Asking what must be a question too obvious for anyone to ask.

moreau16

Hey, new user to the forum here.

I've been trying to play around with the Foundry, it seems like a fun way to waste an afternoon.

I'm currently writing a mission that involves a lot of different locations, some enormous tracts of dialogue and essentially no combat whatsoever.

It's a story mission is my point.

Now my question is about away teams.

I don't want them in my mission.

I want my Captain to beam down (or walk, whatever) to wherever they're going by themselves, because that's the way the story is set up. They'd just be getting in the way, bumping into things like gangly, well-dressed Roombas.

I've been combing the forums looking for ways to essentially turn them off or classify the maps as non-violent or SOMETHING that will stop them from constantly beaming in with me everywhere I go.

Honestly, how does a Starship Captain even go to the toilet without four heavily armed pals grinding fruitlessly into walls like bathroom-zombies?

The only evidence of anyone else asking this question are a tiny handful of forum topics from between 2010 and 2012 where the only advice was basically to try and glitch the game, hoping that you wouldn't end up falling into your own trap.

Problem is, that's SUPER clunky. I just want a simple transition from one room to another without having to awkwardly tell my Bridge Crew to bunch up in the corner because I'm supposed to be ALONE when trapped on a poorly lit ghost-ship. It destroys the immersion, you know?

So, any thoughts?

There are also just a BUNCH of things the Foundry doesn't work too well at. Wouldn't the whole UI be more effective if you could walk around the map as your character pulling items out of a menu and dropping them where you want them to go? Using a 2-D map to hopefully drop things vaguely where you want them to go and hoping they don't float eerily in mid-air is pretty needlessly clunky.

But that's really an issue for another time, right now I'm just looking for a way to make my missions away-team free.

rogue6800

I've been requesting this feature for some time now. @tacofangs has said in the past that a volume exists on Nimbus, so it could be made a foundry object in theory, it's just a matter of how much time the devs are willing to put into adding it.

From a story point of view it is possible one of the most important features we could be blessed with.

The only way to achieve this is to cleverly arrange objects and barriers to block the beam in locations and leave enough space for the game not to realise what you are doing. This is unreliable at best.

duncanidaho11

rogue6800 wrote: »

The only way to achieve this is to cleverly arrange objects and barriers to block the beam in locations and leave enough space for the game not to realise what you are doing. This is unreliable at best.

A more reliable way I've found is to spawn a wall behind the player but in front of the away team on reaching a given location. The spawning system will apparently try to work around objects and terrain. But blocking movement (with an enclosed space) is more straight forward. It's just delicate work to setup (and it's very strongly advisable if you try this to have an "emergency release" button just in case the player moves in a way you weren't expecting.)

moreau16

Oh my God this sounds like so much hassle!

I've basically got a big fat mission full of plot that is now rendered useless without hours of painstakingly putting fake walls in place to essentially try and trick the Foundry into giving me basic functionality.

If I wasn't playing a Vulcan, that would really scuff my nerps...

duncanidaho11

You could also just ignore the away team, don't give them any dialog, and let them naturally fall into the background as player assets rather than story components. One thing to keep in mind when approaching a Foundry build (or any project for that matter) is that what you want to achieve isn't necessarily the best approach given all the constraints you have to work around. It's possible to overcome a lot through sheer effort, but creative solutions are worth considering as well.

Just take a step back and think about the problem. You might find that your full plot only needs a few tweaks to better fit this format.

rogue6800

I just did some fiddling, you could arrange your spawn point like this, just make sure to test publish, I haven't checked myself:

It uses tall invisible walls... You will want to place some objects to hide the BOFFS.

starswordc

I once spawned an object directly on top of one of my boffs* and he got stuck. I suggest having a few reach marker triggers in every possible walking direction from the spawn point ("Component Reached" uses OR logic unlike most triggers which use AND logic) that spawn objects to trap the boffs inside.

* It was an accident: I had you deploying into a space station by shuttle, then the shuttle gets blown away by an enemy ship and the airlock gets smashed up behind you. One iteration had a piece of debris spawn right on top of my boff.

thay8472

note if a group of players run this mission some of them may find themselves trapped in these walls/objects.

markhawkman

Yeah... using props to trap boffs is a TERRIBLE idea for any mission that might get played by a team... which is all of them. It's better to just leave the boffs at the starting point by telling them to stand there and not move.

funny story: in one of the roundtables we did a team play of a mission because we were doing a team review of it..... I got stuck in the wall of one of the maps and stayed there until that maps was complete.

moreau16

Then it would appear I am what the French call: 'Up TRIBBLE creek'.

rogue6800

markhawkman wrote: »

Yeah... using props to trap boffs is a TERRIBLE idea for any mission that might get played by a team... which is all of them. It's better to just leave the boffs at the starting point by telling them to stand there and not move.

funny story: in one of the roundtables we did a team play of a mission because we were doing a team review of it..... I got stuck in the wall of one of the maps and stayed there until that maps was complete.

Good point, I forget about teams when designing...

Personally I never design missions for teams and I always state it in the description. One option is just to add a warning is the description. In this case I would say that if the OP wanted the Captain to be alone, then they wouldn't want teams to play anyway.

duncanidaho11

rogue6800 wrote: »

Personally I never design missions for teams and I always state it in the description. One option is just to add a warning is the description. In this case I would say that if the OP wanted the Captain to be alone, then they wouldn't want teams to play anyway.

My approach might be the most suitable in this case (use a wall on moving to a location to block trailing boffs.) An AI gets left behind while a human player can opt to using the safety switch to proceed. For what the author intends there wouldn't be any difference (just some careful planning and building at whatever stage this is necessary) but it would enable those who are dead-set on teaming.

rogue6800

duncanidaho11 wrote: »

rogue6800 wrote: »

Personally I never design missions for teams and I always state it in the description. One option is just to add a warning is the description. In this case I would say that if the OP wanted the Captain to be alone, then they wouldn't want teams to play anyway.

My approach might be the most suitable in this case (use a wall on moving to a location to block trailing boffs.) An AI gets left behind while a human player can opt to using the safety switch to proceed. For what the author intends there wouldn't be any difference (just some careful planning and building at whatever stage this is necessary) but it would enable those who are dead-set on teaming.

Yes, a technique I've used before, it's just a bit messy seeing the BOFFS beam in. I guess it is the best solution in this scenario. Easiest to implement too.

duncanidaho11

rogue6800 wrote: »

Yes, a technique I've used before, it's just a bit messy seeing the BOFFS beam in. I guess it is the best solution in this scenario. Easiest to implement too.

Only if they write it as a solo away mission. From what it sounds the OP could quite easily have the player captain isolated after the fact.

johnnysnowball

I found the easiest thing, as with Shore Leave Under Siege, when i wanted the Captain to be on a solo vacation, was simply to have the senior staff tag along. It made the mission much better and added some humour.

paxfederatica

rogue6800 wrote: »

duncanidaho11 wrote: »

rogue6800 wrote: »

Personally I never design missions for teams and I always state it in the description. One option is just to add a warning is the description. In this case I would say that if the OP wanted the Captain to be alone, then they wouldn't want teams to play anyway.

My approach might be the most suitable in this case (use a wall on moving to a location to block trailing boffs.) An AI gets left behind while a human player can opt to using the safety switch to proceed. For what the author intends there wouldn't be any difference (just some careful planning and building at whatever stage this is necessary) but it would enable those who are dead-set on teaming.

Yes, a technique I've used before, it's just a bit messy seeing the BOFFS beam in. I guess it is the best solution in this scenario. Easiest to implement too.

Specifically, what you would do is instruct the player (recommended in green "Mission Info" text) to set a rally point for your away team because they're not needed for this part of the mission. In dialogue you can explain this by ordering the BOffs to patrol/search one area while you're off doing another.

You could even create a makeshift timer by spawning a weak mob next to the rally point to attack the BOffs while the player captain is elsewhere, then triggering stuff in your desired event to spawn/despawn when that mob is defeated (using the Component Completed option).

moreau16

Thanks, guys. These methods are all pretty interesting and useful.

However given that I basically narratively boxed myself into a corner with this story, I think I might go back to formula and start again.

It's a shame really, because I was hugging myself when I came up with the title 'Heart and Seoul'...

Poor little mission... You were too beautiful to live...

councilspectre

This limitation has put a lot of fun ideas on hold, for sure. Like the other posters, I've toyed around with "traps" however they've never worked for me.

I have a simple but rather underwhelming suggestion, which is to include [ooc] dialog that tells the player to leave their boffs behind in a location and continue on their own. Once you leave the area (hit a reach marker), drop some walls and roof on them to trap them in. Perhaps, you could tell the player to move the boffs into a location, then use an interact object to spawn the boff trap and seal them off. Again, underwhelming and not exactly a great way to maintain immersion, but other options are limited and very unpredictable.

There are other limitations where options exist in the actual game but not for UGC. Hopefully, foundry players understand this and will forgive some of our unfortunately clumsy or immersion-breaking workarounds.

For example, if you'd like to just disable an enemy instead of blowing them up (which is what Picard tries to do in every battle instead of ordering Worf to fight to the death), you have to allow the player to blow up the enemy ship and then spawn a disabled version of the ship onto the map somewhere near the battle and have a dialog that explains that they've been disabled (even though we just witnessed them very obviously exploding into dust).

I've done this a few times and players don't seem to mind. If they do, they didn't comment on it in the review of the mission.

Edit: I also just noticed that paxfederatica suggested the same thing in a way. Oh well.

rekurzion

councilspectre wrote: »

This limitation has put a lot of fun ideas on hold, for sure. Like the other posters, I've toyed around with "traps" however they've never worked for me.

I have a simple but rather underwhelming suggestion, which is to include [ooc] dialog that tells the player to leave their boffs behind in a location and continue on their own. Once you leave the area (hit a reach marker), drop some walls and roof on them to trap them in. Perhaps, you could tell the player to move the boffs into a location, then use an interact object to spawn the boff trap and seal them off. Again, underwhelming and not exactly a great way to maintain immersion, but other options are limited and very unpredictable.

There are other limitations where options exist in the actual game but not for UGC. Hopefully, foundry players understand this and will forgive some of our unfortunately clumsy or immersion-breaking workarounds.

For example, if you'd like to just disable an enemy instead of blowing them up (which is what Picard tries to do in every battle instead of ordering Worf to fight to the death), you have to allow the player to blow up the enemy ship and then spawn a disabled version of the ship onto the map somewhere near the battle and have a dialog that explains that they've been disabled (even though we just witnessed them very obviously exploding into dust).

I've done this a few times and players don't seem to mind. If they do, they didn't comment on it in the review of the mission.

Edit: I also just noticed that paxfederatica suggested the same thing in a way. Oh well.

Most reliable method I've seen thus far. Just need to write a compelling segment that makes sense in the story.