I think the face to face aspect takes into account that the ship being attacked should realistically detect an incoming vessel a few minutes before coming into weapons range, and easily has enough time to turn before battle commences.
Otherwise you'd have to assume that the ship cought with it's pants down had terrible sensors, and also that the opponent dropped out of warp right next to her.

I agree that Klingon cloaking was a joke in BoTF. They should have no cloaks until the movie BOP, and then after that you should be able to refit all K'Tinga's with a cloak, and all future ships should be so equipped.

The whole concept of up and down in deep space has also always been an issue with the Star Trek series. It is not unreasonable that a starship might be designed with one artificial gravity field direction for practical reasons. The configuration of a ship for orbital orientation to a planet may also dictate design configuration of a ship along one axis. There is no reason, however, that ships meeting in deep space would manage to agree, as it was, on one direction as an arbitrary up and down. The Romulan ship could just a well decload and appear to be upside down or on its side. By the same logic and in the third dimension they could decloak and appear to you to be above or blow you based on your orientation. They might be "facing" you due to their direction of travel to intercept you but everything else would be up to chance. So why do they almost always show up in the same plane and in the same orientation as your ship in the TV show? Because we people live in a gravity field, think in terms of one in our everday life and these realties in deep space would be confusing and distracting in a TV drama. The same holds for a game.

As long as there is an improvement in the quality of play in ship to ship combat in BOTF2 over BOTF I will be happy. Keep the two dimensional face to face and same up down axis orientation and it will work for a game. That is the best way to present the action for a game of this type.



Physics predicts that there may really be 19 or more physical dimensions. Living in three dimensions we can hardly imagine a universe like that. For conceptual reasons think of it as though the other fiscal dimension are being compress to inperceptable small scale in our universe. It can only be seen when you study the behavior of subatomic particles.

I'd have to agree with Ken on this, for a variety of reasons.

First off, it's more natural to see the ships start off facing each other on a level plane (although that's not to say that the ships won't utilize the verticle axis while performing combat manuvers). Secondly, it would, in my mind (and I'm only estimating this as I'm not sure of the programming techniques going to be used for movement), require a significant amount of additional work in order to determine which directions ships are entering combat from. The game does not keep track of ship direction, it only keeps track of which square the ships are in and which square it will be in next. Think of it this way...

You have a bunch of folders on your hard drive. The folders are labeld 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. And on your screen, they appear to create a box that looks like:

1 - 2 - 3
4 - 5 - 6
7 - 8 - 9

You have a picture file that looks like the Enterprise-E in folder 1 and you want to move it to folder 3. Let's say that the computer is programmed to move the picture file one folder at a time, meaning it has to go from folder 1 to folder 2 before it can get to folder 3. So what the computer will actually do is *copy* your picture to folder 2 and then *delete* it from folder 1. Thus, while the computer keeps track of where the picture was, it no longer cares. This will hold true for the program and ship movement. It's pretty much the same exact concept. The computer doesn't actually care how your folders are lined up, all it knows is that it is programmed to move from folder 1 to folder 2 to folder 3.

Making the computer keep track of which direction (note: not previous square/folder/whatever) is an entirely new challenge. I'm not sure how complicated it would be to add, but just for a frame of mind, I could see it easily multiplying the amount of code for the movement portion of the game. Again, this is all personal opinion and could be completely meaningless and wrong, and at best is just a guesstimate.

Assuming this is true, it wouldn't be worth the effort in my opinion.

Now think of what that model would need to keep track of a 3D game area.

I think if combat is taking place in a secter next to a group of ships all combat effective ships within 1 square/hex of the sector should warp into battle after a certain ammount of combat turns depending on the ships overall speed.

I had always assumed that ships entering the field of combat would be facing eachother. It would stand to reason that the fleets would have eachother on sensors as they approached, and would have more than enough time to turn and face eachother. That's most likely the way it will be implemented.

Jade has an interesting idea, though I'm not sure it would be fair, particularly in enemy space, where the enemy almost certainly has more ships close by.

i had the same idea as jade funnily enough however it will be in the combat orders like a request reinforcements order, and then any vessel within range can come to help, the longer the combat the more help may arrive.

perhaps give an option:

cloak and avoid
cloak and attack

as ship action. Ship that are cloaked won't attack wtih the first option. Dunno if this is good for the game, just an idea.

You guys actually completely missed what I was saying. :p

Let's say that the Romulan player has a couple of capital ships in a sector in the middle of nowhere important, and a **huge** fleet of another empire shows up. Now normally, those capital ships would be set to engage, even when cloaked. Now that the two taskforces are in the same sector, combat is *going* to occur, so both players get dragged to the combat screen.

The Romulan player will see his/her ships, along with the massive force that the other empire has. Let's say the other empire is the Federation...

The Federation will see, in the combat screen.... just his/her ships and nothing else.

The Romulan player is obviously over-matched and will retreat. No combat occurs.

Let's say you are the Federation player. What is now going to go through your head? Let's even add to it and say that you are allied with the Klingons.

Answer: Gee, that must have been some Romulan ships there even though I never saw them. In reality, the Federation player should not even have a clue if there were ships there or not.

There should be **ONLY** two ways any player can even know that a cloaked ship is nearby. A) it can be detected with enough sensor technology or B) it decloaks. That's it.

The simple fact that BOTH players got pulled to the combat screen in the first place and the Federation player saw absolutely nothing tells him way more than it should considering he didn't even see any ships.

Second example:
A force of cloaked Romulan ships and a force of Federation ships meet in a sector. They are both about equally matched. Both players get pulled to the combat screen.

Romulan player sees all his ships and all of the Federation ships.

Federation player only sees his ships.

The Romulan player decides to move their forces to flanking positions while cloaked, which takes time and more importantly, turns.

What is the Federation player going to do? Order evasions? Retreats? What would the ships be evading/retreating from? There's nothing there as far as the Federation ships can tell! Result: even though the cloaking technology on the Romulan ships is **supposed** to give the elements of surprise, that element is completely stripped simply because the Federation player is pulled into the combat screen before he can actually detect the ships. They're still invisible to him/her.

Conclusion from this example: Instead of cloaking providing an element of surprise, it is only providing a first-strike opportunity, exactly like they do in BotF1, which I found lame. There are some differences in that you can remain cloaked instead of being forced to decloak after the first turn, thus allowing you freedom to reposition yourself before attacking. The details are different, but the end result is the same.

Solution:
In these two examples, the Romulan player should be the only one able to view the combat screen until he decloaks. Thus, if he retreats, the Federation player will still have no idea that he was even there, which is exactly what cloaking technology is supposed to do and why it was designed. The Fed player would never be brought to the combat screen, perserving the advantage of cloaking technology.

If the Romulan player decides to remain in combat, again he should be the only player viewing the combat screen until his ships become detectable. This will allow him to issue movement orders, and then be able to launch his first-strike attack. On the turn that the Romulan ships are declaoking, all other players involved in the engagement who were unable to see the cloaked ships will now be pulled into the combat screen. At this point, they will only be able to watch the Romulan attacking/decloaking actions, and then will be allowed to issue orders for the next turn as per normal 3-d combat.

Is this more clear?

I vote for Iwulff's idea!



Na, think about it, Azhdeen - if your ship is set to cloak and evade, then the combat won't occur in the first place - so the Federation won't know about the ship.

If the ship was set to cloak and attack though, chances are the Federation would know about it because A) They detected it. B) There are strange sensor readings that they're investigating - they don't know a ship is there, but they know *something* is there.

Yes, even if the ship was taken by surprise, the command staff would still give orders to evade, raise shields, or whatever - unless they were so stricken by fear that they couldn't do anything - in which case how did they make it to Captain in the first place?

You have to remember that this is a game though - there are some problems that you realistically can't "solve". We know that we won't be able to follow canon in every aspect of every matter, because doing so would make the game unplayable.

We've always know that in these circumstances, we would have to break a few of the established rules. But where possible we will try to avoid this. As much as it pains me to say it though, BOTF2 is is just a game.

(Feel free to kill me! )

Hmmm, Sorry I started another interesting discussion! LOL

I have to Agree With Azh on most aspects... Then Again, i can concur with both Iwulf and Matress as well. My Reasoning was not to invoke a discussion on attacks (Cloak vs uncloaked) It was however to spark an interest in total ship movements. What if I as a Romulan wanted only to pull alongside another Majors ship? By what I have seen this is not possable. Also Ships in combat was mentioned. Someone said something about ships in sectors adjacent would be able to "swoop in" and assist.
My thought is coming out of warp would in a matter of speaking be like coming out of cloak, with the difference that the warp ship(s) would be detected, making the other majors to either engage them or retreat.

In principle (to me anyway) it seems resonable, in pratice.. I have no clue.
But it is an idea...

Thanks for the replies. It's good to see things before they happen. Thinking outside the box before the box is complete, stops problems before hand.

Winterhawk.

I think we're still talking about two seperate things.

If I have a pair of warbirds hanging around in a system, I don't want them set to avoid. I want them set to engage. If a crummy science vessel shows up, I want to beat the everliving crap out of it.

If a fleet of 25 ships show up, I want to get the hell out of town. Even better, if the Federation doesn't even know I'm there because I'm cloaked, then I want to keep it that way. Otherwise, what's the point of being cloaked? Why would the Romulans bother creating such a flawed technology that is supposed to make them undetectable, but not even do that?

Again, I don't want to be set to avoid because I want to crush any ships foolish enough to be alone. But I definitely don't want to suicide two capital ships against the entire Federation fleet. See the problem?

I'm already positive there's going to be an engage order, and avoid order, and an intercept order. The cloak order will likely be independant of those and be a seperate order. Thus you can be cloaked/engaged, cloaked/avoid, decloak/engage, decloak/avoid, cloak/intercept, decloak/intercept, and anything else I'm missing.

But that still doesn't solve the problem of being dragged to the combat screen and your element of surprise is stripped from you if your ships happen to be set to engage (and most ships capable of launching attacks are).

The avoid order is great for noncombat ships and exploratory vessels. I always set my science ships to evade in BotF1 and it helps a lot. In the early game, I tend to spread out my taskforces into groups of 2 or so to hunt down lame troop transports that are unprotected that are trying to take my fringe systems. If I have a couple of cloaked destroyers, I want them to attack things that show up. But if what shows up turns into the entire Klingon fleet, throwing my two destroyers against their hulls won't do crap.

Again, I WANT them to engage. But if I am going to retreat because the odds are against me, why should the player on the other side even be able to realize that I was there in the first place? They shouldn't. And that's my point.

As for programming this, considering anything releated to 3-d combat isn't even really started (for Supremacy at least), I can easily see this being accounted for. Chances are the code would have to be designed with this in mind in order to easily account for it, but whatever. Te programming issues is a discussion for 6-12 months from now.

I realize this is a game. But sometimes the game really does need to be as realistic as possible. One of the goals is to improve the strategy and tactics since BotF1 is rather straightfoward. But dragging players to the combat screen simply to see their own ships is detracting from the empires that utilize cloaked ships. I mean, having the first-strike capability was pretty nice. But cloaking technology is more than just getting the first strike. It's pretending to not be there at all if you so choose or to establish a superior position. I mean, it's all over canon Trek. And I think it's definitely programmable and should probably be done so to perserve the flavor of tactics that the "cloaked empires", and particularly the Romulans employ.

The whole engage/avoid setting does not meet the requirements for the issues that I am trying to present here, and what I am trying to outline will still exist. There will come a time where a player will be engaged in combat only to see no other ships than his own, and then combat will "myseriously end" with nothing occuring. The point was for the Romulans to flee the sector without be detected. And as far as the game is concerned, that happened. Their ships can't be seen. But the player knows regardless that the Romulans were just there and retreated. That is a broken game mechanic. It defeats the one of the purposes of an invisible starship.

Besides, you guys only tried to address one of my reasonings. If the Romulan player decides to take the first two turns of his combat moving his ships into a flanking position, currently the Federation player would still be dragged to the combat screen and will have to assign orders. So while the Romulan player is moving, what should the Federation player be doing? He's going to a) order evasive actions or b) retreat. Again, what would the Federation player be retreating from? There's no ships detectable!

But, the Federation player, as in the human being opperating the keyboard KNOWS that the Romulans or Klingons are there. Again, a broken game mechanic. The element of surprise that the cloak allows is gone and the Federation player can order a retreat, even though there is nothing to obviously retreat from.

Waiting to pull the player into combat after the cloaked ships becomes detectable solves both problems.

*edit*
If you're hoping that an engage/avoid order will solve the problem I'm trying to outline, then you are mistaken. That already exists in BotF1. If my suggestion (or a better one) doesn't get included, then you might as well keep cloaked ships the same way that they are in BotF1. You only need them untargetable, not invisible. The point of being invisible is to give the illusion that you're not even there to the person(s) you are hiding from, which gets removed when both sides get pulled into 3-d combat at the same time.

Azh,

I do understand what you are saying. I agree with most of all of it. ( the other parts are over my brains tech level understanding)

But I will leave the rest of this discussion to others who have a fuller knowledge of this then myself..

Winter.

How about a window that pops up for the cloaked taskforce giveing the option to engage or not. That would solve the invisible starship problem. If the player decides yes, then this would have to be sent to the other players in real time. Or simply when the turn button is pressed again, there would be a temporary setback for the battle to decide the outcome and victor of the square. Then go from there. Also, A cloaked retreat would be cool. With a dissadvantage of shields being down for a whole seccond or so before the cloak sets.

Then the option of position IE: Behimd, Front, Port, and Bow (Possible 3D sphere with 16 - xxx ammounts of positions to select) would add some flavor to the combat at the start to give the cloaked ship an advantage and choise in the matter.

It's a matter of paranoia. If your travelling in or near the territory of a race with cloaking technology, you'd be a little jumpy and quite willing to look into any odd sensor readings you had.

I agree. That would be dependant of whom is manning that station

Lets assume there is at lease some chance that a ship could detect something, or a fluxuation of anything. How would that be regulated?