No problem at all, I'll just leave this comment as way of record for any other modmakers/modusers. :)

Anyway, my brain research completed sucessfully, prompted the cutscene to play, unlocked the encrypted codex data project, and also immediately brought up the coordinates story mission when next entering geoscape - which I think is all as expected?

So to reiterate your earlier PSA, if anything it does seem like it's the actual codex kill that matters rather than the subsequent research.

I am afraid i don't have enough information about the inner workings of how exactly the Golden Path triggers are linked together to answer your question. Alexo had his crashes when loading into the Psigate mission. Sooo... i suppose that is going to be when you find out whether you got lucky or not.

Sorry for not having a better answer.

Wow, just last night I started a Neutralise Fieldcommander mission with the target being an Avatar (the first I've encountered so far this campaign), and then today while looking for something else entirely happened across this thread. Good timing.

So, for clarity, I have encountered and killed several Codexes already, however I havent yet researched the brain in the shadowchamber. Am I still at risk of the bug discussed below or should I be ok?

Yep, that's a sensible thing to do.

I think just given the nature of mods, it's safer too to just play Ironman "honor mode" where you can only use the saves if there is a bug, but otherwise treat it as Ironman

To sum this up for others: Please kill the Codex before reaching forcelevel 19, otherwise you risk derailing the story quests with a premature Avatar kill.

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you could try console cheating those goals to get back on track, maybe?
as i said, not really sure how these goals are woven into each other, if that just means you crash on the next step after that, it's not much of a help i suppose
i'll put a note about this issue into the description of my mod, thanks for playtesting i guess :D

@alexo: We talked on Discord already, but I'll just quote myself here as a PSA for others:
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Hmmmm, first time i hear about this. Looking at the mod, i did make it so it doesn't just spawn a vanilla Avatar. It spawns a unique "ABAAvatarGeneral" enemy as a possible General.
so i guess you got to forcelevel 19 without ever doing the Codex hijack?
i don't really know the inner workings of how the Golden Path is strung together, what stuff triggers what. But i wouldn't have expected that the game listens for an Avatarkill (actually, a kill of any AdvPsiWitch?) before you even did the Codex. More importantly, i don't see how that would do anything to break the actual Codex hijack quest? (Bearbeitet)
Since my mod only gives the Avatar from FL19 on, and there are other enemy mods on the Workshop with Avatars in them, i would've thought that any of those already ran into this issue and that this was a known thing.

At force level 19 I had an avatar show up BEFORE I did the codex skull jack or the gatekeeper mission and after killing it the campaign became bugged. Couldn't proceed with the gatekeeper mission. Is there a fix for this or is this a non issue?

No idea. It might not have been this mod, but it was the only one I added and the Ironman savegame 100% was definitely deleted after an unprecedented crash when enemy general evac'd. Just keep an eye out in case another report likes this comes or could be a freak event or delayed error from something else.

I can assure you that whatever deleted your save, my mod has nothing to do with it.

In fact, i have never ever heard about the game just deleting savegames.

wat

Just added this mod. My game crashed after the General escaped then deleted my Ironman savegame file... never had any crashes before this. Otherwise your mods are A+++ best reason to play XCOM 2

It's random. All mission variants are added to a global list where the game picks them randomly, each having an equal chance to be used. There's nothing like the spawnweight of enemies to tweak. You simply got a streak of 3, that's not that unlikely to happen.

I had three missions in a row from this mod until I disabled it.
Is that how it's meant to be? Is there a way to adjust the frequency of missions from the mod?

conflicts with more mission types. makes the game freeze when getting a mission.

Yes, starting with Forcelevel 19 you can have Avatars pop up as the boss of a "Search And Destroy: Advanced Alien" or of a "Neutralize Alien Commander" mission.

Can an Advanced Alien in the late game be an Avatar?

Yeah, that can be rough. Fwiw, you are not the first person to tell me this. It's a lot of raw hp to chew through and if you aren't prepared by bringing more than just basic assault rifles, it can be a bit tedious. On the flip side, there is only one patrolling pod around that kills civvies, so you can really take your time.

I'd wager that you'd find the mission much more bearable if you were to encounter it a second time.

oh lol ok as long as its rare, yeh my 1st run with this mod I got it on my 1st retalliation mission. so 5-6 faceless, 2 pods and a chosen. mostly just had squaddies and rookies on my team. I still won but a was like jesus that was overkill. yeh super lucky Rng haha

There are a couple of versions of the existing mission types. One of the rare variants for the retal mission does indeed feature a lot of Faceless. You'll not see it very often, often you'll not even see it once during the whole campaign. Seems like you got ... lucky ... there.

If you want to modify the mission, you can do so in the XComSchedules.ini, in the "TER" folder within Config. It's a very finicky ini, though. Misplacing a bracket or something like that can lead to crashes or having the missions be empty, so be careful about it. I suggest leaving it, that particular mission is quite rare in the first place.

Great mod, all of your mods are excellent as well. umm one question... it seems like there are a lot of faceless on the retalliation missions. Is there a way to reduce that in the config files???

The Berserker can start spawning as soon as forcelevel 5. This is 1 down from their regular scheduling in the base game (it is an "advanced" alien, after all), but nowhere near the forcelevel 2 of the second mission after gatecrasher. Unless you are running other mods that change how forcelevels work, it is impossible to happen as you describe.

This mod works fine balance-wise for most of the game, but the neutralise the advanced alien mission in the early game can have a berserker as the target, which is neigh impossible to kill if you get it as your second mission after gatecrasher, with only 4 troops at squaddie level.

No, that still works like in unmodded XCOM.

I am not aware of any mod that managed to fix that issue.

oh, it was my very first retaliation of the campaign, really wasnt a fun time....

FWIW, that mission is fairly rare. Also, now that you know about it, it's easy to spot.

had a retaliation where there was about 6 hidden faceless. I assume this is the suspect mod. I'm not really a fan of this change, cuz now I'm just not going to rescue civs ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm not holding my breath ;)

Well, I have no idea. I just had one of the missions but it worked right this time. I guess if I ever figure it out I'll let you know. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yeah, I saw that. I'm not sure why it works for some of them but not others, but it's worth a shot to check at least. If that's the case I'll report it to that mod author instead and will let you know just in case someone else runs as many janky mod combos as I do. XD I'll keep playing with everything intact and mess around next time I run into one (not sure if I had anything other than an autosave close to my latest mission of that type spawning).

So, how it works is that in the Schedules.ini there's an EncounterTag "FieldCommanderGroup" is attached to one of the pods. Maybe that gets lost when your dynamic pods mod messes around with the pods.

That would be my prime suspect.

No, I've usually found them after a turn or two. It was the first viper I saw in one mission and in others it was like, the first muton or blah blah.. that does make sense as a possible reason, if it's just never setting that enemy to mission critical.
What's even weirder is that I dug into your mission configs and definitely confirmed that the Prototype one, which HAS worked for me, doesn't do anything different. Heck, they're like the base missions and I've never seen this before in my 1200 hours playing XCOM 2. <_<

I did notice that the viper was a different color than usual (red, but not a wyvern, just a viper)--maybe it's something with the enemy color variations mod invalidating the logic code's references somehow?... I don't think the Dynamic Pods by Force Level would do anything at all to that. Ahwell! it was worth a shot asking and thanks for the prompt reply. :) I'll just reload and maybe remove the 02 variant of the SND from my mod files.

Hm, yeah. That's a weird one. Since you are getting the correct pods, the Kismet (=underlying logics that make missions flow according to their rules) must be bugging out on the mission for whatever reason. I don't really know what would cause that and i can't imagine a mod conflict being responsible either.

Are you cheesing the missions in some way? The mission logic should go "End of turn: Activate Timer" -> "Once boss enemy revealed: Set that guy to mission critical". I could maybe see the logic breaking if you manage to uncover the alien before the end of your first turn...

I don't think Kismet issues are fixable by console, but this is a topic i do not know a whole lot about.

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I invariably fail the mission when this one spawns. It's totally fine though with the Prototype. Haven't run into the chryssalid one yet. It's a shame, because I love the variation these add, but I don't even know where to begin with figuring out how to at least get credit for the guerilla ops. There's no crash or anything, and pods spawn, it's just the field commander isn't recognized as a field commander to kill for some... really bizarre reason, and I can't even console fix it. Got any ideas or a console command to run to earn credit once it's all completed? I've even tried "killallais" and it doesn't register, and have spawned all units at my cursor, etc. Just nothin'. Not really sure how to even troubleshoot this one since it's so odd. I have cleared my configs and it's happened on two separate campaigns after a clear each time. I can't find anything weird in the config files that would suggest why this happens either.

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@Derbk, I've been having a pretty nuts issue with the ABA Plus version (just posting here since all the info on stuff is here) where I get a Locate Powerful Alien variant, but I actually achieve Neutralize all enemy targets... without having Locate the powerful Alien or Kill the Alien completed. I see a single enemy that is a new, powerful type, but it doesn't trigger anything other than Tygan's generic dialogue about the new enemy type, but it doesn't complete the objective. I'm actually just completely baffled. I've even tried all the variations of "forcecompleteobjective NeutralizeCommander" or "Kill" or "Sweep" or "NeutralizeFieldCommander" or so forth and it hasn't worked in the console to get me through it.

Nope. Thats why its listed as a prereq.

One silly quick question. Will this mod work WITHOUT A Better ADVENT: War of the Chosen?

I was able to reload the same mission and the civilians were loaded in this time. Holy crap was it challenging. I love the extra faceless. I took some damage but was able to rescue the six and get out with everyone alive. I love the AI. Firm but fair. Thanks for making these mods. I disabled a bunch of cosmetic mods and turned down the graphics settings and things ran much more smooth. My guess is that there was too much going on in-game for my laptop to handle everything so there must have been a hiccup when loading in the civilians. The mission that bugged out was the same mission type but I did notice the pods were different. A couple of Chrysalids, soldiers, and only one faceless. So maybe some of the pods must have also failed to spawn in.

Thanks, Derbek. I really like your mods and how well they play together. I looked at that particular mission type again and it was a "Retaliation Mission". I'll try disabling all other mods and see if it still causes an issue. If I'm the first to report, something else must be causing the hiccup.

Only thing i could imagine is a problem with the special mission setup that puts A LOT more faceless on the map. But even in that setup there should be plenty of regular civvies around (and i think i use that special setup only for regular retals anyways...)

Aside from that one thing i do, i don't really interact with that mission type in any meaningful way.

No idea what could cause it tbh. You are the first one to report such a problem too, so i think that may have been just a one-time issue.

I want to help resolve it if you're interested. If not, no big deal. I was able to reload the save and I ended up getting a different mission type.

One of the objectives it to "rescue at least six civilians from alien forces"

It is a "Stop advent retaliation mission"

I think it's one of the mission types where there are regular people that are under attack and you have to defeat the enemies. Although, come to think of it, there weren't any friendlies helping me out. I will see if I can reload that mission to see what it's called exactly.

You mean you got a VIP mission without a VIP? Or what do you mean by civilians?

@Derbk, I just ran into an issue where there were no civilians, which cause me to fail a mission. It was a rescue mission with two Chrysalids, a muton, faceless, and a few advent soldiers. Once I dispatched of them, the mission ended. I never made it across the whole map to see if maybe the civilians were hiding in the fog of war; but I'm not sure that matters or not. I've got ABA, ABB, ABM and ABC (and the baby advent) loaded. In addition, I have a few UI mods, voicepacks, and cosmetic mods. I had not run into any problems until this mission. Oh, I'm also running beta strike. I noticed during this particular mission that my game took forever to load. Is it possible the civilians failed to spawn?

hahahahah. Is it intended that in the mission where i have to kill a special Chrysalid that civilians are just casual walk among them. XD

The new missions use the same spawnweights and forcelevels that are used by vanilla. You would've gotten the same ones if your mission was a vanilla Kill Advent Fieldcommander. Well, that one MEC Prototype would be a General, but the rest would be the same.

It's literally the same mission as the vanilla one, just with the boss swapped out.

With Better Missions, I got a 'Wreck Prototype" mission that put me against no fewer than 4 MECs. I'm barely even in the mid-game. I think this needs to be looked at, because on Commander it's legitimately impossible to win.