"Bottle shows"

lpthomasmarik · July 2017

Does anyone know of, or can recommend, any foundry mission bottle shows? By which i mean something that takes place almost exclusively aboard the ship.

spiritborn · July 2017

Honestly I can't think of anything like that, probably because we as foundry authors don't really have to deal with reason bottle shows exists, since we don't have budget to worry about.

there's some "social zone" foundry missions but honestly I can't remember a single one that was story based and mostly on a single ship.

EDIT:technically we do have asset budget but that's the same for each project so we don't have to save assets on one project to be used on another, unlike TV series that have the budget for the whole season and thus have to save on some episodes to afford the big expensive episodes.

theyredeadjim · August 2017

I've never tried to write a "bottle show" mission for one simple reason: I don't know what ship the player happens to command. Even if one ignores the vast number of alien vessels available, and concentrates solely, for example, on the Federation faction ships, there is still considerable variation with respect to interiors. My guess is that others also back away for the same reason.

It's a pity, because there are many stories that could be told in a ship only context, but it does demonstrate how a story told in a gaming medium will be different from stories told through other media.

duncanidaho11 · August 2017

theyredeadjim wrote: »

I've never tried to write a "bottle show" mission for one simple reason: I don't know what ship the player happens to command. Even if one ignores the vast number of alien vessels available, and concentrates solely, for example, on the Federation faction ships, there is still considerable variation with respect to interiors. My guess is that others also back away for the same reason.

Given how many Foundry missions exist, the balance of probability is still that attempts at bottle episodes have been made (somewhere). The problem for the OP is of course finding them and that's a monumental task given the search UI.

What they might want to think about is what they hope to get out of a bottle episode. If it's "RP character interactions for their captain" it might honestly be easier (and less time consuming) to build such a mission themselves. If what they want though is just a mission with stronger character interactions, then all they need to do is regularly play Foundry missions. We can't write easily bottle episodes about the player's ship but we can certainly write missions about other ships and crews (it's how we get around the limitations.) Finding one of those shouldn't take much more than browsing the search UI (applying certain plot point key words such as "distress" or "U.S.S." might help) or more interestingly the top 3 system in the sector block (screening missions by the content and focus of the intro briefing.)

"Bottle shows"

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