With Season 6, a number of new Federation mobs have been added to the game. They are the NPC counterparts of C-store ships.

They are:
- Galaxy Cruiser with Antimatter Spread and Saucer Separation
- Nebula Science Vessel with Tachyon Detection Grid
- Intrepid Science Vessel with Ablative Generators
- Rhode Island Science Vessel with Photonic Displacer
- Armitage Battleship with Photon Torpedo Point Defense System and Peregrine Fighters
- Prometheus Battleship with Multi-Vector Assault Mode


This is great for gameplay purposes, but raises a problem when working in the Foundry. If we place a Federation Cruiser group it has a chance of being one of the above "special" ships. This can raise a problem when we want to reskin ships.

I would love to be able to differentiate between different possible ships besides "Frigate", "Cruiser", and "Battleship". How about: "Frigate", "Cruiser Standard", "Cruiser Galaxy", "Escort", "Science Standard", "Science Nebula", "Science Rhode Island", "Science Intrepid", "Battleship Typhoon", "Battleship Armitage", and "Battleship Prometheus". The same kind of thing could be done for, say, the Gorn or the True Way factions.

This would resolve the issue, and give authors more control over NPC mobs.

I agree. It would also be especially useful if we could select which possible enemies in a group would spawn. Not just ships, but ground enemies as well.

Some better system needs to be in place to specify ships in general. Figuring out what's going to spawn with multiple players is very difficult. It's worse with the Battleship group, because with larger player amounts than 3, the initial ship will not spawn. So, if you reskin the original ship and have it be part of the storyline, it won't even be there with 4 or 5 players.

Wait, they actually have Galaxy with Saucer Sep? Now that must look weird on a reskinned ship... Do these actually spawn in the Foundry groups too?

I think what this shows is, once again, that the Foundry is just a secondary (or tertiary, or quaternary) consideration, if it's considered at all.

Yup.

I haven't tested it yet, but I suspect that when the ship saucer separates it will take the form of a Galaxy stardrive.

That explains something. I was playing the latest spotlight with Bazag the other day and when we were fighting there was a friendly mob fighting alongside us, and when the fight was over there was a Galaxy stardrive section that was named "Type 8 Shuttle."

What I suspect happened, after seeing your posts, is that Castmodean probably reskinned all or some of the contacts in a cruiser mob as shuttles. One of those reskinned mobs spawned as a galaxy (still looking like a shuttle of course) and it separated. The saucer section probably still looked like a shuttle, but the stardrive would have been a new spawn that kept the old name.

I would have thought it'd be the other way around - the stardrive keeps its reskinned appearance and name, and the saucer appears as its own mini-mob.

I don't think the other ships are that serious. The effects will be weird, but the Galaxy Class with Saucer Sep really screws things up. I figure the chances of this getting fixed are probably close to nil, unfortunately.

I suggest you add a post about this in the bug forum.

Apparently this problem isn't limited to the Foundry.

I was playing the Federation Minefield action, and the U.S.S. Landcaster (a battleship reskinned to look like an Imperial class cruiser) split into Alpha, Beta, and Gamma sections.

EDIT: Sorry, forgot to check the dates. Zombie thread.