A Cold Heart, 1&2

zahinder · December 2012

A Cold Heart 2 is now released!

Federation, level 31+.

Get to know the merry Vulcan Renj and his happy crew. Find out new mysteries, make new discoveries...

Both parts are still ineligible, because of the usual nonsense, but here's hoping, and thank you to anyone willing to play ineligible missions.

Some of the battles in part 2 can be a bit overwhelming if you aren't careful (and don't avoid them).

Part 2 is a bit more complex than part 1, so there may be some behavior I haven't run into in testing.

zahinder · January 2013

From another thread:

markhawkman wrote: »

#2 has an issue with the find t'Pel objective. You used a GIGANTIC invisible object with a default dialog.... once that object apepars on the map my tricorder can't seem to point at anything else.....

#1.... the breen base would be ok if not for those stupid ice walls everywhere.....

#1: The ice walls are necessary unless I was going to make the base completely from scratch (which, in future, I'll try to do more often).

#2: The T'Pel objective is intentionally a bit difficult to find. I'll review the mission -- I'm a little torn on how to display that tricorder information: if it's a single pop-up, you could miss important information. The invisible object is persistant, but annoying.

markhawkman · January 2013

1:The issue isn't the existence of the ice walls. It's that they tend to block walkways the way you have them positioned.

2: couldn't you just make the object disappear after you inteeract with it?

zahinder · January 2013

1: The ice walls are positioned where they are to hide plants and huge curtains of flowing water. But that's a weakness, fair cop.

2: I could, but my intention was to keep the information available to the player to double-check. Otherwise I'd just have used a one-off pop up dialog with a reach marker.

That said, if the effect is just really distracting/strange, maybe I'll change it.

(I really appreciate the feedback, by the way!! I definitely learned a lot after doing the first mission, and I was trying to achieve some difficult stuff in the second)

markhawkman · January 2013

1: For plants, you can probably use ice Boulders to hide them. what did you use as the base map?

2: certain types of pop up dialog will persist in the chat window. Erm... actually, I think you used those. The giant invisible object is just annoying. And it makes tricorders malfunction.....

zahinder · January 2013

1: Icy caves, I think. I'll have to check when the game is back up. Ice boulders... I'll see if I can re-do the map that way.

2: I will see what I can do about removing the invisible object. I may change that option tree to something like 2 or so 'getting closer' scans culminating in a nav beacon.

Actually... that gives me an idea. I think I'll have the scan option (there are three distinct approaches) give a series of nav beacons. Each 'pass' then replaces previous nav beacons with a tighter indicator.

Did you manage to get past that point?

markhawkman · January 2013

Uh, no. I couldn't find T'Pel.

zahinder · January 2013

Hmm. I think I should also put in a bypass in case people just get absolutely stuck.

zahinder · January 2013

Markhawkman:
Ok, I updated the blizzard mission a bit so that the scan dialog goes away after initial look, plus adds map markers.
Also, remember 'v' works with objectives.

Going to work on cleaning up Breen base next...

Edit:
Breen base should have a lot more room to run around. Thanks for pointing me to that -- the Breen base suffered from being my first attempt at making an indoor map.

markhawkman · January 2013

That was part of the problem with the giant invisible object. Pushing V only pointed towards it.

zahinder · January 2013

Aaaaah. Yeah, good point.

Well, it's fixed now.

markhawkman · January 2013

I'm replaying it and noticed soemthing amusing.... Whatever you reskinned as dead Chub, is a COMBAT group and several of them just helped me slaughter a live chub group....

EDIT: THREEE times! The Zombie Shub are fun guys to have around.

(but totally messing up your story.)

nagorak · January 2013

markhawkman wrote: »

I'm replaying it and noticed soemthing amusing.... Whatever you reskinned as dead Chub, is a COMBAT group and several of them just helped me slaughter a live chub group....

EDIT: THREEE times! The Zombie Shub are fun guys to have around. (but totally messing up your story.)

Neutral targs, etc. are only neutral to Fed and Klingon faction, unfortunately.

zahinder · January 2013

Aaaah blah.

Yeah, I moved some things around and didn't... pay attention to that.

I'll be replacing those fun zombies with NPC contacts. Derp a derp a derp.

markhawkman · January 2013

Just out of curiosity, what was your goal for the 4 carriers protecting the Shub Queen? It really wasn't that hard for me to destroy them. (Lure tactics, get one in firing range, shoot it, then move away from the group, it follows and you can blast it without the others bothering you)

zahinder · January 2013

To require at least some effort and care for a reasonably skilled player, but hopefully not utterly ignorable (that's tricky with Foundry, but hey), and to provide at least a moment of thought of 'hey, maybe I can talk my way through this.'

At the same time, if you feel like blowing everything away, you can.

The Shub aren't the Borg, and aren't meant to be as pants-wettingly scary as the Borg are supposed to be (mind you, whether the Borg in STO or even later episodes of Star Trek are consistent with the threat they were supposed to represent is arguable)

markhawkman · January 2013

Hehe, ok, I was wondering because every other Shub fight got face-rolled... I'd line up the small ones for HY Tricobalt torps just because I wanted to see the subspace rift form, not because I wanted the damage. (they usually evaporated if their shields were down and that hit them)

It probably didn't hurt that I was playing a Pyro build. The Tric is the only weapon that doesn't have a DoT. Drexela's ship has 4 plasma arrays and a Hargh, and uses Eject warp plasma(and Fire at Will). The stupid AIs would fly straight into it half the time. It's a great way to get rid of fighters(and frigates).

One tiny suggestion: somewhat larger frigate groups, not much just a little.

zahinder · January 2013

Mmm, yeah.

I'm also rethinking... I had quite intentionally set the battleships up to be vulnerable to being kited out and attacked one after another. Thinking about that some more, that seems... really dumb. The Shub aren't master warriors, but they aren't idiots.

Maybe I'll pull their aggro ranges together more. I'll experiment.

markhawkman · January 2013

Actually.... they're about as close together as you can get them as-is. The first time I tried the lure trick, it didn't work right and I accidentally got two of them chasing me. So it does take some skill.

zahinder · January 2013

First mission is now eligible for officer reports (and, given some comments from the devs, was probably eligible before I realized due to display bug).

Second mission is only at 4 plays, so, not, yet.

But now I'm inspired to finish.

zahinder · January 2013

Since I'm quitting Foundry and deleting my stuff, for the 10 or so who bothered playing this, the secret was Renj was taking a very long term revenge on T'Pel and Koth, and his goofy behavior is almost entirely a ruse. The third part was going to be an investigation where this slowly became clear, with Koth initially set up as a traitor to the federation before dying 'accidentally' in a shuttle accident.

Maybe someday there will be a mmo that isn't hostile to creators, and stuff like this will be valued.

Guess I'll go blow up defenseless ships for loot now.

markhawkman · January 2013

don't delete your stuff!!!! ;-;

nagorak · January 2013

markhawkman wrote: »

don't delete your stuff!!!! ;-;

I agree. I think you should just unpublished, if you must, and think it over. Or if you're just leaving the game anyway, why not just leave your missions up? What damage could it possibly do?

Above all else, I urge you to avoid doing something in the heat of the moment you might regret later.

A Cold Heart, 1&2

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