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Manheim Cole Revamp
leviathan99
Member Posts: 7,747 Arc User
So in case you missed it, the talk is that due to a combination of lag issues (which are being temporarily addressed) and general dissatisfaction with the console, the Manheim console is slated to get revamped mechanics.
Currently, the Manheim console creates two copies of a ship. One "past" and one "future" with the player ship as "present". Damage and healing funnel forewards through the ships so that any damage or healing incurred by the "past" ship is shared by "present" and "future" ships. This tends to cause damage to be overwhelming since the NPC "past" ship takes damage easily and incurs environmental damage, which the player cannot easily predict.
I went back to look at the episode the consoles were based on: TNG's "We'll Always Have Paris" to see if I could get ideas for what a "new console" would look like, using the episode's ideas about The Manheim Effect.
We never really see what happens when and if anything happens to a copy of anything from a different point in time so damage and healing seem rather beside the point, nor do we see a strong example of duplicates "stacking damage" aside from Data realizing that only one of his duplicates can use anti-matter to stop the effect.
I also thought I'd look at the mechanical depictions of this in other games for inspiration.
- Armada had a Manheim device that created a "Gemini Effect", one copy. The primary ship that had the device was a timeship which was immunized from changes to its own timeline.
- Two cards from Star Trek CCG used variations on this effect:
* 2nd Edition's The Manheim Effect causes you to repeat a dilemma that an opponent has successfully overcome. The level of strategy it must have taken to use this card is beyond me since, on the surface, it's a negative unless you WANT to guarantee that you encounter a specific dilemma.
* Paul Manheim's personnel card allows you to "double or nullify" the card Manheim's Dimensional Door. Whichdid the following...
* Manheim's Dimension Door: Whenever anyone can show that they have a card in hand that matches the card any player just played, the player may basically be forced to retract that last move. This is described as a "temporal hiccup".
Looking back at the episode, the "temporal hiccup" stands out as how the effect played on the show.
* Picard, Riker and Data enter a Turbolift while talking, the doors open and they see themselves just before they got on the turbolift. We cut to the past versions who wait for the next turbolift and follow them going forward.
* Data stands ready to put antimatter in a device to stop the time distortions, looks back and sees two copies of himself all also holding the antimatter. They have to decide which one is going to close the rift and they decide on the middle one, who nudges his future self aside and closes the rift.
In both cases, what we have is a situation where we start of following one version of a character, we see multiples, and then the version we are following at the end is not the one we were following earlier in the scene. In a sense, DS9's episode "Visionary" (with a time traveling O'Brien) and TNG's "Time Squared" both play with versions of this idea. "Time Squared" has a Picard from the future who escapes the destruction of the Enterprise, lands aboard the present Enterprise, and gets himself killed even as the Picard aboard the Enterprise decides to take a gamble. "Visionary" has O'Brien traveling through time in a loop until he can't any longer and so he teams up with his past self to send him back instead.
What you have is a hiccup or a broken continuity in all three episodes.
I'm trying to think of what would be best as a new Manheim mechanic for STO and would appreciate other people's ideas since chaining health seems to cause problems but the devs don't seem to want it to be purely a pet summoning console.
First of all, I think for the price of a console slot, maybe a toggle effect like Multivector Assault is more warranted. MVAM does have costs and benefits baked in, in various forms such as reduced hull and increased turnrate.
MVAM causes a reduction in hull and shield and weapon power generally (it varies depending on module) with a boost to speed, turnrate, and one subsystem in addition to getting two pets.
I'm thinking maybe we reverse MVAM's penalty for a "toggle on" (3 min cooldown) Manheim effect.
A 10% decrease in, say, Aux, speed, and turnrate. You don't get the personal increases but you DO get stronger pets.
So, while on, you get, say:
-5 Turnrate
-50 Impulse Speed
-10 Auxillary
POSSIBLY a weapon haste reduction if deemed necessary for balance
(A sensible penalty because you're mucking with time and effectively "borrowing" time.)
Your alternate sections share in this loss but you gain... not a hull, shields, or weapon bonus as those would not make sense, thematically. Instead you get:
+5% Accuracy (to all sections)
+5% Dodge
This makes sense because you're coordinating across time.
Now, damage would not be chained (mirroring the canon examples I gave where the future version of someone dies without influencing the actual future). Maybe you only have one duplicate but it is a VERY BEEFY duplicate.
And I'd look at giving the Manheim Device a "secondary activation" where you disengage the effect and swap physical places with one of your copies, much like the hiccups in the episode. (And maybe this is "force triggered" if a copy hits 0 health?)
This is just playing around and thinking out loud. Feedback welcome. I think a kind of "reverse MVAM penalty"/"temporal MVAM" makes a lot of sense though. And I'm partial to the idea that the ship copy you start following is not the ship you end up playing at the end of the effect, mirroring what we saw in the episode.
Currently, the Manheim console creates two copies of a ship. One "past" and one "future" with the player ship as "present". Damage and healing funnel forewards through the ships so that any damage or healing incurred by the "past" ship is shared by "present" and "future" ships. This tends to cause damage to be overwhelming since the NPC "past" ship takes damage easily and incurs environmental damage, which the player cannot easily predict.
I went back to look at the episode the consoles were based on: TNG's "We'll Always Have Paris" to see if I could get ideas for what a "new console" would look like, using the episode's ideas about The Manheim Effect.
We never really see what happens when and if anything happens to a copy of anything from a different point in time so damage and healing seem rather beside the point, nor do we see a strong example of duplicates "stacking damage" aside from Data realizing that only one of his duplicates can use anti-matter to stop the effect.
I also thought I'd look at the mechanical depictions of this in other games for inspiration.
- Armada had a Manheim device that created a "Gemini Effect", one copy. The primary ship that had the device was a timeship which was immunized from changes to its own timeline.
- Two cards from Star Trek CCG used variations on this effect:
* 2nd Edition's The Manheim Effect causes you to repeat a dilemma that an opponent has successfully overcome. The level of strategy it must have taken to use this card is beyond me since, on the surface, it's a negative unless you WANT to guarantee that you encounter a specific dilemma.
* Paul Manheim's personnel card allows you to "double or nullify" the card Manheim's Dimensional Door. Whichdid the following...
* Manheim's Dimension Door: Whenever anyone can show that they have a card in hand that matches the card any player just played, the player may basically be forced to retract that last move. This is described as a "temporal hiccup".
Looking back at the episode, the "temporal hiccup" stands out as how the effect played on the show.
* Picard, Riker and Data enter a Turbolift while talking, the doors open and they see themselves just before they got on the turbolift. We cut to the past versions who wait for the next turbolift and follow them going forward.
* Data stands ready to put antimatter in a device to stop the time distortions, looks back and sees two copies of himself all also holding the antimatter. They have to decide which one is going to close the rift and they decide on the middle one, who nudges his future self aside and closes the rift.
In both cases, what we have is a situation where we start of following one version of a character, we see multiples, and then the version we are following at the end is not the one we were following earlier in the scene. In a sense, DS9's episode "Visionary" (with a time traveling O'Brien) and TNG's "Time Squared" both play with versions of this idea. "Time Squared" has a Picard from the future who escapes the destruction of the Enterprise, lands aboard the present Enterprise, and gets himself killed even as the Picard aboard the Enterprise decides to take a gamble. "Visionary" has O'Brien traveling through time in a loop until he can't any longer and so he teams up with his past self to send him back instead.
What you have is a hiccup or a broken continuity in all three episodes.
I'm trying to think of what would be best as a new Manheim mechanic for STO and would appreciate other people's ideas since chaining health seems to cause problems but the devs don't seem to want it to be purely a pet summoning console.
First of all, I think for the price of a console slot, maybe a toggle effect like Multivector Assault is more warranted. MVAM does have costs and benefits baked in, in various forms such as reduced hull and increased turnrate.
MVAM causes a reduction in hull and shield and weapon power generally (it varies depending on module) with a boost to speed, turnrate, and one subsystem in addition to getting two pets.
I'm thinking maybe we reverse MVAM's penalty for a "toggle on" (3 min cooldown) Manheim effect.
A 10% decrease in, say, Aux, speed, and turnrate. You don't get the personal increases but you DO get stronger pets.
So, while on, you get, say:
-5 Turnrate
-50 Impulse Speed
-10 Auxillary
POSSIBLY a weapon haste reduction if deemed necessary for balance
(A sensible penalty because you're mucking with time and effectively "borrowing" time.)
Your alternate sections share in this loss but you gain... not a hull, shields, or weapon bonus as those would not make sense, thematically. Instead you get:
+5% Accuracy (to all sections)
+5% Dodge
This makes sense because you're coordinating across time.
Now, damage would not be chained (mirroring the canon examples I gave where the future version of someone dies without influencing the actual future). Maybe you only have one duplicate but it is a VERY BEEFY duplicate.
And I'd look at giving the Manheim Device a "secondary activation" where you disengage the effect and swap physical places with one of your copies, much like the hiccups in the episode. (And maybe this is "force triggered" if a copy hits 0 health?)
This is just playing around and thinking out loud. Feedback welcome. I think a kind of "reverse MVAM penalty"/"temporal MVAM" makes a lot of sense though. And I'm partial to the idea that the ship copy you start following is not the ship you end up playing at the end of the effect, mirroring what we saw in the episode.
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