story mission for playable advent mec: discussion and feedback

[Atheran2]

I'll start by saying that I haven't played with your mod at all. Mostly because I don't like the general idea from a lore perspective. MEC I can understand but that's as far as I could justify myself playing with advent units.

On the other hand I really like the idea from a modding perspective.

 

I also think that missions like this is an awesome addition to the game and give players something else to do besides the boring-already 4-5 different types of missions you get. I think that getting it randomly at a certain stage in the game makes much more sense to me (and not only for balance reasons).

 

So Kudos to you people for the initiative! As for the Bradford...Ugh! Even more dialogue by this guy?

Joking aside if you add that dialogue I think it should be VOed. Is that something you can do?

 

For the rest I agree with HabDand to be honest... One or two maximum per campaign otherwise it makes it too easy. MECs wouldn't require a habitat per-se. Maybe charging up in the engineering? For the rest tho' I believe a habitat is a very unique and interesting, yet hard to make idea.

[davidlallen]

Thanks for the feedback. Do you have any suggestions for lore-friendly ways to introduce the other units besides mec? People have often suggested a psi ability used during tactical to permanently enslave one of the enemies, but it seems pretty hard to get that result out of the tactical game and back into the strategic game. So, any suggestions other than that one?

[Dethraker]

From what I've researched into the game and such having the aliens in their current form suddenly convert to XCom(or just away from Ethereal influence) is not possible. They are essentially hard wired to only follow what the Ethereals have put into their minds, control is absolute.

 

Personally, I think that is a bit too final. I would completely buy that some inferior "results" from experimentation with splicing human DNA with the various alien DNA could have resulted in an "unruly" batch of Advent, alien, etc. that the Ethereals didn't have absolute control over. Maybe they were thought to have been wiped out and a few survived, but you would have to make this a faction you get these from, or make their appearance extremely rare in the game, only from rescues, etc. Humans are, afterall, very unruly as a species so their psyche could easily transfer over into some early experiments that the aliens thought they had perfected.

 

That's the angle I would take personally in order to have it as believable as possible. Bear in mind that I did argue this stance on one forum somewhere and it too was widely rejected by the "lore experts", so you really can't satisfy that group by anything except abandoning the concept entirely lol. The fact remains that this sort of mod adds more to the gameplay than it takes away from those lore experts so just keep doing what you're doing my friend.

 

If you were looking for the most "lore-friendly" method to introduce these aliens to the side of XCom this would, in my opinion, be the best way to approach it.

 

NOTE: Something to consider is looking into the "Squad-cohesion" mod and see about having an alien in the group taking away from the group effectiveness, that might also help with the backlash of going against what the lore experts believe is appropriate for XCom. Also it will allow you to avoid nerfing the aliens too much in order to allow them to fit(idk though might have to buff them since XCom is so powerful lol).

[Johnny5000]

Hi guys. I'm loving the mod so far - keep it up!

 

I really like the mission as a way to get hold of a Mec. To me it makes a lot more sense than rebuilding one from old werckages - the avenger doesn't have a giant-robot-assembly facility! But that's just my opinion; other people disagree, so I think you've taken the right approach in giving people an INI file that they can configure to suit them. Would it be possible to add the mission desciption to one of the mod's INI files so people can replace it if they want?

 

Here's my idea on a lore-friendly way to capture aliens. Doesn't sound like that much fun to code, though:

Create a craftable item that a soldier equips to a utility slot, a short-range weapon that does, say, 3 damage. Call it an 'Arc Thrower' :wink:. If the player uses it to kill an alien in the field, they come back with a loot item called "captive <insert alien here>". Once the player has the captive and have built a Psi-Lab (and - optionally - have at least one healthy Psi-Operative), you can run a reseach project called "Brainwash <insert alien here>". After this research is done, remove the "captive <insert alien here>" loot item and add the alien trooper to the armory.

I'm sure you get the idea. The details can be fine-tuned or tweaked to suit: The 'Arc Thrower' could just be a property added to a GREMLIN's Combat Protocol perk. Or it could be a new ammunition mod ('Sedative Darts' etc). Et Cetera.

 

 

I've also found a bug: The 'Rescue Mec' Mission was available from the start of the game for me. I didn't notice that it was supposed to only open up after I'd researched Resistance Radio, so I researched it in the first month, which gave me a mission on the global map - and every time I tried to load it, the game crashed.
So I left the mission where it was and re-did the Rescue Mec research after I had reseached Resistance Radio. That made another mission which works fine. I still have the buggy mission showing on my map, though, and it still crashes the game if i try to do it.

Edited April 21, 2016 by Johnny5000

[davidlallen]

Thanks for the feedback! Lots of people have suggested either an arc thrower, or psi mind domination, as a way to capture troops. It's a little challenging to transfer this type of unit from the tactical map back to the strategic map, but we will keep this in mind.

 

Do you have a save game of the game with the mission that crashes the game? If so can you attach it to a post here (zip first, use full editor) or put it on some public cloud storage like dropbox or pastebin? I would like to look inside the save to see what may be wrong.

[Oswaldo192]

well some idea come to my mind, one of them is that in between research on the dark room or intel you come across the position of some advent lab with some "key" information about the aliens, after raiding the lab xcom discover not only how the ethereal guide and control the aliens, but also where they keep the anomalies or fail experiment, both allowing xcom to reproduce some of that technology, like "splice" alien or rescue this "anomalies"

[Johnny5000]

@ davidlallen:

 

Huh, So I tried the buggy Rescue Mec mission just now and it loaded fine.

EDIT: I also (after posting) just had a similar CTD when trying to load a completely vanilla Supply Raid council mission.

 

So then started a new game and tried to re-create the sitiation, but in the new game I can't research the Mec mission. It appears in the research options, but is greyed out and can't be selected (presumably until Resistance Radio research).

 

So...I don't think this is a problem with the Playable Advent mod. Apologies for the false report - but good news, I guess?

[davidlallen]

Thanks for the feedback. If you don't know this tip, here is what you can try first when you get any weird result from mods. Remove all the ini files under My Documents/My Games/XCOM2/XComGame/Config. This removes your graphics settings, which you can re-enter, but it also removes all the "junk" that builds up here. When switching mods, the game doesn't update these files quite correctly. It's worthwhile to remove them all once in a while, and definitely when switching sets of mods.