Seeking advice...

[Ultimo]

So, I continue to struggle with the final mission in my WW2 arc.  Set at Guadalcanal, the idea is that the Rikti have gone back in time to give the Japanese the atomic bomb, which Ouroboros is trying to prevent.  At the same time, the US Army has detected the radiation from the bomb, and has sent in several WW2 era heroes, including the player characters, to destroy the Japanese bomb, researchers and research.  During the mission, the players would meet the Ouroboros Mender, and help him to defeat the Rikti and destroy their time portal.

 

The problem is, I'm not sure how to set things up.

 

My first thoughts on the matter are this:

The players enter the mission, told by their contact about the threat of a Japanese bomb.  The Stalwart Star has already gone in, but contact has been lost.  The players must find him if they can... complete his mission either way.  Destroy the bomb and the research, and "sanction" the researchers.  The fight through Japanese patrols, perhaps help out US Troops fighting in the area, and find the Mender, being held by RIKTI.

 

They free the Mender, and he explains that the Rikti are from the future, trying to change history.  He needs their help to destroy the Rikti portal and the Rikti themselves.  THIS is the first issue.

I can't make the Mender a CONTACT.  In a regular mission, I would expect the players to click on him, and a dialog box would open with all the necessary exposition.  AE doesn't let me do that.  I could have it appear as a Clue, but players often ignore those... so I'm not sure how to make this work.

 

The second thing is the selection of map.  Ideally, the map would be some kind of forest/jungle (I've been using Croatoa maps), but would have some kind of underground tunnels they could enter to find the research... but I'm not sure which map, if any, has that.

 

In the end of it, they don't find the Stalwart Star, as he's fallen into the future through the Rikti portal.  The players can't wait for him to return, they need to end the threat and destroy the portal (this is part of the origin story of one of my characters, the Stalwart Star, kind of a Captain America homage).  

 

If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, I'd welcome them.  Thanks in advance.

[Ankylosaur]

There are two devices that come to mind with the Mender. 

1. What i typically do is use an escort. You get a whole extra line of dialogue, as they say something when they arrive. Escorts come with some other benefits and drawbacks though - so may or may not work for you.
   1. So rescue them, they say something  like "Rikti are from the future! Let's destroy their portal."
   2. You also have some space in a clue, maybe the Mender hands them something, about the Rikti or the portal. "Mender X tells you..." 
   3. and then they say something when they arrive, "The Rikti want the Japanese to win. Let's stop their plot." - or whatever. 
2. If you need more space I saw one arc where the author asked players to right-click the character to get their details. They used the boss description for a longer exposition. It worked for me better than I expected it would.

 

As to maps, you are playing with the exciting unpredictability of outdoor maps! Very few allow you to position a contact in front or back so you have to work around that. The very few that also have interiors do, but they don't fit your scenario at all as described. So your choice is to just use an interior map that serves as the whole research station, or change your location to fit a map like the Croatoa Winter map (maybe northern Japan?)

With the winter map - do all the bomb destruction and non rikti stuff outside the caves, with some required objectives which gives them a chance to find the Mender.

The nice thing about using the Mender as an escort in a case like this is that if he is outside the winter caves, his destination can be inside the caves, helping you guide your player to the location, and it helps get around the issue of finding the escort's destination before you find the escort. Ice caves make for a pretty undesirable research location - but maybe rikti and a few rikti props like computers or portal stabilizers make it feel more rikti-lived-in.

Bonus tip - if you want a tech-based alternative to the typical portal options, I often use the "Reinforced Door" you can find in the Longbow mob. Create a Boss, add the Reinforced door from the Longbow mob and surround it with Rikti. It is the cell door you would find in a Longbow base if you died and went to the Hospital there, and i think it being in the mob is why only the Longbow prison cells work on maps with cells (they don't work for council, 5th column, or cot maps)

Edited Wednesday at 10:17 PM by Ankylosaur

[Darmian]

Possibly adapting one of @Ankylosaur' ideas for outdoor maps would be to have an optional series of hologrammatic versions of the Mender that each lead to the next one in the chain, each one dropping some part of the needed exposition, until finally the last one leads you to the actual Mender.  Fiddly to do but not impossible.

 

As to maps?  Oh, limits.  Or...if you hand wave something about time being in flux and warping the surrounding area, you COULD use the Nemesis Shadow Shard Base.  Maybe.

 

 

[Clave Dark 5]

I don't have tons of experience with it yet, but in the times I've tested it, I couldn't even get the winter map to work right for me, or not all the time.  I'm still working on a couple of things (slowly... slowly...) and feel I just have to make peace with having the player have to run all over to hell and back to go from one chained objective to the next if they're on outside maps.  I get around this being too onerous (in my mind at least) by setting the maps as "empty" of foes, so it doesn't feel quite as time waste-y.

[Ultimo]

So, here's my plan.

 

The mission will still use the same Croatoa map.  It will be populated by Japanese troops.

The players will be given several objectives.

1) Destroy the Japanese atomic bomb (provided by the Rikti, but the players won't know that yet)

2) Destroy all the Japanese research, and "sanction" all the researchers.

3) Defeat the Japanese leadership.

 

The Japanese Leader will actually be a RIKTI general, with Japanese guards.  They'll be animated as if he's talking to them, presumably about the tech he's given them.

When they defeat the Rikti general, it will trigger two events.

First, it will spawn a MENDER, as an ambush.  He'll run in, and drop an exposition bomb telling the players about how the Rikti have come back in time to change history, making Earth easier to conquer in the future, and how they need to destroy the time portal.

Second, it will spawn the Rikti time portal, which will be a new objective.

 

There will also be several patrols wandering around, both Japanese and US Troops, a couple of allies to rescue and a Japanese super (who isn't an objective) to defeat.

 

The issues I'm having right now are... 

There doesn't seem to be a destructible object that looks anything like a time portal.

There doesn't seem to be any way to have a MENDER appear as an "ambush."  I COULD create another new group called Menders, and populate it with custom characters based on the actual Menders in the game.

 

What say you, how does this sound?

[Darmian]

9 hours ago, Ultimo said:

There doesn't seem to be a destructible object that looks anything like a time portal.

AHA!

 

Well to steal something @Ankylosaur found, maybe it doesn't have to be a destructible object.  It could be a boss!

 

Voila!

 

 

Have whatever enemies around you you like, whether Japanese soldiers or Rikti or whatever, instead of Longbow.

And it looks like this in mission.

 

Edited 15 hours ago by Darmian

[Ultimo]

Hm, that could work!  I'll try that, it's better than the generator I have in it now.

 

I'd hoped for one of those big Portal Corp portals, but of course those aren't available.

[Darmian]

46 minutes ago, Ultimo said:

Hm, that could work!  I'll try that, it's better than the generator I have in it now.

 

I'd hoped for one of those big Portal Corp portals, but of course those aren't available.

Well, give it a go in test maybe.  To be honest it's kind of a weird thing to have as a "boss"!  But if you scroll through the choices (so many) there's some wacky stuff in there.

 

And of course you don't have to have only one of those.  Imagine...Portal engine damaged. Portals appearing around the place rather than in a "fixed" spot.

Edited 12 hours ago by Darmian

[Clave Dark 5]

That reinforced door is genius, and also new to me.

 

But if not that, there's always this destructible if nothing else (as seen and used in a recent story of mine).

The rest of what you have planned sounds good to me.

Edited 3 hours ago by Clave Dark 5

[Ultimo]

Well, it's posted and ready to go... but I'm still not quite happy with everything.  The Menders arrive, but they run in from offscreen, which means you can easily miss their dialog, which is kind of essential.  More, it doesn't bring in one guy, it brings in THREE of them, and they don't arrive and just stand there, they kind of keep shuffling around, running into one another, and then they follow you around the map.

 

I feel like I need to rework the intro and outro dialog from LCol. Anderson... but that I can tinker with.

 

If anyone wants to give it a try and let me know what they think, that would be great.