More big battles!

gofasternow

Just recently, I ended up finding a YouTube video of some of the Dominion War's space battles and part of me went "Y'know, I'd love something like this in STO." Now, we already had a big battle with the Jem'Hadar in "The 2800"'s end, but I'd kill for a storyline of that sort with that big scale of warring. I missed how, like in the mission with the Doomsday Weapon, you had all of these ships, allied and foe alike, just warping in and kicking copious amounts of tail.

I'd love to have something like that again. Please, Cryptic, do so!

ashkrik23

Well you can always play Starbase 24. The battles there are huge.

hypl

It would be unwise for Cryptic to make any content involving large scale fleet battles until their engine can actually support it. Once the engine is capped out with entities and effects, they begin to drop out. Frame rate begins to drop. Torpedoes become invisible. Cannon shots turn into simple colored rectangles, but at least you can still see them. As sound effects continue to overlap one another, eventually it bugs out and requires a restart of the client to fix. This has been my experience playing content like Starbase 24 or Starbase Fleet Defense, as well as some encounters in the Dyson Sphere Contested Zone.

It's not difficult to put up with, but it does sort of rob you of a joyful experience when you really want to experience an epic massive fleet battle.

confedinblue

Maybe, just maybe, someday we'll see something like what Eve Online saw recently:

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/01/28/unpaid-bill-costs-gamer-200000-in-eve-online/

lan451

hypl wrote: »

It would be unwise for Cryptic to make any content involving large scale fleet battles until their engine can actually support it. Once the engine is capped out with entities and effects, they begin to drop out. Frame rate begins to drop. Torpedoes become invisible. Cannon shots turn into simple colored rectangles, but at least you can still see them. As sound effects continue to overlap one another, eventually it bugs out and requires a restart of the client to fix. This has been my experience playing content like Starbase 24 or Starbase Fleet Defense, as well as some encounters in the Dyson Sphere Contested Zone.

It's not difficult to put up with, but it does sort of rob you of a joyful experience when you really want to experience an epic massive fleet battle.

Pretty much this. As much as I love large scale battles, the game just can't handle them very well. The 20 man SB defense is one that I play often, but it gets really rough. I sometimes see it in Crystalline Entity every once in a while. Until that can be fixed up, more large scale battles aren't a good idea right now.

anothervisitor

confedinblue wrote: »

Maybe, just maybe, someday we'll see something like what Eve Online saw recently:

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/01/28/unpaid-bill-costs-gamer-200000-in-eve-online/

This made me chuckle. If you think that STO is an expensive game then try EVE. It takes tons of money and time to build up your strength, and unlike in STO, you can lose everything you worked for. That's why I would never play EVE.
I'll choose STO over such a harsh and expensive environment any day. Cheers devs, there might be some problems on here but at least this game is much more player friendly.

alfamega

confedinblue wrote: »

Maybe, just maybe, someday we'll see something like what Eve Online saw recently:

hahaha... forget it. log on to eve, jump in to a system with 100+players and watch the node crash, as well as a killmail for your ship from over 10 systems away.

johngazman

confedinblue wrote: »

Maybe, just maybe, someday we'll see something like what Eve Online saw recently:

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/01/28/unpaid-bill-costs-gamer-200000-in-eve-online/

I think we are. Cryptic have an unpaid bill due, and the 4th Anniversary is how they're going to pay for it.

paxfederatica

hypl wrote: »

It would be unwise for Cryptic to make any content involving large scale fleet battles until their engine can actually support it. Once the engine is capped out with entities and effects, they begin to drop out. Frame rate begins to drop. Torpedoes become invisible. Cannon shots turn into simple colored rectangles, but at least you can still see them. As sound effects continue to overlap one another, eventually it bugs out and requires a restart of the client to fix. This has been my experience playing content like Starbase 24 or Starbase Fleet Defense, as well as some encounters in the Dyson Sphere Contested Zone.

It's not difficult to put up with, but it does sort of rob you of a joyful experience when you really want to experience an epic massive fleet battle.

As far as battles in Cryptic missions are concerned, the Elachi attack on New Romulus in the Republic storyline (at the end of "Devil's Choice") is the new gold standard for epic STO space battles IMHO. Instead of one ginormous conflagration, it is broken up into three waves - each still big enough to produce an epic experience, but without putting such a huge burden on the game engine.

As a Foundry author, what I like to do is make long and sustained battles instead of huge ones or even waves like the one in "Devil's Choice". That is, instead of spawning 12 mobs per side all at once and letting them have at it (which tends to flame out quickly anyway), what I'll do is spawn just a few per side at first, but then trigger each new mob after that to spawn immediately when a previously spawned mob is destroyed. The resulting battles make up in continuity and duration what they lack in sheer size. This way you can still have a long and epic battle, but again without taxing the engine to the point where the experience suffers.

coupaholic

anothervisitor wrote: »

This made me chuckle. If you think that STO is an expensive game then try EVE. It takes tons of money and time to build up your strength, and unlike in STO, you can lose everything you worked for. That's why I would never play EVE.
I'll choose STO over such a harsh and expensive environment any day. Cheers devs, there might be some problems on here but at least this game is much more player friendly.

Not to de-rail the thread, but you do EVE a great dis-service. There are means and ways to get into the endgame from day 1 in a sandbox, and the idea of actually losing what you risk is a great feature in my book. Sometimes I wish STO had the same idea, it'll fix the balance issues :P

Anyway, I apologise. Back on topic.

I would like to see bigger scale stuff in STO yes but the engine will cry and die if Cryptic attempted it. These days it's not only the ships the game needs to worry about, it's all the fancy graphical effects and the tons of pets flying all over the place.

As a test I'd love to see an all carrier attempt at a 20 man fleet action, just to see how the game will cope with it.

somebob

paxfederatica wrote: »

As far as battles in Cryptic missions are concerned, the Elachi attack on New Romulus in the Republic storyline (at the end of "Devil's Choice") is the new gold standard for epic STO space battles IMHO. Instead of one ginormous conflagration, it is broken up into three waves - each still big enough to produce an epic experience, but without putting such a huge burden on the game engine.

I agree, and completely disagree as well.

The engine (as usual) totally crapped out once a bunch of things got on screen and started fighting. I spent most of the battle dealing with invisible energy beams, invisible torpedoes, and none of the usual on-screen information like shield states around a target and such.

And keep in mind, I'm running STO on absolute max slider levels (but no AA).

The Cryptic engine absolutely and utterly can not deal with large numbers of things on screen. Which is really sad, as the epic battles that result would be just amazing to see.

timezarg

Participate in a 10v10 arena PvP private match. Plenty of activity then.

xaosmg123

Starbase 24, Klingon Defense Force, Gorn Minefield, all space Fleet Actions and any space Arena/Assault/Capture + Hold

All are big fun space battles!!!


Also the kerrat warzone is EPIC as heck, and there are some episodes where you fight alongside a ton of npcs against a ton more enemy npcs. I know in the second klingon episode series you fight with an entire fleet from one house against another klingon house's fleet. E P I C!


Oh, also you can do custom premade "challanges" I like to use this with some friends and find some of the highly geared players. When in battle, even though we get t=steamrolled - its a learning experience and damn fun to see how long i can survive against some of the best players