Sub-orbital flight

cosmoscola

Several times, Captains have been forced to seek shelter in a nebula, or - in the atmosphere of a planet.
Imagine: Being able to take your ship into an atmosphere of a planet, and have a real cat and mouse fight. Science classes may for example have a more advanced sensor arrays that allows ships to be seen at greater distances than other classes. Or, less power to the sensors may leed to that nasty bloom effect, that makes it even less easy to find your opponent.
Maybe some de-buffs depending on the type of planet you dive into.
What do you think?

comm0nsense

I think it would be cool to have, but that it is pretty low on the list of priorities.

jslyn

Can't you already do that? Fly in to the upper atmosphere of a planet and the screen shakes and the visuals flare white.

cusashorn

Yeah, but he wants the game to take it one step further by generating the surface of the planet while your ship flies below the stratosphere.

neoakiraii

Not many ship fighting on planets went on in Trek..... only time i saw it was the KDF attack in DS9.....and one time on Voyager, and one time in Enterprise. would be cool, but there are many other things i rather them work on then that.

lordfuzun

Don't forget Worf's bother Kern taking his ship into the photosphere of a star and Warping out.

azurianstar

You know, I think it might be plausible to make a faux-atmospheric flight in STO, which is seamless.


First off, you have your normal space map. And as you approach a planet, you get the atmospheric entry effect, but when you are doing so, the planets disappear and the flat terrain of a planetery surface appears. Due to the bluring, you don't see this.

Just need to add atmospheric effects similar to the effects used in fludic space. And the terrain has to be convincing for the duration of the map as if you are flying over the surface.

And ships that are capable of landing on the surface of worlds (Defiant and Nova were remarked to have Landing capability, but never seen. As well as the Intrepid and the BoPs) you have a kind of graphics that have a unique graphic that lowers the landing gear prior to touchdown. Once you land, you have a disembark que and you are on the surface of the planet. And the ship you are flying shows up in the background.


So to me, STO is capable of pulling it off.

centersolace

azurianstar wrote: »

You know, I think it might be plausible to make a faux-atmospheric flight in STO, which is seamless.


First off, you have your normal space map. And as you approach a planet, you get the atmospheric entry effect, but when you are doing so, the planets disappear and the flat terrain of a planetery surface appears. Due to the bluring, you don't see this.

Just need to add atmospheric effects similar to the effects used in fludic space. And the terrain has to be convincing for the duration of the map as if you are flying over the surface.

And ships that are capable of landing on the surface of worlds (Defiant and Nova were remarked to have Landing capability, but never seen. As well as the Intrepid and the BoPs) you have a kind of graphics that have a unique graphic that lowers the landing gear prior to touchdown. Once you land, you have a disembark que and you are on the surface of the planet. And the ship you are flying shows up in the background.


So to me, STO is capable of pulling it off.

YOU!!! YOU HAVE BEEN HACKING MY MIND!!! How did you learn how to mind meld!?!? I was talking about this very thing with a friend a few days ago! :eek::eek:

Seriously though, ship to ship combat in the upper atmosphere of a Gas Giant, or Shuttle races through canyons (with collisions turned on! :P), landing your BoP on an alien world to hunt its various fauna for trophies! How cool would that be?

azurianstar

I have my methods.

And yes, Klingons going to worlds to hunt dangerous animals would be a nice thing. Especially if we could mount our trophies above the Starbase Fireplace.

Now the question, does Cryptic do cool?

liquidacid29

cusashorn wrote: »

Yeah, but he wants the game to take it one step further by generating the surface of the planet while your ship flies below the stratosphere.

that would be pretty odd considering how off scale the planets are compared to the ships no?

ufpterrell

I think they should enable us to fly through gas giants, bit like back in Klingon Academy. Remember trying to escape from many hopeless fights by taking my ship into the atmosphere, like a cat and mouse game trying to loose them flying blind with no sensors. Would be a cool feature, but while STO is superpowers in space it simply won't work properly. A set up more akin to Bridge Commander would be better.

jslyn

ufpterrell wrote: »

I think they should enable us to fly through gas giants, bit like back in Klingon Academy. Remember trying to escape from many hopeless fights by taking my ship into the atmosphere, like a cat and mouse game trying to loose them flying blind with no sensors.

I think that the gravity and pressure of a gas giant would crush a starship if it tried to fly through one.

cusashorn wrote: »

Yeah, but he wants the game to take it one step further by generating the surface of the planet while your ship flies below the stratosphere.

Say WHAT? :eek:

Below the stratosphere? That is, like, ten kilometers off of the ground. Most ships would be destroyed if they attempted that.

tacofangs

azurianstar wrote: »

You know, I think it might be plausible to make a faux-atmospheric flight in STO, which is seamless.


First off, you have your normal space map. And as you approach a planet, you get the atmospheric entry effect, but when you are doing so, the planets disappear and the flat terrain of a planetery surface appears. Due to the bluring, you don't see this.

Just need to add atmospheric effects similar to the effects used in fludic space. And the terrain has to be convincing for the duration of the map as if you are flying over the surface.

And ships that are capable of landing on the surface of worlds (Defiant and Nova were remarked to have Landing capability, but never seen. As well as the Intrepid and the BoPs) you have a kind of graphics that have a unique graphic that lowers the landing gear prior to touchdown. Once you land, you have a disembark que and you are on the surface of the planet. And the ship you are flying shows up in the background.


So to me, STO is capable of pulling it off.

Sadly no. . . While atmospheric flight is something we've tossed around a few times, there's no "good" way to pull it off currently. We can't swap a planet for terrain as you say, without swapping maps, so we could have you fly to the planet, click a door, and then enter the terrain map.

However, there's a fine balance necessary between the size of the map (which has hard limits before computers start imploding) and the speed you can fly. We've talked about using small craft (shuttles) for this kind of thing, which would make scaling a little easier.

Even then, any landing would have to be handled through a cut scene most likely.

comm0nsense

Champions Online just added flying vehicles, so the Cryptic engine can obviously do this.

altechachan

comm0nsense wrote: »

Champions Online just added flying vehicles, so the Cryptic engine can obviously do this.

While I haven't played Champions Online, I doubt what the flying vehicles there are doing atmospheric reentry from space.

In STO, we already have flying vehicles. The Romulan/Reman arc has us escaping fighters or destroying them from the ground.

Now, can we have a ground map where your ship is flying through the sky? Maybe. We did have those bugs in beta where your ship avatar spawned in ESD instead of your captain's avatar. Very interesting to trade Slug-a-cola with a Miranda-class ship.

What I think Tacofangs is saying is that making the transition from space to atmosphere won't be you steering your ship down to the planet manually.

bluegeek

They'd probably also need to make an entirely new set of maps, as the normal scale for ground maps would be way off for shuttlecraft.

theultimatex

It would be nice. We had these kinds of things in Earth and Beyond and Star Wars Galaxies.

leviathan99

tacofangs wrote: »

Sadly no. . . While atmospheric flight is something we've tossed around a few times, there's no "good" way to pull it off currently. We can't swap a planet for terrain as you say, without swapping maps, so we could have you fly to the planet, click a door, and then enter the terrain map.

However, there's a fine balance necessary between the size of the map (which has hard limits before computers start imploding) and the speed you can fly. We've talked about using small craft (shuttles) for this kind of thing, which would make scaling a little easier.

Even then, any landing would have to be handled through a cut scene most likely.

You can cut across a map without a loadscreen.

For example, certain doors. Cutscenes do this and you were able to include bridge cutscenes on space maps by stashing the bridge on a remote part of the map. It's also how respawning works and I've seen some Foundry missions pull some great teleporting tricks with respawns.

You could theoretically have a planetary/atmospheric area and a space area sharing a map.

When the planet gets close to the planet, their spawn location gets changed to the atmosphere and they get a forced respawn when they hit the rumbly, white atmospheric effect. Which spawns them in a boxed off portion of the map.

aveldra

I would love to see fighting in a in world that's a ecumenopolis with skyscrapers the reaching far into the heavens. Imagine it in the night time with all the blazing lights, and having dogfights in escorts and bops inbetween these buildings.

atatassault

tacofangs wrote: »

Sadly no. . . While atmospheric flight is something we've tossed around a few times, there's no "good" way to pull it off currently. We can't swap a planet for terrain as you say, without swapping maps, so we could have you fly to the planet, click a door, and then enter the terrain map.

However, there's a fine balance necessary between the size of the map (which has hard limits before computers start imploding) and the speed you can fly. We've talked about using small craft (shuttles) for this kind of thing, which would make scaling a little easier.

Even then, any landing would have to be handled through a cut scene most likely.

I've seen the large map and computers not being able to handle far away coordinates multiple times. Its seems bogus to me, as I've seen tech demos that let you explore a solar system, going from the orbit of planet alpha, and being able to explore the entire (procedurally generated) surface of planet theta (and every planet in between).

robeasom

I for one would love to fight in a nebula pretty much like the fight in TWOK That was one of the best space battles I've seen

jj1701e

lordfuzun wrote: »

Don't forget Worf's bother Kern taking his ship into the photosphere of a star and Warping out.

One of my favorite scenes in TNG. Proves that there are plenty of captains out there with the ability to think on their feet, not just the "Hero" characters.

On the actual topic, don't know how feasible that would be...plus wouldn't it ruin your ground pvp match if someone flew their cruiser down to the planet and did Fire-At-Will? You just killed 18 players on the other faction lol...;)

voporak

Even if we can't go into atmospheres because of what Tacofangs said, could we at least get a mission/fleet action that has us battling in the sky of some huge city planet? You could add a challenge by having civilian shuttles flying also.

voporak

jj1701e wrote: »

One of my favorite scenes in TNG. Proves that there are plenty of captains out there with the ability to think on their feet, not just the "Hero" characters.

On the actual topic, don't know how feasible that would be...plus wouldn't it ruin your ground pvp match if someone flew their cruiser down to the planet and did Fire-At-Will? You just killed 18 players on the other faction lol...;)

Forget fire at will... Let's try Cannon scatter volley with turrets all around. I would just plant my Defiant 1km above a Klingon spawn point and set weapons to autofire. :rolleyes:

sirboulevard

I actually made a psuedo version of this in the Foundry for my Mission "The Fighter Test". Worked pretty well. Many of my friends enjoyed the combat like that. Wasn't perfect, had to use asteroid bases for the city and then wall it up with the large asteroids to prevent people from escaping but it worked well for fighters and was fun.

Devs, make this an official thing. I dont mind having to zone to a new map. You could end up mixing and matching Capital ship segments (space) with fighter segments (atmosphere) and use that to highlight your upcoming default fighter and ship function.