Why Point of Interest flight?

[Aslan_chShran]

I know traveling via Impulse would take a lot longer, but I had hoped that would have been a *choice* especially within a given Star System... it seems to make the game feel more of a "game" that you will hit a hidden barrier at the edge of Earth (or whatever planet) that will force you to enter Warp to get to, say, Saturn. Hidden Barrier's are not cool - why no option to just use Impulse to travel through Star Systems? I can understand not allowing for Impulse BETWEEN Star Systems (though that would be funny watching someone try to reach another System via Impulse... it would take hours and hours in game time if not longer!!!) but the OPTION should be there instead of a man-made instance-barrier between all worlds in a system...

[Commander_Nate]

I agree.

Oh for the forums that allow "123" as a valid response...

[Mozcol]

I know traveling via Impulse would take a lot longer, but I had hoped that would have been a *choice* especially within a given Star System... it seems to make the game feel more of a "game" that you will hit a hidden barrier at the edge of Earth (or whatever planet) that will force you to enter Warp to get to, say, Saturn. Hidden Barrier's are not cool - why no option to just use Impulse to travel through Star Systems? I can understand not allowing for Impulse BETWEEN Star Systems (though that would be funny watching someone try to reach another System via Impulse... it would take hours and hours in game time if not longer!!!) but the OPTION should be there instead of a man-made instance-barrier between all worlds in a system...

Not being an RP'er I prefer to warp wherever I go and get there fast. But i'm not against the option for those that more immersion to game. /vote yes

[blujester]

It's a matter of mechanics within the game engine. If an intire solar system had to load everytime you droped out of warp you'd be waiting an hour or more to see it load and would need around 10gbts of ram even then.

Plus, it would take you over 7 hours to fly to saturn from the earth at impulse speed and years to fly to another solar system. No reason for it from a game play perspective. And the Cryptic engine is simply not capable of doing it. EVE's engine is the only thing I've seen that comes close and it makes traveling long distances seem very slow and boring. Anytime you drop out of warp you are in the middle of an extremly large room. To get to saturn from earth you have to go to another room. Thats just the way the engine is desighned.

Bj

[Swea]

Craig said it would take like 7 hours to do that, i dont see many ppl actually wanting to sit there for 7 hours when you can just go to warp. Impulse is not that fast

[andrewprofit]

I know traveling via Impulse would take a lot longer, but I had hoped that would have been a *choice* especially within a given Star System... it seems to make the game feel more of a "game" that you will hit a hidden barrier at the edge of Earth (or whatever planet) that will force you to enter Warp to get to, say, Saturn. Hidden Barrier's are not cool - why no option to just use Impulse to travel through Star Systems? I can understand not allowing for Impulse BETWEEN Star Systems (though that would be funny watching someone try to reach another System via Impulse... it would take hours and hours in game time if not longer!!!) but the OPTION should be there instead of a man-made instance-barrier between all worlds in a system...

I agree no boxes.

[andrewprofit]

Craig said it would take like 7 hours to do that, i dont see many ppl actually wanting to sit there for 7 hours when you can just go to warp. Impulse is not that fast

It should be relatively easy to let someone sit there in empty space for seven hours.

[MajorD]

I think they are making separate zones for separate planets or system just for instances so they could split people. Impulse would actually be plenty fast to get across a system, the Enteprrise-D was able to go from Jupiter to Earth in 43 minutes at impulse in TNG:"Best of Both Worlds". I can't remember if it's part 1 or 2.

But, it's extremely silly that they aren't willing to give us warp at any time as a travel power in zones. I guess the zones must be really small.

[Vorgse]

It's a matter of mechanics within the game engine. If an intire solar system had to load everytime you droped out of warp you'd be waiting an hour or more to see it load and would need around 10gbts of ram even then.

Plus, it would take you over 7 hours to fly to saturn from the earth at impulse speed and years to fly to another solar system. No reason for it from a game play perspective. And the Cryptic engine is simply not capable of doing it. EVE's engine is the only thing I've seen that comes close and it makes traveling long distances seem very slow and boring. Anytime you drop out of warp you are in the middle of an extremly large room. To get to saturn from earth you have to go to another room. Thats just the way the engine is desighned.

I know I'm always the stickler about accuracy so I had to comment here.

First it is against Starfleet regulations to travel at faster-than-light speeds inside a solar system unless there is an emergency.

Second, I don't know where you got "7 hours to saturn at impulse" According to ST:TMP it took 1.8 hours to reach jupiter from earth at approx. 2/3 impulse. Though according to my math and some info from MA , 2/3 impulse in ST:TMP is 97,000 km/s while in ST:TNG "Suspicions" 3/4 impulse is only 5,550 km/s, While from Voyager you just know that full impulse is less than 200,000 km/s. So If you're in the travelling at full impulse in the Enterprise(refit) it would take you a MAXIMUM(yes if it was on the opposite side of the sun from earth) of about 3 hours 15 minutes. If you're on a Enterprise-D Shuttlecraft at full impulse it'd take you a maximum of about 2.5 days. You decide.

[AraYm]

I know traveling via Impulse would take a lot longer, but I had hoped that would have been a *choice* especially within a given Star System... it seems to make the game feel more of a "game" that you will hit a hidden barrier at the edge of Earth (or whatever planet) that will force you to enter Warp to get to, say, Saturn. Hidden Barrier's are not cool - why no option to just use Impulse to travel through Star Systems? I can understand not allowing for Impulse BETWEEN Star Systems (though that would be funny watching someone try to reach another System via Impulse... it would take hours and hours in game time if not longer!!!) but the OPTION should be there instead of a man-made instance-barrier between all worlds in a system...

Not hours...

even with the Trek-tech it would take about 44 years to cross the Sol system with full impulse

Where's the fun in that ?

[ebeyer]

It's a matter of mechanics within the game engine. If an intire solar system had to load everytime you droped out of warp you'd be waiting an hour or more to see it load and would need around 10gbts of ram even then.

Plus, it would take you over 7 hours to fly to saturn from the earth at impulse speed and years to fly to another solar system. No reason for it from a game play perspective. And the Cryptic engine is simply not capable of doing it. EVE's engine is the only thing I've seen that comes close and it makes traveling long distances seem very slow and boring. Anytime you drop out of warp you are in the middle of an extremly large room. To get to saturn from earth you have to go to another room. Thats just the way the engine is desighned.

Bj

Why not keep it as is, only when you go to "warp", you're moving at the appropriate impulse speed. So the warp POI screen loads up, but you're only moving at like warp 0.001. That'd satisfy RP'ers, would preserve the gameplay mechanic and would get REAL boring real fast.

[Vorgse]

Not hours...

even with the Trek-tech it would take about 44 years to cross the Sol system with full impulse

Where's the fun in that ?

Again where are these time measurements coming from? With the info gathered here (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Impulse_drive) and my own table of the distance of planets to the sun, it would take the OMP Enterprise 22.5 hours to go from 1 end of pluto's orbit to the other. Even the slower TNG scale only takes about 18 day 5 hours to make the same trip.

[rporter]

Guys, that's great and all, but STO is not supposed to be a simulation.

I say again; Not a sim.

You shouldn't expect everything to be 100% true to real life mathematics. The movies sure aren't.

[jblancato]

Guys, that's great and all, but STO is not supposed to be a simulation.

I say again; Not a sim.

You shouldn't expect everything to be 100% true to real life mathematics. The movies sure aren't.

Correct, we're making a game, not a space sim. The idea here is to replicate the Star Trek experience, not replicate the Star Trek universe.

[Zepath]

I don't think this is even an issue.

IMO Cryptic has sacrificed aspects (important to me) of this game to make sure your travel is direct and swift.

[Mozcol]

Correct, we're making a game, not a space sim. The idea here is to replicate the Star Trek experience, not replicate the Star Trek universe.

No offense but thats just a play on semantics. i can't experience impulse if its not in the universe. not that I'm going to wasting my time going impulse, i'm going to be warping for fast action but it needed to be pointed out.

[Vorgse]

Guys, that's great and all, but STO is not supposed to be a simulation.

I say again; Not a sim.

You shouldn't expect everything to be 100% true to real life mathematics. The movies sure aren't.

Very true! I would hate to take real ST time to get places, there were like 100 episodes that covered the course of a week or more of just travelling from one system to another.
However, no matter how much they decrease travel time I hope they keep it all relative, if it take me 1 minute to go from earth to Vulcan it better take longer to get to DS9 or Cardassia.
I know RPers love accuracy, and as a trekker I'd love to try out an RP server. But I also don't want 1 mission to take me a weeks worth of travelling.

[AraYm]

Again where are these time measurements coming from? With the info gathered here (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Impulse_drive) and my own table of the distance of planets to the sun, it would take the OMP Enterprise 22.5 hours to go from 1 end of pluto's orbit to the other. Even the slower TNG scale only takes about 18 day 5 hours to make the same trip.

Maybe I had the wrong measurments

(but to be shine with my own knowledge: the distance between the Sun and Pluto isn't alsways the same it can be between 4,425 and 7,375 billion Kilometer, so there isn't really an 100% acurate (fixed) table for the distance ;-P )

As far as I'm concerned i'm not patient enough to wait even a sinlge hour just to make it through one System ^^


PS: Oh Rekhan back on the Boards again =)

[Commander_Nate]

Correct, we're making a game, not a space sim. The idea here is to replicate the Star Trek experience, not replicate the Star Trek universe.

So can you explain how this whole instance vs. persistent thing is going to work in STO or at least how you guys are planning to make it work?

How is instancing for episodes/missions going to work? How is the "sharing" system going to work and who can you share with?

How is this going to relate to the persistent PvP zones like the Neutral Zone? Are territory changes going to work based on which side wins more simultaneous instanced/sharded battles over the same location or do you have another system worked out for this?

How is non-episodic exploration, or "picking a direction and just going" gonna work? Are the systems and objects and locations we find doing this going to become a persistent part of the map or something that only we can access? Does it just disappear all together once we leave or can other players travel to it as well if they wish?

I don't mean to bombard you here but I'm sure you've noticed the 475,621 lively threads that have cropped up on this in the last 1-2 weeks. Can you give us a detailed overview? Please.

[USS_Parallax]

Impulse goes SLOW. Sublight speeds. It would take simply too much time to go impulse from one planet to another. Even in a Sim this wouldn't likely be possible. It would take you probably 20 hours to go from Earth to Pluto at sublight speeds assuming Maximum Impulse goes 1/4th the speed of light.

[Vorgse]

How is this going to relate to the persistent PvP zones like the Neutral Zone? Are territory changes going to work based on which side wins more simultaneous instanced/sharded battles over the same location or do you have another system worked out for this?

I like this idea A LOT! I remember how that was in WW2OL and it made the PvP battling actually have a purpose. You'd gain or lose more and more ground over the course of weeks or months until you captured or lost a certain point, then the battle lines would be reset. It made it fun and it was very interesting how command systems cropped up including strategy and stuff. I'd LOVE to see a moving battleline in this game.

[AraYm]

And while we're at it, will someting similar to COX badge/short bio-system be in the game ?

Edit: Ah ignore the question. I'm gonig to ask the question if i make it to the next Dev-chat

[SelorKiith]

You really want 20 Hours and more flying from Earth to whatever on Impulse? It's pretty much as pointless as this "2 Week minimum Repairtime" Request Oo

Though I don't now but I have a suggestion... if it isn't already like that... if you hit the "boarder" of say Earth-Instance you switch into warp and not just bounce of...

[USS_Parallax]

Even going Warp 1 it would take you 5 hours to get to Pluto from Earth. 4-5 years to the nearest star.

[Commander_Nate]

I like this idea A LOT! I remember how that was in WW2OL and it made the PvP battling actually have a purpose. You'd gain or lose more and more ground over the course of weeks or months until you captured or lost a certain point, then the battle lines would be reset. It made it fun and it was very interesting how command systems cropped up including strategy and stuff. I'd LOVE to see a moving battleline in this game.

Well from what we understand there will be something sort of like this in the NZ and other dynamic PvP zones of STO.

My question is if they are going to do instancing/sharding, how do they determine who wins and moves the line? If you have 3 shards of the same battle over the same planet because there are too many players engaged in the fight to have all in 1 shard, how do you pick a winner? It seems kind of odd and unfair for the Fed players who might have won Shard 1 to come out and still see the planet go to the Klingons because their buddies lost in Shard 2 and Shard 3.

I loved how WWII Online did it because you could spend hours fighting over a major city and it all would matter one way or the other. The respawn/supply limit they had there worked great at keeping overcrowding to a minimum as well.

[Loekii]

Well from what we understand there will be something sort of like this in the NZ and other dynamic PvP zones of STO.

My question is if they are going to do instancing/sharding, how do they determine who wins and moves the line? If you have 3 shards of the same battle over the same planet because there are too many players engaged in the fight to have all in 1 shard, how do you pick a winner? It seems kind of odd and unfair for a the Fed players who might have won Shard 1 to come out and still see the planet go to the Klingons because their buddies lost in Shard 2 and Shard 3.

I loved how WWII Online did it because you could spend hours fighting over a major city and it all would matter one way or the other. The respawn/supply limit they had there worked great at keeping overcrowding to a minimum as well.

Odds are, what even 'move the line' system the end up with competitive-PvE and PvP in the NZ, it will be instance based, and probably will be a calculation of the results from all the instances at a set point in time.

Hopefully, the system will bet tweaked so that the low populated instances do not count as much, so an 'easy' victory against a 1/4 populated zone will only net 1/4 the points.

However, Cryptic has stated details on their PvP system is slated for later in the PR cycle (per zinc).

[Tamgros]

We already covered this topic this week:
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=25109

here are some posts:
Yeah, you should be able to fly to the moon. They talked about their being multiple things going on in one place, they just have to be close.

If anyone is still wondering, it would take you over 4.5 hours to get from Earth to Saturn at full impulse. And that is when they are at their closest possible distance. Add on an hour or so when they are farthest...

Not a sim, not a sim, not a sim, not a sim :p
You "could" fly from one planet to another at impulse, it would just take hours to do so. So I mean thats your choicie if you want to take forever getting somewhere.


That's the point, you cant. in STO they will be separate instances so you're not going to be able to travel from earth to Saturn at impulse. Again, this is not a sim.

Lol, if you want to travel to Saturn at impulse for 5ish hours, when you obviously could just warp and get there in pretty much no time, you don't deserve to be a SF captain. Why waste the time of your entire crew like that? :o

[Commander_Nate]

Odds are, what even 'move the line' system the end up with competitive-PvE and PvP in the NZ, it will be instance based, and probably will be a calculation of the results from all the instances at a set point in time.

Hopefully, the system will bet tweaked so that the low populated instances do not count as much, so an 'easy' victory against a 1/4 populated zone will only net 1/4 the points.

However, Cryptic has stated details on their PvP system is slated for later in the PR cycle (per zinc).


I would hope they tweaked it to where your instance choices were different parts of the system, rather than multiple instances of the same areas, and had the more important locations in the system weighted more or something.

For example, if we were fighting over Sol, players could choose an Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Asteroid Belt, Saturn, or Pluto instance. Holding or taking Earth or Mars would mean more than taking the Asteroid Belt or Jupiter obviously. This way there's no "WTF, we just successfully defended Mars, why is there a Klingon Flag on it?!?!".

That to me seems much more reasonable than 5 instances of Earth, 5 of Mars, and so on.

[Aslan_chShran]

I just thought that we were done with Zones, but EverQuest comes back with a vengeance it seems =)

Seriously, I've waited 10+ years for a Star Trek MMORPG so I'm going to be happy as pie, regardless... I just don't like the idea of boxes that you have to warp out of to get to another planet in the same system.

[Flatfingers]

Aren't we forgetting something here?

We already know that in Star Trek Online, it's not going to take us days to fly between star systems (as in Star Trek). That canonical element has already been changed for the sake of generally enjoyable gameplay.

So why in Star Trek Online should it take us hours to fly between planets in a star system?

If Cryptic is willing to shorten interstellar flight times, what's stopping them from also shortening interplanetary flight times?

I have the feeling that point-and-click travel in a star system, rather than free flight, was not a design choice that was based on travel time concerns....

--Flatfingers

[Manta2015]

Correct, we're making a game, not a space sim. The idea here is to replicate the Star Trek experience, not replicate the Star Trek universe.

+1


-Manta-

[MajorD]

Impulse goes SLOW. Sublight speeds. It would take simply too much time to go impulse from one planet to another. Even in a Sim this wouldn't likely be possible. It would take you probably 20 hours to go from Earth to Pluto at sublight speeds assuming Maximum Impulse goes 1/4th the speed of light.

The Enterprise-D went from Jupiter to Earth in 34 minutes at impulse, in "Best of Both Worlds" while Jupiter is about 33 light minutes away. So, Pluto would be about 4 and a half hours away at impulse.

[Vorgse]

The Enterprise-D went from Jupiter to Earth in 34 minutes at impulse, in "Best of Both Worlds" while Jupiter is about 33 light minutes away. So, Pluto would be about 4 and a half hours away at impulse.

I think this figure is closest to the most accurate between different spinoffs. In ST:OMP Scotty specifically says that The impulse engines can MAINTAIN a maximum of .8 the speed of light. I think you can assume that means at that in the 2300's full impulse was 80% the speed of light.

Also people keep whining "I don't want to spend hours flying between planets, boo hoo!" Neither does anyone else! Not only that the Devs have said that you won't.

I think what people don't want is instantaneous travel just because you plot a course and hit warp. It's not a sim, but that doesn't mean players don't want to feel like they're in space. Space is big. So the Devs are going to shrink it, which I think is a good idea.

As for this instancing idea, why not run neutral zone battles like WW2OL or SW: Battlefront, fight for spawn points, if there are too many people in the area around your teams spawn point in one section then you have to spawn in another, then if you want you can fly back.

[agentandy8]

Completely voted yes! I have no idea why, but it would be fun do have a trophy that says: I wasted 70 hours of my life flying across STO at impulse speed!

I am not being sarcastic, it would be fun!

[ransomwk]

It's a matter of mechanics within the game engine. If an intire solar system had to load everytime you droped out of warp you'd be waiting an hour or more to see it load and would need around 10gbts of ram even then.

Starfleet Academy did it. Didn't take an hour to load or 10 gbts of ram either.



The idea here is to replicate the Star Trek experience, not replicate the Star Trek universe.

Half the experience comes from the universe.


Given that, this sounds like cryptic's unofficial announcement that the game will only be half done.
My point of view: the half that is done better be $#!& hot.

[metl]

Perhaps I missed an update somewhere. Last I knew, you used the trans-warp to go between systems, then in the system you could use mpulse or the warp drive (akin to Legacy) Breaking a planet into it's own zone is silly. A round sphere is not going to use hardly any memory at all since the planet ground side is already it's own instance.

[Loekii]

Perhaps I missed an update somewhere. Last I knew, you used the trans-warp to go between systems, then in the system you could use mpulse or the warp drive (akin to Legacy) Breaking a planet into it's own zone is silly. A round sphere is not going to use hardly any memory at all since the planet ground side is already it's own instance.

I think you had it mistaken.

As far as I recall, it has never been like that, but rather what we basically see here.

[metl]

https://www.startrekonline.com/ask_cryptic/4-30-09

In this article, he mentions 3 map levels. Sector (between systems) System map where battles happen, and surface maps (ground and stations) I take system map to mean the entire system, not just one point of interest in that system. I will keep digging, there there wa also an article which detailed the travel methods.

[metl]

And from http://sknr.net/2009/04/25/star-trek-online-second-interview/

GVK: How will ship navigation be handled and how will the game handle travel times between locales?

Space is BIG. We want to retain a sense of that grandiose scale, but it’s not fun to have to spend days and days traveling between planets. There will be a number of options such as wormholes and transwarp conduits to speed travel times.

But since exploration is a big part of STO, there will be times when the best thing to do is pick a direction and see what’s out there!

[Loekii]

https://www.startrekonline.com/ask_cryptic/4-30-09

In this article, he mentions 3 map levels. Sector (between systems) System map where battles happen, and surface maps (ground and stations) I take system map to mean the entire system, not just one point of interest in that system. I will keep digging, there there wa also an article which detailed the travel methods.

The askcryptic fits what we are seeing here.


Map Level 1 - You travel between systems via 'Warp' in the Sector Map (the 2d Grid like map)
Map Level 2 - When an encounter happens or you get to your destination, you drop into the '3D Space' map.
Map Level 3 - And from there you close to a planet and beam down to the Ground Map.


The other stuff also supports this. There are *Some* Wormholes and Warp conduits. They never said that is how you would travel from system to system.

[Morbius1]

The askcryptic fits what we are seeing here.


Map Level 1 - You travel between systems via 'Warp' in the Sector Map (the 2d Grid like map)
Map Level 2 - When an encounter happens or you get to your destination, you drop into the '3D Space' map.
Map Level 3 - And from there you close to a planet and beam down to the Ground Map.


This sounds similar to EVE, minus the last part. Though, I think, unlike EVE, you won't have to go from warp gate to warp gate. You'll just pick a point in the 2d map and "zoom" you're there. If this is the case, though, then each planet would not be a zone (in space not the surface). So it would be a whole solar system "boxed" in area.

That's what it sounds like to me. I hope that is the case. If it is then you should be able to go at impulse in a system as that's how you can move in EVE if you wish. If not then how do you actually "explore" in STO if all your doing is going from one point to another without any choice of just going in a random direction?

[cocoa-jin]

EVE pulls it off...I dont see why STO couldnt...the barrier is such a horrible break in immersion. Not that I want to travel 7hrs to get somewhere, I just dont want to see a barrier to travel freedom...within reason.

I'd hope any break in travel would happen after a few hours at impulse...for immersion.

[metl]

http://www.stocenter.com/star-trek-online-news/star-trek-convention-meet-and-greet-with-cryptic-studio-in-las-vegas/

Again, Sector map, which you travel between solar sytems, and system map where the asteroids, planets and stations are. If you have the latest PC Gamer article, they mention having a low-warp speed which gets you across the sector faster than just impulse. I think I have found more resources to point towards actually being able to explore a system instead of limiting you to just one station, one planet or one asteroid belt.

based on what I have read, the system maps will be very similar to Legacy in the terms of composition. You might have just a small map with only one planet, or you may have a system with several planets, a nebula and a space station. I would like to find some screens of the maps to see how things are actually buit. I think that would be the best answer as to what composes the second map level.

[metl]

This sounds similar to EVE, minus the last part. Though, I think, unlike EVE, you won't have to go from warp gate to warp gate. You'll just pick a point in the 2d map and "zoom" you're there. If this is the case, though, then each planet would not be a zone (in space not the surface). So it would be a whole solar system "boxed" in area.

That's what it sounds like to me. I hope that is the case. If it is then you should be able to go at impulse in a system as that's how you can move in EVE if you wish. If not then how do you actually "explore" in STO if all your doing is going from one point to another without any choice of just going in a random direction?

That is how I take it as well. Even one of the devs says just go off in a direction and explore. If you can't do that, then all the exploration features they keep bragging about would be nothing more than an instanced mission.

[runrhino06]

Has anyone ever played ST: Bridge Commander?? If so, then w/o "Intercept" in your Conn options...it could very be a long time getting from planet to planet. Sure I'm up for having the option of doing so but my main concern is how big this so called "barrier" is. Although, I'm sure it is large enough to play around with...just mainly curious...

[Tmann26]

From what I gathered, full impulse = just slower than the speed of light (almost warp 1 but not quite), so it'd take around 8 minutes to go from the Sol to Earth, maybe 15-20 minutes to travel half of the Terran system end to end. I myself was hoping for an "RP walk" mode. In WoW, I've RP walked from Zul'Aman to Booty Bay, Ahn'Qiraj to Everlook, and Black Temple to Cosmowrench... just because.

On a side note, have they addressed the whole warp engines tearing space a new time hole via tachyons? :P

[MajorD]

I think this figure is closest to the most accurate between different spinoffs. In ST:OMP Scotty specifically says that The impulse engines can MAINTAIN a maximum of .8 the speed of light. I think you can assume that means at that in the 2300's full impulse was 80% the speed of light.

Also people keep whining "I don't want to spend hours flying between planets, boo hoo!" Neither does anyone else! Not only that the Devs have said that you won't.

I think what people don't want is instantaneous travel just because you plot a course and hit warp. It's not a sim, but that doesn't mean players don't want to feel like they're in space. Space is big. So the Devs are going to shrink it, which I think is a good idea.

As for this instancing idea, why not run neutral zone battles like WW2OL or SW: Battlefront, fight for spawn points, if there are too many people in the area around your teams spawn point in one section then you have to spawn in another, then if you want you can fly back.
All they needed to do was give the Federation and other local powers Quantum Slipstream drive, or transwarp drive. This would have compressed local space distances to minutes at most, completely eliminating any need for load screen. It would also shrink the universe, but what does it matter if in real time, thanks to load screens, we have instant travel anyway and if we have various conduits for transgalactic travel?
Perhaps I missed an update somewhere. Last I knew, you used the trans-warp to go between systems, then in the system you could use mpulse or the warp drive (akin to Legacy) Breaking a planet into it's own zone is silly. A round sphere is not going to use hardly any memory at all since the planet ground side is already it's own instance.
The way it will be, from what I recall, is there will be the map for system to system movement, then ship movement in systems, and then ground movement. However, map movement has two or three movement methods. The map has warp, transwarp conduits, and wormholes. However, early on, I pointed out that if you have transwarp conduits you don't really need wormholes, and if you have wormholes you don't really need transwarp conduits, yet they could be complementary in certain ways. Even so, I think they dropped wormholes.

What they're doing with impulse is, if you give it maximum power, then it lets you cross a space environment in a couple minutes.

[Powerhelm]

Correct, we're making a game, not a space sim. The idea here is to replicate the Star Trek experience, not replicate the Star Trek universe.

Doesn't the Star Trek Experience rely heavily on going out to strange unexplored things and parts of space unexplored (and therefore not possible to have a POI for)?

[Vorgse]

All they needed to do was give the Federation and other local powers Quantum Slipstream drive, or transwarp drive. This would have compressed local space distances to minutes at most, completely eliminating any need for load screen. It would also shrink the universe, but what does it matter if in real time, thanks to load screens, we have instant travel anyway and if we have various conduits for transgalactic travel?

I couldn't find the post, but I only looked for a minute or two. However, I remember reading from the Devs that the "Sector Map" isn't just a "map" of the sector you watch yourself travel across. They made like the sector map was a giant saucer of mostly empty space with systems, ect. mixed in. In other words each "Sector" is all one giant zone with a lot of X and Y but with only a little Z.

[Loekii]

I couldn't find the post, but I only looked for a minute or two. However, I remember reading from the Devs that the "Sector Map" isn't just a "map" of the sector you watch yourself travel across. They made like the sector map was a giant saucer of mostly empty space with systems, ect. mixed in. In other words each "Sector" is all one giant zone with a lot of X and Y but with only a little Z.

Its demonstrated in this gameplay video at about 2:45 -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64wxE-BvtXI

[jdnix]

This sounds similar to EVE, minus the last part. Though, I think, unlike EVE, you won't have to go from warp gate to warp gate. You'll just pick a point in the 2d map and "zoom" you're there. If this is the case, though, then each planet would not be a zone (in space not the surface). So it would be a whole solar system "boxed" in area.

That's what it sounds like to me. I hope that is the case. If it is then you should be able to go at impulse in a system as that's how you can move in EVE if you wish. If not then how do you actually "explore" in STO if all your doing is going from one point to another without any choice of just going in a random direction?

But you can just pick your direction on the sector map. You just can't do it on the system level. But, why would you actually want to do that? You really want to see hours and hours of empty space? Starfleet explores planets, stars, spacial anomalies, asteroid belts, strange space cities, and derelict space ships (i.e. points of interest), not empty space.

If you really want to find the limits of Cryptic's model I'm sure you'll be able to. If it's not being able to spend hours slowly traveling through empty space between planets, it would be not being able to spend years traveling between stars or not being able to quit Starfleet and become a baker. No game can satisfy every person's whim, nor should they try. They should spend their time and effort to make the most enjoyable game they can for the most people.

[Emn1ty]

It's a matter of mechanics within the game engine. If an intire solar system had to load everytime you droped out of warp you'd be waiting an hour or more to see it load and would need around 10gbts of ram even then.
Yet it works in EVE

[/quote]Plus, it would take you over 7 hours to fly to saturn from the earth at impulse speed and years to fly to another solar system. No reason for it from a game play perspective. And the Cryptic engine is simply not capable of doing it. EVE's engine is the only thing I've seen that comes close and it makes traveling long distances seem very slow and boring. Anytime you drop out of warp you are in the middle of an extremly large room. To get to saturn from earth you have to go to another room. Thats just the way the engine is desighned.

Bj[/QUOTE]

Thats not the point. The point is that invisible walls are atrociously damaging to the immersion of a game. I hated them in Halo 2 and Halo 3 as well as in EVE and any other game that had them since. If you are going to make barriers, make them natural (Halo 1's cliffs, Arkham Asylum's ocean, death barriers in other games). Having me impulse for a while, leave the computer, and come back 5 minutes later to be hitting a invisible wall would kill the game in-part for me. Of course all this really depends on is how far away the invisible walls are. Halo 1 had invisible walls, but they were near a mile outside the level structure in game. If it takes me 2 of those 7 hours to get to the barrier then it really doesn't matter. IMO that barrier would be far from reach for any normal player activity.

@Doc, I think they are asking for it not because they can, but because the other highly rated sci-fi MMO and technically any other MMO out there allows for manual travel between locations in a certain area/realm/kingdom/star system. It would only make sense for a game that is half about exploration to allow you to actually explore.

[Vorgse]

I will say I'm not a fan of the warping from planet to planet inside a system like he talks about from Earth to Saturn, They should take the home systems, Earth, Qo'nos, Cardassia, etc. and make them one big system map that takes about 10 minutes to fly the full diameter of. The other systems it seems like they only need a couple of planets anyway

[blujester]

Originally Posted by Jack_Roberts
It's a matter of mechanics within the game engine. If an intire solar system had to load everytime you droped out of warp you'd be waiting an hour or more to see it load and would need around 10gbts of ram even then.


Yet it works in EVE


Uhh no it doesn't . In Eve you only load the system you are in to memory. And while Eves syatems are huge. You still need point to point flight there or it takes you days to cross the system. You can point your ship thataway and spend days craweling along but you can't just engage warp with out a destination. I understand the desire for a solar system to be persistant and all in one box ala Eve but it seems a small concession between a load screen at warp or an animation. And who knows we may get an animation in STO as well . We just don't know yet.

Bj

[jdnix]

Yet it works in EVE



Thats not the point. The point is that invisible walls are atrociously damaging to the immersion of a game. I hated them in Halo 2 and Halo 3 as well as in EVE and any other game that had them since. If you are going to make barriers, make them natural (Halo 1's cliffs, Arkham Asylum's ocean, death barriers in other games). Having me impulse for a while, leave the computer, and come back 5 minutes later to be hitting a invisible wall would kill the game in-part for me. Of course all this really depends on is how far away the invisible walls are. Halo 1 had invisible walls, but they were near a mile outside the level structure in game. If it takes me 2 of those 7 hours to get to the barrier then it really doesn't matter. IMO that barrier would be far from reach for any normal player activity.

@Doc, I think they are asking for it not because they can, but because the other highly rated sci-fi MMO and technically any other MMO out there allows for manual travel between locations in a certain area/realm/kingdom/star system. It would only make sense for a game that is half about exploration to allow you to actually explore.

If invisible walls damage your immersion don't go seeking them out.

The fact that EVE's stars and planets only exist as features on the background and not as objects in space, damages my immersion there so I don't try to fly to them.

The fact that most places in WoW are bounded by unclimable mountains damages my immersion there too. So again I travel between zones at the places where it's traversable.

Every game has to take shortcuts to make a game encompassing a world or a galaxy tractable. The fact that Cryptic chose to make the sector map free flight versus the solar system map and CCP choose to do the reverse, doesn't make one better than another.

[Aslan_chShran]

Thats not the point. The point is that invisible walls are atrociously damaging to the immersion of a game.

DING DING DING! Exactly.

[metl]

Its demonstrated in this gameplay video at about 2:45 -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64wxE-BvtXI


Yikes. I hope the sector travel gets some serious love. Right now it looks seriously ugly and confusing.

[CoffinDNC]

Well, I think there are other ways to handle this, than actually letting a ship physically bump into a invisible wall. For example, if you get to the border of the actual impulse zone, just transfer the player to the warp map - period.

That doesn't hurt the immersion all too much, imho.

[Mozcol]

So, the only space your exposed to is a virtual box, and limited to one planet at a time. All those threads of "Can one server hold everyone?" start to lose its doom value. Its much easier to handle one box with one or a few items inside than one box overstuffed. As far as i understand there are only going to be two relative "free-zone" areas, the Galaxy map and the StarBases. I say "relative" because there still will be a system in place to spread the load across different instances of the same area, like CO shards or EQ2's system.

I certainly want instances to relieve congestion but having played EQ1 for years I am so used to and comfortable in a huge open world its hard to adjust to the idea of what seems to be the small world of STO. Maybe it feels like your really in a huge universe but I won't know for certain until I play the game. What i do know is playing EQ2 felt like playing in a closet after EQ1, the single-most reason I went to WoW. I'll buy and try the game regardless but I hope....oh do I hope its not like a closet.....its a Universe......meet it halfway Cryptic.:)

[128hoodmario]

Can we all sit down and remember an episode of DS9. HEY YOU OVER THERE I SAID SIT DOWN! DON'T YOU THROW THAT AT ME!

ahem. As far as I remember there was a runabout that had a bomb on it or something and it was heading for the Bajor sun (I seem to remember it being called Ba'hava'el or something like that. If I'm right please throw me a buscuit) . Anyway they were chasing it in another runabout and Dax (the less sexy Jadzia Dax) said "we need to go to warp to catch it" and Kira replied "you can't go to warp in a star system it is far too dangerous!". I rest my case

[Vorgse]

Can we all sit down and remember an episode of DS9. HEY YOU OVER THERE I SAID SIT DOWN! DON'T YOU THROW THAT AT ME!

ahem. As far as I remember there was a runabout that had a bomb on it or something and it was heading for the Bajor sun (I seem to remember it being called Ba'hava'el or something like that. If I'm right please throw me a buscuit) . Anyway they were chasing it in another runabout and Dax (the less sexy Jadzia Dax) said "we need to go to warp to catch it" and Kira replied "you can't go to warp in a star system it is far too dangerous!". I rest my case

I said this way, way earlier in the thread! I'm glad someone finally backed me up! There's just too much interplanetary travel, not to mention obstacles like asteroid belts.
Also how many TNG episodes said, "We're travelling to the planet blahblah at warp 6." None, it's always "travelling warp 6 to the blahblah system"

[Amblin]

I know traveling via Impulse would take a lot longer, but I had hoped that would have been a *choice* especially within a given Star System... it seems to make the game feel more of a "game" that you will hit a hidden barrier at the edge of Earth (or whatever planet) that will force you to enter Warp to get to, say, Saturn. Hidden Barrier's are not cool - why no option to just use Impulse to travel through Star Systems? I can understand not allowing for Impulse BETWEEN Star Systems (though that would be funny watching someone try to reach another System via Impulse... it would take hours and hours in game time if not longer!!!) but the OPTION should be there instead of a man-made instance-barrier between all worlds in a system...

Truth is I thought warp was banned in-system as it was all to easy to smash into a planet, asteroid etc?

Basically warp travel is too quick to allow for manouvering in a relatively small space?

Boxing in is all to do with the game engine. Shame. Even Eve has boxing though, in the form of jump gates.

It seems no-one is capable after over a decade, of recreating Elite. Gotta wonder if gaming has gone up an evolutionary dead end somedays.:rolleyes:

Well just wait and see, it may be a good idea after all, as I for one have seen too many games recently where it is quicker to die and instantly be transported to the other side of the map to reduce travel time.

But it would appear there will be no sunday afternoon drives around the solar system.

[Vorgse]

It seems no-one is capable after over a decade, of recreating Elite. Gotta wonder if gaming has gone up an evolutionary dead end somedays.

It's because gamers still want great graphics even though it's an MMO. Sad, really, though it seems to me like EVEs boxes would be plenty big enough to fit a whole solar system in, I wonder why Cryptic decided that's not possible?

Anyone else play LoTRO much? Those "boxes" seem pretty big, I mean it takes up to 20 mins to run from one end to the other and that's including terrain, buildings, Mobs, other players, trees, etc. Seems like if they can do all that then running an equally large and mostly empty(as far as terrain and detail goes) box shouldn't be that difficult or system starining to do.

[Zepath]

Craig said it would take like 7 hours to do that, i dont see many ppl actually wanting to sit there for 7 hours when you can just go to warp. Impulse is not that fast


What?!?! No auto-pilot now? Oh I quit!!!!!!!

[blujester]

It's because gamers still want great graphics even though it's an MMO. Sad, really, though it seems to me like EVEs boxes would be plenty big enough to fit a whole solar system in, I wonder why Cryptic decided that's not possible?

Anyone else play LoTRO much? Those "boxes" seem pretty big, I mean it takes up to 20 mins to run from one end to the other and that's including terrain, buildings, Mobs, other players, trees, etc. Seems like if they can do all that then running an equally large and mostly empty(as far as terrain and detail goes) box shouldn't be that difficult or system starining to do.



EvEs boxes do have intire solar systems in them but cryptics engine can't do it the same way as the backbone is different. And EvEs backbone cannot support 2 instances of one zone that size which is why hubs like Jita lag badly. Cryptic's engine is of the same vintage but was desighned for more traditional ground action and not built from the ground up as a space sim. Given the constraints of the engine and the talent of the writers Cryptic uses I think the game is gonna be good but not perfect. If the sub base is high enough then all the problems with walls and instances can be delt with in expansions and installments. I still bet it will take 20 min to cross a planet instance from side to side on impulse and thats big enough for me.


Bj

[loyaltrekie]

And EvEs backbone cannot support 2 instances of one zone that size which is why hubs like Jita lag badly.

Bj

You are working on very outdated news and not the latest client if you are having "bad" lag in the majority of the game. Eve's issue was caused by outdated technology; both infrastructure and hardware. Something ST:O shouldn't suffer from; so your point is pretty silly.


Plus, it would take you over 7 hours to fly to saturn from the earth at impulse speed and years to fly to another solar system.

I very highly doubt that Cryptic knows the data much less would implement correct scaling.

[JerryC]

Sorry, but if they can do it in EVE, why the hell cant we do it in STO?



It's a matter of mechanics within the game engine. If an intire solar system had to load everytime you droped out of warp you'd be waiting an hour or more to see it load and would need around 10gbts of ram even then.

Plus, it would take you over 7 hours to fly to saturn from the earth at impulse speed and years to fly to another solar system. No reason for it from a game play perspective. And the Cryptic engine is simply not capable of doing it. EVE's engine is the only thing I've seen that comes close and it makes traveling long distances seem very slow and boring. Anytime you drop out of warp you are in the middle of an extremly large room. To get to saturn from earth you have to go to another room. Thats just the way the engine is desighned.

Bj

[Zepath]

Completely voted yes! I have no idea why, but it would be fun do have a trophy that says: I wasted 70 hours of my life flying across STO at impulse speed!

I am not being sarcastic, it would be fun!

Hey, in Asheron's Call ... I went in one direction for 3 hours. I found things people didn't even know existed (including a base camp and two spawn nodes), and the game had been out for 2 years when I did that.

To run from the northern tip if the world, to the southern most tip of the world took 6 and a half hours ... I didn't do it but a friend did ... he started at 8:15 on a Saturday morning, and finished at 3:30 that afternoon ... but he died twice, and we figure he lost about 45m with the deaths.

That was a game you could explore in ... you could truly go where no one else has gone, or hadn't been in months ... and they were still adding land-mass when I left the game in 2002 ... and the game is still going.

And believe me you felt alone out there ... especially when that game has "gear recovery" as part of their death mechanics. If you were 40 minutes away from a respawn node, you started getting an adrenalin rush if you were losing a fight.

[MajorD]

Its demonstrated in this gameplay video at about 2:45 -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64wxE-BvtXI

That sector map is actually a really neat way to handle interstellar travel. Interestingly he says you see it only at high warp, he said warp 9. If he wasn't just saying stuff, then it means at lower warp you get... something else. I wonder how that works.

I wonder if they will have warp highways.

I would have watched those videos sooner but that camera angle angered me. And, the repeated use of Star Track, instead of Star Trek. One of my friends does that and I never thought I would hear anyone else do that.

[Interdictor]

Realistic travel times are a BAD idea. This is a GAME folks - NOT a SIM.

[Zepath]

Realistic travel times are a BAD idea. This is a GAME folks - NOT a SIM.

With all respect, a SIM would require you to micro-manage your ship ... travel times have nothing to do with whether its a SIM or a GAME. Some very successful GAMES have travel times of 20m or more.

Ever run from Ironforge to Tanaris through Thousand Needles back in the day? Before Blizzard decided to put a Flight Path every 10 feet? Its was a good 30 minute run ... and that didn't stop that game from getting 27M subscriptions at its high point.

[Interdictor]

travel times have nothing to do with whether its a SIM or a GAME.
Sure it does - if the travel times are in any way "realistic" then it's more sim-like.

Some very successful GAMES have travel times of 20m or more.
Yeah, but travel times have nothing to do with their success. And in any case - thankfully - it seems STO is not going this route. I really doubt the playerbase of STO will "suffer" from relatively quick travel.

[loyaltrekie]

With all respect, a SIM would require you to micro-manage your ship ... travel times have nothing to do with whether its a SIM or a GAME. Some very successful GAMES have travel times of 20m or more.


You quoted "realistic travel"; even in those games the travel wasn't "realistic" it was just extended.

[Krakkken]

Correct, we're making a game, not a space sim. The idea here is to replicate the Star Trek experience, not replicate the Star Trek universe.

And thats the exact reason you stand to fail. Star Trek for alot of people wasnt a sim TV show or movie. It was an idealistic way of life. Now you want to take that and turn it into a lifeless game. It may be a game to you but for those of us that has followed the game longer than most devs on this project have been alive you are realy insulting the majority of the player base who have been waiting patiently through two companies for this thing to go live. Lets get down to the real reason you any software company makes their games instanced based. Its easier to make, quicker to make, and easier to trouble shoot. It has nothing to do with quality or content of the game. You are dealing with a much higher average player age with this fan base and to make it another average jump to here, jump to here, jump to here game you have absolutly taken the fun of exploration out of it for me.

[Zepath]

You quoted "realistic travel"; even in those games the travel wasn't "realistic" it was just extended.

Eh? Where did I say that? I don't see that I said it. I was up pretty late last night and tired, but I don't remember saying that anywhere?

[Zepath]

Yeah, but travel times have nothing to do with their success. And in any case - thankfully - it seems STO is not going this route. I really doubt the playerbase of STO will "suffer" from relatively quick travel.

I'm willing to bet lunch, that within weeks after this game launches ... all of those players here that are drooling over this game, expecting to "Go where no man has gone before." and do their own "5 year mission" are going to be very unhappy campers.

[metl]

There are some good arguments here. Look at how many different things are crammed into just one map in WoW. Now that includes terrain, nodes, spawns, trees, rocks, enterable buildings, people, creatures, water, just about everything. Someone argued that an entire solar system would take too much memory. How? Look at Sol. One sun, nine planets (I'm still fond of pluto) a few moons and........ what else? As much as Legacy was a joke, look at the map builds. Usually several planets, some nebulae, a space station or two if not more, weapon platforms, you get the picture. We're not asking for everything crammed into one gigantic map, obviously there has to be some limitation, but come on let's not go backwards to ST 25th Ann days of one planet per system. I think technology has improved slightly since then. There is a middle ground. They can build an entire system without spreading it out as far as EVE did.

[Aslan_chShran]

But it would appear there will be no sunday afternoon drives around the solar system.

lol as funny as it sounds, I *wanted* to be able to do that :P

[Interdictor]

And thats the exact reason you stand to fail. Star Trek for alot of people wasnt a sim TV show or movie. It was an idealistic way of life. Now you want to take that and turn it into a lifeless game. It may be a game to you but for those of us that has followed the game longer than most devs on this project have been alive you are realy insulting the majority of the player base who have been waiting patiently through two companies for this thing to go live.

"those of us that has followed the game longer than most devs on this project have been alive"!?!?

Please - so you have been waiting for a Star Trek MMO to appear for 20 to 30 years? Even before there were such things as MMOs or even online gaming (arguably beyond some simple ASCII dungeon crawls)?

And in any case, you comprise only a TINY FRACTION of the game's potential playerbase. And in this business, money talks, plain and simple. Cryptic is here to make a fun game easily accessible to the most people it can reach - not just the hard-core trekkies. If this means sacrifices to star trek *snicker* "reality" - like "realisitic travel times" - must be made, then so be it.

Personally, Cryptic has a great track record in my books, and so far I like the direction they are heading in with this game.

[Interdictor]

I'm willing to bet lunch, that within weeks after this game launches ... all of those players here that are drooling over this game, expecting to "Go where no man has gone before." and do their own "5 year mission" are going to be very unhappy campers.
Oh - there will probably be people like that - there have already been people who have quit because they didn't like X thing in the game.

But I'M willing to be lunch that if and when what you say comes to pass - that people hoping to do "5 year missions" in "boundless space" quit after a few weeks, Cryptic will barely feel the hit, because the numbers of people who want to spend a day to a week of realtime warping to the next mission will be microscopically small.

[Tmann26]

Sure it does - if the travel times are in any way "realistic" then it's more sim-like.



I cannot completely agree with this statement. I'll provide examples:

Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII is a game based around WWII air combat. The aircraft travel at "realistic" speeds, but it is far from a simulator. The aircraft turn unrealistically, and are in no way modeled accurately for physics of what aircraft can do. Damage is also not correctly modeled, among other things that differentiate a game from a simulator.

On the other hand IL*2 Sturmovik: 1946 is a simulator based around WWII air combat. The aircraft also travel at "realistic" speeds, yet it's a simulator. You cannot simply point the aircraft in any direction because you feel like it. Instead, the aircraft have to be capable to perform given maneuvers or you could risk damage to the airframe, or the pilot could black out/red out and lose control of the aircraft due to unconsciousness. Damage is modeled very accurately, you can shoot bits and pieces off aircraft, or loose part of a wing because of collision, etc.

So really, simulation vs game is not necessarily based upon how realistic things travel, but more-so it's a wider range of things that are or are not true to life. Speed certainly could be a factor, but it's not the only one. Some are even interchangeable, speeds can be realistic, yet other things are not etc. ;)

In my eyes, what would make STO a simulator vs a game would be career progression. Say if you had to apply to Starfleet academy and progress through classes over 4 years or so before you can even go into "operational" space, would make STO a Star Trek Universe simulator. Or if you died, you would have to create another character, that would also equal simulator in my eyes. Granted, these examples are extreme, but they would be more true to life, at least within the Star Trek Universe.

So in closing, regardless of how real or unreal things travel in STO, it will always be a game and never a simulator. It may have some simulated things, but overall it will remain a game as long as you can die and respawn.

[Interdictor]

So really, simulation vs game is not necessarily based upon how realistic things travel, but more-so it's a wider range of things that are or are not true to life. Speed certainly could be a factor, but it's not the only one. Some are even interchangeable, speeds can be realistic, yet other things are not etc. ;)

And I agree with you. I did not say "realistic travel times = sim". I said that realistic travel times make it more "sim-like".

[Tmann26]

Oh I know, I wasn't trying to imply that's what you believed, but I was pointing out that games can have realistic speeds as well. :P It's not a fine line that separates game from simulator, rather it's a very large line that can even be skewed at times in either direction.

And in the end, STO = game, always will not matter how it's viewed. :) Again, some things might be simulated, and others not, that's for the devs to figure out. hehe

[JacobFlowers]

I know I'm always the stickler about accuracy so I had to comment here.

First it is against Starfleet regulations to travel at faster-than-light speeds inside a solar system unless there is an emergency.

Second, I don't know where you got "7 hours to saturn at impulse" According to ST:TMP it took 1.8 hours to reach jupiter from earth at approx. 2/3 impulse. Though according to my math and some info from MA , 2/3 impulse in ST:TMP is 97,000 km/s while in ST:TNG "Suspicions" 3/4 impulse is only 5,550 km/s, While from Voyager you just know that full impulse is less than 200,000 km/s. So If you're in the travelling at full impulse in the Enterprise(refit) it would take you a MAXIMUM(yes if it was on the opposite side of the sun from earth) of about 3 hours 15 minutes. If you're on a Enterprise-D Shuttlecraft at full impulse it'd take you a maximum of about 2.5 days. You decide.

Impulse speeds could be accelerated slightly but still be slower than warp. This could be fine for people who want to cruise while another task is being performed either in game or out of game.

Why not keep it as is, only when you go to "warp", you're moving at the appropriate impulse speed. So the warp POI screen loads up, but you're only moving at like warp 0.001. That'd satisfy RP'ers, would preserve the gameplay mechanic and would get REAL boring real fast.

Correct, we're making a game, not a space sim. The idea here is to replicate the Star Trek experience, not replicate the Star Trek universe.

I understand this, and I of course agree it shouldn't be made into a space sim.

But I must diverge on one point...

I loved EVE, but one of the things I felt it was lacking was travel freedom. Everytime I entered warp, it was only to destination areas, I could never just go off in a direction and explore, even in systems. It was rather annoying, and I had always thought to myself "man, a star trek MMO would be so cool if the travel system was more free".

This has nothing to do with this function catering to RPers, but more to game mechanics. What if I want to park my ship some place safe in a system while my brohter talks to me. Or I want to set down between two large planets and repair my ship?

Another pity is instancing. Its too bad I can't have the suspense of a Klingon ship warping into the system at a moments notice. blah

[Kriss]

So can you explain how this whole instance vs. persistent thing is going to work in STO or at least how you guys are planning to make it work?

How is instancing for episodes/missions going to work? How is the "sharing" system going to work and who can you share with?

How is this going to relate to the persistent PvP zones like the Neutral Zone? Are territory changes going to work based on which side wins more simultaneous instanced/sharded battles over the same location or do you have another system worked out for this?

How is non-episodic exploration, or "picking a direction and just going" gonna work? Are the systems and objects and locations we find doing this going to become a persistent part of the map or something that only we can access? Does it just disappear all together once we leave or can other players travel to it as well if they wish?

I don't mean to bombard you here but I'm sure you've noticed the 475,621 lively threads that have cropped up on this in the last 1-2 weeks. Can you give us a detailed overview? Please.

Quoting this so maybe the Devs can address the raging ****ed public.

[Mozcol]

As it would be cool in my book to let them have their impulse its just not in the game, period. And we know that it won't be, Cryptic is not going to change that, it will completely screw up the way they have instances and the Galaxy map setup already. not going to happen...this is a dead issue. Come to grips. Peace.:)

[Emn1ty]

As it would be cool in my book to let them have their impulse its just not in the game, period. And we know that it won't be, Cryptic is not going to change that, it will completely screw up the way they have instances and the Galaxy map setup already. not going to happen...this is a dead issue. Come to grips. Peace.:)

If you truly think that, then you wouldn't be posting in this thread in the first place.

[Zander_Hawk]

I know I'm always the stickler about accuracy so I had to comment here.

First it is against Starfleet regulations to travel at faster-than-light speeds inside a solar system unless there is an emergency.

Second, I don't know where you got "7 hours to saturn at impulse" According to ST:TMP it took 1.8 hours to reach jupiter from earth at approx. 2/3 impulse. Though according to my math and some info from MA , 2/3 impulse in ST:TMP is 97,000 km/s while in ST:TNG "Suspicions" 3/4 impulse is only 5,550 km/s, While from Voyager you just know that full impulse is less than 200,000 km/s. So If you're in the travelling at full impulse in the Enterprise(refit) it would take you a MAXIMUM(yes if it was on the opposite side of the sun from earth) of about 3 hours 15 minutes. If you're on a Enterprise-D Shuttlecraft at full impulse it'd take you a maximum of about 2.5 days. You decide.


Impulse speeds could be accelerated slightly but still be slower than warp. This could be fine for people who want to cruise while another task is being performed either in game or out of game.





I understand this, and I of course agree it shouldn't be made into a space sim.

But I must diverge on one point...

I loved EVE, but one of the things I felt it was lacking was travel freedom. Everytime I entered warp, it was only to destination areas, I could never just go off in a direction and explore, even in systems. It was rather annoying, and I had always thought to myself "man, a star trek MMO would be so cool if the travel system was more free".

This has nothing to do with this function catering to RPers, but more to game mechanics. What if I want to park my ship some place safe in a system while my brohter talks to me. Or I want to set down between two large planets and repair my ship?

Another pity is instancing. Its too bad I can't have the suspense of a Klingon ship warping into the system at a moments notice. blah


I believe the new NX-91001 (Sovereign hybrid) has a “Hyper Impulse Drive”, perhaps this drive will allow a ship to go faster than regular impulse without entering warp. The drive would effectively allow a ship to travel at speeds between impulse and warp, cutting down travel time between worlds. Or who knows, may a "Hyper Impulse Drive" is just a really fancy name for a regular impulse drive that includes a color coat of candy apple red. You never know. The joys of 25th century technology and perhaps marketing.

[JacobFlowers]

I'll just say that:

I don't liek the idea of "Point of Interest" flight. It really irked me in EVE, it would be a huge let down in STO.

FREEDOM OF FLIGHT FTW

[Interdictor]

I'll just say that:

I don't liek the idea of "Point of Interest" flight. It really irked me in EVE, it would be a huge let down in STO.

FREEDOM OF FLIGHT FTW

Really doubt that will happen at this point in the game.

Besides - "point of interest" keeps things interesting rather than dealing with boring voids all the time :p.

[Nestro]

I still believe though, that there will be some points of interest which will give us a little bit more the feel of flying arround freely. Like exploration sides. I can imagine that these zones are much much bigger so you need to cruise arround in it a bit to get into sensor range or something like that. I think it was allready mentioned somewhere, that exploration will more be like "Oh, the spot over there, we dont know much about yet. Please have a look at it." implying that everything outside these zones are pretty much well known allready by scientists. Would be quite boring though to be allways pointed to the place to be explored. Kinda doesnt feel like real exploration. I'd rather hope we gather intel about further research spots by investigating places given by the high command. Like, we go to spot A, because high command wants us so, and there we get to know about spot B and C and we choose where to go and so forth. Could easily be done with that Genesis-Machine (procedurale content creating algorithm) i think. Would be very nice to see some real episodes beeing an integral part of this :)

[Sorbek]

Correct, we're making a game, not a space sim. The idea here is to replicate the Star Trek experience, not replicate the Star Trek universe.

How can you really have exploration then huh? Its not exploration if its an instance that no one else will ever find but you and the "known" universe isn't truly expanding as players venture farther from the safety of their respective borders.

[Commander_Nate]

Quoting this so maybe the Devs can address the raging ****ed public.

Thanks, I'm really hoping they answer these somehow. It would go a long way towards clarifying and ending this debate.

[Interdictor]

How can you really have exploration then huh? Its not exploration if its an instance that no one else will ever find but you and the "known" universe isn't truly expanding as players venture farther from the safety of their respective borders.
I imagine there are hardware/manpower limitations to this.

* If explored space was persistent - what would you do with all those explored worlds once they've been discovered? Most would simply be thousands of dots on a galactic map - never visited again.

* If the boundaries of the known galaxy keep expanding then the amount of time it would take to get to the edges to do some real exploring would become more and more prohibitive.

* If Cryptic does as you say, then the thousands of players will quickly discover everything there is to discover within a matter of months. They may not have the manpower or resources to be constantly adding more and more exploration content - it would very quickly get out of hand.

* and if Cryptic's had a "random exploration system generator" do the work (freeing up dev manpower for instance) and the results were persistent, the ever-expanding universe would grow day by day, filling up their servers to their limits after a short while - all for what? Thousands of worlds that nobody will likely ever go back to once they've been discovered.

No - considering all of the problems and difficulties, I think Cryptic's route is the more sensible route.

[Vorgse]

Or if you died, you would have to create another character, that would also equal simulator in my eyes. Granted, these examples are extreme, but they would be more true to life, at least within the Star Trek Universe.

Haha I love this. I've always wanted a sim like this. I have always felt that players are too wreckless with their characters in online games.

[Tamgros]

No - considering all of the problems and difficulties, I think Cryptic's route is the more sensible route.

Yet a developer team of one man is solving all these problems in another game in development, and he is doing so with a full time job.

Procedural generation makes it so he won't have to hand craft anything as you explore, the universe is literally generated as you explore so you have no idea what you will find. And no, it won't take months to discover everything, more like decades. The Milky way has 100-400 billion stars, not to mention other stuff you can throw in for fun (starbases, spacial anomalies, whatever...)

I think that STO shouldn't become a sim like the game the other guy is creating, but there surely should be many persistent aspects. The universe should grow, if it doesn't, you aren't actually discovering something new, because it isn't actually there, even as far as the game Universe is concerned.

[Vorgse]

EvEs boxes do have intire solar systems in them but cryptics engine can't do it the same way as the backbone is different. And EvEs backbone cannot support 2 instances of one zone that size which is why hubs like Jita lag badly. Cryptic's engine is of the same vintage but was desighned for more traditional ground action and not built from the ground up as a space sim. Given the constraints of the engine and the talent of the writers Cryptic uses I think the game is gonna be good but not perfect. If the sub base is high enough then all the problems with walls and instances can be delt with in expansions and installments. I still bet it will take 20 min to cross a planet instance from side to side on impulse and thats big enough for me.


Bj

But why would you want just one planet "box" that big? I'd rather have the planets be a bit smaller and just have system boxes. If the only time you ever fight or do anything is hovering over some POI then it'll feel exactly like the space battles in SW:BF2. You couldn't even recreate the battle of Sector 001 with the "planet box" everyone is describing, that battle took place across the full radius of the Sol system.

I've made this point and others have now also, but I will reiterate it.
If other MMOs can fit all those players, creatures, buildings, trees, terrain, etc. in one area, whats' keeping Cryptic from placing 10 spheres, an asteroid field, and a starbase or 2, on a picture of a star field and making that one area?

[Tamgros]

I've made this point and others have now also, but I will reiterate it.
If other MMOs can fit all those players, creatures, buildings, trees, terrain, etc. in one area, whats' keeping Cryptic from placing 10 spheres, an asteroid field, and a starbase or 2, on a picture of a star field and making that one area?
What's the point? As has been said in this thread, It would take almost 5 hours to reach saturn from earth at impulse, and that is when they are as close as possible. They can be over 7 hours from each other at times.

In system we'll warp to the other.

Did you seem the trailer out of gamescom?

http://ve3d.ign.com/videos/54572/PC/Star-Trek-Online/Trailer/GamesCom-09-Off-Screen-Trailer

The zones are huge! And the battles in the trailer had a lot of ships, and this is pre-beta footage :)


BTW:

To support my previous post, let's say cryptic wants to allow their system to generate around 400 billion stars and other key points in the galaxy. There really could be 10x that much with spacial anomalies, starbases, black holes, rogue asteroids , etc. but this number is already so silly large that it doesn't matter.

Let's say that players can quickly explore. I think it would be sad if they could, but let's say the avg person can explore two different places/hour (again, i would be :( if exploration was that quick, i want more depth to it, but for the purposes of showing how large a galaxy really is, I'm inflating these numbers).

Say the avg player goes exploring for 20 hours per week. I kind of doubt it will be that high, but again, I can exaggerate all I want because 400billion is just so large, it's silly.

Now let's say that STO is a success and has around 400K subs. How many months would it take? Lol, months? Try 480 YEARS!

What if there were 1 million subs do you ask? It would still take 192 years. Yeah... this isn't a problem. Persistent galaxy FTW!!!

[eqfan592]

Very true! I would hate to take real ST time to get places, there were like 100 episodes that covered the course of a week or more of just travelling from one system to another.
However, no matter how much they decrease travel time I hope they keep it all relative, if it take me 1 minute to go from earth to Vulcan it better take longer to get to DS9 or Cardassia.
I know RPers love accuracy, and as a trekker I'd love to try out an RP server. But I also don't want 1 mission to take me a weeks worth of travelling.

That really is the key point right there. What made the shows so much fun and enjoyable to watch? Remember the entire episode where you got to watch the night watch fly the ship through a patch of empty space for a full hour and nothing happened? No, you don't remember that episode. Because that episode would be beyond stupid and boring, and no sane person would ever expect the average person to find that truly entertaining.

Would it be "nice" to be able to do that? Sure! Is it a make or break game mechanic? Not even close, assuming they make the areas around planets and so forth large enough to fly around in for a reasonable amount of time without hitting a "wall." Ya know, since people hate walls so much, maybe we should just have ships explode after they reach a certain point. If anything, it would be entertaining to watch (from a distance, of course!) :P Talk about a way to end a race! If they did that at the Daytona 500, I'd watch every year! (assuming nobody actually got hurt) :)

[Commander_Nate]

I imagine there are hardware/manpower limitations to this.

* If explored space was persistent - what would you do with all those explored worlds once they've been discovered? Most would simply be thousands of dots on a galactic map - never visited again.
Not necessarily. There are plenty of players like me who would go there just because we've never been there. If they include a fog of war function, then I wouldn't even know it was there til I went to it.

Players and fleets could go back to them to establish their own starbases or outposts or whatever.

If they were populated by a new NPC race, then there are diplomatic, economic, and other reasons for returning.


* If the boundaries of the known galaxy keep expanding then the amount of time it would take to get to the edges to do some real exploring would become more and more prohibitive.
How so? If you've already been to a good portion of the map just spawn closer to the edge. This is a fairly simple option that Cryptic could give us.

* If Cryptic does as you say, then the thousands of players will quickly discover everything there is to discover within a matter of months. They may not have the manpower or resources to be constantly adding more and more exploration content - it would very quickly get out of hand.
Not if the Genesis Engine does it's job right.

* and if Cryptic's had a "random exploration system generator" do the work (freeing up dev manpower for instance) and the results were persistent, the ever-expanding universe would grow day by day, filling up their servers to their limits after a short while - all for what? Thousands of worlds that nobody will likely ever go back to once they've been discovered.

No - considering all of the problems and difficulties, I think Cryptic's route is the more sensible route.
We're talking about saving sets of randomly generated variables here and then recalling them as needed. This is basically a question of storage capacity and memory. For a multi-million dollar company, this should be a non-issue given the low price and relative ease with which memory can be upgraded and expanded.

[Interdictor]

We're talking about saving sets of randomly generated variables here and then recalling them as needed. This is basically a question of storage capacity and memory. For a multi-million dollar company, this should be a non-issue given the low price and relative ease with which memory can be upgraded and expanded.
Too much cost for too little payoff. After a while space would be littered with useless destinations.

If STO was going to be nothing but an exploratory game, I'd agree with you, but exploration is going to be but one facet of the game.

[eqfan592]

How can you really have exploration then huh? Its not exploration if its an instance that no one else will ever find but you and the "known" universe isn't truly expanding as players venture farther from the safety of their respective borders.

Given that you can share the locations of planets you discover with other players, then the "known" universe will be expanding naturally as players share their charts with other players. It may not be an instant growth, but it will grow nonetheless.

[Commander_Nate]

Too much cost for too little payoff. After a while space would be littered with useless destinations.

If STO was going to be nothing but an exploratory game, I'd agree with you, but exploration is going to be but one facet of the game.

I doubt very much that the cost of this is something Cryptic/Atari couldn't easily afford. Especially in the case of something that is about to become a fairly solid revenue stream.

Given that you can share the locations of planets you discover with other players, then the "known" universe will be expanding naturally as players share their charts with other players. It may not be an instant growth, but it will grow nonetheless.
But if you don't share them, or don't know the right person in order to get a location shared, then they don't actually exist and nothing was discovered.

[SubitusNex]

My 2 cents.

I agree with the point of view expressed in the initial post. However once you understand the implications of it for the game engine it makes sense to have several waypoints. Firstly in terms of development it takes a few years off from developing a boundary free travel system for a whole new universe.

Can you imagine jumping from one system content to another based merely on x and y coordinates, simple right? Actually considering each system could be of diferent morphology, size, etc.. it would mean a huge puzzle, and then Loading (transition areas) would have to exist nonetheless, and having to set you at a coordinate after loadign based on the previous positions could lead to large ammounts of bugs, should your crash or anything else.

Then there would also be an enormous problem with optimizing the system, and the distances so it would be practical.

So yea, impulse travel sounds fun but in terms of game mechanics it sounds to me as it would be overly costly and time consuming for a project such as this. Sad, but true.... unless some genius out there figures it out and makes the next MMO breakthrough.

PS: So far the only few MMORPGs I've had the chance to play that had seamless area content loading, were based on "small" worlds rather than large universes :) .

[eqfan592]

But if you don't share them, or don't know the right person in order to get a location shared, then they don't actually exist and nothing was discovered.

That's a bit obtuse and philosophical. They do actually exist in the game. Simply because you don't personally know about it doesn't mean it's not there at all and that nothing was discovered. The potential still exists for you to end up with that location at some point in time. Given that I think the sharing of star charts is going to be very popular, it's unlikely that many planets will be only known by one or two people for an extend period of time.

I like this way of their doing things the most, because I like the idea of being able to personally share this information with others in the community, while at the same time I like the idea of being able to keep a place or two known only to me and a select few, just to be "our" place, so to speak. It's the best of both worlds, IMHO :)

[jdnix]

But why would you want just one planet "box" that big? I'd rather have the planets be a bit smaller and just have system boxes. If the only time you ever fight or do anything is hovering over some POI then it'll feel exactly like the space battles in SW:BF2. You couldn't even recreate the battle of Sector 001 with the "planet box" everyone is describing, that battle took place across the full radius of the Sol system.

I've made this point and others have now also, but I will reiterate it.
If other MMOs can fit all those players, creatures, buildings, trees, terrain, etc. in one area, whats' keeping Cryptic from placing 10 spheres, an asteroid field, and a starbase or 2, on a picture of a star field and making that one area?

But it's points of interest not planets. If a wrecked starship is picked up on your scanners, that's a point of interest and you can warp to it. If a borg cube is invading they could easily have a series of points of interest representing the different stages of the cube moving across the system.

Secondly, we don't know how big one of these zones are going to be. The screen shots they've shown look like there's a lot going on.

I don't think the issue for Cryptic is their inability to put many objects in a zone. It's how do you handle the sheer size of space. For example Jupiter is 0.01 degrees across when viewed from Earth, at closest approach. How do you steer for something that small? Obviously you can't so to get anywhere you're basically selecting from a list of points of interest.

Then you have to deal with the speeds of star ships. At impulse speeds travel times between planets would be ridiculously long, but at the same time impulse is far to fast for a human being to control near any object of interest. At impulse, you travel from the Earth to the moon in less than two seconds. If you were passing by a mile long starship, it would go from too small to see to right on top of you and back to too small to see in less than a second. So basically, you have to travel at one scale and then drop to a smaller, slower scale when you approach anything.

This pretty much leads you to a point of interest flight system.

[KashikoiBaka]

Too much cost for too little payoff. After a while space would be littered with useless destinations.

If STO was going to be nothing but an exploratory game, I'd agree with you, but exploration is going to be but one facet of the game.

Left at the next planet, Sol systems biggest ball of Yarn!

[Commander_Nate]

That's a bit obtuse and philosophical. They do actually exist in the game. Simply because you don't personally know about it doesn't mean it's not there at all and that nothing was discovered. The potential still exists for you to end up with that location at some point in time. Given that I think the sharing of star charts is going to be very popular, it's unlikely that many planets will be only known by one or two people for an extend period of time.

I like this way of their doing things the most, because I like the idea of being able to personally share this information with others in the community, while at the same time I like the idea of being able to keep a place or two known only to me and a select few, just to be "our" place, so to speak. It's the best of both worlds, IMHO :)

That's my point. The sharing system needs to be set up so that I can choose to share things I discover with the entire community at once or at least with my entire faction. Having to go around and individually share my map with the players I want to share with would be ridiculous and would lead to a situation like I pointed out in my previous post.

[Interdictor]

But it's points of interest not planets. If a wrecked starship is picked up on your scanners, that's a point of interest and you can warp to it. If a borg cube is invading they could easily have a series of points of interest representing the different stages of the cube moving across the system.

Secondly, we don't know how big one of these zones are going to be. The screen shots they've shown look like there's a lot going on.

I don't think the issue for Cryptic is their inability to put many objects in a zone. It's how do you handle the sheer size of space. For example Jupiter is 0.01 degrees across when viewed from Earth, at closest approach. How do you steer for something that small? Obviously you can't so to get anywhere you're basically selecting from a list of points of interest.

Then you have to deal with the speeds of star ships. At impulse speeds travel times between planets would be ridiculously long, but at the same time impulse is far to fast for a human being to control near any object of interest. At impulse, you travel from the Earth to the moon in less than two seconds. If you were passing by a mile long starship, it would go from too small to see to right on top of you and back to too small to see in less than a second. So basically, you have to travel at one scale and then drop to a smaller, slower scale when you approach anything.

This pretty much leads you to a point of interest flight system.
Well put. I agree.

[Vorgse]

I don't think the issue for Cryptic is their inability to put many objects in a zone. It's how do you handle the sheer size of space. For example Jupiter is 0.01 degrees across when viewed from Earth, at closest approach. How do you steer for something that small? Obviously you can't so to get anywhere you're basically selecting from a list of points of interest.

If that's how you define POI flight then almost anything with a map has POI travel. In ST:SFA you chose a target star or planet you wanted to fly to by cycling targets or selecting one from a list, then that planet would show up on your radar as a waypoint and it would be targeted on your HUD. Then, you manually point your ship in its direction and set your speed, you're right after a few million miles just a single degree is a huge difference, but that's why thrusters were invented, and course corrections.
This is my main argument against the need for POI flight. SFA "boxes" but they were entire systems wide, they avoided invisible walls by making the empty space outside of the system infinite so that all the engine had to do was know how far away you were from the planets also it had a few hundred different configurations of star systems and live video cutscenes. Sure you're saying well that isn't an MMO, it takes a lot more to run an MMO. My response? SFA was released in 1997, and required a 90 MHZ processor, 16 MB of RAM, a 1 MB SVGA card, and 150 MB of HDD space. So tell me again how having a whole system as one instance is more than the engine can handle?

[Amblin]

Aren't we forgetting something here?

We already know that in Star Trek Online, it's not going to take us days to fly between star systems (as in Star Trek). That canonical element has already been changed for the sake of generally enjoyable gameplay.

So why in Star Trek Online should it take us hours to fly between planets in a star system?

If Cryptic is willing to shorten interstellar flight times, what's stopping them from also shortening interplanetary flight times?

I have the feeling that point-and-click travel in a star system, rather than free flight, was not a design choice that was based on travel time concerns....

--Flatfingers

I suppose it's choice or the feeling of it. I recall freelancer and elite, no boxes as such. You could fly for ages and not banging into boundries.

That is what people want to feel I think.

If space is massive, why cram me into a shoe box and taunt me with it's untamable glory?

I understand it's just a game but you call it an MMO and that sparks certain pre-requisites in a gamers mind that rarely match the reality.

Player expectations.
MMO = Persistant, expansive, sandbox
RPG = Roleplay through a story and decisions made are final and matter.

Reality is always different.

MMO = Limited travel, Boxes, on rails, limited customization, Limited population per server or shard.
RPG = On rails, fail safe stories made to entertain on the grind train. Reward for combat wins not choices.

We hanker for adventure but are only given tickets for rides that haver known destinations. If you got lost in the woods, you'd cry wolf, so we let you suckle on the teat of predictability.

And remember, just like the TV shows, when you finish playing STO, everything will be as it was when you logged in. The #1 Rule for making a TV Series. N matter what happens nothing changes.

Even after the entire span of the TV Shows, feds are at reasonable peace with everyone but the bogey man (borg).

I may have gone a little off topic there =)

[Vorgse]

My other favorite thing to see people write is at one point they'll write about how big space is and how you'd never be able to get anywhere ever, then on a completely unrelated post they'll argue almost the opposite saying, you'd have no control, you're moving to fast. Cryptic has said a million times that travel won't be accurate times. Why can't it be scaled? Let's face it if you're coming up on something fast, say you're going full impulse and the compter shows you're 1000 Mi. away from something, you can't stop in time, so maybe you should have slowed to 1/8 impulse 9000 mi. or so ago.

I've played every Star Trek Video game that has come out since about 1995(except "Chekov's Lost Missions, I could never find it) and each one failed because it had about one strength and a million weaknesses. What I was hoping STO would do was take a page out of their books, and make a frankenstien of a game that utilized strnegths of past ST games and improved them. I think I expected travel to be more like SFA(but not the crappy instant travel while warping) with more accurate physics, battle tactics to be somewhere between BC and SFC, battle combat to be an improved KA, and ground battle to be like EF only 3rd person and taken more seriously. Obviously all improved since the last of those games came out around 2003 or so.
Maybe playing all those games set my hopes too high, but after Cryptic gave us the "Exloration is a key component" and "space battle will be very tactical" quotes I guess that's what I expected.

[blujester]

Ok Amblin I'm gonna call you on Freelancer. Every zone was a box on freelancer. When you got to the edge you still saw particals flyin by, but you weren't going anywhere. Period.


Take this as a possible scenarion for point to point flight within a sector like 001 (Earth).
Your in orbit around Earth and want to take a look at Saturn's Rings. You pull up the mini map and set course for Saturn orbit. Your ship goes ZOOM BANG and wizziz off the screen. slow disolve to a load screen. BANG ZOOM your ship comes into Saturn space making for orbit. Too imersion breaking? Wouldn't be for me. Not that that's how it's done but that's how I'd do it.


Bj

[Emn1ty]

As a matter of fact, that is very immersion breaking. No matter how the loading is done, it breaks immersion. The thing I LOVE about EVE is the seamlessness of its universe. I actually enjoy traveling long distances because I feel like I'm doing so. I even enjoyed mining cause I felt like it mattered. The game feels more real than any other MMO I have ever played exactly because it has realistic qualities to it. ST has those qualities as well, and so should STO. Much of the JJ Abrams Star Trek movie takes place IN TRANSIT, just to make that clarification.

[blujester]

As a matter of fact, that is very immersion breaking. No matter how the loading is done, it breaks immersion. The thing I LOVE about EVE is the seamlessness of its universe. I actually enjoy traveling long distances because I feel like I'm doing so. I even enjoyed mining cause I felt like it mattered. The game feels more real than any other MMO I have ever played exactly because it has realistic qualities to it. ST has those qualities as well, and so should STO. Much of the JJ Abrams Star Trek movie takes place IN TRANSIT, just to make that clarification.

Ok..so instead of a loading screen, how about your BO's telling you BS about your crew and argueing with each other. Because thats what happens in the movies and the series in point to point flight? Would that break the emersion? Or would a commercial break be more inline with the series? hmm now that would be a real Star Trek The Next Generation feel!!. This is going to be a game. It will try to capture the feel of Startrek and let you be your own hero. But it won't be living there. It will be a game. It might be a great one but if it's the great game you imagine it won't be the great game someone else imagines. Lets hope it's a good game we can all enjoy for what it is?


Bj

[Zepath]

As a matter of fact, that is very immersion breaking. No matter how the loading is done, it breaks immersion. The thing I LOVE about EVE is the seamlessness of its universe. I actually enjoy traveling long distances because I feel like I'm doing so. I even enjoyed mining cause I felt like it mattered. The game feels more real than any other MMO I have ever played exactly because it has realistic qualities to it. ST has those qualities as well, and so should STO. Much of the JJ Abrams Star Trek movie takes place IN TRANSIT, just to make that clarification.

Ok, I'm a huge supporter of Eve (although I don't play it anymore) ... but let's be fair ... you do go through jump-gates all the time in Eve ... its not instanced (thank God) but its not exactly seamless either.

[blujester]

Ok, I'm a huge supporter of Eve (although I don't play it anymore) ... but let's be fair ... you do go through jump-gates all the time in Eve ... its not instanced (thank God) but its not exactly seamless either.

Not to mention the difference between watching your ship fast forward uncontrolled between POINT to POINT waypoints and a loading screen in a solar system is not much and takes the same amount of time and could be interupted by a random encounter just as easily on both systems. EvE is a good game but it's no better than most and worse than some as far as enjoyment.


Bj

[Zepath]

Not to mention the difference between watching your ship fast forward uncontrolled between POINT to POINT waypoints and a loading screen in a solar system is not much and takes the same amount of time and could be interupted by a random encounter just as easily on both systems. EvE is a good game but it's no better than most and worse than some as far as enjoyment.


Bj

Hey, don't be bashing waypoint plotting ... I love waypoint plotting. If more people used it in Eve, there'd be a lot less QQ'ing about the ganking.

[blujester]

Hey, don't be bashing waypoint plotting ... I love waypoint plotting. If more people used it in Eve, there'd be a lot less QQ'ing about the ganking.

Not meaning to bash it..I was a recon, pilot I had so many waypoints in so many systems I had an offline spreadsheet to track them all. I'm just sayin the "Fast Forward" graphic might as well have been a load screen for all I cared. It was just looking at pictures. Moving or static means little. But the flight and my point is, It was still POINT to POINT.

No freeflight at all in EvE and that killed it for me.


Bj

[Loekii]

While I am not crazy about loading screens, I will give Cryptic props for using a semi-animated (slow panning camera) loading screen in their gameplay videos from gamescon.

[blujester]

You know what.. instead of loading screens it SHOULD be your BO's telling you stupid junk like Doctor: The talaxyins have been keeping to them selves lately and I'm worried! FO: Sir I'd aprecciate it if the Engineering Chief would stick to his own buisness and leave me out of his marital squables. CfEn : If that tub a lard can't answer a simple question I kin'a see any reason to talk to 'im at all.

I've been a supervisor and a plant manager and I got this all the time. A captain of a ship does too. Why not use it as a tool for imersion. Whats more real than that? Thats what being a leader is about..putting up with inane BS like that? So use it in place of loading screens. Sure, you'll want to kill our BO's most of the time. But it's just like real life at work!!


Bj

[Vorgse]

Ok Amblin I'm gonna call you on Freelancer. Every zone was a box on freelancer. When you got to the edge you still saw particals flyin by, but you weren't going anywhere. Period.


Take this as a possible scenarion for point to point flight within a sector like 001 (Earth).
Your in orbit around Earth and want to take a look at Saturn's Rings. You pull up the mini map and set course for Saturn orbit. Your ship goes ZOOM BANG and wizziz off the screen. slow disolve to a load screen. BANG ZOOM your ship comes into Saturn space making for orbit. Too imersion breaking? Wouldn't be for me. Not that that's how it's done but that's how I'd do it.


Bj

Or why not Point your bow at Saturn, engage full impulse, and glide in to a high orbit about 5 minutes later? I guess I don't know why everything has to be instantaneous. SFA did that instant travel stuff and it was seamless, sure there wasn't even a loading screen, but when it took you 3 seconds to go anywhere it does break some of the immersion. What if my fellow pirates and I want to hang at the midpoint between Jupiter and Saturn and wait for unsuspecting travelers? Well, can't do that anymore lads because now we can only hang out right next to planets.

[eqfan592]

That's my point. The sharing system needs to be set up so that I can choose to share things I discover with the entire community at once or at least with my entire faction. Having to go around and individually share my map with the players I want to share with would be ridiculous and would lead to a situation like I pointed out in my previous post.

You're forgetting though that the players you share it with will also be sharing their out, and then the people THEY share with will be sharing THEIRS out, and so on, and so on and so on. Trust me, this natural progression will result in the majority of planets that are discovered being known fairly quickly to the entire community. Also, having this mechanism in place compels people to interact with each other even more, which could help create a larger sense of community. I just see a lot more upside here than down :)

[metl]

You're forgetting though that the players you share it with will also be sharing their out, and then the people THEY share with will be sharing THEIRS out, and so on, and so on and so on. Trust me, this natural progression will result in the majority of planets that are discovered being known fairly quickly to the entire community. Also, having this mechanism in place compels people to interact with each other even more, which could help create a larger sense of community. I just see a lot more upside here than down :)

If that is the case, why not make it persistent? Wouldn't that be the same thing?

I can see it now. "I explored every waypoint I have, but jack wants more for a new map than I can afford. Nothing for me to do, might as well quit now."

Another thing. Guild wars are supposed to be possible. How if they don't have my base location and no way of obtaining it (without a turncoat, obviously.)

[JacobFlowers]

Really doubt that will happen at this point in the game.

Besides - "point of interest" keeps things interesting rather than dealing with boring voids all the time :p.

Point of interest flight will not necessarily keep thigns interesting. It certainly didn't achieve that in EVE. But what you say does bring up a good point. If this game achieves a level of immersiveness on a level that we all desire, then even being in the empty void of space should not be "boring" per se... because at any moment something could happen. So this is up to Cryptic to deliver interesting game play.

I am not saying we should ONLY have freedom of flight. I am in favor of having Points of Interest flight ANNND freedom of flight. Add, not take away. Give us the freedom to choose if we want to say to our helmsman "second star to the right and straight on till morning".

[eqfan592]

If that is the case, why not make it persistent? Wouldn't that be the same thing?

I can see it now. "I explored every waypoint I have, but jack wants more for a new map than I can afford. Nothing for me to do, might as well quit now."

Another thing. Guild wars are supposed to be possible. How if they don't have my base location and no way of obtaining it (without a turncoat, obviously.)

What you don't understand is that it IS making it persistent. This is a form of doing that very thing, it's just adding another element to it besides just having the entire universe automatically know it the second you find someplace. As for guild wars, it's not much of a war if the two fleets never even attempt to engage each other. At some point they will both have to come out of hiding.

I personally like this way of doing things, and I don't honestly imagine most people are going to be selling their star charts, but rather I see them being exchanged among friends pretty freely, which will help keep any sort of market prices pretty well in check.

[metl]

I don't think you see where I am going with the guilds. I can come out and attack all day long while building up my resources limitlessly without any fear of them ever being taken away. How long before we see the largest ships being produced constantly and feeding wars in which no one ever wins? If you can't damage your opponents ability to field ships, how do you ever expect to win the war? Just hope they get bored fighting you? I realize this is not a pvp centered game, but for the pvpers, fighting npc bases is going to get old.

[blujester]

I don't think you see where I am going with the guilds. I can come out and attack all day long while building up my resources limitlessly without any fear of them ever being taken away. How long before we see the largest ships being produced constantly and feeding wars in which no one ever wins? If you can't damage your opponents ability to field ships, how do you ever expect to win the war? Just hope they get bored fighting you? I realize this is not a pvp centered game, but for the pvpers, fighting npc bases is going to get old.

And I don't think you have grasped what we know about FvF in STO so far. There will probably not be fleet structures, certainly not at launch. There will most likely never be a mechanic for an opposing fleet to take over you base if and when you do get one. You will never need to build more than one ship of any type for your fleet mate as it will never be lost permenantly. It's not certain that ships will be built at all by players.

What we do know is that both PvP AND PvE will influence the loyaltys of the border inhabitants. Victorys and losses in PvP will impact loyalty but not directly facilitate change of ownership of a regeon beyond that. PvP between Houses in the KDF may or may not have any real goal other than the fun of blasting people out of the sky.

We simply do not know how PvP will be implimented and untill we do, it's all speculation.


Bj