Some thoughts

posted on November 15th, 2009, 12:21 pm

Hi all, I just felt I'd like to share some of my thoughts about fleet ops:

-I love the new cloaking system, which was announced a while ago.


-About the feds: I think they are too swarming in nature. Not that they dont generaly use huge amounts of ships, but you can build them as fast as they die off.... After... like, the battle of Wolf359, 30 ships are destroyed, and everyone is like omfg. It may be hard to incorporate, but I miss the OMFG feeling when losing a fleet of ships, maintained by dedicated starfleet personell, like ants in a firestorm...

-Also, I'd like the promy

-Also, I'd like to have tractor beams to be used the way they are used in star trek: Always.
As some sort of counter effect, you should be able to send some sort of feedback pulse through tractor beams (some ships should have that ability)

-Borg: I've got a feeling we should stick to Probe (scoutship), sphere, and cube. Then, through assimilation, you could upgrade the ships (sphere->tactical sphere, cube->tactical cube). A fleet of assims is too dominion-wars style...
The borg could easialy destroy the federation completely, if they would take the time and effort. Instead, they slowly expand. In a way, all ships are on their own. I miss that micro-management feeling in FO (not to mention armada2)
So: less basebuilding, more shipmanagement.

-The klingons are being redone: Hell yeah:D

-I miss the cards Perhaps this could be an avatar addition to the dominion?


-Finally, I've been thinking about how it would be possible to incorporate some of the..... more exploration-ish aspects of star trek to the game....
Obviously, this has to happen through campains. Any news on this?
My ideas go more along the line of bridge commander.... so I wont bother you with that here....


All in all, my idea is that Fleet Ops is more focussed on the Fleet aspect, than Ops.
Things get too swarmy very quickly. It's too easy to make a dominion-wars-scale battle, starting from scratch. Instead, I think, it should be focussed on small skirmishes, like the battle in First Contact, or the almost-battle in nemesis (scimitar vs the fed fleet that had been marshalled by picard).
More tactics, less ships...

posted on November 15th, 2009, 12:45 pm

I absolutly support your ideas. But...

It's true that there is no OMG feeling when you lose a fleet, but it isn't that eas to introduce. Quick rebuilds are needed, ohterwise the game would always end immediatly after one side loses its fleet. If you want the OMG feeling and suffer a real fallback in offense, you would have to make the game much more defense oriented. Your base would need to hold even if your attack fleet is crushed (and you can't build it up again in the next 10 mins) and this means there need to be bonuses for ships when near the starbase, and a crazy strong starbase with artillary range. I believe this will not happen.

Same thing goes for the focus on exploration. This would need much grater maps, which is nealry impossible, as lagging and resource consumption increases rapindly with the maps size.

posted on November 15th, 2009, 5:43 pm

Welcome to the forums

The Feds are getting a major overhaul in one of the next few patches, so they will become "more like the shows".

If you play online, and especially 1v1, you will see that the Borg and all the other factions rarely get up to "DS9-style" fleets because there is a lot more micromanagement . If you just play non competitively or against the AI there is great room for error and for massing huge inflexible and inefficient fleets - try that against a good human player and it will all end in disaster. Most people's fleets end up being 6 units large in good matches.

Campaigns will not appear for a very long time due to huge time constraints and the desire to implement all factions before adding in them. However, fan-designed campaigns will become possible after the next patch. http://fleetopsguide.freecp.net/campaign

As for the Cards being in...
http://fleetopsguide.freecp.net/dominion

As for the Promie: Unofficial FAQ - The Hitchhiker's Guide to Fleet Operations

The vessel will be in as a map object (and something you can get through neutral buildings in a future release). What crazy idea drove the storyboard authors to make the Prometheus MVAM a "super weapon" is beyond Optec’s imagination. As he said, “even my mobile phone can calculate 3-d vectors for attacking 3 vessels, that’s not much of a trick. Putting three power cores in one vessel to make them real combatant vessels seems like a waste to me—what with modern electronic warfare mechanisms, like ECM and stuff like that. At the end of the day I think the Prometheus is probably an effective tool of war – but its power cores are just damn expensive!" DOCa Cola on the other hand thinks the Prometheus is cool, but believes currently there is no proper way to achieve a good-looking multi-vector assault mode (one that doesn’t involve three single parts flying around the map with each being able to be commanded). Until then, the Prometheus won’t be a buildable warship.

posted on November 17th, 2009, 9:53 am

Thanks for the reply!

To be honest, I rarely play online. Maybe my 'critique' should be focussed on the AI instead? (A)

RIP cards

Promy through a neutral building? I'd have it warp in as an experimental class...
Plz do a good job on the MVAM...

posted on November 17th, 2009, 10:44 am

I'm soon the cardies will rise again.  Not in the near future, but the constant support by members of this forum will make them recover from their devastation within  some decades only.