Error in your tutorial

drivecat

I do apologize if this is the wrong panel for this information.

While I am not a navy person, I have been at sea more than I lived my life on land. In the start up mission and tutorial your Commander Davis should be referenced as acting Captain Davis or the XO or the CO depending on the situation. He told my character to go around Northeast of the warp core. Since there is no Northeast in space, I seriously doubt he would say this on a space vessel, much less than anyone would at sea on Earth. Ships do have a inclination to change direction.

As acting Captain, my instructions would be to head fore and starboard around it or simply clockwise. You kids at Cryptic or Perfect World, need to study some nautical phrases about as much as those writer on the shows. I enjoyed watching those shows in the past but they always made mistakes with nautical terminology and ranks. You are best to observe some actual naval footage or visit a naval shipyard.

Keep up the hard work and maybe this will pay off for you, when you get done with college. Then you can get a job working with Cisco Systems, EDS, or Microsoft. The Navy is a good life also, I am a US Merchant Marine myself.

deyvad

Ah ha good one!!

I can imagine some forum posting like....

WTF!!!11 where is the starboard?? I went everywhere and couldn't find it, this game is broken, FIX IT NOWW!!!!11

Where's the actor captain??? is the mission bugged??


Don't forget the world is filled with idiots. And with people who don't master english.
They have to dumb it down as much as possible, otherwise they lose on potential income.

The motto is: Keep it simple, stupid!

As for rank and nautical terminology, I would imagine that after 4 centuries and countless civilizations encounteered, 20th century nautical terminology would probably be left in history books and a new terminology would be used.

You'll understand once you get older.

eagledraco

When the game launched over 2 years ago I remember someone pointing out that Zachary Quinto talked about your shields in the Tutorial as Forward, Back, Left and Right. When he should have said Fore, Aft, Port, Starboard.

Cryptic's reply to this is they did it on purpose - to remove any confusion over nautical terms. Why? Because most games have never served in a navy. A yep, there are dummies playing the game who need this dumbed down. Sad but true.

wildmousex

Generally speaking, most of the people playing STO are not very knowledgeable on nautical phrases - - and so their use of the term "north east" instead of " starboard forward" probably avoid's them a-lot more headaches.

drivecat

I don't believe the people who followed Star Trek are "stupid" at all, it is my considered opinion it takes a degree of intelligence to even be a viewer of the show. As for dumbing it down, that is a poor excuse, for a lack of learning. What I mean by that, we have too much dumbing it down in the US to the point young adults don't know how to read or write. People have a desire to learn even if it just to enjoy a game. I also play poker, I had to learn it to play it.

As for the jargon, the best film I watched in the theater in 1983 was "Star Trek:Wrath of Kahn" with my now departed wife. She and I greatly enjoyed that film. It had all the elements of two WWII u-boats fighting. They piped people aboard ship, they called officers Mister, they did about everything just as they should. The TV shows and this online game don't seem to have the same aptitude.

I am truly sorry, I didn't mean to come in here and start some debate. I probably wouldn't have even responded to the comments but that crack about "You'll understand once you get older." was very disrespectful and calling everyone stupid you should be ashamed of yourself. I am as old as I plan to get.

Don't bother coming back at me, just apologize to the others if you wish. I am done here.

thecosmic1

While I do understand your points, drivercat, the point the others are making is that this game is being played by people of various ages and cultures all around the world. And what interests you, due to your Navy background, has very little interest to a 7 year old in Spain who just wants to pew-pew ships.

While I prefer a little more hard science/facts in my sci-fi I also understand that 99% of the time Trek wasn't focused on facts. You talk about WoK but there were 726 episodes of Trek where those types of facts were generally overlooked and ignored. Trek has never really focused on those things to any degree because the emphasis was on the characters and stories rather then the details.

kobayashlmaru

Naval terminology aside, you are all missing a key point to his post. Northeast is confusing even as an in-game direction. why can't you say "clockwise" or "behind me" or show use the path tool from ESD? A friend of mine ran the tutorial and had no idea what he was talking about "Northeast" and went back up the way he came thinking that was north then east. I later explained to him they are referring to the minimap, not the direction in game.

It's important that this stays as confusing as it is though. The directions only get worse as the game progresses, so getting used to it at the beginning is important for your success later on.

thecosmic1

kobayashlmaru wrote: »

why can't you say "clockwise" or "behind me" or show use the path tool from ESD?

Surprisingly I read a report a month ago about how the term "clockwise" is being slowly phased out of the vocabulary as children are generally only familiar with digital clocks now and have little to no experience with traditional face-with-hands clocks.

anazonda

While yes, there would be more correct terms and cool things to say, yada yada yada, I have to agree with some of the above posters.

The average gamer barely knows where north it, much less aft, or starboard, ventral or dorsal.
It needs to be dumbed down.

Just look at the Skill system... People could'n handle it, so it was dumbed down... Now people seem happy, despite most of the specialization is gone.

You may think that most players are Star Trek fans... Sadly that dosen't seem to be the case... I saw people asking who Worf was the other day... Seriously...?
Half these people have no clue. and the other half are busy answering questions to the first half

commadorebob

I'm creating a walk-through series of all of the missions in STO. My thoughts on the tutorial can be found here.

But yes, the Tutorial has a few plot holes.

starfleetfc

Well, STO still has text saying "left or right shield failing" when it's should actually be port and starboard shields. Funny thing is, the computer even says "port/starboard shield failing"

zodiemish

drivecat wrote: »

I am truly sorry, I didn't mean to come in here and start some debate. I probably wouldn't have even responded to the comments but that crack about "You'll understand once you get older." was very disrespectful and calling everyone stupid you should be ashamed of yourself. I am as old as I plan to get.

Hmmmmm

Keep up the hard work and maybe this will pay off for you, when you get done with college. Then you can get a job working with Cisco Systems, EDS, or Microsoft. The Navy is a good life also, I am a US Merchant Marine myself.

And this ^ wasn't disrespectful and rude? You came in here swinging and sent out a few punches, but I guess you forgot when you punch someone or someones you normally get punched back.

Don't bother coming back at me, just apologize to the others if you wish. I am done here.

10 bucks says your not... Reverse psychology. now he is not going to post again so I lose that bet.

brigadooom

thecosmic1 wrote: »

Surprisingly I read a report a month ago about how the term "clockwise" is being slowly phased out of the vocabulary as children are generally only familiar with digital clocks now and have little to no experience with traditional face-with-hands clocks.

Really? I has a sad.

tangolight

drivecat wrote: »

I enjoyed watching those shows in the past but they always made mistakes with nautical terminology and ranks. You are best to observe some actual naval footage or visit a naval shipyard.

Besides the other reasons already pointed out in this thread, they even did this in the shows. Thus, this is canon. This game reflects the shows, which in turn did not strictly observe naval terminology and procedures. Starfleet is not the navy in space.

starfleetfc wrote: »

Well, STO still has text saying "left or right shield failing" when it's should actually be port and starboard shields. Funny thing is, the computer even says "port/starboard shield failing"

I've been playing since beta, and I don't remember the computer ever saying anything but left and right shields.

kobayashlmaru

brigadooom wrote: »

Really? I has a sad.

I also read a report suggesting that younger generations have a lot more trouble reading maps and understanding direction, presumably since everything is done with GPS these days.

tacofangs

While Starfleet is based on Earth Naval traditions, it's been centuries, and some things may have changed.

I did not write the dialog there, but your map ALWAYS has cardinal directions. Even in space there is a little N(orth) up arrow on the map. I can only guess that north east was given as it is easily understood by the majority of people, and while it might not make sense on an actual ship, if you were to look at your map, it should be apparent which way was meant.

lordmalak1

I noticed a couple days ago that some of my DOFF's are at rank 'Petty officer'. Apparently time doesn't erase some traditions.

thecosmic1

lordmalak1 wrote: »

I noticed a couple days ago that some of my DOFF's are at rank 'Petty officer'. Apparently time doesn't erase some traditions.

Miles O'Brien was a Petty Officer (Senior Chief) much of his career.

drogyn1701

I did not write the dialog there, but your map ALWAYS has cardinal directions. Even in space there is a little N(orth) up arrow on the map. I can only guess that north east was given as it is easily understood by the majority of people, and while it might not make sense on an actual ship, if you were to look at your map, it should be apparent which way was meant.

I would expect that for ease of understanding, the Federation would probably have a "Galactic North" and that north = up. That way all their 2D maps would be oriented the same. We do this now. We have generally agreed that north = up. There's really no reason it has be up, as in space, up and down are relative. We could easily put Africa and South America at the top of the map.

3D mapping and course plotting would likely work very differently, though I imagine most human designers would still equate Galactic North with up.

Of course this is a game, so at the end of the day you need directions easily understood by 21st century folks

beezle23

brigadooom wrote: »

Really? I has a sad.

Cheer up, maybe it means "deasil" and widdershins" will make a comeback. :P

logicalspock

The OP is rude, but correct about the directions. They always refer to directions on the ship using naval terminology.


Cardinal directions are based off of a 2-diminsional approximation of a planet's surface with respect to its axis (polar coordinates). Space is three dimensional and on the show they use spherical coordinates and do not name the cardinal direction. The spherical coordinates seem to use a division other than degrees (perhaps grads or 1/1000's). It is not clear if the frame of reference is the ship or the center of the galaxy, or both.

anazonda

logicalspock wrote: »

The OP is rude, but correct about the directions. They always refer to directions on the ship using naval terminology.


Cardinal directions are based off of a 2-diminsional approximation of a planet's surface with respect to its axis (polar coordinates). Space is three dimensional and on the show they use spherical coordinates and do not name the cardinal direction. The spherical coordinates seem to use a division other than degrees (perhaps grads or 1/1000's). It is not clear if the frame of reference is the ship or the center of the galaxy, or both.

But... STO isnt 3D...? It's 2.5D

kobayashlmaru

tacofangs wrote: »

While Starfleet is based on Earth Naval traditions, it's been centuries, and some things may have changed.

I did not write the dialog there, but your map ALWAYS has cardinal directions. Even in space there is a little N(orth) up arrow on the map. I can only guess that north east was given as it is easily understood by the majority of people, and while it might not make sense on an actual ship, if you were to look at your map, it should be apparent which way was meant.

It's been a while since I played the tutorial and actually read it, but does the text indicate to press "M" to see the map in this dialogue? As a tutorial, a new player won't know it's a map direction unless it's stated somewhere.

direphoenix

drivecat wrote: »

I do apologize if this is the wrong panel for this information.

While I am not a navy person, I have been at sea more than I lived my life on land. In the start up mission and tutorial your Commander Davis should be referenced as acting Captain Davis or the XO or the CO depending on the situation. He told my character to go around Northeast of the warp core. Since there is no Northeast in space, I seriously doubt he would say this on a space vessel, much less than anyone would at sea on Earth. Ships do have a inclination to change direction.

As acting Captain, my instructions would be to head fore and starboard around it or simply clockwise. You kids at Cryptic or Perfect World, need to study some nautical phrases about as much as those writer on the shows. I enjoyed watching those shows in the past but they always made mistakes with nautical terminology and ranks. You are best to observe some actual naval footage or visit a naval shipyard.

Keep up the hard work and maybe this will pay off for you, when you get done with college. Then you can get a job working with Cisco Systems, EDS, or Microsoft. The Navy is a good life also, I am a US Merchant Marine myself.

There are certain limitations with this game and a lot of the people that play it. First, a lot of people are not familiar with naval lingo. It seems to often sound "alien" and exotic to most people, and while some may even like the way those terms sound, fewer understand it, and an even smaller portion of those people will make any attempt to learn it. If these forums are any example, then you should know that this game is filled with people who, even while in a "Star Trek" environment, seem inexplicably xenophobic and resistant to adapting or accepting customs or mannerisms different from those they are used to.

Second, is the problem of level design. If you have spent any time looking at any of the maps in-game, or even through Foundry, you would notice that interior spaces are not built with any exterior in mind. They are built as rooms sitting in space, connected by hallway/corridor modules. Even interiors of terrestrial buildings are contrary to what shape their exteriors may look like. As such, there are no "orientations". There is no "forward", "aft", "port", or "starboard" side of ship interiors because our interiors are not built as ships, where you have a hull and then separate the interior space with bulkheads in order to form spaces and corridors; they're just rooms attached by hallway "tubes" floating in limbo. The only interior that almost pulls off the illusion of actually being inside the space you're supposed to be in is the Belfast interior.

(on a side note, I have the distinct feeling this won't change with the Neverwinter Foundry update, and interiors will still be room modules connected by hallway modules instead of getting a general space that is supposed to be the interior of the overall ship/deck/building in which you separate with wall/bulkhead units to form the rooms/corridors)

drogyn1701 wrote: »

I would expect that for ease of understanding, the Federation would probably have a "Galactic North" and that north = up. That way all their 2D maps would be oriented the same. We do this now. We have generally agreed that north = up. There's really no reason it has be up, as in space, up and down are relative. We could easily put Africa and South America at the top of the map.

3D mapping and course plotting would likely work very differently, though I imagine most human designers would still equate Galactic North with up.

Of course this is a game, so at the end of the day you need directions easily understood by 21st century folks

On Earth, we orient ourselves to the most stable points on the planet: The North and South poles. Anywhere you are on the globe, you can generally get the direction of one of those, know where the opposite is and know that in one direction perpendicular to that line is East, and the other direction is West.

This, however is on an essentially 2D surface plane (even if that plane is wrapped around a sphere).

On a Galactic scale however, we can still do the same thing! Even though the stars are all floating around in 3D space, the entire galaxy spins on an axis, and nearly all the matter spinning around that axis ends up on or near a relatively flat disc we call the "galactic plane". This will be our 2-D surface that we will look at like a top-down map.

"But what will we orient ourselves to? We're all spinning around in this galaxy! Picking one direction as north for the entire galaxy won't work because we're all spinning around the core and our relative directions would be constantly changing! Actual "North" and "South" to the galactic core goes in directions away from the galactic plane, spinning as the galaxy's equator!"

Well, there's one point that's identifiable in the galaxy from pretty much everywhere else in the galaxy: The galactic core. The center from which everything else in the galaxy spins around. And it doesn't change, and our positions to other star systems relative to the galactic core stays fairly stable as we spin around this merry-go-round.

And there we have our first direction! "Coreward", or toward the center of the galaxy! This would make our second direction the opposite of coreward which we can call... "Edgeward"! That's right! toward the edge of the galaxy! This might not be so difficult after all!

But wait, we need two more directions to move along the galactic plane, what could those be? Well, the great thing about being in a spinning galaxy like the Milky Way is that it spins in one direction around the core! We'll call that direction, "Spinward"! And moving against the direction of this galactic spin? "Anti-spinward"!

"What are some examples of how to use these directions?"

I'm glad you asked! Here's some examples:

"Memory Alpha is one sector coreward of Sol"

"The Romulans are losing worlds to the Klingons on their edgeward borders"

"You'll have to travel three sectors spinward to get to Qo'NoS from K-7"

tangolight

Sure, it could be more accurate, and even canon.

But really, if the game asked you to set your heading for 115.246 mark 92.908, would you even know which way to go right away? And that's assuming you understand what that means in the first place. And how many people do you think would NOT get it, and complain?

sameriker

I am sorry this thread is "technically" my fault. Drivecat is a 68 year old retired Lt. Commander in the US Merchant Marines. He is a neighbor who live a few blocks from me. While I was at his house working on his computer, I introduced him to this game and told him to address any questions he had to this forum.

Keep up the hard work and maybe this will pay off for you, when you get done with college. Then you can get a job working with Cisco Systems, EDS, or Microsoft. The Navy is a good life also, I am a US Merchant Marine myself.

I am a college student attending SVSU and he probably assumed this is a college project. I am disappointed that the first few posters didn't seem to pleasant and came out swinging at the old man. He was seriously offering his advice and the very first reply ended with "grow up".

I will have a talk with him, when I get down that way again. He doesn't get out all being disabled. I don't see him that often, but I thought he needed people to talk to and since he was an electrician in the USMM I figure STO might have filled that empty space in his life.
He is a man of his word, I suppose now I have to find him another hobby.

deyvad

drivecat wrote: »

I probably wouldn't have even responded to the comments but that crack about "You'll understand once you get older." was very disrespectful and calling everyone stupid you should be ashamed of yourself. I am as old as I plan to get.

Don't bother coming back at me, just apologize to the others if you wish. I am done here.

Great, it was meant to be disrespectful, did you even read your own post??

drivecat wrote: »

[...]You kids at Cryptic or Perfect World, need to study some nautical phrases about as much as those writer on the shows [...]

Keep up the hard work and maybe this will pay off for you, when you get done with college. Then you can get a job working with Cisco Systems, EDS, or Microsoft. The Navy is a good life also, I am a US Merchant Marine myself.

So basicly you can insult others, but god forbid the same be done towards thou

As for apologies, none are needed, I truly believe the world is filled with idiots. Just watch tonites evening news, you'll see...

tangolight

sameriker wrote: »

I am disappointed that the first few posters didn't seem to pleasant and came out swinging at the old man. He was seriously offering his advice and the very first reply ended with "grow up".

As evidenced by the post above this one, as a result of his calling the employees at multi-million dollar companies Cryptic and Perfect World 'kids' and suggesting that when they 'get done with college' they can get a job working at some other company insults the developer, and the game itself.

It may have been a misunderstanding as you state, but the people replying have no way of knowing that, or of knowing his age or ability, and had to take his post at face value.

Perhaps when you talk to him, if you want to try to get him to continue playing the game, explain to him how his post sounded insulting to others, even though it wasn't intended to be, and how this game caters to many people of all ages, all over the world, not just America, who may also have different naval traditions.

(True story: At college, a professor once saw me playing STO and asked if it was something I had made. In his defense, I had the UI turned off, so maybe he thought it was just a screensaver or something.)

sameriker

deyvad wrote: »

Great, it was meant to be disrespectful, did you even read your own post??

Apparently words to live by?

deyvad wrote: »

As for apologies, none are needed, I truly believe the world is filled with idiots. Just watch tonites evening news, you'll see...

I am sad there are so many cynical people too. I believe the world is filled with some pretty awesome people as well.

tangolight wrote: »

It may have been a misunderstanding as you state, but the people replying have no way of knowing that, or of knowing his age or ability, and had to take his post at face value.

I would NEVER have seen this as an insult. "Kids" is an insult? I am 20, think of myself as an adult and handle myself online as an adult. Even when people are being trolls, I try maintain a certain amount of respect in case it is in jest. Maybe a Cryptic or PWE might get offended by this, but I read the whole thread and tacofangs didn't appear offended back on page 2. Why should any player? I have seen messages written on forums and email from people I know are older than myself with typos, lower case, and sounding very much like an 8 year old.

I am not exceptional, so what makes people act like this? A rhetorical question, but apparently I am just another one of the stupid idiots who play this game.

admrenlarreck

beezle23 wrote: »

Cheer up, maybe it means "deasil" and widdershins" will make a comeback. :P

Wow someone else who knows what those mean.....

tangolight

sameriker wrote: »

I would NEVER have seen this as an insult. "Kids" is an insult? I am 20, think of myself as an adult and handle myself online as an adult. Even when people are being trolls, I try maintain a certain amount of respect in case it is in jest. Maybe a Cryptic or PWE might get offended by this, but I read the whole thread and tacofangs didn't appear offended back on page 2. Why should any player? I have seen messages written on forums and email from people I know are older than myself with typos, lower case, and sounding very much like an 8 year old.

Maybe not if you're 20, but I imagine there's also a mature fanbase (in terms of physical age) here as well. Imagine you're 35 or something, in the work force for over a decade, and are told by some random person you don't know that you're just a kid who might have a chance if you ever finish college and then you can get a REAL job.

As for myself, I'm not a dev, but I take offence to people who talk down to people who aren't even there to defend themselves. And the post seemed to be at least partly directed to the devs. On the other hand, the topic clearly states the error is in 'your' tutorial, and posted in this public forum.

Even if I didn't make it myself, someone coming up to me and complaining about all the things that are wrong with 'my' game when I didn't even make it would irritate me too.