Give us back Exploration Clusters (Foundry-version)

RSV (Really Short Version): Give us back Exploration Clusters and give us the ability to design the "unknown system"-mission ourselves in the foundry. Short enough? Good.

Please don't give feedback to the lengthy length of my post, I know how long it is ;-)
RSV kind of summarizes the thread in one sentence, the long text is me explaining my idea quite detailed. So yeah, giving feedback on RSV will help me as much as giving feedback on one single feature of what I've thought out.


So, sadly Exploration Clusters were deleted from the game because they didn't serve their purpose anymore. No good content, instead the same random and bugged missions and not-working first contact-missions. Still the Exploration Clusters were one of those things that could make you feel like a real Star Trek-Captain ("To boldly go..."), atleast the system had the possibility to let you feel like this (if the missions had worked properly and were interesting). I'd like to be able to feel like I'm flying in Outer Space and explore strange unknown worlds, so I wish them back. Obviously (hence posting in Foundry-discussion) with quite a few changes.

So first of all Exploration Clusters get back and you have those places to farm material (although they should only include the Common / Uncommon stuff, you'll get through PvE Queues anyway) and the places where you'll enter a mission. For these missions the Foundry can be benefitial on huge scale.

So essentially my proposal would be Cryptic sort of buying missions from Foundry-creators for use in Exploration Clusters, the height being decided by them. Every Foundry-Author can create random, possibly recurring standard-missions for outer-space, or create a First Contact-situation, or even get a multi-mission plot going. All that will only be available through Exploration of the Star Clusters. These missions should not be available through standard Foundry-tab, instead be tied to the unexplored systems, the Clusters featured.

So how does it work: Currently on Tribble there is a nice Foundry-update approaching, with the Author being able to tag a mission as "Player Housing" -> No objectives in the mission, only design for personal / fleet / whatever use. For my idea Cryptic creates the "Cluster"-tag, which will serve the base for every mission you intend to feature in Exploration Clusters. Let's give an example: The mission you are building is about discovering an Asteroid Belt with deposits of an unreplicateable material. So you start building, realize you forgot to set the tag, and change it. Nothing happens, and you just build on, until the mission is finished.
Now pressing on "Publish" will not start the publishing-process, instead a screen will pop up asking you the following things:

Is your mission part of a chain? (Y) (N)
If yes: Choose the mission chain (will show all mission chains, you have already created) or create a new one (here you'd choose the name of a new mission chain).
For simplicity reasons if the answer to the above question is Yes and you choose an already existing mission chain, the rest of the questions will be ignored. If you create a new mission chain or the answer to the above question is No, then the following things have to be set:

Is your mission repeatable? (Y) (N) (If it's a First Contact mission, it might not be wise to select "Yes" here; some people will not want their missions to be repeatable)

After completion of your mission: How long will the mission be excluded from appearing? Set a time until this mission could be appearing a second time; range can be from 0h to several weeks, depending on the nature of the story. If you create a mission chain, the time span is applied after you have played the last mission of the chain, so it's the time until the first mission could appear again.

Select the exploration clusters your mission may appear in: Dropdown menue featuring every Exploration Cluster; given KDF and FED should have peace, everything should be possible for both factions; access into Sirius Sector for KDF / Omega Leonis to FED should be granted; note the big amount of "should". If you create a mission chain, you may only choose one for simplicity reasons.

In the given example you want the mission to not be part of a mission chain, be repeatable every 24h and appear only in Delta Volanis-Cluster.

After setting the mission up, you are good to go, press on the button "publish" again and the mission is sent to Cryptic to review (alternative system further down). Someone there (or community members) will play through the mission, decide if it is good enough to be included in the Exploration Clusters, and will decide on the price the author gets. My proposal would be a small amount of Zen, ranging from 5 Zen for small generic missions (like the ones that were in place when the Clusters existed) up to maybe 100 Zen for epic missions that are part of a bigger storyline.
When your mission gets accepted you'll completely lose the ability to edit or upgrade the mission. Thus at the very end of the mission a window will appear telling "Created by @handle, released on xx.xx.xxxx. Leave a feedback or gift the author", to protect the author from bad critics because the mission doesn't use the newest feature of the Foundry that was patched.
Also for the Author the mission will disappear from the list of missions you have. Instead a new tab will show you every released Exploration-mission, so you can check the feedback you got. Gifts work the same way they do in current Foundry-maps.


If many Foundry-Authors take part in mission-creation, this idea could very quickly make the Exploration Clusters a diverse place, many different missions to play can make for a lot of content that has a true Trek-feeling to it. That's the biggest pro for cryptic imo, being able to get much content nearly for free. The biggest downside is: Cryptic would have to approve the missions and maybe even set rewards for them, polish them, change a few things etc. Means work that Cryptic doesn't put into the Foundry currently. So instead of having Cryptic check every mission before publishing, the missions could directly go to the Exploration Clusters. However this could mean that several trolls could really spoil the fun by putting catastrophic missions into the repertory, thus reducing immersion. Also the reward for publishing a mission couldn't be awarded, an idea that was introduced because it offers an incentive for Foundry-Authors to build missions specifically for Exploration.

So can Cryptic make money with this idea? Well, they get Exploration nearly for free, Content that is worth playing, a change from the constant grind. I'd say it would indirectly affect them (or better their wallet). Players looking for Trek-feeling may be able to find it by exploring strange new worlds. That would result in more players actually playing STO, good for Cryptic.
Exploration Cluster-Lockbox? Possible, with some fun goodies of other worlds (do something strange to your enemy, something that could make you laugh; look for the Defera Zone-wide-mission that is given out by temple-quest-giver Jula for a nice item).

For anyone that made it to this place: Congratulations ;-) . I hope I didn't disappoint you.

So I'd be happy to recieve feedback on my idea, your thoughts, own ideas, stuff like that.
Greetings
Silverman