3 Campaign Narratives / Guide Request

I was thinking over the types of narrative styles that would be logical for Space Engineers Campaigns. I think I've broken it down to 3 types (that I could think of) that people will want to make. I've tried to figure out how to do 2 and 3, but so far haven't been able to. Really all I've been able to figure out so far is the very simple stuff, "go here" and "destroy that".


1. Character(s) going from level to level.
This is the default so it doesn't really need much of a guide. Perhaps a brief one on how to set the character's inventory, health, etc.

2. Ship going from level to level.
This seems like the one most people are going to want. Where the player(s) build or improve a main ship and probably a a few small ships.

3. Missions from a home base.
With this one, the player(s) have home level that they build their base in. A mission can take them to a new level but afterward they load back into the home level where they expand a home station. I don't even know if this is possible currently, but I see it being a narrative style people would want to use.




Missions in multiplayer
I know I'm not the only one who would like a guide on how to do multiplayer missions correctly.
A guide on these would give enough framework for people to figure out most other variations.

-How to make missions shared among a faction or just all players to accomplish cooperatively.
Example, everyone in the faction shares a mission to destroy an enemy station.
-How to make competitive missions where different players have the same goal but the one who accomplishes it first, "wins".
Example, everyone playing gets a mission to destroy and NPC station, first to do it wins.
-How to make co-op missions for specific roles.
Example, a campaign has 2 co-op teams. One holding off bugs on the alien world, one in orbit readying a ship to land and retrieve the ground team. Ground team would have a different mission than orbit team, but both teams would be in the same faction.



I think these are the guides that would make the campaign section of steam workshop explode with new content.

 

I can work this into my tutorial series, as well as writing up a tutorial for Steam. I'm actually kind of glad you made this request, aside from the basics of setting up the tool and interacting with the menus I was kind of lost on what to do for further tutorials.

I will warn you, some things right now don't work correctly in mulitplayer, mainly because problems that pop up in the VST are not fixed for extremely long periods of time. An example is a problem that i discovered in May of 2017 still has yet to get fixed. Said issue cripples a bit of multiplayer stuff. Also, currently campaign generation specifically is a bit broken right now. Single missions are fine, so you can do "episodes" but you lose the ability to transfer info across levels.

And before i continue, anything i say is easy, I mean that the guide should be fairly simple and (probably) short.

One thing that i can see that would pose a difficulty would probably be the same faction coop idea. You can achieve it with having the two (or more) groups be in factions that are allied, having everyone be in the same faction and see different objectives would be extremely difficult.

Other than that, the rest is fairly easy. I'd say im a bit of an expert in terms of the two factions racing to finish something before the other, since my main use of the VST has been making classic game modes(DM, CTF, Conquest, etc). Character going from level and ship going from level to level is fairly easy to do as well (Keen does it in their campaign)

Missions from home base actually has a lot of my interest, i can think of a few ways i'd try to make it happen.

As a final thing, i would like to re-iterate that the campaign tool built into the VST at this time is broken,and i have yet to see a workaround. That limits some possibilities and that is also probably why there is next to nothing on the steam section for campaigns. In terms of single mission maps, almost everything listed can be accomplished.

Again, i thank you sir, you have given me a direction to continue in. Also this gives me something to do on weekends