META DISCUSSION Ghosts of CG-submissions-past

[Jmanis]

Won't lie, I've had my fair share of criticisms of CGs in the past, with the recent Scythes of Panem Conflict CG being the latest one I've had problems with. This post isn't here to complain about that, or complain about CGs general either (plenty of other places to do that)... rather, I want to talk about player submissions.

For whatever it's worth, I've generally "made peace with" the mechanics at our disposal, and the frustrating part with the Scythes conflict CG is the bland way those existing mechanics have been used... one sided CZ CGs are pretty much as bottom-of-the-barrel you can get.

There's lots of cool and interesting ways CG mechanics can be used to create interesting and cool CGs. I've made submissions which I think are "cool", but for one reason or another, which I'll never know about, they haven't made the cut. But the other thing is that we'll also never be able to see those player submissions. And I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of cool CG ideas, using the current mechanics, never see the light of day for some reason.

So, here's a thread to share your CG submissions which (probably) haven't got up. Reason for this thread is so that:

• For others wanting to submit a CG, there's a brainstormed bunch of CGs to get ideas flowing
• It'll maybe give FD some idea of what players are interested in.

Doesn't need to be the full submission with faction names, locations and stuff (unless very pertinent). Here's an idea for the structure:

• Type of CG / CG Pair
• Any preliminary things or other info (If FD need to set a system/station state or somesuch, which has been demonstrated as doable in numerous CGs)
• A pitch; what makes this cool or different?

Also, if you're posting a CG submission, just make sure it actually sticks to the submission guidelines. As much as a galaxy-wide manhunt would be great for a CG, it's not able to be requested via the form. to save you going, the different requestable types are: Bounty Hunt (hand in bounties), Conflict Zone (hand in bonds), Exploration (hand in explo data), Mining (hand in mined goods), and five different "trade" CGs (Data, Material, Commodity, Rare Goods, Salvage/S&R).

To get the ball rolling, here's a couple I've submitted in the past:

- Salvage CG: Collect <selection of Thargoid cargoes>.

- Fairly straightforward, collect some selection of Thargoid cargoes to a station =~ 500-2,000 LY away.

- The only Thargoid-cargo-only CG we had was a Tissue Sample collection CG which got canned because the tissue sampling mechanic was broken, so delivering highly corrosive cargo hasn't been given a good run. Now, you can just shove a bunch of CRCRs onto a conda and say "job done"... but squeezing out up to 20t more cargo in unprotected racks is entirely doable and would make for a neat challenge. The distance to the station is important because anyone can jump one or two hops and dump off the goods... but it takes planning to get it that far. May even be a CG where it's not just large haulers = best.

----

- Commodity CG: Deliver Weapons/Medicines to a damaged starport, paired with Salvage CG: Deliver stolen Minerals/Metals (must be sold on black market)

- A station needs to be set into the "damaged" state for this one, and the Salvage CG must have a black market for this.

- Premise of this is pretty simple. Criminals attack a extraction station.. if there's no "vanilla" damage skin for a station, handwavium the Thargoid damage by saying the criminals attacked using an "insider" who disabled station security, and the criminals themselves used enzyme missiles as part of their loadout. Destabilized station causes evacuation of precious metals and minerals to safer locations, which is the whole plan of the pirates, who attempt to hijack the minerals en-route. I've known of CGs to require smuggling illegal cargo, but not one to supply vanilla stolen cargo (i.e stolen gold/palladium). Meanwhile, the damaged station needs basic medicines and battle weapons to help the injured and fight off opportunistic raids. Shipping cargo into damaged stations is a bit underused, as it's not actually tied to transitioning to the "repair" state; that's entirely contingent on killing Thargoids. So a dedicated CG to push cargo into a damaged station would be cool, and even a little challenging.

There's others, but I'll post them later...

 

[Chaparral]

What is the point of submitting a CZ CG if the instances don't populate more than 50% of the itme?

I'd rather just have something that works.

 

[Jmanis]

What is the point of submitting a CZ CG if the instances don't populate more than 50% of the itme?

I'd rather just have something that works.

Not the point of this thread...

 

[simulacrae]

I enjoyed the search for the Antares CG...

What if there was a special weapons test where Aegis or someone sends out a taskforce against the thargoids but we loose contact with them. So make the first part of the CG a wide area search for wreckage with a second more refined search of specific systems collecting wreackage and scrap from both human and thargoid wrecks... the upshot could be some new weaponry and maybe a little story telling. Maybe lead us to the wreck of a capital ship with some voice logs.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

One I didn't submit in the end because I couldn't quite get it to feel right - salvage CG, for Military Plans

The catch is that the specific Military Plans they're after are hidden on a megaship that's known to be somewhere in uninhabited space (I'd intended this one for Colonia where there's a lot of it about, but Pleiades or Witch Head would work too, as would "fringes of the bubble"). The purpose of the CG is to obtain the plans from the ship to foil an attack.

Step 1: find the ship
Step 2: use the underused megaship heist mechanics to steal the cargo (its cargo holds only contain Military Plans)

The sooner the ship is discovered, the more chance of the CG succeeding.

Couldn't figure out a way to make Step 1 neither trivial nor impossible, though - and it would have limited Step 2 to those bits of the CG community which were watching the search, so probably not going to work.

Something similar might be doable as an II since then Step 1 could be Phase 1 and Step 2 could come with a Galnet article announcing its position. Extra clues could also be given out during Phase 1 if it went on longer.

 

[Rubbernuke]

A long time ago I wrote the only piece of Archon Delaines lore available (before the codex popped up)- Kumo Tribute Day:

Kumo Crew

The Kumo Crew is an independent pirate syndicate and one of the most influential criminal organisations in the Core Systems. Its headquarters is the starport Gabriel Enterprise in the Harma system, and the majority of its territory spans the Pegasi Sector. It is represented by a Power, with HQ...

elite-dangerous.fandom.com

I submitted a CG where the aim of the game is to steal as much as you could and be the top pirate. You returned to Harma to drop it all off, and whoever was top had Archons favour (a decal and lots of cash). FD could not do it because stolen goods created bugs and issues in CGs.

My idea for an II campaign: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...alactica-meets-aliens-megaship-action.510639/

 

[Jmanis]

One I didn't submit in the end because I couldn't quite get it to feel right - salvage CG, for Military Plans

The catch is that the specific Military Plans they're after are hidden on a megaship that's known to be somewhere in uninhabited space (I'd intended this one for Colonia where there's a lot of it about, but Pleiades or Witch Head would work too, as would "fringes of the bubble"). The purpose of the CG is to obtain the plans from the ship to foil an attack.

Step 1: find the ship
Step 2: use the underused megaship heist mechanics to steal the cargo (its cargo holds only contain Military Plans)

The sooner the ship is discovered, the more chance of the CG succeeding.

Couldn't figure out a way to make Step 1 neither trivial nor impossible, though - and it would have limited Step 2 to those bits of the CG community which were watching the search, so probably not going to work.

Something similar might be doable as an II since then Step 1 could be Phase 1 and Step 2 could come with a Galnet article announcing its position. Extra clues could also be given out during Phase 1 if it went on longer.

Yeah, I'd love to see some things use that sort of mechanic, and the unique "Salvage" cargo like Rebel Transmissions and Military Intelligence. If they were more reliably found (like Rebel Transmissions in Civil Unrest), you could set a state and punching out USS could be the hook. Sadly, I actually don't trust FD to not set the cargo levels to something ridiculous like 2m for a Tier 1 success.

 

[Jmanis]

A CG which I never actually suggested (which is actually nine CGs) because <reasons>[1] which predates the current BGS mechanics was a set of high-stakes conflict CG. These days, I'd have a conflict state forced, and the outcomes executed by FD, but just rely on the BGS war-meter to measure success.

Premise is that my group's faction is present in about 25 systems, and controls around 10 of them. Fiction of our faction is that they're basically a "Military Junta"--"Imperial nationalists", even rejecting other Imperial authorities... tl;dr they'd rather punch people in the face to exert dominance than "negotiate".

With that background, they go on a large military campaign, going into a simultaneous war state in four different systems where they're present, but have no control, and the controller is non-native (there's a lot of that in my region) in order to seize control.

Likewise, another four wars kick off in systems where our faction is a non-native controller. Finally, a war also kicks off in our faction's home system with the faction with closest influence. So basically:

• The four systems we don't control are the systems we want to seize control of
• The four systems we do control are opportunistic wars to overthrow us because our faction is over-extended
• Likewise in our homeworld, we're subject to an attack of opportunity.

In the non-homeworld systems, winner gets control, loser is instantly retreated from the system (noting the controller was non-native as well)
In our homeworld, we either win, or we lose control of the system. (An alternate option was our faction is removed from the game, but as has become apparent, that's not technically possible)

There's nothing particularly complex about it, just a nine-front war with high-stakes for loss.

[1] I'm still firmly in the camp of the BGS existing entirely to facilitate a living, breathing universe. Everything is mutable and there's no semblence of balance intended in it. However, I know many players don't share that opinion despite FD's statements, and things like Powerplay have things which change as a result of what government type is in control. I don't think such a CG could kick off without a bunch of foot-stamping from some people.