SPOILERS AHEAD!!

Don’t read any further if you want to experience the scenario for yourself.

Playing the scenario with a Game Master is recommended, as there are some glitches and probably bugs with the scenario.

Krepios System

Every time you load the scenario the map will look differently. Usually it is not centered – so you need to zoom out first and look the for asteroid belt. It does not span all around the map as it might have a negative impact on game performance.

When opening the GM screen you will find it looking empty. Click the button next to Global Message to jump to the player ship and the area of operations.

The asteroid belt contains

  • SMC HQ as the biggest station. It is usually around the center of the belt. The players start right in front of it.

  • 3 mining stations are distributed around SMC HQ in 20-30u distance.

  • 3 abandoned mining stations on the map serve as mission locations and can be explored by the players

  • several nebulas on the map also serve as mission locations

  • one science station is situated in one of the nebulas. It also gives missions and trades to the players.

  • SMC Alpha is counter-clock wise on the far side of the asteroid belt. It serves as a location for the main mission. More on it later.

  • Minefields on the map can be used strategically by the players and have a container in the center that gives the players credits (RP) and energy.

  • A wormhole at the center near the planet is used at the end of the mission. Outer World traders start there, but the players should not go there until they are tasked to.

  • Far, far away in sector F80 is a dummy station called John Doe. The players jump there at the end and the scenario is over. They are not supposed to fly there or even know of its existence.

Customization Options

  • In scenario_01_krepios.lua you can edit the My.Config object to change the name of the player ship and the main characters. Just in case you do not like them.

  • You can rename all ships, stations, nebulae on the map. Theoretically all occurrences of its name should be updated. If not, you can consider this a bug and report it.

  • You can move stations – it does work. But don’t overdo it, as the mission areas assigned to the stations do not move.

  • You can command all ships on the map. They will do what you tell them and return to their previous routine if you give them the command to Idle.

  • It is not possible to create ships and stations from the Create menu as they will be created with default descriptions and none of the enhancements of the scenario. Sorry.

  • Mines etc should be fine though.

GM Menu

The GM interface has the ultimate Cheat Menu and we will briefly go over it:

Player > Reputation

Reputation (RP) is basically used as a currency in game. You could also use the slider in the Tweak interface to change the reputation, but the buttons let you work more fine grained.

Player > Crew

There is a mission for the crew to lend their repair crew. Having the ship destroyed will make the crew unobtainable. In case that happens (or you want to help the crew) you can modify the crew count here.

Player > Upgrades

Upgrades are basically what the crew is striving for and you can support them if you need to. You get a list of all upgrades that are available and can gift them to the players for free. Note that most upgrades require a certain upgrade to be installed, and you have to honor this dependency. Upgrade names in parentheses [] are already installed on the ship, upgrades with an angled arrow at the end > will be installed when you click the button. The players do not get a notification and don’t need to pay for the upgrade.

Player > Storage

Manipulate what the ship has loaded. Good for role playing or fixing, when the players buy stuff that they can not sell anywhere.

Player > Reset Menus

Some custom menus on the crew stations are nested (like the in-game database of the Science Officer). In theory there should always be a back button ⇐ visible to the stations to go back to the main menu. To my knowledge it has never happened that this button was not there or inaccessible, but should it ever happen you can force all stations to the main menu with a click on the Reset Menu button.

Player > Raid Player

Sends a small group of Outlaws to raid the player. It is composed mostly of interceptors and small ships, so your players should not struggle too much.

Stations > Storage

Same as with the players storage you can manipulate the storage on the station effectively also influencing how much the station buys or sells.

Stations > Missions

You get a climbs of the missions a station offers. If you dislike it, select it and hit the Replace button.

Story

Theoretically you should never need to trigger story events as they run automatically, but if your crew gets bored, you can advance the story quicker.

Plot Line

Phase 0: Intro

During Phase 0 the players have all the time in the world. If you have newbies, now is the time to get them accustomed to their stations.

Welcome

As soon as the game starts the team is "welcomed" by Commander Wright Hartman. Depending on how nicely they answer, they get more or less RP at the beginning.

Relay should start looking for missions to earn RP. The crew can choose between multiple fighting and non-fighting missions. Additionally they have missions to visit all inhabited stations in the sector.

They should start exploring their surroundings, doing missions and shipping goods.

Phase 1: Sandbox

The open world phase where the players can do whatever they want

Money earned (onFirstMoneyEarned)

Phase 1 starts as soon as they have 150RP gathered by doing a few mission. Wright Hartman says hi again and insults them, but this event does little more than start a few timers.

Laser Refit Module (onLaserRefitReward)

25 minutes after Phase 1 starts, Wright Hartman contacts the crew again and installs a module for the Weapons Officer. This allows them to modify their lasers to be more powerful, have further reach, etc and can be used for strategic purposes. This is mostly helpful to experienced players. Everything regarding the module should be described in-game.

You can trigger this event early through the menu.

Power Preset Module (onPowerPresetsReward)

40 minutes after Phase 1 starts, Wright Hartman gifts them another upgrade for the Engineering Officer which allows them to store presets for power and coolant distribution. If you played Artemis, this should be pretty familiar.

You can trigger this event early through the menu.

Phase 2: Enemies

Enemies (onAttackersSpawn)

60 minutes after Phase 1 starts, five enemy fleets spawn simultaneously close to the stations. The faction is called Legion, but nobody has any information who they are. They start heading towards the stations and attack ships.

Shortly afterwards the player also get a warning by HQ that something is going on.

Enemy detection (onAttackersDetection)

As soon as the players have scanned any enemy ship or they are close enough to the player or any station to attack an emergency broadcast is sent to the whole sector commanding for evacuation to SMC Alpha, the abandoned mining station.

At the same time Wright Hartman mans a ship with warp drive to go to SMC Alpha. If the players are really unlucky Hartman is killed on his way there, but this should rarely happen. Especially if you are trying to avoid it. ;)

The players should now be on their way to SMC Alpha to plan the defenses. They can (and should) scan some of the enemies, but are not supposed to fight them head on. The enemy is cheating at that point and is quickly repairing themselves and replenishing missiles. This is intentional to make it very hard to defeat the enemy.

Defense planning (onDefensePlanned)

Sooner or later the players should make it to SMC Alpha and start the dialog with Wright Hartman to plan the defenses. He gives the players control over one squadron and the stations. The players now have new options:

  • The Relay Officer can control a defense fleet through communications.

  • Relay Officer can issue commands to SMC Alpha on what to do next (build missiles, reactivate shields, etc)

  • SMC Alpha will randomly offer upgrades. This is the first option to have a chance to get the upgrade to store nukes

  • The high command will randomly send RP to the player

  • Scanning enemy ships reveals more intel in a dialog the Relay Officer can have with SMC Alpha.

All bases destroyed (onAllStationsDestroyed)

As soon as all stations are destroyed the cheat that repairs the enemies and replenishes their missiles is turned off and the players have a more realistic chance of fighting the enemy.

You can speed up that progress by deleting all stations (SMC HQ, the three inhabited mining stations, the science station) or commanding the fleets directly.

Phase 3: Evacuation

The attack of the enemy is intentionally designed to be very hard. Experienced crews can destroy the fleets, but sooner or later Phase 3 will start and it gives the players the option to finish the scenario with more or less heroism.

Enemies closing in on Fortress (onClosingInToFortress)

Once the first enemy fleet is close to the fortress high command recalls the players and they can finish the scenario by flying through the wormhole close to the planet.

SMC Alpha destroyed (onCommanderDead)

Once SMC Alpha is destroyed a second recall is issued by High Command. The players could stay in the sector to fight the last enemies, but at this point they should not have any way of replenishing missiles. Sooner or later they should make their way to the wormhole.

You can speed up or delay this event by destroying or saving SMC Alpha.

The End

The scenario sooner or later ends with the crew flying through the wormhole. As soon as that happens an ending dialog appears on screen and when the player are through with it the scenario ends. Congratulations.

The four endings are:

  • Hartman is dead, enemy lives (probably the most common one)

  • Hartman is dead, enemy destroyed (a rare one)

  • Hartman lives, enemy lives (this happens if the crew evacuates quickly)

  • Hartman lives, enemy destroyed (can be considered the best one)

Each of those has a different text at the end.

Side Missions

There are a bunch of side missions for Phase 1. This table shows how engaged each station can be in such an encounter. It could help you recommend missions in case anyone gets bored.

Table 1. Side Missions Engagement Table
Mission Helms Weapons Engi Science Relay

Buy goods

●

●

●●

Capture someone

●●●

●●●

●●●

●

●

Destroy space junk [1]

●●

●●

●

●●

●

Disable ship

●

●●

●●

●●[2]

Find and gather crystals

●

●●

●

Destroy pirate base

●●

●●●

●●

●●

●

Raging Miner

●●●[3]

●●●

●●●

●●[4]

●●[5]

Repair

●

●●[6]

●●

Scan asteroids

●

●●●

●●[7]

Secret Code

●

●●●[8]

Transport human

●●

●

Transport product

●●

●

●

Transport thing

●●

●

●

Other

Helms

Weapons

Engi

Science

Relay

Mining asteroids

●

●

●●●

●●

Trading

●●

●

●

●●

GM Hints

This chapter should help you understand the game better

  • Stations rotate one of their offered mission every few minutes to keep the missions fresh.

  • Stations always offer at least one fighting mission and one non-fighting missions for the crew to choose from.

  • Flying Traders spawn close to the wormhole to keep the economy alive. They buy items when the storage of a station is full and sell items when it is empty.

  • You can destroy all trading ships without problem. After a few minutes a replacement will spawn.

Navigating fleets

There are some fleets in the scenario, most notably the five enemy fleets and the defending fleet. A fleet means one fleet leader and multiple wingmen. Once the fleet leader is killed a wingman takes over their place and carries on with the same order.

To change the order of a fleet select the one ship that does not have the Fly in formation order and issue a new one. If you want the fleet to return to their previous order just issue the Idle command.

You can also command wingmen by issuing them orders. This will not change the order of the fleet though. To let the wingman fly back into formation give them the Idle order.

Things to look out for

There are some glitches that you should have an eye on:

  • Trading ships commonly build clumps where none of them moves. This is quite common (also in other scenarios). Please help them get unstuck.

  • Wingmen of fleets with the Fly in formation command have the bad habit of flying straight into mines. Either navigate fleets around minefields or break up the formation temporarily by issuing flight commands to all wingmen individually. Once they have passed the minefield issue the Idle order to make them fly back in formation.

1. Players are sometimes raided
2. can hack the drive
3. Outmaneuver the laser
4. EMP burst occurs when one of the shields is repaired (0%). Getting the shields down only when those bursts occur gives a big advantage.
5. can hack the laser or maneuverability
6. has to deal with smaller crew
7. could use scan probes
8. Everyone could help remember the phrase though