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STO playing on the new Advanced Android Tablets
pryor
Member Posts: 567 Arc User
This game needs to be ported to the Large Android Tablets, I just bought my son the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2, 1.9Ghz 8core processor, 3 GIGS RAM, 200 GIGS Storage, as the Tablet comes with only 32GB internal, it's expandable with micro SD card, a 128 GB High Speed is more than enough and cheap, this puts the PC I play STO with to shame, i easily paired a blue tooth xBox 360 controler to it, I can also pair Bluetooth keyboard and mouse too, this thing can play the new Call of Duty games, so im sure it can play STO, this will keep this game alive.
Discord: Pryor#2941
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While Android is technically a heavily modified Linux distro, there are several technical differences between the two, so you can't even just install Wine to run it there, and while yes, you can connect keyboards and mice to tables, I am willing to bet that 99% won't do it for gaming... and that's just for starters...
The Samsung tablets processors does not use the same architectures as PC's or even Macs (and we all knew how the latter went).
I could actually go on, but TBH I don't want to go too technical...
Basically: Porting and maintaining a android version of this simply isn't economically viable.
Additionally, Android tablets uses RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) CPUs as opposed to the CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) CPUs that are used in PCs, laptops and consoles. That basically means RISC CPUs lack certain types of hard coded instruction sets in the CPU itself to perform some complex calculations. That means the calculations must be done using software / additional coding. That would cause a performance hit in the game. Also, because the CPUs operate differently you cannot simply recompile the program with minor tweaks. Especially since Android does not support DirectX; it uses OpenGL for graphics.
STO is a pretty demanding on the CPU. Ever wonder why you may notice a dip in performance when playing Crystalline Catastrophe? All those ships require some CPU resources. The more ships there are the lower the performance. Despite how much RISC CPUs used in tablets have advanced over the years, the raw performance is still less than that of a 2nd generation Intel Core i3 CPU from 2011.
As for your comment about "PC's will become primarilly developers tools"... Yeah, let's just say you do not know what you talking about and leave it at that.
Playing STO on a tablet...? There was some hope for that a couple of years ago, but for Windows Tablets, not Android Tablets. Intel was still manufacturing the Atom series low end CPUs. But they lost hundreds of million of dollars if not a billion every year because they were selling them below cost to capture market share in the tablet and low end laptop market. They were slowly penetrating the market, but it was too slow and investors wanted Intel to simply cut it's losses so that Intel could have better profits since there would be no need to absorb the year over year loss. No more new Intel Atom CPUs meant the Windows Tablet market died since Windows 8.1 / Windows 10 cannot run on RISC CPUs that Andriod Tablets use.
200GB of storage? So I guess that means you'll be able to fit 3-4 games max before the OS starts complaining. Get real.
To get an idea of how off the table Tablet support seems to be, clicking buttons on the UI via a touch interface is currently a very tricky process. First you need to tap on the button you want to press in order to get the game to register focus on it, then you need to tap and hold for a half second before letting go - to give the game a chance to register that you're trying to click on it. Double-clicking and dragging things via tablet touch screens seem to be completely broken.
The game is playable on Windows 10 tablets with a bluetooth or wired mouse and keyboard, though performance is pretty awful. Wouldn't recommend it beyond having to conduct emergency space business in a serious pinch.
Sure, whatever you say.
Well, if you are considering a budget laptop to play the game better, then you should consider the following Acer laptop with an i3-7100u and Intel HD 620 with a 1080p screen for $350. However, I do recommend you install an additional 4GB of DDR4 RAM to bring up the total amount of RAM to 8GB which will allow Windows to run a little better. More importantly, having two sticks of RAM means the RAM operates at full speed (dual channel) rather than half speed (single channel). That is a great benefit when using integrated graphic cores because that can improve game performance by roughly 10% to 20%, but that varies depending on the specific game.
https://www.amazon.com/Acer-E5-575-33BM-15-6-Inch-Notebook-Generation/dp/B01K1IO3QW/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1514338632&sr=8-3&keywords=i3-7100u
I play my free 2 play STO account on a somewhat dated Dell Latitude 3450 laptop with a 4th generation Intel i5-4200u and the Intel HD 4400. It has a Radeon HD 8850m (almost equal to a nVidia 940mx), but for the most part I decided to play STO with the Intel HD 4400. It can basically handle STO at 1080p resolution with a mix of low and medium settings; Lighting 2.0 is off. Usually performance is 30 FPS or higher, but in certain cases it can drop to mid 20's (the Voth Battlezone during combat) and sometimes below 20 FPS in Crystalline Catastrophe Advanced (when there are a lot of ships). The 7th generation i3-7100u is at least equal to the i5-4200u in terms of processing performance, but the Intel HD 620 is more powerful than the Intel HD 4400. Not really enough to turn on Lighting 2.0, but playing the game with the same graphic settings will definitely provide better performance. However, lowering the resolution to 1600x900 may be enough to get decent performance most of the time with Lighting 2.0 activated.
The installed base of Android tablets with good 3D graphics, sd card slots filled with 32+ GB RAM, and game controllers is a tiny sliver of nothing compared to the number of PC, Xbox 1, and PS4 units. Of those few tablets, how many are owned by people who would not only play STO but also spend a lot of money doing so? Answer: nowhere near enough.
A Nintendo Switch port would make more sense, since 100% of owners want to play games even if not STO.
No, I'm actually not. I'm forced to play on my laptop cause my desktop died and my son is building me a new one, but he has to wait till he gets his income tax refund to be able to afford to. My husband and I are living on a fixed income, or I would have given him the funds, but we can barely afford bills and groceries on what we're getting.
So I'm being patient and only running the race and some DOFFs/RnD schooling while I wait.
But thank you for the advice, it is appreciated
Stop demanding that they do things to fit What You Want. The entitlement in your attitude is disgusting >_<
"I was here before you, I will be here after you are gone. I am here, regardless of your acknowledgement or acceptance..." - The Truth
But thank you for explaining it, it makes sense now. As I've explained before, about all I know about computers is how to turn them on. I rely on my son and son in law for tech stuff lol.
If you want to upgrade to Gold, wait for the summer Lifetime sale. You can get it for $199. Right now, since the winter Lifetime sale just went off, it's back to $299.
But yeah, Silver accounts are the Free2Play, while the Gold is the Lifer account. Believe me, the Lifer is well-worth it. You get many perks and goodies for that. If you don't think you can wait till summer to get a discount, then buy it full price.
Either way, here's the link: http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/3026993