Defeat All Snakes

My best guess with what little we've been told is that you're putting in more things than the map allows for, especially as defendable objects spawn ambush waves which can eat up your slots without really telling you. Check the information right above the map on your mission editing window, see what it says. Your problem with the defendable object not being attacked isn't really a problem, that's how they work. It won't be attacked until you've triggered the guards surrounding it, at which point more of them run in trying to destroy it. If it was just under attack the moment it spawned, it would probably be destroyed without the players ever seeing it, and you'd get a lot of angry comments from people telling you to Defeat yourself. It's not perfect, but this is an old game and the AE is a house of weirdly-shaped cards that don't always obey the laws of physics as we understand them.

Statesmanomics.

Looking back, as I wallow in my screenshots folder, every so often I've managed to snap a portrait of a character or event NPC that turned out to be more expressive than usual. Here's a few of them.

I answered this question awhile ago on discord, here's a copypaste. And yes, the file structure's just changed. architect/critters and architect/villaingroups is what you want.

No. You can change their names via the regular GM spawn dialog, but there's no "giant monster" category in custom groups. They're their own unique thing. No. GM spawns are highly restricted. It's one per map, only a few maps have the option, and no, the interface won't tell you which ones until you select them individually and check their spawn count. Yes, though it depends on the GM and the animation. Many GMs aren't regular models and don't follow regular animation prompts, while the ones that do are subject to the fact that animations don't work half the time in general. Also, a lot of models have a much smaller list of viable animation types than show up on the list. It's a longstanding aggravation that a lot of these won't work despite playing just fine in the preview screen. I hope this list of heartbreaking disappointments was helpful! For future inquiries, please refer to my AE FAQ:

Sure, let's make ourselves even more redundant.

DETH ETERNAL clocks in at a cool 23%. This area seems to be the sweet spot, I only had one serious malfunction (pink and green space hellions?) and it was easy enough to correct, if baffling. My Christmas arc (The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year) settled at 46% and, despite taking a full minute to open, was largely cooperative while I was working on it, with only the occasional mechanical breakdown or weird contextual glitch. The Mu escort on mission 3 is a much more precarious one than I first wrote, but the one I first wrote just stopped working. Game of Thorns, my first ever foray into the AE, starts to melt its containment housing at 52%. 50% seems to be the eye of terror, the point at which you enter the realms of madness and never return. I had to rewrite so much of that arc as entire sections were inexplicably swallowed, costumes would deform themselves, Gremuloids were suddenly eight foot tall and text would just go missing. I'm almost grateful that the file is now somehow unpublishable, meaning I can't make any changes to the published version. You're welcome, everyone.

In AE, if the bosses still aren't spawning, try setting party size to x4. I seem to remember that being the threshold for full force.

Look man, I'll settle for what we have working as intended someday.

What happened with the plague in safe rock? Did they find a cure?? Just asking questions.

I still take pride in my disposable NPCs.

Hey hey, people. So, the savage beatings he receives in mission 1 aside, Scirocco also strongly implies he's going to "deal with" Phipps himself in the closing text. But amusingly, I ran this IC with the Doom Crew last year, and Queen Raccoon decided they were going to canonically (purely in Crew Canon, of course) finish him off there and then, which led to me bringing back his spirit in the subsequent Valentine's Day arc, in which they all went to Hell. ...Look, trust me, it all made sense at the time. Unfortunately, his time down below hadn't changed him much. Phipps, perhaps more than any other character, occupies an interesting position in the CoH roster. He's almost universally loathed by hero and villain alike, and I think the reason for that is that he's that little bit more "real" than most of his peers. You look at the redside lineup and you've got Megatron, Skeletor, Thanos -- and then suddenly out of nowhere you're looking at Heinrich Himmler. He's uncomfortably believable.

A good way to end an era: with EVIL. Thanks for the entertaining read, all this time.

Base building is pretty cool. But what about base destroying? These are a few snapshots from the aftermath of the penultimate chapter of the Black Hand Society's season 1, in which the cartel war hit its closest to home. The blood effect in that last one was achieved using the city ruin pieces -- tinting the secondary (I think it was secondary) color red creates a very convincing splatter pattern. It was just a matter of arranging them in a believable order.

The day Mr. Fitz finally got shot.

(The Black Hand Society are commencing their expansion into St. Martial, and their resident lawyer, Mr. Fitz, has prepared a little tourist brochure to help them get to know their new neighbours. I figured what the hell, I'll share it here, too, and maybe stir up some curiosity about the greasy neon jewel of the Etoile Isles.) Alright, let's get down to business. And start studying this sh*t, 'cause there's gonna be a quiz, and you ain't gonna like the failing grade. Welcome to... This place was a big deal once; but now it's a smoking pile of horsesh*t bein' used as a pissing ground by the Freakshow. Only money comin' through here is via Krazy Mark's yard sale and Louey Felluca's trash racket. Still... you wanna dump a body, fly underneath the radar or deal with the Freaks for some crazy-ass reason, this is the place to go. Because nobody, and I mean nobody gives a f**k about this place -- and that in itself has a kind of power. Gotta be careful with this one. This is Johnny Sonata's private castle, and the linchpin of St. Martial's success. We ain't takin' a cut anytime soon -- but that don't mean we can't do a little business. If you're the networking type, think about rubbin' some elbows on the down-low. Runnin' a few scams on the casino. Maybe even doin' some work for the man himself. This is it. This is where the heists happen. This is where the money changes hands. A fat stack of casinos, bars, strip clubs, fight clubs; the Jackpot's got it all. Lotta fingers trynna get into this pie, but you want a piece of it, you gotta go through the Family first, and that's AFTER you step over every other wannabe who's trynna make a move. It's knives out down here, kids, and they're gonna be ready for us. Let's get established before we start kickin' down doors. Residential, couple hotels, couple historic buildings... Runs the field from high-class to fixer-upper. Tsing Guns run a warehouse outta here and the Marcones have their holdout in the area, but you're gonna see a lot of Tsoo around town, too, haulin' product and spittin' on the sidewalk. You wanna run dope, dyne or any'a that sh*t, do it here. Yeah, yeah, you know the drill: it's another Arachnos sh*thole, and they're dug in deep. You're gonna see Crab squads on the march pretty much everywhere in St Martial except Fortune's Wheel and the Hard Way, and they're big fans of blowin' your brains out first and carvin' questions into your headstone later. Less we have to do with them the better, but let's be real, here: these assholes are everywhere. They control the air, they control the harbor, and they always take their cut. Might not be a bad idea to get on their good side. Run some side jobs, grease a few palms to make 'em look the other way when it counts. Think about it. Industrial center, like a little piece of Sharkhead in our new backyard. Ain't pretty, but everyone's got business here, including a deniable subsidiary of Cage Corp, our old pals at Gadzul Oil and good old Freedom Corps. Good place for smuggling, manufacturing or arms deals. Now this is some Alice in Wonderland sh*t. In terms of turf, it's an even split between the Circle of Thorns sulkin' in the artificial swamp and the Carnies shakin' their t*ts for the coked-out billionaires in their creepy f**kin' tents. I ain't touchin' it myself, but you want in on the magic biz, you do it here: pick one of these two flea circuses and either muscle in or make a deal. Or just put a gun in your mouth and pull the f**kin' trigger, probably get the same result with less dicking around. Oh yeah. One more thing: Listen, I don't know what the deal with these f**ked-up things is, but they're all over St. Martial like flies on sh*t. I'm serious here, they're like King's Row pigeons; f**k you up as soon as look at you. We move into the neighbourhood, we're gonna need a plan for dealin' with 'em, because trust me: they ain't goin' away.

It doesn't matter what the animations are, or whether they're a generic or custom entity type. They just stand there, not animating, like lemons. Like everyone who uses it seriously, I know AE is a house of cards, and can only assume a recent attempt to fix something that broke as a result of an attempt to fix something else has now broken this. You have my sympathies, but it would be great if someone could look into this, as it really makes these scenes incredibly lifeless. Thank you. -- (Edit for clarity: all published arcs are retroactively suffering from this, not just ones being created now.)

This kind of objective is especially irritating, because people can (and will) breeze past the escort, compulsively click the glowie, and then find themselves with no idea how to complete the mission. That said, I use this gimmick all the time. You just have to accept that it, like everything else about the AE that isn't applicable to fire farms, is fundamentally broken and you have to stretch a little to make it work.

Long time no post, Basehavers! Just wanted to drop in a few scenes from the finale of the Black Hand Society's Silverado arc. The setting was a supposedly derelict fuel rig some way off the northern shore of Mercy Island, which was secretly being used as a manufacturing facility and portal hub by a brutal South American tech cartel. The construction was another joint effort between myself and fellow sewer architect Voidtek, who went full cray-cray on the gigantic portal room.

Oh snap, media attention! By astounding coincidence, TMWCotY is actually my entry into this year's winter holiday AE contest, as seen here. One of the stipulations of said contest is that entries have to feature at least one of the characters Jack Frost, the Sandman or the Boogie Man, hence the odd alias for the contact. Since, as you may have noticed, I never do things the easy way, I crammed in all three. In any case, thanks for playing, and I'm very glad you enjoyed yourself. Have a very merry (illegal) Christmas.

Arc ID: 45220 Arc Name: The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year Author: @boilinghands Number of Missions: 3 Description: Lord Recluse has abolished Christmas, and Grandville is in the grip of an anti-Christmas crackdown. Trees are torn down, gifts confiscated, carolers hit with riot hoses, and none dare resist. None, that is, but a rumor-shadowed figure who seeks those willing to defy Recluse's edict -- one the villains of the isles call only "The Sandman..." The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year is a level 50, alignment-flexible Etoile arc, best experienced at a +?/x4 or higher difficulty level, with bosses enabled throughout and AVs turned on at least for mission 3, where they do more good than harm. Anyone completing the arc between now and the end of December can email me in-game with a brief summary of who their character is, and I’ll reply telling them what their gift from the Sandman was. Special thanks to Black Hand Society kingpin Horror Frost for the gracious use of his likeness, everyone who helped playtest, and to my longstanding RP tailgunner Voidtek, both for constantly keeping me on my toes with this stuff and for always contributing ideas so unbelievably dumb that they somehow work.

Took some screens to make teasers for an upcoming RP event. Wasn't easy getting this one but I'm happy with it.

Resolving_a_parking_ticket.jpg

It really made me consider my non-vampire privilege and put a lot of things into perspective regarding the way I take my ability to go out in sunlight and look at crucifixes for granted, so yes, I think it was extremely important and thank you for bringing it up. I hope others will take the time to self reflect after reading it, also. Fuck the armpit thing, though, get this shit out of here before I die of Irrelevance Poisoning.