Saturday, April 9, 2011

‘Smuggler’s Revenge’

Help!

The following story mission is: ‘To Kalabesh’

This is an interesting mission, different to the typical search/destroy/escort formats of most missions. By now you may be flying the AnIn-1450, but I stuck with my 1300 and completed this mission first time, though it would be easier in the 1450.

Jake Rattenbury wants to shock the Colonials by attacking Administration City (imaginative name). Major Ivanova messed up the smuggling run in ‘Escorting Bill’. By blowing her up Jake hopes to keep the Colonial Guard out of his business.

On the surface you need to meet with Jake in his coolly named ship The Anarchy. He has a bomb which you need to collect and deposit at the gates of the city. Being a big chicken Jake stays behind and leaves you to do the dirty work. Once you reach the marked spot with the bomb it is automatically deposited and activated.

Now you have to go and find Major Ivanova in her even cooler named ship Falcon’s Fist. She’s not far away and your task is to lure her to the bomb. Give her a few shots with the blaster and she’ll follow. If you Afterburn away then you may lose her, so just head straight for the bomb and use your Repair Droid or Shield if you have one.

Once Ivanova passes close to the bomb it goes off and wastes Falcon Fist. The Major survives and curses you for a coward from her pod. “What if the Mantis attack?” she says, “You wouldn’t take my place and defend the Colonies.” Jake Rattenbury gloats, and you feel like a rat.

So a different mission, but this is one where you may not enjoy the role you have to play. The Mantis are swarming about and here you are attacking the first line of defence to protect Jake, who’s obviously a bad guy. This story mission makes you aware of just how linear the storyline is in Pirate Galaxy (PG). The recent tutorials give you a choice over ships, but the story is still a straight jacket. Now PG has never claimed to be a Role Playing Game (RPG) so I won’t criticise them. However I think the game would be improved if you could make a choice in some missions about which side you want to be on.

For example in this story mission you could decide to stick with Jake and keep collecting the crystals. However what if you could decide not to plant the bomb, or warn Ivanova, or even attack Jake. At the end of the mission you would then be part of the Colonial Guard. There could then be a series of parallel missions where you fight against smugglers and Mantis raids. You could keep your own ship or be loaned a Colonial vessel. The trade off might be a better ship but less crystals as you just draw regular military pay.

After 4 or 5 missions then the Smuggler and Guard paths could converge as the Mantis attack and all differences are forgotten. Doing this would only require 4 or 5 extra story missions and increase the replayability of PG. After taking the Smuggler route you could create a new pilot on another server and try the path of the Guards. Similar paths could be set up in the other systems too, maybe tailored to suit different choices in ship.

All a suggestion to improve the game, not a criticism because as I said this is a good mission.

2 comments:

  1. Yeah, I agree. Would be great if you had some kind of a "moral compass", with multichoice missions to decide what side your character is on.

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  2. Meh, mispelt my own name in previous comment :(

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