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Saturday, March 08, 2008

More on Scenario Writing

This is Steven Petrick Posting.

One of the recent scenario submissions was a demonstration of melding ideas. The scenario involved a Seltorian Hive ship (actually a smaller Nest ship) crossing the void between Galaxies. The author took the time to consider what this might look like before submitting it. Obviously the relatively short lived but fast breeding Seltorians would not need to send fully crewed units, but could reduce manning to near minimal levels on the ships being sent, which would of course have the benefit of making available supplies last far longer (fewer mouths to feed). Once the new Galaxy was reached, a suitable planet could be found to provide the food needed to breed full crews.

In the meantime, lack of full crews could make the ships more vulnerable to the unexpected as they cross the void.

For the unexpected, he did not go with a simple encounter with fleeing Tholians, but borrowed a monster from elsewhere in the Starfleet Universe as his antagonist.

The result is what may be an interesting solitaire scenario using units that seldom get much play (Seltorian Nest ship). It is a straight up combat scenario (no need to gather information on the monster, just keep shooting until they are dead because they will keep going until they destroy the Nest Ship, and if you lose Nest ship, all of your ships are dead anyway).

So, there are things that can be done to create interesting scenario ideas. I certainly had not thought about Seltorians running into someone in the deep void, although a scenario where a Hive Ship arrives in a Galaxy already dominated by Andromedans had occurred to me.