In spite of all the anticipation in earning enough dilithium ore and then purchasing a Foundry slot, I confess to feeling rather disappointed. I thought it would be easy to build a mission. One of the elements that is giving me the most trouble is STATES, specifically the hidden, when, and visible options. I really need someone to explain these to me, please.

http://www.startrekonline.com/foundry_video

HUZZAH!!! VIDEOS!!!!

I still can not buy slots. Is anyone else experiencing this?

its relatively easy but there is still a bit of a learning curve at first. these tutorials may help. http://www.startrekonline.com/foundry_video

States are basically when an object appears or disappears on the map. so for example you want to have a contact beam in.

you could place a reach marker onto the map. add a contact onto the map and go into the states for that contact. the first option will say hidden - immediately - to visible. change 'immediately' to 'on component reached' and then select the reach marker you placed on the map.

now when the player reaches that marker the contact will appear.



or you may want an object to disappear when a mission objective completes. so place your object and go to states. leave the first option as immediately as you want it to start on the map, then go down to the one that says visible - never - hidden. change 'hidden' to 'objective complete' and then pick the objective from the mission goals on the storyboard.

so when that part of the mission is complete the object will disappear.

i hope that is somewhat clear. it can be quite tricky at first. either way States are not that important to simple mission construction. this is the more advanced stuff and you can pretty much ignore that if you want to begin with.

How much Dilithium do you have?

Yeah, it's a big disappointment, but they are working to fix it.
In my opinion, here is the best resource:
http://starbaseugc.com/

Be well.

Way more than enough for the basic starter package.

That's a common bug. The Devs are trying to fix it.

@bluegeek:
All the month of May I had the 10K and could not buy the slot the button refused to activate. But on June 1st the system upgraded and I could buy. I now have 8 slots. Maybe you should try a manual patch? I don't know if I would go as far as re-installing.

I'm in the same boat as some times I have 8 slots and other times I have 1/0.

As to the "devs are working on it", this was listed as being fixed a couple of patches ago although, as noted up above, many of us are still locked out.

Branflakes said we needed to send in a GM ticket to ask for a correction. I;m still waiting.