story mission for playable advent mec: discussion and feedback

[davidlallen]

(nexus release completed not yet available on steam)

 

Bradford: Commander, Resistance Radio has picked up an interesting transmission. It seems there is a MEC which is behaving oddly. It has concluded that Advent is wrong to hold power over humanity and destroyed part of an Advent base. Advent has imprisoned the MEC and is planning to study it. We can organize a rescue mission, but it'll eat up a lot of our intel and supplies trying to do this.

 

In the latest April 5 version of Playable Advent, I have added a mission which allows you to build mecs, only after you successfully rescue a mec on a mission. This thread is for discussion of that particular mission, and how story missions in general should be added to the game.

 

Main discussion thread

Steam download (preferred)

Nexus download

 

First, please if you haven't, give a positive rating at steam. We really want the fifth star.

 

Instructions for completing the mission

 

1. This mission is disabled by default. To enable it, in XComPlayableAdvent.ini, change the line MISSION_ALIEN=false to MISSION_ALIEN=true. Optionally change FREE_ALIEN to true.

 

2. You don't need a new campaign, but you do need a save that doesn't already have this mod active.

 

3. Once you complete Resistance Radio, you will see a new research item: Rescue Misbehaving Mec. Right now its cost is free.

 

4. Complete this research, and you will see a Council mission on the geoscape, whose reward is the mec.

 

5. Complete the mission. We know that the mec's idle animation is holding a gun, which he doesn't have.

 

6. The new mec is a reward for the mission. It is highly likely that the new mec will be affected by the "armor glitch" due to lack of class specific armor in the base game. Go to the armory loadout and equip the mec armor.

 

7. Now in the proving ground, you will see the project to build additional mecs

 

Comments and questions

 

I am really not sure how new story missions should fit into the game. We do not want them to be triggered randomly; when somebody loads up the mod, they want that mod's mission to *happen*. So the mission is always available until you execute it. If there are a lot of story mods like this, they will clutter up the research list. Is there a better way to start this whole set of steps?

 

I would like to add more specific mission icons to the geoscape when the mission is present. It's possible for people to overlook what appears to be a standard council mission icon.

 

The mission completion screen is a generic one. I need to replace this with a more specific one, hopefully using the mec portrait instead, and give some more "lore" information about building additional mecs. This will help people to know that there is a new proving ground project.

 

Is this type of story mission even worthwhile? For mecs, there is sufficient "lore" reasoning to just allow Shen to build them, after the autopsy. Maybe this entire concept is not important enough. If you can think of more that I can do to make this better, please let me know.

Edited April 6, 2016 by davidlallen

[koopakidshyguy]

I think the idea is awesome, but only getting it once as a story thing seems like a lot of effort for a single mission, and that will only get worse the more aliens you add. Seems like you could make it a council thing or a fairly cheap proving grounds project (Advent Contacts), leading to a generic "Rogue Advent Rescue" mission that could choose from a pool with all (or at least the most appropriate for the game's current time) alien classes and could come up occasionally after either the blacksite or forge, making it a tactical tool to be considered alongside cloning options.

 

Spokesman: Commander, recent reports from within the Advent network indicate that a high profile member of Advent's forces has gone rogue. This individual could prove to be an incredibly valuable asset for XCOM, but will need to be extracted quickly, as Advent forces are converging on their position, and it's only a matter of time before they are eliminated for their insubordination.

 

(Incidentally, I'd be happy to spruce up the localization file if you'd like, all sorts of flavor text is brewing in my mind for this mod, :tongue:)

 

It really comes down to what you want the mission to accomplish for the player. Making individual "story" missions dedicated to saving each alien type is going to hit diminishing returns really fast, and is going to get boring for players even faster. On the other hand, a trigger-able semi-randomized mission type providing an occasional opportunity to find Advent recruits without having to autopsy and pay through the nose for them would be an incredibly exciting prospect for a player, and would encourage players to recruit aliens they might not try out otherwise, and fits the modular nature of the game a lot better than a 12 part mini-campaign would. I think this mission is an awesome start, and with a little tweaking, it would basically be content-complete, so you won't have to get bogged down working on it (which would be a shame, because if this mod's going to see a wide userbase, it really needs to deliver on the promise of a new set of balanced, non-intrusive, polished classes, which this mission really isn't central to). It's awesome for world building, but I'd definitely say it's a matter of first things first.

Edited April 6, 2016 by koopakidshyguy

[davidlallen]

What do you think about the random aspect? Somebody says, "Cool mod, I want to play a viper", and then the first five games they play, they get other random aliens.

[koopakidshyguy]

What do you think about the random aspect? Somebody says, "Cool mod, I want to play a viper", and then the first five games they play, they get other random aliens.

That's what cloning after the autopsy is for, if you want a specific alien, you buy a specific alien, it's a price you're willing to pay. The randomized mission would essentially fulfill an alternate purpose of encouraging unit diversity, which would increase the player's tactical options and replayability immensely. Plus, by having it be one specific mission that you reuse for all aliens, there would always just be one proving ground option to research the mission, greatly reducing clutter.

Edited April 6, 2016 by koopakidshyguy

[davidlallen]

So then, both cloning and the mission. The way I setup the mec mission, you can't clone (juryrig) till after you get the mission.

 

One future benefit of the mission mechanism is that for some aliens, cloning is not very lore friendly. For mecs, juryrigging seems fine without any mission. For vipers and chryssalids, YMMV but I can see them being cloned or spawned. It's the other aliens where a rescue mission seems like the only way that fits "lore". So, if I get good feedback on the mission structure, I would permanently remove the muton, berserker, andromedon proving grounds projects, and only deliver them via mission. That is why the random aspect worries me.

[koopakidshyguy]

So then, both cloning and the mission. The way I setup the mec mission, you can't clone (juryrig) till after you get the mission.

 

One future benefit of the mission mechanism is that for some aliens, cloning is not very lore friendly. For mecs, juryrigging seems fine without any mission. For vipers and chryssalids, YMMV but I can see them being cloned or spawned. It's the other aliens where a rescue mission seems like the only way that fits "lore". So, if I get good feedback on the mission structure, I would permanently remove the muton, berserker, andromedon proving grounds projects, and only deliver them via mission. That is why the random aspect worries me.

The project description I have right now for Andromedons is rehabilitation and repair of an injured Andromedon. Not a perfect explanation, but it works for now. There could be an alternate corpse type of injured varieties of troops to be dropped after ending a mission with a mind-controlled/hacked/unconcious unit, perhaps combined with some kind of incapacitating secondary weapon, which would give a personal touch to it ("I remember the landed UFO I found you on... you bastard."). That being said, if people want Andromedons, they're probably just going to want an option to flat-out buy an Andromedon... or set them to free in the .ini, like I do, :wink:

 

If the randomization irks you that badly, I understand, but I still think a generic mission type would serve you much better in the long run.

Edited April 7, 2016 by koopakidshyguy

[sgtcal10]

Very impressive!

[sgtcal10]

dave, see my steam comment for more details

[Dragon32]

Could you use the resistance rumours mechanic (or whatever those things on the geoscape, like Stadium, are called)? One pops up (random pick from possible rescue-an-alien mission list), Avenger scans it and it then adds the mission location to the Geoscape. Upon completing (failed or succeeded) that rescue-an-alien mission is removed from the list of possibles for that game. So you only have one go to get a Viper, one go to get a Mec etc.

 

Dunno what the possibilities are but could you have an INI setting to allow / disallow random missions and another setting (or bunch of settings for each alien type) for cloning. Personally, I'd just go for the missions.

 

On the Mec you could say that Advent has been experimenting with loading engrams of captured human soldiers onto the Mec's neural net in attempt to bolster their tactical sense. In this case more of the original personality came through than they wanted. I find the whole "AI realises it's doing bad things" a bit Star Trek TOS for my liking. Still, YMMV.

[HabDand]

Regarding this and other future alien rescue missions..

Gate the mission itself behind a science project that requires X corpses of that unit like an autopsy. The project would be "MEC AI" or "Viper neurology" etc and in itself is implying that to communicate, condition, train, sequester (whatever!) an alien being requires a much deeper understanding of what makes them tick. Then you spend a load of intel and supplies to find a rogue or rebellious alien captive and rescue them via a mission. I suggest you only ever get to trigger ONE mission of each alien type and it should be super hard (l assume you have control over EASY/MODERATE/DIFFICULT in these triggered missions?)

I mentioned in the steam thread that maybe it should also require a new facility room (xeno-habitat) for each alien type you recruit, but that's VERY punitive, so l am just putting it out there really.

Buildable MEC's... I think this would work if you made the build pre-req a number of MEC corpses, some lovely alloy and it ended up being more of an self learning SHIV than a unique unit. But then why are you rescuing one?

I don't think players should be able to get 1 of every critter in the game in one campaign. You can provide an unlocked version if that's what floats their pokemon?

I like the idea of getting one or two max in a campaign, they should be unusual and unique. If l want to experience a campaign with a different set of beasts.. well that's replayability for you, and congrats for adding another reason to do a new campaign after beating the game. If l simply must 'collect them all' then l can use the unlocked version?

Whatever you decide, it's very clever so well done to all involved.