I'm working on my first foundry mission. I want to keep it pretty simple (like me) while I experiment with some of my options. Right now I'm basically just using several maps, each with a pop up dialogue, reach objective, and 4 regular objectives (basic scan or transport stops). I think I mostly have that straight but here is what I'm stuck on right now.

I want to include pretty massive background space combat. I'd like to have one enemy facing a large number of other enemies but I want the single enemy to win (or at least, to not lose).

I've tried putting a Borg cube up against a couple of the weaker version groups. The cube tends to die rather quickly. If I set the cube to true combat and the other force to timid I get the outcome I want (cube survives) but there is no battle. I guess what I'm trying to do is set up a boss type battle and I can't seem to get it working. Is it even possible?

Am I missing a way to set NPC levels? If possible, it would be quite easy to set the single enemy higher and the larger group lower.

Also, while I'm here. I published what I had last night so I could get a friend to look at it for me. I received an email that said it was successfully published but I can't find it when I search. Does each mission have to be reviewed before it can be accessed. I was checking some of the sto wiki stuff and I'm not quite clear on this.

Thank you for your time.

As far as seeing your published mission. First you need to become a reviewer. It's as simple as clicking a button. Open the mission menu, click to the Foundry, then click down to the Browse All tab. There's a button at the bottom "Become a Reviewer" click it, agree to the EULA. It costs nothing and there's no obligations. Now you should see a new tab called Review Content, this is where the missions that haven't gotten 5 reviews live.

Also make sure you are on a character that is high enough level to see your mission. Mission level is based on what species of enemies you put down. Borg, for instance, make a mission level 41 or higher while Romulans make it 16 or higher.

As for combat balance. That's a difficult. Keep in mind that your enemy and friendly mobs will scale to the level of the player. So when you're testing with a foundry character they are level 1. But go test a published version with a vice admiral and they'll be tougher. So I would suggest playing with things and doing test publishes to see how the fight works out in the real game environment rather than in the Foundry map test.

Though it may, on the surface, look to be as simple as slapping mobs inside each other?s attack circles and using triggers to make them appear (and thus start fighting), staging mass combats is actually one of the trickier things a foundry author can pull-off.

It can be very difficult to predict the outcomes of such battles unless one side markedly out-guns the other. I use a lot of them, including some that begin so they are in-progress once the player arrives on scene. Indeed, to avoid using the warp-in effect which starts cycling very fast once the fighting ends and looks uber-sloppy, it is often best to do so. Having enemies warp-in to a battle is usually okay since they will be dead once the combat is over; allies create a problem since they start doing it once the fighting stops.

On one mission where I did this I was constantly getting reviews saying that a final battle was way too hard or way too easy. It would just depend how things went and how long it took the play to get to and enter the battle. It is always a balancing act and always an imprecise one. Experimentation and a massive number of live test runs is the only real solution there.

I appreciate the response. I was afraid that was the case about NPC levels. So it sounds like there is no real way to make one tougher than a group (too bad there isn't a cluster of just fighters that I could put a costume on).

Thanks for the bit about becoming a reviewer. I must have glossed over that while I was getting so frustrated, lol.

If you just want to make it so the Cube wipes out a number of attacking enemies, then just place a fighter 02 group, and reskin them as frigates, or escorts if it's a Fed/Klingon group where plenty of ship options are available. The trick is to make sure you use only fast ships that can conceivably maneuver similar to a fighter. A huge cruiser will look ridiculous flying around like a fighter.

If you want to make the battle seem more impressive, place a frigate group set to timid (and ideally with the damaged animation, maybe even leaking, but you can't currently do that since space animations are bugged). And then add the reskinned fighters to make it look like a battle is actually taking place. The cube should wipe out the reskinned fighters and then move to destroy the remaining "timid" ships. You could also place a few NPC contacts that the Cube obviously won't attack, but they'll just be there as damaged ships. Maybe a couple of the destroyed cruisers or destroyed Mirandas detail objects.

Hopefully we get space animations back soon because it's really hindering us right now.

I must've missed the fighter options. Might have misread it as frigates or something. After a while my eyes started going crossed, lol.

And I thought something was funny about animations and behaviors. I couldn't figure out how to make things warp in or vent plasma. Some of the options were clearly for ground (a sitting ship, lol).

I'm looking forward to getting home and trying out a few if these things.

Also.... you can place fighters then reskin them to LOOK like frigates or larger....

In the last foundry challenge, I placed fighter swarms then reskinned them as Aeon timeships..... hehehe

The Borg are pretty pathetic NPCs, because they are endgame ennemies and endgame mobs are scaled to the average players' gaming skill.

If you want them to destroy a cruiser 01 or 02 you'll probably need two borg battleship groups, but you have to make sure that only one at a time is fighting the player, because most people can't fight two battleships at the same time.