Can STO do this? I hope?

pino31

Is it possible with the games technology to match phaser charge fx along the phaser arrays? (would be a great effect to apply to beam overload abilities, it would be awesome!) Federation ship phaser beams charge up usually along an array, while not always every shot, but usually at least on the initial fire and have even been seen occurring with every phaser shot fired as seen here:

youtu.be/BRubpYNDJuk?t=68

echatty

I only remember seeing that on TNG,

Not sure if it should be done on all ships.

warmonger360

if it can be done, it would apply to only those ship with a strip

phoenixc

I doubt people would notice it much in combat, and the game firing arcs don't really match the arcs of the weapons on the models so while making the animation for the array is probably doable, if anything it would just draw attention to the limitations of the game.

spiritborn

echatty wrote: »

I only remember seeing that on TNG,

Not sure if it should be done on all ships.

All TNG era ships we've seen firing (including the Luna in Lower Decks) have that charge up animation that said it's present only on federation ships of the TNG era. While the hardpoints on ships more or less match the locations of the array on the model they do not use the whole array and still fire from certain preset points and having a charge up animation would probably drawn attention to that (not mention since we can equip all weapons on, on all ships with few exceptions would probably look weird on beams never meant to be shot from a strip like the DSC or the movie era phasers).

snowwolf

Weapons are fired from a hardpoint. Which is a physical dot the phaser beam "spawns" from..

To do a chargeup like this would require an animation for the weapon. Not to be mentioned, you'd have to have a delay for the weapon... Since the phasers need to "charge up", something that would effect gameplay.

That, and considering how difficult it would be to program for every ship and weapon... No.

It's maybe possible but it would consume too much time, Star Trek Online plays more like an arcade game in space anyhow. There's no point to have this realistic phaser animation, given how much random flashy effects and powers we already use.

If it was a more realistic game, it would probably be more considered / worth it. Even Star Trek Legacy did not have it, when I think about it.. The only game to feature the "warm up" effect on phasers is Bridge Commander.

But, then again.. A lot of times on TNG and Voyager... Phasers are fired without the warm up, to save SFX money. lol.

spiritborn

snowwolf#0563 wrote: »

Weapons are fired from a hardpoint. Which is a physical dot the phaser beam "spawns" from..

To do a chargeup like this would require an animation for the weapon. Not to be mentioned, you'd have to have a delay for the weapon... Since the phasers need to "charge up", something that would effect gameplay.

That, and considering how difficult it would be to program for every ship and weapon... No.

It's maybe possible but it would consume too much time, Star Trek Online plays more like an arcade game in space anyhow. There's no point to have this realistic phaser animation, given how much random flashy effects and powers we already use.

If it was a more realistic game, it would probably be more considered / worth it. Even Star Trek Legacy did not have it, when I think about it.. The only game to feature the "warm up" effect on phasers is Bridge Commander.

But, then again.. A lot of times on TNG and Voyager... Phasers are fired without the warm up, to save SFX money. lol.

Bridge Commander was a space sim game so in the scale of "realism" it was in the extreme end of the "realistic", honestly in STO it's a effect 99% of people wouldn't notice anyway.

Could it be done, possible, would it be worth the cost, most likely not.

pino31

I don't mean hypothetically. I posted this question hoping the devs would see it and actually do it. Unless there's a limit on their tech for some weird reason.

Star Trek Bridge Commander was mentioned, a game that was released in the 90s, so I'm surprised it's not in other Star Trek games including STO.

I'm also surprised it's not a bigger concern for players who are also die hard fans of Star Trek. We should want our phaser arrays to line up to the models and we should want our Star Trek phasers to actually look like Star Trek phasers.

All Federation ships that had phaser arrays use the 'charge up' effect along the arrays throughout all Star Trek series from tng-voy. The only reason we haven't seen them lately is because we haven't been in the right point on the timeline.

Ent/Dsc/Tos and anything else before TNG hadn't shown us the use of phaser arrays yet. Obviously those kinds of ships shouldn't use that sort of effect. But there's a lot of ships in STO that use phaser arrays and they should look like Star Trek phaser arrays.

howtor

Honestly would it be cool, yes between getting it going (image all the bugs it could cause lol) and the fact that with all the lights and flashes I don't think you would be able to see it anyways

pino31

spiritborn wrote: »

echatty wrote: »

I only remember seeing that on TNG,

Not sure if it should be done on all ships.

All TNG era ships we've seen firing (including the Luna in Lower Decks) have that charge up animation that said it's present only on federation ships of the TNG era. While the hardpoints on ships more or less match the locations of the array on the model they do not use the whole array and still fire from certain preset points and having a charge up animation would probably drawn attention to that (not mention since we can equip all weapons on, on all ships with few exceptions would probably look weird on beams never meant to be shot from a strip like the DSC or the movie era phasers).

I assumed they would correct the phaser fire 'point' issue if they were to actually debut the effect in the game. They'd have to, it's a prerequisite.
And you're right, the weapons would have to be able to differentiate between whether or not to use the effect based on the ship type. I certainly would not want an Discovery era ship firing phasers using a phaser array effect for sure.

foxrockssocks

This isn't ever likely to happen. Phaser strips on the models are not unique and easily definable to the game somehow. They are also different on every ship, and even between different saucers and what have you. And on some ships, you have variants that have strips in places other variants don't, like the Galaxy X nacelles.

Thus, to do this properly, you have to line up this effect differently on every variation of every ship, which either means coding phaser strips into the models or doing different animations for every single variation. Also keep in mind, every ship currently uses the same beam animation (or sprites I imagine) regardless of its size. Simple point emitters are far easier to do, and they don't even do those consistently.

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vetteguy904

not needed and another drain on what is already some serious visual frenzy