OK so here is the summary finally.
Split Scientist Plot Part1
The choice with 'consequence' will take the form of a decision between serving one of two employers. At the beginning of the Plot the player is contacted by the Split Strong Arms corp. They want you to track down a female Split who disappeared just before her wedding. She was to marry a young and potentially influential member of another family as a bridle but seems to have run off and created something of a scandal between two powerful families. Shortly after the player accepts the mission they are contacted by a representative of the Jonferco corporation who ALSO want the player to find the Split woman, they just want the player to return her to Jonferco and keep it secret from the Split. Intelligent players should begin to wonder what's really going on right about here. So the player is sent off to talk with someone, who sends them off to talk to someone else, etc. etc. Each person has a piece of information but wants something for it. Do this for me. Do that for me. Insert random mission here. Along the way the player discovers that the Split woman is actually a brilliant scientist that has been working on space ship engine technology. So after much hoodoo and humdrum the player eventually earns the location of the woman's lab and heads to wherever we decide to put it. I'm thinking somewhere sufficiently out of the way to explain why the player was needed in the first place. (Note: The reason is due to the HUB being in player hand and needed to reach the sector she is in?)
From here onwards a few changes based on feedback:
- 1. No female Split visual conversations or interaction, incoming messages are OK.
2. The Player Corporation creation will be removed from this plot line and will be set as a follow up, more to that later.
3. Also we are not going to use the race track in this one, maybe in a later one.
So now she'll talk with the player. During the conversation the player will find out that yes, she ran away from her marriage. She had her research to pursue and neither the time nor the interest to be an unofficial bridle to curb some brutish male's homicidal tendencies. "Research?" The player asks. "Yes research." She confirms. She then explains how she's working on a new means of FTL travel (which is based on a reverse engineered Terran M/AM Rambus, which she's much less open about.) It doesn't take long to determine that this is the corporations real interest in her. There will also be dialogue trees here allowing the player to talk to her about the two corporations. Through them the player can learn about both sides, and what she believes their agendas are. The Split don't give half a hump about her marriage. They're only interested in her research. Just like the Yaki. "Yaki?" the player asks. "Yes, Yaki!" She then explains the connection between Jonferco and the Beryl group in greater or lesser detail depending on what we hear back from Egosoft. I'm still somewhat vague on how transparent or clandestine that connection is. Still, she should be able to paint the picture to allow the player to make a reasonably informed decision. Starting by telling the player how they've gotten themselves in between a rock and a hard place. Snub one or the other but count on one of 'em being pissed. "Why now?" the player asks. "Why the sudden interest when they weren't before?" Or something to that effect. She doesn't know. The research is still far from finished and unusable. In either case she has no interest in leaving her station and being held captive by either and refuses to go with the player ... but then admits that her research has reached a point where she requires funding for materials and personnel that she can't afford and reluctantly agrees to allow the player to act as a go between to make arrangements with one or the other corporation. Enter the choice. By now the player should know who is who and have a pretty clear understanding of what's about to happen in terms of their relationship with either the Split of the Yaki. This sets up the good guy / bad guy split and determines hostile interests in the future of the plot. Good guy choice is to honor original agreement and go back to the Split. Bad guy choice is take more money / better tech and go to Jonferco / Yaki at the cost of Split rep. Whichever entity is denied will become the antagonist for later missions. If the Strong Arms were snubbed there will be Strong Arms agents gunning for the player later on. But if Jonferco is snubbed the Yaki are gunning for them. And I use the term 'gunning for' loosely. These don't have to be combat missions, so much as competitions of some sort, even if that competition is who gets resource A to station X first.
The player returns to one or the other corp. and makes the pitch to either the Split Strong Arms or the Jonferco / Beryl / Yaki, convincing one or the other to sponsor the woman's research, thus ending the original mission and beginning the next phase. Insert appropriate cash / tech reward here.
------Major Pause in this plot line
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Player Corporation Plot
This plot line is based on the idea to allow the player to create his own corporation. This is pure fictional and should only include lore to serve as reference or enlighten the player. The player corp plot also includes the own sector reward, as it’s the location the Corp HQ is located. This should be a simple plot in structure, story but heavy in trade and think, or fight, depending on player choice. Only 2 choices are possible. Trade Corp or Security Corp. Trade corp will feature 80% of trade/build mission type of missions and 20% patrol/kill/defend missions, whereas for the security corp it’s the other way around. These missions should be from the generic mission’s pool but with higher values for trade, multiple stations for build, difficult patrol and defend missions. The corp rank (fictional) will be used to trigger the different stages in this plot line, where we will use a system that rewards points based on effort. This system is yet to be made, but it will reward effort not kills, where 1 trade run for 10k (just a number) Microchips will get rewarded much higher than a simple patrol mission.
Steps in this plot are as:
- Player gets contacted informing it would be good to set up own corp, as it will allow for better solve upcoming tasks (link to “main” Plot part 1?)
- Player has to “search” for the sector (sector location should be somewhat central and after a unknown sector, or Freedoms Reach, my favorites are 6/9 near Legends Hone or 10/5 or 12/5 near Clarity End)
- Deliver wares to construction TL(s) for the Corp HQ
- Interact with Teladi for possible integration to Stock Exchange (bribe here, pay there, ect)
- When “reputation” is enough and set amount of time has passed HQ is up, player gets attacked by completion/pirates.
- Set up stationary defenses (faked) 1-2 OWPs (paid for in cash and resources)
- Get corp reputation high enough to earn owning sector (again trade and defend)
------end corp plot
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Split Scientist Plot Part2
Next the player returns to the scientist and starts assisting her to build her team and acquire the necessary resources to continue her research. So after talking with the Split, who surprisingly has a list of names, the player sets off after the scientists she wants. Now I'm seeing a number of self-important, over inflated egos, each with their own series of conditions and demands that the player has to meet before they will agree to join the project. Thus adding random sub missions if you like. Or not. Next there would be resources required, and this could range from computer and jumpdrive components to the ship the Split woman wants to modify, whatever. Increase/decrease player aggravation level here. Now at each step of the way the 'enemy' agents could be trying to achieve the same objective, competing with the player or simply attacking to prevent the competition from advancing. Perhaps in the end it is discovered that they've had either a spy or a computer hack in place feeding them information. There are plenty of opportunities during this phase for lots of missions and problems. Anything is possible. A covert op to see if one of the team members is a mole, a defend station mission in later stages to defend against either Yaki or (neutral faction) Strong Arms ships, even assassinations are possible. Whatever you want. Lastly there could be something really cool like the need for the player to steal data from the Jonferco or SSA competition after some kind of data theft and sabotage. this could involve going undercover (boarding a ship?) and hacking into the enemy HQ using whatever minigame / hacking sequence you guys come up with to steal/retrieve the missing data. Then there is the actual experiment and this is where things get interesting. As far as the player knows they're testing some new kind of FTL drive and jumping to a nearby sector, or something. The new tech can either be installed on the player ship or we can require the player to board the experimental ship (idk whatever is easiest and makes the most sense. Personally I like the new ship idea but I'm not attached to it.) Then you guys can use a cutscene or something to thoroughly frak the player over by depositing them in the new sector and shorting out the jump drive.
Insert fog filled sector with creepy music and Betty, "Jumpdrive destroyed. Triplex scanner destroyed..." etc. The cutscene is just an idea to bypass the risk of the player doing something crazy like ejecting just as the experimental ship jumps and breaking the plot but it could be really cool. Idk. Not my department and I'm not attached to it. I do think the reason for the player ending up in the new sector is that the real test of the drive had been hidden from the player, who nobody really cares about. What everybody really wanted was to see if the new FTL tech would get to the region of space around ... dun dun dun DAAAH! Insert appropriate mystery here.
This needs tying up a bit better to conclude here and the player will have the special reward ship.
------end of split scientist plot
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Stop the war
This should be a small plot line that will use diplomacy for most part. The goners are the patrons of this plot and they will use the player’s galactic influence to get the Argon and the Terran to agree on a cease fire. Note that we don’t know the mechanics to actually halt it so can’t go into detail on that just yet. In any case this is a plot that would need the player to gain max notoriety on BOTH sides (maybe even 2nd highest one to Boron?) to even be able to get the parties to sit at one table. Maybe use this opportunity to explain the reason for blowing up the Torus. Use a set of missions to gain institutional trust from all sides involved so they can agree to a cease fire.
This plot offer should contain 3 options when it gets offered
- 1. Accept the offer from the goner to mediate a ceasefire
2. Temporary refuse to help at this point, offer will be given later on
3. Definitely refuse to stop the war cause they deserve it anyway
There is no reward set for this one other than the ranks and maybe some money, we can toss in a ship as reward, depending on the faction the player started, just for good measure, but for most part honour and peace should be reward enough.
------end stop the war plot
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MFG
Ketraar
Make sure the last LOD is mostly just one smoothing group - more performance.
I would like to try it out.
*plausibility acheived*
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