New Type of Mission

It is entirely possible. One way would be to set a variable to a random number, and then have different events' trigger conditions be based on the value of that variable. That said, 100 events is a lot to script, especially if your objectives are substantially affected by these "cards," such that you can expect needing some multiple of this to deal with all the contingencies. Hamak sector 1.6 had over 100 events, and that's with precious little in the way of variability.

I believe something like this could be done. The hard part would be to make sure all six players were always involved no matter how the random numbers came out. Combat missions involve everyone, but diplomacy and science would not. You would need to come up with some other mission types. Perhaps defensive, offensive, patrol, escort, and espionage.

At the start of defensive, offensive, escort, and espionage missions the players would receive clear orders. Patrol missions would start with simple orders to patrol an area, and they would suddenly turn into one of the other mission types.

In my expereince from observing crews playing mission scripts, another challenge would be scripting all the consequences for disobeying orders. Many Artemis players are primarily science fiction fans rather than gamers. They play to act out a fantasy rather than to win the game. What if they are ordered to patrol an area and they never go near that area? What if they are ordered to escort a convoy and instead they investigate a nebula? What if they are ordered to attack the Arvonians and instead they go monster baiting? For every possible mission combination you need to write consequences of doing the wrong thing.

Two things could come about by not completing missions: 1)You don't move closer to victory(you need to complete a set number of missions based on difficulty); and 2)You don't get the benefit provided by a completed mission. That's the way it is now. You don't have to rendezvous with that transport; but, although there is no negative impact, you don't receive that extra coolant! I still think Artemis would benefit from some type of scoring system. There could be a bonus based on the percentage of missions you accomplished, as well as the time it took to win the scenario, number of bases remaining, etc. My thinking is that, if the mission is complete, it receives one value. If iris not completed, it receives another value. Either way, if there is a value associated with the mission or event, it will not come up again. At the end of the game, the number of each value would be used in the scoring process.

I'm not necessarily suggesting that the missions would be of the types mentioned - that was just for example. However, all of the events wouldn't have to spawn enemy ships. You could have scanning missions, rendezvous, getting a number of enemy ships to surrender, etc. All of the missions would involve the entire crew, like they do now.

As far as the random events go, I'm thinking of little things that might go wrong on the ship, like forward shields down 33%, warp drive damaged by plasma overload which requires repair, and even some benefits, like one system may immediately cool down completely, beams temporarily overcharge to 300% for 10 seconds without building heat, etc. The possibilities are endless.

How would a scanning mission involve the Weapons or Engineering officers?

It's surprisingly hard to involve Engineering in an interesting way. Sure, your script can just start randomly destroying things so the Engineer needs to push DamCons around, but that's not very challenging. The Engineer is only truly challenged when the ship is pushed to its maximum performance.

Well, some stations may have a few minutes of relative calm during certain missions. Howver, they are just as likely to be hip-deep in it when the next event/mission is determined. Bottom line is, everyone can't be kept 100% busy 100% of the time. But I hope that by a combination of luck in the draw and skill with the station will pose interesting tactical problems at inopportune times.

Basically what I wanted to do was throw this bone of an idea out into the middle of the pack and see if anyone with scripting know how could take the project from idea to reality. I have some ideas about what I'd like to see with the missions and the random events. My shortcoming is I don't have the technical savvy to do the scripting.

Is anybody interested in taking this on?

I will. But I first have to finish the campaign. So don't expect anything for several months. Would probably be best if someone else did it though because of my time constraints. Also the scriptor I work with (yeah I do mission design, development, story, backstory, etc. Not the actually scripting) would have to agree. But I think we will be able to do this after the conclusion of our current project.

I'm kind of in the same boat. I would love to learn how to script missions (and plan on doing so). However, between my trying to learn the ins and outs of DMX, as well as my 55-60 hour/week job, it doesn't leave a lot of free time.

I definitely want to be a part of the designing this, though - I really feel like it has potential.

With the way Mission Scripting is set up in Artemis, you could actually incorporate every mission ever created into one "Mission" with the random variable to select which mission starts up.

I'm always down to help with some mission scripting, but like everyone else, my life can be sporadic and extremely busy. I do work an extremely boring job though, and may have some time during that, no promises though.

Also, if I'm working with anybody I'd ask that they clearing label and comment on what is occuring during a mission script. Also Jim, I've had alot of people ask me here and there about mission scripting (because I was able to catch on pretty quick) and I've actually thought about possibly creating some tutorial videos, or maybe even throwing together some lessons to share over skype or other. Because the more scripters we have, the better the community will become :)

Anyone wanting to learn how to do some scripting (with the Mission Editor, because I'm too lazy to write the XML manually), hit me up! defineyourmorals@g, facebook.com/lucastarnold or lucas99801 on skype/icloud