Restore Tutorial Narrative

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Author: Epigamesh

Last revision: 1 May at 14:08 UTC (6)

File size: 11.15 MB

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Description:

This mod aims to restore most narrative we loose when beginning a campaign without the tutorial. Because, even if I don’t want to have Shen explaining how to walk in a scripted mission where two characters are destined to die, I do miss all those cool narratives regarding the Commander rescue, the Avenger first flight, and the beginning of the resistance against ADVENT.

The Gatecrasher mission now begins in the Gene Clinic where the Commander is detained. The Reaper Elena Dragunova has already tampered with the stasis tube, but the Commander, unable to walk and surrounded by ADVENT forces, will need help to escape. An XCOM team, led by Peter Osei and Ana Ramirez, is therefore deployed, and will receive, not only the temporary help from the Reaper, but also from Bradford and Kelly, who are returning from the diversion they caused, and will arrive later on the battlefield.
This first mission plays like a rescue VIP mission, but with an inconscious Commander to extract and an additional guest, Elena Dragunova. Bradford and Kelly will arrive on the battlefield at the third turn, but they will also alert ADVENT by doing so, hence XCOM will loose concealment if this wasn’t already the case.
There is no official timer, but ADVENT will throw ever increasing reinforcement, so the objective is to be quick before being overwhelmed. By default, the first ADVENT reinforcement is planned at the second alien’s turn, and is renewed each turn. Then, they double at turn 5, triple at turn 9 (and quadruple at turn 14, though XCOM would probably already be dead if they haven’t evacuated by then). If this appears too much, the values are configurable in the XComGameData ini file.

The Commander awakening movie plays after the end of the first mission. Then, upon entering the Command Center, Shen and Bradford talk about the flight device, will leads to the corresponding mission. This mission plays the same as in the vanilla game, and ends with the device being retrieved by Shen in the Avenger.

Upon entering the Command center again, the last movie shows the Avenger taking it’s first flight. XCOM has then to take a third mission, meant to replace the first tutorial guerilla op. This mission is, in fact, the same one as when lauching the vanilla game without the tutorial, namely the ADVENT monument sabotage. After this mission, the sarting faction HQ should be revealed on the map. This is the end of this mod’s modifications; the rest of the game should play as normal.

This mod should not be added on an ongoing campaign (of course).

Use this bridge mod for compatibility with Covert Infiltration.
Not compatible with LWOTC: I’m not working on it, so feel free to create a similar compatibility bridge if you want.
The mod has also been reported as uncompatible with [WOTC] Visibility Memory and Starting SHIV.

Jane Kelly Starting Soldier: I used this mod to create Jane Kelly at the beginning of the campaign (and also reused lot of its code to do the same for Peter Osei and Ana Ramirez)

I wouldn’t have gone far if it wasn’t for the existing miscellanous modding tutorials, which have been a big help (and already existing mission and spawning mods, which helped to better understand how to achieve this).
Also, many thanks for the kind peoples of the XCOM discord who took time to answer my questions.