The missing dynamic is the Green yellow and Red alert. We do not get to put are ships to Green alert yellow alert, or red alert. And green is no shields and weapons yellow is just shields but no weapons, and Red alert which is weapons and shield. I would hope that you could work this in to missions.

How I think it could be done is, you see a ship and you are at green alert, then you come up to the ship and or base and see they are Orion or such. You go to yellow alert, and you hail the ship then they talk and sound aggressive and then you go to red alert. You fight and do the fight five and then win the mission. By just adding that dynamic could make all the fans happier and it could really add a new dynamic to all missions with little change, and I hope to the hole game and code.:D
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Its not really Cryptic's model (which in fairness would not have translated from other MMOs).
But you take on ST you adapt to it. Not the other way around. At least thats my humble view.
PS. I'm not actually a Trekkie.
yes they do look to other games all the Star trek Starfleet Command 1-2-3, also Star trek Legacy. You press green button to stand down from red or yellow give me some time there is a STN episode that they go to green but I will have to find it it was first season. Anyway I think they drop it for Stand down from yellow alert or red alert. That is what is for to stand down from.
Yellow alert should be automatic when you enter a possibly hostile situation. So any time you leave Sector Space and go into a mission or area, you automatically go to Yellow Alert and your shields go up. Having to make this happen for EVERY mission would be redundant.
Red alert is automatic when you enter combat. It even shows it at the top of the screen. It would be silly to have to manually switch to Red alert status, because then you have people that may forget sometimes, and then they would complain that "I can't shoot at things unless I switch the Red alert, WTF?!q1"
So the alerts are there. Just because you can't issue orders to make it change doesn't mean much. It all works how the game developers wanted it to.
But I seem to remember Green and Yellow alert being more "gotcha" elements in Starfleet Academy, which is this game's closest spiritual ancestor.
They change very little being manually activated rather than automatically activated.
The big difference in SFA was that you were flagged hostile to everyone while in Red Alert. So you needed to go down a notch or two to hail friendly targets without accidentally firing on them. And you could get caught with your pants down if you didn't go to Red Alert in most sectors of space whereas being at Red Alert near a Starbase meant you could accidentally fire on it and have the Federation out to kill you. Then again, I remember having fun using my tractor beam to tow a starbase in that game...
Still, I see the alert status largely as a "gotcha" mechanic (it's a hoop that any smart person paying attention could follow and which penalized you for not doing what you should automatically do) at best and potentially a griefing mechanic if handled the way SFA did it.
The most interesting thing I can recall about alert status in SFA was when an enemy would hail you, pretending to be friendly, and you'd either tick them off or fall into an ambush where you'd need to up your alert status accordingly. That and you needed to stand down from Red Alert to use transporters but you basically have to be out of combat to use transporters in STO anyway.
They never actually said it, but the implication was that it was green alert when they said "Stand down from red alert" or yellow alert (I believe one of the many technical manuals discussed it, I'm not entirely sure where I read it).
Well said But it could add more depth with out to munch coding. That is a great dynamic that you would have to shut down some weptiond to get the transporter to beam a lot up. But I still sould like to have it.
Its possible, though I don't see it happening, which is a shame really.
ya mabey a good point but I would like to see it because it would maybe shut up the there is not depth or challenge to Space combat.
I also miss this...
"Destruct sequence completed and engaged. Awaiting final code for one minute countdown."
"Code: zero, zero, zero, destruct, zero."
I rolled a klingon recently and couldn't figure out what was wrong until I realized that everything I was shooting at already had shields up even though I'd been cloaked.
I silently call out commands in my head so my wife doesn't overhear and have me committed and always being in a state of shields up and weapons ready kind of messes with the immersion. Oh well, I suppose we're just going to have to get used to it.
When in sector space, that is your "Green alert".
You automatically go into Yellow alert when you go into a system.
An explination for the constant yellow alert is the fact that essentially every faction is at war with someone else.
You automatically go to Red alert when you get into a fight.
Also, I bet you people would complain so much if they died just once from being in green alert mode. I don't expect being able to select your alert mode, and especially the results of that choice, to be added into the game.
Don't forget any door that doesn't lead to another instance (or, doesn't lead anywhere) is an archway, and all doorways are now 2 stories tall and 100 feet wide. LOL.
you could even tie this in with "diplomacy"
Ponder:
There are some Romulans 15km away... your mission is ambiguous and there might be a way to resolve things peacefully.
Scenario A: You roll up on 'em at Red Alert.
They open fire, regardless of the possibility for diplomacy
Scenario B: You roll up on 'em at Yellow Alert.
If there's a chance for diplomacy, maybe they hail you... or at least won't open fire until you're within 5km, giving YOU a chance to hail them; a hint there might be a chance for diplomacy.
If there's no chance for diplomacy, they open up on ya.
Scenario C: You roll up on 'em at Green Alert.
If diplomacy is an option, maybe they hail you... but MAYBE you are just too tempting a target with your shields down so they launch some plasmas with your pants down.
If diplomacy is NOT an option... maybe they open hailing frequencies to distract you while they get within high yield plasma range... mwahahaha.
Different races in different scenarios will react to different defensive/offensive stances differently in how they approach diplomatic engagements.
There is risk and reward to approaching a foe with sub-optimal defenses... as a gesture of good faith.
This could add a whole lot to 'diplomacy' beyond simply choosing the 'win via diplomacy' button, as one must first EARN the right to even begin talks.
It doesn't have to be that way. In the shows the ship would frequently automatically go to red alert in situations where they were fired upon, the ship was in immenent danger, someone hit the reset button, waste extraction got backed up... well, you know. Why not have an option where you're in a constant yellow alert because of hostilities ever present in Federation space, but you could choose to automatically go to red alert as the system is now, or manually go to red alert with a control panel toggle? Or, keep all the automatic red alerts like it is now, but add the option to manually trigger red alert whenever you felt like it (like the captain so often did) and you get to hear a klaxon?
And those archways have fins designed apparently like old fashioned cow-catchers to scoop up bridge officers.
I remember being so impressed with the trains in City of Heroes and how the doors opened and the toon actually ran inside, I was positive that Cryptic would have improved on that kind of depth in this game. I hate being wrong about stuff like that.
Maybe that's an improvement that will come down the road? I, for one, can understand why the hallways on starships have to be so honking huge, and can even get past the transporter pads large enough to fit a shuttle on, but I don't understand why the doors have to be so big, especially when control panels you would have to interact with aren't.
This is the Best post yet if they could intgrat that in to "diplomacy" missions it would have a lot of people doing thoughs missions over any other. thanks for that post.
I pretty much have to hold on to that hope, and I think it's a reasonable hope. I fully expect most of the bells and whistles to show up over the next several months.
Heck, there were numerous TNG and VOY eps that had the ship at yellow alert, just because where they happened to be traveling had astrometric problems, ion storms, flaring stars, etc.. I'd be fine with that triggering my power levels to default to "defensive", and dumping power to the shields.
And then I would like blue alert as well... Janeway used it when landing Voyager, I think that's something we should be able to do too!
Make it so!