Hailing the Enemy

[JamesDBurke]

"Hail them."

The last volley of disruptor fire had knocker out their shields. A well placed torpedo was all it took to knock out main power and now they sat dead in space - like a ripe fruit ready to be plucked and squeezed of it's juices. Motionless, defenseless, weaponless.

"The enemy Captain is responding, sir."

"On screen."

"This is Captain Stevens of the Federa-"

"You will power down whatever systems I have not already destroyed and prepare to be boarded. Any resistance will be met with deadly violence. You will also transmit all tactical and astrometric data in your systems immediately to my ship. Do this, and I may let you limp back to your precious Federation."

"The ship is in ruins, the computers are fried. I need a minute to get things in order to comply."

"I give you...two minutes...for your valiant crew."

*********

OK, a little set-up there, but I completely hope that when it comes to PvP that you don't always have to utterly destroy the enemy. It would be totally awesome if you had pounded your opposition into a totally defenseless state you could then board the ship, raid supplies, assets and materials and even download starmaps and tactical data. Anyone know anything solid on this, because for me this would be the absolute best - especially if you and the other player both had team speak and you could hear the defeat in your opponents voice - oohh, what fun it would be!!

[STO-Stucco]

Yeah, for me, I am very curious on how in-depth they plan on getting with situations like this. They did state in the webcast you can board your enemies vessel I believe. I think it will be situations like this and details like this that will make the game.

Maybe take it a bit further and during battle you knock out their shields. You could send over boarding parties while still engaged to help take control of the ship or something or steal some supplies. Your boarding parties success can be determined on their combat training lvl vs. the enemies ships combat training lvl+home advantage and crew size etc...

Attacked Ship: Sir, we just lost our shields!
Attacking Ship: Prepare a boarding party, target engineering supplies
Attacked Ship Computer: Intruder Alert, Deck 7!
Attacked Ship: ....uh-oh!
Attacking Ship: boooya!

[Cathbadh]

I like it - there is an argument for it being more honourable to disarm and capture an enemy prize than simply to blast them away. Pretty sure in a real war the Klingons would prefer it too. Or maybe they really are mostly psychopaths?

It would be a nice touch but hopefully without much repetition if ever implemented.

[Wolf503]

"Hail them."

The last volley of disruptor fire had knocker out their shields. A well placed torpedo was all it took to knock out main power and now they sat dead in space - like a ripe fruit ready to be plucked and squeezed of it's juices. Motionless, defenseless, weaponless.

"The enemy Captain is responding, sir."

"On screen."

"This is Captain Stevens of the Federa-"

"You will power down whatever systems I have not already destroyed and prepare to be boarded. Any resistance will be met with deadly violence. You will also transmit all tactical and astrometric data in your systems immediately to my ship. Do this, and I may let you limp back to your precious Federation."

"The ship is in ruins, the computers are fried. I need a minute to get things in order to comply."

"I give you...two minutes...for your valiant crew."

*********

OK, a little set-up there, but I completely hope that when it comes to PvP that you don't always have to utterly destroy the enemy. It would be totally awesome if you had pounded your opposition into a totally defenseless state you could then board the ship, raid supplies, assets and materials and even download starmaps and tactical data. Anyone know anything solid on this, because for me this would be the absolute best - especially if you and the other player both had team speak and you could hear the defeat in your opponents voice - oohh, what fun it would be!!

This is exactly how it should play out!

I will be very disappointed if the only way to defeat someone is to completely destroy them.

[NorwayClass]

With any luck once you take out their shields, disable their engines, and weapons essentially leaving their ship dead in space, you can then target their artificial gravity and leave the crew floating in space as well as their ship buahaha:D

[seventodark]

with any luck you be able to do anything you like to there ship
hope you can hail

[bradley1701]

I love this idea as well...and hopefully it isn't like in Pirates of the Burning Sea where you have to earn the skill/use a skill point in order to gain "diplomacy" which is the skill that allows you to communicate with the enemy...so stupid. I want to be able to talk freely with the enemy from day 1!

[Sythian]

I love this idea as well...and hopefully it isn't like in Pirates of the Burning Sea where you have to earn the skill/use a skill point in order to gain "diplomacy" which is the skill that allows you to communicate with the enemy...so stupid. I want to be able to talk freely with the enemy from day 1!

lol, that brought a bad senerio into my head.

"Captian, we are being hailed." - Ensign Guy

"dang, if only I had the skill to respond." - Cpt Some Dude

:confused: - Ensign Guy

[auutumn]

I'm thinking that they could have pre-recorded and user recorded messages that a player can assign to unique hot keys which can be activated during an encounter, battle, negotiations, etc. They would just add atmosphere and be handy for those who are into RPGing. There should also be those commands which tell your crew to attack, stand down, etc.

[headlockman]

I'm sure most are going to shoot first and ask questions later :p

[TheMasterpiece]

Im sure in PvP you cant just kill everyone cause the PC and the PCs bridge crew would have to be protected

[marscentral]

I certainly like the idea that a peaceful solution could be negotiated (certainly in PvE), but I don't think even the most skillful negotiators should be able to avoid combat all the time!

[OrabIbo]

Wasn't aware there was much of an option but to do this? After all we can't destroy ships in the first place.

Well at least if they are destroyed they aren't permanently. Plus, it brings alot of greifing opprotunities. While being introduced to EvE has opened my eyes a little.

I've somewhat grown to enjoy the risk in PvP in EvE. But boarding your ship? I dunno.

While I'm all for it in STO. I'm not sure that Cryptic would have a fully explorable ship that ppl are expecting to be in the game. kinda figured they would create bridges and thats about it for interiors. After all if player crews are ruled out why have extensive interiors to explore?

Sure you can invite ppl to see your ships interior, but I can't say that there will be an engineering, Holodeck, Ten-forward, Observation deck, Captains Quarters...etc. I think a bridge is all we will get, and possibly and instanced quarters. But who knows. I can see ship interiors being entirely instanced.

[Sullen]

Would be cool to have an in-game mic system, so one ship could hail the other and actually talk. Non-RPers talking to RPers might turn out a bit funny, though. :P I suppose that's the part where the captain gives the finger across the neck to cut the hailing frequency out.

[rk1988]

Talking with the enemy and using diplomacy instead of fighting all the time would be awsome, unfortunatly I think in most scenarios unless you have a bigger ship your getting shot on sight.

[Signalsgt]

Would be cool to have an in-game mic system, so one ship could hail the other and actually talk. Non-RPers talking to RPers might turn out a bit funny, though. :P I suppose that's the part where the captain gives the finger across the neck to cut the hailing frequency out.


Don't even go down the RP vs Non-RP'r road. I'd be more concerned with a 30 something (me) ending up in a crap talking session with a teenager.

That will not end well. :)

[KO_Gilligan]

You just fly in and mash the fire button. You can Mash the Torpedo fire button, or the Phaser fire button. This is where understanding good strategy comes in...
:cool:

[Copenhagen]

Hailing is good!

That would be awesome! If you have some trash talking teenager come on there just cut the freq and show them what your engineers have been doing to modify your weapons systems!

[ThosaH]

awesome idea dude.... i was thinking the same thing the other day.... negotiations also would be cool.... before a fight. however, if one side decides they are out-gunned, and want to flee... fighting at warp speed should be outlawed... i know they did it in star trek.... but the moment a photon torpedo left the subspace field, it would be warped back behind the ship a hundred light years. that gives everyone a "way out" in PvP also...

[Magnuson]

I think it would be a nice option to be able to hail the other player and negotiate a surrender or truce. I'd also like to see a surrender option in PVP so that you don't have have your ship completely destroyed in a PVP battle. Maybe by surrendering you save you ship, but sacrifice resources, star maps, or some other penalty.

[SoongType]

Better hope communications dosnt suffer durring the battle.:pAlso what If your bridge gets taken over,there would be no need for a hail-maybe a self destruct sequence could be done quick enough to avoid capture.

[Sullen]

"Lower your shields and surrender immediately, and I will spare you."

"LOLGAY."

"..."

"Hahaha!"

"... aw c'mon."

[Trekkie]

I don't really think voice command should be in the game at launch, but I would definitely like to see alternatives to completely destroying your opponent because it would add some more depth and strategy to the game, which is inevitably a great thing.

[warbot7777]

Yeah If they have this in I'll play for sure, I really want to be able to cripple a ship and cause minimal casualties If needed. As a federation captain I will try to show mercy as Picard would. Target the weapons, shields, and engines and then make them surrender. Oh and diplomacy first of course :)

[boydyma]

most webcams have a basic face altering technology, hope that could be introduced here, would make communications really interesting... if a little to bandwidth intensive and totally unrealistic..... but nice eyecandy..... have your face morped into the race you are playing as.... overlay klingon features over your face...

totally unrealistic for now... but i can wish cant i?

[Father_Origin]

I have no problem with that...IF, and only IF
all such transmissions can be heard/read by anyone in the area.

WHY?


To eliminate player spys.

I don't want some Fed player, logging into thier klingon spy toon so they can relay
all our battle plans and positions to thier Fed fleet friends without us knowing
that we have been ratted out and by whom.

[warbot7777]

If they were allowing a RP only server I would join that. Also I would initiate self destruct Picard alpha tango at the first sign of loss lol.

[Hagon]

Normally I'm all for total non-communication between factions. It adds so much to the faction vs faction conflict. An air of mystery if you will. I can see that the other side is talking, but I'm totally in the dark as to what they're talking about and I'm left to wonder. Being able to talk to them adds absolutely nothing to a game, except headaches from having to read all the childish drivel.

Someone mentioned PotBS and how one had to burn a skill point and how they didn't like that and thought they should have just been able to talk to the enemy. I have the opposite opinion pretty much. I don't think they should have offered the option at all. I was on the unofficial RP server (before they merged it with another), and I assumed things would be more mature so I burnt a skill point to get diplomacy to be able to talk with the enemy. What a mistake that was, and eventually did a respec so I could drop the skill. It served no purpose whatsoever, and detracted from the game too much in my opinion.

That being said, I don't think they'd be able to justify not being able to communicate with the opposing faction in STO though, since the universal translator has been an integral part of Trek since the beginning.

I therefor anticipate the game being rife with trash talking and other disruptive behaviour in chat channels that always comes when players are in heated competition with each other in these games. It's not going to be pretty, and for those thinking it'll be better if there were RP servers, if it is, it would be the fist time I've seen it. In fact, on most RP servers I've been on in games where the "enemies" can talk to each other, it's actually been worse.

I would like the boarding feature though, but would prefer any communications that need be involved be through set text messages one can prompt from icons on their tool bar.

Stuff like...

"Hagon of the battle cruiser XXXXXX demands your surrender!"

"You have surrendered. You will be boarded in XXX."

"You have refused to surrender. Prepare to fight to the death!"

etc etc.

[Magnuson]

Yeah I too was thinking that the Hailing option would be text based instead of voice. First there's the technical difficulty and bandwidth issue of adding voice, then there's dealing with the racist 14 year old kid who can't shut his mouth. Anyone who's ever played on Xbox Live knows what I'm talking about.

That being said as others have already pointed out, even text chat could get pretty heated, so as Hagon suggested in the post before a selection of prepared text messages would probably be a good alternative. So long as there was a variety of prepared answers to reflect the myriad personalities in the game I'd have no problem with a system like that at all.

[warbot7777]

Hmm sounds good to me as long as there are lots of text options. If all we get are 3 options I will be sad.

[CaptainLynch]

Hailing the opposing ship is completely withing Star Trek canon. And not being able to communicate with the other faction is fairly impossible because everyone has universal translators and is apparently taking Klingon and Galacta lessons. :rolleyes:

Only obscure NPC races would be difficult to communicate with. That's just canon