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Suggestion: Movement/Combat Mechanics of Playable Borg Cube/Sphere
wrathofachilles
Member Posts: 931 Arc User
Hello! I wanted to make a suggestion regarding how a playable Borg Cube/Sphere could be done without the confusion of not knowing which way the ship is "facing."
Having flown the Cnidarian Defender, I certainly understand the challenges of knowing which way you are facing, even with the engine trail. Particularly once in the jelly form, you can't readily tell which direction you are facing as there is no engine trail. Granted, you move very slowly in jelly form, but that actually makes it harder to tell where you are moving in my opinion, because stationary objects, which one can use as navigational landmarks, move very slowly relative to you. I ended up putting on the Bozeman engines in the vanity slot to have a dedicated "this is your aft" graphic to solve these issues.
My thoughts regarding how a ship like the Borg Cube could be flown, and in a fashion I think would be thematically appropriate, are as follows:
First, is for the ship to always travel in the direction of the camera.
Borg cubes seem to be able to fly full speed in any direction and don't particularly re-orient themselves to do so. As such, even if you are flying with your ship kind of catty-corner, it would be rather reminiscent of what we've seen on screen.
Next, I would suggest that the weapons "fore" arc always face the selected target, regardless of which direction the camera is facing.
This mechanic would simulate how Borg Cubes don't seem to have "heavy cannons facing forward" or fore or aft torpedo tubes, but rather seem to have identical weapon coverage from all angles. This would prevent Borg ships, like Cubes and Spheres, from being able to do "broad side" with beams, but I think the advantages of always keeping your fore weapons facing the enemy would ultimately level out, and be a particular boon for torpedoes. It might be too OP to allow this to use dual/dual heavy cannons, but I think single cannons, beam arrays, and dual beam banks, like all ships have access to, would be alright. However, perhaps Borg ships could be further restricted to not be allowed to use dual beam banks if found to be too OP.
The keyboard keys that normally turn your ship could be used to move the ship laterally relative to the camera, to strafe from side to side, and also still be used to rotate the ship model for the purposes of giving the enemy another shield facing to chew on and for aesthetic purposes. Whether the keys strafe or rotate could change depending on whether you have a mouse button held down, similarly to how the behavior of the left/right keys change when moving a character on the ground depending on if you have a mouse button held down to move the camera. The strafe/rotate behavior relative to mouse press could be changed in menus.
The speed of strafing motion could be determined by the throttle. I would recommend 1/4 speed when strafing while at 0 throttle, with strafing speed otherwise matching the throttle.
For circumstances in which the ship might want to be moving away from a target while still firing on it, i.e. being chased in PVP or firing on an enemy while heading toward your next target, I think it would be really neat, but not necessary, just a nice feature if not too difficult to implement, if a little holographic viewscreen, like the one Locutus used while orchestrating the battle of Wolf 359, could pop up over your ship to show you what's happening off-camera. There could also be an arrow that shows you where your target is relative to you, so that you know that the screen is currently showing you something directly behind you or off to the right, etc. This feature could be toggleable for those who don't care for it.
With these controls, a Borg Cube or Sphere would essentially have infinite turn rate for both movement and weapon facing, but not for shield facings.
The usual turn rate modifier could affect how swiftly the ship physically rotates, which for a Cube, I think it would "look right" and "feel right" if it was rather natively slow, like a 6 or 5. Although the rotation speed should be constant, unlike other ships where rotation speed significantly drops when stationary. And the speed modifier would work as normal to dictate how swiftly you can move in the direction the camera is facing.
The ships should also have little to no inertia (which I think translates to a very high inertia rating on the stat sheet, at least I think that's how that works.) as slip-n-slide Cubes and Spheres, while probably pretty hilarious, would be very strange.
I would also suggest not implementing the energy drain penalty while in reverse, and perhaps extending the throttle to represent 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, and full speed in reverse, as keeping your camera on your target while firing on them and flying full speed in reverse would strike me as very "Borg." Although the "holo-viewscreen" for off-camera targets I suggested above would largely take care of this mechanic on its own, but both could live together very nicely.
I think that flying a Borg Cube with these controls would feel very "right" and look right. I also think that, while a departure from how all the other ships in the game fly, it's not so far removed from how our characters move to be entirely foreign, and in fact strikes me as a hybrid between the typical space and ground movement mechanics, so I think it could work very well.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Having flown the Cnidarian Defender, I certainly understand the challenges of knowing which way you are facing, even with the engine trail. Particularly once in the jelly form, you can't readily tell which direction you are facing as there is no engine trail. Granted, you move very slowly in jelly form, but that actually makes it harder to tell where you are moving in my opinion, because stationary objects, which one can use as navigational landmarks, move very slowly relative to you. I ended up putting on the Bozeman engines in the vanity slot to have a dedicated "this is your aft" graphic to solve these issues.
My thoughts regarding how a ship like the Borg Cube could be flown, and in a fashion I think would be thematically appropriate, are as follows:
First, is for the ship to always travel in the direction of the camera.
Borg cubes seem to be able to fly full speed in any direction and don't particularly re-orient themselves to do so. As such, even if you are flying with your ship kind of catty-corner, it would be rather reminiscent of what we've seen on screen.
Next, I would suggest that the weapons "fore" arc always face the selected target, regardless of which direction the camera is facing.
This mechanic would simulate how Borg Cubes don't seem to have "heavy cannons facing forward" or fore or aft torpedo tubes, but rather seem to have identical weapon coverage from all angles. This would prevent Borg ships, like Cubes and Spheres, from being able to do "broad side" with beams, but I think the advantages of always keeping your fore weapons facing the enemy would ultimately level out, and be a particular boon for torpedoes. It might be too OP to allow this to use dual/dual heavy cannons, but I think single cannons, beam arrays, and dual beam banks, like all ships have access to, would be alright. However, perhaps Borg ships could be further restricted to not be allowed to use dual beam banks if found to be too OP.
The keyboard keys that normally turn your ship could be used to move the ship laterally relative to the camera, to strafe from side to side, and also still be used to rotate the ship model for the purposes of giving the enemy another shield facing to chew on and for aesthetic purposes. Whether the keys strafe or rotate could change depending on whether you have a mouse button held down, similarly to how the behavior of the left/right keys change when moving a character on the ground depending on if you have a mouse button held down to move the camera. The strafe/rotate behavior relative to mouse press could be changed in menus.
The speed of strafing motion could be determined by the throttle. I would recommend 1/4 speed when strafing while at 0 throttle, with strafing speed otherwise matching the throttle.
For circumstances in which the ship might want to be moving away from a target while still firing on it, i.e. being chased in PVP or firing on an enemy while heading toward your next target, I think it would be really neat, but not necessary, just a nice feature if not too difficult to implement, if a little holographic viewscreen, like the one Locutus used while orchestrating the battle of Wolf 359, could pop up over your ship to show you what's happening off-camera. There could also be an arrow that shows you where your target is relative to you, so that you know that the screen is currently showing you something directly behind you or off to the right, etc. This feature could be toggleable for those who don't care for it.
With these controls, a Borg Cube or Sphere would essentially have infinite turn rate for both movement and weapon facing, but not for shield facings.
The usual turn rate modifier could affect how swiftly the ship physically rotates, which for a Cube, I think it would "look right" and "feel right" if it was rather natively slow, like a 6 or 5. Although the rotation speed should be constant, unlike other ships where rotation speed significantly drops when stationary. And the speed modifier would work as normal to dictate how swiftly you can move in the direction the camera is facing.
The ships should also have little to no inertia (which I think translates to a very high inertia rating on the stat sheet, at least I think that's how that works.) as slip-n-slide Cubes and Spheres, while probably pretty hilarious, would be very strange.
I would also suggest not implementing the energy drain penalty while in reverse, and perhaps extending the throttle to represent 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, and full speed in reverse, as keeping your camera on your target while firing on them and flying full speed in reverse would strike me as very "Borg." Although the "holo-viewscreen" for off-camera targets I suggested above would largely take care of this mechanic on its own, but both could live together very nicely.
I think that flying a Borg Cube with these controls would feel very "right" and look right. I also think that, while a departure from how all the other ships in the game fly, it's not so far removed from how our characters move to be entirely foreign, and in fact strikes me as a hybrid between the typical space and ground movement mechanics, so I think it could work very well.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
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