Hi guys I've recently been invited to be a contributor here at SB UGC, a site which I expect will grow once UGC content can be experienced on holodeck.
I just want to say I really love Star Trek, I like STO, think it could be better but accept all the reasons why it is not.
Also admittedly I am a big critic of Cryptic in that if I feel they deserve harsh criticism, (exploration), you name it, I go at them hard, I also give them credit where credit is due and wouldn't be here making missions if I didn't think they were working hard to improve the game.
That being said in order to learn the Foundry Toolset I published a Mission called 'The Siege' of which so far there are two missions with the same name, mine is the one by Cruis.In :)
This will be a series of missions and will have recurring characters from them. Hopefully alot of people will like the missions and look forward to more from me personally and get to like my characters, sort of like an interactive book.
The current episode amount is not set in stone, it depends on how much life is left in the series as it goes on and whether I am dragging it or it is still fun to play.
With regard to advice and tips etc for the Foundry and making missions for STO, alot has been covered in these blogs so far that I have stated on the STO forums particularly the last blog which deals with a reason to fight enemies.
Immersion is very important, the following piece of advice is important: The player's only reason for playing or having fun in a mission is the dialogue mixed with the map/setting etc. Imagine if you took away all the dialogue from all the current missions in game, what are you left with? Go here, interact with this, shoot this, interact with this person or object, etc until done.
So you see the dialogue is important, it sets the stage. Now you have to be careful not to inject too much personality in bridge your crew dialogue, stick to the facts of what they want to see, maybe give them a 'professional Starfleet' opinion, something a science officer WOULD say given the situation or what he is talking about. Remember it isn't your bridge crew you are writing for, it's perhaps thousands of other persons.
Inject personality in your mission characters and build them up to make them have a 3D personality, but be very careful what you have your players Captain say and their bridge officers, when it is not story related.
Also making the appearance of conversation goes a long way. One example where cryptic missed the ball on this one was the Preserver story. Usually one of your BO's kept popping up telling you everything that was going on, it cried out for a situation where your crew all of your BO were involved in the conversation and added the bits and pieces to give one whole out look, rather than have on BO just automatically all knowing and telling you everything etc etc.
Read the book Preservers by Will Shatner and you will see what I mean, he got dialogue perfect imo in that book, it sucked the reader into the mystery.
Other than that a good healthy dose of alot of knowledge of everything trek from the mundane to the all important canon stuff will serve you well.
Read ST books and watch some series again. Alter some story lines, base some stories off of them, continue a story never before continued in the series.
I myself haven't watched much episodes in a long time and it's something I plan to change as well as re-reading some books.
thanks
-Cruis
