Sath
02-21-2009, 11:06 AM
I think many people will compare scenes from the movies with STO. There were many shots showing a , Klingon Bird of Prey for example, decloaking right in front of a federation ship. In the outside shot we could see them very close together. The directors of the movies decided to do that for the effect on the screen, so they didn't have to flip between both ships permanently and it does look very impressive also.
In "reality", with ships that fast and huge, no captain would do that. We are talking about effective combat ranges of more than 20000 kilometers. We all know the scene where captain Picard ordered the destruction of a stranded and heavily damaged federation ship. He ordered 20k distance and a salvo of two torpedoes destroyed the ship after 2 seconds or so. That's a speed of 10k/sec. In some STO screenshots we can see a "dogfight" around some Borg cubes and torpedoes flying a lot slower than 10k/sec.
So my guessing is that torpedoes do have a smart speed control to maintain maneuverability on moving targets or the scene in the movie was exaggerated.
Should we really get realistic sectors, the dimensions must be immense, the largest ever realized in a game, "Elite" may be the only exception here, dunno about "EVE" though. So if it is going to be "real", we will engage each other at distances beyond 20000 kilometers. Even at impulse speed we will close up fastly and start turning to get into a superior position or to avoid torpedo impacts. We shouldn't be able to see each other in the outside view, unless wanted. There should always be a thousand or more kilometers between each other to have it real. So your oppenent should never be more than a dot on your screen.
I think we get a more scaled down version of the universe, slower combat speeds for both ships and weapons, and therefore we don't need that much space. It's more like in the movies then.
In "reality" we don't even have to see our target, the computers do the aiming and will tell us the status of the enemy ship permanently. But we all want to have some fun, so we need a smart zooming camera to show us the effects of our attacks.
Are we getting one big screen (movie) and we then have to select what is to be shown? Be it either our current target or the ship that means the greatest threat to us or just a forward view. Or will it be popup windows which automatically show us the current attacker and our target on another window?
I just wrote this to tell people that Star Trek space combat is completely different from everything else, because it's the only "beyond visual range" combat i know of. It is kind of like the old 2nd WW battleship fights but at much higher speeds. Those ships opened fire way out of visual range when the enemy ship was still behind horizon. Always point your main torpedo launchers (guns) on the target (broadside 2nd WW ships), maintain optimal combat distance and so on. This can hardly be achieved by manually controlling the ship, we normally have to trust the auto-pilot on that. Though i like realistic combat flight simulators i think the better choice for STO is a more arcade-style combat. Otherwise we have to stay 3 years on the academy to learn tactics and all that stuff. Well, i am in for that ;)
Since the space part of STO is going to play a major role, what would you like to see?
In "reality", with ships that fast and huge, no captain would do that. We are talking about effective combat ranges of more than 20000 kilometers. We all know the scene where captain Picard ordered the destruction of a stranded and heavily damaged federation ship. He ordered 20k distance and a salvo of two torpedoes destroyed the ship after 2 seconds or so. That's a speed of 10k/sec. In some STO screenshots we can see a "dogfight" around some Borg cubes and torpedoes flying a lot slower than 10k/sec.
So my guessing is that torpedoes do have a smart speed control to maintain maneuverability on moving targets or the scene in the movie was exaggerated.
Should we really get realistic sectors, the dimensions must be immense, the largest ever realized in a game, "Elite" may be the only exception here, dunno about "EVE" though. So if it is going to be "real", we will engage each other at distances beyond 20000 kilometers. Even at impulse speed we will close up fastly and start turning to get into a superior position or to avoid torpedo impacts. We shouldn't be able to see each other in the outside view, unless wanted. There should always be a thousand or more kilometers between each other to have it real. So your oppenent should never be more than a dot on your screen.
I think we get a more scaled down version of the universe, slower combat speeds for both ships and weapons, and therefore we don't need that much space. It's more like in the movies then.
In "reality" we don't even have to see our target, the computers do the aiming and will tell us the status of the enemy ship permanently. But we all want to have some fun, so we need a smart zooming camera to show us the effects of our attacks.
Are we getting one big screen (movie) and we then have to select what is to be shown? Be it either our current target or the ship that means the greatest threat to us or just a forward view. Or will it be popup windows which automatically show us the current attacker and our target on another window?
I just wrote this to tell people that Star Trek space combat is completely different from everything else, because it's the only "beyond visual range" combat i know of. It is kind of like the old 2nd WW battleship fights but at much higher speeds. Those ships opened fire way out of visual range when the enemy ship was still behind horizon. Always point your main torpedo launchers (guns) on the target (broadside 2nd WW ships), maintain optimal combat distance and so on. This can hardly be achieved by manually controlling the ship, we normally have to trust the auto-pilot on that. Though i like realistic combat flight simulators i think the better choice for STO is a more arcade-style combat. Otherwise we have to stay 3 years on the academy to learn tactics and all that stuff. Well, i am in for that ;)
Since the space part of STO is going to play a major role, what would you like to see?