Just watched an episode of Star Trek when the Federation retake DS9 from the Dominion. Then I played STO's Khitomer elite and soloed a Cube in a T4 Galaxy refit...
Is everyone happy with Space combat in STO, with the difficulty, canon resemblance and that Star Trek feel it has to it? And why do you have that view, or what do you think should be done about it?
Beta Antares Shipyards advanced Starship development project.
CLASSIFIED
Just watched an episode of Star Trek when the Federation retake DS9 from the Dominion. Then I played STO's Khitomer elite and soloed a Cube in a T4 Galaxy refit...
Is everyone happy with Space combat in STO, with the difficulty, canon resemblance and that Star Trek feel it has to it? And why do you have that view, or what do you think should be done about it?
Most seem to agree that STO's space combat is fun, but that word has varying mileage. I think it's adequate, though it would benefit greatly from a balancing pass.
Being a game, they have to make changes and sacrifices in order to make it balanced, playable and fun. No game based off some type of cultural entity would survive very long if it stayed true to that entity completely.
First, STO is not a simulator, it is an RPG. So you are not living out Trek episodes when you are playing - which is a good thing as they are incredibly inconsistent: one week the Galaxy blows a whole deep into a Borg Cube and the next week it is being captured by Ferengi in B'rel purchased from a scrapyard. Trek's combat moved at speed of plot.
Does it bother me that I can solo Cubes? Sometimes, but then I take into consideration that this time period is 30 years past Nemesis and dealing with Technology brought back by Janeway - and it has been advancing ever since. Janeway was one-shotting Sphere with a torpedo and in First Contact the same Borg Cube that took-out 39 ships at Wolf 359 was popped by Picard and a handful of ships. So even by then some tricks had been learned.
So I guess I do not think anything should be done about it.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
I love the sto space combat, its a great system for me.
Would I like to see some balance tweaks? Sure, but I have good fun playing as it is now. I'd love to see an additional difficulty setting in stfs but I can live with bad pugs being just as tough to play as a harder difficulty from time to time.
I'd also love to see a deeper diving/climbing angle to some ships and more movement options, but I also know the the game engine doesn't support that, (I remember, I think it was bridge commander? Seeing galaxies and other ships flying upside down, and in spite of my knowlege of phyics in space thought it looked odd).
Though I will say seeing ships like the defiant spiralling through exploding warp cores cannons blazing pleases me greatly.
Would be awesome to see some canon stfs like recreating wolf359 with much higher scale and difficulty. But I fear that may be a dream for a smoke and a cold beer lol!
In all I'm happy with sto, it is what it is and for me that is fine
"If this will be our end, then I will have them make SUCH an end as to be worthy of rememberance! Out of torpedos you say?! Find me the ferengi!".
not calling for a better AI, just give those ships a huge HP boost, but at the same time cut the amount of ships down to a third of what it is now.
This would have also great benefits towards performance in player dense zones.
loot is an annoyance and serves no purpose in this game...every mission rewards better gear than anything that actually drops throughout the leveling process and beyond. And it should be no problem to equip your ship with that gear during and after leveling.
Not every ship should explode...some should simply be crippled and drifting in space (like voth), or even warp away (like the acamar in that Tau dewa mission)
cannons and torps need a speed increase...when an energy weapon is behaving like a guided rocket, something is not right.
And a torp that is supposed to be faster than a ship at subwarp is actually having a hard time catching up, something is wrong.
Energy weapons should have a penalty when hitting hull, similar to torps hitting shields. In other words, energy weapons are not the first choice for blowing up a ship.
Ships in general have too many weapon slots. 8 slots means that 6-7 beams are fireing simultaniously, which simply looks like spam and completely not Trek, atleast imo.
This is much better at lower levels where ships only have 3-4 slots...those fights look alot more Trek.
I like the space combat more than anything else in this game.
But I do think there are issues with risk and reward. Borg stfs pay out way more than any other stf. Undine and sphere stfs are skipped because they have relatively ****ty rewards. The battlezones are faster, easier and more rewarding (but, imo, boring).
There is also too much of an emphasis on dps. Control / healing is only an afterthought.
As previously mentioned, STO is not a simulator, it's a game.
That said, I like STO's space combat for the most part. I think some things should have been changed at the very beginning though.
Namely that a quantity of many ships to fight should have been transformed into only a very few ships of high quality.
Powers and weapons should have been adjusted to compensate for the fact that each ship you fought was extremely tough and powerful.
A focus on only a few ships of considerable challenge (it could of course scale to the group), would have not only put more importance on the capability of each ship, but it would have reduced lag in 20 man missions.
I enjoy the space portion of the game. I would still like some changes, though. Mostly cosmetic.
I would like the enemies to be tougher and fewer in number. Longer, more cinematic battles instead of steamrolling squadrons.
I would also prefer the option to combine your weapons' power in to a single animation. Which is to say, instead of a dozen beams firing a second, I would like to see one strong beam. Preferably with the charge-up array animation before the blast. That was the way that it was often presented on film. Not always, mind you, but often.
I would like to see more Cluster Torpedoes instead of a bunch of torpedoes. About half the time in the shows Spreads fired one torpedo and split in to a bunch. It would be nice if some of the Torp Types did that as a Spread Animation.
Disable instead of Destroy would be a toggle.
Customized Attack Patterns would be a nice Captain Skill. they sometimes call out patterns names after the commander of the ship. We should get a Captain skill that has two empty slots and you another slot with each Captain Space Skill Rank-Up you earn. Then you fill the slots with Buff, Debuff, and Resist Modules that you want. It would be like "Attack Pattern (Captain's Name) 3" it would apply you custom skill, like a Kit for Space.
not calling for a better AI, just give those ships a huge HP boost
AHAHAHAHA!!! You sir/madam are being refreshingly honest and ironic.
See, they've already done what you want. Higher HP, harder hitting NPCs in elite. Now you want more than that in a "harder" difficulty. But people will complain that it's too hard, so they issue mk XIVIXXIIMZXX Uber Rare gear.
What you want is more power creep, love it.
All more HP means is that we just need moar damage. However, if they gave an NPC tactical team one might have to use strategy...
Personally I wouldn't mind if STO's space combat slowed down considerably. It rarely feels like you're commanding a mobile city-in-space several times the size of an aircraft carrier, or that intelligence and careful planning are more important than any amount of fast reflexes, split-second timing, and maximized aggression. It lacks the grandeur, the feeling that the fate of the civilization on the planet below rests on the outcome of two clashing titans. Instead its more like a couple fighter pilots having a skirmish.
I recent checked back on the most savagely one-sided beatdown I could think of, the destruction of the USS Odyssey at the hands of the Jem'Hadar, and even outnumbered 3-to-1 and facing weapons that bypassed its shields, it still took almost two minutes and a suicide attack to destroy the Odyssey. In this game, such an engagement would last maybe two seconds? Something missing there.
Personally I wouldn't mind if STO's space combat slowed down considerably. It rarely feels like you're commanding a mobile city-in-space several times the size of an aircraft carrier, or that intelligence and careful planning are more important than any amount of fast reflexes, split-second timing, and maximized aggression. It lacks the grandeur, the feeling that the fate of the civilization on the planet below rests on the outcome of two clashing titans. Instead its more like a couple fighter pilots having a skirmish.
I recent checked back on the most savagely one-sided beatdown I could think of, the destruction of the USS Odyssey at the hands of the Jem'Hadar, and even outnumbered 3-to-1 and facing weapons that bypassed its shields, it still took almost two minutes and a suicide attack to destroy the Odyssey. In this game, such an engagement would last maybe two seconds? Something missing there.
I enjoy STO's space combat, but it does not nor does any MMO with space out there compare with SWG's space combat. The main thing I'd like to see is that some STFs, even if they had to go a tier higher in difficulty force players to use tanks and or healers.
Personally I wouldn't mind if STO's space combat slowed down considerably. It rarely feels like you're commanding a mobile city-in-space several times the size of an aircraft carrier, or that intelligence and careful planning are more important than any amount of fast reflexes, split-second timing, and maximized aggression. It lacks the grandeur, the feeling that the fate of the civilization on the planet below rests on the outcome of two clashing titans. Instead its more like a couple fighter pilots having a skirmish.
I would suggest that the issue is not "length" as much as it is "feeling".
Even if the fights were longer, they would lack the visceral nature of a drama. They are just simulationist/gaming exercises, and not dramatic ones.
Tanks & healbots? I'm not into the WoW. You're just trading one set of mechanics for another. Again, it's not a mechanical issue. The issue is that it is mechanical.
I like flying starships around. I put up with a lot of other noise in order to do that.
I do not like much of anything about STOs space combat.
I do not like the way that timed abilities are used for everything. Its too much button mashing and doesnt feel right. Something like Hazard Emitters, should simply be a ship modifier, if you enter a cloud of goo then the HE systems activate and there you go. Or if you have Emerg Power to Shields, it should simply draw emergency power to buff the shields whenever they take damage. This would reduce things down to a few targetable abilities, which would streamline gameplay immensely.
I do not like the absence of consumable resources, such as power drain and/or crew. Right now only weapons and aux-to-bat use any power, but nothing else. Shields should consume power as they are damage and try to recharge, and engines should consume power when running at full speed, so that power levels mean something more than a modifier. Repairs should be performed by crew using things like Engi Team. Want to repair an ally? Send some of your crew over, hope you wont need them right away. Combat should be attrition warfare more than popping the other ship. Popping a ship should be possible, but it should require player skill and be somewhat rare, akin to a sniper headshot in FPS games, the rest of the time it should be running the guy out of resources and crew to effectively repair his ship and then popping him when he's low.
I dont like the way some of the abilities are essentially magic. Things like gravity well and tykens rift should be deployable satellites that can be targeted and destroyed, not unnatural phenomenon. It should be more sci-fi, less fantasy. I would like to see more stuff like that, more long-range sensor probes, stuff like that. Slot them in the torpedo hard-point (or dont).
I do not like the way that the particle effects that fill the screen with pastels, like some kind of teenager modern art. Its not like any kind of combat I've ever seen.
I really dislike the way that space combat is used as gratuitous time-filler in most of the episodes.
I'd also love to see a deeper diving/climbing angle to some ships and more movement options, but I also know the the game engine doesn't support that
The game engine completely utterly and totally DOES support it.
Cryptic has limited the angle and does not allow you to go directly up and down because...yeah, I got nothing.
Champions Online (which uses the exact same game engine) allows you to use a flying based travel power (think Superman) and you can go up, down, and every single angle inbetween.
To answer the first post though - I love STO's space combat. It's a lot of fun. It's also really easy (IMHO). Also, don't think at all about how many thousands of people you just killed every time you run a mission. :P
It's fun, probably too easy, partially because you have to solo waves of enemies, instead of having a single combat being exciting. And there is a bit too much space magic (that said, I love the space magicians, aka Science Vessels and Science Captains).
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
The game engine completely utterly and totally DOES support it.
Cryptic has limited the angle and does not allow you to go directly up and down because...yeah, I got nothing.
Champions Online (which uses the exact same game engine) allows you to use a flying based travel power (think Superman) and you can go up, down, and every single angle inbetween.
To answer the first post though - I love STO's space combat. It's a lot of fun. It's also really easy (IMHO). Also, don't think at all about how many thousands of people you just killed every time you run a mission. :P
I guess it's kinda a tradition in space-games. There are alot of space-fighter games that force you fly according to some kind of imaginary horizon and have some kind of default angle that all the ships are aligned to even though its in SPACE and SHOULD allow movements in ALL driections. From what I can recall most of the games that really allow free movement are heavy simulators. That would explain the non-realistic movement restriction but still not justify them.
That aside, I'm satisfied with the sapce combat. It's the most fun part of the game even tough it has some balance issues, but seriously what MMO doesn't?
And for the canon: I have a good laugh every time someone complains about it.
Bwaaah the design from ship-x or use color of weapon-y is not like on TV bwaaah.
I use a ship with fan-made design (yeah the oddy) with romulan weapons, reman shiels and have a reman, breen, jem'hadar, voth and orion bridge officer. So, in your face canon! :P
For the most part, I'm happy with it. It's better than I was expecting when I was first talked into the trying the game. There are a few things I think could improve it a lot:
I wish enemies were more evenly matched with a single player, with much better AI, the ability to heal themselves, use more buffs on themselves, etc. I hate the way you tear through enemies in this game, even when you purposely keep your damage low. It's pathetic how even enemies that should be "boss" level like Borg cubes and the Voth dreadnoughts go down almost instantly. I want fewer, smarter opponents that take a bit of time to kill -- the new Undine content just makes me want this even more.
At the same time, all the BS insta-kill stuff should really go. Borg invisitorps being the biggest offender, but there are others. Challenge is nice, being one-shot by something you couldn't prepare for isn't. I don't want to tear through enemies, I don't want enemies to tear through me unless my shields are down and half my crew's dead.
I wonder how much different the gameplay would be if energy weapons worked more like torpedoes and only one could fire at a time. This alone would do a lot to bring the Trek look to the game, you never really saw "spammy" attacks outside of torpedo spreads. I've been purposely putting more torpedoes on my ships just to get this look, it's so much better looking than the beam/pulse spam.
In DS9, a Defiant was able to rip through almost anything in mere seconds, and ships were capable of full 3D motion. Neither can be done in STO (Unless your enemy is very weak compared to you.
What we have to remember however, is that STO is a game. That means there has to be something that makes you put at least a little efford into the game.
Don't look silly... Don't call it the "Z-Store/Zen Store"...
Just watched an episode of Star Trek when the Federation retake DS9 from the Dominion. Then I played STO's Khitomer elite and soloed a Cube in a T4 Galaxy refit...
Is everyone happy with Space combat in STO, with the difficulty, canon resemblance and that Star Trek feel it has to it? And why do you have that view, or what do you think should be done about it?
apart from the lack of 3 dimensional fight, barrel rolls and expanded use of the map, its just great mindlessly firing off cannon and faw spam every second.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I like it. I reckon most players are still here for the combat alone, even when you've flown mission X hundreds of times there is still a chance something unexpected happens and it gives you a bit of a buzz. Those situations are few and far between though.
I suppose my main criticism is that it's not varied enough. and I agree completely that the pace should be slowed down and for tactics to matter more. I enjoy combat far more when levelling up than I do at the endgame. By the time I reach 50 I have abilities, gear passives and traits out of my ears. I'm just too powerful for enemies to even matter, let alone be any sort of threat.
Personally I'd go further and have the combat function more like a simulator, I don't see why every MMO needs to follow the usual 'fire everything now' idea. Energy banks that can and will run dry, torpedo compliments that will run out, less space magic and more cool down time between abilities that make sense.
For the most part, space combat is fun. I shoot npcs, they shoot me, stuff explodes after taking a lotta damage. Usually its the npcs, but every now and then I TRIBBLE up or get mobbed.
I just wish they'd fix the random death BS that crops up every now and then. I'm not talking about crits and stuff like that, its just I'm flying along at full heath, full shields and then next second *boom* dead. Not shot, not hit, not damaged, just instant dead. That kinda gets annoying pretty quick. Didnt happen much before the rep system changes, but now it happens quite often. Not every mission, but maybe every third mission/queue/whatever.
AHAHAHAHA!!! You sir/madam are being refreshingly honest and ironic.
See, they've already done what you want. Higher HP, harder hitting NPCs in elite. Now you want more than that in a "harder" difficulty. But people will complain that it's too hard, so they issue mk XIVIXXIIMZXX Uber Rare gear.
What you want is more power creep, love it.
All more HP means is that we just need moar damage. However, if they gave an NPC tactical team one might have to use strategy...
That's not quite true. More HP doesn't mean we need more damage.
Take an ISE for example - you've got folks doing 3-4m damage or so. They're doing it to how many objects? Reducing the number of objects while increasing their individual health amounts could still require the same amount of damage...it might just feel more like Star Trek to some, in there being what they feel to be epic battles rather than what's basically a monster farm and slaughtering a bunch of mobs.
Look at SB24 and the number of ships lined up for the slaughter there, eh? What if the number of ships was massively reduced while the health of the ships was tweaked? Same damage - same amount of time...
I believe that's along the lines of what he was talking about. It's something that I'd personally prefer. It's one thing in a fantasy game or ground game, where you're slaughtering the trash mobs on your way to the boss mob...but each of those ships are full of crew. You kill more NPCs blowing up a single ship in Space than you do in an entire instance on the Ground - and - that just feels way off.
I generally like the space combat in the game, although I have some issues with it.
First being the borg in particular to easy. A single ship should never be able to rip apart a borg cube.
That could be easily solved by replacing the "Tac cube" with the "normal cube" with no change in stats, and replacing the current normal cube with... don't know... a tactical sphere may be. Also no change in stats just visually.
Second thing is to much blowing up. A battle outcome should not mean "ship blows up" as a rule. NPCs should either be incapacitated or retread when beaten and only explode as an exception.
Player ships should always be incapacitated intend of blowing up and then after 10 seconds all molecules just rearrange back to a ship... beside the sickbay that somehow is the only ship part that has been damaged by the annihilation of the entire ship :rolleyes:
So that are my main issues, because both that things suck any immersion out of space combat.
It's enough. It's not balanced (lol a2b lol), but it's fair.
As for canon, in the show, when the ship had to loose, he lost, no matter what. And when he had to win, he won, no matter what. Sometimes using a last minute Crusher and some technobabbles with a deflector, or a trick only seen once.
Star Trek was probably the ones using the most plot weapons and armor. No fights were the same, even when the opponents were identical, and they never used the same trick twice.
In some episode the enemy take several torp and still have a shield, sometimes they take a single torp and die.
And I'm not mentioning the exploding consoles or everytime they took a speak break during a fight to find a plan to escape, while the enemy was nice enough to stop shooting in the meantime.
All more HP means is that we just need moar damage. However, if they gave an NPC tactical team one might have to use strategy...
Like what ? Pounding their shield harder ? AFAIK, the only think that can remove TT is subnucleotic beam. That's a fairly limited strategy, don't you think ?
AHAHAHAHA!!! You sir/madam are being refreshingly honest and ironic.
See, they've already done what you want. Higher HP, harder hitting NPCs in elite. Now you want more than that in a "harder" difficulty. But people will complain that it's too hard, so they issue mk XIVIXXIIMZXX Uber Rare gear.
What you want is more power creep, love it.
All more HP means is that we just need moar damage. However, if they gave an NPC tactical team one might have to use strategy...
you honestly come accross like somebody with a reading insufficency....
i merely was stating that there are too many low HP ships. when you can rip through 3 ships in 3 seconds it doesn't feel trek.
never said they should be harder hitting
never said there was a need for higher tier gear...it isn't even needed for elites, btw
the number of low HP vessels thrown against the player doesn't feel like trek at all.
honestly, the normal NPCs should have the HP level of elite NPCs, but not their firepower and elite NPCs should have even more HP, but instead of 1 shot kill powers a more sustained and attrition based combat mechanic.
the amount of time to kill would idealy be the same, but instead of 3 ships simultaniously, you blow up only one.
i'm clearly wasting my time by responding to you, because you obviously have a hard time with comprehensive reading otherwise you would have incorporated more of my previous post into your "response".
and btw...all that TT does IS increase the amount of Shield points you need to remove before blowing up the ship. That is exactly what i proposed anyway, but without the AI TRIBBLE up and it doesn't solve the issue of too many small ships.
Your proposal does exactly what you falsely attributed to my idea...increase the need for power creep, because you would have 3 ships with 4 times the shield points. But ofcourse you didn't think that far ahead.
Just watched an episode of Star Trek when the Federation retake DS9 from the Dominion. Then I played STO's Khitomer elite and soloed a Cube in a T4 Galaxy refit...
Is everyone happy with Space combat in STO, with the difficulty, canon resemblance and that Star Trek feel it has to it? And why do you have that view, or what do you think should be done about it?
I assume you are viewing it from a canon perspective, in that case, I have a bit of news for you, canon went out the window several years ago, so it's a mute point.
Regarding Star Trek combat Lore in comparison to STO space combat:
Is it possible to solo and destroy a Borg Cube? Yes, it is possible -> this has been proven in Best of Both Worlds & also in Voyager.
So if we take lore and line it up with what STO gameplay, it is possible.
Regarding STO Space Gameplay:
A) It is its strongest aspect, when compared to its horrible ground combat.
Way to basic, no skills or strategy involved, point, click, and shoot - a space bar spammer. Everything relies on special OP consoles, OP pew pew Lock Box ships, and CStore variants.
C) It is pretty and the ship models are decent, but thats pretty much where it ends.
D) AI difficultly is counted on increasing the NPC dmg output and HP, while the NPC's have no skills or strategy. So the AI is as simplistic as it gets.
E) STO deserves to be F2P, since it was doubtful that it would have survived as a P2P - the game concepts, mechanics, and overall presentation is too simple to compete with some of the MMORPG heavy hitters. Its staying power comes from the ip alone.
F) The space combat cannot be intensely improved on without destroying the entire programmed foundation, in other words, without releasing a horde of new BUGS and rekindling old ones.
In the end, the best aspect of STO is in its Space combat, but it can use a complete overhaul without breaking the game. They should completely cut off the ground game altogether and focus on ship interior interactions and space combat.
all the points you make i'd sign in an instant, but i think there is a way to make the space combat much more "trek" without a major overhaul.
reduce the amount of ships, but at the same time increase HP of npcs, so that battles take longer against individual ships.
And not all ships need to explode...especially those with thick hull should rather be adrift or warp out, than blow up
Comments
Most seem to agree that STO's space combat is fun, but that word has varying mileage. I think it's adequate, though it would benefit greatly from a balancing pass.
Does it bother me that I can solo Cubes? Sometimes, but then I take into consideration that this time period is 30 years past Nemesis and dealing with Technology brought back by Janeway - and it has been advancing ever since. Janeway was one-shotting Sphere with a torpedo and in First Contact the same Borg Cube that took-out 39 ships at Wolf 359 was popped by Picard and a handful of ships. So even by then some tricks had been learned.
So I guess I do not think anything should be done about it.
Would I like to see some balance tweaks? Sure, but I have good fun playing as it is now. I'd love to see an additional difficulty setting in stfs but I can live with bad pugs being just as tough to play as a harder difficulty from time to time.
I'd also love to see a deeper diving/climbing angle to some ships and more movement options, but I also know the the game engine doesn't support that, (I remember, I think it was bridge commander? Seeing galaxies and other ships flying upside down, and in spite of my knowlege of phyics in space thought it looked odd).
Though I will say seeing ships like the defiant spiralling through exploding warp cores cannons blazing pleases me greatly.
Would be awesome to see some canon stfs like recreating wolf359 with much higher scale and difficulty. But I fear that may be a dream for a smoke and a cold beer lol!
In all I'm happy with sto, it is what it is and for me that is fine
"If this will be our end, then I will have them make SUCH an end as to be worthy of rememberance! Out of torpedos you say?! Find me the ferengi!".
not calling for a better AI, just give those ships a huge HP boost, but at the same time cut the amount of ships down to a third of what it is now.
This would have also great benefits towards performance in player dense zones.
loot is an annoyance and serves no purpose in this game...every mission rewards better gear than anything that actually drops throughout the leveling process and beyond. And it should be no problem to equip your ship with that gear during and after leveling.
Not every ship should explode...some should simply be crippled and drifting in space (like voth), or even warp away (like the acamar in that Tau dewa mission)
cannons and torps need a speed increase...when an energy weapon is behaving like a guided rocket, something is not right.
And a torp that is supposed to be faster than a ship at subwarp is actually having a hard time catching up, something is wrong.
Energy weapons should have a penalty when hitting hull, similar to torps hitting shields. In other words, energy weapons are not the first choice for blowing up a ship.
Ships in general have too many weapon slots. 8 slots means that 6-7 beams are fireing simultaniously, which simply looks like spam and completely not Trek, atleast imo.
This is much better at lower levels where ships only have 3-4 slots...those fights look alot more Trek.
other than that, it is fairly entertaining.
But I do think there are issues with risk and reward. Borg stfs pay out way more than any other stf. Undine and sphere stfs are skipped because they have relatively ****ty rewards. The battlezones are faster, easier and more rewarding (but, imo, boring).
There is also too much of an emphasis on dps. Control / healing is only an afterthought.
That said, I like STO's space combat for the most part. I think some things should have been changed at the very beginning though.
Namely that a quantity of many ships to fight should have been transformed into only a very few ships of high quality.
Powers and weapons should have been adjusted to compensate for the fact that each ship you fought was extremely tough and powerful.
A focus on only a few ships of considerable challenge (it could of course scale to the group), would have not only put more importance on the capability of each ship, but it would have reduced lag in 20 man missions.
I would like the enemies to be tougher and fewer in number. Longer, more cinematic battles instead of steamrolling squadrons.
I would also prefer the option to combine your weapons' power in to a single animation. Which is to say, instead of a dozen beams firing a second, I would like to see one strong beam. Preferably with the charge-up array animation before the blast. That was the way that it was often presented on film. Not always, mind you, but often.
I would like to see more Cluster Torpedoes instead of a bunch of torpedoes. About half the time in the shows Spreads fired one torpedo and split in to a bunch. It would be nice if some of the Torp Types did that as a Spread Animation.
Disable instead of Destroy would be a toggle.
Customized Attack Patterns would be a nice Captain Skill. they sometimes call out patterns names after the commander of the ship. We should get a Captain skill that has two empty slots and you another slot with each Captain Space Skill Rank-Up you earn. Then you fill the slots with Buff, Debuff, and Resist Modules that you want. It would be like "Attack Pattern (Captain's Name) 3" it would apply you custom skill, like a Kit for Space.
AHAHAHAHA!!! You sir/madam are being refreshingly honest and ironic.
See, they've already done what you want. Higher HP, harder hitting NPCs in elite. Now you want more than that in a "harder" difficulty. But people will complain that it's too hard, so they issue mk XIVIXXIIMZXX Uber Rare gear.
What you want is more power creep, love it.
All more HP means is that we just need moar damage. However, if they gave an NPC tactical team one might have to use strategy...
I recent checked back on the most savagely one-sided beatdown I could think of, the destruction of the USS Odyssey at the hands of the Jem'Hadar, and even outnumbered 3-to-1 and facing weapons that bypassed its shields, it still took almost two minutes and a suicide attack to destroy the Odyssey. In this game, such an engagement would last maybe two seconds? Something missing there.
I like you.
I would suggest that the issue is not "length" as much as it is "feeling".
Even if the fights were longer, they would lack the visceral nature of a drama. They are just simulationist/gaming exercises, and not dramatic ones.
Tanks & healbots? I'm not into the WoW. You're just trading one set of mechanics for another. Again, it's not a mechanical issue. The issue is that it is mechanical.
IKS Korrasami (Fleet B'rel Bird of Prey Retrofit T5-U)
I do not like much of anything about STOs space combat.
I do not like the way that timed abilities are used for everything. Its too much button mashing and doesnt feel right. Something like Hazard Emitters, should simply be a ship modifier, if you enter a cloud of goo then the HE systems activate and there you go. Or if you have Emerg Power to Shields, it should simply draw emergency power to buff the shields whenever they take damage. This would reduce things down to a few targetable abilities, which would streamline gameplay immensely.
I do not like the absence of consumable resources, such as power drain and/or crew. Right now only weapons and aux-to-bat use any power, but nothing else. Shields should consume power as they are damage and try to recharge, and engines should consume power when running at full speed, so that power levels mean something more than a modifier. Repairs should be performed by crew using things like Engi Team. Want to repair an ally? Send some of your crew over, hope you wont need them right away. Combat should be attrition warfare more than popping the other ship. Popping a ship should be possible, but it should require player skill and be somewhat rare, akin to a sniper headshot in FPS games, the rest of the time it should be running the guy out of resources and crew to effectively repair his ship and then popping him when he's low.
I dont like the way some of the abilities are essentially magic. Things like gravity well and tykens rift should be deployable satellites that can be targeted and destroyed, not unnatural phenomenon. It should be more sci-fi, less fantasy. I would like to see more stuff like that, more long-range sensor probes, stuff like that. Slot them in the torpedo hard-point (or dont).
I do not like the way that the particle effects that fill the screen with pastels, like some kind of teenager modern art. Its not like any kind of combat I've ever seen.
I really dislike the way that space combat is used as gratuitous time-filler in most of the episodes.
The game engine completely utterly and totally DOES support it.
Cryptic has limited the angle and does not allow you to go directly up and down because...yeah, I got nothing.
Champions Online (which uses the exact same game engine) allows you to use a flying based travel power (think Superman) and you can go up, down, and every single angle inbetween.
To answer the first post though - I love STO's space combat. It's a lot of fun. It's also really easy (IMHO). Also, don't think at all about how many thousands of people you just killed every time you run a mission. :P
Razira's Primus Database Page
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
I guess it's kinda a tradition in space-games. There are alot of space-fighter games that force you fly according to some kind of imaginary horizon and have some kind of default angle that all the ships are aligned to even though its in SPACE and SHOULD allow movements in ALL driections. From what I can recall most of the games that really allow free movement are heavy simulators. That would explain the non-realistic movement restriction but still not justify them.
That aside, I'm satisfied with the sapce combat. It's the most fun part of the game even tough it has some balance issues, but seriously what MMO doesn't?
And for the canon: I have a good laugh every time someone complains about it.
Bwaaah the design from ship-x or use color of weapon-y is not like on TV bwaaah.
I use a ship with fan-made design (yeah the oddy) with romulan weapons, reman shiels and have a reman, breen, jem'hadar, voth and orion bridge officer. So, in your face canon! :P
I wish enemies were more evenly matched with a single player, with much better AI, the ability to heal themselves, use more buffs on themselves, etc. I hate the way you tear through enemies in this game, even when you purposely keep your damage low. It's pathetic how even enemies that should be "boss" level like Borg cubes and the Voth dreadnoughts go down almost instantly. I want fewer, smarter opponents that take a bit of time to kill -- the new Undine content just makes me want this even more.
At the same time, all the BS insta-kill stuff should really go. Borg invisitorps being the biggest offender, but there are others. Challenge is nice, being one-shot by something you couldn't prepare for isn't. I don't want to tear through enemies, I don't want enemies to tear through me unless my shields are down and half my crew's dead.
I wonder how much different the gameplay would be if energy weapons worked more like torpedoes and only one could fire at a time. This alone would do a lot to bring the Trek look to the game, you never really saw "spammy" attacks outside of torpedo spreads. I've been purposely putting more torpedoes on my ships just to get this look, it's so much better looking than the beam/pulse spam.
No?
In DS9, a Defiant was able to rip through almost anything in mere seconds, and ships were capable of full 3D motion. Neither can be done in STO (Unless your enemy is very weak compared to you.
What we have to remember however, is that STO is a game. That means there has to be something that makes you put at least a little efford into the game.
apart from the lack of 3 dimensional fight, barrel rolls and expanded use of the map, its just great mindlessly firing off cannon and faw spam every second.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I suppose my main criticism is that it's not varied enough. and I agree completely that the pace should be slowed down and for tactics to matter more. I enjoy combat far more when levelling up than I do at the endgame. By the time I reach 50 I have abilities, gear passives and traits out of my ears. I'm just too powerful for enemies to even matter, let alone be any sort of threat.
Personally I'd go further and have the combat function more like a simulator, I don't see why every MMO needs to follow the usual 'fire everything now' idea. Energy banks that can and will run dry, torpedo compliments that will run out, less space magic and more cool down time between abilities that make sense.
I just wish they'd fix the random death BS that crops up every now and then. I'm not talking about crits and stuff like that, its just I'm flying along at full heath, full shields and then next second *boom* dead. Not shot, not hit, not damaged, just instant dead. That kinda gets annoying pretty quick. Didnt happen much before the rep system changes, but now it happens quite often. Not every mission, but maybe every third mission/queue/whatever.
That's not quite true. More HP doesn't mean we need more damage.
Take an ISE for example - you've got folks doing 3-4m damage or so. They're doing it to how many objects? Reducing the number of objects while increasing their individual health amounts could still require the same amount of damage...it might just feel more like Star Trek to some, in there being what they feel to be epic battles rather than what's basically a monster farm and slaughtering a bunch of mobs.
Look at SB24 and the number of ships lined up for the slaughter there, eh? What if the number of ships was massively reduced while the health of the ships was tweaked? Same damage - same amount of time...
I believe that's along the lines of what he was talking about. It's something that I'd personally prefer. It's one thing in a fantasy game or ground game, where you're slaughtering the trash mobs on your way to the boss mob...but each of those ships are full of crew. You kill more NPCs blowing up a single ship in Space than you do in an entire instance on the Ground - and - that just feels way off.
First being the borg in particular to easy. A single ship should never be able to rip apart a borg cube.
That could be easily solved by replacing the "Tac cube" with the "normal cube" with no change in stats, and replacing the current normal cube with... don't know... a tactical sphere may be. Also no change in stats just visually.
Second thing is to much blowing up. A battle outcome should not mean "ship blows up" as a rule. NPCs should either be incapacitated or retread when beaten and only explode as an exception.
Player ships should always be incapacitated intend of blowing up and then after 10 seconds all molecules just rearrange back to a ship... beside the sickbay that somehow is the only ship part that has been damaged by the annihilation of the entire ship :rolleyes:
So that are my main issues, because both that things suck any immersion out of space combat.
As for canon, in the show, when the ship had to loose, he lost, no matter what. And when he had to win, he won, no matter what. Sometimes using a last minute Crusher and some technobabbles with a deflector, or a trick only seen once.
Star Trek was probably the ones using the most plot weapons and armor. No fights were the same, even when the opponents were identical, and they never used the same trick twice.
In some episode the enemy take several torp and still have a shield, sometimes they take a single torp and die.
And I'm not mentioning the exploding consoles or everytime they took a speak break during a fight to find a plan to escape, while the enemy was nice enough to stop shooting in the meantime.
Like what ? Pounding their shield harder ? AFAIK, the only think that can remove TT is subnucleotic beam. That's a fairly limited strategy, don't you think ?
you honestly come accross like somebody with a reading insufficency....
i merely was stating that there are too many low HP ships. when you can rip through 3 ships in 3 seconds it doesn't feel trek.
never said they should be harder hitting
never said there was a need for higher tier gear...it isn't even needed for elites, btw
the number of low HP vessels thrown against the player doesn't feel like trek at all.
honestly, the normal NPCs should have the HP level of elite NPCs, but not their firepower and elite NPCs should have even more HP, but instead of 1 shot kill powers a more sustained and attrition based combat mechanic.
the amount of time to kill would idealy be the same, but instead of 3 ships simultaniously, you blow up only one.
i'm clearly wasting my time by responding to you, because you obviously have a hard time with comprehensive reading otherwise you would have incorporated more of my previous post into your "response".
and btw...all that TT does IS increase the amount of Shield points you need to remove before blowing up the ship. That is exactly what i proposed anyway, but without the AI TRIBBLE up and it doesn't solve the issue of too many small ships.
Your proposal does exactly what you falsely attributed to my idea...increase the need for power creep, because you would have 3 ships with 4 times the shield points. But ofcourse you didn't think that far ahead.
I assume you are viewing it from a canon perspective, in that case, I have a bit of news for you, canon went out the window several years ago, so it's a mute point.
Regarding Star Trek combat Lore in comparison to STO space combat:
Is it possible to solo and destroy a Borg Cube? Yes, it is possible -> this has been proven in Best of Both Worlds & also in Voyager.
So if we take lore and line it up with what STO gameplay, it is possible.
Regarding STO Space Gameplay:
A) It is its strongest aspect, when compared to its horrible ground combat.
C) It is pretty and the ship models are decent, but thats pretty much where it ends.
D) AI difficultly is counted on increasing the NPC dmg output and HP, while the NPC's have no skills or strategy. So the AI is as simplistic as it gets.
E) STO deserves to be F2P, since it was doubtful that it would have survived as a P2P - the game concepts, mechanics, and overall presentation is too simple to compete with some of the MMORPG heavy hitters. Its staying power comes from the ip alone.
F) The space combat cannot be intensely improved on without destroying the entire programmed foundation, in other words, without releasing a horde of new BUGS and rekindling old ones.
In the end, the best aspect of STO is in its Space combat, but it can use a complete overhaul without breaking the game. They should completely cut off the ground game altogether and focus on ship interior interactions and space combat.
reduce the amount of ships, but at the same time increase HP of npcs, so that battles take longer against individual ships.
And not all ships need to explode...especially those with thick hull should rather be adrift or warp out, than blow up