Hard Coded Alien Mission Races

[Arthanor]

So is it that the game generates the first mission of the mission list with the first alien race of the race list as its first mission? This would allow a modder to define any combination of mission&race as the first just by moving things around in the lists.

If so, couldn't you just define your intro mission at the top of the alien mission list and keep all the vanilla missions instead of deleting them?

[Hobbes]

So is it that the game generates the first mission of the mission list with the first alien race of the race list as its first mission? This would allow a modder to define any combination of mission&race as the first just by moving things around in the lists.

If so, couldn't you just define your intro mission at the top of the alien mission list and keep all the vanilla missions instead of deleting them?

My reasoning is that you need to delete all existing missions (previously loaded by the XCom1ruleset) to ensure that your mission list gets loaded first. Now that I look at it, it seems I don't actually need to delete them, as long as I keep them on the bottom of the list.

[Arthanor]

Right, the way missions are loaded is still somewhat of a mystery to me.. missions from mods get added to the existing list, unlike other lists (tech dependencies / items requires / ammunition) which overwrite the previous version?

But from what you just said, you can redefine a vanilla mission and it will be moved down the list?

*Still confused*

Either deleting or redefining the vanilla missions, if another mod (ex.: Mechtoid) adds a mission before yours then it will also screw things up and now you may end up with a mechtoid mission first month or something..

[Hobbes]

Right, the way missions are loaded is still somewhat of a mystery to me.. missions from mods get added to the existing list, unlike other lists (tech dependencies / items requires / ammunition) which overwrite the previous version?

But from what you just said, you can redefine a vanilla mission and it will be moved down the list?

*Still confused*

Either deleting or redefining the vanilla missions, if another mod (ex.: Mechtoid) adds a mission before yours then it will also screw things up and now you may end up with a mechtoid mission first month or something..

OK, just tested and it is necessary to delete and readd the vanilla missions, otherwise you get stuck with the Sectoid Research as the first mission.

If people want to use other mods, they're responsible for what happens. Some mods are simply not compatible with others.

[Arthanor]

Thanks for looking into it! It supports the "alien missions are added to the list for each mod" hypothesis.

Some mods are indeed incompatible, but it is always good to try to minimalize those incompatibilities. In this case, that means we have to make sure that a mod that modifies the first mission is always before any other mod that has to do with missions in the loading order, which is indeed the player's responsibility. (but a warning would be nice)