MOD:WCU:WC0:Campaign:Master

The original idea of Starlord was to play Chen (Ripper/Bossman) between Iason incident (2629) and Custer's Carnival (2649). Unfortunately, Chen graduates in 2637, so he misses even McAuliffe. Three alternative solutions I proposed were:

• 1) Ignore Chen's graduation; or have him be on pre-graduation tour of duty in 2634 (McAuliffe).
• 2) Pick a different character to play prior to 2637, then switch to Chen.
• 3) Have Chen be a privateer before joining the Confeds.

Starlord liked the third idea best (and me too), so here it is.

Priv0/WC0 spans 18 years, which is an awful long time, and could, if fully fleshed out, be a longer game to play than all the rest of WC put together. So I've tried to break it up.

So we have two main parts:

• Priv 0, from 2631 to 2637 (6 years)
• WC 0, from 2637 to 2649 (12 years)

The Priv0 part will be freer play than a military campaign, but there will be enough story in it to span 6 years. Parts of the story will be game-date triggered.

The WC0 will be divided into campaigns we called "chapters". Each chapter would be about 10 missions, and end with a descisive battle or flashpoint.

Iason 2629

• • Iason Incident

(cinematic only)
Crew aboard Iason playing cards on a table, chitchat.
Cut to the ship's captain and a scientist discussing itinerary.
Pilot interrupts "Unidentified ship on the sensors!"
Etceteras.
Ending with destruction of the Iason.
Cut to view of the skyline of Kaohsiung city, Taiwan,

but with new buildings on tall pilons, holding them above the water (due to sea-level rise).
Cut to a family farewell, young Chen is leaving to go and try to make a living privateering.
Train ride to harbor.
Boat trip to the space elevator base, on an island in the ocean.
Riding the elevator up, leaving the atmosphere.
Passenger shuttle leaving the space elevator station.
News show, talk about the Kilrathi. Official position is: Kilrathi pirates are the problem.
Shuttle arrives to space station destination. Could be a mining station in Gemini. Whatever.
 Timeline:
2629 Vega Sector penetration + Iason incident

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Start 2631

• • 2631: Game begins.

Player is at the space station just arrived at. No ship. Hardly any credits.
At the bar there's a fixer. When you speak to him, he's a professional career advisor
and privateer trainer. He says he's happy to see you, and that you've made a career
choice you won't regret, but explains that, to get started in it without a ship, the
only jobs to be had are as turret gunner.
Chen asks why he couldn't get some other job.
The man says that other jobs wouldn't give you the right kind of experience.
He's already booked time for you on a simulator at the Sim/Arcade parlor down the hall,
and that you can start your training right away.
In the main hall, there's a door next to the Mercenaries Guild with a sign "Sim".
You click on it and you're in a room with like arcade machines. You sit at one, put your
hand on the palm reader and it says, "Hello, Chen; you can begin lesson 1".
The training is a number of lessons on how to use a ship's turret for defense. You have
a choice to view the text for the lesson, practise, and "Take Test". After passing a test,
you're onto the next lesson.
Once you've passed all the lessons, you find your trainor friend at the bar again, and
he notifies you that you're now a certified gunner, and that you could get jobs through
the mission computer. You can proceed to flying lessons, if you want; but he advises that
you get work and save money, and once you have about 10k to 20k credits, to come see him
again about getting a pilot's license and buying your own ship.
There should be gunner jobs available through the computer, ranging in pay from 100 to
like 700 credits; but if you pick a high paying job, you're refused and told they are
looking for someone with experience.
Once you gain experience, better paying jobs become available, but are also longer trips,
with more pirates to fight.
A smart player will wait to have more than 20k credits before trying to get a job that
takes you back to the station where the trainor is.
Simulator training on fighter piloting:
Lessons include landing and launching, escort flying, patrol, engagement, protection,
tactics and maneuvers, simulated flying of various ship models, and following chief
pilot orders.
Buying and customizing a ship (Talon and Tarsus are the cheapest). No ship smaller than
a Drayman can fit a jump drive, in the 2630's and 40's, though, so solo jobs are only
in-system. Escort jobs are the most common, and you always dock into the ship you are
escorting before a jump; and launch again from it after the jump point.
Your trainor tells you that his job is basically done, but that if you want to become a
chief pilot, to come and see him again, after you've gained some experience as pilot.
A chief pilot gets paid about double what a pilot gets paid. Essentially, a chief pilot
gives the orders to the other pilots in a squadron. A Drayman upgraded with a launch bay
can probably fit up to 3 fighters. If one of them is a chief pilot, typically the pilots
will work more effectively.
Once, or if, you become chief pilot, the next step in privateering would be to buy your
own cargo ship. But you'd better have extra money to buy a fighter that you can lauch in
in case of attack; otherwise you have to hire an escort or squadron of escorts and you
depend on their skills completely. But, to buy a cargo ship you need tons of money, so
the player will probably have started the story long before.
What's really the prerequisites to start the story: a pilot's license and a fighter.

Becoming a pirate:
You can become a pirate by attacking merchant ships and sweet-talking to pirates. Once
you reach a certain status with pirates, they may invite you to join their Brotherhood.
If you accept, they take you to a pirate base. At pirate bases you can take part of 
merchant hunting trips, where you ride with your fighter aboard a Caernaven or Drayman,
they drop you and the other fighters into a system, and you attack merchants. Once there
is enough loot floating around, the caernaven shows up again and brings you back to the
pirate base.

Start of the story 2631

• • 2631: Story begins.

To keep the tradition, if you happen to land in New Detroit and go to the bar, there is
a character at the front table named Deiter. He's a spice merchant...

Kat Pirates 2632

OBSOLETE -- THIS WILL BE CHANGED TO A PRIVATEERISH TYPE CAMPAIGN AND STORYLINE

• • 2632: Destruction of a pre-war carrier by kat military attack (tentative, chuck_starchaser)

Preceded by: missions against kat pirates and warlords, off a pre-war carrier.
During this chapter, the kat problem is one of kat pirates attacking Terran shipping.
At the end of this chapter, the player's carrier is on its way to replace another, but
the other carrier gets attacked by a large, military kat force, and is destroyed.
The player's carrier Captain orders retreat from the system just in time.
Upon return, Bossman and the rest of the crew are told to never speak to anyone about
the incident, as "there is NO war with the Kilrathi (until we say so)".
Ships flown: ???
Ships met: ???
Systems: ???
Characters met: ???
Timeline:
2630-2634 "space piracy, kidnapping and interplanetary plundering by Kilrathi" (KS Manual)
2630 Turreted Laser Cannon enters service

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The Return 2633

OBSOLETE -- THIS WILL BE CHANGED TO A PRIVATEERISH TYPE CAMPAIGN AND STORYLINE

• • 2633: Safe return of a pre-war carrier trapped behind enemy lines (tentative, Shissui)

Preceded by: running supply ship (Drayman) escort missions (which supply carriers on the front).
Pre-war carriers patrol systems at the front for kat pirates and warlords. The kat pirates have
figured out, by now, that going against a carrier is hard; but cutting their supplies is easier.
Drayman convoys must regularly dock with pre-war carriers at the front, and Bossman flies escort.
But on one of these runs, a carrier being resuplied is attacked by a kat military force, just
as two Draymans are docked with it. Bossman must help repell the attack. Both Draymans are
destroyed, and the carrier is battered. So, Bossman can't come back, and the carrier's captain
explains that they saw a larger kat military force going past them towards Terran space. They
can't afford to meet that force, so they must explore uncharted systems to get back. Bossman must
go through jump points ahead of the carrier, to verify the systems are safe. 
Ships flown: ???
Ships met: ???
Systems: ???
Characters met: ???
Timeline:
2633 M-421A survey + Image-Recognition missile enters service

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War 2634

OBSOLETE -- THIS WILL BE CHANGED TO A PRIVATEERISH TYPE CAMPAIGN AND STORYLINE

• • 2634 (earlier): Destruction of the Anna Magdalena

Preceded by: missions against kat pirates and warlords, off a pre-war carrier
Ships flown: ???
Ships met: ???
Systems: ???
Characters met: ???
Timeline:
2634 Terran Confederation Congress The TCC voted unanimously to enforce a non-agression policy with the Kilrathi
and threaten military reprisals if it was broken. Victory Streak
2634.186 Declaration of War: The Anna Magdelena, ferrying orphans to Dieno, is attacked by a pair
of Kilrathi fighters. All hands are lost. In retaliation for this and the five-year string of equally
heinous abuses of all known laws of civility, the Terran Confederation officially declares war on the
Empire of Kilrah for countless acts of piracy and unwarranted assault. Victory Streak

---

• • 2634 (later): The fall of McAuliffe (preceded by patrol missions)

OBSOLETE -- THIS WILL BE CHANGED TO A PRIVATEERISH TYPE CAMPAIGN AND STORYLINE: After the end of the Privateer-like storylines, Chen gets an encrypted message disc from Paladin, to go meet him in McAuliffe's Alexandria station. When Chen gets there, the kats enter the system, and he participates in the defense, and next day retaking of, McAuliffe.

Base: Alexandria space station
Ships flown: ???
Ships met: ???
Systems: Mcauliffe
Characters met: "Spirit's father: tanaka shun called "go-devil" is the one ripper-bossman briefly
meets\fights with during the mc auliffe events" ?
Timeline:
2634.228 TCN cryptographer Ches M. Penney intercepts and partially decodes a stray Kilrathi cipher
implying that a strike will soon be launched against the planet McAuliffe and its orbitting space
station, Alexandria. Confederation High Command orders a counteroffensive twice the size of the
anticipated fleet, hoping to reach McAuliffe first and ambush the attackers. Claw Marks, KS Manual
2634.235 After a tense rush to McAuliffe, the Confederation fleet establishes a formidable defensive
position around the planet. When the Kilrathi fleet arrives, however, it is quadruple the expected
size. The incomlete transmission of the intercepted message had underestimated the size of the
Kilrathi offensive. So begins the McAuliffe Ambush engagement. In several days of bloody combat, the
Terran fleet is all but obliterated, leaving a still-sizeable force of funtional Kilrathi spacecraft.
But the Kilrathi, momentarily daunted by the ferocity of the Terran resistance, turn back to regroup
and repair. The first large-scale Terran-Kilrathi engagement ends with the Kilrathi spearhead
momentarily broken. The phase-shield piercing torpedo technology is used by Kilrathi forces during
this ambush for the first time. That technology is soon to be adapted by the Terran Military.
Claw Marks, KS Manual

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• • 2634 (next day): The retaking of Mcauliffe: Multiple missions in a single day!!!

OBSOLETE -- THIS WILL BE CHANGED TO A PRIVATEERISH TYPE CAMPAIGN AND STORYLINE

Base: Grey Wolf (Concordia supercruiser)
Ships flown: ???
Ships met: ???
Systems: Mcauliffe
Characters met: Paladin?, Iceman?
Preceded by missions to cut Kilrathi resupplies and reinforcements
Timeline:
2634.236 Battle of McAuliffe Fighters and bombers from the Concordia and the Ark Royal launch on a
counter-attack against Kilrathi forces at McAuliffe. Concordia's forces feign at a carrier, then
break off, loop McAuliffe and attack the Kilrathi transports and landing craft, while Ark Royal's
forces engage the originally targetted Carrier. Once Ark Royal's bombers have struck the carrier,
they loop around the planet and form the second wave of the attack against the Kilrathi transports
and LCs. There is only time for one sweep, and the confed forces can't slow down because they need
the velocity to loop back out and make it to rendezvous with the carriers. Missiles are to be under
complete computer control, taking care of target acquisition and firing. Pilots are to control the
guns --Action Stations
2634.236 - 2634.239 The Concordia is abandoned and explodes just before Turner jumps back to
McAuliffe. --Action Stations
2634.352 The Kilrathi Emperor announces the decree to eliminate the human race. KS Calendar

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Long Way Home 2634/2635

• • 2634/5: .... (other chapters?)

Preceded by: After routing kats back out of McAuliffe
Base:
Ships flown:
Ships met:
Systems:
Characters met:

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• • SINOPSIS:

While the kats were on their way to attack McAuliffe, a pre-war carrier had been sent into Kilrathi territory via a different route. But as the kats are routed from McAuliffe, they retreat, closing in on the carrier. The carrier is outnumbered and outgunned, gets battered, and loses about half its escorts; and it barely manages to flee. The kats block the carrier's retreat while regrouping to give chase. The commander of the carrier is aware that he cannot go back the way he came, and that kat forces anywhere along the front line are probably making preparations to block the carrier's attempt to flee back into Confed space.

Meanwhile in McAuliffe, Paladin has figured out everything that's going on, so he sends Chen with an overflowing cargo of supplies, munitions and spare parts, to try to find the carrier. Paladin thinks the only way the carrier could be going is South of Kilrah. So Chen heads South, then South-East, and eventually finds the carrier. But the carrier's commander has knowledge or suspicions of a kat fleet coming South, along the front, to try and catch it. So the player has little chance of being able to head back to Confed space, and accepts the commander's offer to become an escort to the carrier.

So, I'm not sure if this is what Shissui had in mind, but it's what I pictured the strategy would be: the commander keeps on the move all the time, going from one system to another kind of at random, sending the player first across each jump point to verify its safety, and doing jump point telemetry at each new system, to find its jump points, or else observing kat movements; trying to find some way back. Meanwhile, they practise piracy on the kats, as a way to resupply, and sometimes capturing kat ships. Gradually, captured kat ships grow to a whole fleet, and captured khameks with no engines are attached to the carrier by a savvy engineer; so after attaching like 8 khameks to the carrier, the latter becomes a sort of (home-made) dreadnough in terms of size, armor and firepower, and can now fight its way back to Confed space.

2637

CHEN'S GRADUATION MARKS THE END OF PRIV ZERO, AND THE BEGINNING OF WC ZERO.

Timeline:
2637 Chen Kien graduates

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NOTE: IT IS QUITE CONCEIVABLE THAT CHEN MIGHT GET PERIODIC LEAVE FROM FLEET, AT WHICH TIMES THE PLAYER COULD BE FREE TO RETURN TO PRIVATEERING.

Heat Up 2638

• • 2638: .... (another chapter?)

Preceded by:
Base:
Ships flown:
Ships met:
Systems:
Characters met:
Timeline:
2638 Flak Cannon enters service

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Enyo 2639

• • 2639: The retaking of Enyo

Preceded by: (space thick with kats all the time...) Raptor minelaying mission, and others
rarely encountered in previous WC games such as officer shuttle destruction, spy ship detection
and destruction (the spy ship possesses a cloak rendering it invisible to radar (although NOT to
human eyes like the later stakhra stealth fighter) and will be hard to spot in an asteroid belt,
for instance)
Base: Grey Wolf (Concordia supercruiser)
Ships flown: ???
Ships met: ???
Systems: Enyo
Characters met: Hunter, Knight (and La Doña, saved by Knight), Spirit's dad
Timeline:
2639 Kilrathi forces occupy Enyo
2639.033 Kilrathi occupation forces land on the human-occupied world Enyo, put a quarter of a million
human prisoners under orbital guns, and await Terran reprisals. So begins the Enyo Engagement, a tactical
situation made difficult by the presence of so many hostages. Phase One involves
bringing in an attack force against the Kilrathi fleet at Enyo. The attack force under command of
Captain Geoffrey Tolwyn consists principally of Raptor-Class heavy fighters reconfigured to carry extra
Porcupine Space Mines and practically no missiles. The force is small enough that Kilrathi forces at Enyo
are certain of victory. The Phase One forces drop their Space Mines in one region of space near Enyo and
engage the enemy. Kilrathi ships maneuver to get out of the mined region and turn their attention to destroying
the invaders. By the time the Kilrathi navigators realize that the mined region corresponds to Enyo's
principal jump point, it is too late: Phase Two has begun. A single radio signal detonates all the specially-
-modified Porcupine mines, and moments later the remainder of the Terran fleet appears at the jump point, in
the middle of the engagement. The Terran fleet strikes first against the gunships threatening the human colonies.
The enemy ships are destroyed with minimal loss of life among the colonists. Then the two fleets settle in for a
pounding match. The Enyo engagement ends with the Kilrathi in retreat. Losses have been nearly identical
between the two fleets, but the Kilrathi have been forced to abandon a strategic position.
NOTE: The above quotation is from Claw Marks and KS Manual, but with all occurences of "McAuliffe" changed
to "Enyo"; --as we believe they were in error.

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2639/2640: At this stage, the kilrathi will have hacked into the TKB (terran knowledge bank) and will have learned the earth's position as well as all our system's. This is why I insisted on having the trackrha spy ship design in the plot.

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Espionage 2640

• • 2640: .... (another chapter?)

Preceded by:
Base:
Ships flown:
Ships met:
Systems:
Characters met:
Timeline:
2640 Neutron Gun enters service
(I suppose the "movie Rapier" doesn't exist before this, since it has a neutron gun.)

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Counter-Espionage 2641

• • 2641/2/3: .... (other chapters?)

Preceded by:
Base:
Ships flown:
Ships met:
Systems:
Characters met:

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Retreat 2644

THIS NEEDS UPDATING TO INCORPORATE AND EXPAND ON THE KARNES STORY AND THE TORTUGA PIRATE BASE.

• • 2644: Assisting the Tiger's Claw in repelling invading kilrathi fleet

Preceded by missions off the Grey Wolf
Base: Grey Wolf (Concordia supercruiser)
Ships flown: ???
Ships met: Snakeir class dreadnaught (1 km version)
Systems: ???
Characters met: ???
Timeline:
2644 Trojan Four Spaceyards builds the first Bengal: Tiger's Claw
Daymon Karnes, at this time considered being a war hero, is MIA when he doesn't return from a standard patrol in
system M-421A. Confederation HQ finds out later that Karnes has turned renegade and begun to establish a pirate
base on Tortuga, a planet in M-421A. Confed declares this fact Top Secret fearing it might have negative effects
on morale. WC Academy Series The newly-launched TCS Tiger's Claw, on its shakedown cruise, carrying a minimal
spacecrew and an under-experienced command, finds itself in the path of a surprise Kilrathi invasion force.
The ship's unexpected presence along the Kilrathi flight plan, clever tactics on the part of the command crew,
and performance above and beyond the call of duty by the spacecrews rout the superior Kilrathi force. Shortly
thereafter, Tiger's Claw is given permanent assignment in Vega Sector. Claw Marks

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2645

• • 2645: .... (another chapter?)

Preceded by:
Base:
Ships flown:
Ships met:
Systems:
Characters met:
Timeline:
2645 Second Bengal class, TCS Kipling, launched

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2647

• • 2647: .... (another chapter?)

Preceded by:
Base:
Ships flown:
Ships met:
Systems:
Characters met:
Timeline:
2647 The Battle of the Landreich

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2648

• • 2648: .... (another chapter?)

Preceded by:
Base:
Ships flown:
Ships met:
Systems:
Characters met:

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Custer's Carnival 2649

• • 2649: Custer's Carnival

Preceded by:
Base: Tiger's Claw
Ships flown: ???
Ships met: Snakeir class dreadnaught (4 km version)
Systems: ???
Characters met: The newbies: Maniac, Spirit and Angel.
Timeline:
2649 Terran ground forces launch an attack on a fortified Kilrathi colony, only to be routed by unexpected
Kilrathi fighter support. The Terrans quickly reform and advance back into Terran space, their lightly-armed
transports pursued by Kilrathi warships. The TCS Tiger's Claw is detached from its previous station and
assigned to intercept the pursuing fighters in a delaying action evantually known as Custer's Carnival.
Swarmed and badly damaged by Kilrathi fighters, the carrier distracts Kilrathi forces long enough for the
Terran fleet to reach safety. Despite the fact that three-fourths of its engines are destroyed and half its
pilots are listed as casualties, the heroic efforts of the Claw's crew allows the carrier to make it back
into Terran space. Two Gold Stars and numerous other medals - many of them posthumous - are awarded to the
ship's personnel. The carrier itself spends six months in spacedock for repairs and refitting. Claw Marks,
KS Manual

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"The plot will end with a vid sequence in witch the pilots discuss the near arrival of a new recruit: a certain christopher blair..."

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AFTER THE END OF THE WC0 PLOT, PERHAPS WE COULD ALLOW THE PLAYER TO RETURN TO PRIVATEERING AND TIE UP A FEW LOOSE ENDS. AFTER ALL, CHEN DIES IN ACTION, IN 2656; WHICH COMES A WHOPPING 7 YEARS AFTER CUSTER'S CARNIVAL.