The original thread on this has been lost in the old Taldren forums, so I'll repost the topic here:
This campaign is not going to be controlled by time limits like other campaigns such as the SFC2.net servers. Instead, it will be controlled by economic control, in a sense like the old Red Alert and the D3 servers. The object of the campaign is to win a war where the self-righteous ISC, Fed-hating Klingons, power-hungry Roms, "persuaded" Gorns have colluded and conspired in a "Coalition" to undergo a war of "pacification" to dominate the "Alliance" of the Federation and its Mirak, Hydran and Lyran allies. It's is very much along the lines of Axis and Allies in WW2 where geographic/astrographic position and geo-politics/astro-politics play a good part in determining the sides in each respective war.
Public or Private: Well it's public otherwise I would never post in Taldren forums about it, hehe. Oh yeah, no recruiting either. Just play and enjoy. *crossing fingers*
Background History:
This role-playing sort of sets up the story:
http://208.57.228.3/ubb/Forum2/HTML/010869.htmlIn addition, the SFC timeline thread provides some more background info:
http://208.57.228.4/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB7&Number=1208&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1VCs: When a race loses more than half of their starting economic points that power will be "compelled" to sue for peace is knocked out of the war. When the Alliance or the Coalition loses an ally the Admin will ask if they wish to continue the war. Sooner or later one side or the other will "surrender" either through outright admission or loss of pilot participation that will allow their respective nation to quickly fall.
Campaign Map: the map used as a reference the "Star Trek Star Charts" by Geoffrey Mandel, and to be discovered at your local bookstore, with the Federation being in the map middle, Romulans/Klingons placed East/Beta Quadrant-wise, the ISC placed South/Rimward, the Gorns are between the ISC and Klingons (brings a whole new meaning to Plasma D racks), the Hydran/Mirak/Lyran placed North/Coreward of the Feds and East/Alpha Quadrant-wise are substantial neutral areas representing the "undiscovered" Ferengi, Cardassian and Tzenkenthi races. There is a 2/3 hex wide band of zero-value economic hexes West of the Feds to explain why no exploration was made until the 24th century towards the West part of the map. To a degree, smaller bands of zero-value economic hexes exist near the ISC/Fed and Mirak/Lyran/Hydran frontier with the Feds. All this being said, a quick look at the atlas will illustrate that most of the fighting will gravitate toward the Fed/Klingon/Romulan border areas since Earth, Romulus and Kronos are not very far apart unlike other servers where the homeworlds of each power were very far apart indeed.
Starting Era: Middle.
Starting Economic Strength:
I used SFB as a reference where the Gorns are the poorest and the Feds/ISC are the richest races.
In descending order of economic power the ranks are:
1) Federation (Super Power)
2) ISC (Super Power about 10% weaker than Feds)
3) Klingons (Marginal Super Power)
4) Romulans (Tweener Power on the rise)
5) Lyran (Medium Power; de-centralized gov't negates some of their true potential)
6) Mirak (Medium Power)
7) Hydrans (Medium Power)
8) Gorn (Medium Power scarping the ceilng of the obsure quadrant powers)
The Federation is appox. 5 times stronger than the Gorns and the ISC is approx. two times stronger than the Romulans and 3 times stronger than the Lyrans. This should give you some idea of what kind of offensive is needed to knock out a power from the war. Most of the economic power for each race lies in their core worlds and colony world so it will not be necesary to take the homeworld to defeat an enemy, in most cases, but instead take half their territory. Obviously, the Alliance will really rely heavily on the Federation while the Coaltion can probably afford to lose a power such as the Romulans and/or Gorns but probably not the Klingons. If you are playing for a small power, you don't have worry too much about a Super Power swamping you. Due to map placement of the powers, the "bully" power will most probably have to go through your "sugar-daddy" protector in order to get to you, but in war anything is possible.
Shiplist: I am trying my best to make the AOTK ship list work among all the races but I do encourage anyone concerned that their race is in trouble to PM or email me and I'll give my best consideration of the relevant facts to bring "justice" to your race.
The modifications made are:
1) ISC now has a battle carrier (I-BCV) which is basically a CCD with 6 fighter complement. The I-CVAD is once again a DN-class ship.
2) The PF cruisers of the Romulans and Gorns (ie. R-THV, G-BCHV) only have 2 PFs complement.
3) The hard-points of Rom/Gorn PFs have been reduced from 4/5 to 2/3.
4) I cleaned up the hardpoints on the Lyran PFs so you can see all of its weapons in the ship schematic screen in SFC2.
5) I really only know and understand ISC, Rom, Gorn, Klingon and to a lessor degree Hydran ships so I left the other ships alone. Any comments will be appreciated via PM or Email.
Rules: CnC rules used for AOTK since no one has agreed to a better package yet. Standard GFL dyna rules:
http://www.gfluniverse.net/dynarules. We can make the LOS (ie Line of Sight) rule extended to 3 hexes behind the front-line but I doubt there will be much need for deep striking. Bases are indestructible. Take Screenshots and ask in general chat who the CO/XO is for the applicable race for "cheating", "abuse", etc. issues. For anyone that has played in GFL D3 dyna you can probably attest that we run a tight dyna with little mercy for repeat offending cheaters. If you forgot a rule we simply remind and let it go, not over-react and boot. So, it won't be an Activision D3 dyna situation or a marine boot camp server.
War Consequences: The Feds are just too nice sometimes. If the Alliance wins the Romulans/Klingons can look forward to a Marshall plan-like economic bail-out package to improve their peoples' standard of living and undergo some applicable democratic reforms. The Gorns will lynch their deranged Mussolini-like leaders and jump for joy. The ISC will undergo some massive psycho-therapy sessions on how their "superiority complex" failed them. However, if the Coalition wins then the Federation and her allies (maybe?!) can look forward to a new dark age, where the Humans are reduced to slave status for their Klingon & her allies conquerors, not unlike the mirror universe episodes shown in DS9. Here's a DS9 promo (source:
www.startrek.com) taste of it:
http://www.startrek.com/library/media_DS9.asp?id=18126So, what kind of 24th century will dawn in the Alpha/Beta Quadrants?
Start TIme: I am shooting for the weekend of Feb. 8th/9th since GFL has a really good fight going on right now in D3.