Getting, and drawing your costume isn't an issue. We could draw your captain and your ship side by side. They are just costumes on the ENTITY that is you. The problem is that there is only one YOU ENTITY. And it only exists in one map at a time. It's keeping track of TWO separate entities, both representing you, on two different maps that is problematic.
Its problematic for the KDF player to play at all so I would never ask for more than one broken version of my characters to exist at a given time when the one is too hard to keep working itself.
I don't know anything about your engine or your capabilities or limitations. So this will probably sound ridiculous, but I'm trying to do some outside-the-box thinking.
What about keeping a proxy copy of a player on every single sector space map (or one step further, every non-combat public map), to be 'generated' upon zone-in? The one issue that'd come to mind is it'd take up a population slot in every instance in "reserve", completely negating the whole point of instancing.
As I mentioned, this can be achieved even easier by making the "dressing room" you see when you hit "U" as a primary screen, populating it with your bridge and officers there, and making the front view of the ship the actual combat or sector-space.
Also, as far as adding immense immersiveness to a ship, making the view outside more dynamic than just stars, is a good start too. Making it so you can see things around you relative to where you are when you zoned into the bridge would be very awesome (such as visiting your bridge from ESD should render ESD, the moon, earth, etc when you look outside). Again, window-dressing; the assets are already there
Said NO to Arc. Gets punished by not being given a free outfit, free lobi, and free shuttle. Now forced to use Arc's site when trying to get to STO site. Still not rewards for beta testing the Arc website by force. Bravo Cryptic.
Another issue is how to determine the timing. I guess we could manually fly from every planet to every other planet to get a baseline, but that's annoying.
That also seems very problematic considering transwarp, slipstream, driver coil, warp core buffs and a few engines that still have speed increases. Which abilities can your helmsman use. If you hop out early will you find your self in the middle of sector space at a standstill with slip stream half used. If you are sitting outside sol going to delta volanis in a tuffli will it know that is does not need to transwarp there and will he just fly there.
Is it just me or is it mainly the critics of these ideas ho seem to think "functional bridge" means "ship combat from the bridge"? That isn't what most interior proponents suggest and hasn't been for almost four years after the initial wave of bridge commander junkies adapted or left.
This is about travel and content on interiors. There isn't one solution for that (because that's a matter of tastes) but there can be many good ideas.
So you want to sit on your bridge, staring into space, while someone says "Ahead Warp Factor 3, Captain!" (actually, "Ahead Emergency Warp!" if you want to be technical, 'cuz we always run our ships at maximum warp), and then nothing at all happens for several time units, being minutes, hours, etc., and then you get a report that you've dropped out of warp in the Delta Epsilon system, and you're establishing orbit around Delta Epsilon 4.
Sounds a bit boring, honestly.
Or did you want instant travel? In which case, everyone would use "bridge mode" because, well, instant travel. Then why bother with a sector map at all?
In "reality" (used somewhat loosely here), the tactical view IS you telling your bridge officers where to go, especially if you use the map to set an automatic course, and of course, when you're in combat, you're telling your crew what to do, rather than actually doing it yourself.
Well I definitely appreciate the well thought out reply! It would have to be a Season dedicated to it for sure, but it would be an epic feature release!
A few thoughts on the system to answer some of your concerns: it would be for navigation, exploration, and diplomacy. The interior instance being separate from sector space is fine. As long as you can assign variables to the client (like last location visited before spawn), you could accurately represent where the ship should be. Assign a coordinate system to the entire map to calculate distances. If 0 0 0 is Sol System you can easily do a time distance formula using speed variables from the "sector ship". Make it slightly longer to encourage sector travel if you prefer.
Primarily you don't need a) view screen showing sector space, just use predefined art for warp travel. It's not like view screens are so amazing now. b) combat from the bridge is unnecessary as STO has it's own unique combat system already. Just have a button to "enter tactical mode" and load in the regular combat maps.
Again, focus on the concept of mini games to satisfy our horrible exploration system, crafting, diplomacy, etc. It's a base line to accommodate these revamped systems.
Things to do while you use the bridge for navigation.
I think something along these lines could finally complete the feeling of Trek in STO.
Getting, and drawing your costume isn't an issue. We could draw your captain and your ship side by side. They are just costumes on the ENTITY that is you. The problem is that there is only one YOU ENTITY. And it only exists in one map at a time. It's keeping track of TWO separate entities, both representing you, on two different maps that is problematic.
Does the second entity have to be us? The shard of possibilities is our costume on 2 npcs. cant we have a dummy with a costume as our proxy?
To get what the OP wants would not only call for an engine overhaul like Daedalus304 said, but in actuality it would require completely new and different game.
Actually to get what the "OP" wants does not require an engine overhaul or a completely new and different game.
They could do something as simple as have "Sector space" show up on the "view screen" with control over the player-character avatar and player-ship avatar toggling when they sit in the captain's chair complete with "warp to new sector?" and even "start conflict with random breen?" when you reach an edge.
Like said above, this is something only a Dev can answer.
Needless to say, if it was doable, they would've already done it.
Not necessarily. In any software development company... anything is doable with 3 things... Enough Time, Money, and Resources (people).
So is it possible, sure... provided these three requirements are met. Now, is it viable? Would the work required net them anything? Would they make back their investment?
Would it make them money? If the answer is no... then it won't happen. This is not a bad thing... it makes sure that the company (and its products) continue to exist. No money, no company... No company, no game.
Erm, I think this problem can somewhat be solved by just taking the new Fed Tutorials into account. I want to be immersed by story and have a conclusion in my bridge commanding abilities. The Tutorial is completely awesome in it's portrayal of where you are and what you're about to do.
Heck, I'd love to see a more up-to-date way to choose your away team and see them actually beam down, instead of this cardboard cut-out before beaming down in front of a static picture.
If they'd revamp almost every episode/season until it get's more generalized (like say; the Dominion season) between all factions, it'll be completely mind-blowing. There's no need to implement these elements this way and all Star Trek fans would rejoice.
I can't seriously say this more then enough; learn from the Fed Tutorial missions. Redo them, but in a way it resembles the old missions. Use elements, but add to them.
I can see one problem with this; and that's where we might need some some sort of universal bridge, much like the Origin. What might help with that is having certain positions in any bridge chosen to be filled with a scripted objects to anchor actors into their spots - like the Captains chair or Con officer etc. etc.. That way the bridges can become interchangeable without loss of immersion.
Erm, I think this problem can somewhat be solved by just taking the new Fed Tutorials into account. I want to be immersed by story and have a conclusion in my bridge commanding abilities. The Tutorial is completely awesome in it's portrayal of where you are and what you're about to do.
Heck, I'd love to see a more up-to-date way to choose your away team and see them actually beam down, instead of this cardboard cut-out before beaming down in front of a static picture.
If they'd revamp almost every episode/season until it get's more generalized (like say; the Dominion season) between all factions, it'll be completely mind-blowing. There's no need to implement these elements this way and all Star Trek fans would rejoice.
I can't seriously say this more then enough; learn from the Fed Tutorial missions. Redo them, but in a way it resembles the old missions. Use elements, but add to them.
I can see one problem with this; and that's where we might need some some sort of universal bridge, much like the Origin. What might help with that is having certain positions in any bridge chosen to be filled with a scripted objects to anchor actors into their spots - like the Captains chair or Con officer etc. etc.. That way the bridges can become interchangeable without loss of immersion.
Actually to get what the "OP" wants does not require an engine overhaul or a completely new and different game.
They could do something as simple as have "Sector space" show up on the "view screen" with control over the player-character avatar and player-ship avatar toggling when they sit in the captain's chair complete with "warp to new sector?" and even "start conflict with random breen?" when you reach an edge.
It isn't "warp science" kids.
No, but it's significantly more complex than you think. The game engine (and I'm theorizing here, but I'm willing to bet I'm pretty close) creates a client-side 3D "space" based on data from the database servers (because ultimately, everything is just a database entry), then generates a viewport (A 2-dimensional frame) for that 3D space, and displays it on your monitor.
What you're envisioning would require generating two completely different 3D spaces, and then overlaying a viewport from one onto a texture on another.
It's certainly possible, but it's going to roughly double the texture memory and CPU requirements for the game engine, and require pretty heavy anti-aliasing to make it not look like utter #$@%.
That also means that you now require the "inside" (ground) view to accurately correspond to your position in the "outside" (space) view.
Again, not impossible, but would probably require rewriting the game engine, since it currently knows your position in either the "ground" universe or the "space" universe-- not both. When you're on Earth Space Dock, you're not in the "space" universe at all-- you only exist in the "ground" universe. They're completely separate right now, and the game has no way of knowing that anyone inside (any instance of) ESD is in orbit near Earth.
Disclaimer: Not a game developer, but big on programming, databases, and 3D CGI.
So you want to sit on your bridge, staring into space, while someone says "Ahead Warp Factor 3, Captain!" (actually, "Ahead Emergency Warp!" if you want to be technical, 'cuz we always run our ships at maximum warp), and then nothing at all happens for several time units, being minutes, hours, etc., and then you get a report that you've dropped out of warp in the Delta Epsilon system, and you're establishing orbit around Delta Epsilon 4.
Sounds a bit boring, honestly.
Or did you want instant travel? In which case, everyone would use "bridge mode" because, well, instant travel. Then why bother with a sector map at all?
In "reality" (used somewhat loosely here), the tactical view IS you telling your bridge officers where to go, especially if you use the map to set an automatic course, and of course, when you're in combat, you're telling your crew what to do, rather than actually doing it yourself.
Stop acting like an authority on reality or what others want, please.
I want to manage my bank, DOffs and run missions and mini games inside my ship. Leave the navigation to the helmsman. Have social activities including combat that emphasize ship interiors. Leave navigation to the helmsman.
I've written probably 50k words on this subject with ideas on how to do combat on non standard interiors, social mini games, timers, etc.
I do not do citations on message boards. I don't care if you've seen it before but kindly don't ever try to assign or extrapolate thoughts or desires to others. It's insulting to make up what you think I want and call it a bad idea in the same breath when you just made up the thing you're critiquing.
Stop acting like an authority on reality or what others want, please.
I wasn't, I was trying to understand, and did so based on your post (which I quoted), in which you specifically stated:
This is about travel and content on interiors.
That's pretty specific. That's what I addressed. If that's not what you meant, why did you say it?
I want to manage my bank, DOffs and run missions and mini games inside my ship. Leave the navigation to the helmsman. Have social activities including combat that emphasize ship interiors. Leave navigation to the helmsman.
Ah, so you want non-bridge stuff on your bridge (except for duty officer assignments, which you can do from your ready room already). I do think it's peculiar that your "bank" is starbase only-- I think it should be your ship, but conceptually, I think the inventory is on-ship cargo hold.
I've written probably 50k words on this subject with ideas on how to do combat on non standard interiors, social mini games, timers, etc.
I do not do citations on message boards. I don't care if you've seen it before but kindly don't ever try to assign or extrapolate thoughts or desires to others. It's insulting to make up what you think I want and call it a bad idea in the same breath when you just made up the thing you're critiquing.
Oh-- so sorry, wasn't aware that in order to reply to your post, I had to go read every post you've ever made on the topic. :rolleyes:
But seriously, unless you're assuming that you're special enough that the Dev's should make these changes for JUST YOU, aren't you assigning and extrapolating desires to others? I'm OK with the tactical map, and I've got enough imagination that I can grasp the current space-based interface as an abstraction layer between what I see and what I want my crew to do, so you're apparently making assumptions about what I (and the rest of the playerbase) want.
However, what I have said in the past, and will repeat now, is that our game, as it stands today, is not set up for this at all. It's not an engine limitation per se, and it's not because our engine is old. It's because it's not how the game was designed. Again, possible, but not probable.
Just an idea but how about a helm interface with a list of all systems in the game you select one and a standard timer starts that disables your ability to return from the bridge to sector space. say 3 minutes as a standard no matter what system you choose. so while on your bridge you can go to you ready room and do some doffing and when the timer is up and you return to sector space your ship transwarps to the selected system
Needless to say, if it was doable, they would've already done it.
That's not quite accurate. Chances are, it's very much doable, but they choose NOT to do it. If anything, it seems they might be trying their best to REMOVE player interiors. All those fancy Lockbox ship bridges? No custom interiors, just the bridge. The new Origin bridge? Just that, no new corridors/interior rooms besides the bridge.
Personally, I have a feeling they'll eventually do away with the corridors, Engineering, Sickbay etc alltogether, and limit any "Player interior" setting to the Bridge, and nothing else. Or more probably, they'll end up removing Bridges as well.
Step 1: get a print screen of your ship's viewscreen.
Step 2: print it out
Step 3: cut out screen part
Step 4: tape to monitor
Step 5: enjoy
Viewing the ship in 3D space means you can see what's around you in all directions. At some point or another, each and every one of you has had thier bacon saved by this fact. Probibly you saw a heavy torpeado being launched behind you and were able to shoot it down.
There comes a point where "Immersion" and "Bordom" intersect. Someone once suggested that ship damge repair and changes to ship loadout could only be done at starbases and should take time to up the imersion level. What people need to realize is that not everyone wants to be imersed the same amount. Some people don't have time to stand around and wait, thier playing time is limited.
There has to be some level of compromise, or else it's only going to be fun for everyone. If the bridge commander wannabes got everything they wanted, then people who don't want to play that way would leave.
Or the dev's would need to maintine a million diffrent ways to play the game, sucking up sever space, man hours and thier sanity.
Everywhere I look, people are screaming about how bad Cryptic is.
What's my position?
That people should know what they're screaming about!
(paraphrased from "The Newsroom)
Personally, I have a feeling they'll eventually do away with the corridors, Engineering, Sickbay etc alltogether, and limit any "Player interior" setting to the Bridge, and nothing else. Or more probably, they'll end up removing Bridges as well.
I can see your point however they did do a full interior for romulan ships including a very impressive engineering and "ten forward". The problem with standard fed interiors is a legacy one. There was an interview on the old STOKED podcast with the dev who made the original interiors, I forget his name the guy who made the STFs, remastered fed missions and made all the honour guard, omega and maco gear. he basically said it was slapped together from the maps used in the original tutorial. wasn't perfect but it was good enough. unfortunately it didn't stand the test of time too well and IMO it put a lot of players off
Also if cryptic didn't see the value of bridges then they wouldn't have produced them for top lockbox and lobi ships. I'm surprised there hasn't been more c-store ship interior packs as far as I know they have been good sellers
Erm, I think this problem can somewhat be solved by just taking the new Fed Tutorials into account. I want to be immersed by story and have a conclusion in my bridge commanding abilities. The Tutorial is completely awesome in it's portrayal of where you are and what you're about to do.
Heck, I'd love to see a more up-to-date way to choose your away team and see them actually beam down, instead of this cardboard cut-out before beaming down in front of a static picture.
If they'd revamp almost every episode/season until it get's more generalized (like say; the Dominion season) between all factions, it'll be completely mind-blowing. There's no need to implement these elements this way and all Star Trek fans would rejoice.
I can't seriously say this more then enough; learn from the Fed Tutorial missions. Redo them, but in a way it resembles the old missions. Use elements, but add to them.
I can see one problem with this; and that's where we might need some some sort of universal bridge, much like the Origin. What might help with that is having certain positions in any bridge chosen to be filled with a scripted objects to anchor actors into their spots - like the Captains chair or Con officer etc. etc.. That way the bridges can become interchangeable without loss of immersion.
Summing things up heavily... I think you could have something like four universal interiors per faction. You can access your own interior type on your ship and get some extra options. To experience the others, you either find a friend with a different interior or track down ships around the game world similar to the Breen patrol.
I'd probably expect it to be handled a lot like a season adventure zone except split up across 12 ship interiors (4 per faction, 5 decks a piece). Like adventure zones, these would have events random and triggered. Unlike adventure zones, you could specify where in the game world you want to emerge, with an appropriate timer. While the timer ticks down, you survey the adventure zone, DOff, etc. There would be a rep and marks attached.
One key difference with these is that instead of being one and done like New Romulus, I'd imagine a skeleton crew of devs could continue to develop new content for interiors with a new rep added using your Command Marks periodically.
I've definitely gone over this plenty of times in the past, but my search-fu seems to be weak today.
Note that I don't think I've ever used the word 'impossible.' It's all code, nothing is impossible given enough time, money, and manpower.
Understood and appreciated. Granted that a lot of work would need to be done for two map instances to be handled simultaneously by one player's computer, but the benefit to the game's playability would be tremendous.
In the meantime...
To my (non-programmer) mind, the best alternative is the count-down method others have mentioned. Instead of "flying" your ship from the bridge, you go to your helm officer, tell him which system to go to, and a timer counts down however long it takes to get there. During the countdown you can meander around your interior, doing whatever captainy things captains do. When the timer is up, your helm officer informs you that you have arrived, and you can load that map.
The problem with the above is what happens when you leave your bridge part way through the count down. If you leave at the start, you go back to where ever you left to get to your bridge. If you leave at the end, you go to your destination. If you leave in the middle, where do you go? Remember, there is nothing tracking you through sector space, so we have no functional idea where your "ship" is right now. Instead, we just know that you're 50% done with the countdown. So, we can't drop you in the right spot in sector space, do we dump you back at the start? We can't let you cheat by going to the end point. . .
Another issue is how to determine the timing. I guess we could manually fly from every planet to every other planet to get a baseline, but that's annoying. IMO I think this idea best works with a unified sector space, so that there is no map loading between sectors. Timing things in that mode would be a much simpler task, as we could just determine distances between them. A unified sector space would also make it easier to drop you in an appropriate spot if you were to leave your bridge part way through your journey. It's something that has been tossed about, but I haven't heard anything concrete about that in a while.
I wouldn't think tracking ship sector travel to be that difficult. Assign each system a set of coordinates on a grid. Determining the distance between any of those points is simple. Determining the travel time is as simple as simple as applying the ship speed to that distance. Determining any point along that line for a given time at a given speed is also simple.
This would save on the need to load a new map for each new sector/system until the player chooses to leave the ship interior. That's an immediate benefit, without a lot of effort.
In addition, I wouldn't really want to do this unless we did some major bridge refresh as well. I think we have a lot of terrible bridges in the game. I also think it would be cool if your viewscreen could reflect the system you are at, but that would be more tech, and wouldn't really work until the above bits happened. They're all nice ideas, and I think everyone on the team would love to see it, but there is a LOT of work involved, and a lot of edge cases that can break things horribly. It's not a trivial undertaking.
Keep in mind, the above suggestion would only be for travel, not fighting anything. That would be an even bigger can of worms to wrestle with.
Understood. However, the implementation of what you described earlier would provide the incentive to further flesh out the possibilities of what can be done within the ship's interior.
The monitor overlay idea has been raised a number of times before, but imo it would just feel chintzy. We couldn't do a full 3d bridge overlay, it would just be a texture. Basically cutting a viewscreen out of cardboard and pasting it onto your monitor. I don't think anyone would be satisfied by that.
Leaving the ship interior would likely always be preferred when engaging in ship to ship combat, but... many players are asking for more non-combat content to be included in the game.
To that end, a mini-map of the sector which the player is in could be displayed as the "Viewscreen" of their bridge. So as to have the normal mini-map showing the ship interior and the viewscreen showing the live sector/system instance. Of course this would be part of the major re-work, which you guys have planned.
In the meantime, the viewscreen could just show a sector/system map with a plotted position indicated.
What it all comes down to is realism v convenience. It would be more realistic if I could only go to the exterior view of my ship while sitting in my captains chair. Also it's always bothered me that when going to the exterior of my ship it always does the beam out animation. I'm guessing that they coded it so whenever leaving my character screen to a transition screen the beam out animation has to be played. I hope they can fix that when I'm on my ship because I'm not beaming into space.
They could also add more realism by making it so you can go to your transporter room to start away missions. While this would be much more realistic it would also be much more time consuming so they wouldn't want to make it mandatory. Or maybe they could just add a switch in the options screen to turn realism on or off.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." Jean-Luc Picard
So you want to sit on your bridge, staring into space, while someone says "Ahead Warp Factor 3, Captain!" (actually, "Ahead Emergency Warp!" if you want to be technical, 'cuz we always run our ships at maximum warp), and then nothing at all happens for several time units, being minutes, hours, etc., and then you get a report that you've dropped out of warp in the Delta Epsilon system, and you're establishing orbit around Delta Epsilon 4.
Sounds a bit boring, honestly.
Or did you want instant travel? In which case, everyone would use "bridge mode" because, well, instant travel. Then why bother with a sector map at all?
In "reality" (used somewhat loosely here), the tactical view IS you telling your bridge officers where to go, especially if you use the map to set an automatic course, and of course, when you're in combat, you're telling your crew what to do, rather than actually doing it yourself.
That's a pretty short-sighted view.
A few of us made outlines of how this could work back in the old forums (probably all labeled as "Archived User" now), one of us even going so far as making screenshot mockups.
One of the many things you could "do" while waiting for the ETA timer to count down (besides inventory/DOff/mail management) is RANDOM ENCOUNTERS. Well, maybe not so "random", as much as "encounters that have a % chance of occurring while "traveling" through a particular area of the galaxy/sector map (you're not actually traveling, since you're on your ship interior). These encounters could come in many flavors, from Yellow Alerts (like distress signals or spatial anomalies) that are skippable, to Red Alerts that pause your ETA timer (holding your "position" (coordinates) on the Galaxy/Sector Map) and require your Captain to take some sort of action, either engaging the enemy (loading system space map and going into combat or fighting boarders on your interior) or attempting evasive maneuvers (minigame) to avoid combat completely before the player can plot a new course to their final destination.
Speed would also play a role. All ships would have some sort of "cruising speed" (some may cruise faster than others), but the reason you wouldn't "always" travel at maximum warp would be that it causes damage to your warp core (and now we actually have warp cores!) if you run at faster than cruising speed for a prolonged period of time. This damage will reduce your maximum warp, and can be repaired for EC at a starbase with repair facilities. Run your warp core into the ground and the nearest starbase is days/weeks/months away at the best speed you can muster? Good thing Transwarp Jumps to Sol/Qo'noS/New Romulus are free and always available (if you haven't transwarp jumped in the past 15 minutes)
When plotting your course, you not only set your waypoints but also the speed for each leg. Need to take a shortcut through a dangerous, high-risk area? Increase your warp factor through the dangerous parts to get through there faster and lower your chance of a hostile encounter. You may strain your warp core some, but it may be worth it to save some time on your trip.
(Example scenario: You're a Fed captain that needs to get an Ambassador to a planet beyond a hostile Klingon picket line. You could either plot a course around the Klingons which could take a while, or charge through at maximum warp and hope the Klingons don't intercept you while in their controlled space.)
Maybe you are actually looking for action. Specifically, maybe you want to crack some Orion Syndicate skulls for making off with some pricey commodities. Plot a course to an area with a high pirate activity and just patrol around in there until they show up on scanners.
Getting, and drawing your costume isn't an issue. We could draw your captain and your ship side by side. They are just costumes on the ENTITY that is you. The problem is that there is only one YOU ENTITY. And it only exists in one map at a time. It's keeping track of TWO separate entities, both representing you, on two different maps that is problematic.
You should check back to page one and two, then, as I had proposed a possible solution to this.
Why not avoid the whole "two places at once" thing completely by using the same principle as how the character display in the status/gear screen works? Using the game's data on which bridge the player's ship is using, along with the costumes of their character and BOffs, it would create a client-side only bridge model which would replace the player's ship only for them. It would have "dummies" tied to the seats, which would use the costumes of their character and active bridge crew.
There wouldn't be an issue with having the player's character in two places at once, because they would still only be in one place; their ship reskinned client-side to appear as their bridge. The reskinned dummies would then act as the bridge crew.
The reason I keep saying client-side is so that to other players, the player would still appear to be their ship, while the player in question could use an ersatz "bridge view". In order to work with the space visuals outside of the "bridge", the copied bridge model and officer costumes could also be scaled down, with an "invisibility field" around them to keep space objects from showing up inside.
Since the player's character (as ship) would be reskinned client-side into a copy of their selected bridge model, it could even use the same tech used on ships to display battle damage to display battle damage inside of the "bridge".
One of the biggest problems facing missions within our ship interiors are the vast array of different layouts etc. If it was just the Origin interior it would be more manageable but what about the Belfast or Constitution interiors? The more variation we have the harder it becomes to code interesting missions in them. They could do it with just the origin interior but then it's a bit jarring and breaks immersion.
Unless, they have certain tags which they can place in the interiors which would be associated with different objectives/placing of NPC's. I for one would love to see some holodeck malfunctions etc like we saw in TNG.
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One of the biggest problems facing missions within our ship interiors are the vast array of different layouts etc. If it was just the Origin interior it would be more manageable but what about the Belfast or Constitution interiors? The more variation we have the harder it becomes to code interesting missions in them. They could do it with just the origin interior but then it's a bit jarring and breaks immersion.
Unless, they have certain tags which they can place in the interiors which would be associated with different objectives/placing of NPC's. I for one would love to see some holodeck malfunctions etc like we saw in TNG.
Well, that's why my solution is:
- Don't set any dynamic content on bridges.
- Give each interior type its own content. And it's not "pay for content" if players have the choice to track down an NPC ship with that interior to play that content. It's simply paying for the convenience of accessing that content wherever you are instead of flying to more remote sectors to play that content aboard NPC ships with "disabled bridge crews" or cadet-manned ships.
... So, there is no easy way to track you through sector space while you are actually on another map...
... The best alternative is the count-down method others have mentioned.
... If you leave in the middle, where do you go?
... Another issue is how to determine the timing.
... In addition, I wouldn't really want to do this unless we did some major bridge refresh as well.
I also think it would be cool if your viewscreen could reflect the system you are at, but that would be more tech
... the above suggestion would only be for travel, not fighting anything.
The monitor overlay idea has been raised a number of times before, but imo it would just feel chintzy. We couldn't do a full 3d bridge overlay, it would just be a texture. I don't think anyone would be satisfied by that.
10 km = x seconds.
Leave ship interior after 5 seconds, you spawn 50 km down the route.
If you don't have numbers on distances I am pretty sure people would be honored to fly around the game manually and chart it for the developers.
A bridge update does sound like a lot of work if to give all ships all sections, impossible in fact.
So make it only usable with c-store or lockbox interiors, or, limit the features to bridges only. All ships should have a bridge and a viewscreen from what I know.
I don't think that's a far stretch either, we already have bridges with more features than others.
View screen live 3D feed would be off way I see it.
If you had that you'd ask to interact with what's on the screen such as combat.
The user having a generic image or animation it's implied and understood you are in another instance.
I am more I think of all the cool things you could do with the viewscreen such as special menus, text for lore, tutorial or storyline.
Bring a planet up on screen and read about it.
Even a pixelated gif of moving stars and an engine sound effect will go a long way
And of course talking to people in PM you should have the option to "put them on screen" as is already done generic during mission briefings already.
One great functional use I could see for it is if you were allowed to doff from your bridge without spawning. Then you could skip all loading screens.
And even if you had to spawn out of ship interiors to doff in that sector you'd still be saving the hazzle and have a more fluid travel there.
I really enjoyed the Bridge Commander Lite bone they threw in the new Fed Tutorial, even though its likely nothing like this will ever really come to STO sadly.
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Its problematic for the KDF player to play at all so I would never ask for more than one broken version of my characters to exist at a given time when the one is too hard to keep working itself.
As I mentioned, this can be achieved even easier by making the "dressing room" you see when you hit "U" as a primary screen, populating it with your bridge and officers there, and making the front view of the ship the actual combat or sector-space.
Also, as far as adding immense immersiveness to a ship, making the view outside more dynamic than just stars, is a good start too. Making it so you can see things around you relative to where you are when you zoned into the bridge would be very awesome (such as visiting your bridge from ESD should render ESD, the moon, earth, etc when you look outside). Again, window-dressing; the assets are already there
That also seems very problematic considering transwarp, slipstream, driver coil, warp core buffs and a few engines that still have speed increases. Which abilities can your helmsman use. If you hop out early will you find your self in the middle of sector space at a standstill with slip stream half used. If you are sitting outside sol going to delta volanis in a tuffli will it know that is does not need to transwarp there and will he just fly there.
All I see are logistical issues.
So you want to sit on your bridge, staring into space, while someone says "Ahead Warp Factor 3, Captain!" (actually, "Ahead Emergency Warp!" if you want to be technical, 'cuz we always run our ships at maximum warp), and then nothing at all happens for several time units, being minutes, hours, etc., and then you get a report that you've dropped out of warp in the Delta Epsilon system, and you're establishing orbit around Delta Epsilon 4.
Sounds a bit boring, honestly.
Or did you want instant travel? In which case, everyone would use "bridge mode" because, well, instant travel. Then why bother with a sector map at all?
In "reality" (used somewhat loosely here), the tactical view IS you telling your bridge officers where to go, especially if you use the map to set an automatic course, and of course, when you're in combat, you're telling your crew what to do, rather than actually doing it yourself.
A few thoughts on the system to answer some of your concerns: it would be for navigation, exploration, and diplomacy. The interior instance being separate from sector space is fine. As long as you can assign variables to the client (like last location visited before spawn), you could accurately represent where the ship should be. Assign a coordinate system to the entire map to calculate distances. If 0 0 0 is Sol System you can easily do a time distance formula using speed variables from the "sector ship". Make it slightly longer to encourage sector travel if you prefer.
Primarily you don't need a) view screen showing sector space, just use predefined art for warp travel. It's not like view screens are so amazing now. b) combat from the bridge is unnecessary as STO has it's own unique combat system already. Just have a button to "enter tactical mode" and load in the regular combat maps.
Again, focus on the concept of mini games to satisfy our horrible exploration system, crafting, diplomacy, etc. It's a base line to accommodate these revamped systems.
Things to do while you use the bridge for navigation.
I think something along these lines could finally complete the feeling of Trek in STO.
Does the second entity have to be us? The shard of possibilities is our costume on 2 npcs. cant we have a dummy with a costume as our proxy?
Actually to get what the "OP" wants does not require an engine overhaul or a completely new and different game.
They could do something as simple as have "Sector space" show up on the "view screen" with control over the player-character avatar and player-ship avatar toggling when they sit in the captain's chair complete with "warp to new sector?" and even "start conflict with random breen?" when you reach an edge.
It isn't "warp science" kids.
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Not necessarily. In any software development company... anything is doable with 3 things... Enough Time, Money, and Resources (people).
So is it possible, sure... provided these three requirements are met. Now, is it viable? Would the work required net them anything? Would they make back their investment?
Would it make them money? If the answer is no... then it won't happen. This is not a bad thing... it makes sure that the company (and its products) continue to exist. No money, no company... No company, no game.
Star Trek Online, Now with out the Trek....
Heck, I'd love to see a more up-to-date way to choose your away team and see them actually beam down, instead of this cardboard cut-out before beaming down in front of a static picture.
If they'd revamp almost every episode/season until it get's more generalized (like say; the Dominion season) between all factions, it'll be completely mind-blowing. There's no need to implement these elements this way and all Star Trek fans would rejoice.
I can't seriously say this more then enough; learn from the Fed Tutorial missions. Redo them, but in a way it resembles the old missions. Use elements, but add to them.
I can see one problem with this; and that's where we might need some some sort of universal bridge, much like the Origin. What might help with that is having certain positions in any bridge chosen to be filled with a scripted objects to anchor actors into their spots - like the Captains chair or Con officer etc. etc.. That way the bridges can become interchangeable without loss of immersion.
They could have left the Borg out entirely.
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No, but it's significantly more complex than you think. The game engine (and I'm theorizing here, but I'm willing to bet I'm pretty close) creates a client-side 3D "space" based on data from the database servers (because ultimately, everything is just a database entry), then generates a viewport (A 2-dimensional frame) for that 3D space, and displays it on your monitor.
What you're envisioning would require generating two completely different 3D spaces, and then overlaying a viewport from one onto a texture on another.
It's certainly possible, but it's going to roughly double the texture memory and CPU requirements for the game engine, and require pretty heavy anti-aliasing to make it not look like utter #$@%.
That also means that you now require the "inside" (ground) view to accurately correspond to your position in the "outside" (space) view.
Again, not impossible, but would probably require rewriting the game engine, since it currently knows your position in either the "ground" universe or the "space" universe-- not both. When you're on Earth Space Dock, you're not in the "space" universe at all-- you only exist in the "ground" universe. They're completely separate right now, and the game has no way of knowing that anyone inside (any instance of) ESD is in orbit near Earth.
Disclaimer: Not a game developer, but big on programming, databases, and 3D CGI.
Stop acting like an authority on reality or what others want, please.
I want to manage my bank, DOffs and run missions and mini games inside my ship. Leave the navigation to the helmsman. Have social activities including combat that emphasize ship interiors. Leave navigation to the helmsman.
I've written probably 50k words on this subject with ideas on how to do combat on non standard interiors, social mini games, timers, etc.
I do not do citations on message boards. I don't care if you've seen it before but kindly don't ever try to assign or extrapolate thoughts or desires to others. It's insulting to make up what you think I want and call it a bad idea in the same breath when you just made up the thing you're critiquing.
I wasn't, I was trying to understand, and did so based on your post (which I quoted), in which you specifically stated:
That's pretty specific. That's what I addressed. If that's not what you meant, why did you say it?
Ah, so you want non-bridge stuff on your bridge (except for duty officer assignments, which you can do from your ready room already). I do think it's peculiar that your "bank" is starbase only-- I think it should be your ship, but conceptually, I think the inventory is on-ship cargo hold.
Oh-- so sorry, wasn't aware that in order to reply to your post, I had to go read every post you've ever made on the topic. :rolleyes:
But seriously, unless you're assuming that you're special enough that the Dev's should make these changes for JUST YOU, aren't you assigning and extrapolating desires to others? I'm OK with the tactical map, and I've got enough imagination that I can grasp the current space-based interface as an abstraction layer between what I see and what I want my crew to do, so you're apparently making assumptions about what I (and the rest of the playerbase) want.
Just an idea but how about a helm interface with a list of all systems in the game you select one and a standard timer starts that disables your ability to return from the bridge to sector space. say 3 minutes as a standard no matter what system you choose. so while on your bridge you can go to you ready room and do some doffing and when the timer is up and you return to sector space your ship transwarps to the selected system
That's not quite accurate. Chances are, it's very much doable, but they choose NOT to do it. If anything, it seems they might be trying their best to REMOVE player interiors. All those fancy Lockbox ship bridges? No custom interiors, just the bridge. The new Origin bridge? Just that, no new corridors/interior rooms besides the bridge.
Personally, I have a feeling they'll eventually do away with the corridors, Engineering, Sickbay etc alltogether, and limit any "Player interior" setting to the Bridge, and nothing else. Or more probably, they'll end up removing Bridges as well.
Step 2: print it out
Step 3: cut out screen part
Step 4: tape to monitor
Step 5: enjoy
Viewing the ship in 3D space means you can see what's around you in all directions. At some point or another, each and every one of you has had thier bacon saved by this fact. Probibly you saw a heavy torpeado being launched behind you and were able to shoot it down.
There comes a point where "Immersion" and "Bordom" intersect. Someone once suggested that ship damge repair and changes to ship loadout could only be done at starbases and should take time to up the imersion level. What people need to realize is that not everyone wants to be imersed the same amount. Some people don't have time to stand around and wait, thier playing time is limited.
There has to be some level of compromise, or else it's only going to be fun for everyone. If the bridge commander wannabes got everything they wanted, then people who don't want to play that way would leave.
Or the dev's would need to maintine a million diffrent ways to play the game, sucking up sever space, man hours and thier sanity.
What's my position?
That people should know what they're screaming about!
(paraphrased from "The Newsroom)
I can see your point however they did do a full interior for romulan ships including a very impressive engineering and "ten forward". The problem with standard fed interiors is a legacy one. There was an interview on the old STOKED podcast with the dev who made the original interiors, I forget his name the guy who made the STFs, remastered fed missions and made all the honour guard, omega and maco gear. he basically said it was slapped together from the maps used in the original tutorial. wasn't perfect but it was good enough. unfortunately it didn't stand the test of time too well and IMO it put a lot of players off
Also if cryptic didn't see the value of bridges then they wouldn't have produced them for top lockbox and lobi ships. I'm surprised there hasn't been more c-store ship interior packs as far as I know they have been good sellers
Summing things up heavily... I think you could have something like four universal interiors per faction. You can access your own interior type on your ship and get some extra options. To experience the others, you either find a friend with a different interior or track down ships around the game world similar to the Breen patrol.
I'd probably expect it to be handled a lot like a season adventure zone except split up across 12 ship interiors (4 per faction, 5 decks a piece). Like adventure zones, these would have events random and triggered. Unlike adventure zones, you could specify where in the game world you want to emerge, with an appropriate timer. While the timer ticks down, you survey the adventure zone, DOff, etc. There would be a rep and marks attached.
One key difference with these is that instead of being one and done like New Romulus, I'd imagine a skeleton crew of devs could continue to develop new content for interiors with a new rep added using your Command Marks periodically.
Understood and appreciated. Granted that a lot of work would need to be done for two map instances to be handled simultaneously by one player's computer, but the benefit to the game's playability would be tremendous.
In the meantime...
I wouldn't think tracking ship sector travel to be that difficult. Assign each system a set of coordinates on a grid. Determining the distance between any of those points is simple. Determining the travel time is as simple as simple as applying the ship speed to that distance. Determining any point along that line for a given time at a given speed is also simple.
This would save on the need to load a new map for each new sector/system until the player chooses to leave the ship interior. That's an immediate benefit, without a lot of effort.
Understood. However, the implementation of what you described earlier would provide the incentive to further flesh out the possibilities of what can be done within the ship's interior.
Leaving the ship interior would likely always be preferred when engaging in ship to ship combat, but... many players are asking for more non-combat content to be included in the game.
To that end, a mini-map of the sector which the player is in could be displayed as the "Viewscreen" of their bridge. So as to have the normal mini-map showing the ship interior and the viewscreen showing the live sector/system instance. Of course this would be part of the major re-work, which you guys have planned.
In the meantime, the viewscreen could just show a sector/system map with a plotted position indicated.
They could also add more realism by making it so you can go to your transporter room to start away missions. While this would be much more realistic it would also be much more time consuming so they wouldn't want to make it mandatory. Or maybe they could just add a switch in the options screen to turn realism on or off.
That's a pretty short-sighted view.
A few of us made outlines of how this could work back in the old forums (probably all labeled as "Archived User" now), one of us even going so far as making screenshot mockups.
One of the many things you could "do" while waiting for the ETA timer to count down (besides inventory/DOff/mail management) is RANDOM ENCOUNTERS. Well, maybe not so "random", as much as "encounters that have a % chance of occurring while "traveling" through a particular area of the galaxy/sector map (you're not actually traveling, since you're on your ship interior). These encounters could come in many flavors, from Yellow Alerts (like distress signals or spatial anomalies) that are skippable, to Red Alerts that pause your ETA timer (holding your "position" (coordinates) on the Galaxy/Sector Map) and require your Captain to take some sort of action, either engaging the enemy (loading system space map and going into combat or fighting boarders on your interior) or attempting evasive maneuvers (minigame) to avoid combat completely before the player can plot a new course to their final destination.
Speed would also play a role. All ships would have some sort of "cruising speed" (some may cruise faster than others), but the reason you wouldn't "always" travel at maximum warp would be that it causes damage to your warp core (and now we actually have warp cores!) if you run at faster than cruising speed for a prolonged period of time. This damage will reduce your maximum warp, and can be repaired for EC at a starbase with repair facilities. Run your warp core into the ground and the nearest starbase is days/weeks/months away at the best speed you can muster? Good thing Transwarp Jumps to Sol/Qo'noS/New Romulus are free and always available (if you haven't transwarp jumped in the past 15 minutes)
When plotting your course, you not only set your waypoints but also the speed for each leg. Need to take a shortcut through a dangerous, high-risk area? Increase your warp factor through the dangerous parts to get through there faster and lower your chance of a hostile encounter. You may strain your warp core some, but it may be worth it to save some time on your trip.
(Example scenario: You're a Fed captain that needs to get an Ambassador to a planet beyond a hostile Klingon picket line. You could either plot a course around the Klingons which could take a while, or charge through at maximum warp and hope the Klingons don't intercept you while in their controlled space.)
Maybe you are actually looking for action. Specifically, maybe you want to crack some Orion Syndicate skulls for making off with some pricey commodities. Plot a course to an area with a high pirate activity and just patrol around in there until they show up on scanners.
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You should check back to page one and two, then, as I had proposed a possible solution to this.
Why not avoid the whole "two places at once" thing completely by using the same principle as how the character display in the status/gear screen works? Using the game's data on which bridge the player's ship is using, along with the costumes of their character and BOffs, it would create a client-side only bridge model which would replace the player's ship only for them. It would have "dummies" tied to the seats, which would use the costumes of their character and active bridge crew.
There wouldn't be an issue with having the player's character in two places at once, because they would still only be in one place; their ship reskinned client-side to appear as their bridge. The reskinned dummies would then act as the bridge crew.
The reason I keep saying client-side is so that to other players, the player would still appear to be their ship, while the player in question could use an ersatz "bridge view". In order to work with the space visuals outside of the "bridge", the copied bridge model and officer costumes could also be scaled down, with an "invisibility field" around them to keep space objects from showing up inside.
Since the player's character (as ship) would be reskinned client-side into a copy of their selected bridge model, it could even use the same tech used on ships to display battle damage to display battle damage inside of the "bridge".
Unless, they have certain tags which they can place in the interiors which would be associated with different objectives/placing of NPC's. I for one would love to see some holodeck malfunctions etc like we saw in TNG.
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Well, that's why my solution is:
- Don't set any dynamic content on bridges.
- Give each interior type its own content. And it's not "pay for content" if players have the choice to track down an NPC ship with that interior to play that content. It's simply paying for the convenience of accessing that content wherever you are instead of flying to more remote sectors to play that content aboard NPC ships with "disabled bridge crews" or cadet-manned ships.
10 km = x seconds.
Leave ship interior after 5 seconds, you spawn 50 km down the route.
If you don't have numbers on distances I am pretty sure people would be honored to fly around the game manually and chart it for the developers.
A bridge update does sound like a lot of work if to give all ships all sections, impossible in fact.
So make it only usable with c-store or lockbox interiors, or, limit the features to bridges only. All ships should have a bridge and a viewscreen from what I know.
I don't think that's a far stretch either, we already have bridges with more features than others.
View screen live 3D feed would be off way I see it.
If you had that you'd ask to interact with what's on the screen such as combat.
The user having a generic image or animation it's implied and understood you are in another instance.
I am more I think of all the cool things you could do with the viewscreen such as special menus, text for lore, tutorial or storyline.
Bring a planet up on screen and read about it.
Even a pixelated gif of moving stars and an engine sound effect will go a long way
And of course talking to people in PM you should have the option to "put them on screen" as is already done generic during mission briefings already.
One great functional use I could see for it is if you were allowed to doff from your bridge without spawning. Then you could skip all loading screens.
And even if you had to spawn out of ship interiors to doff in that sector you'd still be saving the hazzle and have a more fluid travel there.