[...]
Also we're getting Off Topic this Ship is nice, Now show me the Bridge, hopefully it's Medieval Themed with the Captain Chair being a Throne.
They don't really do ship specific bridges anymore. Even for the hyper-expensive gamble ships they either let you use the existing factional ones or force you to use that really plain one that came out years ago (for the APU, maybe?), so don't expect to see any for a 'freebie'.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
By "misplaced", I meant that the central authority on Earth had kind of lost track of them (I think there was supposed to have been an interstellar war or something); when a survey ship found them again, some time after the events of The White Dragon, the crew was surprised because they didn't think it was possible for people to survive that long with Threadfall.
I suppose that's true. I kinda got the sense that the colony was kinda on its own from the get go. And I think Admiral Paul Benden was a war veteran himself when the Pern colony was established.
Yes, the colonists were almost all war veterans who wanted to get so far out that everyone would leave them alone (and the fact that many of them were telempaths whose gifts were rubbed raw by long years of combat and could not handle the high population density of the core worlds any more was one of the main drivers of that need for relative solitude). The colony ships were all stripped-down surplus warships that were decommissioned in the aftermath of the war, a trio consisting of a dreadnaught or command cruiser (I think it was named "Yokohama") and one large and one smaller troopship.
Not a fan. Also why I'm not a fan of animated stuff in Trek in general. It's so silly.
What's next, a kit module that beams in Pikachu's as security escorts?
Don't Dis the 'Chu
^
Also we're getting Off Topic this Ship is nice, Now show me the Bridge, hopefully it's Medieval Themed with the Captain Chair being a Throne.
I am fairly sure that the bridge will instead look like an old concrete parking garage with junk consoles dumped in it, the same bridge almost every other ship that has come out in the last few years has been inflicted with.
I am fairly sure that the bridge will instead look like an old concrete parking garage with junk consoles dumped in it, the same bridge almost every other ship that has come out in the last few years has been inflicted with.
I am fairly sure that the bridge will instead look like an old concrete parking garage with junk consoles dumped in it, the same bridge almost every other ship that has come out in the last few years has been inflicted with.
Like the Ugly bridge of the Temer class?
Yes, the exact same one. The devs have stopped bothering to link the usual list of standard bridges the old ships had in for the most part, and that vomit-worthy abomination is the only bridge available for almost all of the new ships coming out.
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,089Community Moderator
Yes, the colonists were almost all war veterans who wanted to get so far out that everyone would leave them alone (and the fact that many of them were telempaths whose gifts were rubbed raw by long years of combat and could not handle the high population density of the core worlds any more was one of the main drivers of that need for relative solitude). The colony ships were all stripped-down surplus warships that were decommissioned in the aftermath of the war, a trio consisting of a dreadnaught or command cruiser (I think it was named "Yokohama") and one large and one smaller troopship.
No mention of them being converted warships or anything, but the ships were the Yokohama, Buenos Aires, and Bahrain.
By "misplaced", I meant that the central authority on Earth had kind of lost track of them (I think there was supposed to have been an interstellar war or something);
That wasn't what happened. I read the entire Pern series years ago and did an audiobook run through last year because the new 3rd Pass novels had not been written during my first time and I wanted to know what happened. I still want to know because one of the leads is known to have died shortly after the events but we'll never how or why since the author died. On the other hand, hurray for the Bluerider Weyrleader Girl!
I am going off on a tangent. The important thing is that the story still fresh in my head.
What happened was that a ship did come for first colonists after their distress signal was received. There was a small holdout on the Southern Continent. They did not know that the others had survived by moving North. Surface-level planetary scans from orbit did not reveal the Northerns because they had built Fort Hold inside of a mountain. The ship crew believed that only the small group in the South had managed to avoid being consumed by Thread. The guys still in the South were evacuated back to main starfaring civilization and the system was interdicted with buoys warning ships not to enter.
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[...]
Also we're getting Off Topic this Ship is nice, Now show me the Bridge, hopefully it's Medieval Themed with the Captain Chair being a Throne.
They don't really do ship specific bridges anymore. Even for the hyper-expensive gamble ships they either let you use the existing factional ones or force you to use that really plain one that came out years ago (for the APU, maybe?), so don't expect to see any for a 'freebie'.
Then they should do a multi-use bridge! This design could be slightly tweaked (different colors, change the portraits on the walls) for the Fek'Ihri ships, which also need decent bridges! There are currently four of then, well, five including the original Kar'Fi. It would be quite cool to have a replica of Fek'Ihr's throne as a captain's chair, too!
So they could make bridges for six ships! There is already a synergy between this new ship and the Fek'Ihri ships anyway. The consoles will harmonize quite nicely. Quite an odd thing to say about Fek'Ihri, huh?
Yes, it's a lot of work. I would not expect a freebie. But if they make this set of 'good and evil' bridges, they can make them an event reward! It seems to be hard to find new original ideas for event rewards anyway. We've had some strange stuff. I think a cool set of fantasy-themed bridges would be a great reward for the Winter event this year. They might even make a third variant with very 'Holiday' coloring themes (and maybe pictures of Kramp'Ihri on the walls?)
A new generic bridge would go a long way to improving the state we have now (which is almost nothing) but that as ever would need to be something new missions could take advantage of. Personally I think the way to go is make a Khitomer Alliance bridge that becomes the standard install for anything that's not KDF/ROM/FED (the current system suggests that bridges are modular and a Khitomer Alliance bridge would be a very sensible choice for multi-faction). Something tailored to Hysperian or Fek'Ihri for examples would be *incredibly* niche even as a variation on a theme and broadly not solve the general issue for the rest of STO history.
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The Hysperians' starships also reflected the Hysperians' medieval motif, as it was quite common to see a minstrel playing a lute, knights in armor brandishing swords, and even stables containing live horses aboard a Monaveen-type cruiser.
plus we've seen their bridge
or at least some of their ship's interior
giving the Hysperian Intel Battlecruiser the ugly generic Temer class bridge would seem very half-assed or lazy.
Dedicating the time to build a Hysperian environment necessitates using them in main plot. Otherwise you're sacrificing a mission's worth of dev time from the environment artists to the direct cost of new mission content (cue complaints of no or lacking playable content in the next season release). Seeing the bridge in lower decks does nothing to ease that effort either.
And that effort could be put into a bridge that's far more widely applicable, even to Hysperian starships under the command of Alliance officers. Ex. a Khitomer Alliance bridge. If you're going to bother to build something here, build something that solves a widely distributed problem. Otherwise you just punt the exact same situation developing for the next ship that needs a bridge better than the severely dated (and never compelling) Temer bridge, gaining nothing from the dev time in the grand scheme and forcing the same conversation to be had again.
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Did building this ship for the Summer event necessitate using it for main plot? Where are the missions it appears in?
The Fek'Ihri have been infiltrating space-fantasy into the game for years now. And this is a whole new source. May as well lean in! Let's see another Hysperian ship next year. It doesn't have to be cannon, but they have the materials now and it can be very similar. Make it a carrier so it can have weird fantasy pets like Fek'Ihri carriers (and benefit from the Fek'Ihri consoles). Griffins or Wyverns, I'd say. They could have flame breath like Lost Souls do.
And why restrict this to ships? They could have ruffly 'medieval' bathing suits for Risa. ("Real" medieval bathing suits didn't exist, they were too paranoid about exposing bodies. But early 20th century bathing suits with some medieval-looking heraldry would be just fine... )
Did building this ship for the Summer event necessitate using it for main plot? Where are the missions it appears in?
Welcome to the world of false equivalency! Let's tear this down....
Mission art is a much bigger investment relative to the main pipeline (1 bridge = season's worth of map content, rather than a small fraction per ship volume), especially with how intensively they polish it these days. And the trade offs come at a huge cost relative to alternatives, namely missions and other forms of playable content that have a huge disparity in real player engagement. Get a silly one off ship? It comes at the cost of a single alternative ship design and that only applies for the release slot in question as those are baked into the game's economic and player population cycles (the summer ship isn't pulling c-store content out of existence). If Cryptic didn't build a Hysperian ship here, they would have built something entirely equivalent without costing huge swaths of alternative content (unlike new bridges that aren't tied to new missions). The zero sum trade-offs are not the same by miles.
Basically, Cryptic has the overhead to make random one-off ships on occasion especially as that content is marketable for its own sake and drives player engagement numbers. We make it worth their time to make one off niche ships through real reactions
We absolutely don't do that for bridges. Bridges are a niche feature that never sold well enough to continue direct monetization and held on for a while as a one-off on occasion for fancy ships (at low fidelity and playable scope). Ship interiors lack compelling functionality and a very old discussion point that basically amounts to "dead on arrival as a new feature update" (since doing stuff with interiors to make them worthwhile and desirable would require throwing everything out and starting from scratch, with huge zero-sum costs for other content development. You like missions? You won't be getting them for a couple years while Cryptic tries to encourage what players are left to care about ship interiors). We get some new interiors when Cryptic makes the level art for it (for higher profile, more impactful content, which most players actually use) but in the theater of real economics bridges do not command sufficient interest to be worth the time making for disconnected one-off maps for funsies. Had players actually bought them way back in the day en mass when the game's economics were being worked out, you can bet the team would be optimized differently today. But you know the saying: vote with your wallet. It doesn't just applies to loot box complaint threads.
The event should have had more gear besides ships (ex. vanity shield, festival hats, pets, floaters/boards that breath fire, which Cryptic absolutely has demonstrated design capacity to make for events), but bridge interiors are not viable in base principle. The wrong horses were backed when it counted (a decade ago+) for those want more of them now.
Post edited by duncanidaho11 on
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,089Community Moderator
Not only that, but the Devs have stated that unless a mission calls for an interior, they're not making new bridges/interiors unless they can use it in a mission. See Voyager and Galaxy interiors as examples.
If they're going to invest time in making a bridge or a full interior, they're going to use it for more than just "here's a bridge you're most likely NEVER going to set foot on to go with your ship".
DUNCANIDAHO11 has a point and is not that far off. I would not estimate the impact to be an entire season's worth of map content, but it could easily be a mission's worth depending on how much the mission could re-use existing rooms and whatnot, and even one mission less a year would not be a great thing.
That said, if they ever did a mission that includes a boarding action on a Fek'Ihri ship their style is not so far off from a medieval one that Hysperian ships could not use the same bridges as the Fek'Ihri ones. Still, it is a very long shot at best.
That's quoting Ten Forward Weekly, sunshine. Bridges (especially canon bridges) tend to be at a much higher level of visual fidelity, densely populated, and highly bespoke assets than a standard map, thus takes about the same amount of environment art time as a full mission (which builds out a lot of content through reused kit pieces that themselves make use of sparse repeating elements, even when those kits are new). Anything that isn't original to STO hits that "especially" modifier as recreating a space requires more intensive work in matching photos/production info than original art (which would hit content even like the Hysperian as there is still *some* content existing in the IP setting out precise details to be used in a full bridge).
As we get typically one mission per season now, that equates to one bridge = one season's worth of map (ie. environmental modeling) work. Simple? Recreating bridges from the shows is a major investment that takes planning because the environment art team could quickly reach a bottleneck if they had to create it and all attenuated content in the same season. For example (because reading patterns from real content development seems to be a lost art here): Federation interiors created last arc were an iterative process with kit pieces from prior seasons support the time required to make things like the Oddy bridge later in the arc (which itself isn't as demanding as a canon bridge given the process requires no replication).
Plus, all modern examples of new bridges (see also DSC) plug into extensively used interior kits that serve as a major foundation to arcs, in order to economize on some of the new assets (ex. doors, textures, console components). So the trade-off for something wholly new and one-off (ex. Hysperian) would be even more pressing than we've seen for the content Cryptic's built lately. That's not to say they can't do it (they plan around work loads) but these are significant considerations for time investment that one-off playable bridges don't have a good argument to justify "hey, let's do this!"
DUNCANIDAHO11 has a point and is not that far off. I would not estimate the impact to be an entire season's worth of map content, but it could easily be a mission's worth depending on how much the mission could re-use existing rooms and whatnot, and even one mission less a year would not be a great thing.
.
It is, Tacofangs gave that estimate when talking about canon bridges on Ten Forward a few years back (subject of the Disco-Connie bridge IIRC). Recreating bridges requires a lot of intensive modeling work and precise replication (mostly through photos, at best of times set measurements). Thus it takes about the same amount of work to model a bridge as it does to model an episode's worth of environment art (which now equals a season's worth of environment art as we typically get one episode per season with accessory content like patrols typically pulling from existing map content).
It's not *costing* us content ATM given Cryptic has mastered the mystic art of planning (got an intensive project coming up? Build kit pieces/maps before it to recycle for that season, ex. Pahvo and FED prisons), but players assuming its trivial and bridges are like any other space is wholly BS. Delivering *playable* bridges is also an additive task and not an insignificant one as having the environment art still requires clean up of mission elements and content designer work to hook up the bridge for use (see. status of Oddy and FED tutorial bridges).
Thus, giving us a Hysperian bridge for funsies is a dead-on-arrival ask, as the trade-off required is hugely constraining for the dev team as there's nothing else that content plugs in for. Months of work for trivial gains with the successive season suffering for the lack of art team bandwidth. Fek'Ihri at this point would also be in the same boat and likely wouldn't be able to pull from Hysperian beyond using wood textures (the style is very different and anything you build for the one wouldn't be usable in another unless it's VERY generic).
Post edited by duncanidaho11 on
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Bridges ... takes about the same amount of environment art time as a full mission ...
As we get typically one mission per season now, that equates to one bridge = one season's worth of map work.
There, I fixed your post for you. You wrote an entire novel just to say 2 sentences. Great job.
Anyway, since what you really mean by "season" is "1 episode", I can actually agree with that. It's pathetic that that is what this game has come to, but it's true enough. As someone who has played since beta, when I read "season" I forget how sad the current standard has become compared to what it used to mean.
But yes, you are right by the current sad standard of development and meaning of "season".
Bridges ... takes about the same amount of environment art time as a full mission ...
As we get typically one mission per season now, that equates to one bridge = one season's worth of map work.
There, I fixed your post for you. You wrote an entire novel just to say 2 sentences. Great job..
It's easier to say "I didn't think through my original objection, sorry" than to try maintaining an attitude here. The season cadence is a very basic item that losing track of isn't my issue.
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Thanks for the continued reply! It's really great engaging with you about how the word "season" now means "1 episode" because the game is now primarily focused on gambling instead of mission production. Anyway, best wishes to you and yours on this holiday weekend!
Thanks! Will do, got plans to see the brother this weekend so setting up for a roadtrip here IRL.
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Let me first say that I fully understand and accept why we don't get new bridges except under extraordinary circumstances at this point. No sense putting in so much effort for something that's barely used, when that effort could be better spent on genuine content.
That being said, I would really like something other than that generic "Starship" bridge for event/lockbox/promo ships. Even if it's just picking one of the existing faction bridges that looks vaguely like it could suit other factions. And yes, I understand that setting that up for all the existing non-C-store ships would be quite the undertaking itself. But at the least, I'd think it would be doable for new ships going forward.
Especially since I'm pretty sure the devs did it by accident once. I don't think the T6 Risian Luxury Cruiser is supposed to be able to use faction-specific bridges, yet I've got the Origin bridge on mine. If it can happen by accident, on purpose shouldn't be that hard. (Note: not a programmer; feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that point.)
Let me first say that I fully understand and accept why we don't get new bridges except under extraordinary circumstances at this point. No sense putting in so much effort for something that's barely used, when that effort could be better spent on genuine content.
I've been waiting for a new raid for almost a decade now..
Let me first say that I fully understand and accept why we don't get new bridges except under extraordinary circumstances at this point. No sense putting in so much effort for something that's barely used, when that effort could be better spent on genuine content.
That being said, I would really like something other than that generic "Starship" bridge for event/lockbox/promo ships. Even if it's just picking one of the existing faction bridges that looks vaguely like it could suit other factions. And yes, I understand that setting that up for all the existing non-C-store ships would be quite the undertaking itself. But at the least, I'd think it would be doable for new ships going forward.
Especially since I'm pretty sure the devs did it by accident once. I don't think the T6 Risian Luxury Cruiser is supposed to be able to use faction-specific bridges, yet I've got the Origin bridge on mine. If it can happen by accident, on purpose shouldn't be that hard. (Note: not a programmer; feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that point.)
Since Jette left it seems that no one can be bothered to link any of the old standard bridges, it makes me wonder if she was linking the things on her own time or something.
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They don't really do ship specific bridges anymore. Even for the hyper-expensive gamble ships they either let you use the existing factional ones or force you to use that really plain one that came out years ago (for the APU, maybe?), so don't expect to see any for a 'freebie'.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Yes, the colonists were almost all war veterans who wanted to get so far out that everyone would leave them alone (and the fact that many of them were telempaths whose gifts were rubbed raw by long years of combat and could not handle the high population density of the core worlds any more was one of the main drivers of that need for relative solitude). The colony ships were all stripped-down surplus warships that were decommissioned in the aftermath of the war, a trio consisting of a dreadnaught or command cruiser (I think it was named "Yokohama") and one large and one smaller troopship.
I am fairly sure that the bridge will instead look like an old concrete parking garage with junk consoles dumped in it, the same bridge almost every other ship that has come out in the last few years has been inflicted with.
Like the Ugly bridge of the Temer class?
Yes, the exact same one. The devs have stopped bothering to link the usual list of standard bridges the old ships had in for the most part, and that vomit-worthy abomination is the only bridge available for almost all of the new ships coming out.
No mention of them being converted warships or anything, but the ships were the Yokohama, Buenos Aires, and Bahrain.
That wasn't what happened. I read the entire Pern series years ago and did an audiobook run through last year because the new 3rd Pass novels had not been written during my first time and I wanted to know what happened. I still want to know because one of the leads is known to have died shortly after the events but we'll never how or why since the author died. On the other hand, hurray for the Bluerider Weyrleader Girl!
I am going off on a tangent. The important thing is that the story still fresh in my head.
What happened was that a ship did come for first colonists after their distress signal was received. There was a small holdout on the Southern Continent. They did not know that the others had survived by moving North. Surface-level planetary scans from orbit did not reveal the Northerns because they had built Fort Hold inside of a mountain. The ship crew believed that only the small group in the South had managed to avoid being consumed by Thread. The guys still in the South were evacuated back to main starfaring civilization and the system was interdicted with buoys warning ships not to enter.
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Then they should do a multi-use bridge! This design could be slightly tweaked (different colors, change the portraits on the walls) for the Fek'Ihri ships, which also need decent bridges! There are currently four of then, well, five including the original Kar'Fi. It would be quite cool to have a replica of Fek'Ihr's throne as a captain's chair, too!
So they could make bridges for six ships! There is already a synergy between this new ship and the Fek'Ihri ships anyway. The consoles will harmonize quite nicely. Quite an odd thing to say about Fek'Ihri, huh?
Yes, it's a lot of work. I would not expect a freebie. But if they make this set of 'good and evil' bridges, they can make them an event reward! It seems to be hard to find new original ideas for event rewards anyway. We've had some strange stuff. I think a cool set of fantasy-themed bridges would be a great reward for the Winter event this year. They might even make a third variant with very 'Holiday' coloring themes (and maybe pictures of Kramp'Ihri on the walls?)
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plus we've seen their bridge
or at least some of their ship's interior
giving the Hysperian Intel Battlecruiser the ugly generic Temer class bridge would seem very half-assed or lazy.
And that effort could be put into a bridge that's far more widely applicable, even to Hysperian starships under the command of Alliance officers. Ex. a Khitomer Alliance bridge. If you're going to bother to build something here, build something that solves a widely distributed problem. Otherwise you just punt the exact same situation developing for the next ship that needs a bridge better than the severely dated (and never compelling) Temer bridge, gaining nothing from the dev time in the grand scheme and forcing the same conversation to be had again.
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The Fek'Ihri have been infiltrating space-fantasy into the game for years now. And this is a whole new source. May as well lean in! Let's see another Hysperian ship next year. It doesn't have to be cannon, but they have the materials now and it can be very similar. Make it a carrier so it can have weird fantasy pets like Fek'Ihri carriers (and benefit from the Fek'Ihri consoles). Griffins or Wyverns, I'd say. They could have flame breath like Lost Souls do.
And why restrict this to ships? They could have ruffly 'medieval' bathing suits for Risa. ("Real" medieval bathing suits didn't exist, they were too paranoid about exposing bodies. But early 20th century bathing suits with some medieval-looking heraldry would be just fine...
Welcome to the world of false equivalency! Let's tear this down....
Mission art is a much bigger investment relative to the main pipeline (1 bridge = season's worth of map content, rather than a small fraction per ship volume), especially with how intensively they polish it these days. And the trade offs come at a huge cost relative to alternatives, namely missions and other forms of playable content that have a huge disparity in real player engagement. Get a silly one off ship? It comes at the cost of a single alternative ship design and that only applies for the release slot in question as those are baked into the game's economic and player population cycles (the summer ship isn't pulling c-store content out of existence). If Cryptic didn't build a Hysperian ship here, they would have built something entirely equivalent without costing huge swaths of alternative content (unlike new bridges that aren't tied to new missions). The zero sum trade-offs are not the same by miles.
Basically, Cryptic has the overhead to make random one-off ships on occasion especially as that content is marketable for its own sake and drives player engagement numbers. We make it worth their time to make one off niche ships through real reactions
We absolutely don't do that for bridges. Bridges are a niche feature that never sold well enough to continue direct monetization and held on for a while as a one-off on occasion for fancy ships (at low fidelity and playable scope). Ship interiors lack compelling functionality and a very old discussion point that basically amounts to "dead on arrival as a new feature update" (since doing stuff with interiors to make them worthwhile and desirable would require throwing everything out and starting from scratch, with huge zero-sum costs for other content development. You like missions? You won't be getting them for a couple years while Cryptic tries to encourage what players are left to care about ship interiors). We get some new interiors when Cryptic makes the level art for it (for higher profile, more impactful content, which most players actually use) but in the theater of real economics bridges do not command sufficient interest to be worth the time making for disconnected one-off maps for funsies. Had players actually bought them way back in the day en mass when the game's economics were being worked out, you can bet the team would be optimized differently today. But you know the saying: vote with your wallet. It doesn't just applies to loot box complaint threads.
The event should have had more gear besides ships (ex. vanity shield, festival hats, pets, floaters/boards that breath fire, which Cryptic absolutely has demonstrated design capacity to make for events), but bridge interiors are not viable in base principle. The wrong horses were backed when it counted (a decade ago+) for those want more of them now.
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If they're going to invest time in making a bridge or a full interior, they're going to use it for more than just "here's a bridge you're most likely NEVER going to set foot on to go with your ship".
Armchair devs are funny 😅
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DUNCANIDAHO11 has a point and is not that far off. I would not estimate the impact to be an entire season's worth of map content, but it could easily be a mission's worth depending on how much the mission could re-use existing rooms and whatnot, and even one mission less a year would not be a great thing.
That said, if they ever did a mission that includes a boarding action on a Fek'Ihri ship their style is not so far off from a medieval one that Hysperian ships could not use the same bridges as the Fek'Ihri ones. Still, it is a very long shot at best.
That's quoting Ten Forward Weekly, sunshine. Bridges (especially canon bridges) tend to be at a much higher level of visual fidelity, densely populated, and highly bespoke assets than a standard map, thus takes about the same amount of environment art time as a full mission (which builds out a lot of content through reused kit pieces that themselves make use of sparse repeating elements, even when those kits are new). Anything that isn't original to STO hits that "especially" modifier as recreating a space requires more intensive work in matching photos/production info than original art (which would hit content even like the Hysperian as there is still *some* content existing in the IP setting out precise details to be used in a full bridge).
As we get typically one mission per season now, that equates to one bridge = one season's worth of map (ie. environmental modeling) work. Simple? Recreating bridges from the shows is a major investment that takes planning because the environment art team could quickly reach a bottleneck if they had to create it and all attenuated content in the same season. For example (because reading patterns from real content development seems to be a lost art here): Federation interiors created last arc were an iterative process with kit pieces from prior seasons support the time required to make things like the Oddy bridge later in the arc (which itself isn't as demanding as a canon bridge given the process requires no replication).
Plus, all modern examples of new bridges (see also DSC) plug into extensively used interior kits that serve as a major foundation to arcs, in order to economize on some of the new assets (ex. doors, textures, console components). So the trade-off for something wholly new and one-off (ex. Hysperian) would be even more pressing than we've seen for the content Cryptic's built lately. That's not to say they can't do it (they plan around work loads) but these are significant considerations for time investment that one-off playable bridges don't have a good argument to justify "hey, let's do this!"
The more you know, if you actually care to learn.
It is, Tacofangs gave that estimate when talking about canon bridges on Ten Forward a few years back (subject of the Disco-Connie bridge IIRC). Recreating bridges requires a lot of intensive modeling work and precise replication (mostly through photos, at best of times set measurements). Thus it takes about the same amount of work to model a bridge as it does to model an episode's worth of environment art (which now equals a season's worth of environment art as we typically get one episode per season with accessory content like patrols typically pulling from existing map content).
It's not *costing* us content ATM given Cryptic has mastered the mystic art of planning (got an intensive project coming up? Build kit pieces/maps before it to recycle for that season, ex. Pahvo and FED prisons), but players assuming its trivial and bridges are like any other space is wholly BS. Delivering *playable* bridges is also an additive task and not an insignificant one as having the environment art still requires clean up of mission elements and content designer work to hook up the bridge for use (see. status of Oddy and FED tutorial bridges).
Thus, giving us a Hysperian bridge for funsies is a dead-on-arrival ask, as the trade-off required is hugely constraining for the dev team as there's nothing else that content plugs in for. Months of work for trivial gains with the successive season suffering for the lack of art team bandwidth. Fek'Ihri at this point would also be in the same boat and likely wouldn't be able to pull from Hysperian beyond using wood textures (the style is very different and anything you build for the one wouldn't be usable in another unless it's VERY generic).
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
There, I fixed your post for you. You wrote an entire novel just to say 2 sentences. Great job.
Anyway, since what you really mean by "season" is "1 episode", I can actually agree with that. It's pathetic that that is what this game has come to, but it's true enough. As someone who has played since beta, when I read "season" I forget how sad the current standard has become compared to what it used to mean.
But yes, you are right by the current sad standard of development and meaning of "season".
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
It's easier to say "I didn't think through my original objection, sorry" than to try maintaining an attitude here. The season cadence is a very basic item that losing track of isn't my issue.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Thanks for the continued reply! It's really great engaging with you about how the word "season" now means "1 episode" because the game is now primarily focused on gambling instead of mission production. Anyway, best wishes to you and yours on this holiday weekend!
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Thanks! Will do, got plans to see the brother this weekend so setting up for a roadtrip here IRL.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
That being said, I would really like something other than that generic "Starship" bridge for event/lockbox/promo ships. Even if it's just picking one of the existing faction bridges that looks vaguely like it could suit other factions. And yes, I understand that setting that up for all the existing non-C-store ships would be quite the undertaking itself. But at the least, I'd think it would be doable for new ships going forward.
Especially since I'm pretty sure the devs did it by accident once. I don't think the T6 Risian Luxury Cruiser is supposed to be able to use faction-specific bridges, yet I've got the Origin bridge on mine. If it can happen by accident, on purpose shouldn't be that hard. (Note: not a programmer; feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that point.)
I've been waiting for a new raid for almost a decade now..
Since Jette left it seems that no one can be bothered to link any of the old standard bridges, it makes me wonder if she was linking the things on her own time or something.