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Beam hardpoints not working correctly on ships not using phaser 'strips'.
marblesentinel
Member Posts: 21 Arc User
Adding to the problem of omni-beam arrays not firing from any on model hard points for Starfleet ships, testing various weapons on starships like TOS and TMP vessels with dual beam banks or other centralized hard points show they don't fire correctly beyond targets directly in front. The forward bank on ships like the Miranda, Refit Constitution, and Kelvin Constitution fires correctly. But if you fire broadside the port and starboard banks do nothing. Instead the forward bank fires in a painfully clipping manner.
And don't get me started on dual beam banks, with the Kelvin Connie firing from points in space beside the saucer section. The Kelvin Connie also has single cannons firing from a point in space in front of the saucer. That ship needs a visual overhaul just like the Ranger does.
On ships like the Excelsior this all works properly, with even the dual beam bank firing forward from the two side banks. The TOS Connie fires both beams close together so that it looks sort of like the twin beam array as well. But these are the exceptions not the rule. Please fix this. I am getting tired of noticing all these long-standing issues. While you're at it, fix the dual beam bank problem of only being able to fire from dorsal or ventral only, not both as the situation calls for.
(flame/troll comment removed) - darkbladejk
And don't get me started on dual beam banks, with the Kelvin Connie firing from points in space beside the saucer section. The Kelvin Connie also has single cannons firing from a point in space in front of the saucer. That ship needs a visual overhaul just like the Ranger does.
On ships like the Excelsior this all works properly, with even the dual beam bank firing forward from the two side banks. The TOS Connie fires both beams close together so that it looks sort of like the twin beam array as well. But these are the exceptions not the rule. Please fix this. I am getting tired of noticing all these long-standing issues. While you're at it, fix the dual beam bank problem of only being able to fire from dorsal or ventral only, not both as the situation calls for.
(flame/troll comment removed) - darkbladejk
Post edited by darkbladejk on
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This game is ten years old. People have been complaining about graphical issues like this for as long. And after being ignored for so long entitled civility is no longer warranted. They can start earning civility back by first fixing this game's many issues. Graphical issues like these are the least they can do.
Just trying to give advise. If you rant and can't post a thread without civility, two things could happen. !. Your thread gets shut down or 2. Depending on the severity of your rant, get banned from the forum, then what you going to do when you contact support and they say to post on the forum reply with "I can't I got banned".
At the end of the day be civil to Cryptic and to the player base on the forum and you get civility in return.
Sure there are a lot of things wrong, years and years old. Will they get fixed, answer to that is. I just don't know.
The bottom line is act in a civil manner and you get treated in a civil manner back.
Calling the devs lazy at a time when they are all working from home no access to resources that they would normal have access to on a daily basis in my book is a low blow.
With that in mind as was said above, the game is over 10 years old at this point. Fixing bugs isn't just flipping switches either like some people seem to think it is. A single one or zero out of place in the code can bring the entire thing crashing down. I wish it was that simple but it's not. Doing work with modeling can be even more of a pain the aft shuttle bay. You have to be very precise with those models as well to get them to line up right. Getting a hardpoint to line up properly with where you want it can be a nightmare depending on how complex a project you're working on is. I say this as someone who creates mods for older games and has created some custom items from scratch in some newer ones. That's part of why I was picked up to help them hunt down bugs awhile back. I wish it was as simple as flipping switches but it's just not. They're aware of some of the graphical issues which is part of why they've been redoing as much as they can lately. It was also part of why the omni beams were originally restricted is because of hardpoint issues making it appear it was firing through the ship.
Believe me those guys don't like it anymore than you do, but it takes time to fix stuff properly.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
I'm very well aware of how developers for MMOs tend to paint themselves into a corner with coding choices early on. Cryptic's spaghetti code in City of Heroes is still to this day frustrating those trying to clean it up for emulation servers. But that unfortunately is not an inherent problem with coding, but the result of choices made at the start of the project. Other MMOs have put in the effort to fix this in the past like with ESO's complete rework of their executable, so it isn't impossible to fix these problems.
As for modeling and hardpoints I volunteer regularly to work on model detailing for Star Trek mods and fan games. Hardpoints are not inherently difficult, just tedious and sometimes time consuming to make sure you've got all the reference tags correct for all the systems that need it. That's not to say there are not some problems, but they always result from the system plugging the models and hardpoints into the game proper having deliberate limitations built in, like with Stellaris and it's bizarre lack of hardpoint arc and tagging functionality. Heck, the original Homeworld was better than most games made today in this regard and it's what, two decades old at this point?
But in truth, it's more than likely not about that. It's about the Cryptic engine. An engine built to make MMOs quickly and cheaply. Hard points for Star Trek ships are something unique enough that this one size fits all style engine can't likely accommodate it. Perhaps it's time to consider sunsetting this version of the game and developing a new one to meet today's standards.
I'll give Cryptic the benefit of the doubt on the engine itself since modular engine design appears to be only now entering the mainstream(Unreal V comes to mind.), as for the graphical problems themselves? Look I get it, I work on the technical side of starship modeling for mods and fan games. Hardpoints can be tedious and time consuming. Heck Stellaris locks out a lot of the modification work necessary for the wide arcs Starfleet ships have.
But you see, the developers at Cryptic are professionals. Paid to work specifically on this game. A game that is supposed to focus in part on starship combat. It is unreasonable to expect your paying customers to accept long running major problems with this game. And yes if you've played Starfleet Command you know how visual representation of the ships and their weapons is very important to the fans of this IP. Given the pedigree of the starship combat games for this franchise, it is more than reasonable to expect this game to at least measure up to a nineteen year old game.
Edit: spelling/grammar
Fine then. You say Cryptic cares? Then let them prove it. They can start by communicating with us. Give us information on these issues like that you're aware of them and if you plan to fix them at any time in the future. Anything other than the mix of total silence and fluff pieces about the latest gamble box or obscenely overpriced 'legendary' pack. Give us some reason to believe you are going to fix these problems.
Chilllllll The situation has been explained to you by a person who is representing Cryptic. Dark doesn't have to prove anything. Its already a known fact that the devs do read the forum bug reports. If they started responding to bug reports that's taking them away from fixing the bugs to respond to people then said people will start moaning that the devs are spending too much time responding to bug reports rather than fix bugs, you can't have it both ways. But here's a really really good piece of advice don't start flame throwing at a person who has the power to remove you for good from the forum.
Was that with a DSC ship as they all seem to launch torps from the rear regardless what arc the target is even with single shots so I'd assume that's an intentional choice rather then a bug.
However after the release of the new bird of prey bridge I was able to come up with a semi workaround for the problem which I found this mostly is limited to Nvidia cards and computers that only have a chipset for graphics. So what you do is turn down your settings for video card and CPU down to lowest settings on the slider. Then starting with the video card setting click on the right arrow to increase it one increment at a time until you see the intended graphics you want. Then do the same with the CPU settings. In my case it was like 2 times video card and 3 times CPU before it cleared up.
So after doing all this that new bridge no longer had any graphics problems and all of the new generation VFX that had been broken/can't be seen past the hard points could then be seen. For the ones I've been using were the Covert Phaser, Ba'ul Antiproton, and Zhat Vash Disruptor cannon animation/VFX now can be seen but before it was limited to the hard points. So I am pretty sure these are related due to the fact that when dealing with the Zhat Vash beams many players when I use those are asking me what they are because they also own the same beam weapons but because of this graphics issue they actually will appear different depending on the users settings and a person using something other than Nvidia seeing the same weapons displayed when a person is using them at their graphics card maximum affects on the slider. Which in actuality with this problem the user of a Nvidia card those high settings are actually not its actual maximum settings and the reason why it doesn't clear up until you manually and tediously adjust those settings between the card and CPU settings.
This might be a bit confusing but basically all the info on how I was able to be proactive with this irritating problem.