Nod - What was Briefly Yours is now Mine (Single Player)

[nariac]

Hello everyone. Got another mission for you, and this one took a while to make. So much testing ...

This is a hybrid mission, beginning with stealth tank adventures, leading into a convoy interception mission. There's also a twist. If the convoy escapes, you don't fail, but it'll build up a base and GDI will come gunning for you! And they have pretty big guns. This mission has a variation on the deploying MCV trick, where you have quite some time to explore the map before the convoy arrives so you can plan out where you're going to attack it from.

What was Briefly Yours is now Mine

GDI has pushed us out of this region, and we have learned that an armoured convoy

is en route with an MCV. With their primary force lured away by a feigned retreat,

now is the perfect time to stage an ambush and counterattack. Rally what is left

of our forces, and intercept the MCV before it can reach its destination and deploy.

If you fail, you must find a way to destroy GDI's presence entirely.

Changelog:

• Changed the build order of the GDI base structures
• Tightened up the convoy so it doesn't end up being too dispersed
• Greatly increased variety and triggers for GDI attacks

Briefly_Yours_v.3.zip

Edited May 2, 2017 by nariac

[Lightning Hunter]

I feel bad these missions aren't getting any comments.  It looks really nice!  I just don't have the time right now to play anything.  Once work slows down, I will try to play this and comment on it.  Hopefully other people play it and comment in the meantime!

[nariac]

I feel bad these missions aren't getting any comments.  It looks really nice!  I just don't have the time right now to play anything.  Once work slows down, I will try to play this and comment on it.  Hopefully other people play it and comment in the meantime!

 

Thanks, that means a lot. ^_^

[MattAttack]

boy, can I relate to this conversation.  Heck, I'd rather have people tell me my missions suck than say nothing at all.  I too, have been too busy with babies and stuff to play any of these new missions-- I don't even have time for my own project these days.  That being said, I have taken a little time to examine this one and I have to say I'm intrigued... Very intrigued.

I played a couple of times exploring around, finding my base and seeing who I could kill. It' a very nice looking map and I like the concept of utilizing the stealth tank to avoid and selectively attack targets.  I saw too, how this also revolves around using the MCV deploy logic so I decided to check out the .ini file.  Now, I haven't had the chance to see it fully in action in the mission, but looking at the teamtypes and such I'm very impressed if I understand what you were trying to do.  And if this stuff all works, you definitely have taken this MCV deploy thing to the next level!  On the surface it appears that you are really exploiting the teamtype recruiting logic, with all the increasing U1 #s in the MCV teams.  Although I am assuming that you are aware that stealths don't activate cell triggers when cloaked and that is intentionally part of the design.

Either way, I thank you and Darkstar387 for continuing to keep our limited map-making community alive....

[nariac]

Now, I haven't had the chance to see it fully in action in the mission, but looking at the teamtypes and such I'm very impressed if I understand what you were trying to do.  And if this stuff all works, you definitely have taken this MCV deploy thing to the next level!  On the surface it appears that you are really exploiting the teamtype recruiting logic, with all the increasing U1 #s in the MCV teams.  Although I am assuming that you are aware that stealths don't activate cell triggers when cloaked and that is intentionally part of the design.

 

You're on the right track, as always.

 

Indeed, the celltriggers aren't for the stealth. They're the triggers which govern the movement of the convoy, so in fact they're all triggered by the computer GDI units rather than the player's Nod forces. The reason there's so many is that I needed to come up with a cunning plan to get around some problems with the deploying MCV trick, mainly, that if it gets attacked by anything it will instantly skip to its last teamtype instruction - which is to deploy - and do that on the spot.

 

Not handy for a convoy assault mission as you can guess! Although it could be worked into the mission as the driver hitting the "oh shit deploy" button, I decided I really didn't want that to happen, because a clever human player would be able to exploit that, trigger the MCV deploy, and kill it easily after its escorts drive on.

 

So as you can see from the .ini file, the MCV convoy is not just a series of waypoint commands and a deploy at the end, but in fact broken up into several stages, each of which is actually a looped patrol. And each of these patrols clips into a line of celltriggers which start the next patrol. And each patrol also has a steadily increasing U1 number.

 

I know you can see where this is going ...

 

This means that when the MCV is attacked, it will still skip to the last queued instruction in its current teamtype. But this is no longer deploy, but simply another waypoint. The practical effect is, that when the MCV is attacked, it will appear to try to take evasive action and lure the player into chasing it ... straight into the teeth of its escorts. Basically using a "flaw" in the teamtype logic to simulate intelligence.

 

Only the very last stage of the convoy teamtypes has the "rescue" instruction, and that teamtype is only activated when the MCV convoy has re-entered safe territory, so the player cannot trigger it with a last minute attack on the MCV. In addition, the GDI computer player has a BuiltIt trigger which destroys trigger XXXX when a construction yard is built. And trigger XXXX is if you destroy the MCV, you win the mission.

 

On the subject of BuiltIt, there was also another fun trick I used in this mission which I didn't know was possible: the BuiltIt trigger also fires if you discover the appropriate building from beneath the shroud, not just if you actively build it. Previously I used to ring shrouded bases with celltriggers to get the same effect, but it was never reliable enough.

 

In fact Westwood themselves do this with that Covert Ops mission where you start with 4 rocket men and a flame tank in the desert, and have to capture a chinook and fly to your ruined base, can't remember what it was called though, they ringed your base with celltriggers, but sometimes you could trigger them before discovering your base - or discover the base without stepping on the triggers. BuiltIt makes this timing much more reliable, for say, starting production with a BuiltIt trigger tied to the player building a Construction Yard - which will fire when the player discovers their base

[MattAttack]

I'm not sure if it's applicable to what you're trying to do, but "force move" and a U1 od 30+ will usually stop the "move to the last command" bug. (if it really is a bug)  Of course, if your mission is working perfectly fine now, don't change a thing!

 

Heh, hopefully we can get RC1985 to record a couple of playthroughs of these new missions- it may be worth messaging him.  It's fun to see him trounce all of your cleverly and meticulously laid plans and annihilate what you may have designed as a difficult mission.

[nariac]

I'm not sure if it's applicable to what you're trying to do, but "force move" and a U1 od 30+ will usually stop the "move to the last command" bug.

 

I'm 99% sure I did try using force move. It's my go-to solution for dealing with that sort of issue, but maybe because of the gimmicky nature of tricking the AI into deploying an MCV with the weird Rescue command, it just wouldn't play ball with me here. Although now I think of it, it MIGHT have worked, but there was also another issue I needed to concurrently solve. That is, even if the MCV doesn't panic-deploy, on being attacked it will try to "attack" back. It'll chase your tanks, or try to squish your infantry. While that was a bit better than the panic deploy problem, it still meant a clever player could lure the MCV away from the convoy and kill it. In that case, the issue where it skips to the last order was actually beneficial, since it would do a 3-point turn and race away back down the road. And the road has GDI guards. Much better than the silly MCV chasing your men into a dark forest ...

[MattAttack]

On the subject of BuiltIt, there was also another fun trick I used in this mission which I didn't know was possible: the BuiltIt trigger also fires if you discover the appropriate building from beneath the shroud, not just if you actively build it.

I had just noticed this in the .ini and had used it in the past, but I actually found this method to be unreliable.  I had a "built it" for discovering your own comm center, which gave you an airstrike, but it only seemed to work about half of the time.*  I got around this by having some civilians around the structure with "discovered" triggers on them because they got revealed when the comm center "lit up."  The problem with this in a Nod mission, though, is attacking this 3rd party interferes with teams of U1s less than 20 forcing them to stop at the next waypoint.  Hopefully, that makes sense... lol

Hmmm, I hope I get some uninterrupted time to explore this one fully.  I have to say, while I was feeding my kid, I started the mission, removed the shroud and watched the MCV go through its course, with all that escort.  It was beautiful....

 

*  I placed another stealth on the south of your map to test this trigger, and nothing got reinforced. I am now theorizing it may only work if the players "production" is activated-- in this instance your CY is discovered allowing you to build buildings, but I have to get some time to test further.

[Nyerguds]

*  I placed another stealth on the south of your map to test this trigger, and nothing got reinforced. I am now theorizing it may only work if the players "production" is activated-- in this instance your CY is discovered allowing you to build buildings, but I have to get some time to test further.

That's a pretty good theory. By its nature, it's very well possible Built It is never checked before Production is active, since it's deemed impossible to build anything before that.

 

Peculiar that the game would have some kind of "production" status for the player too, though.

[MattAttack]

huh... now it's working every time.  Maybe I'm just crazy, but keep your eye on that "built it"