Starship combat influenced by Star Fleet Battles?

[Tamanous]

After a futile search through this forum I am left to ponder over star ship combat in this game.

Has there been any official word on whether or not the devs are influenced or is drawing upon mechanics from Star Fleet Battles game? Once it wasn't licensed to Star Trek at all but with the couple video game conversions I know it later picked up the official Star Trek stamp.

Anyone in the know?

[Arcticfrost]

After a futile search through this forum I am left to ponder over star ship combat in this game.

Has there been any official word on whether or not the devs are influenced or is drawing upon mechanics from Star Fleet Battles game? Once it wasn't licensed to Star Trek at all but with the couple video game conversions I know it later picked up the official Star Trek stamp.

Anyone in the know?

Lol how could you not find any threads on this, but o well.

Basically or at least in my opinion, it’s pretty much going to be a mix of, movement like that of legacy, subsystem control like BC and damage moding like dominion wars.

O and welcome to the forms;)

[Tribbler]

Hi!!! (Waves with invisisble arms)

Welcome to the STO forums.

Use the search key and look up the basic elements like keywords:

Ship Movement
Ships
PVP

and then look under the developer thread (last dev post sticky). for official comments from the Cryptic Team.

[Chillee]

SFB is not official Star Trek canon either.

[Tamanous]

Well it seems nobody seems to understand my question....let me rephrase:

I am not asking what space combat will be like (I have read as many posts about it as some of you likely). I am asking if the developers have officially stated somewhere that they are specifically, officially or loosely concept borrowing on the Star Fleet Battles system. It is this information I have not been able to find.

Perhaps some of you would know of it from the "Star Fleet Command" games (actually only the first one was using the core rules to any real extent...the later versions were simplified adaptations).

The information thus far leans heavily on the system but perhaps it is simply due to the few details give thus far. Hearing a quote from a dev along the lines of "We were influenced at least a little by the Star Fleet Battles system....blah, blah, blah.." would equal an instant sell for me as I loved the game simply that much. Enough to at least bump it up the scale of anticipation. It is the same reason why I am following Champions Online intently despite not really liking the super hero genre much at all...but I love the Hero system.

We all have our reasons as to why we like some games but mine is not because I am a huge Star Trek fan any more...I am looking for playability and mechanics in a game that I would love to experience.

Thanks for the search tips though...and the late welcome seeing I joined the same time as the one guy with 590 posts :)

[Tamanous]

SFB is not official Star Trek canon either.


Star Fleet Command (based in Star Fleet Battles) later became officially licensed by Star Trek. Canon is not the issue...game play mechanics is the issue and can influence developers without any connection to story.

[Chillee]

Star Fleet Command (based in Star Fleet Battles) later became officially licensed by Star Trek. Canon is not the issue...game play mechanics is the issue and can influence developers without any connection to story.

There does not seem to be historically any great common thread between starship combat games in Star Trek. Certainly, even though the games in the SFC series (1, 2, OP, and 3) were different in some key ways to each other (i.e. # shield facings). Certainly, Bridge Commander (good), Klingon Academy (darn good), Legacy (unpatched and without mods= bad; with mods above average), and Dominion Wars (ugly) shared nothing in common except indifferent branding.

[Lepton]

Star Trek Online's combat is in no way related to Star Fleet Battles. Devs have never mentioned the board game. Steve V. Cole is owed nothing. You can tell him I said so.

[DanSeale]

Star Fleet Command (based in Star Fleet Battles) later became officially licensed by Star Trek. Canon is not the issue...game play mechanics is the issue and can influence developers without any connection to story.

Quite the contrary SFC community was ruined with overly zealous SFB fans who eventually took over what was left. As that occured more and more folks left. Had Orion Pirates been left alone and the bugs fixed it would have been better off. There were all sorts of heated arguments over everything form the "magic photon torpedo" to who knows what.

In short I hope we stay away from most ... if not all ... SFB stuff.

I'm sure these statements will upset some folks. For that I'm sorry .. but SFB as a table top game is a great game. As a real time game it has waay too many issues and simply does not work.

[Zepath]

Oh man, I sure hope we don't hit the SFB level of involvement here.

I want this to be a technical/tactical/strategic game ... but I don't want to be so bogged down in that stuff that I can't enjoy my encounters because I'm bangng my head against a calculator and thumbing through my note book.

I want depth, I want how my ship to matter, I want how I outfit it to matter, I want tactical/strategic encounters .... but the standard MMO depth of details is just fine with me.

That is, it matters if you are the type that wants to be the uber uber player .... but for the standard player, you can get along with just know the basics.

[dyvimtorm]

After a futile search through this forum I am left to ponder over star ship combat in this game.

Has there been any official word on whether or not the devs are influenced or is drawing upon mechanics from Star Fleet Battles game? Once it wasn't licensed to Star Trek at all but with the couple video game conversions I know it later picked up the official Star Trek stamp.

Anyone in the know?

Just a brief comment, when searching, try using advanced search and change to titles only, it gives a narrower result pool. Starfleet battles as keyword gives a couple of necro'ed threads, so parhps you have done that. Regardless, I suspect there'll be influences from every ST battle game prior to this one coming out. But the influence from other games will only be tangential for most, in terms of combat, probably better to look at other MMOs as inspiration, though it is my hope they will exceed what has come before :)

[Tamanous]

I am perfectly ok with tactics being very 'SFB light'. It struck me that the devs has described the combat in ways similar to SFB. In no way would I want that level of control in an mmo. I in fact have argued many times that too much tactical addictions ruin the rpg elements to games (IE. D&D 4e...horrible rpg....yet Star Wars Saga is great....fine line I guess).

The obvious direction though that the game is taking is toward some heavy fleet conflicts along side of traditional character development. To this effect SFB was terrific. Canon aside it is completely personal opinion that it ruined Star Fleet Command. It was a space tactical game...not an rpg. Maybe the wrong players purchased it and thought otherwise.

Either which way it is obvious there has been no mention of if SFB influenced the combat here officially. My question is answered. Hell of a crazy and round about way to answer it mind you. Yes or no question would have sufficed. Board police are strong here....should be an official class in the game :) .

[Sobekeus]

The further away STO stays from SFB and SFC, the better for everyone.

[Chillee]

The further away STO stays from SFB and SFC, the better for everyone.

I concur with my esteemed colleage

[Trsmash]

As I currently understand it the Dev's have not quoted that they have derived their combat system from any specific games that have been released to this date.

If they were to do so I would personally like them to say that they got their inspriation for the combat system from Star Trek Bridge Commander. I thought the combat in that game was fairly nice. If they have the relatively around the same movement and targeting and weapons fire options as in Bridge Commander and expanded options for distributing power and so forth I think that would be an overall solid combat system.

[wootage]

How can you base STO's combat on SFB? Do you mean firing arcs, hit probabilities, etc? Or movement mechanics? 'Cause in space, either there are no hexes, or everything is one really big hex lol.

I'm pretty sure all of the capabilities of the ships in SFB have been changed by the timeline that STO is set in, so those rules no longer apply. Even if they did, I have no idea how you could tell from playing STO.

[Loekii]

After a futile search through this forum I am left to ponder over star ship combat in this game.

Has there been any official word on whether or not the devs are influenced or is drawing upon mechanics from Star Fleet Battles game? Once it wasn't licensed to Star Trek at all but with the couple video game conversions I know it later picked up the official Star Trek stamp.

Anyone in the know?


Welcome to the Boards.

Don't worry about the 'use the search function', comments. Information is poorly laid out and the search function is weak anyway.

As to your question, I think they will be similar, but that is just because they are both Star Trek Games, that share similar generic game mechanics.

For example, the 'Damage' boxes in SFB, are just another form of 'hitpoints' -- which we will see in STO.

Another example would be 'distribution of power' in STO, which will be similar to Power Allocation in SFBs.

Now both of these might be 'similar', but that is because of the generic nature for which SFB was inspired from.

Its is like saying that all fantasy RPGs are 'copying' D&D, when is more that they all just use the same common logical elements to gameplay.

[PigUp]

I've played all the SFC games (which is mostly SFB without the ever expanding modules and some rule changes to fit the real time nature of PC games) and while I would love STO to have the depth of those games, any direct translation of game rules would be impossible. Those games are designed from the ground up to be 2D. However some general concepts like weapon balance, power management, and tractor beams (probably the the most balanced system I've seen in any Trek game) would fit quite well into STO.

Side note: If it were up to me I would try to make combat as simulation level complex SFB/SFC are. It may take a hours to days to learn, but you will spending 100's of hours with a MMO. The foundation of the game, combat, should be complex. It may intimidate at first but everyone will eventually get it, and the level of immersion is astounding. Even though it was locked in 2D, flying a starship in SFC felt so real. The rules give it a complexity that creates a certain believability that you are the captain and mostly everything you've seen on the big and small screen is a possibility.

[Loekii]

I've played all the SFC games (which is mostly SFB without the ever expanding modules and some rule changes to fit the real time nature of PC games) and while I would love STO to have the depth of those games, any direct translation of game rules would be impossible. Those games are designed from the ground up to be 2D. However some general concepts like weapon balance, power management, and tractor beams (probably the the most balanced system I've seen in any Trek game) would fit quite well into STO.

Side note: If it were up to me I would try to make combat as simulation level complex SFB/SFC are. It may take a hours to days to learn, but you will spending 100's of hours with a MMO. The foundation of the game, combat, should be complex. It may intimidate at first but everyone will eventually get it, and the level of immersion is astounding. Even though it was locked in 2D, flying a starship in SFC felt so real. The rules give it a complexity that creates a certain believability that you are the captain and mostly everything you've seen on the big and small screen is a possibility.

I certain agree with the idea of making combat challenging -- easy to jump into at the beginning, but difficult to master at the end.

I don't see Cryptic's movement system to be much more dynamic than the 2D of SFC or SFB. In fact, it basically really is just like playing Star Fleet Battles -- Minatures, with 'Altitude' bars:

http://www.salute.co.uk/salute2003/post_2003_images/pics/Watford%20Wargames%20Federation%20-%20Star%20Fleet%20Battles%201.jpg
http://www.wargames.co.uk/Pending/Archive/June03/Sal2.jpg

-- Basically, you just take the X/Y Unit of Measure, and 'add' the Z axis using that Unit.

[Jertyrael]

Lol how could you not find any threads on this, but o well.

Basically or at least in my opinion, it’s pretty much going to be a mix of, movement like that of legacy, subsystem control like BC and damage moding like dominion wars.

O and welcome to the forms;)

*seizure* movement like legacy....
why not movement like BC, ya *******s!?