Hey everyone,

I’ve added a tutorial on map transitions to Foundry 101, my series of Foundry tutorials for beginners.

The only thing you can’t manually insert into a mission’s storyline is a map transition… so how do you do it? This tutorial explains all, with a particular focus on the first map transition of a mission (the trickiest one to understand).

Link: foundry101.wordpress.com

Enjoy!

Ali

Title: Keeping Up With the J’Sens
ID: ST-HRJGPHDQ7
Allegiance: Starfleet
Level: 1+
Starting Location: Andoria System

Description:
The Deferi Government has asked Starfleet to assist them in a humanitarian mission for the J’Sen, a non-aligned race. Travel to a system on the border of the Federation/Klingon conflict, and render aid to the civilians trying to leave the warzone.

Notes:
This mission is open to all levels to play and as always nny and all reviews and feedback welcome.

This week’s episode of Primetime features an author interview with Leviathan99, a review from filbones on the ongoing Featured Episode series, and a special Foundry Essentials.
We’ve also got our usual news and list of the new UGC missions.

Mission Title: Contamination
Author: Evil70th
Project ID: ST-HOM98JB5K
Allegiance: Federation
Level: 16+
Author’s Description: The Federation Science Directorate has a rogue scientist on its hands. Doctor Klausen, of the Gavin IV Anthropological Study, has decided to interfere in the pre-warp culture on the planet and must be stopped. Admiral Quinn has recommended you to help Doctor Joanne Marbles, Director of Anthropology, Federation Science Directorate, in resolving this incident. Will you help the Federation?

Overview:

A fine effort by a well respected author in the foundry community. Evil70th (Brian to those who are familiar with his forum posts),  is well known for his in depth reviews of many foundry authors. I am honored to return the favor and post a review on his newest foundry creation. His mission explores one of the oldest and most important lessons learned by the United Federation of Planets and the Star Trek series as a whole. From the days when James T. Kirk worked to save an alien society from technological contamination by the Klingons, to the Next Generation and Jean Luc Picard saving an underdeveloped civilization from unintended technological contamination, the lessons learned by throwing advanced knowledge and technology into an unadvanced species created one of Starfleet’s most important laws. The inherent danger to a civilization by learning too much, too fast, is certain to cause disaster. This mission explores this concept nicely and although it starts slowly, builds to an exciting conclusion.

Format:

Evil70th gives the player the option to skip a good deal of the dialogue if desired, but in my opinion, to get the full “intent” of the mission, most of it is recommended. It puts the player in the position to make the right decisions by choice, instead of rushing through the mission. I feel the scenario is better experiencing the author’s intent to put you in the shoes of Kirk and Picard and make the decisions a Starfleet officer is expected to make in these situations. In my opinion, to bypass it takes a great deal away from the mission as a whole, and makes it more of a “generic” STO mission, with the intent to complete it quickly and reap your reward.

Locations:

The map designs in this mission are well done, with each fitting the scenario perfectly. To go into them too much would spoil the scenario. I will add however, that the warping animation followed by dropping out of warp into the system was very cleverly done. I have not seen it done quite this way and was impressed.

Summary:

This mission is perfectly named and the author covers the bases nicely on this subject. If you are a true Star Trek fan and enjoy touching on the lessons learned from the series, this mission gives you the chance to experience it. Although there is some combat, it is not a “shoot-em up” scenario. If you are looking for a mission to blast things, this is not for you, but if you are looking to explore a classic Star Trek experience, I recommend this mission highly.

My Ranking:  5 Stars

with an old enemy giving a hand with a price, it time to look at what new to play on foundry

Fed side

the Amgarr Affair by EnglishWerewolf

Risa Reclamation by t3hbeanzor

We are back part 2 by logitech007

Ausmonaust STF: First Strike 2 by Shinji_Yonazaki

Pegasus by Warbird1988

emergency maintance !! by wulfsaga

The Romulan Revenge, Save the Utopia, Two Cans and a String by Omega_Glory

KDF side

Sharpen the Swords (Romulans) by Shadowstar99

now remember if you have a new mission coming out this week please let us know by leaving a comment below or go to the thread in the forums called promote your foundry mission, and remember give one hand out in friendship and arm the other one

Greetings Captains!

I’d like to take this time to introduce myself, and bring you some exciting news in regards to the Foundry. I offered to help Kirkfat in gathering all the news I can muster on the Foundry and STO, and I figured what better time than now. I promise i’m not here to take over your ship and murder you either.

First off the news:

Brandon (ie PWE_BranFlakes) posted notes (thanks Soriedem) from the Community Conference Call. If you haven’t already had a chance to listen to the recording that Havraha posted give it a listen here.

The actual notes from the call can be found here.

I highly recommend looking over the notes as well as giving the audio a listen. Thanks to Brandon and Jeremy for taking time to listen to all the Foundry authors and taking our ideas to the development team.

continue reading…

Bazag and Galactrix play “Open Secrets” by Zadama, the winner of Podcast UGC’s Jem’Hadar Ship contest.

If you missed the live show, you can watch it on YouTube above.

continue reading…

Podcast UGC was interviewed by All Things Trek. It’s a big long episode! It’s full of all kind of questions about how we started our podcast, how we got started in Star Trek, questions about the Foundry, and of course all kinds of arguments about Star Trek.

Download it at their site here! http://www.allthingstrek.com/news.php

Hello STO community,

This is the first installment of “Sensor Sweep,” which is meant to be a non-technical and entirely impressionistic review series.  I’m not going to give any real spoilers, point-by-point plot summaries, or a long list of categories and ratings.  Instead, I’ll simply talk about what I loved or hated and why.

It’s more of a general scan of a new or old Foundry mission that focuses on my first impressions and take-aways from the general scene.

Mission: “Checks and Balances” by MyGodItsFullofStars

Let me start by saying that I’m very jealous of this author’s ability to add an immense amount of detail to a mission.  I’m not talking about big, impressive sets, like a temple or coliseum.   I’m also not referring to complex plots, twist-and-turns, and crazy things done with triggers (although the mission contains all three).

Rather, I’m referring to the immense amount of detail put into characters and npcs.

This mission is ALIVE with three-dimensional characters.  They have personalities, back-stories, and individual quirks.  From an arrogant, but delightful scientist to a side-splitting Breen captain, the characters in this story will make you grin, chuckle, and even slightly tear up.

continue reading…

The recent release of “The 2800” has given us new content. It also gave us revised Dominion mobs. And that is great. I loved the holodeck fight with the Changeling.

But because all Dominion mobs have been revised, that means they’re revised in our Foundry missions as well. Most significantly, Changelings are no longer a part of any Dominion Captain level mobs. If you have any missions whose story assumes a fight with a Changeling (and hasn’t been revised), your mission now has a plot hole.

As of now, there are no fightable Changelings in the Foundry. (Strictly speaking, there are Founders in the Foundry as contacts, and they can be created in the editor. But, as far as this post’s title goes, it’s close enough.) Your only choice is to reskin another enemy and just have players accept that this Changeling is a very good sport who fights the solids like a solid.

I hope that they add the Changeling boss into the Foundry soon. For that matter, I’d love for them to add back at least one version of the old style of Changeling Captain, so that one could put in an easier/different style of Changeling fight. But I could see why Cryptic wouldn’t want the inconsistency.

Personally, I don’t think this is a time for outrage. It is another time to remember that changes to the game affect our missions. And we must adapt (as well as politely urge Cryptic to give us additional tools to help us adapt and to mitigate problems, when they can). So Founders who use Founders in the Foundry: check your missions.

I guess I wasn’t exactly sure when people wanted this to be released so … what better time than now!?

Here is the … pretty much unedited version of the second Foundry conference call. This call focused on upcoming features planned for the Foundry (yeah, I know, I wasn’t sure such a thing existed either). That includes Foundry Featured Episodes and a new UI overhaul as mentioned by dStahl in the Priority One interview. People participating in the conference call included:

Havraha
Admiral Murphy
Galactrix
Maziken
Soriedem
Alimac30
Grumpy Old Bastard
Irish Darkshadow
Nagorak
Altexist
Rachel Garrett
Woody Valley
Kirkfat
CaptPFDennis
Bazag

And others I didn’t necessarily want to mention as their Skype names were real names instead of handles.

Star Trek Online developers on hand included Branflakes and Borticus.

If you want to hear the call, just click on the linky link below. No not that link, the other link. The LINKY one. Right.

Click here to listen to the Conference Call!
Right click and select “save as” to download the mp3

The great gang at Priority One has an awesome new interview with Dan Stahl.  There is a tons of stuff there, unrelated to the Foundry.  So, it is a must listen.  Listen here, and consider supporting Priority One’s PayPal.

I’ve taken some time to write up a transcript of the Foundry-relevant parts of the interview.  Here goes.

Stuff Daniel Stahl said:

You mentioned the Foundry… it was really good to work with those guys.  You know those guys were working on Star Trek and introduced the Foundry in Star Trek Online last year.  So, being able to sit down with them and look at the Foundry and how it’s being developed for Neverwinter (and how it’s going to eventually benefit in Star Trek) was really a blessing, so I really enjoyed working with those guys and really trying to identify the strengths of the foundry and how it’s going to fit into Neverwinter and Star Trek.  So, there is some stuff there that I can talk about…

On experience with old NW tools:

The barrier of entry was really high, and it was challenging to make something that was easy to make and fun to play.  I mean, it seemed like there was great stuff that people make, but I was incapable of doing it.  So, one of the things I’m excited about is looking at the Foundry and the success we’ve had with Star Trek… if you carry that over to D&D, for example, you can start to imagine the power that you have, to have a simple toolset where you can quickly make a dungeon, quickly populate it, set up patrols, and figure out exactly where the traps go… All of that stuff and, in addition, tell stories, you can imagine that the Foundry is going to be just an awesome part of Neverwinter, and that’s something that I’m excited about.  I’ve played around with it quite a bit, and there are some great features that are coming with Neverwinter that are going to benefit Star Trek Foundry as well.  So, we’re excited about that.

General comment on season 6:

My number one goal right now is to make sure that season 6 has the right stuff.

continue reading…

So while this was supposed to be our 1 year anniversary episode complete with video as a vodcast, the curse of Podcast OMG reared its ugly head and ruined everything. The ONE TIME we actually needed the game to be up and online during our podcast live timeslot, Cryptic’s servers crash for hours, insuring our dream of a 1 year anniversary vodcast were shattered and dashed upon the rocks. How could you, Cryptic? How could you?

On top of that, Pamela randomly stopped recording, probably because someone tried to call us during the podcast, which resulted in us pretty much losing the first hour and 30 minutes of the show. With Terry not recording her typical backup, our last resort was the Trek Radio backup which, as you will hear, is not exactly the best quality recording. Happily, the second half of the show after the break returns to typical show sound.

This is also probably our most unorganized podcast, because we ran entirely without show notes and it took us 45 minutes AFTER our typical start time to get the vodcast working, for it to promptly end because Cryptic couldn’t keep the damn server afloat. Can you tell I’m bitter? Yeah, I’m bitter.

And no mission to review, either! We were going to run one live! Not now. Nope. So join us for our angry Podcast UGC 1 Year Anniversary, everyone! It’ll be a HOOT.

Click here to listen to the Podcast!
Right click and select “save as” to download the mp3

Mailbag – Email us and send us mission recommendations to podcastugc@starbaseugc.com !

END OF SHOW

Podcast UGC is distributed for free in mp3 format on www.starbaseugc.com and iTunes. Podcast UGC is syndicated on Trek Radio and Subspace Radio. It’s aired live on Tuesday evenings at 9:00 Eastern on www.trekradio.net and www.justin.tv/podcastugc. Any other distribution or airings of Podcast UGC is strictly prohibited without permission. Star Trek and Star Trek Online are the rights of their respected owners.

Foundry community members:

Here’s a reminder that STO community manager PWE_BranFlakes will be inviting people to join in on a conference call via Skype on Saturday Feb 25th to discuss Foundry Spotlight.

Here is the previous post that discussed it.

If you have not signed up or responded to kirkfat’s emails from podcasters@starbaseugc.com, then you probably won’t be able to join the call because they won’t know how to contact you. So if you wanna participate, then you’d better email ASAP with your Skype ID.

Please be ready and logged in online on Skype at no later than 12.45pm Pacific Standard Time (US) and they will try and add you to the call. The conference is due to start at 1pm.
^^ Click the link to see timezone conversion ^^

Looking forward to hearing you all tomorrow!

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for eager and over-achieving members of the Foundry community, who will take the following positions (and get paid nothing):

Foundry News Correspondent:  This person would post a weekly list of Foundry news, consisting of dev tweets, forum posts, or QA fixes.  Basically, this job would involve always having a word doc open, adding in news and links as you see them throughout the week, and then posting that list once a week.  You could include info from dev interviews, updates on contests, spotlights, etc.  Whatever you think is the top Foundry-related news of the week.  If someone else posted “breaking news” that week, then it doesn’t have to be part of the post.  It would also be nice if the person is a frequent listener to most, if not all, of the podcasts like Priority One, Stoked, etc.

Weekly Reviewer:  This person will write an illustrated blog review of one Foundry mission per week.  The review should be detailed, nicely illustrated, and in accordance with the guidelines for reviews (no spoilers on front page, basically).  This person can pick any mission to be reviewed that week.  If the reviewer deems the mission of superb quality, it will be stickied at the top of the blog or spotlighted somehow.  For nice examples of reviews, see Filbones, Tranman, or Galactrix’s reviews.

I would prefer that the applicants not be involved too heavily in the other various projects going on, from podcasts to machinima.  That way, these tasks will not be too time-consuming.

Any takers?  Please leave a comment, and tell me which one you’d be good at.  I will pick somebody for each.  Thanks!

With Bajor getting a new social zone form us to play around in, i think it time to look at what’s new on the playable mission side of foundry

Fed side

Lost Ship by ZeroNavigator

Demon Planet Adventure Edition by Pendra80

Checks and Balances by mygod_itsfullofstars

Demon Planet by Pendra80

KDF side

Gorn, But Not Forgotten by Pendra80

Now if you have a missions coming out this week please let us now by leaving a comment or go to the thread in the forums called promote your foundry mission, and remember just because they are winy does not mean that we can not enjoy their home world

Check out this week’s episode of PrimetimeUGC and the conclusion to our exclusive interview with h2orat, Mark Valentine from Perfect World.

filbones also takes us through a review of the new Featured Episode series along with our usual features and ads. Enjoy

PrimetimeUGC can be contacted at mailbag@primetimeugc.com

Follow us on Twitter @Primetime_UGC

Hello Starbase UGC community, it’s been a while but I’ve been back in the Foundry.

I was reading a thread in the STO forums about difficulties putting an NPC contact inside a drydock. The contact will either spawn below or on top of the drydock. I was surprised nobody used this method, so I thought I would make a little video and upload it here for everyone to see.

One thing I forgot to put in was make sure to spawn the ship before the you spawn the drydock. It does also work with enemy NPCs, but they can get stuck inside rather than come out to fight you.

Enjoy!

p

/p

We have a big episode tonight, people. It just keeps going! Hav and Terry have goodies to give away. Hmm … will there be another ship give away? Listen to find out!

I also rant about my mission ratings early on. I hope you enjoy that.

And Kirkfat’s return to the Foundry stars Starbase UGC’s unofficial mascot in the new mission “Helna of Troy”, which we review tonight on this episode. How can you not love it?

Click here to listen to the Podcast!
Right click and select “save as” to download the mp3

BLOCK A
Coming Soon

Block B
Coming Soon

Mission Reviews
Helna of Troy by Kirkfat

Mailbag – Email us and send us mission recommendations to podcastugc@starbaseugc.com !

END OF SHOW

Podcast UGC is distributed for free in mp3 format on www.starbaseugc.com and iTunes. Podcast UGC is syndicated on Trek Radio and Subspace Radio. It’s aired live on Tuesday evenings at 9:00 Eastern on www.trekradio.net and www.justin.tv/podcastugc. Any other distribution or airings of Podcast UGC is strictly prohibited without permission. Star Trek and Star Trek Online are the rights of their respected owners.

From the official post:

Hello and welcome to the first Foundry Challenge!  These challenges will be posted every 4 weeks, which includes 3 weeks to make your mission, and 1 week for the community to play through all of the missions and cast one [1] official vote for a winner. At the end of the 1 week of playthrough and voting, a winner, based on a simple majority of votes, will be announced and awarded 500 STO Promo Points for the C-Store.

Today we start the four-week run of the first Foundry Challenge: Conundrum on Risa

While on shore leave on Risa, the murder of a Stahlonian diplomat takes place on the island you are visiting. This diplomat was recently involved in talks with the Federation and KDF to join forces in combating the Borg advancement in the Alpha Quadrant. The loss of this diplomat is a tradgedy, and will cause a step back in negotiations, as the Stahlonian government was already worried about getting involved.

As the most senior ranking officer on the island at the time of incident, you have been tasked with investigating the events that lead up to the murder, including finding the culprit. As you begin questioning the locals, you stumble across clues that seem to follow some sort of pattern. As the investigation continues, you begin to realize there seems to be a riddle of sorts involved.

You will have from today, Wednesday February 15th, until Wednesday March 7th to make your Foundry mission and reply to this thread with its information in this format:

Mission Title:
Your @Handle:
Faction:
Level Requirement:
Mission Summary:

NOTE: Please do not publish your mission until the morning of Wednesday, March 7th.

Learn more….