Questions on Front/Middle/Back placement

I have a mission where I wanted 3 events to occur during the course of the mission. I choose a fairly linear small tech map (doesn't branch) and placed the objectives in order I wanted the player to logically encounter them as part of the story, one front, one middle, and one back. The problem I am having is that objectives 1 and 2 are sometimes encountered in reverse order, and other times objectives 2 and 3 are encountered in reverse order. Its like there are overlapping areas where areas are both Front and Middle or Middle and Back, or it might be that Middle on the small map can be anywhere, and when placed, displaces something that would should be put Front or Back. I checked the map's allowed objective allowances, and I should be okay.

Anyone have any insight into what is going on here?

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I had to actually rewrite my missions because I couldn't get events to consistantly spawn in a particular location on certain maps. Some maps are a bit better, it seems.

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I had to actually rewrite my missions because I couldn't get events to consistantly spawn in a particular location on certain maps. Some maps are a bit better, it seems.

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This. It's my biggest stumbling block to writing a cohesive mission where object placement matters.

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I've also noticed that the editor allows you to place more objectives in a specific area than the map will allow, as long as you don't exceed the total maximum for the map. If you do this it moves the extra objectives to a seemingly random location.

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Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper

Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World

There are several problems with object placement, maps, and linear story arc progression.
[*]Front, back, and middle zones seem to overlap. Middle objectives spawning before front, etc. (The smaller the map, the harder it will be to get objectives to spawn and deliver clues in a linear fashion.)
[*]Tech maps are supposedly more buggy than others on spawn point locations.
[*]Outdoor maps ignore front, back, and middle entirely. Outdoor maps are one big zone and place objectives randomly.

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This. It's my biggest stumbling block to writing a cohesive mission where object placement matters.


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Objective placement is second only to MA GUI instability in being a stumbling block for me. I've had to rewrite and rewrite my arc to try to overcome this, in the end I've had to compromise on making clue order more nebulous in one mission, consolidating clues, and living with the flat-out nasty problem of outdoor map placement that makes objectives in my final map potentially self-defeating.

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I've also noticed that the editor allows you to place more objectives in a specific area than the map will allow, as long as you don't exceed the total maximum for the map. If you do this it moves the extra objectives to a seemingly random location.

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I've noticed this to, and it has made me look at the map allowances more carefully. This combined with the probability that some maps have overlapping Front and Middle, and Middle and Back placement zones, makes me wonder if List Order of Objective is critical to proper placement; I.E. create Front and Back objectives first, then add any Middle objectives last in the Mission Architect. I haven't looked at it very closely yet, though, to know if really has any effect.

The other factor may be that on some maps the Middle placement is simply treated as an ANY placement for the objective, which defeats the purpose of selecting Middle, which I suppose would be a bug.

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I'm using the Portal Corp maps, and order of events seem to matter as much or more than Front/Middle/Back settings. Either way, it's still not consistant, and one of those maps I got clickable objects overlaping map objects in some cases ('wall' computer overlapped with a large crate).

Triggering of events based on other events helps, but suddenly seeing my 'rescue captive' mysteriously appear beside me after clicking the glowing computer kind of broke my suspension of dis-belief as well.

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