So I am struggling to find my plot for my game. I know what sort of game play I am looking for. I can visualize what playing the game will look like, but the plot that gives the player a reason for each battle still eludes me.

This is a sci-fi, space based RTS game. Objectives can change and be creative, but the basic game play does not. Battles occur between spaceship fleets around and between planets in star systems. The game play revolves around controlling important points, typically planets or space stations. This is not multiplayer.

What I know so far, the final battle involves luring the enemy fleet into a star system for a final show down, and the battle is a cover for detonating the local star into a forced, premature, nova. All is sacrificed for the greater good, humanity (everywhere else) will live on. The game will start with humanity endangered some how, overwhelmed, and rescued by an alien species already fighting this foe. The home turf (which may not be Earth) is lost but a significant population escapes and survival depends on victory.

I'm not sure of the specifics on the intro or how to take it to the outro.

Well first, you need some motivation for the fighting. Are they fighting over resources, or to prove who is the "master race"? Is one or both sides using a war to cover for internal problems?

You could structure it as a campaign, hopping from star system to star system on the way to a common goal, either some mythical object or even your own homeworld after a series of strategic withdrawals.

I guess I've been thinking of it as a master race attacking either to take the system for the hospitable planets, or perhaps to enslave the less advanced species. Not sure on that count. The game would progress as a campaign jumping from system to system completing missions of some sort.

Thanks for the input!

okay so for the purposes of clarification whilst I write
Race: Humans
Race: Goobers - the enemy
Race: Farbles - the allies of humans

Plot idea 1

The Farbles an old stagnant race jealous of others entering what they consider their domain of space observe two new races of spacefaring species begin to rise: The humans and the goobers. The goobers are somewhat more technologically advanced than the humans but both races breed quickly and with time will overwhelm the space held by the Farbles. Thus a terrible plan was developed by the Farbles to adress these problems.

A ship of the humans goes missing (taken by the Farbles). Shortly thereafter the human ship launches a devastating orbital assault on the homeworld of the Goobers before crashing into the planet (in a controlled descent) leaving more than sufficient evidence of the humans (all of them "conveniently" dead) inside as well convenient star maps to Earth's location.

The Goobers swiftly marshall their resources and go on the offensive to destroy the vile humans who attacked them so unjustly in a cowardly surprise attack. The Farbles step forward and offer to save a portion of the human race (not having the resources to save them all) and thus Earth is devastated. Providing the humans with just enough tech to draw equal with the goobers (the Farbles are "pacifists"). The two races go to war. The final plan utilising an "invention" of the Farbles to destroy a star thus ending the Goober's menace and sacrificing the last human fleet is made. Military humans knowing that the Farbles will keep the surviving remnant of the human species "safe" choose this path.

Will the Goobers and the humans fall prey to the evil machinations of the Farbles?



I will add other plots here and there but dishes need to be done before the girlfriend returns home. Hope this inspires

I guess I've been thinking of it as a master race attacking either to take the system for the hospitable planets, or perhaps to enslave the less advanced species. Not sure on that count. The game would progress as a campaign jumping from system to system completing missions of some sort.

Thanks for the input!

Sure! Just saw you had a journal started, too, I look forward to keeping track of your progress.

Edit: I like StormyNature's direction. I remember in Master of Orion II (classic turn based galactic-scale strategy game) when two other species would fight, I would feed the weaker side advanced technology so the war would wear down the stronger, leaving them open to my fleet.

But seriously, I could write a space opera for every Master of Orion save I have.

Plot 2 - The suckerpunch.

The Goobers are a genetically created swift breeding race created and controlled by the Farbles. Utilising the Goobers to wage war against the Humans. The Farbles step in to "save the day" providing some basic support and wins initially until the humans include them in on the battle plans. Using the intel the humans are slowly broken through attrition until the "master" plan is set at which point the "Farbles plan to blow up the sun becomes an attack from behind on the last of the human fleet, as they face off with the Goobers.

Will they survive such a massive betrayal from their Allies?

Plot 3 - It takes a Barbarian to kill a barbarian.

The Goobers are xenophobes due to some traumatic incident in their racial past (insert future villain species for game sequel). All species not Goober must die. To this end they undertake insane behaviours including Kamikaze type attacks, planetary "cleansing" and other "non-civilised" types of warfare. Unable to deal with this sort of madness the Farbles despite their technology, turn to Human's and their "barbaric ways" to wage a similar form of warfare and thus save the Farbles from doom.

hope these help

Plot 4 - The Merchants of Death

The Goobers and Humans are at war. Each side grinding a terrible war through attrition. Enter the Farbles with new forms of technology / weapons available for sale. The humans buy some weaponry they start to push the Goobers back. The Goobers rally and fight back with even more powerful weapons. The humans buy more weapons from the Farbles. This to and fro continues until both sides desperate for a win buy the "ultimate" star exploder weapon from the Farbles who have been selling to both sides.

Who will destroy the sun first?

Plot 5 - The Tiebreaker

The Goobers and the Farbles have been waging a war for what seems an eternity. Both sides have become a manufactory of war. Both sides send envoys to the humans with the same message. Join our side in the war or die. What will the humans do?




That's probably enough crazy ideas from my end.

Hope they help/inspire

I'm going to take some time to process. This is a huge response, thank you. Of course, I like bits a pieces so I'm going to let them sit, maybe reread a few times and see what I come up with. Thank you.

...I could write a space opera for every Master of Orion save I have.

Please do! The more ideas the better.

Right now I am thinking that the Farbles will be true allies, not double crossing. Also, at the end, while the Humans will lose the main of their fleet, along with much of the allies, the population will live on. I am starting to think the Goobers will be modeled after the Shadows from Babylon 5, pushing everything toward conflict and chaos in order to push natural selection and evolution further. To them, then, this conflict is like a noble calling.

More thoughts to come. I have a niece and nephew watching LOTR for the first time here.

I have decided on a back story for my galaxy's aliens.
Imagine this as a total alternate history for humans.

On a planet fourteen times the mass of Earth, in the middle of the habitable zone for a star slightly heavier than the sun and twice its brightness, is our original Human race. They have achieved a technology level somewhat in advance of our own. Their home star is burning hot. Its lifetime was shorter than that of the Sun leaving barely enough time for this race to ready themselves for their ultimate test of survival. In their last few decades of their star's life before it expands they mass produce ships. Placing themselves in stasis on these ships they all leave the planet. Fourteen billion people launched into space on a hundred thousand ships, bound for ten thousand different systems.

Each ship was automated via AI and supplied sufficiently for their trip, taking everybody that wanted to leave. The majority of ships found their planets. Many of these groups found a way to survive, many more found only a poisonous world and perished.

Most of these worlds where survivors took root were within a couple hundred light years of the home world though some ships were bound for targets farther out. Many of those found success as well, though far fewer than those that did not go so far. An extreme minority chose target systems very far out. Only an extreme minority of those are thought to have found new homes.

Many of these newly colonized planets were hospitable and their population flourished, recovering their old tech and continuing, many more though had a less hospitable time. Some even crashed when they landed. Most of those died, ill prepared for the new planet with no resources from the ships data and manufacturing facilities. A few though had the luck to crash on a planet tolerable without its aid and struggled to survive. Some populations spent as little a thousand years in transit, many up to five times that. Some though were traveling much longer, ten, twenty, a hundred thousand year, even a few slept for a hundred and fifty thousand years.

Conditions and transit times left many colonies tens or hundreds of thousands of years behind others. Adaptation to these new world drove each world down new evolutionary paths. The more advanced colonies even began to modify their own genomes. Technology grew in fits and starts for some and came easily to others. Generally the populations that landed first had advanced the most, and changed the most.