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Space Combat: Cryptic...don't stop evolving
obelusdoom
Member Posts: 8 Arc User
What do I mean?
I mean we've had roughly the same space combat system/mechanics since launch and it's remained relatively unchanged for the player in all that time.
Now Cryptic has added lots of content and side systems like duty officers which is great but the core system of combat has stayed basically the same. This is a problem because PVE space combat is fairly repetitive and predictable and can easily lead to player burnout. Basically pve space combat is a grind but it doesn't have to be.
The answer is not to just make the enemy vessels hit harder and have tougher shields. This only makes the game a bigger grind. What players need are variability to their combat experience. Basically what is needed is a smarter enemy who at times can surprise them.
Enemy AI Improvement Suggestions:
1. Enemy ships should work in unison to try and maneuver to focus fire on one shield quadrant. Bridge officers should warn you when the enemy is attempting this.
2. Enemy ships that can battle cloak should use it to better effect i.e. focusing their attacks on weak shield quadrants or staying behind the player to attack from the rear then recloaking to repeat when they come under fire.
3. Enemy ships, depending on faction, should retreat when they have obviously lost.
4. Enemy ships should surprise players by attacking out of cloak with alpha strikes when possible.
5. Enemy ships should try to call in reinforcements. Players would have to jam their transmission to prevent this.
6. There should be a chance that enemy ships of certain factions will try to ram players when they are losing.
7. Enemy ships should be better at rotating their own shields and maneuvering to keep low shields away from players weapon arcs.
8. Enemy ships should use their abilities more wisely (example: subnucleonic Beam) to negate player abilities.
9. Enemy ships should be try to knock out subsystems more frequently.
10. Enemy ships should be more selective in the use of torpedoes to improve the chances of hull hits.
11. Enemy ships should, depending on faction, offer to surrender when defeat is inevitable and retreat in not possible.
12. Enemy ships should taunt players when they are winning.
13. Crews on heavily damaged enemy ships will abandon ship.
14. Enemy ships who are dramatically outgunned will sometimes retreat before combat begins.
But beyond AI improvements it's time the game gave players some more options in space combat.
Suggestions:
1. Add a damage control system to the game. Instead of all damage being simply hull damage split a part of the damage among various ship systems - weapons, sensors, engines, life support, navigation, etc. Damage to systems does not knock them out unless damage to that system reaches 100%. Prior to that it only diminishes that systems effectiveness. Example: Your weapon systems are at 50% so your rate of fire is cut in half.
2. Add a system of damage control teams which players can tell to prioritize specific system repair. Depending on their vessel type players will have a set number of damage control teams. An escort may have 2 teams. A cruiser may have as many as 6 as a benefit to their larger crew. The more damage control teams you assign to a subsystem the faster it gets repaired.
To add to this STO needs to finally implement a system common to all other MMO's...player's resurrecting other players. If you want to build a community you need to give players a reason to group up. This will help do that.
1. Players should be disabled and not destroyed when they are defeated in combat.
2. Players that are defeated should have the option to wait to be repaired by a friendly player or abandon ship. If they abandon ship the idea is that their damaged vessel is later recovered and returned to a base for repair. Repairs should cost credits.
Giving players the ability to resuscitate their fellow players will give the designers more flexibility when designing maps as it will allow them to give greater benefits to grouping and doing things as a fleet. Basically by limiting respawn points and lengthening their distance from the battle it will make resuscitating fellow players critical.
Finally Cryptic should not stand pat with the aesthetics and animations currently present in space combat...i.e. how a ship blows up should vary more than it does. Some ships don't have to blow up at all but could just lose a nacelle and drift lifeless. Get creative here Cryptic. Don't let yourself settle. The more varied the experience the more curious the player will be to see what happens next.
I mean we've had roughly the same space combat system/mechanics since launch and it's remained relatively unchanged for the player in all that time.
Now Cryptic has added lots of content and side systems like duty officers which is great but the core system of combat has stayed basically the same. This is a problem because PVE space combat is fairly repetitive and predictable and can easily lead to player burnout. Basically pve space combat is a grind but it doesn't have to be.
The answer is not to just make the enemy vessels hit harder and have tougher shields. This only makes the game a bigger grind. What players need are variability to their combat experience. Basically what is needed is a smarter enemy who at times can surprise them.
Enemy AI Improvement Suggestions:
1. Enemy ships should work in unison to try and maneuver to focus fire on one shield quadrant. Bridge officers should warn you when the enemy is attempting this.
2. Enemy ships that can battle cloak should use it to better effect i.e. focusing their attacks on weak shield quadrants or staying behind the player to attack from the rear then recloaking to repeat when they come under fire.
3. Enemy ships, depending on faction, should retreat when they have obviously lost.
4. Enemy ships should surprise players by attacking out of cloak with alpha strikes when possible.
5. Enemy ships should try to call in reinforcements. Players would have to jam their transmission to prevent this.
6. There should be a chance that enemy ships of certain factions will try to ram players when they are losing.
7. Enemy ships should be better at rotating their own shields and maneuvering to keep low shields away from players weapon arcs.
8. Enemy ships should use their abilities more wisely (example: subnucleonic Beam) to negate player abilities.
9. Enemy ships should be try to knock out subsystems more frequently.
10. Enemy ships should be more selective in the use of torpedoes to improve the chances of hull hits.
11. Enemy ships should, depending on faction, offer to surrender when defeat is inevitable and retreat in not possible.
12. Enemy ships should taunt players when they are winning.
13. Crews on heavily damaged enemy ships will abandon ship.
14. Enemy ships who are dramatically outgunned will sometimes retreat before combat begins.
But beyond AI improvements it's time the game gave players some more options in space combat.
Suggestions:
1. Add a damage control system to the game. Instead of all damage being simply hull damage split a part of the damage among various ship systems - weapons, sensors, engines, life support, navigation, etc. Damage to systems does not knock them out unless damage to that system reaches 100%. Prior to that it only diminishes that systems effectiveness. Example: Your weapon systems are at 50% so your rate of fire is cut in half.
2. Add a system of damage control teams which players can tell to prioritize specific system repair. Depending on their vessel type players will have a set number of damage control teams. An escort may have 2 teams. A cruiser may have as many as 6 as a benefit to their larger crew. The more damage control teams you assign to a subsystem the faster it gets repaired.
To add to this STO needs to finally implement a system common to all other MMO's...player's resurrecting other players. If you want to build a community you need to give players a reason to group up. This will help do that.
1. Players should be disabled and not destroyed when they are defeated in combat.
2. Players that are defeated should have the option to wait to be repaired by a friendly player or abandon ship. If they abandon ship the idea is that their damaged vessel is later recovered and returned to a base for repair. Repairs should cost credits.
Giving players the ability to resuscitate their fellow players will give the designers more flexibility when designing maps as it will allow them to give greater benefits to grouping and doing things as a fleet. Basically by limiting respawn points and lengthening their distance from the battle it will make resuscitating fellow players critical.
Finally Cryptic should not stand pat with the aesthetics and animations currently present in space combat...i.e. how a ship blows up should vary more than it does. Some ships don't have to blow up at all but could just lose a nacelle and drift lifeless. Get creative here Cryptic. Don't let yourself settle. The more varied the experience the more curious the player will be to see what happens next.
Post edited by obelusdoom on
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Comments
Not that space combat doesn't need an improvement, but you effectively want to make it impossibly hard to combat NPCs by effectively making them as smart as a player (which I am not ever sure is possible) and then handicapping the Player to boot.
I can't speak for everyone, but this would totally turn me off. I don't PvP much, you know why? I am lousy at it. I am not good at outpredicting my opponent not to mention tricking them into something that benefits me.
Adding that system to PvE would make it terrible. The predictability of NPC is what makes them tolerable.
I don't agree with making NPC's as smart as and as deadly players are, but they should be more challenging and effective than they are now. If they had an improved AI, they wouldn't need invisible one shots to down players. Another benefit would be less of a shock to the system when pve players first walk into a pvp zone. Lets face it, in its current state, pve is way too inanimate.
Rather than having a Star Trek MMO, we have in quite a few respects a generic sci-fi MMO with the appearance of Star Trek. If they were to make these changes, they'd keep their core Star Trek fans that have played all the previous ST Space games and lose quite a few players. You'll notice that past Star Trek games have never been that competitive in the market when coming up against other games and STO changed that.
The only way I can see this working is if they apply these changes for people who want to play on Advanced & Elite. So the players who want to keep things simple and not have to worry about lot's of subsystems and smarter AI can play on Normal or maybe bump up to Advance for a great challenge and the ones who want to have that proper ST experience with tactical space combat can play on Advanced or Elite.
My main issue with the difficulty setting has always been that you don't get smarter AI and more complex space combat, you just get AI with more health and can dish out more damage. I truly feel that space combat does need to be looked at, cause although it might be nice to do Infected Elite in 5 minutes, I'd sometimes rather go back to Starfleet Command 3 or Bridge Commander to get that experience I'm after...... but I'd rather have Cryptic offer that experience as well.
The first 10 levels in STO are ridiculously easy. You dont even have to watch your screen to win battles. Just hit the space bar repeatedly and you could be watching TV not even paying attention (I've tested this). For new players who are leveling these AI improvements could ramp up as they progressed so they'd be fairly accustomed to the challenge when they hit the higher levels.
Max level PvE is really the only time in STO when things gets difficult and even that's mostly limited to STFs because they give the NPCs large amounts of shield/hull strength and massive firepower there. So yes of course for STF's if you made the AI smarter you'd have to rebalance the NPCs so they weren't as powerful.
Adding to whamhammer (I hope I got your name right, apologies if not). I can see making the AIs smarter for higher difficultes. And I don't mind scaling AI improvements as you go along in the story/level progression.
The only word of caution I would have is to understand your playerbase, Asking a Max-Level player to have a firm grasp of mechanics is one thing. Asking a level 10-20 player who doesn't have very many bridge officers and fewer probably trained, can be a killer.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
like maybe have these ideas partially activate on advanced and fully activate on elite? on top of the injury system. While leaving how it is now on well, the normal difficulty.
Thoughts added in red.
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