Firefly Tactics

Reinar

Reinar

First time out of the vault
Few weeks back, when I was finishing FT: Crusade and watching Battlestar Galactica, I had an idea of moving Fallout Tactics into space. Then I realized the Firefly setting is perfect for this. A lot of planets of different terrain types, mostly arid, which is good considering what tilesets are available. Space combat is rare and unimportant. Adventurers wear "ragged" clothes (no uniforms, except the Feds), there's almost no armor or it's concealed (I remember Zoë had something when she got shot on Athens, but I don't think it was ever explained). The overall feel of a smuggler from the border sector is similar to a postapo survivor.
There are enough vanilla tiles to create several various biomes of the "wild west" theme, as well as tiles for industrial areas. I think it would be possible to somehow create a core planet city (Ariel, Londinium and such) as well. There are already some weapon sprites that would fit into the universe. With a short campaign in mind, you only need 8 - 15 firearms (Crusade has 21 I think and that's too much already).
The more I think about it, the more doable it is in my opinion.

So I had a first shot at it. Few minutes of work + some new UI I downloaded from Nexusmods (it fits well) and voilá:
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I know something for sure: I don't want to do it all alone. I can do the design work, mapping, creating entities, scripting it, smashing it into a campaign, but I don't want to write the dialogues again (also playtesting was getting on my nerve lately).
I don't want the original Serenity crew from the series to play any part in this (except mentions or easter eggs). I'd like to create a new story with original crew with their own Firefly-class ship. With their own story. With their own train heist and reaver boarding and Alliance patrol and street duel and smuggling operations.
So if anybody wants to join me in my insanity, let me know.
 
Cool idea, sadly I don't know Firefly but I'll ask on couple of places in web. What are the requirements? Of course except some knowledge about Firefly i guess :)
 
Weyland said:
Cool idea, sadly I don't know Firefly but I'll ask on couple of places in web. What are the requirements? Of course except some knowledge about Firefly i guess :)
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Well, English on at least intermediate level, so that guy can write the dialogues. It's ok to use translator from time to time, but not for whole sentences. Thanks.

If it gets going and there's something to test, I'll let you know. It can take years though.
 
I'm a fellow browncoat for sure, but I haven't travelled through the Verse as much as some (just the show / movie and occasional comic). I'm alright at writing dialogue, but I'm not really familiar with the ins and outs of Fallout Tactics (but I think I do have a disc copy of the UK triple release somewhere).

So are you planning on creating a parallel group of traders / mavericks / hired guns / criminals that are operating parallel to the crew of the Serenity? Do they have similar (but not the same) types of deals / jobs to see through on each stop, or maybe they go to the same secret location as the Serenity crew but for a different reason? Also, I am not entirely sure how you could make quite such an interesting crew, personality-wise, as the Serenity crew without making it seem like a rip off. They were a pretty unique collection of rag-tag in the Verse.

P.S. The funny / sad thing about Firefly is that since the show was cancelled after one season and there was only one movie, almost anyone can become a fan (if they want to) by just simply binging on it for one weekend.
 
Well I only saw the show and movie, so you're a comic ahead of me, but I have the board game.
You don't have to be an FT expert, but knowing the basics would be nice. For example the dialogues are one-sided. You can't have replies. You just click the NPC and read the predefined text. In the base game, that means a monologue. In my previous campaign, I added player replies into the text with ifferent colour. So it was a dialogue, but the player character had a predefined personality. Another problem is you can't force speech on your squad mates (companions). Again, I mitigated this problem in my previous campaign by adding unique perk or trait to each companion which helped me to find out which one the player has at the moment, then I opened a special text window with a dialogue between the player and the companion.

At the moment, I don't have anything. I haven't started working on it yet, just did the graphical demo above. It's an idea I have. A unique FT setting (Fallout in space! Kind of). So the crew and the jobs are still waiting to be thought out. I don't want to do a copy-paste of Serenity crew. They don't even have to be as interesting, I am not aiming that high (I just aim to misbehave).
My idea is that the player would be either the captain or the right hand, the guy who does everything outside the ship. The rest of the crew would probably be on the ship all the time - the doctor, the technician and maybe some more. It's impossible or very hard/inconvinient to detect which party member has died, so the people you take on missions would be some expendable hired guns. The recruiting of these guys would probably occur on the planets, some could join as an outcome of a quest. You don't have to have a psychic, a sheppard and a companion to fly with Firefly. :)

The jobs? Well, since FT is about shooting above all, it would be more about the criminal stuff than trading. If it were possible to modify item prices based on location, I would totally implement it, but it's not. Using some of the original contacts like Badger or Niska is not completely off the table, but there are surely hundreds of similar people in the Verse so why not make our own.
My ideas so far: first mission would be about rescuing your main character from prison or something. The crewmates would be playable in this mission and death of anyone would result in mission failure. Another mission would be a train heist, but not a copy paste from the show. I'd like to use that scenery, but the objective? I don't know yet. Definitely not shooting at one Fed without alerting the rest sitting in the next carriage :D Maybe an assasination where you don't know how the target looks like. Or some puzzle like in point-and-click adventures. The stealth options in FT aren't good either so... Also I'd like to implement a Reaver boarding / Alliance inspection as one of the missions.

So, not the show remade in FT, but a Fallout Tactics game in a Firefly setting.
 
I am slowly working on the technical background of the campaign. Turning the stones of FTSE and editor, finding what will it let me do. Lot of disappointment, where I was just a step short of making some cool stuff.
For example, I nearly had a process of accessing the ship from anywhere on the map, while keeping the random encounters intact. Only problem - the ship location has one set position on the world map, so the party gets teleported across the solar system. This means the player base won't be the ship itself :-(. Huge disappointment.
Small setback was the Way of the fruit perk - the process of proccing the perk (by eating fruit) also procs radiation damage, which I use to detect oxygen-free zones. So the character, after eating fruit, yells that he can't breathe. I wanted to turn the fruit into Fruity Oaty Bars. I can still implement them, but it won't have it's own perk... dull. Spent like two hours on it :D

A stab in the back is how special encounters work. I wanted to use them as salvage operations on derelict ships. Rare encounter that can give you a lot of money and loot. There are even 2 perks that increase chance of finding SE and 2 perks that increase outdoorsman, which also increases that chance. So when testing, I added 9 special encounters, all available in each square, 11 % chance each. I found all of them in three minutes with 22% outdoorsman :-?. Stumbling upon a special encounter is easier than having a random encounter. Total bullshit.
I am going to try to do it through random encounter that will somehow change depending on whether it's a reaver boarding or a salvage operation.


Lot of positive development as well. Thankfully, because I really need all the motivation I can get. Found a few ways to use FTSE to make great things.
1) Random loot. Upon entering a map for the first time, containers with certain tag name will be randomly populated by items specified in a loot table. I want it primarily for random encounters, but it can speed up the map making as well. It could be used to give loot to NPCs as well so they don't have just their weapon and ammo on them.
2) Monetary rewards for quests defined by main char's CHA and barter.
3) Forcing the main char to utter some float text words without having to fiddle with tag name (FT:C nightmare intensifies). I know how to make (random) squad members do it as well.
4) Interesting perks. I resurrected the unimplemented Fortune Finder perk to increase amount of loot generated by the random loot procedure. Plus several new, combat oriented perks as well...
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I am also thinking of implementing fuel which you need to fly your ship (= to leave location). I know how to make it through FTSE and variables, but simply using tagged items could probably work as well. Just not sure if it's not too inconvenient and without benefit.
 
This is pretty cool actually. Never was a fan of the show but I like the idea.
 
Messing around with nice, but irrelevant stuff.
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Out of the blue came an idea to give a price tag to each crewmate. Nothing will be paid upon recruitment. Instead, that amount of money will be subtracted from the job (quest) paycheck. I have yet to figure out what will happen if the reward goes into red numbers (easily possible with the combination of low charisma + barter and too many crewmates).
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I know I am replying to this kind of late, but if you were still working on this I would like to help you write dialogue or really whatever. I have been working on my own Tactics mod that balances things for Multiplayer, and I honestly want to learn how to do stuff that would make a campaign, so I would like to help you if you'd want.
 
It's hard to come too late to a project like this. :) Honestly, I didn't do much since last posting here. Some proof of concept work, some graphics stuff, got myself a soundtrack. Biggest thing probably is that now I have a draft of the story and I know what will the missions be about (and on which planet). If I ever finish it, that is.
All in all, it's still laying the basis for the actual work. Any help would be apreciated, since as it is now, chance of this project seeing the light is close to zero. Time flies by, my interest in FT is waning (not to mention the potential audience). Also, I always have several creative projects going on and I switch between them as I get tired by the current one. It takes usually months, sometimes years, between two runs on any one project.
I am telling you this so you understand getting on this ship is a bit of a suicide mission. But I would pass all my kung-fu: tactics onto you in exchange.
 
Reinar said:
It's hard to come too late to a project like this. :) Honestly, I didn't do much since last posting here. Some proof of concept work, some graphics stuff, got myself a soundtrack. Biggest thing probably is that now I have a draft of the story and I know what will the missions be about (and on which planet). If I ever finish it, that is.
All in all, it's still laying the basis for the actual work. Any help would be apreciated, since as it is now, chance of this project seeing the light is close to zero. Time flies by, my interest in FT is waning (not to mention the potential audience). Also, I always have several creative projects going on and I switch between them as I get tired by the current one. It takes usually months, sometimes years, between two runs on any one project.
I am telling you this so you understand getting on this ship is a bit of a suicide mission. But I would pass all my kung-fu: tactics onto you in exchange.
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Sorry for the late reply again, haha, but how would we keep in touch on this, do you happen to work on this through a Git Repo or something similar, I've found myself with renewed motivation to work on Tactics stuff recently, including the mod I was making to spice up multiplayer.
 
~Insert Meme Here~ said:
Sorry for the late reply again, haha, but how would we keep in touch on this, do you happen to work on this through a Git Repo or something similar, I've found myself with renewed motivation to work on Tactics stuff recently, including the mod I was making to spice up multiplayer.
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Hi, here's my late reply for late reply :) I don't use version control / repository except for work. When I worked on my previous campaigns with one helping hand, we were just sending the files over instant messenger (ICQ/Miranda at that time). We never worked on the same file at the same time. Same could work here if we decide to kick it off, just using Discord or something.
But right now, I am not sure I want to commit to making the campaign. Over the past days, I did some more work. Fleshing out the story and mission objectives and preparing portraits for crewmates and important NPCs. Over the past days, I was also playing Shadowrun: Hong Kong and I had this crazy idea yesterday - what about making this Firefly campaign in Shadowrun instead?
I never made a single map in the SR editor, I know batshit about it, but who knows, maybe I would be able to learn it quickly enough that I wouldn't lose motivation in the process.
The positives of this being made in Shadowrun: much better combat (soooo much), proper dialogue trees, easier crewmate job payment, relatively new, not so obscure game (8 years old instead of 22).
The negatives: fewer noncombat skills (basically just decking for science and charisma for speech, maybe biotech for first aid - but for a small fan campaign it could be enough), no random encounters (reaver boarding, salvage operations, headbutting space mines), probably no way of changing the GFX to make Firefly-like UI or guns, probably no bik movies of Firefly entering stratosphere.

So right now, I don't know. I will have "day off" for the rest of the year starting this saturday. I have plenty of personal projects to work on, but I might decide on what to do with this one.:aiee:
 
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