Probably a dumb question.

kaesarcaestol

But I need to ask it anyway. I've been grinding through making a mission, and I'm curious if there's a way to put in just one or two specific starships, rather than a scaling group.

I did a search and didn't find anything, but I may have missed the answer.

duncanidaho11

Cruiser and Battleship mobs will only spawn one ship if the mission is being played by a single player. You can also change the costumes of individual mob units to another stock ship or anything you've created in the tailor. If you need a single non-combat ship, use an NPC contact (which can access the same list of created or stock ship costumes.)

It should also be said that, given a bug with team splitting on map transitions, you probably don't need to worry about how mobs scale with multiple players (if you're making a mission for the general community.) The situation will almost certainly not arise (unless there's a bug fix.)

kaesarcaestol

Awesome, thanks! I was kinda worried about that to be honest. Nothign worse than saying "Break these two ships", and having six or ten show up lol

And of course, the next dumb question is how to disable a ship? Does anybody know where a plain-english guide is that doesn't jump around? I did check the Useful Links.... but the guides are all broken links it seems

duncanidaho11

Spawn an NPC contact after killing the relevant mob and select an appropriate animation for "ship disabled." That's the only thing you can do, really. You cannot disable a ship though combat like you may have seen in a cryptic mission. When a ship is destroyed, it blows up. We don't have any settings to modify that outcome in the Foundry.

If you want to avoid the awkward transition, you could look for a writing solution. Previously when I've needed to do a boarding action I'll start with the target ship as a "disabled" NPC contact with the idea that it's been disabled by allied vessels (present in the area). As you arrive, enemy reinforcements also warp in and combat is with them (+your allies) over the disabled ship. Combat done, you can then proceed with the mission.

kaesarcaestol

Thanks again. Surprising to see a guy named after the coolest Dune Character so knowledgeable about Star Trek ;-)

djxprime

Something else to keep in mind is the Federation battleship mob. If I remember right, that mob has a chance of spawning either a command ship or a Prometheus-Class Escort as the default lead/main ship. If it spawns as the Prometheus, it could use its multi-vector assault mode during battle. So, even if you re-skin the lead ship in that mob as something else, it could look a little weird when it suddenly splits into three smaller ships.

kaesarcaestol

Thanks! I had that set as a mob (it's changed now!)