This needed to be reiterated, especially since it's the only thing that I can think of that provides an example of an actual melee-based starship (instead of a mobile suit of some sort), other than its spinoff Angel Arms.
The link above goes to an example of the Outlaw Star in combat, no extended watching needed
Still, while it was a good show in its own right, it has no place in Star Trek. The closest we have or are likely to get are Escorts, and they need to be inside the 2 km mark to do their best damage... which is plenty close enough to represent the sort of gameplay that melee characters give in most games.
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Joined January 2010.
There was a story in "Star Trek, the manga" where the Enterprise went toe to toe with some child soldiers in Mobile Suits. One of them managed to ram a sword right through the bridge module.
Now if I can only remember what the frak I did with my copy...
I'm sort of all right with the idea of close range mele combat mechs, if only becuase I'm a Gundam fan (and even they used long range attacks that make STO's 10k limit look like a mele attack (IE, the 00-Riser's "trans Am Riser sword"). But stricly speaking, Star Trek was designed as basicly naval combat in a three dimensioninal eviroment.
A mele combat ship runs the risk of getting blasted into the next qudrant before it gets close enough to attack. You would also need to get away before your target's anti-mater containment fails, and you go boom two.
Everywhere I look, people are screaming about how bad Cryptic is.
What's my position?
That people should know what they're screaming about!
(paraphrased from "The Newsroom)
While every ork loves a Brute ramship, I'm not sure they are the best addition to this game or franchise.
Unless Games Workshop and CBS somehow put orks in Trek (I am joking) , ramming ships should be restricted to damaged vessels making a last dish effort instead of a main attack type.
Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
While every ork loves a Brute ramship, I'm not sure they are the best addition to this game or franchise.
Unless Games Workshop and CBS somehow put orks in Trek (I am joking) , ramming ships should be restricted to damaged vessels making a last dish effort instead of a main attack type.
I could see it IF:
They either made unmanned shuttles (or manned in the Klingons' case) a kamikaze carrier pet...
Or they introduced probes, which I could see being a burst damage weapon for science vessels and maybe select cruisers like the exploration cruisers.
personally i'd love to see a semi melee combat.
I mean the hardest hitting guns (DHC) should have a limited range, like 5 Km, while the beams should be able to hit targets 10 Km away.
DC, Single cannons and turrets should have a slight improvement in range of 6 Km.
also defense rating should be determined by distance and speed, the closer you are, the easier to hit.
Come to think of it, don't think there is anykind of Science-Fiction genre that uses such things, except one.
The Yuuzhan Vong from Star Wars probably use a type of melee ship. Either for kamikaze or boarding.
If not the Vong, then i am sure, if we ever actually got to see much of them in ship to ship space combat, the Zerg or Tyranid would also use a form of melee 'ship.'
They either made unmanned shuttles (or manned in the Klingons' case) a kamikaze carrier pet...
Or they introduced probes, which I could see being a burst damage weapon for science vessels and maybe select cruisers like the exploration cruisers.
I thought up a senario where there was a race that managed to settle their entire star system and get a very robust space economy going without warp drive. Then another race came along (like the Satarrans or something) and gave them warp drive inorder to turn them into soldiers for their side. But now they're completely unprepared for competing on a galactic level. They still use chemical propelled ships, and most of those are mining or cargo ships.
So, they are stuck with old school weapons like missiles, machine guns, and piddly little lazers, but, their ships use metreon gas as a propellant, assuring that the most deadly thing the have is their exhaust. This also makes things problematic for more advanced races because even the tiniest ship can make a really big kaboom.
It would make an interesting story, and give us a bunch of fun enemies to fight.
Support and control? Please clarify how science ships are control? Maybe back at launch day when jam sensors, sensor scramble and viral matrix were all really useful control powers. But these days? Nah.
Think of it this way, you have a ship designed to take swipes at the enemy, heavy forward armoring and dense holo-blades on the side of the ship, the blades are strong enough to do some significant damage, all the while the ship is fast, manueverable and can do kinetic damage if aimed right.
I know at least three people who might wanna design such a ship.
Think of it this way, you have a ship designed to take swipes at the enemy, heavy forward armoring and dense holo-blades on the side of the ship, the blades are strong enough to do some significant damage, all the while the ship is fast, manueverable and can do kinetic damage if aimed right.
I know at least three people who might wanna design such a ship.
Think of it this way, you have a ship designed to take swipes at the enemy, heavy forward armoring and dense holo-blades on the side of the ship, the blades are strong enough to do some significant damage, all the while the ship is fast, manueverable and can do kinetic damage if aimed right.
I know at least three people who might wanna design such a ship.
However it turns out that whenever you apply a direct kinetic force to an object, you apply equal force to yourself. So if you hit another ship hard enough to destroy it, you have to absorb the same amount of energy, which will almost certainly destroy you. Newton wins again.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
Well if you're getting Melee Ships, i want Spaceball 1 that can transform into dum, dum dum dum dum, Mega MAID.
SCM - Infected(S) - DMG Out: 11,776,567 DPS: 114,224.70 (28.7% of Team) - Pinky@ukcaptain420 I reserve the right to have a completely different standpoint depending on my mood.
Extreme boarding parties would be cool. If not cast close range massive hull damage on impact and injecting it with your babies causing the enemy ship to die from the inside. Give it a console that give's its attacks a chance for the damage to bypass shields.
Welcome to "how we crashed our ship into a wall." Oops, no wait, that was the enemies force fields... And I forgot to use transphasic weapons. I am going to continue pounding your shields with kinetic weapons that have no penetration now!
My first thought when I saw this thread was a pirate ship boarding scenario... ziplines and cutlasses, yarr!
The Reapers in Mass Effect almost quality as melee-capable, though not quite. They would often physically latch onto stuff and drill with particle beams at very very close range. The Reavers (not to be confused with the Reapers!) in Firefly went so far as to latch onto stuff and spin around like maniacs. Whatever those things were in The Matrix behaved kind of the same way: Latch, tear, drill.
Still, there's nothing that I can remember in Trek canon that comes close to a "melee ship" and I kinda doubt CBS would allow it to happen, or that Cryptic would take much interest in the idea either. Which is for the best I think as it would probably require a ton of work to be done right.
Now, kamikaze fighters, on the other hand... or a widened scope on ramming attacks... that I could get behind, especially for Jem'Hadar ships. But it would still be a niche tactic at best, I think. I can't see most players bothering with it when they can just pew-pew at a safer distance.
Now, kamikaze fighters, on the other hand... or a widened scope on ramming attacks... that I could get behind, especially for Jem'Hadar ships. But it would still be a niche tactic at best, I think. I can't see most players bothering with it when they can just pew-pew at a safer distance.
Jem'Hadar fighters already do that.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
personally i'd love to see a semi melee combat.
I mean the hardest hitting guns (DHC) should have a limited range, like 5 Km, while the beams should be able to hit targets 10 Km away.
DC, Single cannons and turrets should have a slight improvement in range of 6 Km.
also defense rating should be determined by distance and speed, the closer you are, the easier to hit.
This is the most practical idea, although personally I would tweak the ranges you suggested.
Beams get 10km range, cannons and turrets get 8km, dual cannons get 6km and dual heavy cannons get 5km range. Then you can introduce a new type of weapon and give it 2.5km range and add some nifty bonus like shield penetration or a slow effect or something.
That's about as close to melee as you should get in this game, and would add more variety and tradeoffs to different weapons and play styles.
Given the speed of most starships, and the fact that even as ocean warships torpedo rams were almost unusable, I don't think this concept has much promise. Any collision of something as massive, and fast moving, as a pair of starships is likely to cause utter carnage on both ships.
However it turns out that whenever you apply a direct kinetic force to an object, you apply equal force to yourself. So if you hit another ship hard enough to destroy it, you have to absorb the same amount of energy, which will almost certainly destroy you. Newton wins again.
hence the holo blades, they'd do damage but they would also absorb the damage themselves, once a certain ammount of pressure had been applied the blades would either regenerate or disperse and regen.
it would however also prevent an instant kill level of destruction, weaken first then kill.
Comments
This needed to be reiterated, especially since it's the only thing that I can think of that provides an example of an actual melee-based starship (instead of a mobile suit of some sort), other than its spinoff Angel Arms.
The link above goes to an example of the Outlaw Star in combat, no extended watching needed
Still, while it was a good show in its own right, it has no place in Star Trek. The closest we have or are likely to get are Escorts, and they need to be inside the 2 km mark to do their best damage... which is plenty close enough to represent the sort of gameplay that melee characters give in most games.
Joined January 2010.
In regard to hating Star Trek 2009:
I need to have a word with them perhaps.
Now if I can only remember what the frak I did with my copy...
I'm sort of all right with the idea of close range mele combat mechs, if only becuase I'm a Gundam fan (and even they used long range attacks that make STO's 10k limit look like a mele attack (IE, the 00-Riser's "trans Am Riser sword"). But stricly speaking, Star Trek was designed as basicly naval combat in a three dimensioninal eviroment.
A mele combat ship runs the risk of getting blasted into the next qudrant before it gets close enough to attack. You would also need to get away before your target's anti-mater containment fails, and you go boom two.
What's my position?
That people should know what they're screaming about!
(paraphrased from "The Newsroom)
Unless Games Workshop and CBS somehow put orks in Trek (I am joking) , ramming ships should be restricted to damaged vessels making a last dish effort instead of a main attack type.
I could see it IF:
They either made unmanned shuttles (or manned in the Klingons' case) a kamikaze carrier pet...
Or they introduced probes, which I could see being a burst damage weapon for science vessels and maybe select cruisers like the exploration cruisers.
I mean the hardest hitting guns (DHC) should have a limited range, like 5 Km, while the beams should be able to hit targets 10 Km away.
DC, Single cannons and turrets should have a slight improvement in range of 6 Km.
also defense rating should be determined by distance and speed, the closer you are, the easier to hit.
The Yuuzhan Vong from Star Wars probably use a type of melee ship. Either for kamikaze or boarding.
If not the Vong, then i am sure, if we ever actually got to see much of them in ship to ship space combat, the Zerg or Tyranid would also use a form of melee 'ship.'
I thought up a senario where there was a race that managed to settle their entire star system and get a very robust space economy going without warp drive. Then another race came along (like the Satarrans or something) and gave them warp drive inorder to turn them into soldiers for their side. But now they're completely unprepared for competing on a galactic level. They still use chemical propelled ships, and most of those are mining or cargo ships.
So, they are stuck with old school weapons like missiles, machine guns, and piddly little lazers, but, their ships use metreon gas as a propellant, assuring that the most deadly thing the have is their exhaust. This also makes things problematic for more advanced races because even the tiniest ship can make a really big kaboom.
It would make an interesting story, and give us a bunch of fun enemies to fight.
Support and control? Please clarify how science ships are control? Maybe back at launch day when jam sensors, sensor scramble and viral matrix were all really useful control powers. But these days? Nah.
well no really it isn't.
Think of it this way, you have a ship designed to take swipes at the enemy, heavy forward armoring and dense holo-blades on the side of the ship, the blades are strong enough to do some significant damage, all the while the ship is fast, manueverable and can do kinetic damage if aimed right.
I know at least three people who might wanna design such a ship.
ME!ME!ME!ME!ME!ME!ME!ME!
What? Too obvious?
www.divisionhispana.com
The USAF once had a similar thought.
However it turns out that whenever you apply a direct kinetic force to an object, you apply equal force to yourself. So if you hit another ship hard enough to destroy it, you have to absorb the same amount of energy, which will almost certainly destroy you. Newton wins again.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
I reserve the right to have a completely different standpoint depending on my mood.
The Reapers in Mass Effect almost quality as melee-capable, though not quite. They would often physically latch onto stuff and drill with particle beams at very very close range. The Reavers (not to be confused with the Reapers!) in Firefly went so far as to latch onto stuff and spin around like maniacs. Whatever those things were in The Matrix behaved kind of the same way: Latch, tear, drill.
Still, there's nothing that I can remember in Trek canon that comes close to a "melee ship" and I kinda doubt CBS would allow it to happen, or that Cryptic would take much interest in the idea either. Which is for the best I think as it would probably require a ton of work to be done right.
Now, kamikaze fighters, on the other hand... or a widened scope on ramming attacks... that I could get behind, especially for Jem'Hadar ships. But it would still be a niche tactic at best, I think. I can't see most players bothering with it when they can just pew-pew at a safer distance.
Jem'Hadar fighters already do that.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
This is the most practical idea, although personally I would tweak the ranges you suggested.
Beams get 10km range, cannons and turrets get 8km, dual cannons get 6km and dual heavy cannons get 5km range. Then you can introduce a new type of weapon and give it 2.5km range and add some nifty bonus like shield penetration or a slow effect or something.
That's about as close to melee as you should get in this game, and would add more variety and tradeoffs to different weapons and play styles.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jK84VQfiE6Q/Tvp0fXWfudI/AAAAAAAACXo/nFqK85VsQnA/s1600/katahdin.jpg
Given the speed of most starships, and the fact that even as ocean warships torpedo rams were almost unusable, I don't think this concept has much promise. Any collision of something as massive, and fast moving, as a pair of starships is likely to cause utter carnage on both ships.
hence the holo blades, they'd do damage but they would also absorb the damage themselves, once a certain ammount of pressure had been applied the blades would either regenerate or disperse and regen.
it would however also prevent an instant kill level of destruction, weaken first then kill.