Give me more warp speed Scotty!...

posted on February 4th, 2015, 9:41 am

Humbly asking for reintegration of the Warp Speed or equivalent in to the Fleet Operations game mechanics...

Hi Mesha,

To answer your questions, we felt that an extremely powerful faction like 8472 (or the Crystalline Entity, or the Scimitar, etc) was better suited as a non playable set of units. In a future version of Fleet Operations you will see those units flying around wreaking havoc, but not buildable by the player.

Hi Dominus Noctis, please don't get offended but i have to ask. When you say "you will see those units flying around wreaking havoc", do you mean snail-around on impulse speed?...
I think you people really need to make some alternative to the warp speed, or some kind of impulse engine boost like in " Star Trek Armada 2 - Cardassian Kulinor Class"!...
Traversing a large map on only "impulse drive" is a daunting task to say the least!...
I know why you ( the Fleet Operations Development Team ) remove the warp speed, but did you know that in the Star Trek universe starships travel with "in sistem warp" also?...
Something like "impulse engine boost" this lower warp speed allows after starship get out of high warp on the edge of the
star sistem to be able to traverse the huge distances in space even inside a star system...
If you want to keep the strategic element make it so that the warp speed do not engage instantly when you press the button. Instead make it to require long delay or use special energy or something else, just don't remove it completely!...
I am simply asking you ( the Fleet Operations Development Team ) to reconsider reintegration of the Warp Speed or equivalent in to the Fleet Operations game mechanics for the next version...

With great respect to all the amazing work your people have done so far - Tsar Ivaylo

posted on February 5th, 2015, 1:32 pm

i think warp speed did end up being awkward in armada, tho with tweaking it could be made better. having it as an option in the menu is always the best bet.

but to stop it being abused or just looking silly, like when you warp in from the feds star fleet command giving the ships a delay of 1 or 2 seconds before they can act might be a bit more strategic. also a minimum distance of the warp from spot to spot so its not like they are hopping about in close succession.
(minimum distance could be fairly large, say 2 screens worth or larger otherwise impulse seems obsolete)
perhaps the minimum distance depends on ship size (smaller more maneuverable ships could have smaller minimum distances)

perhaps even making the warp faster to the location but unselectable to alter the destination until they come out of warp?

perhaps stations could have 'no warp zone' around them like the planets did in armada 2. so you cant warp into the middle of someones base the warp out again. or the dilithium/tritanium moons have big no warp zones? it would make it more of a reason to build your stations near planets/moons for safety?

i kinda think it should aim to be a tactical decision rather than a speed up the game function

posted on February 5th, 2015, 2:41 pm

i think warp speed did end up being awkward in armada, tho with tweaking it could be made better. having it as an option in the menu is always the best bet.

but to stop it being abused or just looking silly, like when you warp in from the feds star fleet command giving the ships a delay of 1 or 2 seconds before they can act might be a bit more strategic. also a minimum distance of the warp from spot to spot so its not like they are hopping about in close succession.
(minimum distance could be fairly large, say 2 screens worth or larger otherwise impulse seems obsolete)
perhaps the minimum distance depends on ship size (smaller more maneuverable ships could have smaller minimum distances)

perhaps even making the warp faster to the location but unselectable to alter the destination until they come out of warp?

perhaps stations could have 'no warp zone' around them like the planets did in armada 2. so you cant warp into the middle of someones base the warp out again. or the dilithium/tritanium moons have big no warp zones? it would make it more of a reason to build your stations near planets/moons for safety?

Excellent points good sir!...

i kinda think it should aim to be a tactical decision rather than a speed up the game function

I completely agree with you!...
Nevertheless i think warp speed should be in the game!...
After all this is Star Trek oriented game!...

posted on February 8th, 2015, 2:24 am

Armada 2's warp drive had many flaws, the least of which being how buggy it was when NPCs tried to use it. however, i do believe it can be integrated into the game again. in a way, it sorta deserves a place.

now, it rather depends on the scale of the maps. some armada maps give the impression that everything is happening within a star system, and very rarely is it seen in the show that they use warp drive to drop out right ontop of their target. there are many problems with that, such as the power it takes to control the warp field and then sending that power to weapons and shields, among other things. so i feel if the maps are designed to be contained within a small space, then no warp drive should be used.

on the other hand, i remember several maps, especially in armada 2 vanilla, that it seemed like you were flying between several very long distances, especially with some clusters of planets being like star systems and then having large gaps. on maps like these, warp drive makes alot of sense. but the no-warp barriers should be larger so you cannot drop out of warp into weapons range, even if you're an artillery ship. this keeps combat strictly impulse speeds, but allows warp drive to be used strategically to flank a base, retreat from a massive fight, or ambush a target in open space.
speaking of fighting however, that brings up another point of annoyance. in A2, you could shoot at a ship at warp while sitting still. while this rarely did very much damage to the target, it was very silly watching ships suddenly attempt to shoot down a ship that's on screen for only 2-3 seconds at most. it super stretched phaser textures and also didnt make any sense. in canon it was shown that only torpedoes could be used at warp (maybe exceptions, but there are special circumstances there.)
therefore, if warpdrive is reintroduced in FO, i hope some way to fix warp combat is implemented. either a state check system so only ships at warp can fire at warping ships and same applies with sub-light speeds.

just to throw it out there, it could also be a cool system to see there be a delay when jumping to warp. and some ships do it faster. for example, most intrepid's seem to be able to go to warp faster then a galaxy. meaning if you want to chase retreating ships at warp, you may need special starships to do so. and chasing a retreating warbird may not be as simple as sending your own battleship after it.

alternatively, warpdrive may be too difficult to balance in skirmish style gameplay. and if the devs decide that such mechanics must be ignored to ensure the finished game isnt ridiculously buggy, then i hope that the campaign (if story missions are added) will feature a mission or two with a sort of nod to warp drive. either be having your ships go through a scripted gate to warp to across the map, or by some other means.

posted on February 13th, 2015, 8:39 am

The A2 Warp System was imho crap. The AI would use it to evade turrets and get directly into your base, without getting harmed.
In FO, I think the warp drive should be invented completely new. Scouts should probably not get a warp drive, or at least not so fast it can explore the map within seconds.
Cloaked ships should "send out emissions" due to the high energy consumption of cloak and warp drive, thus increasing the chance to get visible on the minimap, as well as a chance to get caught when warping in onto an enemy fleet.

posted on February 15th, 2015, 2:30 am

Cloaked ships should "send out emissions" due to the high energy consumption of cloak and warp drive, thus increasing the chance to get visible on the minimap, as well as a chance to get caught when warping in onto an enemy fleet.

ohhhhhh..... i completely forgot about warping cloaked ships. that could get annoying quickly if you could simply warp around cloaked. i mean, romulans already have some of the best strategies built around their cloak, they dont need more help. sneak attacks, sabotage strikes... why if they're defensive abilities werent so pathetic i'd probably always play romulans when i play FO with friends. as it is their turrets are rather rubbish.

but yeah i agree though, IF a warp drive is implemented, cloaked ships should be fairly easily detected at warp. only exceptions being something like a scimitar or maybe the scout. after all, the scout is TINY anyway, could probably get away undetected with only a energy masking field.

anyway, there's alot the Fleet Ops team could do with a warp drive system, though it depends on the scale they feel like working on to even consider a warp drive. if you're fighting over the orbit of say earth, warp is kinda useless unless you decide to do the picard maneuver. however if you're fighting over the section of space between DS9 and cardassia, that basically demands warp drive.

posted on February 15th, 2015, 3:32 am

I think that unless you're building the entire game around warp, it should be limited to certain massive maps as a toggle in the map settings (the map specifically, not the match settings). You need to be able to build deep within the gravity well so that the enemy can't warp right on top of your turrets, or even behind them, and allow your defensive perimeter to actually defend your perimeter. A2 doesn't support big enough maps to accommodate the huge gravity wells necessary for that and that is a major reason that the A2 warp mechanic was so bad. Ship speed and weapon range didn't matter because you could always just warp right next to the target. Adding a cooldown would probably also help.

posted on February 15th, 2015, 3:43 am

i agree completely. as someone who enjoyed turtle-ing a bit too much, A2 annoyed me with NPC fleets warping over my line of turrets to drop out on top of my base. i actually built a few maps where you had asteroids on 2 sides, and planets on the other two sides of each base. that way when someone did warp in. GRAVITYYYYY!!! and i just fortified the hell out of both planets. it looked like some kind of weird artistic box by the end of it, but it worked.

in PVP with friends we agreed not to use warp drive to invade. though even that, we argued alot about how close was okay, and stuff. i never did check to see if there was a mod that lets you turn off warp drive.....

posted on February 15th, 2015, 7:03 pm

There's an 8 player map in A2 where each race was in a box. I had warping fleets were bottle-necked into two rows of three starbases and a line of torp turrets. Sometimes I just sat and watched the fireworks...

Personally, it depends on map size. Warp would work really well with ridiculously huge maps as suggested in another thread. It was nice in Sins, but routes were limiting.

Huge maps like that are a lot to ask for, and some might not like it. This is Star Trek after all, not the ultimate rts platform. In FO, each match had a feel of 'battling for the sector'. But who knows - the Miranda made it in by popular demand

Warp-ins should be used imho by all races as a means of fleet construction rather than building yards. Even small ships took months to build. I could see the construction of ships like the Runabout, Peregrine, and Delta Flyer happening quickly on a starbase, maybe even a Saber class. Maybe even a fleet could be called in at once.