Deck Conn Standalone Missions

Steam and the launch press both promise tightly designed standalone combat scenarios besides the dynamic campaign. A press screenshot even names one: Raccoon Hunt, assigning the Wasp-class CEN Raccoon to locate a weak FNA gunboat (FNA Bunka) in an adjacent sector and incapacitate or destroy it. This page is how to use those hunts. Pair it with Combat and Getting Started.

Why the game ships a shooting range

The campaign mixes HQ orders, distress calls, fuel, promotions, and reputation. That is a lot of noise for a captain who still mis-clicks the plot. Standalone missions exist so you can practice range, subsystem targeting, and capture versus destroy without writing a forever-war obituary. The store text calls them individual combat scenarios to hone tactical skills. Use them that way.

If the first campaign patrol already feels unfair, you skipped this page. Go back.

If you’re a fan of Star Trek and classic MicroProse games, you’ll love Deck & Conn

How to read a briefing like Raccoon Hunt

The CEN-IT terminal in the screenshot is a briefing CRT, not a pause menu. It tells you:

• Player vessel: CEN Raccoon, Wasp-class corvette.
• Objective language: incapacitate or destroy — the same fork as the feature list.
• Target: a weak gunboat in an adjacent sector. Weak is not harmless. Weak is the designer telling you this is a classroom.
• A START button. Do not mash it until you have a power floor written down.

Treat every standalone briefing as a contract. If it says locate, you may not open with active sensors. If it says destroy, capture is extra credit, not the grade. If it says incapacitate, do not shoot the reactor out of habit.

A drill loop that actually teaches

1. Open the power planner and circle quiet intercept.
2. Run the scenario once without firing, just to watch sensors and range.
3. Run it again targeting propulsion, then weapons. Log which shot made capture possible.
4. Run it loud. Feel the fuel and battery cost. That cost is the campaign tax.
5. Only then take the campaign walkthrough out of harbor.

Repeat a hunt until the weapons station hits the subsystem you named before the turn started. Crew promotions in campaign should follow that habit, not a lucky first shot.

What standalone will not teach

• Long fuel math back to a yard.
• HQ versus distress-call politics.
• Upgrade appetite after a prize.
• Jumping between sectors as a patrol clock. That is the FTL guide.

If you only play scenarios, you will look sharp and still fail a war patrol. If you only play campaign, you will look busy and still shoot hull. Alternate.

After-action for a classroom fight

Write four lines: briefing verb (locate / incapacitate / destroy), doctrine flown, first subsystem targeted, whether you could still jump or return. Compare those lines to the tactics tier list. If they disagree, the scenario did its job. You found the hole before HQ did.

Official media for the fantasy sits on the links hub and in the short above. The short is mood. The briefing CRT is the lesson. Play the lesson until it is boring, then go write a ship’s history.

More tutorials live on the Guides Hub.

If the briefing CRT looks like a museum piece, that is the point. Funtime Electrics and MicroProse shipped diegetic terminals on purpose. Slow down, fund the floor, then press START. A hunt you understand is worth more than a campaign you survived by accident. When you can finish Raccoon Hunt twice — once quiet, once loud — you have earned the forever-war. Take FTL seriously on the way out, and keep Updates in case a later build adds named scenarios we can finally list without guessing.