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Any way to guarantee what ship in an NPC group appears?
meraxa
Member Posts: 18 Arc User
Well, I'm currently on a bit of a strong kick with my project, having managed some general workarounds for bugs and whatnot. However, when it comes to adding a fight scene, I've got a bit of a conundrum.
As far as I seem to understand it, the number of enemies that appear from an NPC group is dependent on how many ships you yourself bring to a fight. So I've put down a Klingon Cruiser Group, and to my pleasant surprise, have found it spawn just the one enemy. Unfortunately in the most ideal scenario I'd like it to be a specific, named enemy that the player fights, and I was wondering if there was any way to ensure that's what appeared first and foremost. Right now it seems like it randomly picks any of the ships currently within the group.
As far as I seem to understand it, the number of enemies that appear from an NPC group is dependent on how many ships you yourself bring to a fight. So I've put down a Klingon Cruiser Group, and to my pleasant surprise, have found it spawn just the one enemy. Unfortunately in the most ideal scenario I'd like it to be a specific, named enemy that the player fights, and I was wondering if there was any way to ensure that's what appeared first and foremost. Right now it seems like it randomly picks any of the ships currently within the group.
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> The lowest numbered npc (red dot) in that group will always be the one to spawn. (I.E. if they're numbered 399-405 ... 399 will always be the one to spawn.)
Aha, thank you. Will try that when I get home. Reason I ask is because I'm trying to have a big reveal about how many ships the enemy [i]actually[/i] has, and that's a bit difficult if a whole different vessel just turns up when the fight starts.
For your stated purposes I'd say pick a specific look for your enemy NPC then use the skin for that look. that way that ship will always spawn, however if it's played in a group there's no way to prevent more ships from spawning just be somewhat vague in your text to allow "escorts" in case there's more then 1 person playing.
Oh, the skin stuff I already knew. It was just how to get that ship specifically to appear among a group of varied ships.
That said, I may have to concede a bit on escorts it seems. Doesn't feel right to have a moment where the player is just asked to generally ignore other stuff.
At this point there's no way to choose a specific template appear, if you want a specific "hero" ship to appear for certain, you reskin the lowest numbered NPC in the group with the skin you want to use and the name you want to use.
I'm using it to make certain only D7 battlecruisers appear in a 23c mission I'm making, they're just reskinned KDF cruiser mobs with a specific name.
The ship in question will act like the template it's using but most of the time your players won't know the difference so it doesn't matter. Building stuff for the Foundry means finding (creative) compromises for the limits for the tools we are given and ironically the stories are often better for it as you need to think about what you really want for the scene and not just mindlessly put stuff in the scene (granted there are Foundry missions where the author clearly just mindlessly put stuff in the maps without any thought but there's exceptions for every rule).
This isn't entirely true. For instance, the lowest number in the Battleship group won't appear for 4 or 5 players. A while back another Foundry author went through and compiled all the NPCs within a group, what type of enemy they were and against how many players it would appear. Unfortunately, this guide was on the old, defunct StarbaseUGC site. I saved a copy of the guide for myself on Google Docs. You're welcome to take a look here.