ST Torpedo Discussion

posted on November 23rd, 2010, 3:26 am

I was responding to the main post of the thread.  And I keep seeing the same "has to be exactly like canon" theme from some people and they don't seem to grasp its a game with balancing issues and checks that need to be in place so one team isn't more op than another.

Ah, ok.  In that case, I completely agree with you.  Canon is great, but it tends to favor certain factions, so some allowances must be made.

posted on November 23rd, 2010, 11:38 pm

Ah, ok.  In that case, I completely agree with you.  Canon is great, but it tends to favor certain factions, so some allowances must be made.

It doesnt really favor factions. The problem with fleetops (and most other RTSs) Is balace thru making ships/weapons equal (more or less) rather than balancing thru cost.

I'd rather have photons on ships that should have photons, and just have them cost more, than have them not look like they should.

Stuff could be balanced easy too, smaller ships (like the BoP or Sabre) with photons just get a reduced rate of fire in addition to costing more, that way the same damage over time is done


I'm not saying that because the defiant killed ships in 1-2 shots it should kill those ships ingame in 1-2 shots, but I am saying that randomly changing the loadout of some of the older ships in trek still used in fleet ops for a dubious 'balance' is the problem.

[Tyler]

posted on November 23rd, 2010, 11:44 pm

Last edited by Tyler on November 23rd, 2010, 11:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think he meant canon favors certain factions, which the plot is well known to do.

posted on November 23rd, 2010, 11:54 pm

I think he meant canon favors certain factions, which the plot is well known to do.

Yes, the PLOT favors factions, but thats it, it tends to teach us very little of the 'balance' factor.

posted on November 24th, 2010, 12:45 am

I think he meant canon favors certain factions, which the plot is well known to do.

Yeah, that's exactly what I meant.

Yes, the PLOT favors factions, but thats it, it tends to teach us very little of the 'balance' factor.

And that right there is the single biggest problem with making FO true to canon.  If we gave every ship the Federation has photon torpedos, it would be truer to canon, but it would make the Federation much more powerful than the other factions (even if you just made the ships more powerful to compensate, they'd become Borg-like).  FO is fine as it is.  I'd rather not see monstrous ships like the Defiant, Sovereign, Galaxy, Cube, Scimitar, and Narada just to make the game closer to canon.

posted on November 24th, 2010, 1:31 am

And how would even that be unbalanced ?

Sure, you could let someone build a deathstar even, but it could still be balanced.

Balance should be done thru cost, rate of fire, and other such methods, not thru making ships differnt, because as it is a number of the ships should be replaced with new models to go along with the changed loadout.

For example, the Sabre and the Nova.

The Nova has Photons, the Sabre has the quantum pulse once it's leveld up a lot.

Give the Sabre a Photon, but make the Photon it has have a very long refire rate. The canon is adherered to, but the sabre is still much weaker than the Nova.

Or for the Kliingon BoP... just give it a regular photon (because micros on regular ships are silly, they're shuttle/fighter weapons) with a 2 shot burst, then a 12 or so second refire rate. It'll look like a BoP, but the rate of fire will be slow enough to not throw balance off that much. Prehaps increase the price a little bit to balance it out.

posted on November 24th, 2010, 1:40 am

Giving a Photon to the Sabre would require rebalancing the Phaser and would make it less effective against the early game ships around when you start building it, along with the Freighter.

Besides the launcher was probably replaced with the Quantum Pulse in a class-wide refit.

posted on November 24th, 2010, 4:16 am

True, that brigns up the way ships magicly spawn weapons, :p

posted on November 24th, 2010, 9:46 pm

True, that brigns up the way ships magicly spawn weapons, :p

well ships magically build in seconds in yards, and resources magically move around, and stations magically get crew and and and

its a game, just accept this isnt a simulator. the adding of stuff in real trek would probably take a month in a dock, but are u gonna sit and wait a month while your sabre gets its shiny new gunz?

are u gonna wait a year for your sovvie to emerge from the yard?

they managed to build new gunz in enterprise, without having replicators.

experience represents crew skill, so an experienced crew with 24th century tech could make some gunz maybe.

posted on November 24th, 2010, 9:50 pm

A real-life second likely a few days in-game, considering how fast the stardates increase.

posted on November 24th, 2010, 9:53 pm

A real-life second likely a few days in-game, considering how fast the stardates increase.

yet ships move between stations in your base far slower

if you scale the time so that each second is a long time in game, then battles should end in flashes, ships should zip around the screen like crazy.

the time it takes to build a sovvie is at least a year (crude estimate)

the time taken for a battle is a few minutes.

so the sovvie taking seconds in game should mean battles last under a second lol. it just doesnt work, realism can only go so far before u have to give in and let the gameplay take priority.

posted on November 24th, 2010, 9:58 pm

Never said it was perfect, probably one of those things you shouldn't try to rationalize... Stupid brain, not liking anything incomplete or unexplained.

Unless ships build faster in war?

posted on November 24th, 2010, 10:15 pm

Unless ships build faster in war?

they do, just not this fast. unless they are skipping hull in the redshirts' quarters, they dont need air, they are dead before they can sleep anyway.

posted on November 24th, 2010, 10:20 pm

Well, in normal Star Trek the battles, ship construction, and resource gathering don't occur in the same place.  This is a game.

posted on November 24th, 2010, 10:34 pm

You dont really talk about time dimensions here, do you?

1) Star Trek is not real
2) If you take the canon-series for a "near real simulation", it is still heavily biased
3) If you put your canon-based knowledge into a game, it will get even more biased
4) And if you try to balance it out, you will get an even more biased version of "reality"

Lets point it out: Its a game with a canon "feeling". You can replace the ships with pokemon and the space with ground - you have your pokemon-simulation.

I think, this game gets its greatness out of the factor, that every race is doing different things with different approaches and under the line, its still playable against any other race. Thats a lot of work until you can call that "good", and its GREAT.

The next redo will be the borg and they will do even more "other" things like the feds will do, so you cant even compare the gameplay, but it will be balanced.

So, when we talk about realism, time, canon and "how it should be balanced", then you have two ways:

Make it realistic in a turn-based game with the most detail-level you can make (birth of the federation like but with every unit, every building, every ressource customizable, editable and changable - so you will end up working 2 hours per round) or leave it be.

This is a real-time simulation, so its limited to a very thin complex-level and fleetops manages it, to put it on a medium-high level, with "simple" options avaiblable.

Sorry, but I cant understand the arguments here.