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Space combat should evolve
obelusdoom
Member Posts: 8 Arc User
Wasn't 100% sure this was the right forum but I think this falls under game mechanices...anyway here goes.
Cryptic has added lots of content and side systems like duty officers which is great but the core system of space combat has stayed basically the same. I submit that this is a problem because PVE space combat is pretty repetitive and predictable in its current state and that can easily lead to player burnout.
So here are a few suggestions on how to add variability to space combat.
Enemy AI Improvement Suggestions:
1. Enemy ships should work in unison to try and maneuver to focus fire on one shield quadrant. Bridge officers should warn you when the enemy is attempting this.
2. Enemy ships that can battle cloak should use it to better effect i.e. focusing their attacks on weak shield quadrants or staying behind the player to attack from the rear then recloaking to repeat when they come under fire.
3. Enemy ships, depending on faction, should retreat when they have obviously lost. I think this would help the game feel more canon (at least from a Fed perspective). Players would still get credit for the victory of course.
4. Enemy ships should surprise players by attacking out of cloak with alpha strikes when possible. Bridge officers should warn when an enemy ship is decloaking to fire.
5. Enemy ships should try to call in reinforcements. Bridge officers should report this and players could jam their transmission to prevent this (if they have the right skills).
6. There should be a chance that enemy ships of certain factions will try to ram players when they are losing.
7. Enemy ships should be better at rotating their own shields and maneuvering to keep low shields away from players weapon arcs.
8. Enemy ships should use their abilities more wisely (example: subnucleonic Beam) to negate player abilities. Bridge officers should warn when this has happened.
9. Enemy ships should be try to knock out subsystems more frequently.
10. Enemy ships should be more selective in the use of torpedoes to improve the chances of hull hits.
11. Enemy ships should, depending on faction, offer to surrender when defeat is inevitable and retreat in not possible. Again, this would help the game feel closer to Star Trek Canon for Fed players.
12. Enemy ships should taunt players when they are winning.
13. Crews on heavily damaged enemy ships will abandon ship. This would be the equivalent of an alternate death animation.
14. Enemy ships who are dramatically outgunned will often retreat before combat begins or call in reinforcements.
But beyond AI improvements I think it's high time the game gave players some more options in space combat.
Suggestions:
1. Add a damage control system to the game. Instead of all damage being simply hull damage maybe split a part of the damage among various ship systems - weapons, sensors, engines, life support, navigation, etc. Damage to systems does not knock them out unless damage to that system reaches 100%. Prior to that it only diminishes that systems effectiveness. Example: Your weapon systems are at 50% so your rate of fire is cut in half.
2. Add a system of damage control teams which players can tell to prioritize specific system repair. Depending on their vessel type players will have a set number of damage control teams. An escort may have 2 teams. A cruiser may have as many as 6 as a benefit to their larger crew. The more damage control teams you assign to a subsystem the faster it gets repaired.
To add to this STO should consider implementing a system common to all other MMO's...player's resurrecting other players. If you want to help build a community you need to give players a reason to group up. I think this will help do that.
More suggestions:
1. Players should be disabled and not destroyed when they are defeated in combat.
2. Players that are defeated should have the option to wait to be repaired by a friendly player or abandon ship. If they abandon ship the idea is that their damaged vessel is later recovered and returned to a base for repair. Repairs should cost credits.
Giving players the ability to resuscitate their fellow players will give the designers more flexibility when designing maps as it will allow them to give greater benefits to grouping and doing things as a fleet. Basically by limiting respawn points and lengthening their distance from the battle it will make resuscitating fellow players critical.
Finally Cryptic should not stand pat with the aesthetics and animations currently present in space combat...i.e. how a ship blows up should vary more than it does.
Some ships don't have to blow up at all but could just lose a nacelle and drift lifeless. Please get creative here Cryptic. I love the new facial animations you've added and the Earth Space Dock is breathtaking. Now please add more animations to space combat. It's what we are doing most of the time.
Thanks
Cryptic has added lots of content and side systems like duty officers which is great but the core system of space combat has stayed basically the same. I submit that this is a problem because PVE space combat is pretty repetitive and predictable in its current state and that can easily lead to player burnout.
So here are a few suggestions on how to add variability to space combat.
Enemy AI Improvement Suggestions:
1. Enemy ships should work in unison to try and maneuver to focus fire on one shield quadrant. Bridge officers should warn you when the enemy is attempting this.
2. Enemy ships that can battle cloak should use it to better effect i.e. focusing their attacks on weak shield quadrants or staying behind the player to attack from the rear then recloaking to repeat when they come under fire.
3. Enemy ships, depending on faction, should retreat when they have obviously lost. I think this would help the game feel more canon (at least from a Fed perspective). Players would still get credit for the victory of course.
4. Enemy ships should surprise players by attacking out of cloak with alpha strikes when possible. Bridge officers should warn when an enemy ship is decloaking to fire.
5. Enemy ships should try to call in reinforcements. Bridge officers should report this and players could jam their transmission to prevent this (if they have the right skills).
6. There should be a chance that enemy ships of certain factions will try to ram players when they are losing.
7. Enemy ships should be better at rotating their own shields and maneuvering to keep low shields away from players weapon arcs.
8. Enemy ships should use their abilities more wisely (example: subnucleonic Beam) to negate player abilities. Bridge officers should warn when this has happened.
9. Enemy ships should be try to knock out subsystems more frequently.
10. Enemy ships should be more selective in the use of torpedoes to improve the chances of hull hits.
11. Enemy ships should, depending on faction, offer to surrender when defeat is inevitable and retreat in not possible. Again, this would help the game feel closer to Star Trek Canon for Fed players.
12. Enemy ships should taunt players when they are winning.
13. Crews on heavily damaged enemy ships will abandon ship. This would be the equivalent of an alternate death animation.
14. Enemy ships who are dramatically outgunned will often retreat before combat begins or call in reinforcements.
But beyond AI improvements I think it's high time the game gave players some more options in space combat.
Suggestions:
1. Add a damage control system to the game. Instead of all damage being simply hull damage maybe split a part of the damage among various ship systems - weapons, sensors, engines, life support, navigation, etc. Damage to systems does not knock them out unless damage to that system reaches 100%. Prior to that it only diminishes that systems effectiveness. Example: Your weapon systems are at 50% so your rate of fire is cut in half.
2. Add a system of damage control teams which players can tell to prioritize specific system repair. Depending on their vessel type players will have a set number of damage control teams. An escort may have 2 teams. A cruiser may have as many as 6 as a benefit to their larger crew. The more damage control teams you assign to a subsystem the faster it gets repaired.
To add to this STO should consider implementing a system common to all other MMO's...player's resurrecting other players. If you want to help build a community you need to give players a reason to group up. I think this will help do that.
More suggestions:
1. Players should be disabled and not destroyed when they are defeated in combat.
2. Players that are defeated should have the option to wait to be repaired by a friendly player or abandon ship. If they abandon ship the idea is that their damaged vessel is later recovered and returned to a base for repair. Repairs should cost credits.
Giving players the ability to resuscitate their fellow players will give the designers more flexibility when designing maps as it will allow them to give greater benefits to grouping and doing things as a fleet. Basically by limiting respawn points and lengthening their distance from the battle it will make resuscitating fellow players critical.
Finally Cryptic should not stand pat with the aesthetics and animations currently present in space combat...i.e. how a ship blows up should vary more than it does.
Some ships don't have to blow up at all but could just lose a nacelle and drift lifeless. Please get creative here Cryptic. I love the new facial animations you've added and the Earth Space Dock is breathtaking. Now please add more animations to space combat. It's what we are doing most of the time.
Thanks
Post edited by obelusdoom on
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I also have one of my own to add - and this is because I personally hate the Space Combat aspect of the game:
There needs to be an option to skip these sections entirely - make a decision on the bridge and have the scene play out as a cinematic or something. If this was an option I would happily pay for the game (as I currently do with WoW, Rift and Star Wars tOR) - Star Wars has a space combat gameplay section too (and I hate that as well) but the SW game allows you to choose whether or not you play those parts, and because I can ignore them, I get to enjoy the rest of the game (yet for those people who love the space combat gameplay they can choose to play as much or as little of that aspect as they like). I think you are seriously limiting your income when you have two such vastly different game-play styles in one game, but not having the option to access and enjoy the rest of the game content unless you slog through parts that you either a) hate or b) are so rubbish at that you cant get past that stage anyway, thereby rendering the rest of the game inaccessible!
I am sure I am not the only one who loves the humanoid-based sections of the game, whether on the ship or on a planet/away team etc, but has absolutely no interest in the space combat aspect. And as I said, if you were to incorporate this as an optional feature, I would gladly become a regular subscriber so that I can enjoy the rest of the gameplay and storyline. But until this does become a reality, and I really hope it does as I love what I have seen of the game so far, I wont be playing as I really hate the space combat aspect that much!!
Just my two cents! :-)
That's good to hear.
I've been leveling a new character and I've found the space battles hard to stay awake through. It's just the same thing over and over. Wish it could be a bit more varied in AI actions, combat animations, etc.
The issue is many non-borg STF's have large numbers of enemies of each type and every enemy of a specific type has a copy of the ability, so they spam it on you. The new Undine STF is a great example, ever Nicor that comes in can and will drop a rift, result given high kills rate is back to back or even multiple rifts.
@obelusdoom: A lot of what your suggesting requires a level of AI coding far beyond what virtually any game posses so i wouldn't hold my breath. That said most of the issues come down to NPC's not making use of tac team to maxamise shield efficiency and never using any resistance or heal skills to reduce and/or heal incoming damage. Tac team every 15 seconds and EPTS1 every 30 is considered pretty much the gold standard for entry level damage survival endgame PVE unless your very experienced. PVE enemies typically never achieve this.
I'm sure it would take some work but I think it would be worth it.
1. Happens already in PvP, teamwork is OP.
2. Players use their cloaks quite well for the most part. Vapers will focus fire on a single facing (usually your aft) and kill you in one pass.
3. Most players use consoles and items like deuterium surplus just to be able to retreat from a fight. And if someone runs, I count it as a victory.
4. This is the KDF's bread and butter. Seriously, why aren't you PvPing?
5. In a zone like Ker'rat, the KDF is usually outnumbered and certain fleets will call in reinforcements. It seems like you want more of a challenge, why jam the enemy in the first place?
6. Lol, again, why don't you PvP? Ramming speed kills are epic, and frequent.
7. Basic PvP piloting, tactical team and spacebar mashing. Again, play against a player and you'll get all this and more.
8. Most of my kills with my main come from well timed subnucs, and most of my kills on my new Romulan come from well timed alphas. Again, what you want exists in PvP.
9. Well, this I could get behind as it's a general game mechanic. But really, you don't want that. If there's a challenging opponent and you have a subsystem offline, you're pretty likely to die rapidly.
10. Timing is everything in PvP and a good player will know when to hit you with a torp spread.
11. A disable mechanic would be interesting, but dying/respawn mechanics are easier.
12. Uh, jump into Ker'rat and listen to the taunting in zone chat. You don't even need to fight anyone, just the chat alone can be pretty entertaining.
13. Meh, lots of work for no money, never going to happen.
14. Again, most players will pick and choose when to fight or flee.
So what I gather is that you want to face a person without facing another person. Bring your ship to Ker'rat, it's a good place to learn some basics and die frequently, then go into the queues. Have crazy 10 minute fights with evenly matched opponents, fly into the Fed/KDF ball without dying, enjoy the thrill of beating a thinking person.
Edit: There was a time when they gave spheres in Borg STFs emergency power to engines and that was too OP, so yeah, none of your suggested changes to NPCs would go over well...
Sorry but I doubt I will be returning to pvp in STO again.
Personally I want smarter NPCs and not just health barns, but sadly a majority of the game's population has been trained to expect easy roflstomps.
Well making an NPC smarter isn't always making them tougher. For instance NPCs that retreat or surrender are smarter but not harder.
Also NPCs are so easy to kill right now when leveling that making them smarter wouldn't seriously threaten players. At max level this might be different and then some adjustment to NPC power might be required.
Yes, I saw that post. And many people chimed in and offered to advise you. If you post a build there, or I don't know, ask a question, they'd be able to advise you.
Like I said, start in a place like Ker'rat, or PvP bootcamp, or ask someone for help. Most are willing to advise. I say start with Ker'rat because that environment has all different types of people of varying skill. And regardless, you can bash the Borg, come away with good loot and feel like you still accomplished something.
But in all honesty, I was killing Fed players in Ker'rat with a fresh level 50, it's not hard on KDF side if you're selective. The first task for KDF is to learn to kill, the first task of a Fed is to learn to survive.
Ultimately, what you want exists in PvP and will never be implemented for PvE. PvP is the only thing that keeps me playing as it's the only challenging thing in the game.
And thanks for the PvP advice but I've been through this before with STO. It's just not worth the time and effort to be competitive any more. I get my pvp fix through Mechwarrior Online and Company of Heroes 2 now.
Like i said the real issue with why NPC's are so easy is that they can't take a hit. Try leveling a Cruiser or Science ship without using Tac team or any form of EPTX, and only drop/reward consoles with no re-running missions for loot. I leveled my Sci and Eng captains like that before i found out about that combo, and let me tell you, battleships and heavy cruiser class NPC's where seriously nasty pieces of work.
The combination of the extra resistance to damage from EPTS, the heal from EPTS, and the full shield usage from Tac team lets you last 5 times as long, and in that time you'll get significantly more natural regen cycles which will extend it even further. In practice you can probably take 10 times as much damage with that combo as without it. Throw in exchange bought armor consoles for hull resistances and you it goes even further.
In particular the suggestion in loving enemies to be disabled or retreat (cloak and run, return to fluidic space ect ect depending on the enemy ) as win conditions (exploding only on occasion as an exception) and the idea of player ships beeing disabled rather then blown up as loose conditions I promoted arround here for years already.
Okay but would you like to see the changes I suggested?
I'd say definitely yes.
But with more intelligent and therefore smarter enemys they should scale down the spawn. Its just ridiculous to see my 200 years old Kumari pwn away a dozen D'Deridex in 6 seconds.
Definitely agree with that.
There's some nice idea's in there and they'd absolutely make the AI a bit tougher. That said, alone they aren't going to cut the mustard. Without going into a massive math post my Chimera heavy escort has a 30 second effective health, (30 seconds means it includes all heals that could cycle in that time period), of 150-180K, My Fed cruiser, depending on weather you include Miracle worker and a few other things has between 350K and 500K 30 second health, and in practice is so hard to punch out in that time period that it will last longer than 30 seconds. Throw in fleet phaser heal procs and the dyson Sci consoles and i'd say a value of over 1000K effective health to kill over a 1 to 1.5 minute period is reasonable. NPC's can't even come within long range sensor range of those kinds of numbers outside of elite STF bosses and mini bosses, (i'll try to grab exact figures next time i'm in game).
Like i said, some nice idea's though.