New Scenario Defenders or Pirates

[Xansta]

Defenders or Pirates

This scenario allows players to be pirates. They can loot cargo or munitions from ships if they are careful not to destroy their victims before looting.

Piracy is not easy. The pirate and the victim have to be stopped, within 3 units, and the shields down (one arc is good enough for the victim). Plus, there has to be room in the player's cargo hold for goods and enough energy to operate the transporters to beam over the loot. Players may purchase an AI named Mr. Smee or talk to some retired pirates to get this pirating criteria. A second scan of freighters reveals their cargo in the ship's description, helping players determine if they want to loot the freighter or not. Station status reports show what goods a station will sell or buy (no questions asked).
Note: testing this scenario reveals an occasional bug where a ship's "Description" option is sometimes not available on the science console along with the "Tactical" and "Systems" options. The work around is to exit the ship and return.

The mission goal is to accumulate reputation in under 45 minutes. More than 32 player ships are made available at the start. The first one may be selected in the options screen. Any other player ships that are to play simultaneously are selected at random from the pool of available player ships. These player ships are mostly non-standard player ships. The scenario reputation point goal is determined by the number and type of player ship(s) spawned at the start of the scenario.

There is an automatic respawn configuration option available in the opening configuration screen along with some other difficulty options.

Players get reputation in the usual way (destroy enemies). They can also sell goods (either purchased, traded, or looted) to stations for reputation. There are also transportation and cargo missions at some stations. At the end of the game, the players are labeled in one of three ways:

• "Noble Defenders" if they avoid piracy.
• "Licensed Privateers" if they only loot enemy ships.
• "Pirates" if they loot neutral or friendly ships.

The scenario provides plenty of ships for the player to engage with - armed ships as well as freighters. There are also sensor jammers, warp jammers, supply drops, along with more standard terrain features to hinder or help the players in their reputation accumulation endeavors.

Enjoy!