Would it be possible to introduce some method of modifying the available powers and equipment of the NPC enemies that we're placing on our maps?

I only ask because the average NPC anything is incredibly easy to burn through and the ability to modify their powers or even grant them use of the item sets would be a huge boost to our RP dynamic.

Would this be possible or is it just completely out of the question (or is it already in and I totally missed it)?

I think the official answer is no because Cryptic is a bit uneasy about Foundry authors making their NPCs too weak and therefore exploit missions.

Well that's unfortunate, I was hoping to make enemies stronger and more challenging, but I definitely see where Cryptic is coming from with making enemies too weak.

The answer then would be to create a point system based on the weapons/equipment on a ship, and a NPC could never go below a certain point value or be missing certain equipment pieces (like shields, etc). After that, make it so that the base BO abilities couldn't be removed; think that would be a good start?

Aye, I understand Cryptic's thinking here. Could turn some enemies into big ol' bags of farmin', and that's not cool.

Still, they could at least make virtually every enemy group in the game have enemy, friendly, and neutral versions for all factions. Really annoying when the Remans you're fighting alongside have to act like Starfleet officers.

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The LAST gthing they want to do, is make the same mistake that Paragon did with the City of Heroes Mission Archtect UGC creation system. There's a reason why that one is essentially dead; while STO's Foundry (when it's up ) thrives.

If you do that, you allow near one click, or AoE 'farm' missions, and yes, while they can be reported, as was proved in CoH, 100,000+ users can make such missions faster than a small GM team can check them out and ban them.

I understand that, which is why in my last post I suggested a point system to ensure that enemies don't become weaker than the standard ships that Cryptic already has in the game.

The only thing that I really want to do is make enemies stronger and have more control over their behavior to better fit the stories that I and everybody else make

Perhaps instead of letting us modify our enemies, they could give us a set of new NPCs with particular abilities that we could use for variety?

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This would b a neat idea.

Yeah, some generic ships that we could recostume would be a great idea, and also allow us to put something like a dreadnaught into a one player mission.

You could have three criteria, like it's agility, offense and defence, and pick the one that has the right balance for the NPC you want to have, and by doing this it'd be impossible to make super weak ones (although why anyone'd need something weaker than a pair of frigates is beyond me).