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Changing ship/character death.
yahtzeeman
Member Posts: 44 Arc User
Something that's always slightly bothered me in STO is how when your ship goes critical and explodes, you magically reincarnate with little more than some scratches seconds later. It's broken a bit of the immersion in my book, especially since there are better options. Ground missions are even worse, since you can literally just set up a 'meat grinder', where you run forward, die, respawn and run back in. There are a lot of ways in-lore to avoid both scenarios.
First, for space missions: Warp out instead of explode. You need to pull back for repairs. This will not change anything about death mechanics other than the fact that you no longer explode and die. Your ship simply engages emergency warp and launches out of the fight.
For ground missions, something similar- either a mass retreat or site-to-site transport that will get you and your away team out of a bad situation. This will prevent your character from dying and suddenly taking up Buddhism as it resurrects.
Neither of these suggestions are fool-proof; what about places that disallow warp/transport? Well, it's better than watching your ship explode and then re-form, or watching your corpse wake up at your most recent respawn point. These are immersion-breaking flaws that I feel would dramatically enhance the game if fixed.
First, for space missions: Warp out instead of explode. You need to pull back for repairs. This will not change anything about death mechanics other than the fact that you no longer explode and die. Your ship simply engages emergency warp and launches out of the fight.
For ground missions, something similar- either a mass retreat or site-to-site transport that will get you and your away team out of a bad situation. This will prevent your character from dying and suddenly taking up Buddhism as it resurrects.
Neither of these suggestions are fool-proof; what about places that disallow warp/transport? Well, it's better than watching your ship explode and then re-form, or watching your corpse wake up at your most recent respawn point. These are immersion-breaking flaws that I feel would dramatically enhance the game if fixed.
Post edited by yahtzeeman on
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And, of course, when you do play solo you can advance you difficulty and deal with ship and personal problems that need to be repaired.
I think you miss his point. all hes saying that instead of exploding when you die you just warp to the respawn point. so your not out of game any longer than if you had actually exploded. and the respawn delay could still be used just apply it to a period of time with 0 power so you cant move. the amount of time a player is out of the stf you spoke of would be the same. but you remove the silly reincarnation stuff from the loop . makes sense to me.
a retreat sounds more ridiculous in Star Trek ....Warpdrive hardly worked on the shows or movies when battle had begun, doubt it would work when your ship just took a pounding, if a ship can just Warp out, it's not in bad condition.
The first thing everyone targets is the Warp drive that's Star Trek combat 101.
From a design perspective, I think they took the easy route: respawn and done.
It's just a game and thank the heavens its not like EVE Online. I'll take a respawn button over their "ship death" all day, every day.
In every place,
The deeds of men remain the same..."
Lol true.
Coming back to OP, I like your thinking.
Ground site to site transport with a M?dic beaming in to revive the away team is great.
Space needs thinking. First of all, how about the warp core breaches I use to hurt whoever shoots me?
As for warping away, must agree with neoakiraii.
What would be viable, except for summoning Q who repairs you, needs thinking.
But keep going with this idea!
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Here's how I would structure it:
1. You collapse on the ground. You go into "disabled" mode in space. Teammates can revive you or you can choose to "die and respawn", prompting an explosion.
2. Injuries happen only when you choose to respawn.
3. On Normal Mode, you will automatically explode and be forced to respawn after 30 seconds of being disabled. On Elite mode, you will automatically explode and be forced to respawn after 10 seconds of being disabled.
4. Injuries have more severe effects.
5. In place of respawn timers, there are abilities that allow you to auto-recover from being disabled without a teammate's help.
6a. On the ground, the cooldown on this ability scales based on kit and gear equipped with a modifier to reduce it on less offensively themed sets. The more you focus on damage, the longer your recovery time. Someone who is entirely defensively geared/specced would be in a position to get right back up. Some injuries increase recovery cooldown.
6b. In space, the self-recovery power cooldown scales based on crew, favoring more tanky ships having faster recoveries. Crew is something that would function differently. You can temporarily lose crew due to certain damage types and special abilities that "injure" crew. Crew injury/loss would generally be much rarer than it is currently but would be tied to certain weapons like transphasics and maybe a revamped or alternate version of Boarding Party. Some ship injuries will lower your maximum crew until removed.
Summary: On normal mode, you never need to see a ship blow up. You just need to be patient or have a teammate on hand. On advanced or elite, you're racing an explosion clock and teammates are urged to revive you, possibly with some kind of reward attached to doing so.
Beyond this, I'd like to see the same mechanic apply to enemies after a fashion. Your last hit takes them down to a disabled state. When disabled, you can salvage them for parts and prisoners, the prisoners being tradeable for certain things like dilithium, diplomatic XP, or marks. Once salvaged, the ship provides no reward for being destroyed. Or you can destroy a ship and get straight EC (one flaw of the game for many new players is the lack of a direct EC source from killing things; having to vendor is non-intuitive) and maybe some straight up military commendation/rep.
I'd also focus on making each type of enemy group have a unique loot table. Romulans drop singularity cores. Enemies drop weapons of the type they use.
So you choose between gear and diplomatic rep for sparing an enemy and salvaging them or EC and military rep for blowing them up.
On the ground, it would be similar with a kill or capture mechanic. The difference being that you tend to get more and better capture rewards, in general.
Borg cannot generally be captured (although maybe there's a special way, trait dependent) and Jem'Hadar and Klingons (but not all Klingons) will generally perform honor suicide that you have to halt. In general, with "kill or capture", devs may choose to weight the rewards with certain NPCs to favor one or the other and there may be rare loot table rewards associated with both kill and capture for specific NPC groups or specific NPCs that are desirable. Some NPCs can't be killed. Some can't be captured.
There is no need for the elaborate or over complication. The tech guys have enough problems keeping STO running smoothly enough to make it playable as is.
i really like the visuals.. specially when you are about to blow up.. except they only last a second or so.
it would be cool if they changed them so when you get a mild injury its the first visual with broken parts.. and when you get a severe one its the one where your ship is on fire.
that way the visuals would stay until you repaired your ship.
[12:44] Vessel One of Two Unimatrix 01 deals 1019527 (1157678) Kinetic Damage to you with Plasma Energy Bolt Explosion.
This a RPG so if I die, I hope it has a meaning. I am on the side of those who want that death matter. I don't want to see a ship magically respawn (except in simulator pvp). I like verisimilitude as Tolkien would have say that. Falling on the ground and being heal is ok, has the disable thing. But blowing up and getting back with damage is defenitely NOT.
I won't go long this time as I have given my opinion in other thread.
Skanvak Drakken
http://lamaisondesdrakkens.clan-box.com/index.php
I've always said that the death system in space needs work. First, just like the OP pointed out, having my ship explode into radioactive vapor every single time I die is immersion-breaking. It's also not a very good MMO death system in any case. It could stand to be much more robust.
Here's how I see it:
Incapacitated in space should work just like it does on the ground. Your ship is a lifeless hulk, sitting there flickering. Other players should have the ability to bring you back from this state with an ability just like CPR on the ground. If you *want* your ship to pop for some reason, perhaps to deal damage to other players or NPCs, you should have to slam the Abandon Ship or Self Destruct button. Only at this point would you take Damage that needs healing. This would be more in keeping with the Trek feel of the game anyway. (Search for Spock anyone?)
This should also apply to NPC vessels. I don't know about you but my Federation Captain has so much blood on his hands. He's lost count of the number of ships he's blasted into the void, taking all hands with them. Hundreds of thousands of lives, at this point, lost under his guns. It's enough to give a guy post traumatic stress disorder.
How about NPC vessels that *don't* always explode? How about warp core breaches being 1) way less common and 2) a much bigger deal when they happen? How about NPCs that surrender or run away sometimes?
I agree with this
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Yeah but that doesn't work in STF's or PVP... how often in a show did you see a ship just up and warp out when they were getting beaten? Often they exploded...and since this is a mmo and there is no perma death system you die and respawn.
On the whole ship disabled thing...yeah its so canon to disable a ship and let them sit there and repair rather than destroy them... :rolleyes:
I have to agree with the OP... I dislike the "death" of the ship... it should be disabled, and float lifeless ejecting warp plasma with a "repairing" timer that lasts as long as the current respawn timers.
Teammates would have a new space ability "Send Emergency Repair Teams" that works exactly like the ground CPR. That would negate the timer, and restore the ship to 25% hull and shields.
Definitely has my support
Star Trek Online, Now with out the Trek....