My next question is on character geneation. I can create any race I want for my captain. But what about my crew? Can I establish what race they are and customize them too?
Or do I have a preselection of crew or senior staff members that I choose?
From the previous Ask Cryptic:
You will be able to fully customize your Bridge Officers' race, appearance, gender, name and physical appearance. It wouldn't be a Cryptic game if you couldn't. You will also train and customize their skills and abilities throughout their career.
Actually, this question and answer segment, actually in my opinion even explains some of the ship designs...purposly I don't know. But it seams that the saucer section on many of the federation ship designs would in fact help protect the vital systems. By allowing the saucer section to take most the damage in a frontal engagement. 8)
Goats are fine, occassionally amusing.
Sheep are waaaay sexier though.
Wonder if there'll be any green skinned sheep species for my captain to discover ...
Hey guys, we all certainly want the community to be fun, but one should not be given the impression this game is all about FAQs, concepts arts, and pet goats. We are looking for Cryptic to build confidence and October has been weak. It's 2008 afterall. Where are the leaked YouTube clips, playable minigames, and B-E-T-A?
Can a Federation player choose to be a member of the other faction, like Worf?
Worf is Klingon, but he joined Starfleet at a time when the Federation and Klingon Empire were allies. Races at odds with the Federation, such as the Romulans, have historically not been allowed into Starfleet. Because of the political situation in 2409, it may not be possible for races from one faction to be a part of the opposing one. But with the species creator you will have access to a wide variety of racial pieces so you can create the character you want. How about a person of Klingon-Vulcan ancestry with some telepathic abilities?
Okay, great, we can create our own races. I love this idea. It's a much needed thing in a Star Trek game and also means that Cryptic don't have to get entrenched in so many minor races and can focus on making the rest of the game better.
The question I still have, however, (where is it that we actually ask cryptic, by the way? link pls) is what happens to all those people who want to be Dominion, Cardassian, Romulan or other Race who aren't (or shouldn't be) part of Klingon Empire or Federation when they finally CAN be one of those races?
Say I customize my character so that it's basically a Romulan and under Race Name I put 'Rihansu' and I play with that character as part of the Federation until the Romulans appear as a faction in an expansion pack - what do I do then if I want to change to what I would have begun playing as if it had been available at the beginning? Do I keep my character as Rihansu (NOT Romulan as far as the game is concerned and therefore with different abilities, etc) and simply change factions with no loss of stats or ship class ability
OR
Do I have to essentially start again if I want to be part of the 'new' faction?
If the latter is the case, I can imagine many people will be disappointed and perhaps will wait (provided it's not toooo long) for the expansions to buy the game - which will make people unhappy because the people playing as Fed and Klingon will have a massive advantage over them. I personally would prefer to wait, albeit painfully, another year for the game to come out with four or five factions included.
I appreciate all of the factors that go into the production of a video game and I really am not having a go at anyone, but I think this is a serious issue for many fans and I don't think I'm alone in my concern by any stretch of the imagination.
Maybe a little more detail of how character creation is going to work would help me here.
In the case that I don't want to make my own race and I want to be an actual pure 100% bona-fide non-customized Klingon like the ones we see on TV - for example, will there be something like a 'faction select' menu with a submenu for species select and then I customise the skills (NOT the appearance - I know I'll be able to make my character look however I want it to) of my Kilingon within certain parameters (20 customization points for all but Klingon has more base strength/melee points than Human, for example)? or will all just begin with a blank character and basically customize our character's attributes to be those of a klingon as we see fit without the use of such menus?
I am glad they are limiting the races that can do the Vulcan nerve pinch, nothing more humiliating then being taken down by the pinch from a Ferengi half your size with the strength of a little girl
That's encouraging news. I hated the EvE orbit and shoot combat. Nice to see they will do something more interactive.
Keep up the good work!
OMG OMG it's Chaad! about time you posted!
Only thing I hope they put sufficient amount of in Starship combat are counter measures. Not everything has to have an equal counter measure. some may just stem the max damage you might incur.
but I hope they can use Reverse Tractor beams in game to either break a tractor beam or push somebody away. Let's say from ..... Ramming!
After all, Craig did say that he may resort to ramming if things are looking bad. I'm okay with it as long as I have an option to possibly prevent it.
Ask Cryptic returns with answers on ship controls, melee weapons and Craigs goat. Thanks very much to our development team for taking time out of their busy schedules to answer these!
Hi all new hear.But bin trek fan long time.Um not realy got much to say about this part from friking sweet. But i do have one idear 4 u to think ov.If ur ship is badly damiged do's that mean the big "OH NO" come's up.Warp brech and then u have to E-jekt the warp core in to space?"BIG BOOM".And then u have to send out a destres signl to ur frend 4 help.And then thay have to come tow u to a star base with traktor beam fro repair.And the reson for this i coz the ship will have only inpuls engins. Is there eny typ of this thing in the game?If not could it be a pozabiltyt???Thank u 4 ur time.Sab
How will melee weapons be used in the game, if Klingons have them will the Federation have access to the same weapons or their own?
Klingons will be more melee-oriented, but both factions will have access to hand-to-hand attacks using either martial arts or weapons. Our plan is to allow all of the melee weapons to be available to both factions, but it may be more difficult for a Federation character to obtain a batleth or a Klingon Empire character to acquire a lirpa.
Your skills will determine how effective you are with melee weapons a Federation character may be able to pick up a batleth and use it, but without training he or she will be less effective than a Klingon who has studied the use of the weapon. And certain martial arts may be limited by faction or race not everyone can perform a Vulcan nerve pinch.
This concerns me most out of the entire interview, because it can easily be handled very badly and because it can end up as a pretty awesome feature if handled just right. Hand to hand combat is certainly a big part of Star Trek, but only in certain situations, they're either forced, ceremonial, or some situations that's 'just right'. The Klingons try to force melee combat but even they generally know when a gun is the better choice, and opt for a bat'leth mostly for when combat is going to be extremely close quarters.
If I'm not mistaken, in TOS, many, if not all, of the situations where hand to hand fighting is used revolve around the crew's weapons being taken away by a higher power, be that a stronger group, or a godlike being. This results in Kirk having to steal a weapon or use his fists if no weapons are around.
Then you have various ceremonial challenges where only bladed weapons are used. Kirk versus Spock immediately comes to mind, in counter to that to some extent, is Captain Archer on Vulcan, when he enters the desert where technology can't be used, thanks to a natural phenomena, Vulcans chase him with a lirpa of a more sane size, also indicating that the mating ritual lirpa is a purely ritual weapon.
For the Klingons, when General Martok was revealed to be a changeling, not a single Klingon ran at it with a bladed weapon. After a second's hesitation to comprehend what was happening, every Klingon in the room with a clear shot fired their disruptors at the changeling.
When Klingons boarded DS9, they transported in in groups of about five, and only one out of five had a bat'leth, some might have had a mek'leth. In this situation it made some sense because there was a good chance of being transported in right next to an enemy, where a bladed weapon could be quite effective. However, the majority of combat was still at range. Many of the fights did break down to hand to hand, after a while, because of the chaos of the randomly space transports in.
Melee combat can be forced, but it needs to be forced in a way that makes sense. Secondly, melee combat can happen without being forced by the plot, even with ranged weapons around. The danger is in getting over eager for melee combat and designing the ground combat system so melee combat is a frequent occurrence, the worse thing that can be done is to make melee equal to ranged combat.
My point is, in the normal course of ground combat, melee should be rare. What melee is going to be useful for is the situations where you find yourself unarmed, or ambushed at extremely close range. It can definitely be a life saver, otherwise soldiers today wouldn't learn grappling and get a combat knife. A knife doesn't run out of ammo and unarmed fighting skill is always immediately at hand.
As for weapons, as part of Starfleet, you should be able to get a combat knife if you want one. You should also be able to use your phaser rifle, if you have one, as a blunt melee weapon. Lastly, every group should have some sort of unarmed fighting style. One thing to consider is how phasers have been focused to a knife like blade, Riker's transporter clone did it with his phaser to carve art from stone; anyone with a phaser could have a handy bayonet or knife just by pressing a button to automatically make those adjustments on a Type II or Type III phaser. For a bayonet this would be pretty good, but it wouldn't replace a combat knife, remember, knives don't run out of ammo, not that we've ever seen a phaser run out.
Also, I don't see why a starfleet officer wouldn't be able to get a bat'leth or any other Klingon bladed weapon, it's just a hunk of sharpened metal. Any replicator should be able to easily make a bat'leth or mek'leth. There should be replicator patterns on record for enthusiasts. There are also various Earthly swords. But I think that's getting silly, anything larger than a combat knife I think is silly for Starfleet personnel to carry. The real limit should be your rank, because if Indi taught us anything, don't get into a gun fight with a sword.
Seems ship-to-ship combat is heading towards a system that requires some thought - I was dreading some "quick adrenalin fix" arcade style combat, but thankfully in this area Cryptic appear to have engaged brain before making choices.
I completely agree with SAMEET the goat did use up vauluble question space, but the odd joke is aceptable and somtimes need
As for the news with all these new races cryptic will have to force the old ones in somewhere other wise it will not be the same star trek were here for.
Great news, Razor, thank you! Nothing surprising to me in the revelations, but I know some people have been wanting Official Confirmation(tm) on certain things mentioned for a while now, so it's good to have that for them.
And for those folks so incredibly angry that Snowflake the Empress of Goats got a mention: Cryptic answers what they want to answer; talking about Craig's goat did not "take up a question slot". If the ongoing goat joke had not been mentioned, then there wouldn't necessarily have been anything else in its place.
To put it more directly, if Cryptic had wanted to answer an additional question (or ten dozen additional questions) they would have done so. They're not bound by the format, they _control_ the format.
Comments
---
From the previous Ask Cryptic:
Sheep are waaaay sexier though.
Wonder if there'll be any green skinned sheep species for my captain to discover ...
Long live the nerf-goat.
Besides I wanna hear about this Goat Planet. Gilligan's long lost home?
Stranded in deserted space....
Nearly devoid of fellow Goats
It was supposed to be a three hour tour....
LMAO good one...
I thought the whole goat thing was funny but then again I actually pay attention around here unlike those who start threads like this one...
all this goat talk is making me hungry.
Good thing the flame in here is just the right temperature.
Okay, great, we can create our own races. I love this idea. It's a much needed thing in a Star Trek game and also means that Cryptic don't have to get entrenched in so many minor races and can focus on making the rest of the game better.
The question I still have, however, (where is it that we actually ask cryptic, by the way? link pls) is what happens to all those people who want to be Dominion, Cardassian, Romulan or other Race who aren't (or shouldn't be) part of Klingon Empire or Federation when they finally CAN be one of those races?
Say I customize my character so that it's basically a Romulan and under Race Name I put 'Rihansu' and I play with that character as part of the Federation until the Romulans appear as a faction in an expansion pack - what do I do then if I want to change to what I would have begun playing as if it had been available at the beginning? Do I keep my character as Rihansu (NOT Romulan as far as the game is concerned and therefore with different abilities, etc) and simply change factions with no loss of stats or ship class ability
OR
Do I have to essentially start again if I want to be part of the 'new' faction?
If the latter is the case, I can imagine many people will be disappointed and perhaps will wait (provided it's not toooo long) for the expansions to buy the game - which will make people unhappy because the people playing as Fed and Klingon will have a massive advantage over them. I personally would prefer to wait, albeit painfully, another year for the game to come out with four or five factions included.
I appreciate all of the factors that go into the production of a video game and I really am not having a go at anyone, but I think this is a serious issue for many fans and I don't think I'm alone in my concern by any stretch of the imagination.
Maybe a little more detail of how character creation is going to work would help me here.
In the case that I don't want to make my own race and I want to be an actual pure 100% bona-fide non-customized Klingon like the ones we see on TV - for example, will there be something like a 'faction select' menu with a submenu for species select and then I customise the skills (NOT the appearance - I know I'll be able to make my character look however I want it to) of my Kilingon within certain parameters (20 customization points for all but Klingon has more base strength/melee points than Human, for example)? or will all just begin with a blank character and basically customize our character's attributes to be those of a klingon as we see fit without the use of such menus?
Since when did lambs grow into goats?
That's encouraging news. I hated the EvE orbit and shoot combat. Nice to see they will do something more interactive.
Keep up the good work!
Only thing I hope they put sufficient amount of in Starship combat are counter measures. Not everything has to have an equal counter measure. some may just stem the max damage you might incur.
but I hope they can use Reverse Tractor beams in game to either break a tractor beam or push somebody away. Let's say from ..... Ramming!
After all, Craig did say that he may resort to ramming if things are looking bad.
Hi all new hear.But bin trek fan long time.Um not realy got much to say about this part from friking sweet. But i do have one idear 4 u to think ov.If ur ship is badly damiged do's that mean the big "OH NO" come's up.Warp brech and then u have to E-jekt the warp core in to space?"BIG BOOM".And then u have to send out a destres signl to ur frend 4 help.And then thay have to come tow u to a star base with traktor beam fro repair.And the reson for this i coz the ship will have only inpuls engins. Is there eny typ of this thing in the game?If not could it be a pozabiltyt???Thank u 4 ur time.Sab
That goes the same for me.
This concerns me most out of the entire interview, because it can easily be handled very badly and because it can end up as a pretty awesome feature if handled just right. Hand to hand combat is certainly a big part of Star Trek, but only in certain situations, they're either forced, ceremonial, or some situations that's 'just right'. The Klingons try to force melee combat but even they generally know when a gun is the better choice, and opt for a bat'leth mostly for when combat is going to be extremely close quarters.
If I'm not mistaken, in TOS, many, if not all, of the situations where hand to hand fighting is used revolve around the crew's weapons being taken away by a higher power, be that a stronger group, or a godlike being. This results in Kirk having to steal a weapon or use his fists if no weapons are around.
Then you have various ceremonial challenges where only bladed weapons are used. Kirk versus Spock immediately comes to mind, in counter to that to some extent, is Captain Archer on Vulcan, when he enters the desert where technology can't be used, thanks to a natural phenomena, Vulcans chase him with a lirpa of a more sane size, also indicating that the mating ritual lirpa is a purely ritual weapon.
For the Klingons, when General Martok was revealed to be a changeling, not a single Klingon ran at it with a bladed weapon. After a second's hesitation to comprehend what was happening, every Klingon in the room with a clear shot fired their disruptors at the changeling.
When Klingons boarded DS9, they transported in in groups of about five, and only one out of five had a bat'leth, some might have had a mek'leth. In this situation it made some sense because there was a good chance of being transported in right next to an enemy, where a bladed weapon could be quite effective. However, the majority of combat was still at range. Many of the fights did break down to hand to hand, after a while, because of the chaos of the randomly space transports in.
Melee combat can be forced, but it needs to be forced in a way that makes sense. Secondly, melee combat can happen without being forced by the plot, even with ranged weapons around. The danger is in getting over eager for melee combat and designing the ground combat system so melee combat is a frequent occurrence, the worse thing that can be done is to make melee equal to ranged combat.
My point is, in the normal course of ground combat, melee should be rare. What melee is going to be useful for is the situations where you find yourself unarmed, or ambushed at extremely close range. It can definitely be a life saver, otherwise soldiers today wouldn't learn grappling and get a combat knife. A knife doesn't run out of ammo and unarmed fighting skill is always immediately at hand.
As for weapons, as part of Starfleet, you should be able to get a combat knife if you want one. You should also be able to use your phaser rifle, if you have one, as a blunt melee weapon. Lastly, every group should have some sort of unarmed fighting style. One thing to consider is how phasers have been focused to a knife like blade, Riker's transporter clone did it with his phaser to carve art from stone; anyone with a phaser could have a handy bayonet or knife just by pressing a button to automatically make those adjustments on a Type II or Type III phaser. For a bayonet this would be pretty good, but it wouldn't replace a combat knife, remember, knives don't run out of ammo, not that we've ever seen a phaser run out.
Also, I don't see why a starfleet officer wouldn't be able to get a bat'leth or any other Klingon bladed weapon, it's just a hunk of sharpened metal. Any replicator should be able to easily make a bat'leth or mek'leth. There should be replicator patterns on record for enthusiasts. There are also various Earthly swords. But I think that's getting silly, anything larger than a combat knife I think is silly for Starfleet personnel to carry. The real limit should be your rank, because if Indi taught us anything, don't get into a gun fight with a sword.
Seems ship-to-ship combat is heading towards a system that requires some thought - I was dreading some "quick adrenalin fix" arcade style combat, but thankfully in this area Cryptic appear to have engaged brain before making choices.
As for the news with all these new races cryptic will have to force the old ones in somewhere other wise it will not be the same star trek were here for.
And for those folks so incredibly angry that Snowflake the Empress of Goats got a mention: Cryptic answers what they want to answer; talking about Craig's goat did not "take up a question slot". If the ongoing goat joke had not been mentioned, then there wouldn't necessarily have been anything else in its place.
To put it more directly, if Cryptic had wanted to answer an additional question (or ten dozen additional questions) they would have done so. They're not bound by the format, they _control_ the format.
KOS