Moving Map Objects

posted on September 5th, 2010, 1:37 am

Remeber in A2 how there were moving asteroid belts?

I thiught that would be a cool feature in fleet ops, except instead of asteroids, there could be nebulas that move around, like in actual star trek, this would be a little more realistic, and would mean that would would have to navigate a little more

posted on September 5th, 2010, 1:42 am

Gotta say i like these ideas, I remember in an episode of TNG there was a reddish gaseous stream eminating from a star.

Would be cool to have nebulas that flow like a river through maps and maybe even have a slight current.

posted on September 5th, 2010, 3:52 am

Maybe they could just be random nebulas with no gameplay effect just visual.

posted on September 5th, 2010, 5:09 am

I like that idea too, makes space for shooting asteroids and stuff but the only problem I could see is if the maps were designed to provide specific corridoors of attack then the moving nebulas kind of mess that up 

posted on September 5th, 2010, 6:39 pm

Another thought on a nebulas - perhaps instead of moving vessels slowly in one direction it could just slow them. Sort of like crossing a river. Remember in Insurrection the Enterprise had to cruise the Briar patch at slower speeds because it would damage the impulse manifolds.

posted on September 6th, 2010, 7:33 pm

A random roaming ion storm would be awesome.

posted on September 6th, 2010, 7:37 pm

A random roaming ion storm would be awesome.

haha no it wouldnt.

random things that hurt players is not good.

imagine playing a game, and you are making no mistakes, then suddenly and ion storm hurts u. and then ur enemy wins. not fun. fo should stay a game of skill not luck. if i wanted a game of luck i would play mario kart (which i do, i love that game)

posted on September 6th, 2010, 7:58 pm

Not if you make it follow a specific path and is small enough.

Here is what I would like to see follow a path.(seperate odfs from stationary ofcourse)

single asteroids/iceteroids
comets
small asteroid/iceteroid clusters
large asteroid/iceteroid clusters
nebulas with no more than 25% of its stationary conterparts effects(small cluster only not large)

posted on September 6th, 2010, 8:08 pm

if it's small enough it wont matter than. and might as well do no damage, as a random damaging thing of any kind is bad. even taking only a few shield hp away reduces your fleet's power.

posted on September 6th, 2010, 8:20 pm

maybe small hiding nebulaes? this would give some new possibilities

posted on September 6th, 2010, 8:21 pm

Hmm a roaming Ion storm wouldnt be bad, since the current way maps work with moving objects would be to have the object follow a path. I doubt any decent map make would set the path the ion storm follows to go right into your opponets base. Sure the feature could be exploitable but but as long as the map maker has control over where said object travels it shouldnt be a problem.

posted on September 6th, 2010, 8:29 pm

even if an ion storm travelled randomly. no ship would be safe unless in your base.

and we would still have matches where a fleet was damaged/destroyed by an ion storm and a game changes direction. fleetops should not become a game where chance decides who wins.

a moving non harmful nebula is a nicer idea, but it can still give an advantage if say a retreating borg cube found a shield disabling neb. or a retreating fed fleet found a green neb. so i vote no on moving nebs of any kind as they introduce a randomness to the game.

posted on September 7th, 2010, 1:25 am

Well then i say, you better be watching your ships, move them out of the way of the nebula, also, i dont think that they should necesarily destroy fleets, or even ships, but damage them sure,

mainly tho i just think it would add more obstacles and such, also would make you have to watch out with your cloaking fleets,

posted on September 7th, 2010, 11:00 am

Well then i say, you better be watching your ships, move them out of the way of the nebula, also, i dont think that they should necesarily destroy fleets, or even ships, but damage them sure,

you cant be everywhere at the same time.

say you are at your expansion, assigning miners to a moon, and con ships to make a turret or a yard or something. or selecting modules for your borg ship, doing research or towing a damaged ship back to a yard. etc and you leave your fleet away from the enemy as now that would leave them relatively safe (the only safer thing u can do is sit in your base, which is dull)

now you are not watching your fleet, and an ion storm sweeps in and knocks all your ships shields offline. so you head back to your exp yard, but the enemy was attacking there and just killed your yard (which is perfectly reasonable) so you attack them, they may have an equal fleet to you, and the player equal skill to you, but you are missing loads of hp on your shields. then u die.

this can happen in many situations too, maybe you bump into the enemy on the way back to a yard, so you dont have a yard to repair with. an equal player with and equal fleet will have an advantage over you, because of nothing more than random chance. and you will lose, because lady luck came over and backhanded you. so u lost not because you played bad, or were a newb, but because luck decided your fleet needed some damage.

even if it only kills 50% of shields or 20% of shields, players can still lose based on this.

and non damaging nebs are nearly as bad. imagine you are chasing a borg cube down, and u have played well, really well, and are winning. but a blue neb is randomly in the area and helps it.

if they choose to attack in a place where there is a blue neb to retreat to then they have planned their attack well. but if they are retreating through open space and find a random blue neb then what luck.

or a non borg fleet finds a green neb. instant shield recharge. 

posted on September 7th, 2010, 11:07 pm

Well what if you were doing what you just described, assigning miners, and somone attackes your fleet?

What you have to understand is im not proposing huge nebula's that will kill your fleet, just small obstacles, like a harmful version of the popular crates idea that was around here a while ago.