Ramsees Hed...some...more thoughts.

[Katarn07]

NO, WAIT!!!!!

 

Do the uniform thing and add the objective of getting back to the ship! That way, as the ship is just taking off after you plant the device, you have to kill the crew as you make your way out (don't make it timed like level 15 of JK, the falling ship, if you do this)

 

This must be the 4th suggestion I have given. Now I don't care that you don't use them and I know you are busy with the mod and all, but can you please acknowledge my posts as being good, needing more thought, or that you hate it and that it would never work???

 

Thanks, guys

[Darth_Linux]

Originally posted by Katarn07

NO, WAIT!!!!!

 

Do the uniform thing and add the objective of getting back to the ship! That way, as the ship is just taking off after you plant the device, you have to kill the crew as you make your way out (don't make it timed like level 15 of JK, the falling ship, if you do this)

 

This must be the 4th suggestion I have given. Now I don't care that you don't use them and I know you are busy with the mod and all, but can you please acknowledge my posts as being good, needing more thought, or that you hate it and that it would never work???

 

Thanks, guys

 

err, I'm still just soaking in all the ideas. All these ideas are good ones and will be considered. I can't say "your's sucks, your's is good, your's needs work" because everyone's ideas are valuable.

 

I think when the team has decided how to do it, we'll let you know in a spoiler thread or something. in the meantime, don't sweat it. your contributions are important whether we use them or not.

 

thanks

Dave

[Ravensroke]

I like the idea of taking out security before attempting to do the rest of the level. Consider, the ship is not run by the imps, its run by smugglers, so you go around the base looking for the keys to the ship, so you can get into it, then you could add a part where you have to do the covert thingie to get to the cargo bay.

[The_One]

Guys, please relax - this map hasn't even been started yet. Even if it had, it would be a month or so into development that the mapper would consider adding in these details.

[Algardex]

I think the best thing to do is to put a poll in your site a couple of weeks before you start making the map asking people what they would like.

Like

A) Just like the original

B) All covert Doomgiver style (Hope not)

C) 50% Action 50% covert ( Hope not)

D ) Almost all action with a bit of covert

E) Like the original but with more destruction

 

[chris the cynic]

Ok, here's what I think:

 

(It’s been a while since I played this one, so I might be totaly off)

 

What you have is a trade off between imperials and smugglers (and worse) the imperials most likely don’t trust the smugglers to have tracking information right out and unencrypted. The smugglers still know where they’re going, but it isn’t left out where their shoddy security can get it stolen. It’s encrypted in an auto-pilot program that only that ship can read and so forth.

 

So you can’t steal it, but that doesn’t mean you can’t kill everyone in true “I am Katarn, I was named after a viscous beast, and I kill lots of people.” fashion. The imperials and the lawbreakers never get along, no matter how much money is involved, the situation is always tense. So provided they get there stuff they don’t mind if the crew of the ship is dead, and they wouldn’t be concerned or surprised if they received a report that the crew all died in a riot.

 

What you need is an interruption in the flow of information. So in goes Kyle, dressed as a stormtrooper or a smuggler, doesn’t matter, and he starts shooting at whoever he’s not dressed like. At the same time Jan takes out the security and communications (best way is by causing a black out, power outages aren’t common things) or Kyle has done this earlier. So all communication out of that sector is comlink (and thus verbal.) The technology would definitely exist to intercept and edit communications, so Jan is there taking out anything that could suggest this is a rebel, and possibly adding in some stuff to make a riot more plausible. If the troopers themselves don’t give enough information saying that there is a big riot going on (and there will be once the shooting starts) than Jan simply edits in some radio chatter of that kind.

 

All that Kyle has to do is plant the thing on the ship, make sure that no one who knows what he’s done lives, and get out before the back up imperials come to lock up. The ship is on auto-pilot and once the scan picks up no life forms, and nothing out of the ordinary the imperials should let it be, or give it a new crew. Either way they will be more concerned with the cargo then doing a big search for a tracking device they have no reason to suspect and their scans show isn’t there.

 

Better yet leave out the auto-pilot all together, once they stop the riot they’ll check the cargo and proceed as planed.

 

Anyway that is a way to keep the senseless violence, with out it being quite so senseless. It works simply because of imperial belief superiority (overconfidence) they believe that these criminals are untrustworthy, and they don’t believe that the rebels are cunning enough to play on their own assumptions. It is stealth, and covert, because no one can see you going on the ship to plant the device, or see you enter or leave, it’s simply a different kind. If they were expecting a rebel to track the ship they wouldn’t expect anything this extravagant, anyone who thought it was a plot to do something of that nature would be laughed (excuse me, beaten) right out of the conversation.

 

That’s my way around the problem anyway, all you need to do is mess with the flow of information. If you were to allow a camera to be there, or let someone say I think it was this one guy doing it, then they can figure out it was a ruse. So Jan needs to be sitting there with a big computer doing the hard work, and a power outage at the same time that the security system goes down would be a plausible start to a riot, edgy people can get violent in the dark.

[chris the cynic]

By the way, I know that's long, but I tried to explain whay it was plauseable, riots have been used to cover things in real life. I also tried to make it make sense (I'm fairly sure I failed) to that end I redid parts of it, so there may be some senseless repition that I missed, which I can't fix, but it might also make more sense if you read it twice, in case I mixed up the order of something.

 

Anyway, hope you liked my idea.

[Katarn07]

It makes sense. Needs some tweaking... I don't think the entire breifing should be changed...

 

Why not add a section to the briefings exclusive to the mod?

 

Background-

 

Classified Intelligence (stuff to add in breifings exclusive to the mod)

 

Mission -

 

Objectives-

[The_One]

They're all good ideas in this thread

 

Once we have a mapper working on it, I'll be sure to point him/her in this direction.

[EnforcerSG]

Why not just have it the way it is, but after you plant the tracking device, you have to activate the autopilot which sends it on its way. You can even have it so you only have 5 minutes or so to get out before it takes off and you are traped with the reinforcements that come on board.

 

It makes sense. You say you don't want to change much, but you will add things like returning to your ship (when you didn't before).

 

I always figured that the Imp's were on the ship loading it up before it was too take off. You get there just as the Imps are finishing up, place the tracking device, hit the autopilot and run before your time is up. You can still kill everything if you want.

 

And where does it say rubber ducks?

[Katarn07]

Agreed. That is excelent idea in my opinion. Run to the bridge, snatch the key, activate the autopilot, run to the back and plant the buggar, and escape another route (if you did not realize this, there is no way to return to the starting point after taking a dive from a high spot to a lower one, so another path is going to be needed...)

 

And an idea for that way to get off would be a hallway that is revealed upon planting the tracker full of reinforcements notified of your attack. Mow them down as you run through to a lift that takes you to the surface, where the Crow can swoop down and the mission is over.

[Infinity Blade]

While alot of these ideas are pretty good, I have a different idea for how it should go.

 

First off, if you are going to be doing something that you don't want noticed, you need stealth. Blasting through everything is what I call EXTREMELY high profile.

 

If this ship is supposed to be so important to the Dark Trooper project, then I'd think they would be pretty suspicious if everyone just suddenly turned up dead there. I would want to delay the shipment to see what was up, and send a scanning crew onboard.

 

I can understand the Imperials shrugging it off due to urgency, but only so far...

 

And as far as autopilot.. The only way I see it working is if the cargo is non-essential to the project. It's been a while and don't remember all the exact details, but if it's tied to something important, you probably need the crew there to acknowledge security checks.

 

So what I'd say is just alter the mission slightly. I'd just make it you have to use a device on the computer to extract the information. You then make more sense of the situation, can blast the crap outta everything, and still retain the original sense of what the DF level was.

[Geoffrey S]

You could always make it far simpler, by changing the objective of 'planting a tracking device' to 'cracking the ship's log' to find out where it has stopped in recent weeks. Or find some materials shipped from the planet for analysing it's homeworld. You wouldn't have to change a thing about the layout, just a small objective.

[HapSlash]

Yup... that's pretty much what I was saying as well.

[Solbe M'ko]

I like Chris' idea alot! I think it would be cool if the player got a disguise in any case (also, if there's no reason to run the player should have to walk or else arouse suspicion) and the whole imperial superiority makes sense, it would just require a whole lot of woek on the map, you'd basically be making an all new map, which would rock because there are NO good stealth maps for SP at this point.

 

Regardless: The main problem with the alarms in JO was that long cutscene you had to endure every time. Alarms would be much simpler, though probably less cool, than Chris' idea. You'd just have to make it so the player could just start over right away.

[chris the cynic]

My god

someone liked my idea.

 

I'm surprised anyone took the time to read the whole thing. Simplicity is probably better though. Dark forces wasn't a heavy “Kyle devises a clever plan to trick the Imperials into thinking that it was nothing” kind of game. It was much more of a “Kyle kills everyone and hopes for the best” thing.

 

I still like my idea, but doubt it would be used. And if it were to be it would need polishing. Probably a lot.

[Solbe M'ko]

It's a good idea. If not in this mod, maybe some other SP mission. The whole Imp vs Thug motif is the best part. JO didn't really have any of that grittier stuff but it makes sense and would make the mission alot more fun.

[ewok mercenary]

It's an excellent idea. I really hope that it is put into the level. I'm hoping to join the team as a mapper and if I can, the level I would most like to work on is Ramsees Hed. And I would definately want to do something along those lines.

[The_Mega_ZZTer]

I'm pretty new here, not sure I've posted on these boards before, though I've followed this MOD's progress for a while.

 

I like the idea that the tracking device idea should be replaced with the crack-the-log objective.

 

The tracking device idea isn't really a good one to begin with. If I was Kyle, I'd just walk up to the ship, open a maintenence panel, drop the device in so no one could see or reach it, close the panel, and leave!

 

We can wasily make cracking the log only possible from one spot... the main computer, or a special terminal, for example.

 

Also, another idea would be to insert "spyware" into the computer that would secretly send data over the HoloNet (ie Star Wars' Internet ) to the Rebels.

 

I like Chris' idea about staging a riot. For a week or so before the Ramsees Hed mission, covert operators could infiltrate the group of smugglers who own the ship, spreading rumors about the imperials who run the surrounding spaceport. Then, one last rumor could cause the riot to.... well, riot... and Kyle can land and post as one of the rioters, who would be working to cleanse the ship of Imperials and take off, not to Annteevy of course.

 

However, since the Imperials own the entire spaceport, this would be impossible and Imperials would pour into the ship after long (good excuse for enemy generators). And during the riot, you would make your way to the main computer and upload the program from your PDA.

 

Kyle would then leave the ship and "disappear" in the nick of time, as a cutscene would play showing the imperials landing several troop transports landing. A few shots of the troopers mopping up the smugglers and commandeering the ship, and one of the ship lifting off for Anteevey once the ship is secured. (They're behind schedule, after all ) One last cutscene shot would zoom in on the empty computer room, with the terminal blinking a message like "Relaying navigational information..." (just as a nice touch).

 

This is what I think the plot should be. Of course, it's not up to me. ^_^

 

And, BTW, smugglers most likely would not have alarm boxes on their ships (yes, I hate them too)

Smugglers would not tend to secure their ships as Imperials do. They'd be more interested with weapons and shields for defence.