Bovine_Avenger

Ok folks, after an entire afternoon testing, I think I've got the reason now; But if anyone would care to test it for me themselves please, I'd appreciate it.

My theory is that there's a hidden modifier on certain power sets that, the more Friendly AI NPCs you have at the point of releasing them (or being with them), the less chance there is of them triggering that power. But I think it's a percentage chance not an absolute.

It may also be a bug, but this is what I've done to isolate what I think is the cause;

* I tried a blank document with just the Robotics Mastermind in, and then Published. Every following change was done on Published. When discovered, that NPC always summons his robots the moment he is freed

* I then added slowly in each of his lines in my published arc, and then the settings to match the one publish. No change with the Robots.

* I then changed the map. No change.

* I added in all his companions; at this point he seemed to wobble with his robots.

* I then started taking them out, and he seemed to get more likely, although not certain, to get his Robots. When it was just him, he always got them again.

* It seems to be around 3 or 4 other companions that he never gets them.

* I then left the others on the map, and stealthed to him. Stealth doesn't seem to have an effect on him pulling the robots.

* I then experimented with rescuing them in different orders, and I noticed if I picked him up first (stealthing around the others if he was closest to the door), he always got the robots. Second, after another NPC and he mostly seemed to get them. Third and he often wouldn't. Fourth hardly ever, if at all. Fifth, never.

* I then realised that, because in Test I'd leap straight to him to check how he was working, I'd ALWAYS discover him first. So I went and ran it properly, making sure he wasn't the first I released, but the fourth. Suddenly, he wasn't getting his robots. AHAH. Thus I think I know what the problem is.

So can a few people confirm this? Can you set up a multiple Escort mission (Arachnos Warehouse Set is a good one, set them all to Front) and see if you are witnessing different rates of pet summons when you collect the MM before or after other friendly combat NPCS?

Thank you; I've petitioned this too... personally I'd prefer to have the MM discovered last, because I want the second mission in my arc to remain challenging, and most of the spawn should be dead by the time you find him. But if this is an anti farming measure, and not a bug, then I'll have to move him forward I guess for that joke to work

Well the arc if anyone would care to test it for me (I'm still fiddling with the custom spawn on the final mission to try and make it viable-but-challenging for both lowbies and L50s, so I'd appreciate feedback in general) is #27552 Apocalypse Cow.

The Mastermind is an Escort on the second mission, 1 of 5 randomly placed on the map. The map is a random Medium laboratory, and the mission is set to Levels 25-40. His settings are as follows;

Lieutenant, Ranged, Robotics - Standard, Devices - Custom (Targeting Drone, Taser), Travel Power - None.

Map dependent settings;

* Custom Faction: Belongs to one, (Ruminant Research Division), consisting of him and the other 4 Escorts for that mission. Only he is a MM, but all fighters are set to aggressive. The 5th Escort on the map is a standard NPC which leaves at the door.

* Spawns at mission start (Mission Goal Created: None)

* Required for mission completion

* Enemy Group:

Devouring Earth, Back Placement, Hard Group, Enemy Alignment,

* Character:

Combat - Aggressive, Arrival Behaviour - Follow, Does Not Betray.

* Animations:

Enemy - Threaten (Animal),

Escort - Captured (Cower) (Yes deliberate pun they all cow'er, they all cow'er down here THEY CANT STOP ME AHAHA), Rescue- Touch Screen, Stranded - Default, Arrival - Weapon (Cheering).



I'm going to try importing him into a custom published mission to see if I can isolate which of the differences between settings may be causing it... I'm not too worried about reducing his power set, as the arc is a comedy one not a farm, I just need him to summon the robots, as he's written around a certain TV show that was very popular recently. Because his name is William N'dama, and he doesn't call them robots, they're Sirloins you see, with their little lights going back and forth... The minions are a visual prop to the puns, AND IT ONLY GETS WORSE! *runs off into the distance making moo'ing noises*

Yup, identical at every level... I've even saved from the published version back to local be sure everything matched; at first I thought I'd found the solution, because I'd made some changes when I originally went back into local to address this, and he'd use them correctly again, but of course I was still in test and hadn't realised this was the cause. But when editing the Published version so it uploaded the character changes, it then didn't work... or indeed, with any setting I can give him it seems.
It's just that when I run through it in local he draws them forth the moment he's rescued and the animation completes, but on Live he does the animation only and then follows from there until engaged in a fight, when he uses the second power set instead. It's possibly either the way Robotics works online, or friendly NPC AI, because an Enemy Mercenaries boss correctly summons the moment he's attacked too. It may also, possibly, be reaction to friendly player stealth, as most of my characters have some variant of it... but I've tried to nullify this by making sure it's never selected during that mission, so I suspect it's not that, but I can't be sure.

Original Post:

Simple question; I've an NPC set as a rescue, with the robotics MM power set. The published arc and the local version are identical, and when I test it in local, he'll summon his robots. However when I run through the published version, he just uses his rifle power set instead, and no matter what will not bring out his robots. Does anyone know what causes this, and is there a work around? Thanks!

SEE POST SIX BELOW PLEASE

Another reason I'd hate to see the inability to publish missions without a full set of minion/Lt/boss etc is that, apart from size, it would break the Primary power pool synergies I made for my final mission of cows; when they are all set to Lieutenant 1 of each type is spawned per mob. I tried to reduce them to Minion to prevent them overwhelming people at lower levels, but then I just got random mobs, which ruined the synergy feature which I'd worked so hard to balance (the idea being knocking one out of the group took away much of the strength of the rest of the group, but there's a link in the group for each character type to be able to tackle first). The same occurs if there's a mix; it will only spawn the ones set as a minion most of the time solo... I'd LOVE for there to be a basic mob setting, where you could set the spawn, and would happily convert some of the cows to Minion to make the correct balance. But right now, as someone else mentioned, you are at the mercy of the random spawner unless you use the trick I mentioned...

The problem is Eva that if the Unique character is part of that Enemy Group, he can turn up anywhere it appears if there's a gap in the roster... I had an Elite Boss turning up amongst normal mobs as a Lieutenant in my arc, and they'll appear in ambushes too if not set to Don't Auto Spawn. Once that's on, and the Ambush is set to Single, it should just be him... but if he has any associated spawn, he may replicate into that as long as he's Auto'd.

The problem is that AI factions are divided into sub groupings so there's provided spawn for certain level ranges, but that 1 sub group seems to be given spawn priority over all others... If it's on the list, it spawns regardless of the players Level, or what else is on the list, but only to it's upper/lower limits; In my case, an edited 5th Column (without supernatural/robotic spawn) would only spawn Nacht not Raserei after Issue 16 went live, even when my test character was L50, thus making the spawn grey to him. I imagine that other groups are getting priority for your custom factions, and are spawning way above the players level because there's nothing in that particular sub group below Level X in turn...

The work around for me, as they weren't an important spawn, and the Raserei covered the levels I needed anyway, was just to remove the Nacht, and use the space for more cow puns instead. Once that group had gone, the Raserei and custom bosses spawned matching the player's level again. But it wasn't a plot vital spawn for me, so I got lucky; it would have totally destroyed the arc if one of the sub groups of Devouring Earth had done the same thing.

The problem is, the Mission Editor keeps being changed so much, you can't really MAKE your arc final at the moment... Right now I've not had my own arc (recommended a few times for Devs Choice) played by anyone but myself in over 2 months, but I desperately need feedback on the custom mobs in particular because the last changes made them absolute monsters for my own alts at the lowest end of the spawn (and the AV, reduced to an EB with only 4 powers can still 1 shot my L30, sigh).
Likewise I've spent many hours trying to fix all the bugs that I've seen, but I have no idea if they occur just for me, or if there's a solution... For instance, one of the story jokes isn't as obvious because one Mastermind friendly NPC won't spawn his robots on Live, although he will on Test; but it's incredibly slow to work out all the permeations and test work arounds, because the boards are largely dead except for a thread on farming, no one has spoken on the Union MA channel (which I mod) for I've no idea how long, and few others are making an effort on genuine arcs and might have come across the issues themselves and have suggestions to make.
Oh, I've tweaked the text again and again to make it ever more crammed full of terrible puns, but as the actual mechanics stand now, I wouldn't WANT the mission to get locked down as an unchangeable DC... and you know, I rather suspect the Devs know this too. I'm wondering if they realize the MA is still in need of some serious tweaking, and so will any arcs made under it yet, before they can be comfortably immortalized.

I have to agree with the comments made though that a higher standard of judging should be applied if they ever do start making choices again; The MA is largely a disaster now in my personal opinion, and what it needs is to REALLY wow people with the best of the very best to get them interested in the actual stories it tells now. To be honest, removing all the Dev Choices, and perhaps re-awarding to only the absolute creme de la creme, in perhaps certain categories (Challenge, Lore, Comedy etc now we can tag them as such) would do much to remove the stigma that's become attached to it since launch... it's mostly seen as an exercise in badly spelt TvTroping and experience maxi-mining alas.

That might sound elitist I know, but I'm not afraid to say that perhaps we need a little of that now; because I suspect we've all rather had enough of second rate, incomplete and incompletable content. Knock our socks off next time, please.

Firstly, they've changed the settings for creatures now, so that Elite/Arch Villains can spawn amongst mobs (they didn't in the past), so what you need to do is go to the My Enemy Groups tab, and RIGHT CLICK on the creature so it says "Don't Auto Spawn"

Secondly, if you're getting 5 of them, it sounds like you've got the Ambush set to hard It won't matter once Don't Auto Spawn is on, but if it's Hard the chances of something above Boss level turning up seems to be quite high too

Your arcs are "Paragon Maid Service" etc...? If so, I can see them, and successfully start them, but I cannot as yet find where they may be stored locally for me so I can play them... if at all. I think the GM route is the only way forward, as I've never come across an arc that was valid, but couldn't be accessed for editing.

Hmmm... I'm torn on this one; part of me wants to say that if you aspire to art, you still need to be aware that bigger isn't always better, and sprawling isn't the same as depth. Everyone speaks of War and Peace as a great work of Art, but what they remember is only the basic plot. And yes, I have read War and Peace, but it was a struggle to get through it despite it's craftmanship, and I'd probably not try again any time soon, because it's a colossal undertaking in time alone to tackle.

So what have I done with my own arcs? Well I only published 1 so far, as I can't get the game interface to fit what I had in mind for some of my other ideas... but have a play through Apocalypse Cow; you'll notice I've crammed an ungodly amount of content (and cow puns) in. But then look at it as a fellow artist... notice how I've cut corners here and there. Porter West on mission 2? He was originally a custom combat capable character, but did I really need 5 of them? I WANTED them, and wanted the original Porter, but how about 4 and a clever tweak; would someone making a delivery really need or want to stay and fight? Nope, so swap him to a standard model, and have him run at the door. Voila, space saved because now he doesn't need any power sets, and I can get my wider vision into 100kb. (I had to fix that with Issue 15 though, it's taken ages to get the exact right settings to have him flee instead of follow again)
And originally, I had patrols on most maps... to keep the player on their toes and give them a sense of unexpected challenge. But do people really want that, when you can tweak the essential mission objective spawn instead and give them certain challenges but of which they'll understand the certain importance of? Now there's just two patrols, in order to keep two joke comments I really liked, on maps where there's a fair amount of down time upon, but instead I've got the surround objective spawns set to hard etc. Again, more space saved, but idea of challenge retained.
Notice I've taken off punctuation at the end of mission briefs in some places etc? Perfect English would be preferable of course, but you'll never get under 100% if you try and use it constantly. Be brief, be informal if you have to be, but make sure your plot goes BAM BAM BAM and people won't really notice you've cut off around 20 full stops on some sentances and saved enough space to get another plot vital line in elsewhere...

I could go on, but you get the point. You don't have to compromise your vision to keep it down to size, but you should be prepared to tweak it around the edges to keep it sharp and succinct.

On the other hand, as already mentioned, the sad case is that no one is playing Art missions anyway, be they in 1 arc or 3. If you really, truly feel you want to write a War and Peace, then use all 3 of the arcs if you have too. However be aware you'll be embracing writing purely for yourself then... obviously you'll enjoy it intensely, because there'll be a 1:1 matching of your thoughts and vision to your output. And also be aware that you'll just get exactly out what you put in; you won't necessarily learn any new skills as an author, or attract any wider praise. What you get is what you already are.

I'm not sure why you can't edit them online; have they since been declared Invalid? I've no experience of an invalid arc (plenty of still working but knackered due to patch changes ones!) but is the Edit button greyed out for you?

If it's not, click Edit > Save As Local, then open C:\Where Ever CoH Is\Missions and there'll be a copy of the file there again. However you'll still have to manually copy any changes back into the published version, AND remove what ever is making it invalid if so before the changes will stick. An Arc over 100% for instance won't save any changes until it's back below 100% again.

Sorry to say, it seems the creative community for the Mission Editor is largely dormant; I've not seen a single comment on Unions MA channel except for mine asking about bugs in weeks. The boards seem to be slow, slow, slow as well... only the farming thread is really getting responses.

But anyway; to share what I've found, my arc wasn't over the size of file, I was just getting the error above... I seem to recall it might be something to do with a broken HTML code or possibly a missing speech mark somewhere, but in the end, making a new mission, then cutting and pasting each mission I wanted to test from the old local document to the new one allowed me to get access to them. Use Notepad and just copy and paste the text across like any other text...

I did, briefly, see the error reoccur when I copied the 5th mission into the new version, but it vanished when I tried a second time and hasn't come back since. I've proof read the original countless times now, and I still can't see where the error is coming from, and the published version still works regardless, so I'll settle for this.

I also had to edit the spawn powers constantly trying to get the balance right, as the new AI behaviour has messed up my previous balance (and it broke the friendly AI with minions, I had to remove most offensive powers on one to get him to summon the robots a large part of some of the jokes relied upon), but it's slowly getting back to complete again. So all I can suggest is perseverance to you, and if you still have problems and I can help with them, I'll try to do so.

It may be an old bug; Make a separate chat tab with only NPC chat in it, and see if they speak it long before you arrive... occasionally they'll see you from as soon as you enter, or from across the map long before they should be able to see you, and you'll miss them saying it.

If you run the entire map up to them and still don't see it, I've not seen that bug before, but for me they can also say it only when you start wailing on them, because a lot of my characters have Stealth, so they can't see you at all until you come out of Stealth to hit you.

Ok, yes setting them to not auto spawn fixed the problem, they don't appear in other groups now, but only as uniques where I set them to appear as an event. I took out one of the minions from the custom group (no one will notice he's gone!) to make the space savings to get those extra settings in... now to just try and sort out the other bugs consistently!

This may be similar to a problem I had;

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=191748

JDs guide didn't include it, as it seems to have only appeared this week with the Issue 16 patch. The only solution I found to only getting low level spawn was, as I mention in that thread, to remove one of the sets of mobs (the Nacht ones) leaving just one set which spawned correctly for their level range. This is probably not what you want to do (nor do I, I find every damn patch I'm having to shrink the actual physical events in my arcs to stay under size and get things working), but you may be able to make a work around based upon this...

Hmm, I can't see where I need to right click yet; where exactly is it please? (Ahh I think I've found it now, under the My Enemy Group list, then Edit, click character in list... "Don't Auto Spawn"... will run the arc again, alas it adds .07% to the arc size, may need to edit some text again, even if this works, sooo fiddley requirements!)

And to answer your question, I have mission where just one mob, the boss event, contains that particular custom faction, and the first boss (plain boss originally) was the unique spawn, and he'd have 2 normal Minions around him. Now one of the minions is replaced by the Elite Boss from Mission 4 instead.

Mission 4 had an Elite Boss as mentioned, and would call in his own pets. He'd also have 2 spawn around him, but now one of them is replaced with the Boss from Mission 3. The rest of the map is filled with mobs from their Custom Faction... but I don't believe boss 3 appears with them. It's hard for me to tell though, as I can't use a local copy to skip to these levels and check easily (see other thread about a returning bug)

*sighs* Issue 16 has added SO MANY bugs into the Mission Editor; Here's the next one... I had a custom faction with 2 unique bosses. Previously in I15 I had them set as Defeat Boss events, and they'd spawn with surrounding mobs from the custom faction. Now they both appear with each other during both Defeat Boss events, making them too hard to complete, as well as wrecking the plot. But I can't for the life of me stop them appearing together... I've tried making them both Elite Bosses, and then Arch Villains, but they appear regardless. Any suggestions?

When I save a published arc to Local to work on it with the advanced editor tools, I get the error which says;

, "The file is too large.

And I can't then open it to test it. It's an exact copy of the published arc, which starts correctly (Save As Local, Exit, go to local version, test, too large error), and I know this came up constantly during the initial issue, and was fixed later; but it too seems to have creeped back... and I can't find a thread which details how to fix it. I think it's a broken code somewhere, but I can't recall what it was. Anyone remember the solution? Thanks!

The Butterfly Effect was the Dev's Choice arc that we badge hunters used to farm the DC badges, and a few others as well in the past isssues... I don't know if that was part of the reason that it was declared invalid, but as it could be completed in about 5 minutes for the whole arc, I wouldn't be surprised if it got flagged as a farm due to all the excessive numbers of play throughs; I know I did 100 times through it for the DC badge alone.

But frankly, most of the DCs so far have been pretty poor in my opinion. Some one else has mentioned the tolerance of bad spelling and grammar in a lot of them, but also they've largely been inconsistently plotted (especially with regards to characterisation), so I'm really hoping they are taking their time and picking only the cream of the crop.

This is so far my only published arc; I've not been able to get my others and their ideas to quite fit the game UI as yet... but this one is probably always going to be my pride and joy even if I can write hundreds more!

Keywords: Non Canon, Humour, Custom Mobs
Length: Very Long
Morality: Neutral
Enemies: Devouring Earth, Crey, Custom 5th Column, Complete Custom Faction
Level Range: Missions 1-4 are 25-40, Mission 5 is 25-53

Be aware, it's absolutely not a serious arc... in fact there are over 400 odd cow puns involved, some of them quite subtle! Even what looks like spelling mistakes are probably a bovine-related piece of humour too; there's 3 famous film subplots, including the most obvious one, crammed in there on top of that!

I've asked for feedback though because, although it's been published since beta, it goes through major shifts every release due to the bugs and work arounds that have to be added, as well as all the major new features; in this case, I've added a few more puns, a new patrol, and changed the power set of the final spawns again due to being able to customize them. In particular, I'd like feedback on whether the XP is acceptable for the final mission (as it's currently just 3 Lts and 1 Arch Villain, and I don't have room for any more custom characters) and whether or not the basic spawns are too hard, or the final arch villain needs firming up or perhaps toning down.

Hey all; After Issue 16 went live, I noticed my arc had inflated above 100% again, so I went through it all with a fine toothcomb. As a consequence I've noticed the following;

1.) The replacement of " " with "/nbsp;" is back, which is increasing sizes slightly. You can fix this by saving to local, searching through with Notepad for that code, and replacing the missing spaces in the found locations in the published mission.

2.) Custom mobs that have Mastermind type skills are not summoning their minions. This can be fixed by deleting the power BEFORE the summons skill in the set, which seems to force them into bringing them out.

3.) There's a bug with custom enemy groups, but I'm not sure what exactly triggers it. Basically, during a mission auto-set at Level 40 (for a L50 character) with the following subset of 5th Column it ONLY summoned the Elite/Arch Villain bosses, and the Nacht designated creeps, which max out at L27 and so appear as grey spawn;

http://www.mediafire.com/?ymkzm0qhzyz

Under Issue 15 either would spawn either Nacht or Raserei depending upon what level you ran through it; However removing the Nacht entirely and just leaving the Raserei gets them to spawn, and at the correct upper limit of 40 now... This is the spawn list as it now stands, and works;

http://www.mediafire.com/?mzytohidfmx

The only other difference between files is that I've changed the Jutlandist from Elite from the first file, but only the Nacht spawn with him in either setting, so that isn't the cause.

Hi all, there's a small but noticeable rise in arc size with the latest publish again. Partly it's because it's reverting to replacing a blank space with the nbsp codes once more, but removing them all still leaves me with 0.10% inflation I can't trace... it's not a massive growth, but for someone who crams cow puns into every single line, it's pushed me over 100% again and I can't thus save my edits (and can't tackle the final custom mobs to make XP normal then)... any ideas where the data has grown post Issue 16?

As of Issue 16, the nbsp bug is back in the game; my arc gained 0.22% from before the publish, pushing it back into uneditable territory again. To fix it, do the following;

1.) Open the published arc
2.) Save it Locally
3.) Open the file in notepad from your CoH\Missions directory.
4.) Do a search through the document for "nbsp"
5.) Using the published version, delete the spaces in the lines where nbsp appears in your local copy, and then put them back. You'll see your file size slowly decrease again...

Mission inflation in the MA editor is back, due to the return of replacing " " with " ". My arc gained 0.22% in size again due to this, enough to push it above 100% and into uneditable again, sigh. It can be fixed by locating the missing spaces, but we shouldn't have to do this once more...