Although I agree with the gist of the post, I'll add two nits:
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New basic objective: fight a named lieutenant.
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You can fight a named lieutentant by selecting a lieutenant as the boss for a "fight a boss" objective. It does *not* get upgraded to a boss if the opponent is actually a lieutenant. You can unclick the "required for mission completion" option, too.
The "boss" can even be a minion, if you so desire.
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New advanced objective: boss ambush. A named boss comes to attack you. Bonus: Boss is not necessarily surrounded by enemies of the same faction.
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This may not be what you want, but you can set an ambush from a custom group that only contains bosses. Although, this will bring at the least 3 bosses, which may or may not be your desired goal 
I will say I've had some fun putting 3 ambushes of only bosses onto a minion that dies in one hit. The next 5 minutes are a pure joy 
Goods suggestions. Here's two more:
New Tool: Spawn Costume and Height Randomizer. Allows spawns with the same name to be a little different, making it more like regular gameplay.
New Objective Enhancement: Boss Trigger Powers. Boss uses a certain set power when they reach a life point. Could be something like Nova, or Gang War, or EMP Pulse
TW/Elec Optimization
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New advanced objective: simul-click objectives.
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I will state for the record that if I ever see those damn things in a MA mission it's going to get insta-1-starred.
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New advanced objective: simul-click objectives.
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I will state for the record that if I ever see those damn things in a MA mission it's going to get insta-1-starred.
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I hate those.
[ QUOTE ][*]New advanced objective: boss ambush. A named boss comes to attack you. Bonus: Boss is not necessarily surrounded by enemies of the same faction.
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Actually, I would go a step farther and say that any place a group is defined for an objective, you have the choice to make that group contain a named boss. That includes ambushes, hostages/escort/ally guards, battles, defendable and destructible objects, maybe more (did I miss any?)
Can't define it for boss groups themselves, obviously, otherwise infinite recursion - but you get the idea.
Edit:
[ QUOTE ][*]New objective enhancement: an option for Patrols to decide if they should Walk or Run.
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Or fly! Fly please, please, pretty please! (Mission error if not all critters in group can fly.)
And for a while things were cold,
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines
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I will state for the record that if I ever see those damn things in a MA mission it's going to get insta-1-starred.
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Like any tool, one must know when and where to use it, and importantly, when not to. There's nothing inherently wrong with simul-click objectives as long as a) they make story sense, and b) they're not overused.
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- New tool: downsize unit, eg, create a custom Boss for mission #1 (as an enemy), but deliberately spawn him at lieutenant strength for mission #2 (as an ally) without having to burn another 6.5% of our memory designing a duplicate. Could also work like for missions like Snaptooth, who appears in different strengths.
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I think a more versatile solution that would accomplish nearly the same thing would be for the Mission Architect to use a single costume listing for custom critters with identical costumes, similar to how it does this for critters that appear in multiple places in an arc.
Please try my custom mission arcs!
Legacy of a Rogue (ID 459586, Entry for Dr. Aeon's Third Challenge)
Death for Dollars! (ID 1050)
Dr. Duplicate's Dastardly Dare (ID 1218)
Win the Past, Own the Future (ID 1429)
That, too, would be a welcome alternative. It would certainly enable one to create a number of visually similar enemies with slightly different sets of powers. For instance: two minions, one Mace/Invulnerable and one Mace/Regen.
All great suggestions.
[ QUOTE ][*]New advanced objective: create a sparring contest (enemies use "we're fighting" emotes).
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This would be my #1. Too often, battles are over before the players are even aware of them. I've come upon several wounded enemy groups just standing around in custom missions. I say to myself, "A battle happened here. I wonder if it was cool."
Even better might be a way to limit battle damage, so the NPCs are fighting each other for a few minutes - or even better, a way to give one group an edge on the other .. I wanted to have my custom villains getting their [censored] kicked by Longbow in my arc, but it didn't work out that way. But I'd think these kind of things would fall into the "resource-expensive" category. 
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I will state for the record that if I ever see those damn things in a MA mission it's going to get insta-1-starred.
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Like any tool, one must know when and where to use it, and importantly, when not to. There's nothing inherently wrong with simul-click objectives as long as a) they make story sense, and b) they're not overused.
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A lot of authors still can't be bothered to warn you that their arc contains EBs. What do you think people's response will be when unannounced Simul-Click Glowies start showing up?
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That, too, would be a welcome alternative. It would certainly enable one to create a number of visually similar enemies with slightly different sets of powers. For instance: two minions, one Mace/Invulnerable and one Mace/Regen.
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It would save a lot of space for some types of groups. For example, I have one where all the minions have the same body style and secondary set, all that changes is their primary set and costume hair/texture/colors. It'd be real nice but probably unlikely to happen if we could make it so 1 critter file contains all the them and save some space because a lot of redundant info is not being repeated. However it will probably be too much of a pain to program for.
Otherwise, it'd be nice if a critter file could contain multiple costumes. We have a lot of bosses in the game who have alternate costumes available when we place them as boss spawns and are randomly chosen when spawned regularly. I'd love it if I could do something like Crey and do female and male versions of the same minion with the same name and powers, but it appears that in their case the Devs also do it with totally different critter entities.
As with any of the tools we've been given: the author will have earned whatever star rating he deserves.
We can set up "hard" spawns around hostile escorts, multiple hard ambushes on a single boss defeat, rooms full of invisible enemies all of whom have mez protection, stacked +DEF enemies, and any number of abuses. People who want to make unbeatable, annoying, 0-star-worthy missions can already do so. What makes you think simul-glowies would make things any worse?
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As with any of the tools we've been given: the author will have earned whatever star rating he deserves.
We can set up "hard" spawns around hostile escorts, multiple hard ambushes on a single boss defeat, rooms full of invisible enemies all of whom have mez protection, stacked +DEF enemies, and any number of abuses. People who want to make unbeatable, annoying, 0-star-worthy missions can already do so. What makes you think simul-glowies would make things any worse?
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Because it's still possible to beat those on your own. Simul-Glowies on the other hand...
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I'd love it if I could do something like Crey and do female and male versions of the same minion with the same name and powers, but it appears that in their case the Devs also do it with totally different critter entities.
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I'd love to be able to allow for randomized faces and hairstyles as well as gender. It'd be great to build a minion uniform and add power sets without having them all look like literal clones.
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Because it's still possible to beat those on your own. Simul-Glowies on the other hand...
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Meh, I don't have a problem with that. I'd rather have more tools than fewer.
My two biggest requests are the afore mentioned specific boss ambush with the ability to pick a boss with no group. Number two would be to pick an entire spawn so you could have a group that could look like a player group ala the Civic Squad from the Westin Phelps arc. Or more to my tastes the LRSF full AV team battles.
I'm not going to ask for anything expensive, like "500KB for every arc, 20 missions, let us design whole Task Forces, let us upload our own enemy models" or anything like that. This is just a simple and very low-maintenance set of mission tools that would vastly enhance the already-AMAZING level of customization in the Mission Architect.
Hertz's Mission Tools Wish List
- New basic objective: fight a named lieutenant.
- New advanced objective: boss ambush. A named boss comes to attack you. Bonus: Boss is not necessarily surrounded by enemies of the same faction.
- New advanced objective: lead a captive to a collection. Bonus: Captive can betray you upon arriving at the collection.
- New advanced objective: create a sparring contest (enemies use "we're fighting" emotes).
- New advanced objective: simul-click objectives.
- New objective enhancement: boss transformation. Upon a certain trigger, the boss will do the warwolf animation and be replaced by a different unit of our choice.
- New objective enhancement: boss teleport. Upon a certain trigger, the boss teleports away and optionally says something as he does so.
- New objective enhancement: ally betrayal. Upon a certain trigger, the ally will turn on you.
- New objective enhancement: an option for Patrols to decide if they should Walk or Run.
- New tool: rename standard critter units, but use the same model and attacks, eg, copy Blood Brother Slicer into a new custom group called "Ex-Hellions" and rename the unit Ex-Slicer.
- New tool: downsize unit, eg, create a custom Boss for mission #1 (as an enemy), but deliberately spawn him at lieutenant strength for mission #2 (as an ally) without having to burn another 6.5% of our memory designing a duplicate. Could also work like for missions like Snaptooth, who appears in different strengths.
- New tool: difficulty level below minion, i.e., pet. Create a few simple sets of powers for this difficulty of creatures, eg, knife, pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, fire brawling (as Fire Imps), electric brawling (as Gremlins), etc.
- New contact: a telephone booth.
I want to emphasize, you guys have given us some incredible latitude in creating our own missions for this game. Has any MMO done this ... ever? (I don't think so.) Are all the MMOs carefully watching to see how this works out? (Damn straight.) Don't think I'm ungrateful for this unprecedented feature. All I'm saying is don't stop there!