NPC Ship's and canon weapons

admiralbrenan

Over the years it has bugged me ever so slightly that some factions (The Breen most noticeably) are not using the right energy weapon type. Now that we have all these special energy weapon types and special consoles, I think it would be a good time to go back and apply some of these weapons/powers to NPC ships.

As I mentioned earlier the Breen are the ones that stick out the most with the wrong energy type. In Star Trek: DS9 and Generations it is stated that the Breen use type 3 disruptors (same and Klingons and Romulans), in game they are using polaron... something just doesn't seem right there. I know that the original reason for this was to give Breen the energy drain slant that they had in the show, but now we have the energy dissipator in game along with polarized disruptors. These would be a perfect fit for the Breen due to the fact that these weapons have a disruptor look and proc along with the polaron energy drain proc. Not only would this make them more in line with canon but also a slight bit more challenging.

The next enemy group that could use a passover for weapons is Dominion ships. As of right now they are using base polaron weapons that can be picked up from drops. While there is nothing wrong with these, they are a far stretch from what they looked like in the show but the dominion polarons from "boldly they rode" fit the bill perfectly. The Heavy escort could also be turned into the escort carrier like the player version. This would also make Dominion ships just a tad bit tougher.

The same could go for other factions as well
> Tholians could use the refracting tetryon weapons
> Hirogens could use phased tetryon weapons to go with there hunter moto (given that phased tets have the ability to knock subsystems offline)
> Romulan Republic NPC's could use the romulan plasma-disruptor hybrids (ground and space)

Multiple other powers from consoles that players have access to
could be added to NPC ships to increase the challange.

I hope that you (the Devs) highly consider doing this as it would make the game more interesting and would appease those who are very particular about getting as close to canon as possible with what is in game.

commadorebob

I'm going to agree and disagree with this.

I'll disagree on the ground of this being 40-ish years after DS9. Even modern militaries will change technology.

But I will agree for a reason that has kept me off of STO for a while: this isn't Star Trek anymore. So many non-canon ships and settings. We have 700 episodes to chose from, why do we need to invent stuff?

So, yes, try to make these weapons canon. Just so I can feel this is still the Star Trek game I attempted to become a developer on.

hevach

Jem'hadar weapons were disrupotrs, Cardassian weapons were usually disruptors... In fact, nearly every weapon that was not stated to be a phaser or some exotic super-tech was usually called a disruptor at some point. Actually, strike that, quite a few weapons that were called phasers were also called disruptors, as were some that were also stated to use unusual or exotic particles, like Anorax's chroniton weapons and a random tetryon pistol from DS9.

So, to stick to canon dialog, nearly every NPC in the game would have disruptors, but in a diverse rainbow of colors and myriad different effects and with numerous secondary terms to separate them (Jem'hadar weapons are also called polaron, Cardassian weapons were also called phaser and plasma, and even Klingon weapons got called phasers almost as often as Federation weapons got called disruptors). The color-themed weapons STO uses instead keep the visual aspects of various races' weapons and gives them a diversity of effect, without creating massive overlap in terminology to render the term disruptor even more useless than it was in canon.

noblet

It's always bugged me why Romulans in STO used Plasma beams. They only had plasma for torps, while borg used plasma beams and graviton torps, not plasma torps. STO gave borg plasma torps and gave graviton to voth and elachi. How far has the borg fallen...:rolleyes:

cptskeeteruk

Yeah a pass on the npc weapons and give them some specials that they had from the shows would be nice and maybe a pass on the visuals a tad to make them a little more detailed and more accurate as some weapons have never looked that right to me in the game. Will they consider it, maybe. Will they ever do it, probably not as they would probably consider it too low of a priority to ever get around to it. Oh and while their doing passes if they ever do. Please rip some of the audio effects from the shows and use them instead, would sound far better. Bit like how the mod armada 3 for sins has done. That mod looks and sounds amazing compared to what cryptics done.

adverbero

well they revamped the Undine ship AI and weapons recently, Maybe ( longshot) they might take a pass over other older enemies

not just from a visual standpoint, but also from a mechanics angle too, In my experience, a lot of enemies that would be dangerous in the shows tend to be pushovers in the game

angrytarg

I agree.

The Dominion was depicted as using phased polaron beams (which, oddly enought, were meant to penetrate shields, not drain power).

Breen drained power and were said to use disruptors. So polarized disruptors would be adequate.

Borg weapons are also "wrong", as are Romulan NPC weapons. And we have the "right" weapons IN THE GAME. They just had to replace them. Gravimetric torps in the hands of the borg were a way to make STFs more challenging as well.