I'm not sure how hard this would be to do but how hard would it be to have ships or enemy troops retreat when critically wounded? Why is every fight to the death. Now I'm not talking about lowering xp rewards or item drops or whatever. Just aesthetically In a fight it would make alot more sense to me to see a ship retreat instead of going down fighting.
Now some of this has to go down to culture and some of it is the choice of each individual captain. A Klingon might be more prone to go down shooting but not all of them would. They are still warriors at heart and can see the overall picture. Borg wouldn't normally retreat. Or rather. IF a retreat was called for all of the borg in the area would retreat and regroup or whatever.
Those are really the only two exceptions I can think of. You might think Orions but They would be the first ones to run. If they can't run then they blow themselves up. They are fighting a war but they don't have death wishes.
Ideally what I would like to see happen is ships warping out when damaged to a certain threshold. This can be randomized from 'retreats when the hull is down to 75%' to 'fights to the death'. Bonus points if you can work in some sort of text ranging from intercepting the communique that they have to withdraw to a 'I'll get you next time gadget' moment.
On the ground I'd like to see more self preservation as well. If they are hurt pretty bad they should be calling for beam outs. Again with a few exceptions and tailored 'possibly randomly' on a per character basis.
I'm not against explosions and so forth especially in large fleet action type engagments where fighting to the death might server an overall tactical objective or where a captain might believe, possible erroneously, that his buddies will come to his aid in time. However in most missions fighting to the death makes no sense.
For example. The Azura mission. Ok The Orions got the drop on the freighter and you come in to the rescue.As it stands now The Orions will fight you tooth and nail to save a ship that is about to explode. After you wipe out 4 raiders you board the Azura and kill off around 25 Orions. You then depart and 2 more raiders and a Marauder descend upon you, Now I can see wanting revenge but they fight to the death as well? Why? The Azura is about to explode as it is. Even if they beat you what have they won?
Now turn this same scenerio around where the enemies have some sort of self preservation. You come in and knock out a couple of the raiders. The other raiders steal what they can and bolt as you approach the Azura. You land and take care of the Orions on board. Since they have no escape it is likely they would fight to the death for the first half but once they star beaming in It makes more sense to think they could start beaming out. You then rescue the crew and return to your ship to see that those two raiders returned with a Marauder.They attack and you manage to drive them off with the captain of the Marauder cursing your name as she is forced to retreat with he bridge falling apart around her.
The XP is the same. The fights are largely the same. The story is more believable and more immersive and you've suddenly got a potential reoccurring villain.
So in short. I'm not asking for a rewrite of the AI. I'm not saying they should start ducking behind asteroids mid fight, although it would be cool if they behaved more intelligently, All I would like to see is a little more self preservation once they are defeated.
I hate runners, but then again it would add more meat to ground combat if a runner tried to get to another group
You misunderstood what I am talking about. I'm not talking about runners as in. they run away and you have to track them down. I am talking about runners as in. Activate warp drive and go crying to the nearest spacedock never to be seen again in this map jettisoning your xp and loot as you leave.
Most of the enemies we face act more like religious zealots than rational enemies. If we just smoked all their friends, maybe they wouldn't just bluster and die horribly (or just die horribly) and we wouldn't kill more people than Stalin during the course of our career. I'd like some to surrender and others to beam out/warp out if that's appropriate. If we just beat the commander of the unit, maybe the last ensign wouldn't go down fighting too.
If it's too hard to fix the earlier missions for this, at least they should offer us the option in Foundry missions and do it in some new missions.
On the ground I'd like to see more self preservation as well. If they are hurt pretty bad they should be calling for beam outs. Again with a few exceptions and tailored 'possibly randomly' on a per character basis.
I'm not against explosions and so forth especially in large fleet action type engagments where fighting to the death might server an overall tactical objective or where a captain might believe, possible erroneously, that his buddies will come to his aid in time. However in most missions fighting to the death makes no sense.
The story is more believable and more immersive and you've suddenly got a potential reoccurring villain.
I don't know about the beam out unless as humanitarians you come to the aid of the wounded that just tried to kill you and beam them to your sickbay.
I would see the runner scenario more with them trying to seek help. As long as it was the last one or every so often it happened but if I'm trying to kill my first dude and he runs off and aggros the next group it would tick me off.
Space could be as you describe but again not every ship regardless of.race should run just maybe 1 in 10 or so.
I don't know about the beam out unless as humanitarians you come to the aid of the wounded that just tried to kill you and beam them to your sickbay.
There are a lot of scenarios where we're on the ground while enemy ships are known or suspected to be nearby, and other enemy installations are around. It'd be very plausible to have them beaming in AND out throughout the whole thing.
A lot of this could tie into the "reputation grind" ideas people brought up a while back.
Personally (at least on the Fed side) I think that before you destroy a ship you have the option to hail them and ask them to stand down. Perhaps you could (as someone said earlier) offer to heal their wounded and repair their ship, and then gain Diplomatic XP and reputation with that race/species.
For ground combat you should have the option to set weapons to stun and only take them down without killing them. After a few camps of baddies are taken down you can again ask them to retreat and have your CMO (or if you're a medic like me you can do it yourself) heal the wounded and tag them for transport back to their ship.
This was very commonplace in every single version of Star Trek and is missing from this game.
After gaining certain levels of reputation with different races, they'll be less likely to "aggro" you when you're working on something such as a "scan five rocks" mission where baddies are involved.
Now as far as how this would work in PvP I have no idea yet. Just fleshing out some ideas, but I do like where this whole thread is going.
I hate the fact that it takes so long for me to be able to use full impulse, after I defeat an enemy. It seems to be a full 5-10 seconds after the enemy ship explodes for me to be able to use full impulse to help other team players. Why is this the case? If it is to make avoiding space explosions more challenging then can't there be some other way to do this?
Comments
You misunderstood what I am talking about. I'm not talking about runners as in. they run away and you have to track them down. I am talking about runners as in. Activate warp drive and go crying to the nearest spacedock never to be seen again in this map jettisoning your xp and loot as you leave.
If it's too hard to fix the earlier missions for this, at least they should offer us the option in Foundry missions and do it in some new missions.
I don't know about the beam out unless as humanitarians you come to the aid of the wounded that just tried to kill you and beam them to your sickbay.
I would see the runner scenario more with them trying to seek help. As long as it was the last one or every so often it happened but if I'm trying to kill my first dude and he runs off and aggros the next group it would tick me off.
Space could be as you describe but again not every ship regardless of.race should run just maybe 1 in 10 or so.
There are a lot of scenarios where we're on the ground while enemy ships are known or suspected to be nearby, and other enemy installations are around. It'd be very plausible to have them beaming in AND out throughout the whole thing.
Personally (at least on the Fed side) I think that before you destroy a ship you have the option to hail them and ask them to stand down. Perhaps you could (as someone said earlier) offer to heal their wounded and repair their ship, and then gain Diplomatic XP and reputation with that race/species.
For ground combat you should have the option to set weapons to stun and only take them down without killing them. After a few camps of baddies are taken down you can again ask them to retreat and have your CMO (or if you're a medic like me you can do it yourself) heal the wounded and tag them for transport back to their ship.
This was very commonplace in every single version of Star Trek and is missing from this game.
After gaining certain levels of reputation with different races, they'll be less likely to "aggro" you when you're working on something such as a "scan five rocks" mission where baddies are involved.
Now as far as how this would work in PvP I have no idea yet. Just fleshing out some ideas, but I do like where this whole thread is going.
Plus, as a Federation officer, I think I would rather kill as few others as possible. Even though there's a war going on.