I'm wondering if there's a scenario out there which introduces a constant threat to the player, at all stages of the game. I don't mean something like intermittent base attacks which are easily warded off. I mean a persistent force or enemy which is actively hunting the player, which is actually a threat, and can only be slowed, but never stopped (except maybe at the very late game, at which point the game ends). I picture the Zirax empire hunting you. In the beginning you hide, but you have to constantly keep moving as they find your bases, or build deep underground. You escape in a CV, but they can track your ship, and send cruisers after you. You can still only run away, so you build better ships you can fight with, but you still take damage in the space fights. You have to take the fight to them to cut down on the number of ships they can send at you at a time, but you can only stop the constant attacks by fighting your way to their homeworld, encountering increasingly difficult resistance, better armed cruisers, and planets swarming with troops. Only when you destroy the Zirax central command will they leave you alone, and retreat to rebuild their scattered fleet... Is there any scenario which makes no or very few modifications, other than a simple force driving the player to build better crafts and constantly keep moving (and thus explore)?
I do not think their is a Scenerio such as your describing. However unless the existing Scenerio tool set has a Lot more utility then i have heard about. Making a "simple force" driving the player is almost as complicated as making some games in a Game Engine. While the existing assets and factions can be used(much like game assets in game engines) Somebody would need to write A "AI Controller" system, with a way for the player to control the difficulty to prevent it from being overwhelming, to get the following you element. They may also need a way to define its available resources so it does not just send a squad of Shielded SVs to attack you on the way out of the home system. They also need to define or create a Homeworld with probably a custom PoI that reflects the Central Command. It might be something that can be done, even in the existing framework, but making a "Simple Force" that actively hunts the player is not a simple or fast thing and anybody that can make something like that is probably also going to wait until things are more stable so everything they have done is not broken every few weeks.
Ravien being able to do it would not surprise me and i actually hope him or somebody with comparable skills in modifying this game will drop by and tell me if the existing toolset can make it happen and guesstimate how time consuming it may actually be. It would be really nice to hear that i am wrong about how complicated it is. However i have used Unity and a bunch of pre-packaged assets to make a very simple get out of a haunted house game with 3 static enemies and 4 moving ones. It took somewhere between 8 and 12 Hours, not including Unity Installation, and i was following a Step by Step Tutorial without having to create or even fully define what was required to make everything work. Edit: Realized I did not actually finish my thought. I suspect that having to make any kind of AI Controller for the "Chase the Player" thing and a Homeworld with a corresponding Point of Interest will be at least as time consuming, and probably more complicated, as the project above which can be considered a playable game.
Sadly no this is not currently possible. The best you could do is use a PDA mission to periodically spawn NPCs or drones near a player while they are on a planet as part of a mission. There's no way inside of a scenario to spawn patrol ships or things in space.
Good to know. My best guess as to how one would have tried to attempt it would be to latch something to the Change Playfield Function that increases the detecting range of of any existing Patrol Vessel and depend on the faction standing to result in Patrol Vessels going after the player. However i have no idea if the tools for such things are available to Scenario Creaters or just the Game Staff. Sounds like it's just the game staff
That's a shame. I don't think I could handle a full scenario like this, but a "mission" as part of another scenario that introduces a constant running threat until x objective is completed ala the BSG episode "33" would be cool..
