Ark Mod was originally intended to be a DLC sized mod that bridges ME3 to MEA. The general story was that the Reapers discover that the Andromeda Initiative have departed the Milky Way, send the Collectors to hunt them down, but the only way is to use the QECs that each Ark carried that linked them to the Milky Way.
During five N7 length missions Shepard would hunt down and destroy the QECs, one for each race, based on maps in Rio (humans), Menae (turians), Thessia (asari) and Erinle (salarians) plus a final mission set on the Kholas Relay. Liara would leave her message and the Initiative would be eventually cut off, as per the MEA lore. The story of the mod would be a race against time as Shepard and the Collectors raced to seal the Initiative's fate.
We originally conceived of the idea once EGM was largely finished and started work on it before MEA was launched. We started by working out how to build gameplay mechanics and use multiplayer assets in single player, doing the hazard maps in the process, and then started building missions. We had planned adding one or two temporary squadmates (who went through so many iterations - human N7 cyborg, quarian exile, a VI and even a volus), in order to give exposition and guide the story along.
MEA came out, and some of the team, especially the writers, felt disappointed by it, had lots of other things going on and lost interest. Of the five missions originally conceived, gameplay was finished in three, and the other two had much of the art done, but without the writers the cutscenes, story and especially new characters just weren’t working.
So, we eventually put out a cut back version of the Menae, the Operation Paladin mission, on its own without the story portion of it which tells what happened to the Turian team who were trying to recover the QEC from a nearby facility.
The full version of the mod is unlikely to be finished, given I am busy with work, and other members of the team have moved on. Big mods are always a combination of artists, game designers, toolkit programmers, audio specialists, voice actors and writers. Any one skill is difficult to learn, nobody can do them all, so finding a group who have the motivation and time to give is even rarer. Therefore I want to give the tip of the hat to those who helped a lot, particularly Sil, Mgamerz and especially Furinax. We were very lucky with EGM that the team came together, and whilst I regret that the full version of Ark has not been made, at least we got one good mission.
Finally, I would also like to say thanks to all the players for their kind words of encouragement and constructive criticism. It really helps.
Absolutely one of the best professionally polished combat mods ever, bar none. It would have been a real treat to experience the entire DLC as conceived, but, you take what you can get.
Great mod and hope that you may squeeze out one more mission. Kudo's and thanks for all the hard work.
Hey, i'm having problems starting the N7: Shipwreck mission. I got the email with the ark model, but it won't show up on the cabin besides shepard's bed. I went to spectre requisitions/hq, but its nowhere to be found ¿Any advice?
thanks for answering pretty quickly tho edit: one more thing this might be the wrong area to mention it but there isn't a post section on the base EGM page i love the Spectre armor you added but one problem is their is a graphical issue on the lower front of the chest plate and there the central light is on the back you cant tell the that where the texture is mirror, the only problem is that it look noticeably off, like there is an invisible line running through the suit is it the possible that it could be fixed? (as far as i'm aware i cant see it on Ashley's version of the Spectre suit)
Hi. I'm not sure if this is the right place for this, but all other mods don't have active areas to discuss this. I'm on the N7: Scorched Earth mission and my drone keeps firing on the shield around my Engineer.
I was only able to install towards the end of my current playthrough (long story), but I loved it, loved it, loved it! The missions felt so varied and tough - I definitely had my tail handed to me a few times, particularly on Menae, even with ME2 squadmates being brought along/all upgrades.
I also really enjoyed the Shipwreck mission -- I didn't check it out, but I'm curious as to whether there's any difference in the final choice (sending to Hackett/taking to Normandy/Paragon/Renegade options). I chose the Paragon option.
Definitely looking forward to running the Frictionless Rail through its paces -- I seem to have missed the first one on Menae (bought it after from Requisitions), and found the second on Thessia. Are there any other levels to the rail mod?
Sorry if this should be obvious, I finished Scorched Earth and got Level 1 frictionless rail, bought level 2 from the Alliance Requisitions via the Normandy shuttle bay Procurement Interface, where are the upper levels of the weapon mod? Thanks for an amazing mod btw!
Hi there!! I just wanted to say firstly that I absolutely love this mod, it's goddamn fantastic! Such a great addition to the mass effect experience, thank you for making it ^^
However, I had a question (not sure if this counts as a bug or not so that's why I'm asking it here) but I wanted to change the visor of the n7 classic armor to opaque. So I did as the instructions described on the main page and used egm to change the settings, however it doesn't change the visor. Even tho it says "EGM settings will now switch visor files to Opaque and autoTOC" it still is transparent. I even ran autotoc again and it still didn't work. Do you know why egm might *not* be changing the files? And if I may be so bold, is there a way to manually change the files in case egm doesn't work? (Don't worry, I accept full responsibility if doing that fucks up my game, I'm just curious if it's possible or not) I really like the opaque visor and would prefer to have it if possible. If this is important, I have already completed n7: operation paladin and have acquired the n7 armor. Thank you for your time!
Which version of Ark and which version of EGM Settings are you using? Ark 0.92 requires EGM Settings v1.62. Ark 0.91 or earlier requires EGM Settings 1.60
Hmmm well for ark I have 0.91 and for egm I have 1.61. Would 1.61 be compatible with 0.91? It seems to be working on all other fronts which is why I'm confused. Like for example, I changed the timing of the n7 operation paladin mission in the egm settings and that worked, no issues what so ever.
You can do this manually by finding files in the DLC_MOD_EGM_Ark\CookedPCConsole folder that end _OPAQ or _TRANS
Copy the type you want, remove the final _OPAQ or _TRANS on the copy, deleting any existing files called that name. Then run the auto toc tool in mod manager or me3explorer.
Possibly a silly question, but in the Cerberus labs where you grab the little Reaper pieces, there's now an artifact called "Synth Skin" not far from the hanar medigel. What does it do? It doesn't seem to have an effect either in Liara's upgrade terminal or the cybernetics thing in the medbay.
332 comments
Ark Mod was originally intended to be a DLC sized mod that bridges ME3 to MEA. The general story was that the Reapers discover that the Andromeda Initiative have departed the Milky Way, send the Collectors to hunt them down, but the only way is to use the QECs that each Ark carried that linked them to the Milky Way.
During five N7 length missions Shepard would hunt down and destroy the QECs, one for each race, based on maps in Rio (humans), Menae (turians), Thessia (asari) and Erinle (salarians) plus a final mission set on the Kholas Relay. Liara would leave her message and the Initiative would be eventually cut off, as per the MEA lore. The story of the mod would be a race against time as Shepard and the Collectors raced to seal the Initiative's fate.
We originally conceived of the idea once EGM was largely finished and started work on it before MEA was launched. We started by working out how to build gameplay mechanics and use multiplayer assets in single player, doing the hazard maps in the process, and then started building missions. We had planned adding one or two temporary squadmates (who went through so many iterations - human N7 cyborg, quarian exile, a VI and even a volus), in order to give exposition and guide the story along.
MEA came out, and some of the team, especially the writers, felt disappointed by it, had lots of other things going on and lost interest. Of the five missions originally conceived, gameplay was finished in three, and the other two had much of the art done, but without the writers the cutscenes, story and especially new characters just weren’t working.
So, we eventually put out a cut back version of the Menae, the Operation Paladin mission, on its own without the story portion of it which tells what happened to the Turian team who were trying to recover the QEC from a nearby facility.
The full version of the mod is unlikely to be finished, given I am busy with work, and other members of the team have moved on. Big mods are always a combination of artists, game designers, toolkit programmers, audio specialists, voice actors and writers. Any one skill is difficult to learn, nobody can do them all, so finding a group who have the motivation and time to give is even rarer. Therefore I want to give the tip of the hat to those who helped a lot, particularly Sil, Mgamerz and especially Furinax. We were very lucky with EGM that the team came together, and whilst I regret that the full version of Ark has not been made, at least we got one good mission.
Finally, I would also like to say thanks to all the players for their kind words of encouragement and constructive criticism. It really helps.
Kinkojiro
Great mod and hope that you may squeeze out one more mission. Kudo's and thanks for all the hard work.
how do i get the new armour sets?
do i do the new missions or do i get them elsewere?
dahm this mod kinda make me depressed it makes andromeda more interesting
edit: is it possible be able to change the color of the armor? or is that not possible due to the model being imported from andromeda
thanks for answering pretty quickly tho
edit:
one more thing this might be the wrong area to mention it but there isn't a post section on the base EGM page
i love the Spectre armor you added but one problem is their is a graphical issue on the lower front of the chest plate and there the central light is on the back
you cant tell the that where the texture is mirror, the only problem is that it look noticeably off, like there is an invisible line running through the suit
is it the possible that it could be fixed? (as far as i'm aware i cant see it on Ashley's version of the Spectre suit)
This mod is INCOMPATIBLE with the Custom Combat Drone Colors mod!
I also really enjoyed the Shipwreck mission -- I didn't check it out, but I'm curious as to whether there's any difference in the final choice (sending to Hackett/taking to Normandy/Paragon/Renegade options). I chose the Paragon option.
Definitely looking forward to running the Frictionless Rail through its paces -- I seem to have missed the first one on Menae (bought it after from Requisitions), and found the second on Thessia. Are there any other levels to the rail mod?
However, I had a question (not sure if this counts as a bug or not so that's why I'm asking it here) but I wanted to change the visor of the n7 classic armor to opaque. So I did as the instructions described on the main page and used egm to change the settings, however it doesn't change the visor. Even tho it says "EGM settings will now switch visor files to Opaque and autoTOC" it still is transparent. I even ran autotoc again and it still didn't work. Do you know why egm might *not* be changing the files? And if I may be so bold, is there a way to manually change the files in case egm doesn't work?
(Don't worry, I accept full responsibility if doing that fucks up my game, I'm just curious if it's possible or not) I really like the opaque visor and would prefer to have it if possible. If this is important, I have already completed n7: operation paladin and have acquired the n7 armor. Thank you for your time!
Ark 0.92 requires EGM Settings v1.62.
Ark 0.91 or earlier requires EGM Settings 1.60
Copy the type you want, remove the final _OPAQ or _TRANS on the copy, deleting any existing files called that name. Then run the auto toc tool in mod manager or me3explorer.