Frequently Asked Questions about Mission Design

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So to get optional objectives to show in the Nav, you apparently have to fill in both even if your objective happens to be only one thing.

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Do you think that's a bug, Arcana, or intended behavior? *glances around for Pohsyb*

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Most likely a bug, but probably not from a programming perspective but rather from an algorithmic perspective: it was done intentionally this way without realizing that people might want to have optional singeton objectives that displayed text without being required.

(The most common and probably prototypical case of optional item(s) displaying text is when the optional item(s) are combined with a mandatory item to "hide" the mandatory item, and the plural text is always required in that case).

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[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]

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Question: Once an arc has reached Developers' Choice status, can it be edited at all, ever?

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Question: Once an arc has reached Developers' Choice status, can it be edited at all, ever?

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Yes you can still edit Hall of Fame and Developer's Choice promoted arcs. I keeping finding and fixing tiny typos and weak sentence structures in Dev's Choice arc. (I think's it's Gremelinses. Dey sneak, dey is. )

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Question: Once an arc has reached Developers' Choice status, can it be edited at all, ever?

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Up to the latest patch, the answer to that question was "yes."

At this moment in time, I can't answer that question definitively.

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[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]

In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)

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Question: Once an arc has reached Developers' Choice status, can it be edited at all, ever?

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Up to the latest patch, the answer to that question was "yes."

At this moment in time, I can't answer that question definitively.

[/ QUOTE ]Apparently, the answer is "no" judging from pohsybs post.

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http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt

Question: Is there any workaround to the "unable to edit your souvenir" bug? Every time I try to edit mine, the text field jitters up and down and up and down and never fully expands, so I cannot read nor correct text in it.

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Question: Is there any workaround to the "unable to edit your souvenir" bug? Every time I try to edit mine, the text field jitters up and down and up and down and never fully expands, so I cannot read nor correct text in it.

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You could probably edit it in the textfile. It should be around line 11, after short simple lines (unless it can dump a custom contact costume right there).

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"I think you're confused. This is /b, not /b/."

Yeah, I found it. I was hoping the interface could be made to display it, though

Seems I'll be doing a lot of hand-editing. The editor's \  messes up arc description, so I need to hand-edit those out of at least there, I might end up having to rearrange objectives to ensure they spawn where I tell them to, and the editor seems to insist on inserting a P0 P-string in random popup window text boxes, which forces an empty popup window to show up, which I suspect I'll have to clean up by hand.

At least I'm lucky in that the bloat from all the non-slash   clutter isn't putting my arc over the limit, though it comes close.

*edit*
Question: Will NPCs set to Rogue fight other NPCs set to Rogue, or will they just fight those set to Enemy and Ally? The tooltip seems to suggest that they will, but I've no way of testing it.

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the editor seems to insist on inserting a P0 P-string in random popup window text boxes, which forces an empty popup window to show up, which I suspect I'll have to clean up by hand.

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yeah, friend of mine was experiencing exactly that problem when we were testing her arc last night. I'll have to let her know.
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Question: Will NPCs set to Rogue fight other NPCs set to Rogue, or will they just fight those set to Enemy and Ally? The tooltip seems to suggest that they will, but I've no way of testing it.

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I'll have to test that myself, I'm curious. I do wish my boss (oh by the way, thanks Samuel, my mission actually mostly works right now (besides ambushes being weird, and not being able to ensure their dialogue ever works, cause no one's standing there to hear it when it "goes off" it'd be better if it triggered once they targeted someone)) would actually attack the Council spawned next to her, but she doesn't. However, if I engage her, her foot stomps will hurt them, and she does a fair job of helping clear them out.

Another thing I noticed. My ally likes to just bolt off randomly for no reason. It didn't happen when I was soloing the arc, but when I tested it with 2 friends last night, she'd just run off randomly mid fight, and at one point I swear she ran so far we couldn't find her at all. Also she seemed to like to get "hooked" on following the controller's stone pet (would be nice if that didn't happen) and if he died, that would cause her to bolt off too, though even when he wasn't around, she did it.

Let's see...a "Easy" "Medium" "Hard" setting for destructable objects would be nice (given that one hit from my tanker with KO blow+rage nearly destroys them, it'd be nice to be able to make them tougher, better yet, a slider or text box to set their HP values).

Also, I can't seem to get bosses (that is, boss-level foes, not my actual mission "bosses") to spawn hardly at all. I was running solo on Rugged, and never saw a one, just a ton of lieutenants and minions. This wasn't just restricted to custom groups...I didn't see a single boss on the entire map. Not until I had 2 other people with me did I notice them occasionally. Does it need to be set up to Unyielding to make bosses spawn? I know in the regular PvE game they tend to spawn for solos around Tenacious or Rugged...but MA doesn't seem to work this way...any ideas?

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"Superman died fighting Doomsday because he allowed his toggles to drop, and didn't beat Doomsday before Unstoppable wore off, sad really..."

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I'll have to test that myself, I'm curious. I do wish my boss (oh by the way, thanks Samuel, my mission actually mostly works right now (besides ambushes being weird, and not being able to ensure their dialogue ever works, cause no one's standing there to hear it when it "goes off" it'd be better if it triggered once they targeted someone)) would actually attack the Council spawned next to her, but she doesn't. However, if I engage her, her foot stomps will hurt them, and she does a fair job of helping clear them out.

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Ambushes currently unload their dialogue into the ether where no-one is listening. And I don't know why. I do wish it would be fixed, though, because as it stands, giving them dialogue is pointless.

Also, a Rogue enemy will attack an Enemy enemy or a Friendly (or just about everyone not from his spawn, for that matter) if they stray close enough. My own Dev/Null was picking fights with Crey scientists before I even got there, but I eventually ended up having to turn him back into Enemy to prevent his dialogue from being triggered by wandering enemies. It seems to work, they just have to stray pretty close to each other.

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Another thing I noticed. My ally likes to just bolt off randomly for no reason. It didn't happen when I was soloing the arc, but when I tested it with 2 friends last night, she'd just run off randomly mid fight, and at one point I swear she ran so far we couldn't find her at all. Also she seemed to like to get "hooked" on following the controller's stone pet (would be nice if that didn't happen) and if he died, that would cause her to bolt off too, though even when he wasn't around, she did it.

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That sounds like an AI selection issue. What behaviour did you choose for her? I haven't tried Aggressive, myself, but from the tooltip, it sounds like exactly the kind of thing you are describing. I keep my own Allies on Fighting Defensive to prevent that kind of willy-nilly overacting, and my one ally has consistently managed to keep himself alive, even though he turned out to be a minion, much to my surprise. Heh

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Also, I can't seem to get bosses (that is, boss-level foes, not my actual mission "bosses") to spawn hardly at all. I was running solo on Rugged, and never saw a one, just a ton of lieutenants and minions. This wasn't just restricted to custom groups...I didn't see a single boss on the entire map. Not until I had 2 other people with me did I notice them occasionally. Does it need to be set up to Unyielding to make bosses spawn? I know in the regular PvE game they tend to spawn for solos around Tenacious or Rugged...but MA doesn't seem to work this way...any ideas?

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That's down to the whim of the spawn code. Sometimes you can't get bosses with multiple people, sometimes you get tons of bosses by yourself. I played through the exact same missions I'd made, played through it several times and sometimes I'd get mostly Crey Security Guards and Crey Scientists, sometimes I'd get almost entirely Paragon Protectors. You can't really GUARANTEE you'll get bosses with less than four people or thereabout, and anything less than that is really down to the whim of the spawn code. It's like that in the regular game, as well, actually.

Also, the first, third and fifth difficulties are identical, only the first produces enemies even con and +1, the third +1 and +2 and the fifth +2 and +3. The second and fourth are similarly identical, only the second produces even con and +1 while the fourth produces +1 and +2. When it comes to spawn size and composition, however, you effectively have only two difficulty settings - odd and even.

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I don't know if this has been covered before, but is there going to be a way for custom critters to use an existing npcs powers?

For example if I want to make a boss with radiation melee, I could select:

[Powers]
-[NPC Powers]
--[Shivans]
---[Shivan Destroyer]

And that gives my custom critter all the powers that that NPC has and possibly the AI of that NPC critter as well. Of course this would also prevent me from adding a second powerset, but to do otherwise would likely mess up the critter anyway.

So just to repeat the question in case it was forgotten while reading the example; [u]Is there going to be a way for us to give a custom critter an existing npcs powers?[u]

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is 15 hours ahead of
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which is 5 hours behind
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I don't believe so, because all too many NPC powers depend on the NPCs, themselves. Shivans, for instance, use the Hydra model, and there's practically no guarantee that those animations are even available to any of the player models at all. Further still, non-human enemies like Arachnoids, Crab Spiders, the Tarantula, Nemesis Jaegers, Malta Titans and so forth have powers that are unique to their models and are very likely not player-usable.

I don't believe we'll ever get the ability to make custom critters who can do or be anything we couldn't make as a player character.

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I don't believe we'll ever get the ability to make custom critters who can do or be anything we couldn't make as a player character.

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I agree, based on what I've read posted by Arcanaville or Pohsyb. It's very, very difficult to make non-standard models use standard power animations (they said something about energy beams coming out of Warwolves' shoulders). Therefore it must be equally hard to apply non-standard animations to standard models.

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It still would be nice to be able to rename non-boss standard characters, even if we can't change their powersets.

In "Anactoria's Escape", I tossed in the Cimeroran Sybils as extra bosses to give them some variety; the Sybils looked like they could belong with the rest of the custom characters. What that yields, unfortunately, is multiple instances of "Sister Solaris" and "Sybil Bramlett" being added to the mission. Simply being able to rename them as "Sybil" and "Priestess" would help.

Existing characters can be renamed, but only if they are being used as bosses in set fights. The same design casts Daedalus in the role of Apollo, and Romulus in the role of Mars. I'm tempted to resort to using Valkyrie as Minerva in order to free up a custom spot to allow some more variety in the minions. Since bosses for set fights can be renamed, I am not sure that allowing the renaming of non-set bosses should be impossible.

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<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison

I was pointed here for my question and tried to find it in these pages but either it's not here or I over looked it so I'll just ask again.

I'm just curious to know if i14 will make it easier to get badges like The Illusionist Badge. For example just setting up the mission to have only enemies needed to get the badge.

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Globals:
@Animorph
@Animorph 2

Also known as;
Maverick, Living Phantom, Role-Player, Live-Wyre, Eagle Eye, Toy-Man, Cartoon, Jetfire, Reflex, Mer-Man, Spartacus, Step, Reaver...

Nope. You cannot get any of the regular badges. There are specails badges for doing AE missions. So in AE only get AE badges.

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Champion
Pillars of Might
Darc Ranger [Blas] / Darc Nebula [Cont]
The Bikini Patrol
Darc Lighter:51-[Blas] / Darc Lady:50-[Tank]
The Panty Raiders
Aegis Magnus [MM] / Atomic Spector [Cor] / Dominar Sefus [Dom]
MEGAFORCE
-Darc Ranger [Def]

*Cries*

I'm never going to get that hammer....

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Globals:
@Animorph
@Animorph 2

Also known as;
Maverick, Living Phantom, Role-Player, Live-Wyre, Eagle Eye, Toy-Man, Cartoon, Jetfire, Reflex, Mer-Man, Spartacus, Step, Reaver...

Ok, I'm running into a virulent myth that HOF arcs have real drops like DC arcs do. I'm 95% sure this is false, but I haven't tested it myself and I don't know where the last info on it is in the forums.

I do suggest that the answer be explicitly placed in the FAQ for this reason in any case.

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"I think you're confused. This is /b, not /b/."

This thread has been extremely useful, but it's time for someone to update the original post. For instance, you can now reorder objectives by dragging and dropping them up and down, and I believe there's a way to manually set the overall mission levels.

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