Zhym

Maybe that is in the narrative. I don't remember at this point. What I do remember is seeing the "Find the Mission Exit!" prompt in the nav menu and hopping out to the mission exit. I do like TP beacons as convenient ways of "capturing" someone without having to escort them.

I'm glad this wasn't an escort mission (I'm always glad that any mission was not an escort mission), but the bolded portion wasn't an actual requirement of the mission, right? When Syzygy showed up (captured, again*) and says that his orders were not to let my character out of his sight, my character's response was, "Good luck with that." He usually runs with stealth on, see. And while he'll often turn that off to let his "helpers" tag along, he's not going to do it for someone who says his orders are basically just to keep an eye on my character. Especially not on that map, which is a PITA to keep everyone together on. So—bye, Z! Good luck with...well, whatever! *There really needs to be an AE arc that hangs a lampshade on how your allies in AE missions always seem to have gotten captured by the time you get there.

Pretty fun story. I do like the "Mars Base" theme. Good use of existing maps to fit the theme. Spoiler comments on the last mission:

My main is a DP/MA blaster, and Ki Push is a wonderful thing. All those fancy powers don't do them much good if they're spending all their time flying backwards, waving their arms helplessly in the air.

The wacky thing is: I knew that. I mean, I've played through all or most of those arcs, and I remember how they continued threads from the in-game official arcs. I just forgot it with @TerroirNoir2 added the note about this in the write-ups here. And now, apropos of nothing, I'm trying to remember which AE arcs let me beat up Reese. Because beating up Reese is never not fun.

Ohhhhh, right. I was getting confused because @Darmian's chapters are following on from the official in-game arc chapters. I was lost there for a bit, wondering why I don't remember seeing Imperial Crusader chapters 1-5 in this thread. D'oh! I've updated the TV Guide posts with the subtitles.

I've tagged "Spirals" parts one and two accordingly. Is there anything else in the TV Guide I should be tagging this way? Or, put another way, has Engineria done the previous episodes in "Imperial Crusader?"

Travel powers have been buffed enough now that there's an "easy" workaround for the ski slopes. Just make a build at level 50 with flight, afterburner, and evasive maneuvers, maybe slot some +fly enhancements, and you'll be fast enough to fly though both the ski slope and slalom courses fast enough to get all the badges. It's the only way I could get them, anyway, since I'm astoundingly bad at navigating those slopes in the way they were intended.

In some AE missions, I've noticed that all the character dialog shows up all at once as soon as I enter the mission. Anyone know why this happens, and if there's anything AE authors can do about it? I think the dialog that's triggered based on damage happens when it's supposed to, but the dialog that's meant to appear when you approach the NPCs sometimes happens all at once, even on large maps.

That's a fun arc! Lots of hilarity. A few notes (including a couple of typos): Again—nicely done!

Oh, and:

Well...

Oooh, close competition on that one. I think I give the dubious "win" to Cleo, though. At least Nadia doesn't act like she's trying to flirt with you while you're running errands for her super-strong boyfriend with a jealous streak and anger management issues.

Just ran through this. Nicely done, as usual, although my shaky knowledge of the lore is starting to come through. Also, I think this (again?) illustrates how hard it is to do Praetorian lore arcs, because there are so many different directions that Praetorian lore can have gone depending on the character choices. For example: A couple of typos I caught: Mission 1: Cleo's descriprion text: last word is "Maruder," not "Marauder." Mission 4 post-text: "Defenceless" s/b "Defenseless." Finally: I don't know why I expected this to be a finale, but it definitely wasn't!

The tragic failure of ASF is that it's a lore-heavy story arc pretending to be a SF. People do SFs and FTs as speed runs. We know this. There's no such thing as a "stop and look at all the Easter eggs" SF run. And yet ASF is full of Easter eggs and story you can only see if you slow down and pay attention to it. As a story arc, it would be incredible. You could take your time, read all the dialog (I mean, Becky alone is worth the time), do a mission here and there in short bursts instead of having to do it all at once, and really be able to appreciate all the lore and story. Heck, if ASF were an AE arc it would be one of my favorites. But for some reason, it got implemented as a SF. Which is a damned shame, because the SF speed runners don't care about the story aspects and the people who want to enjoy the story generally can't run it solo. My theory about why this ended up a SF is that it got caught up in trying to be two things: (1) a great lore-focused story and (2) one of the standard bearers for the new "hard mode" and the associated new currency (the prismatic aether particles). IMO, the latter took over the former—and in many ways, ruined it. I still want an "easy mode" version of ASF (maybe as a Flashback mission?) that can be done solo. Because the story is so good, there really ought to be a way for mere mortals (well, superhero mortals) to experience the whole story. (I'd apologize for resurrecting an old thread, but @Snarky has already said he doesn't mind necromancy.)

The Ultima Underworld games allowed this. You could write anything you wanted on your game map. That game was way ahead of its time.

I've sort of been wondering how much of the recent quietness on Homecoming has been due to TotK. Glad to hear you'll be back to COH more soon, though.

I’d noticed that there seem to be a lot fewer incarnate trials going on these days. Oh, sure, you can still find a BAF most nights, but MoM? Keyes? Underground? Good luck with that. Even @Oklahoman’s Lambda and Magisterium badge runs don’t seem to be happening as regularly (or else I’m just logging in at the wrong times). Also, if people think it’s weird that this thread was resurrected ten months after it was posted, just imagine how I feel, having started the thread. “Wait, that’s my post? What the heck are people still doing discussing it?”

I've updated the "TV Guide" post to use the new numbering. That means it may not match @TerroirNoir's original posts, but I figure it makes more sense to follow the AE series numbering.

Oh, sure, try to deny it. But I've seen how many clones and duplicates you've put in your AE plots. ;)

Yay! We finally got that hot Engineria-on-Engineria action we've been waiting for! ...I mean the battle, people. Jeez. Where are your minds? Anyway—that did rather add something to the playthrough, I think. Also, that's Corporal Zhym to you. :)

That does remind me of something, actually. While I find the location tips in the objective text really helpful (especially the one about an objective being on an upper floor), I was a bit confused in this map because I wasn't sure whether "back" meant the back of the office building or down the tunnels.