The Invasion of the Space Ape Armada (Newly Re-Published!)

The Invasion of the Space Ape Armada
Arc ID: 356628
Keywords: Save the World, Comedy, Sci-Fi
Length: Long
Morality: Heroic
Number of Missions: 3
Description: When the vicious Admiral Silverback of the Space Ape Armada leads his fleet on a mission to conquer the Earth, it's up to you to lead the counter-attack against these savage invaders and save the Earth from conquest by monkeys!


This is an update to my old Space Ape Armada arc. I finally had some time to integrate some feedback, and since the old arc was made before the most recent changes to Mission Architect I was worried that something had probably broken.

This update adds or fixes:
- A new mission, in addition to the other two
- Updated dialog
- Tweaking of minion powers (specifically to remove the excessive number of battle drones the arc tended to summon)
- A new, thematic boss
- Unique (or semi-unique) looks and power combinations for the existing bosses, as well as an update to Admiral Silverback to make him less irritating (Which, coincidentally, pretty much consisted entirely of the removal of 'Rage' from his power list)


... And stay tuned for my next up-and-coming Arc, "The Revenge of the Space Ape Armada!"

Having played this arc a while back I wanted to replay it for the December PC Awards. Overall I think the changes are very good, however some of your power tweaking have caused many of the group to no give exp. The no exp from the group are:

Securpanzee
Baboom
Bonoborg
Irradiape (love the name)
Gorillenforcer
Medi-Gibbon
Gorilla Captain
Admiral Silverback

WN

Hm... I didn't notice that in my pre-publish test runs (no xp at all in the test runs makes it hard to tell if mobs are working as intended, I'll have to remember that in the future).

I'll have to see if there's anything I can do to mitigate the xp loss; especially since Admiral Silverback's still tough since all I did was remove Rage and Build Up from an elite boss that doesn't need either. >_>

Are there any other tweaks I should look at? I don't want to re-standardize the powersets since I don't want everything to be dropping robots like they used to be... perhaps I'll just have to give in and replace all the robot masterminds with energy blast; which is a pity because the energy rifles are just so thematic.

... I'm also surprised the Irradiape gives nothing, since I actually went out of my way to make him a bit more powerful then he used to be. That's actually disheartening, since none of my powerset choices are particularly weak.

It's pretty simple actually. Just select Standard and then only add powers, never take away. Adding powers to Standard will boost the XP a bit towards the 100% that Hard gives, but taking away any Standard powers from either the primary or secondary will result in No XP Period.

Mobs have been updated, so the arc should now be full EXP.

Edit: Arc has been re-tested, and all mobs now give experience. I didn't realize they'd drop down to 0 exp in some situations.

Just finished playing this arc with the MA team on Triumph. I thought the parody and references were amusing. I like the quirky enemy names and their descriptions.

The premise of the arc rests on its humor and references, with some action (gameplay) in between. The primary issue I have here, is that it takes too long to play and the joke starts to wear thin because of the time taken to complete.

The Steel Canyon map is large and takes a bit to traverse, but the joke is still fresh. However, the time it takes to run through this map and get the 6 objectives lends to the time affecting the later enjoyment. Perhaps we only need to destroy one landing pod and the three captains? Mission 2 seemed a fine length.

Mission 3 is enormous. I kind of get that you were going for the large mothership, but since I have no emotional attachment and no story-driven theme, I just want to chuckle and beat the bad guys. I'd prefer a much smaller map for mission 3.

I liked the customs from a gameplay perspective. They have quite a large array of stuns (at least when there are a lot of them) and of course the caltrops to hamper us. They seemed pretty balanced, easily handled with a group, but if you split or got too many adds, they could be dangerous.