This is a great idea. As I said, one man's 5-star might be another man's 1-star and vice versa.

Maybe ratings should be based on the amount of content using these categories.

For example:

Space Combat: ***** (lots of it)
Ground Combat: *** (not so much of it)
Non-combat: * (hardly any of it)

This way players can make an informed decision about whether they want to play a mission based on its actual content, and not based on someone else's opinion of it. I'd much rather make my own mind up and I'd prefer everyone else did the same with my content.

As far as characters that cant be used, how expansive is this list expected to be?

I would imagine there are hundreds of people itching to create a mission that includes their favourite Star Trek characters, i was actually reading Memory Beta most of the day in work finding out where certain characters were in regard to a quest series i was going to make on holodeck.

Isn't the rule that you can recreate Starfleet or Star Trek property, so inanimate objects, but you can't recreate any of the characters, full stop?

Reason being the actors themselves own the rights to the characters they played. That's what happens when a show gets sold into syndication, I believe, and it's how those actors earn a living after the show stops producing new episodes, assuming they're lucky enough to get the show syndicated, which in this case they were. CBS owns the rights to everything not flesh-and-blood, so the ships and other locations, the weapons, uniforms etc, so they can legally allow us to use those things in the Foundry.

Now if you were able to track down Johnny Frakes and get him to do voiceover for your project then upload it with said voiceover, that's a pretty clear indication he's agreed to let you use his legally owned likeness of Riker, so that would be ok, cos you just say to Cryptic when they tell you to remove the mission "Er.. did you not hear, it's him himself doing the voice, noobs."

Since we don't have VO abilities there's no way to prove you have said permission though, unless you get it in writing, on paper, not email, sent to DStahl or one of his cohorts.

The bottom line is if you use the likeness of a Star Trek character and the actor who played that character finds out, they can sue Cryptic for an amount of money for every time the mission containing them has been played.

It's funny (strange, not haha) that we as writers can't claim the same recompense. But that's another thread entirely.

Will the missions that are made Have Diffrent level of rewards for the amount of stars they are given so if a 1 star map gives 100 xp would a 5 star mission give 500 xp

How about letting the authors categorise their mission based on content that's maybe catered to a specific career choice, so either Engineering, Science or Tactical, and maybe a General type as well. Hell, why stop there? Make your target audience Tactical plus Science. You know you're gonna need guns and a healer, you see what I mean?

Engineering and Science missions might be more puzzle/drama-based whereas Tactical would doubtless be more combat oriented. This allows people to not select missions they feel will bore them and rate them down because they were never part of the target audience to begin with.

When you're making any TV or media project, the first question the commissioning editors will ask is "Who's your target audience?" Even before they ask how much it's going to cost.

If you respond with "Everybody in the world" they're gonna laugh you out of their office.

I want, in fact I say we all need a "Target Audience" field which can be seen by potential players so they know if it'll interest them or not.

So I just started reading up on the foundry. I have a mission in mind but it involves rescuing Enterprise-E, Captain Data and Ambassador Jean-Luc Picard.

If I can't use their likenesses, that would pretty much be it for that story...(I have others not involving series characters, but this one was the first one i wanted to do).

Is there a place to see this "not allowed list"?

Best way to think about it is if its in any Star Trek show, movie, book and/or Cryptic did not use it in any of there own content then its safe to say we cant use it either. If they did make a list then it would be massive, then again you could always e-mail CBS and ask :p

Just an idea here!

I was thinking it would be kind of cool for the author to be able to choose to be anonymous until a certain amont of players have reviewed the mission. Flagging would still be in effect, but this would give every mission an equal chance to get a good review in the beginning and would prevent anyone from giving a bad review simply beacuse they dislike a certain player. Wether or not you like someone or not may have nothing to do with their ability to make a great story and mission. And it would give us a chance to be surprised maybe a special ceremony or something when the authors real identity is revealed.

Thats all!

Look, let's make this simple: Don't use canon characters in any stories you create.

'nuff said

Would the story not work is it would be any other ambassador or captain?