Frequently Asked Questions
Welcome to Rex's quickly made combination of the FAQ's made by Trench and inasfe.
Q. What is the Meta Campaign?
A. An adaptation of "Free Company", a cooperative tabletop roleplaying wargame designed by CaptainShack, to be played over Discord.
It is set in a cold science-fiction universe where players assume the role of a commander of a company of mercenaries trying to eke out an existence, with dreams of one day reclaiming their lost homeworld.
Q. What is cold sci-fi?
A. A Shack-ism. A loose mixture of hard and military science fiction with a layer of grit.
The settings of Alien, Battlestar Galactica, BattleTech/MechWarrior, Halo, Helldivers, Firefly, StarCraft, Starship Troopers and RimWorld all have elements of what could be considered cold sci-fi.
Q. How many players can participate in a campaign?
A. It varies depending on the scale. Large-scale campaigns hosted by CaptainShack himself will not have a player limit (except under rare circumstances), while smaller ones hosted by community GMs will usually restrict the amount of participants.
Q. How does it work?
A. Each campaign is broken up into multiple rounds. Each round is played out in three phases, whether that be in a couple hours privately or several days online.
In the Player Phase, players discuss intel, plan actions and submit orders for their unit to their battlegroup’s TAC-COM, or the Game Master directly in smaller missions.
In the TAC-COM Phase, TAC-COMs combine the orders from the players in their battlegroup into a map depicting the players’ intentions for that round and submit it to the Game Master. This phase may be skipped in smaller campaigns that do not have TAC-COMs.
In the Game Master Phase, the GM combines the battlegroup maps into a single map of the battlespace, resolves the outcomes of players’ orders and posts situational updates to the players in the form of midround events.
This process repeats until a campaign reaches its conclusion.
Q. TAC-COM? Battlegroup?
A. TAC-COMs are players who have volunteered to parse and map out the orders of other players inside of a battlegroup for the duration of that campaign. They help to take the pressure off the GM in having to deal with hundreds of people at once.
Battlegroups are organically formed groupings of players centered on a specific objective or task in the campaign. Battlegroups are limited at 30 players each to avoid overburdening a TAC-COM.
TAC-COMs are not the ‘leader’ of a battlegroup, and have no authority over the actions taken by other players, outside of informing players when their submitted orders are invalid and in need of correction.
Q. Who are my commanding officers?
A. Nobody except yourself. This is a core aspect of the Meta Campaign; you and you alone have agency on what your unit does. Nobody can ever tell you what you're required to do.
This also means you cannot force people to do what you want.
Q. When is the next campaign?
A. Campaigns do not run on a set schedule. You'll either have to wait for Shack/a community GM to host one, or volunteer to host one yourself.
Q. How do I join?
A. Signups for a campaign are handled by SAM. When a campaign opens, a post will be made tagging the Meta Campaign Trooper role on the ARMCO Discord server announcing it. Follow the steps outlined in the message to register successfully.
You can grab the Meta Campaign Trooper role in the Channels & Roles tab at the top of the server navigation bar.
Q. Can I join an in-progress campaign?
A. No, sorry. Wait until the next one, though you can certainly watch and help plan in the meantime.
Q. What unit should I play?
A. Pick whatever sounds fun and interesting to you. Don’t worry about how many of a specific unit type there is or isn’t in a given campaign.
Note that there are no refunds for purchasing a unit, so pick carefully.
Q. Callsigns?
A. When signing up, you can pick a short name for your unit that will appear on the map.
Two people cannot have the same callsign. If someone else wants to use the same callsign as you, try to reach an agreement in a civil manner.
Callsigns have a maximum length of 7 characters. Avoid naming yourself something confusing like an order type as well, as it may get forcibly changed by the GM.
Q. What do the coloured callsigns mean?
A. While these are generally used by TAC-COMs to make conveying orders to Shack easier, they can sometimes appear on the larger tactical map too. They each mean a different order type, each order type should have its colour stated in the rules.
Q. What is SAM?
A. A custom-made bot for the Meta Campaign, dedicated to handling aspects such as pay, dossiers, upgrades and signups, made by cheesiestmaster. The name is a backronym, meaning Supply Allocation and Management.
For information on how to use SAM, take a look at the pinned SAM specific FAQ by Kngihtmare in #meta-comm, and the /faq command.
Q. What is the lore of the campaign?
A. Most of the lore is fairly vague to allow players a great amount of freedom in establishing their RP. What has been established is as follows:
- Free Company takes place in the year 3025.
- Decades before the Haven campaign, the planet Armitage in the Orion system was raided by a hostile alien armada. The resulting battle was lost by Armitage’s defenders, and the human colonists were forced to flee the system as the aliens bombarded the surface of the planet. Those refugees would go on to found the Armitage Free Company (ARMCO), a loose coalition of mercenary companies that would largely operate independently of one another until the events on Haven.
- Galactic powers introduced include The Federation, The Syndicate, and The Alliance.
- Galactic threats encountered or alluded to include Bug Hive Swarms, AI uprisings, and Pirate clans.
Q. Can I RP my unit as _?
A. Players are free to flavor their units as they wish, keeping in mind that RP flavor will not impact game mechanics.
Q. Where can I roleplay?
A. You can add a small bit of roleplay in each of your orders, conventionally after the mechanical details.
RP posts in #meta-comm are acceptable as long as they don't interrupt ongoing conversations. This is especially true for big, multi-paragraph long posts.
Most people tend to indicate that certain posts are roleplay with “RP post” or something similar as well.
Q. How many guys/vehicles are in my unit?
A. Mechanically, units made up of personnel are considered to be groups roughly or equal in number to a unit’s Force Strength. Vehicle units are considered to be a single vehicle.
Players can flavor this as they wish, but RP does not influence or override game mechanics.
Q. How many units can my company have?
A. As many as you are willing to spend requisition points on purchasing. Keep in mind however that you are only able to field a single unit at a time, and are not able to switch out units mid-campaign.
Q. What happens if my unit dies during a campaign?
A. That unit is considered K.I.A./M.I.A., all upgrades are lost and the unit will need to be repurchased if you want to use it in future campaigns. You can RP it however you want, but the unit will be unable to influence the current campaign. You will also earn 1 less requisition point when the mission ends.
Q. Can I give Requisition Points or Bonus Pay to other players?
A. No. Everyone must earn their own pay.
Q. Can I submit orders for someone else’s unit / give someone permission to control my unit?
A. No. You may only control your own unit.
Q. Can I (insert war crime here)?
A. No and we are tired of hearing it. If it becomes an issue then the moderation team may take action against you.
Q. PvP?
A. No. The Meta Campaign is and always will be a PvE game, and the mechanics are not intended to be used in a competitive format.
You could try to edit the rules to accommodate PvP in a private session, but don't expect public ones to be that way.
Q. Can I ram [Unit] into enemies?
A. ARMCO is known for borderline suicidal feats, but ramming directly into an enemy is not one of them. Your order will be denied if you try to.
Q. The rules don’t say anything about X, Can I do Y?
A. You can certainly try. The Meta Campaign is as much a roleplaying game as it is a war game, and some of the best and most memorable moments have come from a player thinking outside the box.
Players aren’t strictly limited to only the actions & order types outlined in the rules. Just don't expect unrealistic outcomes, bugs aren't going to be talked into surrendering the same way human pirates might be able to.
Q. I want to suggest something to Shack. How?
A. Firstly, please don't ping him as that is a server rule.
Shack comes by in #meta-comm frequently, so if you see him in chat just say what you want to say. It might take a couple tries depending on how active it is, but rest assured he will see it eventually.
Q. Do people with special roles know more than other players?
A. Generally no. The only person with more knowledge than the average player is CaptainShack himself, as he is the designer of the game. Patreon supporters, moderators, fleet operations officers, etc. do not have any kind of secret insider access or anything, so please do not hound them for answers they probably don’t have.
Note that other Fleet Commands (Morphologis and w4stedspace) haven't developed the game and therefore don't know anything either. Only Shack does.
Q. What about electronic warfare (EW, EWAR)?
A. Electronic warfare is currently not included on purpose. The issues with EW are as follows:
- If it is a buff or debuff, that introduces a lot of GM load for either a negligible benefit (lowered mechanized enemy range), or an overly powerful effect (+1 to friendly mech range)
- If it isn't a buff or debuff, then what does it do?
- If it is a buff that doesn't introduce GM load by affecting an area, then how does it encourage team play, or how is it not just a risk-free benefit without also being a bland +1 stat upgrade?
In summary, if you want to see EW as more than the lore justification for knife fighting ranged engagements, please plead your case with a well thought out mechanic backing it.
Q. What does [Acronym] mean?
A. Acronyms are on a separate page to prevent clutter on this one. You can find them on Frequently Used Acronyms.
Q. Can I nest logistics units in each other? (Logi truck in a logi truck in a logi truck...)
A. A unit with carry capacity can only be loaded onto another if they aren't carrying anything. A logistics truck can only transport another empty logistics truck, a HAT can only load empty light vehicles, etc. No Matryoshka dolls!
Links to the original FAQ documents:
This rules clarifications doc also has clarifications that Shack has made in discord, but may not be fully up to date with the newer rulesets.