Star Trek Online Battle

posted on February 23rd, 2011, 4:46 pm

Difference is, FO engine glows are not so way over done and are actually plausible visually.

The glows are more realistic than the contrails, but you would need an atmosphere (preferably something foggy) to see them in real life.

And since a lot of people seem to have ignored my earlier post, movement contrails are amazingly helpful in space combat games in areas that don't have obvious points of reference (planets, asteroids, etc.) such as deep space. They let you judge the speed and direction of enemy vessels, especially small ones.

Try playing the fan made Babylon 5 game "I've Found Her." There are no contrails on enemy vessels, or you if you go into the third person mode. It's really hard to hit anything or tell how fast your target is moving in relation to you.

posted on February 23rd, 2011, 4:51 pm

Doesn't Bridge Commander have a 'movement blur' that could be used in a similar way? I wonder why they never considered that approach...

Difference is, FO engine glows are not so way over done and are actually plausible visually.

A visual gimmick is still just a visual gimmick, plausible or otherwise. Plausability isn't even really entirely relevent though, since this is a Star Trek game.

posted on February 23rd, 2011, 5:36 pm

Try playing the fan made Babylon 5 game "I've Found Her." There are no contrails on enemy vessels, or you if you go into the third person mode. It's really hard to hit anything or tell how fast your target is moving in relation to you.

i played that and thought it was fine, i never had any trouble hitting stuff.

posted on February 24th, 2011, 1:23 pm

You know the shield indicator on STO was influenced by SFC, And Tbh I actually prefer it around the ship it's quicker to keep an eye on when your in a battle with lot's of ships.

STO has ridiculous amounts of problems, That Me and many others addressed during the beta but we got flamed for on the official forums. Wasn't till about 6months later I started to see people who disagreed with me totally start to come around to my way of thinking. The positive for STO is that it has a large subscriber base and they have time to make improvements.

But Until the game is made more difficult I'm not playing it, It's still too easy.

posted on February 25th, 2011, 8:00 am

my STO issues (and why Im considering droping my subscription)

1- huge interiors. Seriously, that isnt a case of 'it's needed for the camera' it's a case of 'devs were lazy'
2- contrails
3- My STO folder is a tad over 13GB. A patch over 1GB in size isnt uncommon.
4- The 'balance' is horrible. it's a standard MMO 'level up and get stronger guns lol' type game. Which quite often makes zero trek sense.
5- Custom ships. It's nice to do. They take it to silly levels.

Balance is the real key issue to me tho.

Somethimes you encounter a random enemy NPC that attacks, and you barley notice your shields being hit before you explode. But if you're in group with a higher ranked member as leader, and click the 'level matching' button, you magicaly take less damage from high level NPCs and dish out more as well.

It's quite silly, to be honest.

posted on February 25th, 2011, 12:37 pm

my STO issues (and why Im considering droping my subscription)

1- huge interiors. Seriously, that isnt a case of 'it's needed for the camera' it's a case of 'devs were lazy'
2- contrails
3- My STO folder is a tad over 13GB. A patch over 1GB in size isnt uncommon.
4- The 'balance' is horrible. it's a standard MMO 'level up and get stronger guns lol' type game. Which quite often makes zero trek sense.
5- Custom ships. It's nice to do. They take it to silly levels.

Balance is the real key issue to me tho.

Somethimes you encounter a random enemy NPC that attacks, and you barley notice your shields being hit before you explode. But if you're in group with a higher ranked member as leader, and click the 'level matching' button, you magicaly take less damage from high level NPCs and dish out more as well.

It's quite silly, to be honest.

1, I agree with you but I remember reading that the scale is being worked on apparently

2, I'm ok with them but I can understand why you don't like them.

3, The Size of STO is pretty ridiculous and if I didn't have the net connection I have I'd agree with you on the 1GB patch sizes, I'm lucky that I got the whole roughly 6mb/s downloads otherwise I'd cringe at the Download times.

4, The balance is a joke at times, I actually think the game is way too easy. I remember during the Beta you would get non stop threads/posts about how difficult stuff was. I tried to disprove this by simply showing me in my Akira doing missions solo vs Dom/Klingons once you get to around DS9. Obviously people kept moaning and we got that massive nerf patch which ruined the game and made the whole game soloable.

The Stronger Guns type thing though tbh is a factor of it being an MMO unfortunately, I wouldn't mind a different approach but I can't think of one that would work and if you can i'd be glad to hear.

5, The custom ships is a touchy one, I like some of the Escort varients around the Akira - Defiant - Prometheus levels, However some are just ridiculous like the Advanced Cruisers that look just plain silly.

posted on March 21st, 2011, 4:42 pm

[me=Adam_C]passes out at the rage i have for that game [/me]

posted on March 21st, 2011, 9:54 pm

The Stronger Guns type thing though tbh is a factor of it being an MMO unfortunately, I wouldn't mind a different approach but I can't think of one that would work and if you can i'd be glad to hear.

All guns of each type do the same base damage.

Being higher level means better accuracy, rate of fire, better criticals, etc etc.

Also restrict the bigger ships to higher levels, but at the same time actually make the ships DIFFERENT.

For those that dont/havent played: Currently the feds, for example, have three ship types. "Escort" "Cruiser" "Science Ship"

Escorts are the pulse phaser using ships. Sabre, Akira, Defiant, are the first three escorts, which is kinda silly.

posted on March 22nd, 2011, 6:49 am

its looks kinda weird if you see sovereign firing from 8 turrets...

or excelsior firing 8 separate beams from like 4 hardpoints


or how silly dual beam bank attack looks like

+ sets.... lol

posted on March 22nd, 2011, 7:14 pm

Well 8 beams isnt that big of an issue, cause going all beams tends to rape your power supply. I tend to go 2 torpedos and the rest energy weapons, cause 2 torpedos halves the refire time (for non STO players,  in STO torps used a shared cooldown, you fire one torp, and it adds a delay until others can fire, so it onyl is worth it to have two torpedos as each fires in half the normal time)

posted on March 22nd, 2011, 9:29 pm

well i tried 6 beam arrays + 2 torpedoes and if you equip EPS Flow Regulator then you are fine with energy

posted on March 22nd, 2011, 11:02 pm

well i tried 6 beam arrays + 2 torpedoes and if you equip EPS Flow Regulator then you are fine with energy

Oh you had 3 beams + a torp for and aft ?

I meant all beams in a facing.

posted on March 23rd, 2011, 1:50 am

my usual equip is 2x beam 2x torpedo in front and 2x beam + 1x torpedo and 1 tricobalt mine in back

but when i tried 3x beam 1 torpedo in front and 3x beam + 1 tricobalt mine in back with aditionat EPS Flow regulator and power is fine.. i just dont like that beam spam several beam arrays firing from same hardpoint

posted on March 23rd, 2011, 6:20 am

my usual equip is 2x beam 2x torpedo in front and 2x beam + 1x torpedo and 1 tricobalt mine in back

but when i tried 3x beam 1 torpedo in front and 3x beam + 1 tricobalt mine in back with aditionat EPS Flow regulator and power is fine.. i just dont like that beam spam several beam arrays firing from same hardpoint

Ah, Im not to the admrial endgame loadouts yet so no tricobalt for me,

Currently I got a galaxy at captain rank, 2x 2x phaser fore/aft

The quantums fire 1 every 4 seconds, and do pretty damned good at hurting enemy ships, yet I still (ESPECILLY in broadside) have enough power to deshield enemy ships.

Whats even funnier is playing against players when they try to use mines or heavy plasma torps on me (for non players both can be targeted, and klinks and feds can all use plasma torps as if they were pointy eared roms, cause STO is about PvP, not trek common sense, to  a degree that would even make flops cringe :p ) as all I gotta do is hit my fire at will button (a magic power in STO, your tactical officer fires phasers at twice the normal rate, but randomly shoots all valid target, Perfect for point defence).

And even when Im against someone with an exellent PvP loadout, I have enough self heal magic abilties (lets face it, thats what they freaking are) that I can magikly heal myself or my shields quite a bit, and with autofire (cause what kinda MMO would it be w/o the ability to autocast spells!) I really can lay on the hurt as long as I turn in a smart manner and have my fire/shield arcs optimized to give me minimal damage and dish out max damage!