New ideas

posted on July 10th, 2012, 3:50 am

Yes, let's get back to the other stuff. Stuff like Customizable Cloaking Effects, which sounds decent.

For Customizable Cloaking Effects, I was thinking a code should be used that would point to a texture file that is used for the cloaking effect. I added the Custom Effects to the list because the current effect looks like someone put camouflage on the ship and is moving it across the hull. (my opinion) That, and part of my mod has a ship power down, and it looks stupid when your ship is shutting down and the effect comes up when its not even 'cloaking'. (Technically it is, but that's beside the point.)

Any ideas on this?

posted on August 20th, 2012, 3:59 pm

I was thinking the other day about my Marines idea.

I was thinking that we should have a system similar to Star Trek: Dominion War, where you beam an away team on a ship and they slowly kill the crew while being killed themselves.

This would add realism by showing that a fire fight is going on inside the ship instead of the whole 'we beam on, grab someone, and use a small bomb to kill ourselves and them' deal.

Seriously, they just beam on and kill someone just before they are killed themselves. Not only unrealistic, but kind of stupid too.

Any takers?

posted on August 20th, 2012, 10:07 pm

here is a good vid about boarding parties



at 3.43

tho i dont know how you would track numbers of your crew on the enemy ship (having a second crew system tab?)

game mechanic wise i think its probably easier to keep it the way it is.
its easier to see who is winning the ship currently and all it would be doing is delaying what it already does which is counting down the number, which i think would go pretty unnoticed for the most part. its not like you get to see the fight.
and it means there is no extra development time taken away from other things.

nice idea but probably not worth the development time

posted on August 21st, 2012, 2:50 pm

Still, the idea of boarding parties fits. Fights can go on for days, even aboard a starship. It would be nice to see the result of the fight as its 'happening'. Something like a random number generator could be used to determine the effectiveness of the party compared to the defenders who get a bonus from owning the ship and knowing more about it.

On another note, is it possible to have a commend inserted so you can target specific sections of either a model or its hardpoints? I was thinking that a Star Fleet captain would usually target the engines or weapons to disable the ship he's attacking.

posted on August 21st, 2012, 9:20 pm

Still, the idea of boarding parties fits. Fights can go on for days, even aboard a starship. It would be nice to see the result of the fight as its 'happening'. Something like a random number generator could be used to determine the effectiveness of the party compared to the defenders who get a bonus from owning the ship and knowing more about it.

On another note, is it possible to have a commend inserted so you can target specific sections of either a model or its hardpoints? I was thinking that a Star Fleet captain would usually target the engines or weapons to disable the ship he's attacking.

This is a cool idea, but I dont see it being in fleet ops. The whole mechanic seems like it would just be wasted since boarding is a little used feature (with exception to races whom specialize) and in a desperate situation the ship defender can just self target and destroy the ship if the battles going bad onboard.

However I have some ideas too...

1. Transport attack would be a better suited if it was specifically sending boarders to try and destroy a specific subsystem. So you click transport attack and a pop up menu appears then you get the option to target specific areas of the ship like "Engineering" "Bridge" "Environmental Systems" "Deflector Control" ETC... the boarders attempt to damage the area in question, and if they succeed a subsytem or group of subsystems associated with the area get damaged or disabled or destroyed.

Obviously regular transport would stay as is, and there should be some sort of boarders vs crew ratio, counter... thingy. Just so that its not an instant ""click click"" "oh i failed to destroy weapons" ""click click again until I win"" game.

posted on August 21st, 2012, 11:32 pm

That sounds better. Along with the delay, it sounds like my marines idea. Meybe there can be an addition to kill a few crewmen, and if there aren't any, you can have the option of taking the ship, or blowing up a section to keep the enemy from using it.

Awesome idea.

posted on August 21st, 2012, 11:56 pm

Another thought i had was regarding "self destruct" If it could somehow be tethered to crew loss and become an active ability only when crew has reached a critical level. I think it would be beneficial, because it avoids the issues surrounding suicide self destructing your ships in order to destroy other enemy vessels.

I know some folks think any self destruct feature will ruin boarding completely, but with it tethered to crew loss the chances of successful self destruct are lower. Several boarding vessels will overrun the enemy before a player could activate it, where as in a 1 vs 1 the losing players chances increase quite a bit. To make it fair so players arent spamming over a "greyed" button hoping for a lucky click when crew hits critical, the button should be completely invisible until critical is reached.

posted on August 22nd, 2012, 12:18 am

The chance of using self-destruct is already low if the enemy has a weapon disabler, since it's currently tied to that system. I always support self-destruct on anything with a Warp Core.

The real problem is making fire ships possible.

posted on August 22nd, 2012, 6:07 am

The real problem is making fire ships possible

Not truly. Fire ships are basicly ships that ram others, but can destroy entire fleets. The dreadnaut missile could do this, but it was a small AoE. By increasing that, and the damage delt, a single ship could fit the fire ship roll.

And just to be cool, you could add a few fire emitters to make the ship look like a true fire ship

posted on August 21, 2012, 16:56:48
Another thought i had was regarding "self destruct" If it could somehow be tethered to crew loss and become an active ability only when crew has reached a critical level. I think it would be beneficial, because it avoids the issues surrounding suicide self destructing your ships in order to destroy other enemy vessels.

Thats a good idea, but the option has been open to captains even though their ships aren't low on crewmen. The ability should be available at all times, but should have a very short count down.