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Star Trek franchise ground combat: Not exactly inspirational

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
Just to add my $0.02 on the ongoing debate about ground combat:

1) I think it needs a lot of improvement.

2) It's certainly the weak "half" of the game.


HOWEVER...

We're talking about a franchise that was never very imaginative when it came to ground combat. In the television shows, and in the movies, everything was pretty much limited to standard phasers, and phaser rifles, when the script writers wanted things in an episode to look Especially Dangerous.

(Correct me if I'm wrong, I've watched a lot of TNG, some Enterprise, a bit of Voyager, and the very early seasons of DS9.)

If memory serves, about the most complex "ground action" in all of Trek's series and movies was the phaser "frequency modulation" that was required to defeat Borg on the ground, to get around their quick-adjusting shields.

So Cryptic didn't have much to work with.

At the same time, there's no denying the fact that most ground combat is routine, predictable, and a bit sad when you're running through a map that isn't populated by anything except the mobs you have to kill.

I'm wondering -- with such light source material for ground combat, in which ways can Cryptic improve it without straying too far from the feel of Star Trek?
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on

Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    I'm wondering -- with such light source material for ground combat, in which ways can Cryptic improve it without straying too far from the feel of Star Trek?

    Oh that's an easy one : they need to use the best hand-to-hand fighter in the whole franchise, William Shatner, as a model. Everything they need is in this video :

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZM7Af_DOnQ

    My personal fav is at 3:06. :D
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    ...2) It's certainly the weak "half" of the game...

    One man's trash is another man's treasure. I enjoy Ground combat more than the Starship component.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Darkjedi wrote: »
    One man's trash is another man's treasure. I enjoy Ground combat more than the Starship component.

    Same here, especially because it gives me the occasion to see my officers in action.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Darkjedi wrote: »
    One man's trash is another man's treasure. I enjoy Ground combat more than the Starship component.

    Me too, but I think it might be that way because there is less of it, in my experience, and it seems to move faster.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Delazure wrote: »
    Same here, especially because it gives me the occasion to see my officers in action.
    Yea I agree with this. All that time picking out all of my BO uniforms, every once in a while I actually want to see them when they arent sitting in the bridge.

    Also, its a nice change of pace. Space combat is only fun up until you have killed the 1000th enemy ship in a row.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2010
    Seljek wrote: »
    Yea I agree with this. All that time picking out all of my BO uniforms, every once in a while I actually want to see them when they arent sitting in the bridge.

    Also, its a nice change of pace. Space combat is only fun up until you have killed the 1000th enemy ship in a row.

    I'll agree with that, and I can certainly enjoy ground combat when it's at a 1:3 or 1:4 ratio against space combat.

    But again, it really feels like a shoddy, slapped-together affair when you beam down to a "base" that looks EXACTLY like Memory Alpha or several other bases, and there's absolutely no signs of life or things to interact with other than the five or six packs of mobs you have to kill.

    Same with the outdoor, planet away missions -- some of the models and textures are fantastic, and the game's engine really shines on, say, a planet with strange, circular plants and flowing lava currents. But those planets feel very, very lonely when they're completely empty. Several missions make a point of talking about protecting colonists from Klingons, but we never actually see the colonists except in rare cases.

    Ultimately, I find I can just crouch, hit my damage buffs, and snipe away at targets without even having to move.

    I realize this is a lot like saying Wailing Caverns wasn't a complex enough instance -- this is very early in STO's lifespan and there's (hopefully) going to be a lot of improvement.

    But right now, ground missions mostly work as an exercise in spamming a few buttons without any real fear that you're going to wipe or any real need to pay attention to what's going on.
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