"Behold these repositories of fearful arcane knowledge, tomes of aeons-old cursed lore which was surely ancient even when the ill-fortuned antediluvian civilizations which initially articulated it first committed such dread lexicons of terror to shuddering memory!
Fear these legendary encyclopaedia antediluvia, these ebon necronomica of shunned rites and diabolical adulations!
It's a rarely shared but firmly held opinion of mine that no game is complete without a touch of cosmic horror, at least one appearance by things-that-should-not-be. So Here's my ongoing attempt at putting a bit of that sort of thing into Starfarer. I don't really understand the faction and Campaign files enough to put them in there yet. But maybe that's for the best right now.
I'll be making missions involving these things, but they're going to range from very hard to impossible, purposefully. Cosmic Horror, remember.
0.1 Download: (Old, Not compatible with 0.52)
http://www.mediafire.com/?oot8pp6giqirxwm0.1 has:
1 Mission
->Unfortunate Discovery
-->An independent force stumbles into a Phage and it's spawn. Includes 2 new ships and their armaments. turret graphics for the latter incomplete.
EDIT: UPDATEBeen working on some conceptual whatnot for this. I can't progress much further without some help though, the concept as planned is a bit much of a workload for me alone in the spriting and stating department, and I just plain can't do the necessary campaign coding.
ANYWAY here's a little bit about the intended content.
HUMANITY:
The Terran Totality:The Totality is the uniform government of the Sol System. It is responsible for the colonization of many star systems, and the policing and control of them. Totality military doctrine is based around large, spinally mounted magnetic induction weapons. Missiles and fighters play a secondary role to overall fleet doctrine. Ships are heavily armored shieldless bricks
The Cetian Alignment:A alliance of colonies under the leadership of the Tau Ceti colony, who have renounced control by Earth. They claim some of the best and brightest among their number; and their technological edge in rapid nano-fabrication makes them experts at deploying missiles and unmanned drones. Ships are more lightly armored and quicker than Totality vessels. Heavy PD and missile fire. Also brick-like in design.
The Hoplon Agency:Despite his achievements, and the worlds he claims, it is inarguable that man has achieved very little in the grand scheme of things. Strange reports and disastrous happenings abound among the worlds of humanity, but for the most part, humankind remains too busy fighting its petty battles to take notice of such "random happenstance." The Hoplon Agency is a secretive research organization that exists to fit together the pieces of these puzzles, and better defend humanity against whatever waits out in the black, and ultimately, against itself. (Player faction) Ships can vary as research occurs (See below) but start off as very well shielded, but otherwise incredibly frail, energy armed craft. Super sleek.
THINGS FROM THE BLACK
PHAGEPhage are mobile inter-dimensional portals; appearing as distorted zones of space, with an alien field of blood red stars visible through them. They have no apparent physical mass. They are capable of projecting blasts and screens of energy through some means. Disruption of the field is possible with conventional weapons fire. They have been observed purposefully ramming asteroids and other celestial objects, or blowing them apart and catching the pieces. They appear to act as some form of resource gatherer, their entire form a portal used to collect materials for some unknown purpose.
GATEKEEPERThe Gatekeepers are machines of unknown origin. They are often seen around areas of space ripe with anomalous readings. They have been seen to attack the phage and Oneiroi on sight, but also lash out at human vessels; so if they serve some purpose related to those two entities, or are simply ancient, berzerk machines is unknown. They typically take basicly geometric shapes and present no drive emissions of any kind. Their methods of propulsion and attack are not understood, but can be guessed at.
(No image yet)
ONEIROIAn unknown biological agent, apparently capable of interfacing with any matter, but with machines and sentient beings especially. They are capable of incredible displays of spatial and energy manipulation with no discernable means. No vector is known for infection; and no known science applicable to understanding the Oneiroi. Can appear as basically anything; from an otherwise normal human ship to a mass of biological tendrils to glowing balls of energy.
OTHERThere's always room for more ideas, from an additional major player to unique encounters with god-knows-what wandering in from the farthest reaches of space.
Planned Feature: Research and Development.From what I've seen this *may* be possible, but I'm left needing an expert coder opinion. Ideally, the player would start the campaign with only a single vessel, recently developed by Hoplon, and access to other recent developments. To meet the steadily escalating threat, the player must return examples of various artifacts to their home station.
I believe the script would be most workable by checking each month of in game time for certain things, or combinations of things, in the station inventory, removing those appropriate if found, and replacing them with the "researched" items. This could perhaps lead to player choice as well. You brought back an artifact, and a new craft prototype has become available. Do you take it and use it? Leave it another month and let the science teams mass produce it? Or maybe hold onto it until you have a new artifact that will trigger further development on that ship?
I'm relatively certain such a system could be arranged, but I definitely need an opinion on it.
