All that aside, the real reason the game lacks a Star Trek feel is that Star trek isn't really about combat, it's about people, there is not enough interaction, not enough exploration, not enough puzzles and experiments, it's all go there, shoot this, come here and collect reward, rinse and repeat.
And all the attempts to put it in, had been a failure so far.
Interaction with NPCs get boring quite fast. You would need a single 20hrs Story to make it more interesting, but this is far too much work to implement it in a game like this.
Exploration, as it is designed, too. Go here, collect that, fly there collect that as well.
Puzzles/Experiments: All there is are minigames at the moment, and most of it gets boring after the 2nd run.
After all, it is combat (PvP) which offers the most alternation right now. To get more Star Trek Feeling, the game would have to be more like this one game from this other franchise, around 10 years ago. (This 20hrs+ Story Content Stuff, but it would take half an enternity to implement something like this, which is too long for a game like this, where people cry for new stuff every single week.)
In the actual Star Trek the ships rarely would do some of the 3D maneuvers you guys are talking about. There's this thing is space that Star Trek was actually very accurate with displaying called Torsional Stress.
The whole thing of Inertial Dampeners were meant to counter the internal effects of torsional stress, but there is not much that would prevent the torsion from ripping your ship in half, and most of the ships in the Star Trek universe are built with pylons and parts going off in every direction.
I would say the turn rate and speeds of ships now already show their attention to inertial stresses. Though it does raise an interesting idea- can we fly a ship apart? It'd be neat bonus to mobility in emergencies.
But imagine how three dimensions could change fighting mechanics. Shields would have six sides minimum for the dorsal and ventral in addition to fore/aft starboard/port. And thats hard to depict in a two dimensional plane- like from looking at the side of ships or the circular shield indicator in the target viewer.
Not adding dorsal and ventral shields would mean that turning your ship topside would effectively make shield mitigation automatic because you'd be dividing damage between all four simultaniously- and thats not realistically viable.
Also weapons would have to be targeted more conically because you'd have completely independently usable fore, aft, left, right, dorsal, and ventral weapons.
Not doing so would make turning your ship upside down a meaningless cosmetic detail as opposed to a strategic maneuver.
But this could satisfy the broadside cannon wish of many players.
And people so tired of the linearity of the game need to join a role play fleet (call me, I've got one).
There's no way that a game like this is going to be able to open up enough randomized experience and cover enough reaction possibilities to make it character driven.
If thats what's really important to you, role play with similarly minded individuals is the best bet.
My 2 ECs. Give us FULL 3D combat. Not just semi 3D, but FULL. I want to be able to go full vertical, do barrel rolls, etc. That would be fun XD. Albeit not really trek, but fun nonetheless.
THIS!
Full 360 would be great. I can't recall how many times I've ended up at that odd angle where I can't use my cannons nor can I increase/decrease my climb angle....:mad:
Shields could stay just the way they are now without complicating things by adding two more sides, the game is not 2 dimensional, it's 3 dimensional and only feels like the former because of a number in a file limiting pitch angles. A ship above you shooting down at you hits on what appears to be a dorsal area but actually reads as damage to one of the existing quadrants depending on where the hit lands, the ship is enclosed in a ovoid sphere that is divided into 4 quadrants, nothing there needs to be changed. Larger ships would not benefit too much because of poor turning, but more maneuverable ships like shuttle, fighters, escorts and bops should have no such limitations. In First Contact there is an excellent scene showing Akiras and Steamrunners doing barrel rolls and immelmanns wheeling around to get a bead on the Borg cube. there is no reason why that kind of maneuverability can't be in this game, the engine will support it.
If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
In the actual Star Trek the ships rarely would do some of the 3D maneuvers you guys are talking about. There's this thing is space that Star Trek was actually very accurate with displaying called Torsional Stress.
Small Crafts, the Defiant-Class and BoPs for example performed some of these maneuvers, so you are wrong.
Larger ships would not benefit too much because of poor turning, but more maneuverable ships like shuttle, fighters, escorts and bops should have no such limitations. In First Contact there is an excellent scene showing Akiras and Steamrunners doing barrel rolls and immelmanns wheeling around to get a bead on the Borg cube. there is no reason why that kind of maneuverability can't be in this game, the engine will support it.
Small Crafts, the Defiant-Class and BoPs for example performed some of these maneuvers, so you are wrong.
This just proves the point. Torsional stress gets greater the larger the object is. It's the same reason that fighter jets can do all kinds of fancy maneuvers but bombers basically fly in a straight line. (I suffered through engineering school in RL. We studied this kind of thing.)
You can do them in STO too, well 360 flip's in the air at least, not quite flying.
Yes, I'm aware that the image has an unfortunate angle but the animation's quite fast and it's hard to get an upside down character shot. I'll try it with trouser's next time.
Yup, but the engine allows both at the same time as well.:)
And the engine is the same for space and ground so it's possible.
This just proves the point. Torsional stress gets greater the larger the object is. It's the same reason that fighter jets can do all kinds of fancy maneuvers but bombers basically fly in a straight line. (I suffered through engineering school in RL. We studied this kind of thing.)
Well, while it's certainly true that it's not a particularly smart idea to do this with large craft we have today we've also seen larger ships in Star Trek do it without getting torn apart...at reasonable speeds.
For example in "Time Squared" we can see the Enterprise-D sucked into a...I'll show you:
anyway into this and the ship goes in with its rear and first.
So she orients herself 90 degrees "up", while her engines are fighting the effect...without any stress tearing her apart.
Not to mention in STO, when a ship can orient itself 45 degrees "up", another 45 or 90 shouldn't be a problem since there's no gravity or aerodynamic stress affecting the ship...at a reasonable speed of course.;)
*EDIT: and to avoid such stresses, we've seen a simple solution in Star Trek 2: move up and down without changing the ship's orientation. *
You click on join elite STF
A admiral calls you on the comm
Caption your ordered to the Klingon border
Cordinates 341 mark 12 proceed with all haste.
The Borg are here, the fleet is sending all available
Ships . Meet up with the fleet at the tykon nebula
Make Starfleet proud
Hanson out
Now along the way several missions can happen
Rescues, SOS calls, morality missions ect
When you arrive 4 other players arrive too and you 5
Proceed into the STF
Hell no! If I click on Join STF, I want to join an STF, not do some random TRIBBLE that has nothing to do with it.
In some points, story logic has to give way to comfortable accessibility of content.
If players have to slog through random content in order to get into an STF, STFs will be deader than dead.
Well, while it's certainly true that it's not a particularly smart idea to do this with large craft we have today we've also seen larger ships in Star Trek do it without getting torn apart...at reasonable speeds.
Big ships in Trek can do that because of the Structural Integrity Field embedded within the ships hull frames.
Without that, they'd even break in half just from orbiting Planets . It's the same effect that happens when you pull up a big rope over a larger distance. Even though it's as taut as it could be, the middle part will hang through simply due to gravity.
Well, I just watched the JJ Trek II trailer for the first time and it appears that the JJ-prise is sliding across the bottom of San Francisco Bay while shoving tons of water out of the way with no ill effects to the structure.
Apparently JJ made his Enterprise out of diamond. The engineer in me cries.:(
Edit: I know, magic structural field and all. Apparently there's been advances in technology so that a starship in bad enough shape to fall to the earth can still maintain its electronics.
And all the attempts to put it in, had been a failure so far.
Interaction with NPCs get boring quite fast. You would need a single 20hrs Story to make it more interesting, but this is far too much work to implement it in a game like this.
Exploration, as it is designed, too. Go here, collect that, fly there collect that as well.
Puzzles/Experiments: All there is are minigames at the moment, and most of it gets boring after the 2nd run.
I'm not sure it's at all possible to get right, but it's definitely not possible for Cryptic, as they've demonstrated. Repeatedly. The Diplomacy dialogue-only missions were interesting exactly once (if that).
Hell no! If I click on Join STF, I want to join an STF, not do some random TRIBBLE that has nothing to do with it.
In some points, story logic has to give way to comfortable accessibility of content.
If players have to slog through random content in order to get into an STF, STFs will be deader than dead.
I have to say, the space combat mechanic is the most well-executed part of this game, in my humble opinion. It's what I'd been wanting since my old Starfleet Command days. Very much a "Trek" feel from where I sit, but then again, DS9 may be my favorite series of them all. Those big Dominion War fleet engagements were pure fanboygasms.
personally the biggest combat killer for me isn't the pew pew or the fact that I'm laying waste to thousands of lives at a time without ever giving them the chance to surrender, no no. For me its the fact I can't go fricken verticle.
Here I am in space and theres this magical field that stops me at a 55 degree angle and I can't get any closer to a 90. Somehwere along the advancements in technology our 360 degrees turned into 220.
right, tell that to the makers of star trek 2 the wrath of khan.
I'll admit that in most maps it doesn't matter. But it can be pretty infuriating in the vault trying to go between we weavers. I find myself spiraling to get to a straggler all the time.
I guess for full 360 X-Y-Z space combat you would have to set out to do it from the begining and do it right. The only trek game to do that was Bridge Commander (fight from he bridge or from camera). All sorts of manuevers were possible (like the ST: Nemisis "roll on our axis and face our dorsal shield to the enemy" and the like). Thing is, as stated before, the combat was designed for it.
I'm sure even decent programmers can squeeze more out of STO's engine, but at the moment STO's combat just wasn't designed for cover and accuracy (ground), nor serious tactical manuevering (space).
How the Devs see Star Trek, apparently:
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
Klingon Academy. Still my fave Trek game. Yes dated now but the combat was the best for shear damage dealing graphically. You can blast huge chunks out of each other Wrath of Khan style. Warp nacells get blown off, Saucers get ripped in two revealing redglowing deacks! Phasers leave huge scars. Bird of prey wings get blown off... Got look it up on you tube.
Thats what Id like to see. KA damage to ships but using the modern graphics of STO.
Som would complain that when you heal the warp nacelle etc would miraculosly reappear. Well the surface skin damage seen in current games just vanish and you do respawn.
Its fun though in KA it was fun chasing a miranda and hitting it with torps. Boom there goes the nacelle and the ship tries to escape with its engines blown. Hehe.
Monkey see, Monkey do. Monkey flings Feathered Monkey poo...
Star trek feel... isn't that all really just personal preference?
Each person feels and thinks differently when seeing certain things and comparing it to the vacuum they see in their minds of such items.
When I see post about big ships moving and spiraling and flipping, I say no way. not because it's not possible because it truly is, in slow motion movements but when it comes to combat I doubt that's a good idea, a ship moving that fast will kill every body inside it. Some people say inertial dampeners and whatever else but when i catch an episode of ST I always see the guys bouncing off the wall while taking a shot, can you imagine taking that same shot while doing a barrel roll "Oh my god, they killed my Borg engineer!" "Those TRIBBLE!"
And then DHC's on a FED ship? I'm a FED Tac in a Patrol Escort and I still hate seeing DHC's on FED ship it's just, well you know, not right or wrong but just feels not like it should be.
Then there were relationships and children and just as important to the series as tacs, eng, and scis were civies, will they have to make civies or allow marriage and such? I'm not sure.
I'm not sure what a star trek feel is but I am certain what it isn't and that's the furthest I can go.
I have another thing I don't like and sort of bug me from a realism point of view. Why do NPC ship fly so slow. I do my rom daily everyday and something wrong when I fly around a frigate (pick one) with my odyssey overtaking them at 1/2 engine power. Are NPC captain so dumb that they choose to combat at such a low speed as to take there defense rating at a ridiculous low point? How can you loose? If I flew with my defiant always at 1/4 speed hitting evasive once in while, I'd get blown up a lot too.
NPC are way too dumb, I play all missions on elite and apart from STF or No Win nothing offer really a challenge in space (Tholians are annoying more than anything else ). Elite should be tough, not the cake walk it is now. There is Normal for those who want easy and advanced for those you do not want too hard but a challenge, Elite should be much harder, not just a hull and weapon buff on NPC otherwise it defeat the point of playing elite other than better loot.
And before someone mention it, I'm talking about space NPC and combat. I find ground more balanced, there is quite a bit of a difference when you kill a boss on normal or elite, on elite you better be well prepared or you'll respawn a lot with your boffs.
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As an exemple, I do rom daily with my tac in 15-20 min using Jem Attack ship on elite, nice to do it quick but there is no challenge in it or very little.
Jamal : Tactical space specialist. USS Bug Warrior and many others
E'Mc2 : Science Reman torp T'Varo, deadly annoyance :P
Kunmal: Tactical fed Klingon, ground specialist, USS Kanewaga
Ka -tet Tier 5 fleet fully completed Starbase and fleet property
The problem with STO is that all the combat is based on regenerating health based on ability, rather than properly tanking based on a long game of managing your health. This is the difference between playing Counterstrike and Halo. One has finite health which when lost is basically gone, the other rewards you with a regen if you survive long enough to regen.
Its a totally different way to design a combat mechanic and it shows in the pacing but one thing no matter whether you like it or not is true, and thats that Trek was never a regen kind of combat universe. You lost your shields, your ablative armor started to buckle, and thats when you had to figure out if you were going to pull off a victory or not, not wait for the shields to miraculously regenerate somehow.
This is where you enter the conceit of an MMO and the window dressing used to sell us on it. STO isn't really Trek, its just a Trek uniform thrown over an altogether un-Trek set of mechanics. Some of it really does work on a Trek level, but mostly its just a facile proxy that misses the mark quite a bit.
It won't change, it'll never be like real Trek space combat, not unless the dynamics shift to significantly favour HP sustainability, but thats a lot to ask after they've already overhauled the skills and we're deeply into low cost F2P times.
Asking for this to be like Bridge Commander is like every person on the TOR forums asking them to make it into a SWG sandbox. Its just not on the map of where they meant to take it.
It's extremely rare for us to see anything in Star Trek move on a Z axis.
Ships tend to move forward, backwards, left and right. Kind of like space zeppelins more then actual spacecraft..
As far as Star Trek space combat goes, the movement ingame is pretty accurate..
This. And simply SAYING ships can roll doesn't make it so, especially not when it comes to programming in the constraints of a combat system. M
And to the folks saying combat is too FAST? What Romulan Ale are you drinking?! If anything it's too SLOW.
Most shown ST battles happened on a fairly narrow horizontal corridor. The Defiant never climbed high and dived low to Stuka-dive-bomb a Dominion cruiser. And during DS9's war scenes (VERY distinct from the dueling behavior that characterized most Trek movies), Galaxies and Neg'Vhars and even the toughest cruisers had the average lifespan of a Peregrine fighter in the midst of a warp core explosion (hint: SECONDS).
Wartime-level combat (i.e. Fleet Actions and STFs) is the default condition of STO's combat (talking in endgame terms, when every ship performs at its best). Basically, most of STO's status quo is closer to "Sacrifice of Angels" than your typical episode.
And yet the average STO fight consists of 5-7 ships constantly orbiting each other to bring weapon arcs to bear (or in the case of escorts, just parking right up a target's impulse outlets) and letting lose the dogs of Scatter Volley/Fire At Will.
Now, I won't say this isn't a "trek" feel, mind you. The sound effects are wonderful, and I like the graphics, which more or less is enough for me (Unlike some I never expected or wanted a Bridge Commander MMO out of this game).
In the canon we simply didn't see enough truly wartime-scale fighting to say that things wouldn't change in the 30 years of difference. If the world of STO can make Transphasic Torpedoes (once god-tier weapons), personal shields and full-auto energy weapons commonplace, what's to say that ships aren't just so tough these days that literal slugging matches become the order of the day?
In the canon we simply didn't see enough truly wartime-scale fighting to say that things wouldn't change in the 30 years of difference. If the world of STO can make Transphasic Torpedoes (once god-tier weapons), personal shields and full-auto energy weapons commonplace, what's to say that ships aren't just so tough these days that literal slugging matches become the order of the day?
Thats a bit of self serving argument don't you think? An MMO of dubious canon gives everybody god level gear, because in MMOs you become gods fighting atop Olympus by end game, and that should quell all commentary that our ships aren't balanced to reflect how Trek represented ship to ship combat? Also, its idiotic since nothing in history has ever shown that a man made vessel becomes MORE invulnerable as technology improves, all of the 20th century only seeks to prove the opposite (and as much as you say thats not important to the distant future, I think that anybody who really knows why people read and write sci fi would know you're flat wrong).
We COULD sit here and argue all day long about whether the canon demonstrated that ships had staying power or that they were all glorified glass cannons (I tend towards the former, since I can think of multiple ship to ship duels that lasted multiple scenes versus most "glass cannon" scenes involved ships getting ganged up on during massive thousand ship battles) but its pointless. We would be arguing the wrong point.
The point is that this isn't Trek, its a fraud. Its not a simulation of Trek, or even an appropriate representation of most of what Star Trek really is. Its a vessel which mines the canon for ever conceivable familiar thing to sell you on the make believe fantasy, but just like when you played cops and robbers or cowboys and indians or made swords out of cardboard and made plywood shields and fought like gladiators or knights of the round table when you were a kid, everybody knows that this was fantasy and not in any way accurate to even what movies of questionable believability really showed.
Its a game, a fantasy, its about internalizing the joy of playing in a sandbox (ignore obvious contradiction to the fact that this isn't a sandbox MMO), and it doesn't HAVE to be perfect, as long as you see the sand and know why its there. Its a math puzzle that spends a lot of time giving you ways to hide the fact that its math, but we all know that the people who are good at this game don't derive their Defiant Escort builds from watching Trek and trying to read what Chief O'Brien's engineering console showed during the first Battle of Chin'Toka. Min Maxing within STO is its own universe, the rest is just make up and a smile (some people think its a vulgar smile TRIBBLE the whole Trek universe out, but thats subjective).
There is enough inconsistency in how Trek represented combat since Trek for much of its history was rather puritanical as well. Roddenberry kind of went off his rocker when he started making TNG and only after he died did they start to explore the darker war making in the universe, and then only did they have to actually push the limits of what kind of Physics they were actually playing with. Its a fun conversation sure, but lets be honest STO isn't even in a league that pretends to be as good as most of the half baked non-canon novels when it comes to being true to the faith.
Just leave this one alone. Its not worth the heartache for such an obvious truth.
I love this game and don't get me wrong I don't hate how they did sector space and space combat but it does not feel endless.
Firstly it feels small and after doing a trial on Eve Online recently, I realised how small STO actually feels. I know Eve is more of a space simulator, but in comparison to even Bridge Commander it feels very small. Having to corkscrew around to get to the top of the map get's irritating after a while.
I wish they did away with the sector space in all honesty and made it open like Eve, where your ship would enter warp and you'd travel quickly to the next system without having to hit loading screens. A finer level of detail when it comes to space would be appreciated and the size scaling to be fixed would be nice too.
I love the combat, but at times it doesn't feel very bold and epic like some of the great battles in the movies or series for me. I wish they took a few more lessons from Bridge Commander and SFC Series as those were great space combat games and also changed the shield settings to the following:
I do remember a while back Dstahl had mentioned something about wanting open space and removing the borders of each sector block. Maybe by doing this it would allow for that endless space feel, especially when you go into warp to another system. I'd just prefer them to put more effort into refining what we have, as oppose to all the new ships we keep getting & new content. I'd love to eventually have access to an entire system like the Sol system.
Star trek feel... isn't that all really just personal preference?
True.
Besides: What I gathered from the shows, the weapon range of space weaponry in Star Trek is somewhere between 50.000 and 300.000 km. THOUSAND!!! Range of sensors, visual and communication is even larger. Which makes sense considering the general speed these starships are supposed to be abel to travel.
So even if the effective range is closer, there would be not many space-dogfights in this universe, certainly not within the range they take place in this game (10 km lol)
On the bridge this is no big deal, you have sensors to detect other objects, you don?t have to actually look at the other ship to communicate or shoot it. If you want to see the other ship you just magnify the screen if it is within visual range.
But of course its not possible to show two ships being thousands of kilometres apart on the same screen and dogfights "toe-to-toe" are cool and people want action and shooting. So usually encounters where you can see the ships exterior are shown to be at a much closer range.
Which sometimes makes sense when one ship is beeing cloaked or in friendly encounters but often it is just ridiculous (DS9 Dominion war => facepalm)
Besides: What I gathered from the shows, the weapon range of space weaponry in Star Trek is somewhere between 50.000 and 300.000 km. THOUSAND!!! Range of sensors, visual and communication is even larger. Which makes sense considering the general speed these starships are supposed to be abel to travel.
So even if the effective range is closer, there would be not many space-dogfights in this universe, certainly not within the range they take place in this game (10 km lol)
For me, tacking some extra zeroes onto that 10 km (or any other distance indicated in km ingame), would actually go a long way. It would be purely cosmetic, sure, but it would make the transition from light years to km's a lot less awkward, as far as I'm concerned.
I agree with the OP. I've felt since I started playing that space combat should be more strategic and less twitchy. It's just too busy, and Star Trek battles were never like that. That was a Star Wars thing. I'd like to see fewer abilities that actually have more significance. Maybe longer timers on all weapons.
Comments
And all the attempts to put it in, had been a failure so far.
Interaction with NPCs get boring quite fast. You would need a single 20hrs Story to make it more interesting, but this is far too much work to implement it in a game like this.
Exploration, as it is designed, too. Go here, collect that, fly there collect that as well.
Puzzles/Experiments: All there is are minigames at the moment, and most of it gets boring after the 2nd run.
After all, it is combat (PvP) which offers the most alternation right now. To get more Star Trek Feeling, the game would have to be more like this one game from this other franchise, around 10 years ago. (This 20hrs+ Story Content Stuff, but it would take half an enternity to implement something like this, which is too long for a game like this, where people cry for new stuff every single week.)
The whole thing of Inertial Dampeners were meant to counter the internal effects of torsional stress, but there is not much that would prevent the torsion from ripping your ship in half, and most of the ships in the Star Trek universe are built with pylons and parts going off in every direction.
But imagine how three dimensions could change fighting mechanics. Shields would have six sides minimum for the dorsal and ventral in addition to fore/aft starboard/port. And thats hard to depict in a two dimensional plane- like from looking at the side of ships or the circular shield indicator in the target viewer.
Not adding dorsal and ventral shields would mean that turning your ship topside would effectively make shield mitigation automatic because you'd be dividing damage between all four simultaniously- and thats not realistically viable.
Also weapons would have to be targeted more conically because you'd have completely independently usable fore, aft, left, right, dorsal, and ventral weapons.
Not doing so would make turning your ship upside down a meaningless cosmetic detail as opposed to a strategic maneuver.
But this could satisfy the broadside cannon wish of many players.
And people so tired of the linearity of the game need to join a role play fleet (call me, I've got one).
There's no way that a game like this is going to be able to open up enough randomized experience and cover enough reaction possibilities to make it character driven.
If thats what's really important to you, role play with similarly minded individuals is the best bet.
THIS!
Full 360 would be great. I can't recall how many times I've ended up at that odd angle where I can't use my cannons nor can I increase/decrease my climb angle....:mad:
Small Crafts, the Defiant-Class and BoPs for example performed some of these maneuvers, so you are wrong.
This just proves the point. Torsional stress gets greater the larger the object is. It's the same reason that fighter jets can do all kinds of fancy maneuvers but bombers basically fly in a straight line. (I suffered through engineering school in RL. We studied this kind of thing.)
Fly her apart, then!:D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0VTyTPJVfs
Yup, but the engine allows both at the same time as well.:)
And the engine is the same for space and ground so it's possible.
Well, while it's certainly true that it's not a particularly smart idea to do this with large craft we have today we've also seen larger ships in Star Trek do it without getting torn apart...at reasonable speeds.
For example in "Time Squared" we can see the Enterprise-D sucked into a...I'll show you:
http://images.wikia.com/memoryalpha/en/images/1/1d/USS_Enterprise-D_consumed_by_energy_vortex.jpg
anyway into this and the ship goes in with its rear and first.
So she orients herself 90 degrees "up", while her engines are fighting the effect...without any stress tearing her apart.
Not to mention in STO, when a ship can orient itself 45 degrees "up", another 45 or 90 shouldn't be a problem since there's no gravity or aerodynamic stress affecting the ship...at a reasonable speed of course.;)
*EDIT: and to avoid such stresses, we've seen a simple solution in Star Trek 2: move up and down without changing the ship's orientation.
In some points, story logic has to give way to comfortable accessibility of content.
If players have to slog through random content in order to get into an STF, STFs will be deader than dead.
Without that, they'd even break in half just from orbiting Planets . It's the same effect that happens when you pull up a big rope over a larger distance. Even though it's as taut as it could be, the middle part will hang through simply due to gravity.
Apparently JJ made his Enterprise out of diamond. The engineer in me cries.:(
Edit: I know, magic structural field and all. Apparently there's been advances in technology so that a starship in bad enough shape to fall to the earth can still maintain its electronics.
I'm not sure it's at all possible to get right, but it's definitely not possible for Cryptic, as they've demonstrated. Repeatedly. The Diplomacy dialogue-only missions were interesting exactly once (if that).
If you dont like it, then beter and go play EVE
Here I am in space and theres this magical field that stops me at a 55 degree angle and I can't get any closer to a 90. Somehwere along the advancements in technology our 360 degrees turned into 220.
It's extremely rare for us to see anything in Star Trek move on a Z axis.
Ships tend to move forward, backwards, left and right. Kind of like space zeppelins more then actual spacecraft..
As far as Star Trek space combat goes, the movement ingame is pretty accurate..
I'll admit that in most maps it doesn't matter. But it can be pretty infuriating in the vault trying to go between we weavers. I find myself spiraling to get to a straggler all the time.
I'm sure even decent programmers can squeeze more out of STO's engine, but at the moment STO's combat just wasn't designed for cover and accuracy (ground), nor serious tactical manuevering (space).
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
Thats what Id like to see. KA damage to ships but using the modern graphics of STO.
Som would complain that when you heal the warp nacelle etc would miraculosly reappear. Well the surface skin damage seen in current games just vanish and you do respawn.
Its fun though in KA it was fun chasing a miranda and hitting it with torps. Boom there goes the nacelle and the ship tries to escape with its engines blown. Hehe.
Each person feels and thinks differently when seeing certain things and comparing it to the vacuum they see in their minds of such items.
When I see post about big ships moving and spiraling and flipping, I say no way. not because it's not possible because it truly is, in slow motion movements but when it comes to combat I doubt that's a good idea, a ship moving that fast will kill every body inside it. Some people say inertial dampeners and whatever else but when i catch an episode of ST I always see the guys bouncing off the wall while taking a shot, can you imagine taking that same shot while doing a barrel roll "Oh my god, they killed my Borg engineer!" "Those TRIBBLE!"
And then DHC's on a FED ship? I'm a FED Tac in a Patrol Escort and I still hate seeing DHC's on FED ship it's just, well you know, not right or wrong but just feels not like it should be.
Then there were relationships and children and just as important to the series as tacs, eng, and scis were civies, will they have to make civies or allow marriage and such? I'm not sure.
I'm not sure what a star trek feel is but I am certain what it isn't and that's the furthest I can go.
NPC are way too dumb, I play all missions on elite and apart from STF or No Win nothing offer really a challenge in space (Tholians are annoying more than anything else
And before someone mention it, I'm talking about space NPC and combat. I find ground more balanced, there is quite a bit of a difference when you kill a boss on normal or elite, on elite you better be well prepared or you'll respawn a lot with your boffs.
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As an exemple, I do rom daily with my tac in 15-20 min using Jem Attack ship on elite, nice to do it quick but there is no challenge in it or very little.
E'Mc2 : Science Reman torp T'Varo, deadly annoyance :P
Kunmal: Tactical fed Klingon, ground specialist, USS Kanewaga
Ka -tet Tier 5 fleet fully completed Starbase and fleet property
Its a totally different way to design a combat mechanic and it shows in the pacing but one thing no matter whether you like it or not is true, and thats that Trek was never a regen kind of combat universe. You lost your shields, your ablative armor started to buckle, and thats when you had to figure out if you were going to pull off a victory or not, not wait for the shields to miraculously regenerate somehow.
This is where you enter the conceit of an MMO and the window dressing used to sell us on it. STO isn't really Trek, its just a Trek uniform thrown over an altogether un-Trek set of mechanics. Some of it really does work on a Trek level, but mostly its just a facile proxy that misses the mark quite a bit.
It won't change, it'll never be like real Trek space combat, not unless the dynamics shift to significantly favour HP sustainability, but thats a lot to ask after they've already overhauled the skills and we're deeply into low cost F2P times.
Asking for this to be like Bridge Commander is like every person on the TOR forums asking them to make it into a SWG sandbox. Its just not on the map of where they meant to take it.
This. And simply SAYING ships can roll doesn't make it so, especially not when it comes to programming in the constraints of a combat system. M
And to the folks saying combat is too FAST? What Romulan Ale are you drinking?! If anything it's too SLOW.
Most shown ST battles happened on a fairly narrow horizontal corridor. The Defiant never climbed high and dived low to Stuka-dive-bomb a Dominion cruiser. And during DS9's war scenes (VERY distinct from the dueling behavior that characterized most Trek movies), Galaxies and Neg'Vhars and even the toughest cruisers had the average lifespan of a Peregrine fighter in the midst of a warp core explosion (hint: SECONDS).
Wartime-level combat (i.e. Fleet Actions and STFs) is the default condition of STO's combat (talking in endgame terms, when every ship performs at its best). Basically, most of STO's status quo is closer to "Sacrifice of Angels" than your typical episode.
And yet the average STO fight consists of 5-7 ships constantly orbiting each other to bring weapon arcs to bear (or in the case of escorts, just parking right up a target's impulse outlets) and letting lose the dogs of Scatter Volley/Fire At Will.
Now, I won't say this isn't a "trek" feel, mind you. The sound effects are wonderful, and I like the graphics, which more or less is enough for me (Unlike some I never expected or wanted a Bridge Commander MMO out of this game).
In the canon we simply didn't see enough truly wartime-scale fighting to say that things wouldn't change in the 30 years of difference. If the world of STO can make Transphasic Torpedoes (once god-tier weapons), personal shields and full-auto energy weapons commonplace, what's to say that ships aren't just so tough these days that literal slugging matches become the order of the day?
Thats a bit of self serving argument don't you think? An MMO of dubious canon gives everybody god level gear, because in MMOs you become gods fighting atop Olympus by end game, and that should quell all commentary that our ships aren't balanced to reflect how Trek represented ship to ship combat? Also, its idiotic since nothing in history has ever shown that a man made vessel becomes MORE invulnerable as technology improves, all of the 20th century only seeks to prove the opposite (and as much as you say thats not important to the distant future, I think that anybody who really knows why people read and write sci fi would know you're flat wrong).
We COULD sit here and argue all day long about whether the canon demonstrated that ships had staying power or that they were all glorified glass cannons (I tend towards the former, since I can think of multiple ship to ship duels that lasted multiple scenes versus most "glass cannon" scenes involved ships getting ganged up on during massive thousand ship battles) but its pointless. We would be arguing the wrong point.
The point is that this isn't Trek, its a fraud. Its not a simulation of Trek, or even an appropriate representation of most of what Star Trek really is. Its a vessel which mines the canon for ever conceivable familiar thing to sell you on the make believe fantasy, but just like when you played cops and robbers or cowboys and indians or made swords out of cardboard and made plywood shields and fought like gladiators or knights of the round table when you were a kid, everybody knows that this was fantasy and not in any way accurate to even what movies of questionable believability really showed.
Its a game, a fantasy, its about internalizing the joy of playing in a sandbox (ignore obvious contradiction to the fact that this isn't a sandbox MMO), and it doesn't HAVE to be perfect, as long as you see the sand and know why its there. Its a math puzzle that spends a lot of time giving you ways to hide the fact that its math, but we all know that the people who are good at this game don't derive their Defiant Escort builds from watching Trek and trying to read what Chief O'Brien's engineering console showed during the first Battle of Chin'Toka. Min Maxing within STO is its own universe, the rest is just make up and a smile (some people think its a vulgar smile TRIBBLE the whole Trek universe out, but thats subjective).
There is enough inconsistency in how Trek represented combat since Trek for much of its history was rather puritanical as well. Roddenberry kind of went off his rocker when he started making TNG and only after he died did they start to explore the darker war making in the universe, and then only did they have to actually push the limits of what kind of Physics they were actually playing with. Its a fun conversation sure, but lets be honest STO isn't even in a league that pretends to be as good as most of the half baked non-canon novels when it comes to being true to the faith.
Just leave this one alone. Its not worth the heartache for such an obvious truth.
Firstly it feels small and after doing a trial on Eve Online recently, I realised how small STO actually feels. I know Eve is more of a space simulator, but in comparison to even Bridge Commander it feels very small. Having to corkscrew around to get to the top of the map get's irritating after a while.
I wish they did away with the sector space in all honesty and made it open like Eve, where your ship would enter warp and you'd travel quickly to the next system without having to hit loading screens. A finer level of detail when it comes to space would be appreciated and the size scaling to be fixed would be nice too.
I love the combat, but at times it doesn't feel very bold and epic like some of the great battles in the movies or series for me. I wish they took a few more lessons from Bridge Commander and SFC Series as those were great space combat games and also changed the shield settings to the following:
I do remember a while back Dstahl had mentioned something about wanting open space and removing the borders of each sector block. Maybe by doing this it would allow for that endless space feel, especially when you go into warp to another system. I'd just prefer them to put more effort into refining what we have, as oppose to all the new ships we keep getting & new content. I'd love to eventually have access to an entire system like the Sol system.
True.
Besides: What I gathered from the shows, the weapon range of space weaponry in Star Trek is somewhere between 50.000 and 300.000 km. THOUSAND!!! Range of sensors, visual and communication is even larger. Which makes sense considering the general speed these starships are supposed to be abel to travel.
So even if the effective range is closer, there would be not many space-dogfights in this universe, certainly not within the range they take place in this game (10 km lol)
On the bridge this is no big deal, you have sensors to detect other objects, you don?t have to actually look at the other ship to communicate or shoot it. If you want to see the other ship you just magnify the screen if it is within visual range.
But of course its not possible to show two ships being thousands of kilometres apart on the same screen and dogfights "toe-to-toe" are cool and people want action and shooting. So usually encounters where you can see the ships exterior are shown to be at a much closer range.
Which sometimes makes sense when one ship is beeing cloaked or in friendly encounters but often it is just ridiculous (DS9 Dominion war => facepalm)
For me, tacking some extra zeroes onto that 10 km (or any other distance indicated in km ingame), would actually go a long way. It would be purely cosmetic, sure, but it would make the transition from light years to km's a lot less awkward, as far as I'm concerned.