Ankylosaur

Really enjoyed this series - and some more fun customs in the finale! Some clever mechanics in this last one too. Loved speaking to my team.

Thanks @cranebump and @Zhym This series takes place after the fall of Praetoria - so time wise is later. The Lt is not a critical character at all - I just needed someone as a base commander of the Longbow Base in Nerva in both Glimmers 2.3 and 3.1 and threw him in because he was an interesting unique character. Normally I look into the lore, but missed this. (I did the same with Crow at one point in Glitters 1.1 til Darmian pointed it out.) I can just rename him and all would be well - except for the task of finding all the spots where I mention him. He is now Lt. Aamir Agarwal in both missions where he appears. Hopefully I caught all the spots!

And to you too! Loving the playthrough as always. Nerva has so many folk that are in AE, I wanted to include them in this massive war that is unfolding. (like Psimon Omega and Crimson Revenant - and was fun to bring in Hornet since Wyvern is around too. I think you missed one in M2 - Granny Beldam wandered over from her island too.) Someone mentioned that Lt Tendaji may be dead, so apparently I missed some lore there - should probably fix that but might just leave it. 🙂 Oh and yeah - as to Desdemona and Pendragon - there are ways to populate maps in such a way that they are not captured, got a little titred of fiddling with AE and just conceded to the limitations. Anyway - once you wrap M5 - you know who's behind all this and why! Sort of - cause - ninjas? Happy Holidays! Engineria deserves a rest. 🙂

My impressions/ideas... (And is Officer = boss, infantry = minion. and the last one an LT?) Minions One attack seems pretty weak depending on the level of this. I often give them one or more of the invulnerable non-toggles to minions as it is trivial but gives them something small that does not muck with costumes. Russians - Based on your description, the Russian officer could be a merc mastermind with maybe only infantry and a machine gun -warmth would be kind of a funny secondary 🙂 but not realistic enough. Also snipe in practice may have the opposite effect you are looking for - will mobs might aggro sooner if they can shoot further - bears testing. Italians - Officer could be pistols/grenade from Devices Japanese - Seems odd to me to have a Ninja in WW2. Could give the infantry guns/blaster martial arts and instead give the officer the katana and Smoke Flash from ninjitsu or something for support. For what it's worth, I tend to have minions and bosses as combat types and LTs as support.

updated with Possessed Scientists

There is a way to have an ally without guards - but he will not patrol. You can kind of do the reverse though. Set the ally AND the map to empty for him to spawn without guards. Alternatively he could just be a friendly boss also set to empty if you don't want him to interact with the character. You can manually populate the map with enemy bosses, patrols, defendable objects, etc If you populate with patrols, because he is already free (as he has no guards) I believe he will fight the patrols that stumble upon him. I think that will work anyway - and may be the best you can do I think.

In things we give Thanks for during Thanksgiving - I've got to give it up to @TerroirNoir2 and this cable channel and Engineeria! And yes - the story continues! Pendragon is still taking advantage of Primal cell phone tech despite his ridiculous gauntlets with Shoom calls or FacemakerTime or the like.

Though I did not write up the rest - enjoyed it! Fun adventure though...

I have a storm/MA (a storm monk) and have to agree. A nice change from the de facto immobilize

And - on the theme of forced spawning - the game will also "tend" to force spawn a mob at one rank lower if it is the only mob and it is trying to put it in a map/ So, if you only have bosses in a custom mob, they will spawn as a single LT if someone is soloing at +0/+0. I have found a single weird quirk where you can get them to spawn at their rank though. If the mob has all ranks (min through boss)- might be a fairly unique circumstance though. The rule seems to be: If you have all ranks available, but only one rank is available at the level of the mission, then it keeps them at their rank. I discovered this by accident with a custom Shivan mob (all are level 15 - 25), but it has the added quirk of the EB Shivan really being available at all levels even though it's not listed that way (because the EB is the pet from Bloody Bay). By putting my custom Shivan mob in a level 50 mission, only the EBs spawned, and they filled the map with 2 EBs in each spawn point. Impractically tough!

Oh and related are the Underling mob type. In my experience these will never spawn on their own except when placed into their own group.

Mollymauk was asking how to spawn Thorn Vines, and I thought I would share this obscure bit of knowledge I worked out. There are some mobs that I think are marked as "Don't Auto Spawn" in their group - just like you can do your custom mobs with a right-click on a character (a related obscure feature). You can't identify them in the UI - they aren't grayed out like in your custom mob. The tell tale sign of course is that if you use the core mob in a map, the "Don't Auto Spawn" mobs will never appear. Usually "Don't Auto Spawn" is used on unique bosses or on mobs that only appear in certain locations. There might actually be two labels like this as I think some might spawn if you use them in a custom group with other characters, but at least with Coralax Warders, the only way to force them to spawn is to put them in a custom group where there are only "Do Not Spawn" characters so the engine is forced to spawn them. Examples of non-unique characters that will not spawn on their own with their core mob: Vines - CoT Coralax Warders - Coralax Lichen - DE Cobra Hatchling? (minion and boss) - Snakes Psychic Clockwork Lord? - Psychic Clockwork EB Shivan - Shivans Possessed Scientist - CoT Anyone find any others?

Always wanted to do a space adventure myself and am thrilled you took it on. Notes as I go through it...

Fun arc! I do wish I could have gotten to see the six-pack in action!

Unquestionably - and they do. Because you're soloing you catch many more things and make the whole thing much more personal and witty to boot. I think was just missing Engineeria... 🙂

Then you can move on to Glints - only three arcs! 🙂 1 - Let Go of My Ego 2 - Beware the Ids that March 3 - Super Ego Maniac So much ahead for Engineeria!

Mollymauk has been going through Glimmers, which is so great to see! But I wonder if he will lap Engineria!!! I propose you just burn through the last three and treat it like a single Engineeria episode. Oh... The Antici...

The only consistent way to get most things to be single, or boss-only in this case, is to make the map empty, AND the allies/guards empty, in my experience. So then you have to get creative with how you populate if you don't want every encounter to have a boss. Usually that is a combo of destructible objects and patrols but ymmv

It's definitely missing the wit and tongue in cheek of Fallout. And since Bethesda bought that property, it stands to reason that does not naturally come from them. (Skyrim isn't funny for example.) There's a few things, like the "Chunks" brand of food, but not much. Outer Worlds (by the New Vegas folk) captured some of that within the space genre as you say. But somehow I left Outer Worlds feeling like I should have liked it a whole lot more than I did - I liked it, but was a little flat on it I think because it felt a little like Fallout in space with the humor. I may dust it off and give it another spin - I hear they updated the graphics. But combat-wise Starfield feels right on par with Fallout as it feels like it's pretty much the same engine. Melee has always been terrible there IMHO, but it's got more combat action to it than CoH since you can't just tab. 🙂 Again though - not why I play. I chose one of my traits as a Neon Street Rat so did what I could to figure out how to get to Neon City right away. May have influenced my play through - leaving the shining spires of New Atlantis. I think it would have been better to let you start in one of the three big locations and, like Fallout, force you to pick a faction - coming upon Constellation after you have made a bit of a name for yourself. By my level, it does feel a little weird that I am a Captain in the United Colonies, a Ranger in the Freestar Collective and a covert operative for Ryujin Industries - seems at odds with one another. (Actually struggled role-play-wise to bother to do the other faction stories for awhile because of that - but decided a Ryujin covert operative would definitely like to work her way into the United Colonies and Freestar Collective ranks if she could 🙂 ). Some of the amazing things are in the open world platform they created. Things like lighting affected by a combo of atmosphere and weather, planet tilt and location etc. And though this is reiterating what I said above, parts of it are obviously unfinished and will come in the form of DLCs - like outposts and at least one group you hear a lot about but have nothing specific to do with or against them. I wish there were a Mission Architect that could let me plop stories into with prefabbed outposts that I can place on the thousand worlds. 🙂

Yeah - that's the piloting skill. I was late to discover that but it's critical. Take it early. Skills require mastery of that level before you can level them again, which is a good concept - so taking anything you want to gain multiple levels with is better to do early so the leveling of the skill has the requirements out of the way when you are ready to spend a point on it. And if you want to fly the bigger ships - you need piloting. I also leveled up Ship Design because I really enjoyed crafting ships. I did not take over many ships. Several core arcs give you some pretty good free ones. Late late late game I found a Va Runn Prophecy II landed on a planet I was surveying (Serpentis IV) and it was a breeze to take it over. Became an anchor for my toughest ship though I modified it extensively (since it's ugly) and I loaded it up with auto-turrets. 🙂 Story-wise and creative-mission-wise, I think the United Colonies vs Crimson Fleet and the Ryujin faction arc were my personal favs. I did like a particular couple of missions in the main arc where you uncover some stuff with Nasa too but don't want to say much here. The Crucible was a cool one too with some interesting after-effects - frankly a few more star treky, self-contained, "let's drop in on this world and see what's going on here" missions would be welcome. And the Paradisio First Contact one was a great concept but was not especially complicated or involved to work through. YMMV

So I've put a ton of time into it and enjoyed it. If you have played a Bethesda game then it will instantly be familiar with things like their quest formats, dialog trees, companions and affinity, combat, research and crafting, etc. I've completed all the faction quests and pretty much every activity I could find. There's essentially infinite missions between mission boards and just dropping out of space at some randomly generated civilian outpost and encountering their latest issue, but like radio missions they are of minimal consequence. There's some fun little random encounters - like the grandma just touring around space in retirement, or a trader with a pet 8-eyed lizard who landed on the same planet I was exploring. The story is ok, interesting enough but not incredible - but I mean - what could anyone expect here? Gameplay-wise it's kind of clever but without being specific because of spoilers, the whole New Game+ path it unlocks seems antithetical to how people actually play Bethesda games. So that's an odd story choice, but after trying New Game+ I just went back to an earlier save and continued without finishing that quest line. The worlds and key locations are great though and well thought out and give you lots to do. Surveying planets is ok, though a little repetitive. It's kind of nice soothing to stroll a new planet cataloging things, well the non-violent things. I have not invested in surveying skills though, and suspect it could be much quicker going if I did. The variety of plants and animals and landscapes is impressive. (The variety of unique planetary "traits" - special locations you discover - less so). It's clear there are big pieces that are yet to come. Outposts are all but pointless and eminently dull - clearly a shell they will build upon, as there are hooks about colonies and more. I was hoping for something more like the amazing Sim Settlments mod on Fallout 4, but maybe its coming. Similarly, there are obvious story elements that point to high end content yet to come. Unlike outposts - crafting your ships is fun. (Invest in the piloting skill!). I have so much money from just doing the core quests that registering the ships is nbd and you are even given several through the quest lines (even a very expensive C class). It's been fun working out how to use the quirky system and to discover the unique ship parts at the different staryards/brands that let you make something unique. Have a big ole crew of 9 on one of my 3 C class ships. Pretty much nothing can stand up to them now. Even took out the 2 big sort of "boss" ships with em. (Though I have 3 different C class ships they have a similar weapon build out). I wish you had more control over ship interiors, but I guess homes/apartments and outposts are for those that want to lay things out in detail. Combat is as good and bad as any Bethesda game - but it's not the reason I play. Honestly, other than the initial point in stealth and lasers I got from my starting "class" (cyberneticist), and one point in booster packs just to use them, I have put 0 points in combat and am in my 60s. Space combat is fun, and I saw one thread about how playing purely as a space sim - stopping nowhere but space stations - made for a fun play through. I could see that if you did not care about the main plots, but it would get a tad repetative. Managing inventory, as always with Bethesda, is a big burden. There is so much you can take, but only so much you can carry, on yourself or even in your cargo hold. You do have a few infinite storage spots but have to travel to them. The contraband thing and shielded cargo holds is a nice little twist for someone who wants to do a bit more of a redside play through and join the Crimson Fleet pirates. The pure Diplomacy, Manipulation route would be hard to pull off - but being good in convos definitely unlocks some things. I maxed out diplomacy and definitely enjoyed swinging convos my way. Go in with the right expectations and you'll have a good time. But as vast as it is - there is definitely more to come.

One thing I have done with this - and it takes some real finagling - is escorts without people around them. they auto-complete to so you put their nav text in the thing they are going to. They would then leave when they arrive at their destination, to be spawned again later. See the first mission in All That Glitters 3.2 to see what I mean. its similar to what frozen burn mentioned above Much simpler. You can just have them as bosses without any mobs around them set as an ally. Won't be your "ally," and follow you, but they will be on your side when the baddies do arrive. And really - they're individuals so why would they follow you anyway. 🙂 I'd probably put your five boss allies in the front and middle Make Citadel an escort in the middle with something he wants you to click in the back - the objective on the glowie would be something like (Meet Citadel then click the glowie). The reason for the escort is he can say something when you meet him and something when you reach the glowie The baddies spawn when you click the glowie in the back. I would also make the baddies attacking 6 non required defendable objects in in the front and mid to load the base up with extra baddies since your boss allies will be around to take some of them on.

Oh - and the multi-pet controller thing. That was always fun! Getting your recharge high enough to get out 3 singularities or 9-12 imps - great stuff.

I remember when Kheldians were new, someone on Pinnacle started up an all Kheldian SG. It did not last long, and I think I even inherited the base. But early on, when trying to level, it was fun traveling in a group of 8 Novas, sweeping the original Faultline since we could actually navigate it. Oh and the early Quantums and Crystal shards were nasty...

I don't think I have anything nearly as witty as the OG. Love it! My head canon is based on my AE stories, so sharing them reveals spoilers, but if you have not tried them by now, I am not sure these spoilers will hurt you. 🙂 The closest I have is a running gag with Duke Mordrogar who is convinced he could control demons. Really, it was his Hellion "Girlfriend from Hell," "Duchess Mordrogar" who tried to unleash Bat'zul with him, but has since left him. You encounter him all over the place trying to summon demons unsuccessfully. Usually he's been trapped by them, and will willingly ally with you to get out of there alive.