I just discovered something really annoying. We have access to Romulan Republic ground mobs, but not the costumes as single contacts.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Is there a way to customize skins for both hostile and friendly NPC ships?
Let's say I want to come across an unknown never-before seen alien race - can I create an unknown never seen before alien ship skin? Functionality-wise I'd still pick one of the existing races (Klingons, Jem'hadar, etc) but I want it to look unique... even if it's just having the ability to customize a ship like we do with our own, selecting the hulls, saucers, pylons, etc. but not be limited to a single faction or type of ship - able to mix and mash from ALL of them to create something genuinely unique.
If not, can we please have it? The existing mechanics are already in place (obviously, as we can customize our own playable ships)
Is there a way to customize skins for both hostile and friendly NPC ships?
Let's say I want to come across an unknown never-before seen alien race - can I create an unknown never seen before alien ship skin? Functionality-wise I'd still pick one of the existing races (Klingons, Jem'hadar, etc) but I want it to look unique... even if it's just having the ability to customize a ship like we do with our own, selecting the hulls, saucers, pylons, etc. but not be limited to a single faction or type of ship - able to mix and mash from ALL of them to create something genuinely unique.
If not, can we please have it? The existing mechanics are already in place (obviously, as we can customize our own playable ships)
Reskinning mobs is one of the most useful abilities we have, but right now we can't mix and match bits of completely unrelated ships. However, I've done some interesting things by kitbashing and repainting, including using a modified Vo'Quv to simulate a Mawasi cruiser (although on closer inspection I'm thinking maybe I should try a Vor'cha).
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
swipe the neceelles off a fed ship and stick them on a Klingon ship.... etc....
That would be fun but we physically can't do that right now. But that doesn't stop you from mixing and matching bits of different skins on the same ship to come up with something reasonably unique, and using various paint jobs and materials together to make it look a bit different. Some of the lesser-used Starfleet ship skins can be quite useful for this.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
That would be fun but we physically can't do that right now. But that doesn't stop you from mixing and matching bits of different skins on the same ship to come up with something reasonably unique, and using various paint jobs and materials together to make it look a bit different. Some of the lesser-used Starfleet ship skins can be quite useful for this.
It would be nice if we had an FPS view of ground maps so you can put things exactly where you want because top down maps only provide so much information.
I'm going to add to the chorus of people asking for a true interior editor. I know that it's coming over from Neverwinter at some point, but it would be truly spectacular to get it. Along those lines (and I don't know if this has been mentioned at some point in the communications about what the NW system is actually capable of doing), it would be really great to do the editing in a 3D editor with a drag-and-drop functionality.
Walls, doors, windows, floors, ceilings, general architectural apochrypha. As many as possible, please.
Scale-able objects. Want a bed to be bigger in relation to the overall space? Roll up on your mouse scroller. Want a Klingon chair to be Ferengi-sized? Roll down. Want to build a doll house? Scale down a bunch of walls and a roof and there you go. Want to write a mission where the Player is captured by a species of aliens that make humanoids seem like Mini-Figs? Scale up an NPC and have him peeking in a window at you.
Access to all of the social maps as both mission locations and doors, with the sublocations on the maps also able to function as doors. For instance, if I want to launch a mission out of that building that is to your left when you first walk into Paradise on Nimbus. It looks like it's a little cafe to me. It could be something else to someone else.
More casual-wear costumes. Long skirts. Sometimes the point of a skirt is not to be sexy. Hats. Nightclothes and underwear. More options for facial hair--mainly stubble. And the ability to sometimes put the facial hair on a female. And in regards to hair, it would be nice to choose to streak it with grey or put grey at the temples for creating an older character. The ability to have eyes that are not blue, green, brown, or grey. Sometimes I'd like to have a character with purple eyes. Or yellow. Many more options for Cardassian physical traits. We only have the one set of shoulders and the one forehead detail and no true Cardassian hairstyles. Presumably this development would come with the theoretical development of the Cardassians as playable faction. But it would still be nice to have the options in the mean time.
A more amicable environment for creating characters. By this I mean a bit of an overhaul. So right now, we select a faction and choose a race or an alien and build the character with the costumes available to that race as if we were just creating another Alt in-game. I submit that this is backwards from how it should happen in the Foundry, which is all about using the IP to do things in the game that it supports with canon but may not be currently doing. So, I propose lumping absolutely everything (physical features, costume pieces, etc) all together in their respective categories (the way that Aliens are created). You would create the character look first (from every asset available) and then select its allegiance to the Player in the context of the mission with a little selector or drop-down box. To make things a little easier in this world, you could have preset values for major species (Human, Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, Vulcan, Bajoran, Gorn, and so forth) that you would choose, the way that there are examples of looks on the character creation screen in-game. We'd then be able to build any number of characters from any number of species wearing whatever we need them to wear for the mission at hand, instead of being limited to the way they're already used in the game. It would also allow for hybrid characters like we have seen since TOS (Spock, B'Ellana Torres, Naomi Wildman, and so on).
A general area inside the editor that hangs on to all of the characters and environments that you create (with a corresponding button on the character or environment creator to save it to the general cache), so that you can reuse them more easily.
Map transfers that don't involve transporting or warping, including at the end of a mission. I recently played the Purity series. Overall, I was really happy with the experience of playing those missions, I think they're great. But there's a couple of missions in there where you end pretty much exactly where you pick up the next mission and beaming away just made it feel weird. Being able to choose the end of mission transfer back to sector space or wherever would help these ellipses moments feel not as weird. Just cutting or fading to black or white is a powerful tool in storytelling. We should be able to use it.
Similarly to that, I'd like to have the ability to turn off certain things that are used in the mission if the mission is a story arc that uses that thing. To put it more clearly, when you play the string of missions in-game that see the Dominion retaking DS9, you actually can't travel to DS9 while it's under Dominion control. I think that's really cool. It makes the game world feel more dynamic and real. I feel like we should be able to write in a moment where a certain port or planet becomes unusable because of our story until the whole story resolves. Now, I'll also grant you that the Player should have the ability to override that if they don't want to keep playing the story right now or at all. I think it's probably easiest to just make it part of the Drop Mission function that already exists.
The ability to legitimately allow fewer than four BOffs on an away mission.
The ability to put together a conference room where the Player goes to meet with his/her senior staff by inserting their BOffs as NPCs.
When a mission ends, I'd like for it to automatically ask me if I'm ready to leave, the way that the in-game content does.
Placeholder chips for mission specific items that you can pick up and will use during the mission that show up in your inventory. There could be a set number of icons that we can choose from and then name however we choose to name them.
A way to have characters use a more relaxed version of rank in dialogue. For instance, "Vice Admiral" seems a little clumsy in most situations; mostly, people would just say "Admiral". The same is true of "Lieutenant Commander"; most people would just say "Commander". I feel like both should be options. Right now we only have the formal. It would be nice to also have the colloquial.
My biggest request: More options for who talks to the player from their own crew. As it stands, I have relationships with many of my BOffs that the game didn't put in there, but have been developed over the time I've played the game and how I use them. It's really really really really annoying when my science officer keeps giving me medical reports. It also feels weird to me that, at most, only three of your BOffs are ever going to talk on an away mission because the game will only select the first-slotted of each variety to deliver information and story. I don't know the best way to fix this weirdness. For instance, you can't just assign the away team members numbers and randomly pick number 2 for this piece of dialogue, because number 2 might be a science officer who is supposed to deliver tactical advice and so forth. However, maybe if we have the ability to still choose the career-based option or the position on the team option, then we'd be able to choose, as the author, that this piece of dialogue is career specific and this piece of dialogue is just general huggermuggering. Mostly, though, I'm just super concerned about being able to have more choices than just career branches. In my dream world, we'd be able to have tags for First Officer, Tactical Officer, Operations Officer, Science Officer, Security Officer, Chief Engineer, Assistant Chief Engineer, Chief Medical Officer, Pilot, Transporter Chief, Nurse, Astrometrics Officer, Strategic Operations Officer, Intelligence Officer, Communications Officer, Flight Deck Officer, Damage Control Chief, Quartermaster, Yeoman, and the Guinan/Neelix slot, plus a general slot of Tactical, Security, Engineering, Operations, Science, and Medical in case the person playing doesn't have someone assigned to the slot you've written dialogue for. Obviously in my dream world, all of these positions would be assignable in-game.
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And just as a side bar, I think it would be really wonderful to have the ability (that was mentioned at some point in regards to the tech coming over from NW) to build a custom interior for your own ship. I understand that Cryptic probably makes some kind of money out of the C-Store bridge packs. But let's face it, they're really not even close to all the stuff we want to see inside our own ships and they have absolutely no customization ability. One of the really prolific tenets of MMOs in general is the ability to build a house or homestead. It's something that probably doesn't appeal to everybody, but it's something that appeals to a lot of people. And it's something that I would be willing to pay to be able to use. A model:
*Base FTP package = Existing bridge packs with some modability of object locations and general props and junk.
*Base Gold package = 6 decks that are completely customizable based on the ship class you're using. For instance, you'd have more room on the map for a Galaxy than for an Intrepid. The devs would provide a big open deck the shape and size appropriate for your ship and you would customize it. And I do mean customize it. The map would be blank except for the windows and outer hull. You'd put in the corridors and the rooms and the turbolifts and the carpet and the everything. In the best of all worlds, it would also be scale-able. Roll up for the Gorn, roll down for the Ferengi. I think you'd have to force people to choose one type of interior just from a space management standpoint. In other words, you can't possibly store all that data for every single ship a player owns. However, maybe additional interiors could be something that you could purchase.
*No matter the result there, players should definitely be able to buy additional decks of space up to the cap for the ship class. Players could also buy dev-created decoration packages that would automatically populate the inside of the ship with whatever you're buying, be it crew quarters or sickbay or the holodeck or waste reclamation. They should also be able to place these pre-populated rooms where they want them on the ship. So two people might buy the same sickbay, but one of them puts it on deck 3 and one of them puts it on deck 6. A third person might even buy two or three of them. Cryptic would provide standard, purchasable designs for the bridge, ready room, conference room/observation lounge, mess hall, captain's quarters, officers' quarters, crew quarters (doubles and quads), sickbay, science lab, med lab, main engineering, engineering lab, transporter room, cargo bay, docking bay, shuttle bay, brig, security office, armory, deflector control, environmental control, damage control, computer core, astrometrics lab, holodeck, strategic operations, XO's office, department head offices, morgue, flight deck, battle bridge (separating ships only) and recreational areas like a gym, movie theater, aviaries, or whatever.
*Players could also buy fancier props from the C-Store. Or maybe, tie this into crafting somehow and make certain decorative objects craftable.
You'd edit these ship interiors through the Foundry, which might have the added effect of getting more people involved in the Foundry, and therefore make it a more business-friendly part of the game and company resources. You'd also have the ability to place your BOffs and DOffs inside your own ship. And possibly allow for standardizing all of your DOff uniforms... Anyway, I know this last thing is a real shot in the dark...
One more thing. Script possibilities that include something like "if you kill this, you fail" or "if you kill more than x of these, you fail" or "you must kill at least x of these". And also count down clocks. Both internal ones and external ones.
I have wanted to see humanoid skeletal remains as an asset for the longest time. These could be used to portray the aftermath of an ancient battle, a lair for a giant monster, or even to add a spooky atmosphere like in the TOS episode "Catspaw."
Also, it would be nice to have a version of these skeletons to use as either an NPC Contact or Group for those that want to create their own ghost stories or if they want to go all Terminator in The Foundry!
As it stands, I have relationships with many of my BOffs that the game didn't put in there, but have been developed over the time I've played the game and how I use them. It's really really really really annoying when my science officer keeps giving me medical reports. It also feels weird to me that, at most, only three of your BOffs are ever going to talk on an away mission because the game will only select the first-slotted of each variety to deliver information and story. I don't know the best way to fix this weirdness.
I may have a solution for this particular problem. The Doff system allows you to assign different department heads. Ops, Engineering, Medical, Science, Tactical and Security, as well as your XO. If it were possible to have the specific department head provide the dialogue, instead of the highest ranking officer, it would be possible to diversify the conversations a bit more. Authors could still simply select one of the current options, but they could have your CMO declare "He's dead, <insert name here>", or have your XO comment, "Why do we violate Starfleet policy every time we beam down to a planet, Captain?", or maybe you want your Chief engineer to exclaim, "Coolant leak! Captain, we're about two minutes from a warp core breach!" and so on and so forth.
I've only just started using the foundry - I've only recently started playing STO for that matter - but there are a number of things that could help streamline the editor.
- Allow us to alter dialogue, object placement, and assign mission objectives from within the test scenario. It already has the option to reset the scenario, so why not let us test, reset, and alter without going through a long loading screen? This would be especially helpful for creating an alien environmentt using ground or space assets; the ability to see a gasseous nebula or tactical console placed within the 3D world instantly would be infinitely useful. Having to exit out, make a slight adjustment to placements, or correct a minor grammatical error, then reload the test is both time consuming and frustrating.
- Expand on the universe of interaction points that can be used to begin a mission, especially in locations away from the homeworlds, like Starbases - specifically K7, 39 Sierra, Drozana, or other such places. Along with that, expand on the list of available asset NPCs; sometimes you just want your Captain to head upstairs and talk to T'nae, or find Naomi Wildman in her office, or perhaps get in a discussion with a bar patron that leads you to start searching a nearby system for an escaped convict.
- Give us the ability to trigger NPC animations via dialogue prompts or quest objectives. This would ideally include the ability to direct a stationary NPC to walk across a room, beam out in the middle of your discussion, Q-flash across the room, or simply start to cower when you threaten their puny existence. Sometimes you just want your NPC to fall over dead, the victim of an errant phaser blast from behind or an alien virus, but the only option is to beam out the existing NPC and replace them with one that's lying on the ground, which really breaks the 4th wall. If possible, directing them to follow your Captain through part of a ground mission - or even in space - would also help with immersion.
- A few basic ship-board locations would be infinitely useful. Interior locations like conference rooms, holodecks, lounges (Ten Forward), and other such places would help immensely. If not as maps of their own, then broken into building blocks so we can imitate such locations. Walls that have starfields behind their windows would be a good first step toward making most of these kinds of locations.
- The ability to set the scale of an away team. Sometimes you just want one or two bridge officers along, and sometimes you just want the Captain beaming to a particular location. Sometimes you want your away team to stay in a particular place through a dialogue sequence, or even interact with an object, like having them actually walk over and interact with a console, for instance. Along with this, it would be helpful to create event points that call down additional away team members, similar to how exiting Paradice City on Nimbus 3 calls your squad of officers out of the ether.
- Percentage-based victories over NPC squads. When your objective is to disable an enemy ship, or fight an enemy boss to a draw, it should be possible to set a percentage at which they will stop combat and become friendly, completing the objective and allowing you to use the newly-disabled NPC in a follow-up objective. As a corrollary, having a disabled ship reactivate its weapons and start attcking you again - "Perhaps today IS a good day to die, Captain. Helm...! Ramming speed!" - or having that same boss decide to throw their last 20% of health away would also be a useful story element. There are ways to make this happen, but, as I mentioned before, this is one of those immersion problems.
- The ability to have the system assign gender-specific personal pronouns based on simple BBC: things like him or her, Sir or Ma'am, and he or she. A non-gender option would also probably be PC to add, though I don't think that's actually an option in character creation. Anyway, having to reuse 'they', 'their', or otherwise make the dialogue non-specific due to the author not knowing which gender their audience happened to make their Captain, is a little bit repetitive, and also ruins immersion a bit. Also, if it's possible to have the Rear Admiral ranks - or any of the long-winded titles, really - abbreviated at the author's discretion, that would be great. Having my entire bridge crew and all the NPCs refer to me as "Rear Admiral, Lower Half Kurai" through several missions was rather excruciating.
- A standard information box attached to the description that indicates the level requirement for the selected mission. Some authors add this information themselves, but most of them don't; either they actually don't know their enemy squads influence the level of the mission, or they're just sadists. In any case, this information is something the internal systems can easily identify, so indicating a mission is designed for 35+, or 41+, or whatever+ should be a simple matter - parenthesis on the end of the mission name would probably be the most visible way of showing this information.
Wow.... the demolished park is amazing! It has so many things I wish we had in STO. Broken burning trees, dented trashcans, damaged statues, blown up bridges... smoldering craters... sooo much awesomeness.....
Something just crossed my mind that shouldn't be terribly difficult.
Holodeck doors.
I'm building a sequence that uses a holodeck - starts aboard ship, then moves into the holodeck - but the only doors available that open and close are the basic square ones you see everywhere. It would be really satisfying to have that oddly-shaped door they used for the holodeck, complete with that loud, machine-like opening noise.
While we're on the topic, why not add a whole slew of different doors from different races, complete with their unique sounds? Some doors - especially those of Klingon and Romulan design - are no less iconic in both form and sound than their Federation counterparts.
There are so many awesome requests here in this thread. I would truly LOVE to see a whole season of development dedicated to only the Foundry. Increasing the quality of what the User-Generated Content can be, produced through better tools would make most of the user population happy. This opens the door to much more content on both Fed and KDF sides.
The highest priority requests I have is to:
1) Add an animation to the "States" Tab so that if the visibility of an object is turned on or off, it can be from an explosion (animation) or better yet, allowing someone to beam off a map like a rescued hostage or an emergent situation to beam to sickbay. (Beaming someone or something on/off of a map is a FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTERISTIC of Star Trek - and I am astonished that we cannot effectively do this with the current Foundry - I said practically the same thing back in 2011, but there have not been any functional improvements that I know of for this in over 2+ years.)
2) I would like to see the NEW New Earth Space Dock (3.0) in the Foundry. It took almost a year for the New Earth Space Dock (2.0) to get into the Foundry from before. Hopefully, we will not have to wait that long.
3) Re-skinning a ship is still ineffective because when it explodes, the real ship animation is present. For instance, in order to have a Borg and an Undine ship attack the player as a team, the ships must be the same faction and one ship must be re-skinned as a Borg or Undine. If the Borg Cube is re-skinned as an Undine Battleship, upon explosion, the animation is the Borg Cube exploding, breaking continuity and immersion in the Foundry Mission. It would be great to consider a checkbox system or something simple to determine combat interaction of factions - OR at the VERY LEAST make the skinned animation's explosion visible.
Finally, please publish something regarding the Foundry....
- the next major upgrade scheduled
- the wishlist being worked for development
Just something that shows that the Foundry is actually on your radar.
The asset " FX - Portal - Mirror Universe " is not showing up when placed in maps. This effect is used in both my missions "Mercury Solar Observatory" ,and "Photons of Pos-ability" The other portal effects aren't as suitable for my missions.
Solution: Please re enable this asset or something similar Thanks
...
Finally, please publish something regarding the Foundry....
- the next major upgrade scheduled
- the wishlist being worked for development
Just something that shows that the Foundry is actually on your radar.
I second this. Devs, I'm sure you are doing something, but you're giving a very good impersonation of not doing anything. I think giving the players occasional updates about it would get rid of 90% of the rage in the Foundry section. No walls of text necessary, just the occasional note, maybe in the main teaser postings for when there's a new patch or update known to be coming out - like "And finally, we're porting more of the existing costumes across to the Foundry, and hope to have at least 20 more for you to play with in the new update". We need to know that something's happening. (It would also give the Foundry authors themselves an opportunity to let you know if something else should actually take priority over the things you're working on.)
I second this. Devs, I'm sure you are doing something, but you're giving a very good impersonation of not doing anything. I think giving the players occasional updates about it would get rid of 90% of the rage in the Foundry section. No walls of text necessary, just the occasional note, maybe in the main teaser postings for when there's a new patch or update known to be coming out - like "And finally, we're porting more of the existing costumes across to the Foundry, and hope to have at least 20 more for you to play with in the new update". We need to know that something's happening. (It would also give the Foundry authors themselves an opportunity to let you know if something else should actually take priority over the things you're working on.)
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them." -Thomas Marrone
I know they did (Is there a list of those available yet? It would be very handy for the mission I'm working on, especially the PADDs. I know they aren't out on Holodeck yet, but it would be good to have a look at them.) Anyway, that's just what I mean. As it turned out, they WERE doing something - something great, in fact. What a lot of raging would have been saved if the players had known about that, instead of the devs pretending until the very last minute that they'd forgotten all about the Foundry! Not that surprise presents aren't nice....
I know they did (Is there a list of those available yet? It would be very handy for the mission I'm working on, especially the PADDs. I know they aren't out on Holodeck yet, but it would be good to have a look at them.) Anyway, that's just what I mean. As it turned out, they WERE doing something - something great, in fact. What a lot of raging would have been saved if the players had known about that, instead of the devs pretending until the very last minute that they'd forgotten all about the Foundry! Not that surprise presents aren't nice....
I think what's going on here is that Taco just went and added the new objects by himself. This was not likely a part of any plan, it was just something he wanted to do.
The devs have told us things they wanted to do with the Foundry. Early this year we were told by Geko in an interview with PrimetimeUGC that there were a "dozen or so" features from the NW Foundry to come around Season 9. They've gone back on this however, saying that because they had to spend their resources fighting Foundry exploits, they couldn't do that work. Since that new came out a month or so ago we've heard nothing.
Hope you're all doing well! I'd like to request the following assets:
The Risan Luxury Liner
The Una System
and if you don't want to include such a minor like Una:
The class M world used in the Una System
The Starbase used in the Una System
Thank you,
Joe_King
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] Please leave comments or suggestions on the main thread for Homage to Galris at the following link.
Also feel free to check out some of my other projects at the following link.
ship interior for all factions
(i don't know about KDF or Romulan, but every federation ship i've played has the same engineering, medical, transporter, mess hall, and captains quarters and hallways. )
federation ship walls from the federation ships currently in service, and name them Federation instead of generic
(wouldn't be needed if you would just give us the 3 measly maps for the ship interiors)
destructible objects for both ground and space
(e.g., asteroids, defense turrets, carnivorous man eating plants, crates...let us target and blow up stationary objects)
merge the NPC group and NPC contact lists into one single list with the choice to make the NPC friend or foe and change this state during gameplay using the existing state change mechanic
Either targetable invisible objects or trigger animations for weapon fire and all boff/captain weapon abilities with associated animations (jam sensors, aceton beam, torpedo spread, throw anesthizine gas)
Invisible object trigger animations affect away team as well or at least trigger to ask if away should be affected
Select the size of away team from 0 to 4
Make glass objects show clear guideline in Foundry editor. I get it, it's glas, it's hard to see, but why on earth or any planet for that matter should that mean I need to position an invisible object? Even the invisible walls are visible in the editor
Object nudge function using arrow keys
adjustable snap to grip size
Y axis rotation of objects
flatten map designs to save space
adjustable layers (i.e., using drag and drop let me reposition objects to other layers so I can choose which objects in front or behind)
A hospital gown would be handy. I've managed to give the general idea (for the rescued Borg drone at the end of my mission) with a white Shirt Simple and a second-hand-looking pair of Starfleet trousers, but that would be much better. (If anyone knows a better way of doing this, do please say.)
Destructible objects seconded. All helps towards the one great goal of providing something to do besides shoot aliens or press F! I'd add a destructible door to that list, there's one in one of the Klingon War missions so it would just be a straightforward transfer.
Merging NPC contacts and NPC groups also VERY MUCH seconded. That's really something more complicated than just a new asset, I'd imagine it would require some changes to the way the system classifies things. But it would be worth the effort - Star Trek has always had a thing about diplomacy and conflict resolution, and how the freak is that meant to go with a program that doesn't even have a built-in mechanism for enemies to become friendly or vice versa? Cryptic missions can evidently do this already - "Second Star to the Right", for instance, in which your Klingon captain first demands information from a Starfleet officer (which you can't do with a mob) and then when he refuses thumps him (which you can't do with a contact) - so again that might simplify things.
Failing that, if you could choose your transition effect when an object appeared, rather than it always being no animation for a contact and a beam-in effect for a mob, you could seamlessly swap a mob for an identical-looking contact or vice versa (at least where there IS an identical-looking contact available) without the beam-in effect giving away what you've done.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them." -Thomas Marrone
More updates incoming on Tribble!
Also, FYI, the Risian Cruiseliner is currently available as a costume on the Holodeck Foundry.
Just thought I'd let y'all know!
Comments
FX Iconian Gateway.
space and ground
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Yea, it hurts.
Let's say I want to come across an unknown never-before seen alien race - can I create an unknown never seen before alien ship skin? Functionality-wise I'd still pick one of the existing races (Klingons, Jem'hadar, etc) but I want it to look unique... even if it's just having the ability to customize a ship like we do with our own, selecting the hulls, saucers, pylons, etc. but not be limited to a single faction or type of ship - able to mix and mash from ALL of them to create something genuinely unique.
If not, can we please have it? The existing mechanics are already in place (obviously, as we can customize our own playable ships)
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
What do you mean, exactly?
My character Tsin'xing
Some of the ones I've used:
-- Tzenkethi Pouncer-class Strike Fighter. Aeon Timeship with Material 4, Columba nacelle pattern, and Virgo hull pattern.
-- Tzenkethi Ripper-class Corvette. Captain's Yacht with material 4 and Leo paint pattern.
-- Tzenkethi Prowler-class Destroyer. Prometheus Alpha Section with material 4 on everything but the nacelle (that uses Material 2) and Orion paint pattern.
-- Tzenkethi Disdain-class Flight-Deck Battleship (note: doesn't actually have a hangar due to mobs chosen for reskinning). Odyssey saucer with material 4 and Virgo paint pattern.
-- Mawasi cruiser, rendition of this ship from VOY: "Year of Hell" using a Vo'Quv as the base and changing the neck and pylons to the VoD'leh.
-- Borrakite Sword-class heavy frigate, a Research Science Vessel with a Hope hull, Olympic pylons, Hope saucer, and Horizon nacelles.
-- Borrakite Radiant-class cruiser, the saucer from an Envoy-class Exploration Cruiser.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Interesting.... I'll look into this tonight and see what I can come up with. Cheers
Walls, doors, windows, floors, ceilings, general architectural apochrypha. As many as possible, please.
Scale-able objects. Want a bed to be bigger in relation to the overall space? Roll up on your mouse scroller. Want a Klingon chair to be Ferengi-sized? Roll down. Want to build a doll house? Scale down a bunch of walls and a roof and there you go. Want to write a mission where the Player is captured by a species of aliens that make humanoids seem like Mini-Figs? Scale up an NPC and have him peeking in a window at you.
Access to all of the social maps as both mission locations and doors, with the sublocations on the maps also able to function as doors. For instance, if I want to launch a mission out of that building that is to your left when you first walk into Paradise on Nimbus. It looks like it's a little cafe to me. It could be something else to someone else.
More casual-wear costumes. Long skirts. Sometimes the point of a skirt is not to be sexy. Hats. Nightclothes and underwear. More options for facial hair--mainly stubble. And the ability to sometimes put the facial hair on a female. And in regards to hair, it would be nice to choose to streak it with grey or put grey at the temples for creating an older character. The ability to have eyes that are not blue, green, brown, or grey. Sometimes I'd like to have a character with purple eyes. Or yellow. Many more options for Cardassian physical traits. We only have the one set of shoulders and the one forehead detail and no true Cardassian hairstyles. Presumably this development would come with the theoretical development of the Cardassians as playable faction. But it would still be nice to have the options in the mean time.
A more amicable environment for creating characters. By this I mean a bit of an overhaul. So right now, we select a faction and choose a race or an alien and build the character with the costumes available to that race as if we were just creating another Alt in-game. I submit that this is backwards from how it should happen in the Foundry, which is all about using the IP to do things in the game that it supports with canon but may not be currently doing. So, I propose lumping absolutely everything (physical features, costume pieces, etc) all together in their respective categories (the way that Aliens are created). You would create the character look first (from every asset available) and then select its allegiance to the Player in the context of the mission with a little selector or drop-down box. To make things a little easier in this world, you could have preset values for major species (Human, Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, Vulcan, Bajoran, Gorn, and so forth) that you would choose, the way that there are examples of looks on the character creation screen in-game. We'd then be able to build any number of characters from any number of species wearing whatever we need them to wear for the mission at hand, instead of being limited to the way they're already used in the game. It would also allow for hybrid characters like we have seen since TOS (Spock, B'Ellana Torres, Naomi Wildman, and so on).
A general area inside the editor that hangs on to all of the characters and environments that you create (with a corresponding button on the character or environment creator to save it to the general cache), so that you can reuse them more easily.
Map transfers that don't involve transporting or warping, including at the end of a mission. I recently played the Purity series. Overall, I was really happy with the experience of playing those missions, I think they're great. But there's a couple of missions in there where you end pretty much exactly where you pick up the next mission and beaming away just made it feel weird. Being able to choose the end of mission transfer back to sector space or wherever would help these ellipses moments feel not as weird. Just cutting or fading to black or white is a powerful tool in storytelling. We should be able to use it.
Similarly to that, I'd like to have the ability to turn off certain things that are used in the mission if the mission is a story arc that uses that thing. To put it more clearly, when you play the string of missions in-game that see the Dominion retaking DS9, you actually can't travel to DS9 while it's under Dominion control. I think that's really cool. It makes the game world feel more dynamic and real. I feel like we should be able to write in a moment where a certain port or planet becomes unusable because of our story until the whole story resolves. Now, I'll also grant you that the Player should have the ability to override that if they don't want to keep playing the story right now or at all. I think it's probably easiest to just make it part of the Drop Mission function that already exists.
The ability to legitimately allow fewer than four BOffs on an away mission.
The ability to put together a conference room where the Player goes to meet with his/her senior staff by inserting their BOffs as NPCs.
When a mission ends, I'd like for it to automatically ask me if I'm ready to leave, the way that the in-game content does.
Placeholder chips for mission specific items that you can pick up and will use during the mission that show up in your inventory. There could be a set number of icons that we can choose from and then name however we choose to name them.
A way to have characters use a more relaxed version of rank in dialogue. For instance, "Vice Admiral" seems a little clumsy in most situations; mostly, people would just say "Admiral". The same is true of "Lieutenant Commander"; most people would just say "Commander". I feel like both should be options. Right now we only have the formal. It would be nice to also have the colloquial.
My biggest request: More options for who talks to the player from their own crew. As it stands, I have relationships with many of my BOffs that the game didn't put in there, but have been developed over the time I've played the game and how I use them. It's really really really really annoying when my science officer keeps giving me medical reports. It also feels weird to me that, at most, only three of your BOffs are ever going to talk on an away mission because the game will only select the first-slotted of each variety to deliver information and story. I don't know the best way to fix this weirdness. For instance, you can't just assign the away team members numbers and randomly pick number 2 for this piece of dialogue, because number 2 might be a science officer who is supposed to deliver tactical advice and so forth. However, maybe if we have the ability to still choose the career-based option or the position on the team option, then we'd be able to choose, as the author, that this piece of dialogue is career specific and this piece of dialogue is just general huggermuggering. Mostly, though, I'm just super concerned about being able to have more choices than just career branches. In my dream world, we'd be able to have tags for First Officer, Tactical Officer, Operations Officer, Science Officer, Security Officer, Chief Engineer, Assistant Chief Engineer, Chief Medical Officer, Pilot, Transporter Chief, Nurse, Astrometrics Officer, Strategic Operations Officer, Intelligence Officer, Communications Officer, Flight Deck Officer, Damage Control Chief, Quartermaster, Yeoman, and the Guinan/Neelix slot, plus a general slot of Tactical, Security, Engineering, Operations, Science, and Medical in case the person playing doesn't have someone assigned to the slot you've written dialogue for. Obviously in my dream world, all of these positions would be assignable in-game.
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And just as a side bar, I think it would be really wonderful to have the ability (that was mentioned at some point in regards to the tech coming over from NW) to build a custom interior for your own ship. I understand that Cryptic probably makes some kind of money out of the C-Store bridge packs. But let's face it, they're really not even close to all the stuff we want to see inside our own ships and they have absolutely no customization ability. One of the really prolific tenets of MMOs in general is the ability to build a house or homestead. It's something that probably doesn't appeal to everybody, but it's something that appeals to a lot of people. And it's something that I would be willing to pay to be able to use. A model:
*Base FTP package = Existing bridge packs with some modability of object locations and general props and junk.
*Base Gold package = 6 decks that are completely customizable based on the ship class you're using. For instance, you'd have more room on the map for a Galaxy than for an Intrepid. The devs would provide a big open deck the shape and size appropriate for your ship and you would customize it. And I do mean customize it. The map would be blank except for the windows and outer hull. You'd put in the corridors and the rooms and the turbolifts and the carpet and the everything. In the best of all worlds, it would also be scale-able. Roll up for the Gorn, roll down for the Ferengi. I think you'd have to force people to choose one type of interior just from a space management standpoint. In other words, you can't possibly store all that data for every single ship a player owns. However, maybe additional interiors could be something that you could purchase.
*No matter the result there, players should definitely be able to buy additional decks of space up to the cap for the ship class. Players could also buy dev-created decoration packages that would automatically populate the inside of the ship with whatever you're buying, be it crew quarters or sickbay or the holodeck or waste reclamation. They should also be able to place these pre-populated rooms where they want them on the ship. So two people might buy the same sickbay, but one of them puts it on deck 3 and one of them puts it on deck 6. A third person might even buy two or three of them. Cryptic would provide standard, purchasable designs for the bridge, ready room, conference room/observation lounge, mess hall, captain's quarters, officers' quarters, crew quarters (doubles and quads), sickbay, science lab, med lab, main engineering, engineering lab, transporter room, cargo bay, docking bay, shuttle bay, brig, security office, armory, deflector control, environmental control, damage control, computer core, astrometrics lab, holodeck, strategic operations, XO's office, department head offices, morgue, flight deck, battle bridge (separating ships only) and recreational areas like a gym, movie theater, aviaries, or whatever.
*Players could also buy fancier props from the C-Store. Or maybe, tie this into crafting somehow and make certain decorative objects craftable.
You'd edit these ship interiors through the Foundry, which might have the added effect of getting more people involved in the Foundry, and therefore make it a more business-friendly part of the game and company resources. You'd also have the ability to place your BOffs and DOffs inside your own ship. And possibly allow for standardizing all of your DOff uniforms...
Also, it would be nice to have a version of these skeletons to use as either an NPC Contact or Group for those that want to create their own ghost stories or if they want to go all Terminator in The Foundry!
"No matter where you go...there you are."
I've only just started using the foundry - I've only recently started playing STO for that matter - but there are a number of things that could help streamline the editor.
- Allow us to alter dialogue, object placement, and assign mission objectives from within the test scenario. It already has the option to reset the scenario, so why not let us test, reset, and alter without going through a long loading screen? This would be especially helpful for creating an alien environmentt using ground or space assets; the ability to see a gasseous nebula or tactical console placed within the 3D world instantly would be infinitely useful. Having to exit out, make a slight adjustment to placements, or correct a minor grammatical error, then reload the test is both time consuming and frustrating.
- Expand on the universe of interaction points that can be used to begin a mission, especially in locations away from the homeworlds, like Starbases - specifically K7, 39 Sierra, Drozana, or other such places. Along with that, expand on the list of available asset NPCs; sometimes you just want your Captain to head upstairs and talk to T'nae, or find Naomi Wildman in her office, or perhaps get in a discussion with a bar patron that leads you to start searching a nearby system for an escaped convict.
- Give us the ability to trigger NPC animations via dialogue prompts or quest objectives. This would ideally include the ability to direct a stationary NPC to walk across a room, beam out in the middle of your discussion, Q-flash across the room, or simply start to cower when you threaten their puny existence. Sometimes you just want your NPC to fall over dead, the victim of an errant phaser blast from behind or an alien virus, but the only option is to beam out the existing NPC and replace them with one that's lying on the ground, which really breaks the 4th wall. If possible, directing them to follow your Captain through part of a ground mission - or even in space - would also help with immersion.
- A few basic ship-board locations would be infinitely useful. Interior locations like conference rooms, holodecks, lounges (Ten Forward), and other such places would help immensely. If not as maps of their own, then broken into building blocks so we can imitate such locations. Walls that have starfields behind their windows would be a good first step toward making most of these kinds of locations.
- The ability to set the scale of an away team. Sometimes you just want one or two bridge officers along, and sometimes you just want the Captain beaming to a particular location. Sometimes you want your away team to stay in a particular place through a dialogue sequence, or even interact with an object, like having them actually walk over and interact with a console, for instance. Along with this, it would be helpful to create event points that call down additional away team members, similar to how exiting Paradice City on Nimbus 3 calls your squad of officers out of the ether.
- Percentage-based victories over NPC squads. When your objective is to disable an enemy ship, or fight an enemy boss to a draw, it should be possible to set a percentage at which they will stop combat and become friendly, completing the objective and allowing you to use the newly-disabled NPC in a follow-up objective. As a corrollary, having a disabled ship reactivate its weapons and start attcking you again - "Perhaps today IS a good day to die, Captain. Helm...! Ramming speed!" - or having that same boss decide to throw their last 20% of health away would also be a useful story element. There are ways to make this happen, but, as I mentioned before, this is one of those immersion problems.
- The ability to have the system assign gender-specific personal pronouns based on simple BBC: things like him or her, Sir or Ma'am, and he or she. A non-gender option would also probably be PC to add, though I don't think that's actually an option in character creation. Anyway, having to reuse 'they', 'their', or otherwise make the dialogue non-specific due to the author not knowing which gender their audience happened to make their Captain, is a little bit repetitive, and also ruins immersion a bit. Also, if it's possible to have the Rear Admiral ranks - or any of the long-winded titles, really - abbreviated at the author's discretion, that would be great. Having my entire bridge crew and all the NPCs refer to me as "Rear Admiral, Lower Half Kurai" through several missions was rather excruciating.
- A standard information box attached to the description that indicates the level requirement for the selected mission. Some authors add this information themselves, but most of them don't; either they actually don't know their enemy squads influence the level of the mission, or they're just sadists. In any case, this information is something the internal systems can easily identify, so indicating a mission is designed for 35+, or 41+, or whatever+ should be a simple matter - parenthesis on the end of the mission name would probably be the most visible way of showing this information.
That's all I can think of right now...
Wow.... the demolished park is amazing! It has so many things I wish we had in STO. Broken burning trees, dented trashcans, damaged statues, blown up bridges... smoldering craters... sooo much awesomeness.....
My character Tsin'xing
Holodeck doors.
I'm building a sequence that uses a holodeck - starts aboard ship, then moves into the holodeck - but the only doors available that open and close are the basic square ones you see everywhere. It would be really satisfying to have that oddly-shaped door they used for the holodeck, complete with that loud, machine-like opening noise.
While we're on the topic, why not add a whole slew of different doors from different races, complete with their unique sounds? Some doors - especially those of Klingon and Romulan design - are no less iconic in both form and sound than their Federation counterparts.
The highest priority requests I have is to:
1) Add an animation to the "States" Tab so that if the visibility of an object is turned on or off, it can be from an explosion (animation) or better yet, allowing someone to beam off a map like a rescued hostage or an emergent situation to beam to sickbay. (Beaming someone or something on/off of a map is a FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTERISTIC of Star Trek - and I am astonished that we cannot effectively do this with the current Foundry - I said practically the same thing back in 2011, but there have not been any functional improvements that I know of for this in over 2+ years.)
2) I would like to see the NEW New Earth Space Dock (3.0) in the Foundry. It took almost a year for the New Earth Space Dock (2.0) to get into the Foundry from before. Hopefully, we will not have to wait that long.
3) Re-skinning a ship is still ineffective because when it explodes, the real ship animation is present. For instance, in order to have a Borg and an Undine ship attack the player as a team, the ships must be the same faction and one ship must be re-skinned as a Borg or Undine. If the Borg Cube is re-skinned as an Undine Battleship, upon explosion, the animation is the Borg Cube exploding, breaking continuity and immersion in the Foundry Mission. It would be great to consider a checkbox system or something simple to determine combat interaction of factions - OR at the VERY LEAST make the skinned animation's explosion visible.
Finally, please publish something regarding the Foundry....
- the next major upgrade scheduled
- the wishlist being worked for development
Just something that shows that the Foundry is actually on your radar.
Solution: Please re enable this asset or something similar Thanks
I second this. Devs, I'm sure you are doing something, but you're giving a very good impersonation of not doing anything. I think giving the players occasional updates about it would get rid of 90% of the rage in the Foundry section. No walls of text necessary, just the occasional note, maybe in the main teaser postings for when there's a new patch or update known to be coming out - like "And finally, we're porting more of the existing costumes across to the Foundry, and hope to have at least 20 more for you to play with in the new update". We need to know that something's happening. (It would also give the Foundry authors themselves an opportunity to let you know if something else should actually take priority over the things you're working on.)
They did just add a bunch of new assets.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
My character Tsin'xing
I think what's going on here is that Taco just went and added the new objects by himself. This was not likely a part of any plan, it was just something he wanted to do.
The devs have told us things they wanted to do with the Foundry. Early this year we were told by Geko in an interview with PrimetimeUGC that there were a "dozen or so" features from the NW Foundry to come around Season 9. They've gone back on this however, saying that because they had to spend their resources fighting Foundry exploits, they couldn't do that work. Since that new came out a month or so ago we've heard nothing.
Hi Dev Team!
Hope you're all doing well! I'd like to request the following assets:
The Risan Luxury Liner
The Una System
and if you don't want to include such a minor like Una:
The class M world used in the Una System
The Starbase used in the Una System
Thank you,
Joe_King
Please leave comments or suggestions on the main thread for Homage to Galris at the following link.
Also feel free to check out some of my other projects at the following link.
(i don't know about KDF or Romulan, but every federation ship i've played has the same engineering, medical, transporter, mess hall, and captains quarters and hallways. )
federation ship walls from the federation ships currently in service, and name them Federation instead of generic
(wouldn't be needed if you would just give us the 3 measly maps for the ship interiors)
destructible objects for both ground and space
(e.g., asteroids, defense turrets, carnivorous man eating plants, crates...let us target and blow up stationary objects)
merge the NPC group and NPC contact lists into one single list with the choice to make the NPC friend or foe and change this state during gameplay using the existing state change mechanic
Either targetable invisible objects or trigger animations for weapon fire and all boff/captain weapon abilities with associated animations (jam sensors, aceton beam, torpedo spread, throw anesthizine gas)
Invisible object trigger animations affect away team as well or at least trigger to ask if away should be affected
Select the size of away team from 0 to 4
Make glass objects show clear guideline in Foundry editor. I get it, it's glas, it's hard to see, but why on earth or any planet for that matter should that mean I need to position an invisible object? Even the invisible walls are visible in the editor
Object nudge function using arrow keys
adjustable snap to grip size
Y axis rotation of objects
flatten map designs to save space
adjustable layers (i.e., using drag and drop let me reposition objects to other layers so I can choose which objects in front or behind)
federation wall - door without the door
Destructible objects seconded. All helps towards the one great goal of providing something to do besides shoot aliens or press F! I'd add a destructible door to that list, there's one in one of the Klingon War missions so it would just be a straightforward transfer.
Merging NPC contacts and NPC groups also VERY MUCH seconded. That's really something more complicated than just a new asset, I'd imagine it would require some changes to the way the system classifies things. But it would be worth the effort - Star Trek has always had a thing about diplomacy and conflict resolution, and how the freak is that meant to go with a program that doesn't even have a built-in mechanism for enemies to become friendly or vice versa? Cryptic missions can evidently do this already - "Second Star to the Right", for instance, in which your Klingon captain first demands information from a Starfleet officer (which you can't do with a mob) and then when he refuses thumps him (which you can't do with a contact) - so again that might simplify things.
Failing that, if you could choose your transition effect when an object appeared, rather than it always being no animation for a contact and a beam-in effect for a mob, you could seamlessly swap a mob for an identical-looking contact or vice versa (at least where there IS an identical-looking contact available) without the beam-in effect giving away what you've done.
we have rom republic pants but not the jacket which makes for building Romulan based content impossible.
More romulan buildings and some Romulan npc that arnt Tal'shiar as well.
"It appears we have lost our sex appeal, captain."- Tuvok
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
-Q
(hint: click the image to go to my youtube channel)
http://twitch.tv/profile/quantum_quantonium
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http://quantumquantonium.blogspot.com
http://quantonium.tk
EPIC SCREENSHOTS
Also, FYI, the Risian Cruiseliner is currently available as a costume on the Holodeck Foundry.
Just thought I'd let y'all know!