Redoubt Operations #1: Fires Over Kalago
Story Description: The recent discovery of impervium deposits has sparked unrest in the small country of Kalago in southern Africa. When tensions escalate, Redoubt requests assistance from heroes to keep the peace. Little does anyone know, the chaos is about to attract an even bigger threat.
Story Arc ID: 1297
Author’s Global Chat Handle: @Andromeda
Length: Very Long (4 missions)
Level Range: 20-35
Mission Status: Final
Alignment: Heroic
Designer Notes: In the 2009 Mission Architect Awards, this arc was nominated for Best Villain Group.
Redoubt Operations is a dramatic team-oriented mission arc series following the exploits of Redoubt and their nemesis, the Mechanius Imperium. These two original organizations, set firmly within the City of Heroes universe, are both comprised of robots and androids of all types, but have startlingly different philosophies that set them against each other. Which one will be victorious and influence the minds of machinekind for generations to come, and which will be lost and forgotten, a passing fad of their race’s infancy? Only time will tell.
This arc series aims to provide an interesting storyline that is fun to play through as well as read, to provide players as much fiction as they are willing to read while still keeping the basic plot points succinct enough for even a casual player to be able to follow along, and to always keep the player the main focus of the events in the missions while still expanding on the overall story line.
To accomplish this task the Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe (http://tr.im/rdop) is used extensively to provide information about the different characters involved in the story, form the biggest character to the littlest. Information on the arc series itself is posted there, as well as pages on Redoubt, The Mechanius Imperium, their leaders, their solders, and any other characters or organizations involved.
However, to enjoy this arc series, reading none of this background information is required. The bare minimum of information in each arc is provided in the enter and exit popups of each mission. More fiction is then provided in conversations with the contact, clues, and dialogue in the missions.
Players will face a series of four different missions in their quest to return peace to the country of Kalago. Along the way they’ll accomplish such tasks as rescuing the abducted Prime Minister, rescuing civilians caught in the middle of a Sky Raider and Mechanius Imperium warzone, repelling an Imperium sneak attack, and finally riding the region of Mechanius forces. The arc contains one Elite Boss and one Arch-villain.
In-Game Keywords: Ideal for Teams, Custom Characters, Drama
CoH Forums Link: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=2087185#post2087185
Similar Missions:
- Redoubt Operations #2: Wrath of the Imperium
- Fame and Fortune
- Fear And Loathing On Striga
- All Consuming
- Who Dares Wins
Glazius
Says:
@GlaziusF
Running this on a level TOO HIGH ice/axe tank, diff 2 for EA crowds and BOSS FIGHTAN.
Fair warning: I played on Virtue back at launch but have since moved on, and I know approximately nothing about whatever server continuity exists.
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If I’m working for an arconym agency it needs to show up as ACRONYM (A Completely Roundabout Obtuse Naming-Y Method) all the time. But okay, it’s Sky Raiders time, they have a thing for these tiny African republics.
Endurance and inspirations will be procure-on-site. Now begins Operation: Virtuous Mission.
This sure is a cargo ship full of Sky Raiders. Just kinda… standing around. No crates of weapons, no organizational whiteboards, no firing practice, just… Sky Raiders.
Four giant rooms full.
I find Sizwe in the last room and lead him all the way back to the exit. The path I take doesn’t reveal this mysterious enemy, so it’s time for Jump Around And Pound Tab Vol. XXVI. Wish I’d found that motion detector.
Ah, there they are. …on top of three stacked cargo crates. Gotta love where the cargo ship can park your objectives.
Grape-flavored robots with interesting names. (”Landsknecht” has activated a dark and terrible center of my brain. F O E! F O E! Even on the ocean, an F O E!)
Descriptions are a bit on the wordy side, especially considering I haven’t seen these guys before.
Li’l debrief typo: “asses the situation”.
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Hmm. Pretty straightforward stuff here, tons of battles, kinda hating the click-rad powers the lieuts have here since I can’t kill ‘em to shut them down. But what can you do?
A lot of the hostages trigger because there’s a battle nearby, making them easier to spot.
…it’d kinda be nice if there were some ally patrols of REDOUBT bosses or something that spawned in when I was done saving these guys.
—
Ah dear, REDOUBT didn’t have their Cylon scanners up and running and it’s up to me to stop the robots.
Couple of decent little storyish bits with the patrol and battle, but I can’t find the ambassador in here anywhere. …oh, right, he was inside a vault thing. Okay, that’s alright.
My axe doesn’t exactly do a lot against the big bad here, but my squishy pal who’s rad to be with is up for anything.
—
Bug text for mission 4 is kinda exactly the same as mission 1’s.
Bosses are the same too, couple retreads… except they have less of an escort, and none of the wrinkles (ambush, time limit) that they had before. I juggle this Kali so badly she never even gets a lot of Inv on, which is kind of sad.
And the last thing I do is wreck a destructible object with a couple of guards. This really felt too easy.
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Storyline - ****. I was expecting some kind of gotcha at the end, really. Having it end on a couple junior versions of the earlier boss fight and then finish up with an inanimate object going boom just doesn’t have the same oomph to it.
Design - ****. While the grape-flavored robots are pretty monolithic, they have obvious enough powers that they’re easy to tell apart. There’s a lot of “tell, don’t show” going on here, though. The Sky Raider cargo ship is supposed to have guns blazing or at least firing, but it’s quiet. REDOUBT is supposed to be showing up in force to end the conflict once the hostages are out of the way - why not have some patrols of elite bosses or something? The ambassador is waiting in a sealed room, so why not have a couple of consoles to check up on him in there?
Gameplay - ****. All pretty smooth running, aside from a lot of dead air at the end of the first mission trying to find the infiltrator.
Detail - ****. The copy-pasted bug text and the giant handfuls of description for the robots both bring this down a little. We get an actual clue to refer to the general history of the Mechanus Imperium, so you don’t need to retell it with every little minion.
Overall - ****. I don’t know how much space is left in this arc, but it looks like there’s enough room to pile on a few extra bits of detail to make it really shine. (And please no more giant empty 4-room cargo ship. Putting various interesting bits in it is fine, just not a solid enemy crawl.)
Posted on August 17th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Joe
Says:
Thought was put into this game.
I liked the custom mob fighting sky raiders. Some of the maps could be different, and this story arc would be better with a boss or major battle at the end because if feels as if its building up to something. I will play this again with these 2 added features.
Storyline; better than average.
Design; good
Gameplay; some rubberbanding effect but adequate
Detail; need to expand beyond ship maps. This made the mission feel longer.
Posted on August 18th, 2009 at 10:39 am
Andromeda
Says:
@Joe
Would you mind elaborating on the comment on the ship maps?
Also, as far as rubberbanding goes, I don’t really have any control over that, it’s a connection issue unrelated to the story arc.
Posted on August 18th, 2009 at 6:56 pm