[HoL] Xenon Incursion Awkwardness

Snafu_X3 · Post by **Snafu_X3** » Wed, 2. Mar 16, 21:35

flyboychuckles wrote:What happens to the plot if I miss the "get out of here" step?[...]
Is the plot mission gone now?

Nope, it should still appear in your missions menu once activated

timothythaan · Post by **timothythaan** » Fri, 4. Mar 16, 14:03

waddymc wrote:I think the xenon are scared of me, must be my warehouse in middle of toride thats stopped them from ever being spotted by me !!

Even done about 3 laps around toride to try find them and not once seen the fleet, If anyone sees the xenon fleet tell them Im looking for them

I just sat and waited on the Mealstrom gate they will apear in time. You might have to wait a long time tho but they will show them selfs.

waddymc · Post by **waddymc** » Fri, 4. Mar 16, 14:05

timothythaan wrote:
waddymc wrote:I think the xenon are scared of me, must be my warehouse in middle of toride thats stopped them from ever being spotted by me !!

Even done about 3 laps around toride to try find them and not once seen the fleet, If anyone sees the xenon fleet tell them Im looking for them
I just sat and waited on the Mealstrom gate they will apear in time. You might have to wait a long time tho but they will show them selfs.

I practically live in toride so they will show up at some point, just been unlucky spotting them so far, but it has given me time to build my fleet to kill them

birdtable · Post by **birdtable** » Sat, 5. Mar 16, 07:46

Maybe they are aware that any defeat they suffer will be broadcast on youtube and so are trying to avoid the public humiliation.

waddymc · Post by **waddymc** » Sat, 5. Mar 16, 11:44

birdtable wrote:Maybe they are aware that any defeat they suffer will be broadcast on youtube and so are trying to avoid the public humiliation.

Hehe could be, maybe the AI collective have decided it would be a PR nightmare

timothythaan · Post by **timothythaan** » Tue, 8. Mar 16, 08:55

waddymc wrote:
timothythaan wrote:
waddymc wrote:I think the xenon are scared of me, must be my warehouse in middle of toride thats stopped them from ever being spotted by me !!

Even done about 3 laps around toride to try find them and not once seen the fleet, If anyone sees the xenon fleet tell them Im looking for them
I just sat and waited on the Mealstrom gate they will apear in time. You might have to wait a long time tho but they will show them selfs.
I practically live in toride so they will show up at some point, just been unlucky spotting them so far, but it has given me time to build my fleet to kill them

I only just noticed your name XD
Yeah your "Deathstar" and Taranis's must be the blame of they not showing up

Mike Roberts · Post by **Mike Roberts** » Wed, 9. Mar 16, 23:48

I completed this plot by accidentally doing what was the last part only (and having not accepted the campaign). Can I restart the Xenon Incursion mission or roll back the clock so I can do the whole mission from the start? Happy to edit a save game file if required.

The mission was offered just after I had accepted a 'stop the snitch' mission that would give the opportunity to capture both an Arawn and a Taranis. So I just left the plot mission (did not accept or reject it) planning to come back to it. Capturing the Awarn and the Taranis took a while (hostile sector) during which I overwrote all my save games. When done this the plot mission was no longer there. So I continued in the sector.

I spotted a Branch 9 Destroyer and so decided to see what it would take to destroy it - which I did with the help of my captured Taranis. I then got a message to land on a ship and was given rewards as a friend of Toroid and my log said I had completed the Xenon Incursion mission.

So I feel cheated having only having to do a realtively easy defeat of a capital ship.

Any help appreciated. Mike

Edit 1: Title adjusted as early completion may be WAD rather than a bug - Sparky

Edit 2: Located this related thread so merged this post in from Tech Support - Sparky

Mike Roberts · Post by **Mike Roberts** » Thu, 10. Mar 16, 14:15

Not sure my situation is related to this thread. I had NOT accepted the mission. I double checked my logs. It is crazy for a mission to be finished when is has not been started and by an action that was not even directed.

Hence I still would like to know how I can get back and do this mission (without having to do a fresh game start as I have hundreds of hours invested in this game on hard setting).

Please explain what WAD is.

Mike

Post by **Sparky Sparkycorp** » Thu, 10. Mar 16, 14:26

Mike Roberts wrote:Not sure my situation is related to this thread. I had NOT accepted the mission. I double checked my logs. It is crazy for a mission to be finished when is has not been started and by an action that was not even directed.

I merged your thread here because a Dev says on page 1 that "I had set it so that you can finish the mission even if you don't get the mission in the first place.".

Mike Roberts wrote: Hence I still would like to know how I can get back and do this mission (without having to do a fresh game start as I have hundreds of hours invested in this game on hard setting).

I don't know if this is possible but it's related to the topic being discussed in this thread so it seems like a reasonable place for such a question/feedback.

Mike Roberts wrote: Please explain what WAD is.

"Working As Designed". E.g. whether or not is it considered optimal, it is at least doing what it is intended. Whereas a "bug" is more like where something happens unexpectedly, from the point of view of the coder.

Mike Roberts · Post by **Mike Roberts** » Thu, 10. Mar 16, 18:04

I look forward to a comment as to how I can play this mission without having to start from scratch.

I see that the save games are no longer xml and hence editing may be more difficult.

If I am stuffed and the only option is a fresh start then please say so, so I don't waste any more time on this. Mike

Post by **Santi** » Thu, 10. Mar 16, 18:15

You can either use an application like 7zip to decompress your savegames, that will make them show in their original xml format, or better still, go to the in game menu and select "off" for savegame compression.

Post by **j.harshaw** » Thu, 10. Mar 16, 19:23

Hi Mike,

ok, first of all, no, the mission is a one-off and was designed to be done only once.

Yes, I did deliberately design it so that you could finish the mission even if you had declined the mission offer, ignored the mission guidance, or, indeed, never noticed the mission at all.

I would like to explain why that is.

What I was trying to do was convey the story that this situation was going to happen regardless of anything Ren Otani does. So the mission offer does not spawn the mission happening, rather it reacts to the mission already happening. The Xenon are going to invade regardless of whether or not you want them to. They will keep wrecking havoc until they are stopped.

Which, of course, presents a problem. What if the player does not want to do the mission at the time it is offered? What if the player doesn't even notice in the hundred-and-one other things the player might find more interesting at that very moment? What if the player hears Yisha, sees the guidance saying you have to get out of there, and says "Nope." ?

Should they keep on invading until the player decides to accept the mission and kill them off in that context? Should they not invade because the player decides he or she doesn't want to deal with them at that very moment?

I decided that the best course of action would be to allow you to act as you will, but in such a way that the situation is going to happen anyway. On the other side of that, however, I thought it best that if you deal with the invasion later, whether it be by conscious decision or happenstance, that you still stopped the invasion. You're still the hero. You should still be rewarded.

And from a coding point of view, the mission cleans up and everything's going back to relative nice-and-tidiness again.

I do realize that in your particular situation, the drama of it all fell somewhat flat. I apologize for that. However, I still don't see a better way of treating it.

ps. It is possible to do the mission again via save-editing, but the way this mission in particular is structured, it isn't easy and could seriously mess more things up than just the mission.

exogenesis · Post by **exogenesis** » Thu, 10. Mar 16, 20:36

j.harshaw wrote: ...

ps. It is possible to do the mission again via save-editing, but the way this mission in particular is structured, it isn't easy and could seriously mess more things up than just the mission.

Thanks for the explanations,
would be interested in the specifics of the save game edit to re-run this mission,
feels to me it should be a continuing Xenon attempt - ie to make an incursion,
sort of like the Xenon Migration in previous titles

Post by **j.harshaw** » Thu, 10. Mar 16, 20:44

To re-run the mission? Or just have the invasion never end? Easiest way to do the latter would be to mod the mission script and remove the line that stops the invasion. You'd have to then load the game to before the mission started though. And there would be no way to end it.

exogenesis · Post by **exogenesis** » Thu, 10. Mar 16, 21:16

Quick reply, thanks

I guess my objective would be to edit <something> that says I haven't done the mission
(did it too many station builds ago to contemplate going back),
and then remove the 'end mission' line in the script.

Question is then what is <something>, or is that impossible?

Post by **j.harshaw** » Thu, 10. Mar 16, 21:35

That would be a bit more complicated. You'd have to reset the flag from before the mission is triggered, then trigger it again. Not at my work machine so can't (ok, no, I can, but won't) check, but I think that flag might be cleaned up when the mission ends.

No, come to think of it, it would still require modding the mission script because the cues leading up to it don't instantiate and aren't reset because they weren't intended to be done more than once. Didn't want to have code waiting to fire that never will.

Post by **UniTrader** » Thu, 10. Mar 16, 22:54

j.harshaw wrote:What I was trying to do was convey the story that this situation was going to happen regardless of anything Ren Otani does. So the mission offer does not spawn the mission happening, rather it reacts to the mission already happening. The Xenon are going to invade regardless of whether or not you want them to. They will keep wrecking havoc until they are stopped.

this reminds me of the Idea i posted a while ago in the X-Universe on how i would write an XI-Mission - glad it found its way into the Game :++

exogenesis · Post by **exogenesis** » Sat, 12. Mar 16, 19:07

Sounds like it'd be tricky to get the mission to retrigger then,
oh well, thanks for looking, it was just a hope....

Mike Roberts · Post by **Mike Roberts** » Sat, 12. Mar 16, 19:13

Given that the request was to return with 5 capital ships (that I already had) I felt there would time for me to do a mission and then pick this up. All other missions (e.g. Xenon are about to attack this station) are triggered by acceptance and there was no indication that this was different.
You have explained your reasoning but you had not planned on how a player like me might react, with the outcome that a long time devotee of the X-series missed out on the major mission in the HOL DLC and feels pretty cheated. I don't feel like doing a fresh start to get this, so if there is no other option I expect this is the end of the line for me as far as X series are concerned. Mike

Post by **Sparky Sparkycorp** » Sat, 12. Mar 16, 19:42

Mike Roberts wrote:All other missions (e.g. Xenon are about to attack this station) are triggered by acceptance and there was no indication that this was different.

I'm not replying to refute your point of view or to suggest reconsidering it. Only to note that whilst I'd agree most other combat missions I see advertised don't trigger a spawn until after acceptance, a few generic missions are emergent (triggered by the existence for potentially hostile ships already in the game.

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[HoL] Xenon Incursion Awkwardness

Feedback on early completion of Xenon Incursion mission (warning - spoilers)