Old Foundry mission: No Prize for Second Contact

dewolf13

I was thinking about old missions I loved to play, that felt like I really was in an episode (or an arc) of Star Trek -- missions like the Kuvah'magh (?), or pretty much any of those classic Klingon War and True Way missions.

And then my mind wandered to the Foundry. Man, I really miss that thing. It gave this game so much replayability. As much as I enjoy alternating between playing through all the episodes (what I find most fun) and grinding out marks by playing the same TFOs over and over (until it's been long enough to revisit the episodes and have them feel fresh), there was something so special about having random side missions being created every day.

And one that sticks out for me was the arc of 'No Prize for Second Contact'. It's been some years, so I only remember it vaguely, but I remember how it genuinely felt like being a Starfleet Officer and needing to do Starfleet things on behalf of the Federation. And the plot twists and political intrigue...damn. Whoever made those did a stellar job (and many of the other quality Foundry stories).

But generally I loved that there was no impending galactic annihilation in a lot of those missions, just milk runs with interesting and believable stories. Great immersion, and practically infinite novelty.

Oh...*sigh*. We'll always have Paris.

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fleetcaptain5

There were also stories revolving around Nukara Prime and an alternate universe. Missions where people made up their own species. Extraordinary environments and cities. It really allowed you to explore a much greater variety of places, peoples/cultures and stories.


It's a shame Cryptic never tried to salvage any of it. The Foundry itself and the missions it contained indeed brought some welcome variety in what you could do every day. I understand that the fact that it broke after almost every major update made it simply unrealistic to maintain the system as a whole - but they should at least have done something with its contents when they decided to shut it down.

baddmoonrizin

fleetcaptain5#1134 wrote: »

There were also stories revolving around Nukara Prime and an alternate universe. Missions where people made up their own species. Extraordinary environments and cities. It really allowed you to explore a much greater variety of places, peoples/cultures and stories.


It's a shame Cryptic never tried to salvage any of it. The Foundry itself and the missions it contained indeed brought some welcome variety in what you could do every day. I understand that the fact that it broke after almost every major update made it simply unrealistic to maintain the system as a whole - but they should at least have done something with its contents when they decided to shut it down.

They did try to salvage it. They just weren't successful. But they did save every mission.

rattler2

fleetcaptain5#1134 wrote: »

It's a shame Cryptic never tried to salvage any of it. The Foundry itself and the missions it contained indeed brought some welcome variety in what you could do every day. I understand that the fact that it broke after almost every major update made it simply unrealistic to maintain the system as a whole - but they should at least have done something with its contents when they decided to shut it down.

As baddmoon said, Cryptic did try. We just never knew they were doing anything until they admitted defeat and reported the (at the time) coming end of the Foundry. Just because we don't know they're working on something doesn't mean they aren't. I get the sense they had been working behind the scenes for months at least to find a way to keep it from breaking every update before the end came.

And also as baddmoon said, all the Foundry missions that were made were saved and stored. Nothing player made was lost. There were some good ones, including a very story driven encounter between Starfleet and the Fek'lhri. At the time the Foundry was really the ONLY way for Fed players to fight the Fek'lhri.

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spiritborn

corinthalas wrote: »

rattler2 wrote: »

fleetcaptain5#1134 wrote: »

It's a shame Cryptic never tried to salvage any of it. The Foundry itself and the missions it contained indeed brought some welcome variety in what you could do every day. I understand that the fact that it broke after almost every major update made it simply unrealistic to maintain the system as a whole - but they should at least have done something with its contents when they decided to shut it down.

As baddmoon said, Cryptic did try. We just never knew they were doing anything until they admitted defeat and reported the (at the time) coming end of the Foundry. Just because we don't know they're working on something doesn't mean they aren't. I get the sense they had been working behind the scenes for months at least to find a way to keep it from breaking every update before the end came.

And also as baddmoon said, all the Foundry missions that were made were saved and stored. Nothing player made was lost. There were some good ones, including a very story driven encounter between Starfleet and the Fek'lhri. At the time the Foundry was really the ONLY way for Fed players to fight the Fek'lhri.

Complex, convoluted, and poorly documented code is a losing battle to maintain once the people responsible for its creation leave. And by all accounts, that is a succinct summary of Cryptic's efforts with the Foundry.

Yeah the Foundry broke with pretty much every upgrade and even when it did work there was bugs that made it harder then it should have been (plus only 2D maps to work with during editing on a 3D game made things hard at times but I managed). I did some stuff with the Foundry I was personally proud of but even I accept there was no salvaging the Foundry.

From what I've gathered reason the Foundry was so complex, convoluted and poorly documented was that it started life as "off the clock" personal project of one the devs and STO was never planned to work with such a system hence the rather frail code that could break if you looked at it meanly because it was already bit a hack job to mate together 2 systems that were not planned to work together to begin with in the way they did in the Foundry.

littlesarbonn

I enjoyed creating my Bob From Accounting series (for both Fed and Klingon). It was a lot of fun creating a humorous look at Star Trek before the official cartoon came out for Lower Decks.

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