Missions that take place inside your ship.

ammonitida · September 2013

Are there any main or foundry missions like that? In the Star Trek series, "missions" unfolded mostly on the ship itself. Seems odd that there would be no missions like that in a game of this scale.

captainrevo1 · September 2013

The way the game is set up makes it very hard to do this as there are different interiors for players. size can change, species and faction allegiance. as there is not one type only they would literally have to make the mission for every different interior or the spawn points, enemy groups and contacts would be in the right place for one, but wrong for all the others.

they could make a generic fed interior and pretend its your ship but if you are flying a lockbox ship it would look odd and people would complain, if you have selected the belfast (defiant style) bridge then it would look wrong too.

they would then have to do unique ones for klingon and romulans and still have problems if the ship is a gorn or orion ship, so they have avoided doing it because the end result is going to be wrong for a lot of people. even if you use a generic bridge in foundry missions, people seriously complain about it despite them knowing its a limited toolset.

better to make one mission outside your ship that everyone could play.

turbomagnus · September 2013

There are some pretty good Foundry missions, though, that involve you beaming over and they take place inside another ship. "First Cause, Then Effect" is one of my personal favorites.

flash525 · September 2013

There is a KDF mission which takes you through the USS DeWitt (if I've got the name right). Other than that one, I can't think of any others.

hevach · September 2013

I have played quite a few foundry missions that do take place, at least in part, inside your own ship. They generally use the generic interior, many avoid engineering and sickbay, and all but one or two avoid the bridge entirely (those that don't are made worse by the jarring disconnect when the author's selection doesn't match yours). Ready rooms are used quite a bit, with a fake door blocking the way to the bridge to reduce the disconnect. Whatever they do, though, they either don't match bundle or Romulan interiors, or they do but don't match generic ones.

One made use of a battle bridge that I thought was fairly clever. It used a Miranda style bridge with some walls set up to make it more cramped and extra consoles stuffed into the remaining space.

ammonitida · September 2013

hevach wrote: »

I have played quite a few foundry missions that do take place, at least in part, inside your own ship. They generally use the generic interior, many avoid engineering and sickbay, and all but one or two avoid the bridge entirely (those that don't are made worse by the jarring disconnect when the author's selection doesn't match yours). Ready rooms are used quite a bit, with a fake door blocking the way to the bridge to reduce the disconnect. Whatever they do, though, they either don't match bundle or Romulan interiors, or they do but don't match generic ones.

One made use of a battle bridge that I thought was fairly clever. It used a Miranda style bridge with some walls set up to make it more cramped and extra consoles stuffed into the remaining space.

Interesting.

Starships are pretty huge, almost like a miniature city. Creating generic parts of a ship that are normally "blocked" in the bridge view is a clever approach. There could be thousands of rooms in a single ship where missions could take place, and since we'll never see them in bridge view, there won't be any disconnect. Hell, missions could even take place in the holodeck part of the ship, and that of course would mean infinite environmental possibilities. Do you happen to recall the name of these missions?

ammonitida · September 2013

captainrevo1 wrote: »

The way the game is set up makes it very hard to do this as there are different interiors for players. size can change, species and faction allegiance. as there is not one type only they would literally have to make the mission for every different interior or the spawn points, enemy groups and contacts would be in the right place for one, but wrong for all the others.

they could make a generic fed interior and pretend its your ship but if you are flying a lockbox ship it would look odd and people would complain, if you have selected the belfast (defiant style) bridge then it would look wrong too.

they would then have to do unique ones for klingon and romulans and still have problems if the ship is a gorn or orion ship, so they have avoided doing it because the end result is going to be wrong for a lot of people. even if you use a generic bridge in foundry missions, people seriously complain about it despite them knowing its a limited toolset.

better to make one mission outside your ship that everyone could play.

I figured the lack of missions of this type had to do with something like that. Makes me wish we didn't have all these IMO useless interior skins. Just one generic interior for each of the three factions -- allowing for easy to create missions inside your spaceship.

wombat140 · September 2013

"Black Boxes" displays this pretty extensively. It also almost does the same thing with your crew, in that you're carrying a shuttle-full of cadets on their practice flight, together with a few instructors, and a visiting doctor - so you have contacts on board that you can talk to, without wondering why you don't recognise these people. There's a section of crew deck or something, not corresponding to anything you see when you Visit the Bridge, and then an area of the ship's hold where the visiting doctor and a Vulcan technician who could be anybody are running tests on something you beamed aboard earlier in the mission. ("Black Boxes" isn't its full name, by the way, but searching for that will get it.)

Also, "Cloaked Loyalties" deserves a mention for a most ingenious work-around for the why-can't-you-meet-your-own-bridge-crew problem - as well as for a bogglingly strange plot. It successfully shows a bit of your ship, too - just a corner of the sickbay and then the captain's cabin, which I think is the same on all ships.

I'm planning to do something similar for my own mission - have a big scene on board the ship, but have it in the cargo hold, which you wouldn't normally see.

ammonitida · September 2013

wombat140 wrote: »

"Black Boxes" displays this pretty extensively. It also almost does the same thing with your crew, in that you're carrying a shuttle-full of cadets on their practice flight, together with a few instructors, and a visiting doctor - so you have contacts on board that you can talk to, without wondering why you don't recognise these people. There's a section of crew deck or something, not corresponding to anything you see when you Visit the Bridge, and then an area of the ship's hold where the visiting doctor and a Vulcan technician who could be anybody are running tests on something you beamed aboard earlier in the mission. ("Black Boxes" isn't its full name, by the way, but searching for that will get it.)

Also, "Cloaked Loyalties" deserves a mention for a most ingenious work-around for the why-can't-you-meet-your-own-bridge-crew problem - as well as for a bogglingly strange plot. It successfully shows a bit of your ship, too - just a corner of the sickbay and then the captain's cabin, which I think is the same on all ships.

I'm planning to do something similar for my own mission - have a big scene on board the ship, but have it in the cargo hold, which you wouldn't normally see.

Thanks. I'm going to check them out when I log back on.

Missions that take place inside your ship.

Comments