New mod: Shadow of the Badlands

Now that I have "Build-a-Battle" largely finished, I've started on another mod with the working title of "Shadow of the Badlands." As the name implies, the initial concept was for a mod that added functionality similar to the "Nemesis system" from Shadow of Mordor/War; though the plan has gradually morphed as I got further along with Build-a-Battle -- and as I started to plan out the details of how that worked, and started seeing more & more "foundational" pieces I'd have to build first. E.g. the core "get killed, come back & get revenge" mechanic/loop doesn't really work in a game where the player dying leads to them loading a save game, rather than resurrecting -- so it would probably require adding functionality similar to what Unleashed does, where the player ship getting destroyed results in the command section ejecting & getting towed back to base... which then lead me down the further rabbit-hole of trying to figure out what should happen to the player's ship in that scenario, and realizing that it would likely need to be handled differently depending on whether or not Future Trader is installed/present -- from a narrative/logical sense, the player should lose that ship forever and have to replace it, but that's only possible if they're using Future Trader. Otherwise, it would probably need to fallback to something along the lines of "the ship has been towed back to base & repaired, for a cost of X manufacturing units" (and then that lead to the question of what should happen in that situation if the player doesn't have enough MU to cover the cost of the tow/repair).

(Admittedly I may be completely over-thinking something that the game itself doesn't really seem to care about at times. E.g. the way Lucrecia's base apparently has a cloning machine that can create infinite duplicates of Jafs & the t-fighter pilots if their ships get blown up.)

So the plan gradually evolved away from the original concept, to the current one -- in a nutshell, attempting to add a bit more variety to the things the player can do in the post-campaign "free roam" mode; with a general goal of trying to make use of the game's existing assets wherever possible/not recreate the wheel, and "remixing" some of the functionality from Build-a-Battle in a more "structured," mission-like way. I have a fairly detailed list of functionality I want to include, broken down into 3/4 separate phases -- but the "Minimum Viable Product" starting point I'm aiming for (and largely have working at this point) is to recreate the "distress call" side-missions that happen randomly throughout most of the single player campaign.

I did want to add a bit more flexibility and immersion to it, though. so I've setup the UI for it as sort of a "job board" where the player can select from different factions in the current system, accept a contract from them to defend their shipping operations; and then while the contract is active, the player will receive distress calls at random intervals, along with adding a waypoint to the contacts list. Then when traveling to the waypoint, the "rescue" works functionally the same as distress call side-missions in the story campaign: there's a couple of friendly freighters being attacked by some hostile marauder "cutter" corvettes, that the player has to destroy, after which the freighters continue on their way. If the player successfully destroys all the hostile ships, then they're also awarded credit/manufacturing units -- partly in keeping with the "contract" framing, and partly for some functionality I have in mind for later on.

Some highlights & related pieces that are also working now:

• The individual piece that I'm probably the happiest I was able to get working was that I figured out where the game stores its existing text & audio assets for the distress call messages sent during the story campaign (the "We're under attack and require assistance!", etc, text/audio) -- and make the mod use those same assets.
  
• And the piece that I was the second-happiest to get working was figuring out how to generate messages to the player via the in-game Email system. It turned out to be a lot simpler than I'd expected, especially creating the messages themselves -- since under-the-hood they're just HTML files (and old-school HTML3 at at that); to the point that I'm surprised I haven't seen any other mods make use of that, since it seems like an easy way to add story/narrative elements to mods. Right now, I just have a simple "intro" EMail from Franklyn Hoffer setup, with a message to the player telling them that former Maas personnel have turned to "the high seas" in the aftermath of the story campaign, and the League is offering to pay for help defending their shipping from the increased piracy. The mod is setup with a condition to send the message to the player if they're in act 4 (AKA in free-roam mode after completing the story missions) and the message hasn't already been sent.

From the pieces I've been able to get working so far, and along with the Free Roam mod/mode, it looks like it should be possible to create full-blown custom missions that work the same way as the ones in the campaign, and maybe eventually even a mini "epilogue" story campaign (or at the very least to add some more structured gameplay/reasons to continue playing the game after the end of the story campaign). And after tracking down where the game stores the WAV files for the in-game dialogue, it occurs to me that it should be possible to use those files with voice-cloning software, and generate new custom dialogue audio for missions.

The rough roadmap I currently have in mind is, taking an overall "crawl/walk/run" approach:

• Phase 1, recreating the distress call missions, along with the contract selection UI/functionality & related pieces (the "intro EMail" providing narrative framing/explanation for the player having access to the defense contracts, etc). Those parts are largely finished/working, though I do plan to flesh it out a little bit before moving onto "phase 2".
  
  I'm thinking of adding some additional side-mission types based on faction/type of faction the contract is with -- contracts for the "Police" faction could be more search-destroy/bounty-hunter missions, contracts for pirate/outlaw factions could require the player to steam cargo for them from another faction, or with corporate clients the attacking ships could be from a different corporate faction, etc. I also have a few ideas for other ways to make use of the in-game EMail function, along with some basic contract stats-tracking that's already setup -- E.g. check for "X number of ships rescued for such-and-such faction" thresholds, and use that to trigger a "thank you" EMail from that faction (or on the flipside, "watch your back" threatening EMails from factions whose ships the player has destroyed).
  
  
• Phase 2, add functionality & UI for hiring/managing friendly wingmen. That would serve two main purposes: would let me add tougher/higher-value contracts designed to be too difficult to "solo" -- and also add the foundation for features I'll need for phase 3 & beyond. In general, I see the UI for that being effectively a more purpose-built version of the ship-spawning UI in Build-A-Battle, tweaked a bit for that use (E.g. show a "Hire" button instead of "Spawn," add display of the cost to hire the selected ship/wingman, etc). And the interface for managing the wingmen would just be a simple list of ships in the roster, with checkboxes to select them, and buttons to launch/summon them & "release from contract".
  
  
• Phase 3, add a new "Station Assault/Capture" contract type to the UI. When selected, it would show options to select a hostile station, select the wingmen from the existing roster to serve as the assault force, and to select a "boarding ship" - a special type of ship that could be hired, essentially just a freighter scripted to behave a certain way (and conceptually/"in-universe" being a ship containing a boarding party that would dock with & capture the station for the player). In terms of the basic gameplay loop, the way I see is: player selects their boarding ship & assault force, then clicks a "Stage Assault" button, which creates a "Staging Area" waypoint 50-100km so from the target station; when the player reaches that waypoint, the boarding ship & assault force ships are spawned (simulating them rendezvousing with the player), the "Proceed to staging area" objective gets marked complete, and a "Begin assault" objective is added.
  
  Once the player is at the staging area, the UI for "Station Assault" would then have a "Begin Boarding" button, which would start the actual "assault" portion -- triggering the boarding ship to head toward the station and (if not destroyed) dock with it to start the boarding/capture action (I'll probably just go with a "protect the boarding ship once docked for X seconds" approach, potentially with options to purchase larger/more expensive boarding ships that capture stations faster), while the player tries to fend off ships defending the station & protect the boarding ship, use the standard wingman commands to control the assault force, etc.
  
  That's just the basic loop, I also have some ideas for adding optional objectives to base assaults. E.g. having an "Infiltrate/Sabotage" option available before going to the staging area, which would involve stealing cargo containing an IFF transponder that the target station will see as "friendly"; and if completed, then once at the staging area there would be extra button to "Launch Drone", which would launch a tug/drone from the boarding ship that the player could remote-pilot to dock with & disable the gunstars protecting the station.
  
  I'm also planning to tie that into the stats/milestone tracking for that as well, in combination with the in-game EMail function. E.g. once the player reaches a certain "X ships rescued/CU earned/etc" from contracts, it triggers a "status update" Email from Hoffer, saying something to the effect of "reacting to the pirate attacks is just playing whack-a-mole, we need to address the problem at its source & start going after the former Maas stations" -- to give a narrative/in-universe framing for the station assault missions.
  
  
• Phase 4 & beyond - assuming I can get everything else working the way I want it to, that's the point where I'd want to start attempting to add some more complex, structured story-focused missions. One idea for a plot thread that I'm leaning towards is a "Maas Probate War" -- AKA after Caleb Maas' death, his children/heirs back in the Sol system decide to head to the Badlands with mercenary fleet(s), to try to stake competing claims to the remnants of their holdings there. And with the jump accelerator destroyed at the end of the story, they'd have to spend several months to get there "the slow way" at LDS speeds, giving a built-in narrative reason for their delayed arrival.
  
  I haven't thought very much about specific gameplay mechanics for that yet, beyond something like tougher/more structured/scripted station assaults -- E.g. where the objective is to destroy stations rather than capture them, and/or the stations have more defending ships, and/or the player is working alongside friendly/non-wingman ships, or scripted events like the target station calling in some heavy capital ships for backup, etc. That's something I'll likely flesh out when/if I get closer to that stage.

The latest build (2026-11-15.0522) is attached, along with a screenshot of the UI. Any & all feedback is welcome!