Interstellar Mercenaries
In 2024, the world was permanently changed. First Contact with the Hegemony happened on 1st September. The Hegemony beamed their introduction video down to Earth, temporarily taking over every screen and monitor that was connected to the Internet. Finding out that aliens were real was shocking, coming face to face with them thanks to the video screen on your smart fridge was surreal. Naturally, human reactions ran the whole gamut from denying their existence despite all the evidence, to demands that the aliens should be vanquished and driven off, to cautious optimism of interstellar cooperation, and even a joyful celebration of an imminent new Xenophile Golden Age.
Most of these hopes were dashed when the Hegemony bluntly announced that they would not be sharing the fruits of their science and technology with humanity. At least, not for free. But for the right price? Anything was possible. Because the Hegemony was waging a war against another interstellar polity called the Dominion. Both entities consisted of multiple species at various technological levels, loosely cooperating across mindboggling distances. And while Hegemony was doing well in space combat, the same could not be said for their prowess on the ground. Having come across Earth and its warlike inhabitants, the leaders of the Hegemony were willing to hire human armies to do their dirty work for them - first, stopping Dominion advances on Hegemony colonies, then liberating lost colonies, and finally taking the fight to Dominion planets and capturing them for the Hegemony. In return, the Hegemony would pay humans by providing equipment and gear, and possibly even more in the future, if the humans fought well enough.
Fierce debates ran across the planet, on Internet message boards, on TV talk shows, at every international forum. Some countries vehemently refused the offer; they would not suffer the pains of war and loss for technological trinkets. Other countries wanted to sound out the Dominion first, to see if a better offer could be gleaned, yet this was a forlorn hope when Earthlings were still stuck on their birthplace and had no means of reaching across the stars. Ultimately, a handful of countries with military machines of sufficient calibre agreed. Unsurprisingly, the United States was the first among them but other countries would follow suite.
Hello and sorry for the awful original post. As you can see, I've redone the intro. This will be a special 2.2 'test' campaign, focusing on the new OOB features and ground war. Initially it will be more of series of connected scenarios, instead of a normal campaign. I have an idea how to transform it to a more normal campaign later but we'll see how far I can get. Obviously the actual updates will not happen until 2.2 is out.
Plan is to start with the United States Marine Corps and then extending to US Army. Depending on whether I can find accurate OOB's for other countries, I'll expand the number of factions - China is an obvious choice.