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"Forcing" story elements that the Foundry isnt capable of?
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I played a mission today in which an object supposedly exploded. Sadly, this isnt possible with the current mechanics of the Foundry, so the author decided to do a make transition and then simply say it happened. However, without getting into the specifics, let me just say it just felt wrong(to me). Its obviously not the author's fault the Foundry didnt allow them to do this, but it begs the question of whether or not certain story elements should be "forced" if they cant really be done. Has anyone else ever had similiar experiences, and if so what are your thoughts?
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Yeah, I've played some missions where the author tried to force things that couldn't be done.
In personal experience, in my mission you're meant to shut down a forcefield and release a prison held captive, but as that can't be visually represented, I made that the final objective, so that when you click to lower the forcefield your boff pops up and says "It's slowly coming down now. You can all beam back to the ship" and then you click ok and the next scene you're on the ship, after the forcefield went down.
I think that transition worked ok.
Anything that I could definitely not accomplish, I just dropped the idea completely. Cut it out. What I ended up with was much better as a result. So I found that instead of putting in something that doesn't work just for the sake of my ideas, it was more effective to workaround or adapt or be more flexible.
To be honest, I see nothing wrong in telling us an event happened and transporting us to another map to cover for it. It doesn't necessarily mean I'll use that technique, but as long as the author is aware they may lose points for it, and as long as the author is willing to add the proper effect later on, if and when that effect is possible, I'll enjoy the mission for what it is.
1. Docking at a pylon on DS9 - I made this happen by placing a mark reached right at the end of a pylon then emmediatly had a DS9 person tell me I was clear. Paraphrasing there. What the player does after you arrive in DS9 space, is get a message syaing you are clear to procede to docking pylon 2. You know where to go because it's on the map and all the other pylons have ships on them already. Just go to thr point marked and then you have docked.
2. Entering through the wormhole - This was hard but I made it work by placing a blinking sattelite near the event horizon. You interact with that while the wormhole is open and thenn transfer to another map. In effect you enetered the wormhole.
3. Talking BO's while in warp - I read this somewhere on here and had the idea in my head. I had to wait till it was appropriate to use. I am using a blank custom map with a hole lot of the streaking star affects. My plan is to have you travel through that while egaging in dialogue with your BO's.
IDK about your last one, but it seems like your first 2 would have been more easily done with simple reach markers located at the station and wormhole.
Look for it on the episode titled "The Q Ultimatum".
Release date between now and Dec 31
It actually felt well done.
That I could see; especially the blacking out part. However, without naming the mission I played, I'll just say that the explosion and its effects were so supposedly so significant that it felt pretty anti-climatic.
Hmm, come to think of it, now I remember playing one where the transwarp gate is going to blow up and supposedly your ship has to block it from destroying a planet but instead you zone into a parallel universe... it sort of stretched my believeability factor, but the mission was fun anyway.
If it's on Tribble, I'd try the mission "Bounty" - I believe this might be a better model of how to pull off something like that.
bear in mind, the limitations in the Foundry can require some very unique thinking to either overcome or fake a workaround.
Luckily, I decided not to do that.
I've avoided doing any work since I couldn't do what I wanted (warp in/out, disabling ships, having NPCs turn enemy or friendly). I finally decided to jump in and try to bash one into the Foundry's small shell, which means I had to switch things around. Instead of dead crew lying around the decks, they were instead vaporized, which the Science BO sadly reports. But that's more forcing me, not the player.
Well, the choice is to actually not do certain things at this time. Of course, thats a personal choice. I guess the main question I wanted to raise with this thread is what is the general consensus of the "line" between using little "tricks" to make things work, and actually "forcing" something that doesnt feel right.
I have my player place a transponder on the object, move to the next map, then my ship's chief engineer says "Commencing Orbital Strike" and my away team SCI officer says "Orbital Strike Confirmed". I try to re-enforce the dialog so the player believes it happened. Hopefully we'll be able to add effects like this at some time in the future.
so you want a Klingon carrier to blow up...without engaging it
use a place marker in story to trigger it's spawn in....take a weak klingon mob...place #1 where
you want the carrier to blow...skin it as a klink carrier...place any other weak klingon mob actors
out of view range
take a fed dreadnaught mob...stick it right behind the 'carrier'....( the lowest number) skin it as a shuttle
skin any of the other fed actors as shuttles as well, place them well outta range
the scene is set
you reach the place marker...tiny shuttle spawns in behind 'carrier' and 1 shots him..boom
not a perfect way to do it and you will need to fiddle with it to trigger right.
but possible
Thats pretty clever!
or anything really small
one of the most powerful things in foundry is the ability to reskin any mob
it can turn a Federation battleship into a FRIENDLY Klingon Carrier
It can make the impossible hard into a fragile easy
it can allow a federation player to walk the halls of the Romulan homeworld safe from attack
Reskinning is powerful buju
Meow