NPC

[bobsoup]

Has any thoughts been made about Non-Player characters.

Could open up a whole slew of campaign stories. Could be quite simple... they don't need any special intelligence.

NPC makes way from location A-B... you have to keep them alive. They don't need to fight but Xeno and other AI will attack them

Story lines Could be...
Escort ambassador through enemy lines.
Free prisoner (moves when you reach him) and escort him back to transporter.

Etc... etc...

NPCs could move slowly to give you room to maneuver round them. If they die you fail the mission.

Would add an extra dimension of tactics when you have to protect someone you can't control. (If you ever played the old game Syndicate, protect the NPC was always one of my favourite mission types)

[bobsoup]

Could also have NPC that doesn't move.

Protect politician AND achieve objective such as blowing something up.

That way you would be forced to split the squad. 1or more to protect the NPC and the rest to achieve the level objective. Deciding how many to leave and how many to move would be a strategy choice.




With a little modification you could reverse the NPC logic and you have to assassinate an NPC that is moving from point A to B before he reaches point B. If the enemy NPC reaches a transporter before you kill him fail in the mission.

[slayernz]

I agree that NPCs would be good to use. YOu could even give it one of the basic Xeno or FDF AI's available for movement, but instead if the AI trying to move to you, it moves to a specific destination.

[ncaoa]

Ooh. How about a skirmish where you receive a distress signal from a ship being atacked by Devour AI? Throught the fight, you have to keep both your Templar's and the allied crew from being killed or turned untill the victory conditions are met, such as destroying the alien crew or covering the ships crews escape. Or anouther story where you work with FDF soilders to protect an urban zone against pirates?

[ahhhonfire]

I think this is a really cool idea

[overseer]

I dont see xenos as the type to take any prisoners however maybe a storyline could be
4 PHASE MISSION

1:locate survivor pilot/captain from locked / self barricaded room
2: escort and protect pilot to the bridge of a ship for recovery or salvage of that ship.
3:defend pilot while he goes through start up checklist since he is obviously understaffed ! while xenos rush the bridge for XX # of turns
4:clear ship decks while en route to destination before docking
or
escorting hacker to a ships comm to recover traitor or fdf communication records and or self destruct codes and then escort him back to shuttle the squad then proceeds to bridge to initiate self destruct and then fall back to shuttle in XX # of turns to escape the destruction of derelict ship / xeno nest

[fallen]

overseer - definitely some very cool ideas. I will talk to Cory about ways to add this type of controlled non-combat PC to the game (human captain) which could really make the Templars work over-time to protect him.

[Cory Trese]

Great thread, love the ideas. We'll see what we can do