional and CAPTOR mines, engineered debris and asteroid impactors, and small number of Colonial military spacecraft and weapons.

RED FORCE intends to threaten or inflict damage to civilian assets and citizens in Sagittaron space in order to force concessions or retaliation from the Colonial government. RED FORCE will presumably act in conjunction with ground-side attacks.

BLUE FORCE objectives focus on limiting the effect of RED FORCE actions, carrying out pre-emptive defensive and offensive operations as dictated by BLUE FORCE imaging and intelligence assets, and sanctioning key RED FORCE assets when collateral damage is judged acceptable.

Mission 1: Violence of Action - scan, order dockings, and coordinate

ACF cells on Sagittaron announce that they have physically seized or placed bombs aboard civilian shipping at the Aeolus orbital transfer point. They will hold these vessels hostage until their demands are met. Sagittaron's shipping authorities have ordered a halt to all shipping in the area, but with more than 20 ships on-scene, communications in shambles, and the exact identity of the captured or sabotaged ships unknown, the Colonial Fleet must act decisively.

You will lead a squadron of Raptors carrying marine CQB specialists and EOD teams. Enter the Aeolus flotilla and use your Raptor's hull-penetrating radar to identify the ships with hostage-takers or bombs aboard. Order the appropriate teams to make covert entry to these vessels and then signal a coordinated strike. In the event of a hijacked civilian vessel attempting to jump away, you are authorized to use lethal force.

A second Raptor unit will provide ESM for this mission and jam all transmissions between ships in the flotilla.

Mission 2A -  Force Projection - warhead intercept + subsystem destruction

The successful resolution of the Aeolus transfer point crisis without loss of life has allowed BLUE FORCE information correction teams to insulate the Sagittaron  population from ACF propaganda. But you permitted a civilian vessel to escape the Aeolus rally point. With more than 1200 passengers aboard and at least eighteen heavily armed hijackers in control, this jump-capable spacecraft represents both a significant political risk and a potential military asset for the Sagittaron ACF.

Colonial imaging assets have detected the target vessel in a debris field near Sagittaron's trailing Lagrange point. We believe the ship may be attempting to rendezvous with other ACF vessels. Some BLUE FORCE intelligence analysts believe that the ACF has planted missile or torpedo emplacements in the debris field in hopes of luring a Colonial warship into a trap. As a result of integrated human and imaging intelligence, BLUE FORCE HIGHER has declared a NUCLEAR ALERT.

You will lead a Viper squadron deployed from a Sobek-class battlestar in a sweep of the debris field. Clear the area of navigational hazards or ACF interdiction assets while the battlestar hold station. A negotiator aboard the battlestar will maintain constant contact with the hijackers in an attempt to prevent any loss of human life while you operate. Once you have cleared a path, Raptor ESM assets will blind the target vessel's sensors.

If the battlestar comes under guided missile attack, you will neutralize the launchers. Keep an eye on your radiological alarms. The ACF may have acquired nuclear warheads. Marines are standing by to storm the target once you allow the Raptors room to work.

Mission 2B - Hearts Are Minds - warhead intercept + disable or destroy

The destruction of a hijacked civilian vessel at the Aeolus transfer point has drawn significant attention, and the ACF have vowed to retaliate. BLUE FORCE intelligence believes that a physical attack on fleet oilers and container ships convoyed in high Saggitaron orbit is likely. Unfortunately, the events at Aeolus have led to widespread unrest among privately owned Sagittaron shippers, and we are unable to obtain compliance from many of the vessels under threat. We must contain the situation by preventing further loss of life.

After a launch-and-leave deployment from your battlestar, you will coordinate with a group of three frigates to corral convoyed shipping. Separate ships carrying volatiles from the rest of the group. Ships may break from their groups unless you approach and fire warning shots.

Some BLUE FORCE analysts believe that the real target of this operation may be Colonial Fleet assets. ACF may launch suicide attacks on our frigates using tankers or kamikaze ships. It will be up to you to disable - or, if necessary, destroy - these vessels. You may also come under fire from ship-launched anti-fighter missiles.

In the event that the destruction of civilian shipping becomes a military necessity, Raptor ESM units will jam outbound transmissions in order to contain rippling instability.

Mission 3 - Collateral Damage - light dogfight + raptor escort

Intelligence gathered from interrogation of captured hijackers points to an imminent NUCLEAR THREAT. ACF plan to detonate a weapon in Sagittaron's atmosphere, generating an electromagnetic pulse as cover for a wide-scale planetary insurrection. We believe that this weapon will be delivered from space.

The attack methodology is closer to a full-scale military operation than a characteristic insurgent strike. Using reprogrammed CYLOTRON drones from Sagittaron's Fleet training facilities, ACF forces will escort the warhead to its release point aboard an armored civilian vessel. As additional insurance, the ACF has placed thousands of hostages aboard and announced that this vessel is carrying political dissidents they intend to move to safety. We cannot unilaterally destroy the vessel without major political consequences.

You will lead a Viper squadron in an attack on the nuclear transport's escorts. These drones are not responding to shutdown codes and may be armed with live ammunition. You will interdict the drones, including any additional units which launch from the transport, and provide security as Marines close in and board the target.

We expect casualties among hostages and marines.

If the marine strike fails, destroy the target spacecraft. Disabling the vessel will only cause the ACF aboard to detonate the warhead.

Mission 4 - Decapitation - engage vipers and bolithos

Over the past eight hours, BLUE FORCE intelligence has tracked ACF's nuclear arsenal to a Fleet cache embedded in an asteroid at Sagittaron's leading Trojan point. We believe that the ACF has compromised and seized this installation, and that significant portions of their leadership may even now be aboard.

You will lead a full-on attack against the asteroid's defenses. Live ammunition and combat spacecraft were stored aboard, and two frigates slated for decommissioning were also moored nearby. Working in cooperation with your battlestar, you will conduct a fighter sweep and SEAD mission, targeting all ACF combat assets in the area for destruction. You are authorized to unilaterally destroy any civilian vessel attempting to leave the engagement zone.

In the event of an ACF NUCLEAR RELEASE you will provide close escort for your battlestar. We consider the live capture of these leadership elements critical to successful resolution of the insurgency.

Mission 5 -

I'd like to have a thematic followup that indicates the difficulty of suppressing a distributed insurgency by military force, but I don't have anything yet.

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Offline karajorma

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Okay guys, I don't feel like assigning missions so your first job as a dev team is to decide who wants which mission? :D
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Offline General Battuta

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This outline is a little sketchy and it's my fault!

I think it's obvious that M1 branches at the end when a civilian ship under hijacker control attempts to escape. You're forced to decide whether to blow it up or let it jump away.

Get to know and love the weapon-create SEXP! It can make any ship shoot missiles!
« Last Edit: October 08, 2012, 12:57:34 pm by General Battuta »

 
Quote
Thank/curse at Battuta for this one. :p

Definitely not what I would have expected. Love it though.



As for the who gets what, I'm a bit partial to M1, since that would be all new for me. What about everyone else?
Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

 
That's fine with me Suongadon.  I'm fine with just taking them in order.  I'll do 2A.  Do you guys have a general time frame in mind to do each mission?

 
Get to know and love the weapon-create SEXP! It can make any ship shoot missiles!
+1
or make long range cruise missile appear in the mission area
or ... damn I just had a ton of ideas I have to write down until I can test them.

 

Offline karajorma

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Do you guys have a general time frame in mind to do each mission?

As in how long you should take to write the missions? No specific time frame, just don't sit around for ages doing nothing. And if you lose interest, please tell us that you won't be able to complete your mission.
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Wow, that's a far cry from what I started my last mission with!   :eek:
Taking them in order sounds good to me, which gives me 2B.  I suppose I can no longer put off learning tube launches!  As for a timeline, my first mission took about a week or so, so I figure somewhere in that ballpark before I have something playable.  Maybe we could commit to update here every Monday or so?  What do you guys think of using DropBox to sync our files?

 
Since all of the missions appear to be in the proximity of Sagittaron we need to agree on which skybox to use.  Mission 2A calls for placement in the planets trailing Lagrange point so that limits the choices.  Unless I'm mistaken that would be the dark side of the planet and only SkyBox_Blue_01.pof seems to be sufficient.  Let me know if you guys disagree.

On a side note.  I need to create a debris field which I thought I could easily create by placing some ships and setting them to explode before the mission starts.  However, regardless of how early I set the timer you still see a bit of the explosion.  Anyone know how to suppress that?  I tried the vaporize check box.

 
I can definitely post progress each week but I'm not sure I can have a completed mission each week.  I'll do my best to keep up with the group.  I was thinking a week to get a good outline/playable mission.  Probably a few more weeks for testing/polishing and incorporating any feedback.  I thought it would be nice to help voice each others missions too.  Even if we're not great voice actors I think it will beat having messages missed in combat.

Dropbox is fine with me.  I haven't used it before but I assume it's straight forward.

 

Offline karajorma

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I don't think it's a great idea to insist on updating the missions themselves on a certain day. But having a day to post updates in terms of what you've done isn't a bad one. :)
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For the debris field in my mission, I used the Asteroid Field editor: check "enabled" "passive" and "ship" and you can select up to three groups of debris to populate the field with.  Then you just enter the X,Y,Z values that you want to bound the field in and the number of pieces you want in the field.  You can only set up one field this way, but the result is unique every time and looks pretty good.

I don't think it's a great idea to insist on updating the missions themselves on a certain day. But having a day to post updates in terms of what you've done isn't a bad one. :)
That's what I meant, but it's a pretty important clarification! *nightmares about cranking out unfinished missions*

 
Since all of the missions appear to be in the proximity of Sagittaron we need to agree on which skybox to use.  Mission 2A calls for placement in the planets trailing Lagrange point so that limits the choices.  Unless I'm mistaken that would be the dark side of the planet and only SkyBox_Blue_01.pof seems to be sufficient.  Let me know if you guys disagree.

On a side note.  I need to create a debris field which I thought I could easily create by placing some ships and setting them to explode before the mission starts.  However, regardless of how early I set the timer you still see a bit of the explosion.  Anyone know how to suppress that?  I tried the vaporize check box.


Actually, the trailing Lagrange point is L5, the dark-side Lagrange point is L2. http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/mission/observatory_l2.html  For the debris, I think it would be a lot easier to use the asteroid field tab and make it that way, rather than blowing up a bunch of ships.

Wow, that's a far cry from what I started my last mission with!   :eek:
Taking them in order sounds good to me, which gives me 2B.  I suppose I can no longer put off learning tube launches!  As for a timeline, my first mission took about a week or so, so I figure somewhere in that ballpark before I have something playable.  Maybe we could commit to update here every Monday or so?  What do you guys think of using DropBox to sync our files?

Don't know anything about dropbox, but I could commit to update mondays/weekly at least. Probably will be doing most of a first draft of M1 tomorrow evening though.

and tube launches aren't all that necessary I think, but if you do want them, set the vipers docked and use jettison-cargo-delay rather than say, place them manually in the tubes.... like I did.
Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

 

Offline karajorma

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I'll see if I can get the launch tube tutorial up within the next few days.
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Thanks guys for the tip on the debris field.  Are you sure L5 is the trailing point?  It's referred to as one of the Trojan points on the wiki page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point

I want tackle a tube launch too, but I'll probably do that last :)  I looked at M1 from the campaign and there was a lot of fredding involved.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Tube launches aren't that bad if you go off an existing mission and know how to use the docking trick.

 
Thanks guys for the tip on the debris field.  Are you sure L5 is the trailing point?  It's referred to as one of the Trojan points on the wiki page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point

Both L4 and L5 are Trojan points, L4 is ahead of the planet's orbital path, and L5 follows after it.
Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

 
Thanks for the clarification Suongadon.  That opens the choices up a bit.  We still need agree on one for consistency, so just let me know what you guys think.

 
I don't have any problem with that skybox, but I think we should avoid using the same one for each mission.  From looking at "Resources.html", it looks like the dev's skyboxes each have four versions and SkyBox_Blue_01, Skybox_Blue_02, and Skybox_Desert_02 might pass as the same planet, which would give us a pool of 12 boxes.  Since the L4 and L5 points are so far from the planet you wouldn't really see it, so maybe a more generic skybox would be best for M2A and M4?  M3 should be closest to the atmosphere, so any of the "very low orbit" or rotated ones should be good for that (_##.pof or _##c.pof).  M2B specifically says it's in high orbit (_##b.pof).  I don't know where the "transfer point" should be, but I would guess that normal orbit may be good for M1 (_##a.pof). It's late: this may or may not make sense.

There is a bitmap of the planet Desert_2, which would be useful in building a skybox for M4/M2A since you can make those pretty small.  I have a starfield that I've been putting together to be semi-realistic (based on wikipedia data) in terms of colors and intensity.  I actually think using that starfield and the bitmap planets would give a much nicer result.  I'll include that in the dropbox when I set it up.

Oh, I got the tube launch to work!!!  It turns out that the Jettison_Cargo_Delay SEXP tries to force an acceleration toward the bow and dorsal of the battlestar.

 

Offline Killer Whale

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Okay, I haven't actually completed a mission yet as karajoma asked us to do before hand, but I've had a few ideas and would like to give M3 a go.

Quick question, the outline mentions "In this simulated exercise..." How is everyone tackling this? Are you doing the (de)briefings/dialogue "in-character" so to say, or as if everyone knows they're in a simulation.