[SF-Junky]

Milords and Miladies!

Imagine the following situation, if you please. Our heroes have, through information provided by a third party, found out that the enemy is hiding in an as yet unknown star system which is, in fact, a nebula system. Now I kind of need/want to have a mission which shows our heroes travelling through that jump node.

Do you have any good ideas on what to do with the situation except "fly through the node a blow a few hostile cruisers/corvettes out of space"? As said, the enemy is hiding and avoiding a direct confrontation (for now, that is ). On the other hand, the previous two missions have already been rather peaceful, so a little bit of action might be good.

€: Another idea is to let the player squad attack an asteroid base. What could be done there that goes a little bit beyond "destroy all hostiles in the field"?

[Assassin714]

You find something unknown in the nebula, which you think is your enemy, but it is unidentifiable, and then the enemy attacks it and you have to protect it.

[Colonol Dekker]

Hide amongst normal node traffic, kind of like a customs checkpoint, then make a break for it without being allowed to fire on friendly forces?

[Colt]

Hmm.

Well, if the protagonists have fleet assets on their side, then maybe they could be supporting a destroyer or corvette team in their quest to take out the enemy fleet. Perhaps some cargo units nearby could add to the idea that the enemy is assembling for a future confrontation (taking these out could be secondary or bonus objective)? After a certain amount of losses sustained, perhaps the enemy deploys a heretofore unknown warship (destroyer, antagonist command ship, maybe a new ship-class?) and wreck havoc on the protagonist's team. Now you cover the retreat.

EDIT: If the nebula is pretty stormy, then maybe an AWACS-like ship could be assisting the enemy fleet's coordination in the nebula. Taking out it's radar dish could slow the arrival of reinforcement fighter/bomber wings. In regard to the asteroid base idea, maybe capturing it instead with troop transports?

[Nightmare]

Minefield, suicide drones jumping in, deactivated remote nukes/Sentry guns suddenly going online... if you want something crazy maybe something like a Mjolnir firing out of a drifting asteroid.

[General Battuta]

Milords and Miladies!

Imagine the following situation, if you please. Our heroes have, through information provided by a third party, found out that the enemy is hiding in an as yet unknown star system which is, in fact, a nebula system. Now I kind of need/want to have a mission which shows our heroes travelling through that jump node.

Do you have any good ideas on what to do with the situation except "fly through the node a blow a few hostile cruisers/corvettes out of space"? As said, the enemy is hiding and avoiding a direct confrontation (for now, that is ). On the other hand, the previous two missions have already been rather peaceful, so a little bit of action might be good.

€: Another idea is to let the player squad attack an asteroid base. What could be done there that goes a little bit beyond "destroy all hostiles in the field"?

Nebula's stormy, sensors scrambled, have the players travel with a warship or several (if plot allows) and start building up the sense there's Enemies Out There. Intermittent contacts, some of them very powerful, but always gone by the time you can reach them. Is the enemy all around us??? Then randomize whether an enemy strike actually occurs, and when. (You'll have to beware about killing the player/failing the mission after lots of buildup and running around, though.)

e: Beam fire from a distant engagement, if plot allows.

[0rph3u5]

If the Nebula is an unknown system (check) I'd have my protagonist take readings (composition, density, comms and sensor quality) to plan future ops (you know the little things that turn into tactical advantages)

A lot of that can be done with simple tasks - fly x meters from the node, fly speed s for t seconds, fly to point a, get distance x from friendlies, drop a probe which replaces your secondaries, tag a passing ship and watch the signal fade - which can chained, scaled and adapted to fit the point in the narrative.

[0rph3u5]

Addendum to above:
As for the "action requirement", there are always enemy patrol you can drop in semi randomly (as Battuta said), but depending on history with the nebula there could also be clusters of sentries from previous expeditions through the node - e.g protected ressource or salvage claims - which just became forgotten for some reason.

But I'd rather build tension back up instead jumping back into action, so rather go with avoiding confrontation than having it - best by having you guided around them for example (have signals from an AWACs not get through at full brandwith to be beam the targeting data directly to the player or something like that). and of course here are envoirmental hazards you can drop in, e.g. if you combine is-in-box with a check on player speed (friction) or a counter and distance check (radiation) - that also would give some tools to shake up future missions.

[SF-Junky]

These are good ideas. Thanks for the input. I've also contemplated if I can combine the two ideas. Attack the asteroid base and track an enemy ship through the node into the nebula. But I think I'll make it an AWACS patrol mission including micro jumps (kudos to Vassago's Dirge).

[NeonShivan]

*Cracks knuckles with FREDDING intent* Consider my interest peaked.

The nebula mission idea could take multiple routes, you could go the whole Sync/Transcend route and make it a jump scare/horror mission, or turn it into a mission like:

• Player jumps in
• Player completes objective
• Mission updates with new objectives
• New objective spirals out of control
• Run for it?

EDIT: Misread the whole thread