Pulse Phasers, Beam Weapons and Feds, Oh My!

[Nerresand]

Obviously, those orange beams and red/blue glowy exploding lights that we all know and love will be a big part of the arsenal in ST:O. I've heard little mention and seen little sign, however, of whether pulse phasers will be in the game (or what other weapons at all besides phasers, torpedoes and disruptors, for that matter). As far as I know, the only time pulse phasers are seen in "modern" Trek history is on the Defiant; indeed, the saucer design of Federation starships lends itself to the use of "slotted" beam emitters. Beam-type phasers are more of an elegant, versatile design whereas pulse phasers are more of an "aim the ship in this direction and shoot" type of weapon. That may make them fairly impractical for Federation designs, but I think it would be cool to incorporate pulse phasers onto Federation ships in ST:O, if only to spice things up a bit.

I.E., in the Armada 2 mod Fleet Operations, the Nebula class is given a directional pulse phaser bank that can fire along any vector. In that case, it was embedded in the dorsal pod; surely most ship designs would be capable of supporting one or two pulse phaser hardpoints in a location that makes sense and fits with the look of the ship. Weapon hardpoints in Star Trek never were as conspicuous as they are in most sci-fi designs, anyway, so the change in appearance would probably be minimal. Pulse phasers could be differentiated from beam weapons in the gameplay aspect by such factors as range, targeting arc, power consumption and damage output. Maybe like the tactical equivalent of a balance between standard phasers and torpedoes, I don't know.

I guess my point is that as much as I love beam weapons and the unique flavor phasers have in Star Trek (there's something soothing about the sound of a few thousand terawatts of power being pumped into the puny hull of a Galor-class), I'd love to see pulse phasers playing a more noticeable role by the time 2409 rolls around.

(This reminds me, I'm curious about general opinion on "skin-tight" (Nemesis) vs. "bubble" (Everything Else) shielding on ships, but I'm sure that's probably been discussed several times by now, and the trailer clearly shows bubble shielding anyway)

[marscentral]

I'm guessing that there will be a huge arsenal of weapons from canon and stuff they've invented.

I do prefer bubble shields.

[CrisNavarro]

I kinda prefer the skin tight shields myself. Must makes more sense to me that skin-tight is stronger. Allows you to put more power into smaller space. I figure bubble shields sacrifce protection for the sake of range, with the only practical application being when you need to extend your shields around a weaker ally to afford them some protection. Or if you need to use them as a doorstop(like Geordi and Scotty did in the Dyson Sphere)

[abergy32]

Bubble shields would also tend to take more damage when they take up more space that does not even need defending. If you want to defend something other than your own ship bubble shields are great, but if not I'd go with skin tight. It would be cool if you could modify your shields to do either one.

[E.kreeger]

... It would be cool if you could modify your shields to do either one.


I would bet on this as being possible in game. Based on the range of customization/ control over our ships they have been telling us we will have, it wouldn't be logical to have strictly bubble-type shielding around ships.