Outlaw mission idea: Grand Theft Auton

[Cardinal]

The Black Market has recieved some worrying information that a sophisticated auton has been developed that can detect contraband even inside a smugglers compartment. St Katherines Commonwealth fascists are going to experiment with one of these "Beagle" autons to test their efficiency and effectiveness, and a prototype is on its way there - passing through your system as we speak in an unguarded mega-freighter.

The black market gives you the coordinates to find the freighter, and tells you it should be an easy mission, blast the freighter into submission and take the prototype auton back to them, so it can be examined and they can recalibrate their smugglers compartments against this new threat.

As soon as you find the freighter and attack it however, it starts deploying random autons one every few seconds to defend itself. Obviously there isn't much threat if it deploys a mule, but sentinals, battle autons and so on soon add up.

When you finally destroy the freighter it dispatches as its last action a dozen or so defective autons that start homing in on you. You can loot the freighter for the prototype auton, maybe a few unactivated autons, armour etc.

I think there should be consequences for failing this mission; if you fail to kill the freighter and take the auton before it leaves the system, you won't be able to deal any contraband in St K's. It all gets confiscated, regardless of whether you have a smugglers compartment.

[FAD]

...or maybe the freighter could deploy a few mules as well, which automatically begin to head for the base. One of them could be carrying the prototype, leaving the player to figure out where it could be.

Although one thing is for certain about this mission, you'd need a targeting ROM to fend off all the spawning autons...unless they'll be designated as enemy reds.

Also wonder what penalty the BM would give for failing the mission.

[Cardinal]

Good idea FAD

I hadn't thought of the freighter putting the experimental auton on a mule, thats a good twist.

I like the think the autons are designated as green, they are friendly, but the freighter is using them for self-defense. If they were red, other stations would attack them also. Sometimes my own logic scares me, I better get to work...

Do you think George is reading any of these mission ideas? I'm just throwing them up in the air, hoping he can find some use for them.

[F50]

I like this too. However, the mule with the auton should be spawned when it dies. Also a requirement to prevent more than one other mule from reaching a gate intact (blueprints) would be interesting as well.

[goat not sheep]

Hope 2 stargates aren't right beside each other.

[Fossaman]

As I recall, there are snippets of code that you can use to prevent that. Similar to the code that limits which type of korolov missions you can do, based on distance to the target.

[Cardinal]

Hope 2 stargates aren't right beside each other.

That is a legitimate concern though, and worth compensating for this with this (and other) missions.

I'm sure I struck this with one of the CSC escort missions when I first started playing Transcendence. I'd accept the mission, but within seconds the ship had left the system, without me even firing a shot in defense or anger and I was left scratching my head wondering what had happened. It wasn't until a later game that I got to play the mission properly.

I believe Rigel Aurilis (sorry, can't remember the spelling) has set seperated stargates.

[Yugi]

I believe Rigel Aurilis (sorry, can't remember the spelling) has set seperated stargates.

Yes, one in the centre with a drydock next to it and another by a big blue planet.

[Fossaman]

Ahem.

Code: Select all

; Defend Refugee Convoy
					("mission3b"
						; Code to describe mission
						(lambda Nil
							(block (gateList)
								(setq gStart Nil)

								; Get the list of gates in the system
								(setq gateList (sysFindObject gSource "G"))

								; Make sure there are at least 2 gates
								(if (geq (count gateList) 2)
									(block Nil
										(setq gStart (item gateList 0))
										(setq gEnd (item gateList 1))
										
										; The two gates better be at least 150 light-seconds
										; away from each other
										(if (ls (objGetDistance gStart gEnd) 150)
											(setq gStart Nil)
											)
										)
									)

Like I said, there are ways around that problem.

Go George!