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Cero Troubles
cougarxls
Member Posts: 8 Arc User
My very first mission has been published for review! Let me know what you think!
Name: Cero Troubles
ID: ST-HQJQM996X
Author: CougarXLS
Faction: Starfleet
Level: 16+
Duration: 40+ mins (about 30 mins if you skip the dialogue)
On a world where peoples of many different species peacefully co-exist, tragedy has struck. A plague is threatening almost all life on the planet. While some believe that this plague is naturally occurring, there have been reports that the virus was artificially generated.
This world has rejected advanced technology on the surface, in favour of a simple way of life. They do not have the medical abilities and technologies to combat this plague.
An investigation into this plague will leading to a shocking discovery that threatens the whole sector, and may have serious consequences for Starfleet.
The colonists on Cero III have opened their home to anyone who wishes to create a new community. Community rules prohibit advanced technology on the surface, resources are shared communally, and all children are raised by the community.
I would like to continue this story with a sequel, but I am sure I need some pointers
Name: Cero Troubles
ID: ST-HQJQM996X
Author: CougarXLS
Faction: Starfleet
Level: 16+
Duration: 40+ mins (about 30 mins if you skip the dialogue)
On a world where peoples of many different species peacefully co-exist, tragedy has struck. A plague is threatening almost all life on the planet. While some believe that this plague is naturally occurring, there have been reports that the virus was artificially generated.
This world has rejected advanced technology on the surface, in favour of a simple way of life. They do not have the medical abilities and technologies to combat this plague.
An investigation into this plague will leading to a shocking discovery that threatens the whole sector, and may have serious consequences for Starfleet.
The colonists on Cero III have opened their home to anyone who wishes to create a new community. Community rules prohibit advanced technology on the surface, resources are shared communally, and all children are raised by the community.
I would like to continue this story with a sequel, but I am sure I need some pointers
Post edited by cougarxls on
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Comments
As it's my first mission, I'd love to hear what others think. I had fun writing it, but I know I could use some feedback
1. Post the location of the start location in the mission description. Putting the location in the initial hail isn't bad however if you forget the location you can't get it back without quitting the mission and starting it all over again. If you put it in the description then it's in the mission log and easily found.
2. you have some spelling errors, you have "symptomes" instead of "symptoms" in quite a few places (most notably when the prime minister is talking for the first time).
3. try avoid using locations claiming to be the players bridge, ready room, sick bay, or engineering room on a ship. These locations can and often are customized by players and of course won't look anything like what you have created. If you must have something happen on the players ship keep things a little more generic such as a "conference room" for meetings. Your use of a generic "lab" is a good example. It's generic enough it can theoretically just be a place the player can't go rather then replacing a location they can. Personally I would recommend just eliminating the 2nd map with the bridge and ready room. The romulan scientist didn't have any real dialog that couldn't have been given after we went into the lab.
4. give names to important NPC's. Continuing to talk to the "romulan scientist" after having him introduce himself as "doctor mewer" is a little strange.
5. more of a personal preference then an actual problem but the bio generators are really far out on the edge of the map. It makes for a long and slightly tedious run around the edge of the map to get them all.
6. finding all the romulan patrols was a bit frustrating. Unlike the bio generators they aren't marked and I wasted a lot of time running around the map looking for the last patrol, to the point it wasn't fun. Either make their locations more obvious (like only around the buildings or bio generators), cut down on the number of the patrols, or make fighting them entirely optional.
Overall I think it was pretty good, especially for a first mission. I gave it a four star rating.
Check out my foundry mission "The Writers of History".
Good point. It will be done.
My spell checker did not pick up on that. I used MS Word (EN Canada and FR French Quebec), and it did not flag the word "symptomes" as being wrong. The irony is, on this post page, the spell checker is flagging it. But thanks, I will most certainly look at all the words in the dialogue again.
I really did wrestle with this one. I originally had the "romulan scientist" appear in a "generic conference room", but his placing was erratic. He appeared six feet in the air. I think I will take you up on your suggestion and just have the player meet him in the "Lab".
I think I introduced his name a little late in the dialogue and I couldn't figure out how to change his name on the same map without reloading or a new map. I will make the change and introduce his name earlier in the script. Good point, thanks.
I thought about that but I wanted the player to get the sense that they were trying to save a whole world, and not just some random area. If this is a bone of contention with most players then I will move the bio generators closer to the settlement. I wanted to give the player a sense that s/he is saving a whole planet without going onto multiple maps with the same objective. I could use some more feedback on this point.
I had a little placing problem in the foundry for this one. I have a solution, instead of ten Romulan squads, there will be nine. I had a hard time playing this mission with my Starfleet character and finding that last patrol. The map or foundry seems to scatter the last patrol into some random quadrant. I will just delete them, 9 squads is tough enough
Let me thank you again donkyhotay. I put a lot of time into this mission and had fun writing it. Thank-you for your feedback, and thank-you for playing.
I hope to have my corrections made published by tomorrow evening at around this time.
Personally I would just have him named even before he is introduced to the player, that seems to be the way most missions work. If you actually want to change his name without reloading the whole map you use triggers. First have a trigger that makes invisible the romulan scientist at a certain point and then makes visible a different character (mapwise) with his actual name that looks exactly the same and in the exact same position. You can do a lot of really cool stuff with triggers. You can *almost* reload an entire map without changing maps using triggers. There are quite a few missions out there that use triggers to drastically change the map. I can't remember it's name but one of the more impressive ones I've seen is a mission where you are inside of a cave, turn on a phase shift device, and are suddenly outside on the surface of a planet without loading a new map (sadly I can't remember it's name now). I used that idea for the time travel portion of my mission I have in my sig, during both time shifts (especially the first) there is no map loading but it changes quite a bit. Ships vanish, new ones appear, a communication satellite is much smaller in the past, I even have the planet change. It's hard to see but if you pay attention during the first time shift the appearance of the planet changes slightly. That is because there are two planets on the map in the same location that look similar. During the time shift the triggers makes one vanish and the other appear at the exact same time. All you see are coastlines shift a little if you're paying attention to represent changes to the planet over the years. The point is if you want to change somethings name on the map without reloading a brand new map, that is how you do it. Now that I'm done semi-shamelessly plugging my own mission, I consider that too much of a bother for just an NPC and I name my important NPC's even before they've been introduced. The only reason not to have a character named is if they're not important enough to deserve one or if their identity needs to be hidden for plot purposes. Ultimately it's your mission and your decision what to do but that is my advice.
Check out my foundry mission "The Writers of History".
-Spelling has been corrected. I think I got 'em all, but let me know if you find another word spelled wrong (please keep in mind that I am Canadian and some words will be spelled differently, i.e. color vs colour or honor vs honour).
-There is no more bridge or ready room map. The player will go straight to the lab after defeating the Romulan ship. The Dialogue has been adjusted to accommodate this change.
-"Romulan Scientist" now has proper NPC name, "Dr. Mewer". Dialogue has been adjusted accordingly.
-Mission destination information is now included in the mission description (it's still there in the opening hail too).
-I kept all the "Bio Generators" in their original locations, but I removed one Romulan task force that was giving me placement issues and turned out to be exceptionally difficult to locate. Instead of defeating ten Romulan groups, the player only needs to defeat nine. I believe the locations of these nine troops will not leave the player 'wandering' the map.
Thank-you again for your feedback donkyhotay.
I hope that these revisions will inspire more people to play my mission and give me some honest feedback. Thanks!
CougarXLS