... off Sarin. Especially if you don't like this idea...
Puts a mocking face on Star Wars, and the whole "lets include my favorite ships" impulse. But to be worth doing, it needs something else. For this, I need scripters... or it will take forever! Anyone want to collaborate?
The idea (needs a reality-check):
Where the Thargoids represent chaos, these guys represent order. And it's an extra-galactic invasion force. Thus - a collection of interlinked missions set against the background of a Ooniverse gone mad!
It starts out with small groups of Punkin craft popping in. They zip through and attack everything - also destroying bouys. They'll shoot stations to tease the defenders out, and shoot them. Everybody is a target, but there's not enough to make this a serious threat.
[It would be more fun if they were frangible - but I'd want to get a craft to spin "out of control" for a bit if only a subentity is destroyed. I can do the model - attach half a strut to the main ball (the bit with the engines) and the other half to the fin-thing... do the edges to look like glowing damaged bits - which are hidden when the model is combined.]
You'll soo I have three basic fighters:
P-X1 is the only one witchdrive-capable. The others will follow it or use a carrier (ahem - later). It's also the only one with serious weaponry, but slower. Despite the pic, I'm thinking in terms of twin beam-lasers.
P-FF is a standard fighter - twin pulse lasers only, but they travel in pairs (at least)
P-II is a fast model, speed 600?, armed with quad pulse lasers.
So, a typical attack has four ships arriving by the witch-point. The X1 shoots out the bouy, the others head down the space-lanes. These will be three II or 2II escorting 1X1, or 2FF following behind a lone II.
I'm thinking that the scanner initially says "Unknown Configuration (Offender)", later it reads "Punkin-X1 (Hostile)" or something. I can do that just by having early encounters called by script, and having a special like_ship entry with name = "Unknown Configuration".
Over time, the attacks intensify.
Stage II involves a seige of a system the player jumps into. Each station (dockable entity) in the system has a cloud of punkins. Possibly some debris in the place of a station (rock hermit? salvage gang? space bar? what's possible?)
Surviving would involve fuel tanks, a short prior jump, or heading away from the spacelanes, around the planet, around the sun, scoop fuel, jump out.
In the event the player gets out with butt intact, the next station docked at results in a mission screen - Galactic Navy wants to know what you know about the system you've just come from. Do you go with them or run for it?
Run for it, and you get an automatic fugitive status, AND there are punkins out after you too... some confusion involving bounty hunters is likely.
Stay to be interro-erm-questioned, and you get a mission... you are given a stealth ship (stealth asp mkii comes to mind) and all you have to do is fly around the system taking a look, and get out.
OR - you are carrying a q-bomb... use wisely.
... you don't have to. you don't accept and there's just punkins after you.
you go and find... what? A ghost system is a nice touch. No stations, lots of debris. An asteroid field where the station was. It's another system getting the treatment... probably the next one the player jumps to? The one he needed to report to? They passed each other in hyperspace.
Here is the real mission.
The punkins are escorting station-killer asteroids... you gotta take out the asteroid as well as the punkins - like asteroid storm only the little asteroids (a) dodge and (b) shoot back. The q-bomb would be essential for clearing the path.
OR: the punkins have a station-destroyer ship... you get the info from the offficer who debriefed you in a comms message (or do you scoop his escape pod?)
Q-bomb intact? Good lad! (Perhaps there can be an undetonated q-bomb in the wreckage a ship?) Using the stealth craft, you have to fly into the maw of the station-killer and detonate it inside!
I can do the model as a frangible entity, you fly in, blow the blast-doors apart with missiles and lasers, turn about, lob the q-bomb inside and run.
This OR option could also be a subsequent mission. Fly to an infested system, deliver package. You'll have a couple of heavy cruisers coming with to create a diversion.
This creates some breathing space.
Next mission involves chasing down the punkins to a base, then telling the navy.
Navy launches a raid, pressuring one of the X1s to jump. Player follows through the wormhole... several jumps later, there's a punkin station. Now to get out - but there's something jamming the witchdrives and you're spotted. To escape, you need to skim the atmosphere of the planet(?) Skim the sun? (Hey - they're piloted by trumbles!)
After that, navy launches a big assault.
When overwhelmed, the punkin station detonates - so we'll probably never know where they all came from... until next time!
Navy decorates player, shame about your ship but it was in a good cause - btw: we want out stealth stuff back, thanks.
Of course, you now have an iron-ass stealth craft... just do a galaxy jump.
(Now you are in the position of the cloaked asp in said mission - but that's another story.)
The option to run by doing a gal-jump is always there - unless one can script out "sorry, won't supply gal-drive, navy's orders" - so it would be cool to have some way of having systems taken over one at a time.
And - of course, the infestation could follow the player to the next galaxy...
.........................
So much for daydreams. This does not sound trivial to me...
The easy thing to do right away is make them pirates, with bounties. I can have several "like_ship" versions, so some will arrive in threes (number of escorts = 2; escort ship = p-ff;) etc.
That would actually do for the first wave.
A cute wrincle would be to join a battlegroup of thargoids to overcome this menace.
BTW: if you like the premise but not the ships, it's easy to sub them out.
Now: do you see why I need scripters?
