Case of Vanishing Ensigns...???

sandukutupu

Ok here is my layout; I have 2 squads of Fed ensign only. These are placed on an alpine ground map very close to my spawn point, so they will appear right away.

Next I took the 10 individual actors and spread them out all about the map. Your mission is to "find" them of course. I used alpine rocks to mark their locations. I have no problem scanning for them and locating each spot.

However half the time some don't appear in the spot. They are missing and I just get the marker for the rocks. There is no pattern, I run the map over and over and sometimes the ensign will be there and sometime they won't. There is no enemy to eat them. I could understand if it was just effecting 1 group but it effects both.

At this point the only thing I am coming up with is to replace the 2 groups with 10 individual npc characters.

zorbane

If you run too far from their spawn marker they will despawn

drogyn1701

Best bet would be to use individual npc contacts. I think what you might be running into is that the combat mobs sometimes won't spawn unless the player is within visual range.

Just as a test, have you tried publishing your mission to see if this still happens? Sometimes things behave differently after the publishing process.

sandukutupu

I just went ahead and replaced the two NPC groups with 10 individual NPC contacts. I thought it would be quicker to use groups of ensigns since they come named. With the NPC contacts I had to go through all 10 adding the "Ensign Whatshisname", so the UGC Contact won't appear while playing.

I want, hope, and pray Cryptic will make a critter designer in some future version. I didn't want a bunch targs or warriguls so I made up a unit of tribesmen to attack you (warriguls dressed in costume). But I can't call them animals since they wear clothing...

My sons played a game called Spore years ago, in my opinion there are two things about that game that should have been borrowed for STO. The creature edit allowed for multi-limb animals and their space map was 3D. I know it is not like they can go knock on the door and borrow a cup of programming. But it would be nice to see more advanced animal options inside the alien generator.