Now do you realize how these two questions contradict each other? Of course that the wreck would be abandoned may not seem all too realistic (although on the other hand, why should all defeated ships explode in the first place?). That's the artistic license taken in the name of plot immunity.
So you are saying that the status quo (artistic license taken) is just fine then? Make up your mind, and stop arguing against yourself.
That is true, but if the team is not entirely down, it works. If it is down, you still have the respawn option. In this proposal, which is just one of many possible ways to do it (but it has the beauty of essentially already being in the game, if only for ground combat).
But your ship doesn't have a convenient team to revive it... unless grouped of course but then you are asking for the mission to be made harder (playing temporarily with two people down, likely a non-starter in STFs) just to make it seem more 'immersive' to you.
Another option would be:
If you play the wonderful mission "Boldly They Rode", there is a fantastic space battle at the end where both the USS Defiant and the USS Enterprise-F intervene. Now, obviously we cannot have some random Jem'hadar destroy the Defiant and the Enterprise, right? The Devs certainly believed that and implemented a very interesting immortality mechanic for them: If they are below a certain hull threshold, they become untargettable and inactive and start to repair themselves, a process that takes about as long as a respawn would.
The player ship is as important, hell, more important than the Enterprise and the Defiant. So why should it not have the same plot immunity treatment? The current immortality-by-respawn is the same from a gameplay point of view, but much more immersion-breaking.
So a magical invulnerability field is more immersive to you than simply respawning? Seriously?
So why should it not have the same plot immunity treatment? The current immortality-by-respawn is the same from a gameplay point of view, but much more immersion-breaking.
I'd find everyone suddenly not being able to target me while I magi-heal in the middle of the fur-ball and then jump right back into the fight way more immersion breaking than the enemy making my ship pop in a huge fireball and being magically respawned 30 seconds later some distance away from the fight.
Seriously - you actually believe the enemy not being able to target you in the middle of the fight is less immersion-breaking than them blowing you up and you having to come back 30 seconds later?
Here is my thoughts: we are all just pawns in Q's sick game and this reality is really not the true reality. How else could it be 2409 for the past 2-3 years. Quit playing Round with us Q and let us wake up!!!!!!
The current immortality-by-respawn is the same from a gameplay point of view, but much more immersion-breaking.
Actually it's not the same. When you respawn you're placed at a point some distance away. That means you can't be targeted, you're outside of the weapons range. It also lets you come in from a different angle.
So it's not really the same, because the 'become untargetable and repair for 30 seconds' system would leave you in the same spot.
In order for the system to be the same, would mean having your ship limp out to the spawn point over the period of time you are repairing.
Myself I could see a system like that working, and being more immersive then having your ship explode. But I can also see that it could take a lot of work to code and test, enough resources that the cost is greater then the benefit to the bulk of the players.
Hmm, I think your ship should be a disabled flaming wreck, your re-spawn timer starts then at the end you hit the distress signal button, a repair ship drops out of warp and warp tows you back to the start of the map fully repaired.
Or same thing but no need to press a button, a ship warp tows you back to the start of the map and your re-spawn timer starts and what ever its is... thats how long it will take for your ship to be fully repaired... could be 10 secs or if your having a noob moment and you have died several times it could take longer.
Look, if this were truly immersive, the game would cut from the space battle to your bridge, with your bridge officers shouting out all of the systems that are offline.
At that point, some sort of damage control game system would kick in and you'd attempt emergency repairs to get your ship back into the battle before a timer ran out and your ship went "KABOOM!" You might also try hailing the bad guy to buy yourself more time for repairs.
While that would be really cool, it would also take a lot longer than a simple respawn. Good for immersion, bad for team-based gameplay.
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For the most part, I don't offer these ideas as any sort of solution to the in-game mechanics. They are merely observations of different examples in semi-"realistic" Trek combat in regards to ship disablement/destruction.
1) Obviously Starships are tough and have redundant systems. Witness the Constellation in ST:TOS after her encounter with the Doomsday Machine. Wrecked. Warp Engines gone and nacelles ruptured. Life support barely there. Whole sections of the saucer open to space.
But a small crew from the Enterprise gets her nominally functioning again. At least enough to move at impulse and fire a phaser bank. (granted, they had "Miracle Worker" Scotty with them. In BOFF terms he's got at least Engineering team III. :cool: )
2) The Defiant in "First Contact" versus the Borg Cube. Damn near the same. Though her recovery takes place off-screen, it's assumed she was recovered and put in spacedock for repairs.
3) Starships are not invulnerable though. The first Defiant was destroyed outright, as were many ships during the Dominion war. Some of them taken out in split second massed fire.
4) Sometimes bad **** just happens. The "Golden BB" critical hit goes right through the shields and the warp core goes bye bye. (There was that one episode of ST: NG where the Enterprise was in that time loop that kept ending with the 1701-D's destruction. OK, that was dramatic, but... seriously? You bump into another ship and go "boom"? I mean... what?) *
4a) Never, NEVER let Troi helm the ship. BAD STUFF HAPPENS when she does!
5) If a Starship gets disabled in a Borg fight, expect Borg drones to start beaming over and assimilating the crew. A lot of the KIA in the Wolf 359 battle were not actually KIA... unfortunately... *BRRR*
If some game mechanic were implemented for reviving a disabled ship during combat and there are Borg ships present? I'd suggest a timer countdown showing how many crew are being assimilated. Get down too low and your ship might be repairable, but you might not have enough crew percentage left to do in-battle repairs.
6) What is the general policy of various forces in the Alpha Quadrant in regard to disabled ships?
Feds probably leave them alone. Tell them to surrender and they'll treat their wounded etc.
I'd like to think the Klingons are generally honorable enough not to fire on escape pods or ships too damaged to fight. No honor in beating a foe who can't fight back. But some KDF Captains might be ruthless enough to deliver a coup de grace (House Duras anyone?)
Not sure about Romulans. They seem pretty ruthless. Same with Gorn.
Orions? I think, with the Syndicates desire for pillage, they'd want to keep ships intact for looting. ( "NO NO NO!!! First pillage, THEN burn!" )
Cardassians - on the whole, ruthless enough to destroy disabled ships. But not going out of their way for it either. I get the impression whether they do or not depends on whether it detracts from the mission at hand. Obsidian Order operations will ALWAYS destroy all opposing ships though if they can. No witnesses...
Borg - As above. You REALLY don't want to be a disabled ship within transporter range of a Borg ship... >.>
(*that episode made me lose a lot of respect for Picard, too. A captain of the Enterprise should NOT yell "Abandon Ship! Abandon Ship!" In a PANICKED tone of voice!)
Because you can imagine how the one happens, but not the other?
No, I think both are equally problematic. But, I understand why in a video game compromises are made.
What I can't understand (and why I can no longer take anything you write seriously) is how you can argue that ship blown up/respawn is any more/less immersion-breaking than suddenly having everybody who is shooting you STOP while you heal up in the middle of a fight.
You have no logical consistency in your argument. You want one silly make-believe solution instead of another silly make-believe solution - as if they weren't both equally silly.
wut?
:rolleyes:
The current silly make-believe solution works. Why would anyone spend time or resources manufacturing yet another silly immersion breaking solution?
Hence the idea to just use the same system as used in ground combat. Many solutions are far superior to the current one.
It's not the same system however. It would require at least some coding and testing time. They couldn't simply copy/paste the existing ground system in for space.
If you want to RP, knock yourself out. If you can rp out some reason why everyone stops shooting at you in the middle of a fight while you insta-heal in 10 seconds instead of the bad guys continuing to shoot you until you explode and die, I am sure you can RP out some reason why you explode and get respawned a short distance away. Again - one silly thing happening is no more or less silly than another silly thing happening.
Your issue is minor, your argument is weak. Its a video game, not a television show. Immersion takes a backseat to player expectations.
Honestly, not that big of a deal to me. They have to have some sort of way to deal with player death in an MMO and die/respawn is pretty much the standard.
I get what you guys are saying, but at he same time, I think you will have to admit you guys are going to be the minority if any proposal to change the death mechaninc in space involves having to leave the instance, sit at starbase for repairs, or anything else along those lines.
Space fight vid game = pew pew! after all, right?
I think the devs tried to find a middle ground when they added in ship injuries on elite setting. Sure, you still go boom and are insta-respawned just outside of the fight, but at least now there is a consequence you have to deal with.
I cannot speak for the others in this thread, but my personal solutions would be one of the following.
1. The animation of your ship exploding is changed to an animation of your ship quickly going to warp. Your ship will short-warp away. Note that this would not necessarily require anything really complicated. They could even use something akin to the current 'warp effect' - it could be, if the devs really can't spare any time to do something more "proper," that they replay the warp-out cut scene we currently use (with your damaged ship) and then warp back in with your ship in one piece, the inference there being that the ship was given emergency repairs in warp, swung around and came back. Super-realistic? No, it could be better, but it's better than the ship coming back from scrap.
2. Ship is damaged in space and left floating until the timer goes out. Once the timer goes out you're provided with a 'respawn' option which, from a graphical standpoint, does the same as option 1. If a team ship gets in range and uses some kind of a repair power you can bring your ship back online in-place.
Many others here seems to want to completely replace the ship (never mind how you get a new ship and get right back in the mission in 20 seconds), have long, boring videos, have Q undo it and demonstrate that you're his puppet, use the holodeck, or trying to deliberately infer that your character should be wiped when you explode and thereby invalidate the argument entirely by essentially replacing it, something else... none of this is necessary at all. This is a fairly simple solution, one of which requires some system revision, the other just requiring a change in graphics. Granted, it's not something they can flip a switch with, but on the other hand it's also not going to be a massive 6 month R&D project either, unless the game engine is WAY more screwed up than anyone suspects it is.
Long story short, you do not explode, but the internal game play is mostly the same, or adds something similar to what's already available for ground.
I would also invite some of the other posters who seem to be particularly facetious to outright mocking this concept to look at their own posting history. I will bet that a lot of folks here have their own tweaks and peeves that drive them crazy that they've complained about, and don't even consider that this might be similar, even as some may twitch their finger over the Reply button to try to smash this message with a reply on how theirs is vastly more important than this. That said, if you are one of them, I believe it would behoove you to at least give it some thought.
As a final note, it is arguable that the "ship injury" idea is a bit of the worst of both worlds - you still get blown up, but when you miraculously return to life (assuming that this entire game isn't a playground for Q and thereby simply renders by implication everything you do pretty much meaningless). Note that I am NOT saying it should be taken out - in fact, I'm fine with it - just that it doesn't work to try to compromise to "solve" this problem, is all.
There are only very few things that really bother me about STO space combat. The vast majority of its features are somewhere in between of just cool and awesome.
However, one thing bothers me, and I wonder what the design considerations for that decision were: When you are defeated, you blow up, and are magically teleported back to the spawn. This is extremely immersion-breaking for me, and my observation is, for many, many people.
In ground combat, there is another option: Have one of your team mates (or simply another player of the same side) revive you on the spot. But actually, in ground combat, I could devise myself a reason why I am teleported back to the spawn, as long as my ship is in range: They just save me with the transporters.
There is no such imaginative solution in space. The immersion break is 100%. No explanation whatsoever will remove that feeling of "a moment ago I was a starship captain, now I am back to just a player of a video game" feeling which costs a lot of potential fun.
Yes, I am serious. It really annoys me, even though I actually don't die that often.
Could anybody tell me a good guess or maybe even inside knowledge (any devs? ) about why the ground combat options of "respawning or calling for help" were not made available in space, too?
Or what would be your favorite solutions to the immersion breaking problem?
Section 31 teleported you to a holodeck in while you were sleeping, and the whole thing is a simulation to see how you'd react. Like StarFleet Academy did to Wesley Crusher.
what would be cool to see is as a ship is damaged it shows the damage (as it does now) but...even after its been healed by hazard emitters, crew, eng teams, etc. as it is now the damage just magically vanishes as the hull gets repaired. and then you would have to go to a starbase to get it graphically repaired also....if you wanted.
Look at Star Trek Enterprise for ex, after a major battle they had huge amounts of damage both inside and outside of the ship, to the point that they had to find a shipyard to get repaired....even if said shipyard was automated.
Thanks for the public agreement. The current mchanic simply does not work from am immersionist point of view.
Maybe my last post about this wasn't clear enough, so let me try to explain again:
No, I cannot make up any explanation how my ship could possbly come back after being literally vaporized by a warp core explosion - unless it is a "all your actions are meaningless in one way or another" type of explanation, which totally defeats the purpose.
Immersion is a player expectation.
If you want a stopgap explanation, here is a simple one.
The explosion that you see is akin to the ship that the Valiant tried to destroy in Deep Space 9. I forget the episode name, so that's the best I can do. However, once you see that, it will become evident what I'm talking about.
From there you can assume that the ship managed to escape. See the episode of TNG with Stratagema, as that shows that a ship can escape to a short distance away at warp speed while appearing destroyed in an explosion.
The debris (I don't see them myself, graphics settings are too low) can either be omitted by changing the graphics settings (it sucks but it works) or considered considerable damage (e.g. chunks of armor lost in the detonation), but not necessarily chunks of the ship rocketing away.
If you want a "mechanic," the structural integrity field takes such a beating that it risks a massive energy discharge. This is timed in such a manner that it corresponds with the ship warping away. However, by the time that happens significant damage may have already accrued to one of the ship's systems, beyond the ability of the engineering crew to mitigate. The combined result of the emergency warp and explosion produces the visual effect wherein the ship seems to explode but actually manages to escape. While not intended this has a secondary effect of confusing the enemy for a few seconds as to whether or not the ship was destroyed, plus the SIF backlash that caused the 'explosion' managing to cause damage to nearby enemy ships. Also note that the explosion caused by a "warp core breach" is pretty pathetic for a warp core breach, so it could be much much less energy after all.
Also note the text says "Defeated!" Not "Destroyed!"
Sorry if that sucks, but without getting into time-travel and cross-dimensional theories (my personal theory is that our captains are actually working in a variety of dimensions at once as Iaconian influence causes the timelines to begin to collapse, e.g. why we have millions of "main characters" running around, in very very brief), that's about the best I can offer off the top of my head.
As stated, I agree that it should be changed, and I do not think it will take much to do it; however, I also think a "fix" will be a long time coming, sad to say, so you might be best taking alternative approaches to the problem.
The word "Immersion" means different things to different people, and thus your expectation is not the same as mine or someone else's.
What you're suggesting doesn't bother me but ultimately I'd rather see the manpower allocated to creating new things for the game rather then worrying about the degree of immersiveness differentiated between blowing up or slowly healing after being defeated.
It's just not a big enough issue to worry about, IMO - and Cryptic has spent too much time in the past focusing on small issues like this. I mean, really, what percentage of the fan-base actually uses Shooter Mode in comparison to the amount of time spent creating it? It was man-hours that could have been spent much more usefully elsewhere.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
For space combat death/revival, rather than the ship exploding it should simply be disabled. This is already seen in multiple missions for story dependent NPC ships. Every player regardless of rank and career should have the ability to send engineering teams to friendly ships to repair battle damage. Since Cryptic has added the increasing respawn timer, the severity of the damage increases the time necessary to repair the damage. Use of the appropriate components removes the debuffs and/or decreases the time necessary for repair.
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So you are saying that the status quo (artistic license taken) is just fine then? Make up your mind, and stop arguing against yourself.
But your ship doesn't have a convenient team to revive it... unless grouped of course but then you are asking for the mission to be made harder (playing temporarily with two people down, likely a non-starter in STFs) just to make it seem more 'immersive' to you.
So a magical invulnerability field is more immersive to you than simply respawning? Seriously?
I'd find everyone suddenly not being able to target me while I magi-heal in the middle of the fur-ball and then jump right back into the fight way more immersion breaking than the enemy making my ship pop in a huge fireball and being magically respawned 30 seconds later some distance away from the fight.
Seriously - you actually believe the enemy not being able to target you in the middle of the fight is less immersion-breaking than them blowing you up and you having to come back 30 seconds later?
Sorry - I can no longer take you seriously.
Actually it's not the same. When you respawn you're placed at a point some distance away. That means you can't be targeted, you're outside of the weapons range. It also lets you come in from a different angle.
So it's not really the same, because the 'become untargetable and repair for 30 seconds' system would leave you in the same spot.
In order for the system to be the same, would mean having your ship limp out to the spawn point over the period of time you are repairing.
Myself I could see a system like that working, and being more immersive then having your ship explode. But I can also see that it could take a lot of work to code and test, enough resources that the cost is greater then the benefit to the bulk of the players.
Or same thing but no need to press a button, a ship warp tows you back to the start of the map and your re-spawn timer starts and what ever its is... thats how long it will take for your ship to be fully repaired... could be 10 secs or if your having a noob moment and you have died several times it could take longer.
At that point, some sort of damage control game system would kick in and you'd attempt emergency repairs to get your ship back into the battle before a timer ran out and your ship went "KABOOM!" You might also try hailing the bad guy to buy yourself more time for repairs.
While that would be really cool, it would also take a lot longer than a simple respawn. Good for immersion, bad for team-based gameplay.
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1) Obviously Starships are tough and have redundant systems. Witness the Constellation in ST:TOS after her encounter with the Doomsday Machine. Wrecked. Warp Engines gone and nacelles ruptured. Life support barely there. Whole sections of the saucer open to space.
But a small crew from the Enterprise gets her nominally functioning again. At least enough to move at impulse and fire a phaser bank. (granted, they had "Miracle Worker" Scotty with them. In BOFF terms he's got at least Engineering team III. :cool: )
2) The Defiant in "First Contact" versus the Borg Cube. Damn near the same. Though her recovery takes place off-screen, it's assumed she was recovered and put in spacedock for repairs.
3) Starships are not invulnerable though. The first Defiant was destroyed outright, as were many ships during the Dominion war. Some of them taken out in split second massed fire.
4) Sometimes bad **** just happens. The "Golden BB" critical hit goes right through the shields and the warp core goes bye bye. (There was that one episode of ST: NG where the Enterprise was in that time loop that kept ending with the 1701-D's destruction. OK, that was dramatic, but... seriously? You bump into another ship and go "boom"? I mean... what?) *
4a) Never, NEVER let Troi helm the ship. BAD STUFF HAPPENS when she does!
5) If a Starship gets disabled in a Borg fight, expect Borg drones to start beaming over and assimilating the crew. A lot of the KIA in the Wolf 359 battle were not actually KIA... unfortunately... *BRRR*
If some game mechanic were implemented for reviving a disabled ship during combat and there are Borg ships present? I'd suggest a timer countdown showing how many crew are being assimilated. Get down too low and your ship might be repairable, but you might not have enough crew percentage left to do in-battle repairs.
6) What is the general policy of various forces in the Alpha Quadrant in regard to disabled ships?
Feds probably leave them alone. Tell them to surrender and they'll treat their wounded etc.
I'd like to think the Klingons are generally honorable enough not to fire on escape pods or ships too damaged to fight. No honor in beating a foe who can't fight back. But some KDF Captains might be ruthless enough to deliver a coup de grace (House Duras anyone?)
Not sure about Romulans. They seem pretty ruthless. Same with Gorn.
Orions? I think, with the Syndicates desire for pillage, they'd want to keep ships intact for looting. ( "NO NO NO!!! First pillage, THEN burn!" )
Cardassians - on the whole, ruthless enough to destroy disabled ships. But not going out of their way for it either. I get the impression whether they do or not depends on whether it detracts from the mission at hand. Obsidian Order operations will ALWAYS destroy all opposing ships though if they can. No witnesses...
Borg - As above. You REALLY don't want to be a disabled ship within transporter range of a Borg ship... >.>
(*that episode made me lose a lot of respect for Picard, too. A captain of the Enterprise should NOT yell "Abandon Ship! Abandon Ship!" In a PANICKED tone of voice!)
agree with this 100%
No, I think both are equally problematic. But, I understand why in a video game compromises are made.
What I can't understand (and why I can no longer take anything you write seriously) is how you can argue that ship blown up/respawn is any more/less immersion-breaking than suddenly having everybody who is shooting you STOP while you heal up in the middle of a fight.
You have no logical consistency in your argument. You want one silly make-believe solution instead of another silly make-believe solution - as if they weren't both equally silly.
wut?
:rolleyes:
The current silly make-believe solution works. Why would anyone spend time or resources manufacturing yet another silly immersion breaking solution?
It's not the same system however. It would require at least some coding and testing time. They couldn't simply copy/paste the existing ground system in for space.
It makes me believe I am playing a video game.
-shocked-
:rolleyes:
If you want to RP, knock yourself out. If you can rp out some reason why everyone stops shooting at you in the middle of a fight while you insta-heal in 10 seconds instead of the bad guys continuing to shoot you until you explode and die, I am sure you can RP out some reason why you explode and get respawned a short distance away. Again - one silly thing happening is no more or less silly than another silly thing happening.
Your issue is minor, your argument is weak. Its a video game, not a television show. Immersion takes a backseat to player expectations.
I cannot speak for the others in this thread, but my personal solutions would be one of the following.
1. The animation of your ship exploding is changed to an animation of your ship quickly going to warp. Your ship will short-warp away. Note that this would not necessarily require anything really complicated. They could even use something akin to the current 'warp effect' - it could be, if the devs really can't spare any time to do something more "proper," that they replay the warp-out cut scene we currently use (with your damaged ship) and then warp back in with your ship in one piece, the inference there being that the ship was given emergency repairs in warp, swung around and came back. Super-realistic? No, it could be better, but it's better than the ship coming back from scrap.
2. Ship is damaged in space and left floating until the timer goes out. Once the timer goes out you're provided with a 'respawn' option which, from a graphical standpoint, does the same as option 1. If a team ship gets in range and uses some kind of a repair power you can bring your ship back online in-place.
Many others here seems to want to completely replace the ship (never mind how you get a new ship and get right back in the mission in 20 seconds), have long, boring videos, have Q undo it and demonstrate that you're his puppet, use the holodeck, or trying to deliberately infer that your character should be wiped when you explode and thereby invalidate the argument entirely by essentially replacing it, something else... none of this is necessary at all. This is a fairly simple solution, one of which requires some system revision, the other just requiring a change in graphics. Granted, it's not something they can flip a switch with, but on the other hand it's also not going to be a massive 6 month R&D project either, unless the game engine is WAY more screwed up than anyone suspects it is.
Long story short, you do not explode, but the internal game play is mostly the same, or adds something similar to what's already available for ground.
I would also invite some of the other posters who seem to be particularly facetious to outright mocking this concept to look at their own posting history. I will bet that a lot of folks here have their own tweaks and peeves that drive them crazy that they've complained about, and don't even consider that this might be similar, even as some may twitch their finger over the Reply button to try to smash this message with a reply on how theirs is vastly more important than this. That said, if you are one of them, I believe it would behoove you to at least give it some thought.
As a final note, it is arguable that the "ship injury" idea is a bit of the worst of both worlds - you still get blown up, but when you miraculously return to life (assuming that this entire game isn't a playground for Q and thereby simply renders by implication everything you do pretty much meaningless). Note that I am NOT saying it should be taken out - in fact, I'm fine with it - just that it doesn't work to try to compromise to "solve" this problem, is all.
Section 31 teleported you to a holodeck in while you were sleeping, and the whole thing is a simulation to see how you'd react. Like StarFleet Academy did to Wesley Crusher.
Look at Star Trek Enterprise for ex, after a major battle they had huge amounts of damage both inside and outside of the ship, to the point that they had to find a shipyard to get repaired....even if said shipyard was automated.
If you want a stopgap explanation, here is a simple one.
The explosion that you see is akin to the ship that the Valiant tried to destroy in Deep Space 9. I forget the episode name, so that's the best I can do. However, once you see that, it will become evident what I'm talking about.
From there you can assume that the ship managed to escape. See the episode of TNG with Stratagema, as that shows that a ship can escape to a short distance away at warp speed while appearing destroyed in an explosion.
The debris (I don't see them myself, graphics settings are too low) can either be omitted by changing the graphics settings (it sucks but it works) or considered considerable damage (e.g. chunks of armor lost in the detonation), but not necessarily chunks of the ship rocketing away.
If you want a "mechanic," the structural integrity field takes such a beating that it risks a massive energy discharge. This is timed in such a manner that it corresponds with the ship warping away. However, by the time that happens significant damage may have already accrued to one of the ship's systems, beyond the ability of the engineering crew to mitigate. The combined result of the emergency warp and explosion produces the visual effect wherein the ship seems to explode but actually manages to escape. While not intended this has a secondary effect of confusing the enemy for a few seconds as to whether or not the ship was destroyed, plus the SIF backlash that caused the 'explosion' managing to cause damage to nearby enemy ships. Also note that the explosion caused by a "warp core breach" is pretty pathetic for a warp core breach, so it could be much much less energy after all.
Also note the text says "Defeated!" Not "Destroyed!"
Sorry if that sucks, but without getting into time-travel and cross-dimensional theories (my personal theory is that our captains are actually working in a variety of dimensions at once as Iaconian influence causes the timelines to begin to collapse, e.g. why we have millions of "main characters" running around, in very very brief), that's about the best I can offer off the top of my head.
As stated, I agree that it should be changed, and I do not think it will take much to do it; however, I also think a "fix" will be a long time coming, sad to say, so you might be best taking alternative approaches to the problem.
What you're suggesting doesn't bother me but ultimately I'd rather see the manpower allocated to creating new things for the game rather then worrying about the degree of immersiveness differentiated between blowing up or slowly healing after being defeated.
It's just not a big enough issue to worry about, IMO - and Cryptic has spent too much time in the past focusing on small issues like this. I mean, really, what percentage of the fan-base actually uses Shooter Mode in comparison to the amount of time spent creating it? It was man-hours that could have been spent much more usefully elsewhere.
Can you revive a team mate in PvP ground combat? I honestly have no idea, but if that doesn't work then this idea has issues with PvP balance.
You can in team PvE ground so I would be really surprised if you couldn't in PvP
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