How much arc space do custom enemies take up?

'lo, all.

I have a question regarding custom enemy groups.

You see, I had an idea for what I think would be an awesome arc. However, to pull it off, each mission would need its own set of enemies. That's at least 3 enemies a group, and one group for each mission. Five missions... a minimum of 15 custom enemies.

And that's the minimum. On a couple of these groups, I'd prefer to have four or even 5 kinds of enemies.

However, then I remember that a single group of enemies (that, admittedly, had 8 general enemies, and 2 unique enemies) took up around 60% of the available arc space...

So, would it be feasible to make this? Or would I not have any space for actual missions after I added 5 different custom enemy groups...

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'lo, all.

I have a question regarding custom enemy groups.

You see, I had an idea for what I think would be an awesome arc. However, to pull it off, each mission would need its own set of enemies. That's at least 3 enemies a group, and one group for each mission. Five missions... a minimum of 15 custom enemies.

And that's the minimum. On a couple of these groups, I'd prefer to have four or even 5 kinds of enemies.

However, then I remember that a single group of enemies (that, admittedly, had 8 general enemies, and 2 unique enemies) took up around 60% of the available arc space...

So, would it be feasible to make this? Or would I not have any space for actual missions after I added 5 different custom enemy groups...

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Approximately 6.5% of your mission space per critter, minus text descriptions. Also, things like the color of costume elements do not affect the memory size of your critters even if they change the size of your local files (disproved), but adding custom costume elements themselves (capes, tails, custom weapons, etc) can increase the size of custom critters somewhat.

15 would be extremely difficult if not impossible to squeeze into a single mission arc, factoring in the space required to construct the actual missions themselves. 16 is I believe impossible altogether.

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Well... drat.

Guess that's another mission arc down the tubes before it's even begun.

Hmm... maybe I can recycle some of the concepts...

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12 customs is the most I was able to fit into a 4-mission arc.

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The vast majority of the space used by custom critters is the costume data, and the costume data (which is just a .costume file, essentially) is very wasteful. You can cut a custom critter's size by about 50% by yanking out fields in the costume definition that are not required by the program.

I made a program that does this (IGOR) - its important to do the editing on the final storyarc file, not previous critter or cvg files, though, as when COH saves things it saves them bloated.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...umber=13380801

Hope that helps.

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Or...

You can set up your Custom Enemy Group by Ranks,

3-Minions, 3-Lt's (Name them "Custom Group Name Minions and LT's)

3- Bosses, 3- Elite Bosses (Name them "Custom Group Name Bosses and EB's)

3- AV's (Name them "Custom Group Name AV's)

If set up this way, AE is only loading the data from the groups you are using in your missions.

You can specify different groups on details, in different areas to get the desired spawns.

I did a full Five Mission Arc with this set up and stayed at 85k. With some large maps, and alot of details.

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Black-Strike: lvl 50 AR/Dark Corruptor
Brutally Beautiful: lvl 50 BA/Inv Brute
Seared Earth: lvl 50 EC/EA Dominator
Yashi Onuku: lvl 50 Ninja Blade/Ninjitsu Stalker
Death-Widow: lvl 50 Night Widow

That won't actually help with the final filesize - the full critter file for each custom mob you use is going to end up in the storyarc file regardless of how you organize them in the groups.

In fact, putting them all in different groups increases the amount of space they use, since each group gets its own group header.

So, while its good practice to separate custom mobs into different groups if you want to control which will spawn in normal groups and which will spawn in special groups, it doesn't help people whose ultimate filesize is too large.

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That's if you intend to use every single enemy in your Custom Group in every single Arc you design.

In low level Arcs, you are not likely to use your EB's and AV's, because low level Toons wont be able to handle them.

In Mid level and High level Arcs you would possibly use them all.

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Black-Strike: lvl 50 AR/Dark Corruptor
Brutally Beautiful: lvl 50 BA/Inv Brute
Seared Earth: lvl 50 EC/EA Dominator
Yashi Onuku: lvl 50 Ninja Blade/Ninjitsu Stalker
Death-Widow: lvl 50 Night Widow

For the record, the idea was that the players are trying to track down a virus in the AE system, thats infected several other missions. They've managed to isolate the virus to a single map in each mission, but the Player (& Group) has to go in and clear out the infected enemy groups.

The first four levels would each have a different group based on stereotypical video game enemies. The final level would be a confrontation with the virus itself.

So I couldn't divide these by rank. The first mission would just have Ninjas, for example.

I've kept the basic concpet, but have cut it down to three groups - The Virus group, for cetain... I'm still trying to decide if I want to make the other two as Pirates and Ninja... or as Robots and Zombies. Or maybe Aliens and Demons...

Hmm... so many choices...

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