Operation Bookworms:
Players’ must retrieve important record from the Library which was irradiated in the attack that the coalition of aliens made that started the war. The Library and has been overrun by aliens. The Library goes deep down in the earth and is level after level of rooms that are 40 feet high with stacks of books/DVDs/record disks. Care must be taken not to damage other material after the first encounters (entrance), no flamethrowers, grenades, rocket launchers etc can be used. Each character gains a 25 kill bonus if they succeed in their mission. Kills above 1 for each PC shot are subtracted from the kill bonus.
Operation Trident:
Players are assigned to locate and destroy a crashed scout vessel at the bottom of an ocean.
Takes place on a waterworld with large piranha like fish with a huge mouth and multiple rows of teeth and the ability to generate electricity once per encounter at any range which screws with the electronics in the PC’s suits causes a hit and knocks out their Fish Finder’s for the rest of the mission. The fish also have Rapid Movement.
Equipment Issues: The only weapons that will work under water are, Hand to Hand (knife), Power Claws, Power Blade, FlechetteGun (with the rate of fire (kills) dialed back one level to allow for the flechettes to clear the barrel due to the greater resistance of the water), RocketLauncher (with modified rocket torpedoes), Grenades (may fire from Far range if the PC set range the turn before and is considered above the target and dropping grenades down on them, depth charge style, after setting a longer delay on their timer, however the grenade goes off at the end of the round due to the time to drift down). Visibility is murky and ends at Near however PC’s are issued Sonar Detectors which attach to their helmet. They locate objects at Far range and are called Fish Finders by the troops. However on a Fish Finder a PC at Far cannot differentiate aliens from other PC’s who are at Close and if the PC at Far fires at the aliens one of his kills is assigned to each PC at Close.
Captured aliens escape containment on board the ship mid transport. PC’s wake up when the ship automatically thaws them out, groggy, naked, with sirens shrieking, and find a bloody crewman corpse in the adjacent corridor. “Which way was the weapons locker?” (NFA roll).
Piece Talks:
Players are part of honor guard for a truce to be signed with an alien species (after a mission goes bad (evac) versus the same intelligent aliens). The truce is a rouse to take out the Brigadier. Scenario starts as an ambush if the PC with the best NFA fails his roll. They must try and get the Brigadier and themselves off planet. First turn is an ambush and only PC’s that pass an NFA may act. Players may use their body to take a kill for the Brigadier.
Space…err…Large Drifting Ship:
Players’ unit is assigned to sweep out a derelict alien Hulk ship in space that has been infested with parasitic aliens but which contains new technology of the original owners. They may run into other high tech aliens who are after the same thing. Only the second encounter can be at far range (long corridor), the rest can only be at short or close.
Guarding your Rep…and Recreation:
Players’ are pulled out of the front line for R&R and to participate in training maneuvers. They meet up with another unit that they’ve animosity with from previous missions, the third army, seventh brigade, or the “Lucky” 3:7, who they’ve grown to dislike during previous missions for impetuously attacking and leaving PCs’ flank open, running away at a crucial moment, slow in advancing, etc. Unknown to the players the 3:7 actually has the same values as the PC’s. The first encounter is a bar room brawl (players are with others of their unit). The soldiers involved are called in to be chewed out by the Brigadier but it’s pretty clear by the end that he’s amused by the whole thing if they did well and that he’s most upset that they came out the worse if they lost.
The second encounter is Play “Z Ball” where they fin out that they’re playing the 3:7th. – Played in zero G with mercury filled balls that fly at odd angles. The players see one of the 3:7th with a black eye talking to one of the officers setting up the schedule and see the officer scoot the team names around in some way, but they don’t see how. Rolls vs FA will score against the opponents, Rolls vs NFA will avoid one score by the opponents. There are 2 halves (rounds) of play. The brigadier talk to you and tells you that this is for the pride of the Brigade, “Go Sixteen!”.
The third encounter is against an OpFor which they find out is the 3:7th, both side roll their best NFA at start and if one makes it and the other fails the encounter is at the failing team’s headquarters (a great embarrassment to have it overrun). For the scenario no permanent kills can be taken but rank can be gained through “kills” (miles type gear, a PC that takes a hit is “killed”).
With Friends Like These…
Battlefield Tech is a leading defense manufacturer. They’ve actually made some of the Expeditionary Force’s equipment in the past. Recently they bankrolled their company’s future on a new line of forty foot tall bipedal vehicles (Military Expeditionary Combat Harriers), bristling with weaponry which were to make all other military systems obsolete. The Expeditionary Force and the Terran Defense Force conducted tests but in the end turned them down. Analysts said the company was ruined, however they moved their headquarters off Terra out to the rim and somehow managed to do well for themselves. Now Intel says that they’re actually building these vehicles for alien races (note players may have seen one on an earlier mission that wasn’t powered up). The 3:16 is now planning a mission to the headquarters of Battlefield Tech. During the mission it should quickly become apparent that there is no easier target to spot than a forty foot tall machine walking around. The MECH’s will be taken out by fleet or heavy weapon fire support within seconds any time one appears in the distance (beyond FAR range) and is identified by one of the PC’s or NPC’s. This is a backdrop to the game. Then the PC’s will have in to move to complete the mission, occasionally coming across a smoldering pairs of twenty foot tall legs surrounded by slag and debris. The PC’s will then have to deal with the aliens protecting the headquarters. They could be body guards for the executives who are escaping or guarding evidence of alien dealings.
To Be or Not To Be
Terra Studios has sent some famous actors out to the 3:16 to get ideas for their new vid, “Expeditionary Force, the Vid”. The team is assigned to show them the ropes and watch over them. When loading on the drop ship the actors show up in costume with a film crew is along to make some promotional clips. It becomes apparent however that they’re actually shooting the vid (as well as blanks) during the current mission, using the live action/aliens as scenery and that the vid’s director is among the camera crew.
Kill Counter Explanation
(To explain why the kills are the same no matter how many or what size enemy PC’s face.)
The Kill Counters installed on the PC’s weapons utilize specialized sensors on the weapon and in the Mandelbrite suits. This information is then fed into a processor in the counter that uses a classified algorithm to award kills, which are then displayed on counter’s display screen. How the calculation is made is always a subject of conjecture and complaint by troopers but follows these general guidelines; killing a man sized alien is a kill, killing or even wounding larger aliens also awards “kills” although the actual individual alien may not be killed. Similarly against smaller aliens killing more than one may be necessary to actually be awarded a “kill”. In this way a trooper’s actual lethality can be scored competitively with his peers even if one trooper came up against a horde of small aliens and the other just one monstrous alien.