[174586] Assault on Aru Prime (Sci-Fi, VERY EVIL)

Arc Name: Assault on Aru Prime

Arc ID: 174586

Faction: Villainous (Cold-hearted bastage style evil, nothing campy about this)

Creator Global/Forum Name: @Aisynia

Difficulty Level: Moderate to hard, depending on difficulty. All enemies are custom. Several bosses and EBs, but no AVs. These will get downgraded to LTs and Bosses on minimum difficulty.

Synopsis: [SMFA SCMA MWMA] Aru Prime is a neutral world, but it has something the Earth Federation needs to win the war against the Azeri Alliance (which they invaded). Your mission: Take it by any means necessary.

Estimated Time to Play: 1-2 hours. Five missions, most are on fairly small maps, but they are pretty intricately designed. This is a departure from my other two arcs (1008 the Wretch's Gift, and 96322 The Tannhauser Gate). While the narrative is strong, there are a lot less clues, but they are no less important. This arc focuses on quickly paced action, as opposed to introspection or investigation.


I ran someone through it, and one of their comments stuck out a lot. During the last mission, she said "It's like Star Wars in here!", which was a nice compliment Playing in groups of 2 or more people on high difficulty will make this a very hectic encounter, through and through, but we had a lot of fun.

Final warning: This arc is for EVIL PEOPLE. Cold-hearted, uncaring, bastage evil horrible, horrible evil people. Just wanna get that across to you. This is not campy, its just plain horrible and mean.

DO NOT PLAY THIS BELOW 31! There is a non-scaling object to destroy in the second mission that will not drop below 35. When I15 goes live, I will hit this with an auto-SK/Level restrict (whatever it is they're giving us).

Hope you enjoy yourselves, please leave any feedback you might have

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A very fun mission. Nice custom dialogue and good map choice. Well made custom enemies that aren't too challenging solo but decently challenging for a large group.

Loved the last mission. Had an epic scifi battle feel to it with my Bots/FF MM.

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CyraaIren: I appreciate the feedback

Anonymous jackass: If you're gonna come by and 1-star my thread, at least have the nuts to post and say why, you [censored] [censored].

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There. A 5 star to offset the one a little. I hate griefers who do that. I don't normally star posts but for this I will.

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That's appreciated

Kinda wish we couldn't rate posts at all sometimes. I've been drive by 1-starred several times in the past. My response is always the same: If you do it, fine, but have the balls to come by and say why.

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[ QUOTE ]
That's appreciated

Kinda wish we couldn't rate posts at all sometimes. I've been drive by 1-starred several times in the past. My response is always the same: If you do it, fine, but have the balls to come by and say why.

[/ QUOTE ]

I personally never send comments if I 1 or 2-star an arc. Quite honestly, I'm afraid of revenge star griefing. If there were a way to leave feedback anonymously, I would do it and say why I starred it as I did. Wish we had that option. Really I do. Sometimes the arcs that suck the most were made by my good in-game or forum friends... and that's really tough then.

Aisynia, I'm going out with the family (and our squwaker) in a few minutes, but I plan on getting drunk and playing arcs late into the night. I'll swing by yours and give it a whirl. And, just for you and just this once, if I think it sucks [censored] I'll be sure to send comments and say why.

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"OK, first of all... Shut Up." - My 13-Year-Old Daughter

29973 "The Running of the Bulls" [SFMA] - WINNER of the Mighty Big Story Arc Contest !
- The Stellar Wind Orbital Space Platform

Yeah someone did it to this thread and to the arc in game. Someone doesn't like me. [censored] [censored].

I had 2 five stars, and then 1 vote later, it was 3 starred. So someone 0 starred me. I'm being griefed.

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I had someone 0 star grief mine too, so I bumped your arc to the top of my "to-play" list to balance out the star-karma I'll be sure to send you feedback too!!

EDIT:

Well, I wasn't planning on this, but I enjoyed the Arc a lot so here's my detailed review/feedback:

It was a well written with a well constructed story and motivation. Very evil, military sci-fi plot with great space ship battles...wait CoH can't do space ship combat and I had to use my imagination oh well, still great!

While I personally felt really bad for the Arusians and the Azeri, my character (who is thoroughly evil) enjoyed the merciless, militaristic evilness. You did good at making the player (Federation) evil through action and ethnocentric war and intentions. Good job making the player understand the backstory and feel a part of the war without devolving into too much exposition. I liked that the human fleet is all white and shinning and the flagship is the "Lux" (made me snicker every time) and yet they're xenocidal maniacs. Now make a heroic arc where we can play rogue humans helping the Azeri Alliance take down the Earth Fererdation

I found only 3 typos. In the mission 3 into it says "away team managed TO plot" the word "to" is missing. And I think there are too many commas in Aru Security Officer Info text. And in mission 5 Dr. Sing's info says "Dr. Crow."

The clues were good, the missions were well designed and the maps well chosen. You might want to add Mission titles just to keep in line with the general style of CoH missions though by the end I didn't really mind. Maybe if they're set apart with either color or scale so they don't interrupt the narrative?

The custom aliens had cool looks and power designs. The Azeri MSRs were really challenging.

I liked the actions as the mission accept text. Nice touch.

The 4th map was a bit hard to find the glowies in but nice choice of tileset. This is a nitpick, but in the first mission I wasn't sure why the Aru were in the caves, maybe a throw away line a patrol says like "The civilians are fleeing through the escape tunnels" or "bomb shelter" or something similar? Don't change the map, I liked that! There might not be a way to control it, but in Mission 2 one of the shield power reactors showed up in the caves rather than the base.

Mission 3: loved the civilian "patrols" really added to the atmosphere and made it feel like a decimated city.

Mission 5: Something made all the marines into Elite Boss Admiral Ayala. Not sure what would make a Battle spawn EBs, but maybe make her a person so she can never be spawned accidentally? Whatever the marines were supposed to be, it'd be cool if they were weak enough not to survive with out the player's help.

Overall, 5 stars *****! Really enjoyed it, good job!

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Mission 5: Something made all the marines into Elite Boss Admiral Ayala.

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I'm glad you enjoyed it.. and I was afraid of this.

I'm super glad you enjoyed yourself, but I'm going to see what I can do about fixing that up.

EDIT: Fixed. Thanks a ton. The problem is that it refused to let me place them without a custom character.. I was just hoping she was high enough that she wouldn't spawn, and I didn't have room for any other customs. That may have been the patrol (that didn't let me place), which I have since taken out. I don't know really, but it shouldn't happen anymore

EDIT: Now that I've put that fire out... going to address a few of your concerns

Ok, thanks for helping with the typos Dr. Sing uses an NPC called Dr. Crow.. At the time I was literally at 100% and couldn't give her a new description. I was able to do that now though

The Earth Federation Marines are all non-robotic Malta. Those battles can go either way, they're fairly evenly matched from what I've seen.

I don't use mission titles because they ALWAYS break my immersion. I hate that the devs use them TBH.

The Arusians in the caves in the first mission is more of a consequence of that map acting stupid and not doing what I want it to. Since the one Arusian Civilian that talks mentions that they need to get to a safe place, you could say that they are trying to get to the command bunker. I'll see about altering the line of that one civilian though I Also haven't gotten the second computer in that mission to spawn in the back room like it should..

Anyways a lot of the other stuff you mentioned is really just limitations in the MA.

Like you said, I'm really glad you enjoyed yourself, and I appreciate the feedback, helps me improve this a lot

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OK, I ran this arc.

I must say I was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. No offense to you, Aisynia, but it’s been my past experience that whenever someone complains about “1-star griefing,” their mission actually sucks. This is actually the first time I’ve seen one not suck in these circumstances. However, this is not to say that I believe you were griefed, as you said earlier.

The arc is very long, with big maps. Some missions take a long time to complete. And there is a lot of text. A LOT of text. It will not appeal to a lot of players who want fast action, short missions, and easy-to-finish arcs. And it’s evil. Really, REALLY evil. The story contact makes Westin Phipps look like a Boy-Scout Troop Leader. Even though it’s marked as villain content, genocide on a planetary scale will not appeal to many.

I think it’s well written, mostly. I think you succeeded in what you were trying to do. And I think you’ll need to prepare yourself for the inevitable consequences of that.

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"OK, first of all... Shut Up." - My 13-Year-Old Daughter

29973 "The Running of the Bulls" [SFMA] - WINNER of the Mighty Big Story Arc Contest !
- The Stellar Wind Orbital Space Platform

Ok, hehe

I only thought it was griefing cause someone 1 starred my thread and then 0 starred my arc within seconds.. and there was no feedback, no one saying anything to me, and it's kinda lame. I HAVE made people mad here before, there are people that don't like me. I assumed someone got a bug up their [censored] about me, and decided to grief me. It's happened before, I've had my threads 1-starred for no apparent reason. I could be wrong, especially given the bug I was made aware of yesterday, but oh well.

I'm glad you enjoyed yourself

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I made a bunch of refinements to this arc. It should be an easier read, and I smoothed out some of the objectives to make them .. well, make more sense. I also made it so that some missions objectives were a lot more clear as to the intent, such as mentioning the need to defeat the MSR in the fourth mission so you don't end up looking around for more glowies.

I also finally set it so that the MSRs in the last mission never, ever spawn near each other, and have their own names.

Unfortunately, with all the room these improvements made, I had to ditch the Souvenir entirely. Oh well.

I've been conceptualizing an Aru Prime II. If anyone is interested, let me know, that would certainly motivate me

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Review as part of the CoHMR Aggregator project.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a low 30s necro/dark mastermind, +0/x2 with bosses on.

Nothing says evil like zombie soldiers, after all.

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Awful lot of chained ellipses in the first briefing. Admittedly this may be to convey a particular speaking quirk of the Admiral’s but unless she actually stops mid-sentence and trails off you might consider other punctuation.

Okay, so we’re looking for some kind of ancient artifact that can destroy psionic potential, and covering that up with another op. I’d be worried about keeping cover but it all boils down to pushing buttons in the end.

So, information extracted. Everybody in here aside from the security patrols seems to be from the minions-only group of civilians. Not that I mind the punching bags, but a group with only one rank of enemy isn’t worth very much. Maybe you could use civilians escorted by the lieutenants and bosses in the security corps?

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Now to put the screws to this peaceful planet while they’re waiting for the cavalry to arrive, destroying the entire planetary shield and murdering most senior defense personnel.

I like the way you set up the activation and completion messages of glowies to chain into each other. Nice touch.

In addition to the normal security forces it seems there are several unheralded vanilla boss spawns, in addition to the named one. Nice touch for a high-security installation.

But they go down just as easily, and now we’ve looted some shield technology.

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So apparently we disrupted the artifact’s transfer with our bombardment. Whoopsie! The admiral’s sending me down with a scanning device to look for it.

(Incidentally, that’s a good candidate for an opening clue.)

The other aliens are kicking around down here as well - dropping a commander (robots or just the pulse rifle? Can’t tell now) gets me the clue that they may have beaten us to the punch in nabbing this artifact. Judging by the lack of presence in the important places I looked, this seems true.

Oh, and the place is full of civilians trying to find survivors and lamenting the destruction of war. Poor dears.

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Well, looks like they’ve got it on one of their ships and are going to take it off somewhere safe. Can’t have that.

Oh, Arachnos. I was expecting a tech lab, but there are definitely some starship lookin’ pieces in here too.

I’m not entirely sure what the entry message means. I guess the side tunnels are those bits to the right part of the map and the main ship is to the left? Because assuming it’s the other way I end in a small empty room that I think is going to be some kind of boss place.

Huh. Nope. Okay, so the west part was the side tunnels and the east is the engine core. And I can understand doing that, because it definitely looks appropriate, but that room is a terror to navigate even if you’re not a mastermind.

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Ah, now we save our home base ship, and the tech lab tiles come out. Surprised you didn’t go with Longbow to match the white color scheme, but I guess the Freedom Corps logo can get a bit too prominent.

Damn. Okay, spawn density plus every Azeri Engineer’s moral obligation to summon their robot friend plus even greater spawn density because of objectives means that in certain rooms and arrangements I face about twenty enemy forces.

I’m worried about how the artifact defense is going to work out. Fortunately it’s just a glowie. I can hardly imagine trying to protect something given the crazy expanding spawn numbers.

No clues for this mission, though... and no souvenir, either? I guess this was a casualty of a diminished arc size.

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Storyline - ****. This is a pretty credible first half of the story. Well, it works in itself and resolves what it sets out to do, but this is the first half of the story of some kid on Aru Prime who’s going to find a giant robot or something and save the Azeri Alliance from the murderous Terran Federation. It’s a good victory for the villains, is what I’m saying.

The only problem I have is that the crystal’s a bit of a MacGuffin. It’s all well and good to be chasing after it, but using it is also plot-important, and that just happens off screen. I was kinda hoping we’d get to plug the thing in and see it turn on (dropping the last desperate push in a mission exit clue or something). Maybe that’s a thing with space issues? Well, you’ve got more space now.

Design - ****. The various details in the missions do a good job of portraying both the conditions on the ground and the scale of the atrocities I’m committing, with the one last exception I noted above.

There’s this weird jagged lower scale to the missions, though. I came into this arc on the low side and I believe getting bumped up from the start to 35, but this spiked to 41 for the last mission or two. The character I came in with can generally hit above her weight, so I’m not really worried about that, but I didn’t see anything that would necessitate the bump. I mean, if there are canon mobs in this mix that’s a really impressive accomplishment as I didn’t recognize them at all in with the enemy group.

My only problem lies in recognizing the Azeri mobs in combat. I realize they’ve got about the same amount of variety to them as the Aru mobs, and I could pick those out just fine, but the problem is that the Azeri also necessarily include a decent swarm of battle drones, which introduces a certain amount of noise.

Gameplay - **. The first two missions start out alright, even if the civilians are still a bit of a threat that don’t reward very well. But then, it’s looking for a couple glowies on a sprawling outdoor map with random patrols, and then trying to find glowies in the labyrinth of an Arachnos reactor room, and then the last mission.

The Azeri versus Terran battles spawn Azeri bosses. Ordinarily this wouldn’t be bad, but through some freak of luck all the battles managed to take place in close proximity to the EB spawn, which meant that I ended up fighting the EB AND a boss AND their complete complement of minions, ALL of whom had spawned robots.

Maybe putting in a couple identical minions so only one in every three spawns robots would be a good step towards making the last mission less of an aggressively uphill fight.

Detail - ****. Some generally nice description on enemies and various clues that winks out (the clues, at least) for the last two missions. I probably shouldn’t be attributing all of this to space issues but given the profusion of customs and the age of the arc it feels more that the ending detail, including a souvenir (and I was expecting a medal!) was deliberately trimmed than that it was left out.

Overall - ***. Not intended as an average. The arc started out well, but later missions got a bit more annoying and a bit sparser on supporting detail, ending in a mission that had an unnerving tendency to put me up against quadruple odds, with no clues or souvenir to be had.

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Up with the overworld! Up with exploration! | Want a review of your arc?

My arcs: Dream Paper (ID: 1874) | Bricked Electronics (ID: 2180) | The Bravuran Jobs (ID: 5073) | Backwards Day (ID: 329000) | Operation Fair Trade (ID: 391172)