A few Questions
 

So I'm in the process of trying to create a mission, and I've come up against quite a few things that I'm told the foundry simply can't do yet. I'll not ask about those here, but I have a few questions my fleetmates haven't been able to answer.

First off, Is the briefing room map used in first contact missions available in the foundry? If so, where is it? I've looked at every interior map and don't see it. I'd like to add a briefing to my mission and can't find a good premade map. If anyone has suggestions, I'd appreciate them.

Second, is it possible to add a second state to an npc group? I want to make an npc group either despawn or become hidden after an objective is complete, but I can only seem give a group one state, wereas some other things such as details (satellites) have a more advanced state selection, so they can become visible and then hide again later. Can I do this with npc groups?

Third, I know I can apply a costume to an enemy to make it portray a certian thing, so if I wanted to give an ensign level unit a swordmaster costume to make it melee, i can do that. But can I do that in reverse? IE, I'd like to make a federation unit run around and melee things, but It doesn't seem possible. Am I missing something that will enable this to happen?

And Lastly, is there any way to ensure a group of enemies always contains a set group of units regardless of scaling? I'd like a group to always contain about 3 ships to portray a command squad, but scaling seems to prevent this. I could use 3 seperate groups, but I'd prefer not to waste groups toward the map limit.

Thanks in advance.

Given that the interior maps are limited in quantity at the moment I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't available... yet. You may want to request it in the feedback forums, hopefully they add it to the list. When a room or setting is not available people usually just make their own: I had to make my own sick bay to my liking, for example.

No, not at this time; only detail objects as you've observed.

I don't think there's a costume for a fed that is equipped with melee weapons, no.

And unfortunately, short answer to your last question is also no. 3 separate groups seem to be the workaround and even then you have to do a trick to do something about the other actors in that group if you only want 3 and no more ships to show up.

Those were pretty much the answers I expected. No all the way around. Thank you though, I appreciate it.

I guess I'll go see about requesting the briefing room in the feedback forum.

Yeah, I'd like to see the observation deck as well. For now, I've seen people use ready rooms on bridge maps, and there's a pretty nice conference room on the Trimble interior map that would work well for official functions.

So would I be correct in assuming its also currently not possible to make a detail (such as a computer console) interactable like I can make an npc, so a player can use a console unrelated to an objective?

No, you just need to set what you want to have happen by using that console (forcefield/dialog/whatever) to appear when "Component Complete" and select the console you placed as the component. It doesn't need to be an objective in order for it to work.

It's tricky.

I took flak, for example, by placing a mission in a player's Ready Room. The thing is - the FOundry only allows to use one map: so it was the 2409 ready room that most of us were familiar with and this player was a Connie interior pilot and didn't get why it didn't look like the ship in his/her era.

:(

I can definitely see that happening. I'm avoiding that by forcing the player onto another ship for this part of the mission, so it avoids all those issues. It also allows me to do some other things, like build a level of the ship and add some ambient npcs for atmosphere. It also allows me to do what I'm working on now, which is to add a console that the player can access for optional info on the ship's crew and specs.

Perhaps the issue is that I'm just creating the map right now with no objectives attached to it? I had no issues earlier when i was building as I was adding objectives, but I've started to just build this map with no objectives yet.

So If I understand you, I just need to add an objective to the map and then it will allow me to add an unrelated interactable detail?

I'm sorry, but they shouldn't fault you for that. Some of our missions are just going to have to take place on our ship, and if the foundry can't create "our" ship, then people will just have to deal with being on a different federation vessel for a few minutes.

The problem is that most players do not know the limitations of the Foundry well enough, so they will blame you for things that cannot be done/are not your fault from time to time. :) Just ignore the comment, as long as you know better.