Re: Campaign Story

[Jens Granseuer <jensgr@gmx.net>]

On 15.08.2004 10:14, Dave Fancella wrote:
> Background story:
> Kand has ruled Nexus for awhile, yadayada.  Nexians are discontent, want their 
> independence.  Kand has never fully conquered the whole planet, and in an 
> area where their influence is weakest the rebellion begins.  We'll follow the 
> FNA, more or less an arbitrary choice of the factions that are there 
> (possibly have campaigns covering several different major factions, and then 
> at some turning point they ally together against Kand).  It is an area that 
> is poor in resources, hence the reason Kand hasn't focused on it too much.  
> FNA has established secret supply routes that are smuggled in from a richer 
> area (smuggled by sea, I was thinking, which allows the campaign to have some 
> sea maps, if anybody wants them, for the sake of protecting the supply lines, 
> this would be a good time to introduce the continent of primitives off to the 
> west that hasn't made it into the main story yet ;)   ).
Hm, some of this contradicts parts I have just posted as the new Uprising
introduction before reading your post. I'll wait for some other comments
before going into details or trying to resolve it.

> Ok, so if this outline is fine (not saying it is), then what it needs now are 
> some milestone markers, units available in each act according to the progress 
> of the campaign, and so forth.
I like it. But I'm not quite sure how you intend the setbacks to look like.
Do the Nexians really lose a map (if so, the campaign system doesn't support
that, yet) or do they win the map, but the greater story later tells them that
this battle wasn't that important after all and the Empire made advances on
a different battlefield?

As for units, I'd say no aircraft until act 3 (or maybe the end of act 2),
and few heavy units (artillery, heavy tanks, AA guns, trains) until about the
same time, and preferably only in the main body. Factories should not be
available until after act 3. Those restrictions mainly apply to FNA, of
course.

I'd place Marcus' map around the end of act 2. The intel obtained from the
general could result in 1) aircraft and 2) a cunning plan to outflank the
corridor (for which the Sarph rift seems to be a natural choice).
Omyar Gorge is probably somewhere near the end of act 3, then.

> Also, how many maps do you guys want in this 
> thing?  I've written for 3+ maps per act, making 15+ maps total.  There 
> aren't even that many maps in the game right now!  ;)
I was hoping for about the same number of maps. Reasoning is that once we
have a proper storyline established this will allow us to churn out the
corresponding maps much faster. We'll see how much of that is true.

Jens