In this thread I'd like to discuss the ship diversity (or maybe more like the lack of it) of the races in the list compiled by Dafedz.



I was wondering if this list, which has been created some while ago, has been evaluated thoroughly. Since I am working on ship descriptions of the various vessels (starting with the Federation) I have been using that list quite a while to get a feel of the properties of each ship used in the game. To be honest, I am not impressed. The main problem is that each new ship is in fact a copy of an existing one with some increased numbers in shielding, integrity, and weapons. Not only among the same class, but among other classes as well, making it difficult to determine a 'role' of a line of ships.

The most clear example is the backbone of any fleet: her cruisers. We discriminate two kinds of cruisers (using the Feds as an example): Cruisers and Heavy cruisers. All cruisers, exept the Icarus, have 5 phasers and 4 torpedo tubes, with varying strengths. Heavy cruisers, who would seem to be better armed and defended at a cost of speed and range actualy fit into exactly the same line as the cruisers. For example, the Exelsior fits exactly between the Constellation and the Niagara. There is no difference at all between cruisers and heavy cruisers except the tech levels in which they come available.
The shielding and hull integrity go up at a constant rate and the ratio between the two is constant over all ship types (about double shielding than hull in the early techs up to 5 times in the later techs) including destroyers. You'd say that they are much more maneuverable and lack some defense, yet their ratios are exactly the same as with the cruisers only weaker on all levels.
You can extrapolate this same line to the explorers. They are exactly the same as in ratios, only a bit stronger. Some do have more phaser banks indeed, but the magic number regarding torpedo tubes appears to be 4. I realy doubt a Sovereign has the same number of torpedo tubes as a Constitution class.

What happened, for instance, to the idea of 'Strike cruisers'? i.e. more torpedoes in regards to phasers. And is there some function which features exploration and research (scanning of nebulas for instance) which has been agreed on in the past for as far as I know.

In short: in the current setup, there is no benefit at all to not build one massive fleet of your strongest ships only. There is no variation and no desicion making regarding which ship is better in which situation (at least not how I see it).

That was about what I had to say. This is not intended to flame anything of Dafedz work, it is just something I want you guys to think about and hopefully we can come to a revision of the ship list.

I wouldn't worry too much about this, Centurion.

Dafedz and Captain_Chao are currently working to reorder and rebalance the ships in the game, since as you said, the list is pretty old now.

Dafedz is creating a big list of EVERYTHING - he's combining all the info from his various lists into one document that has it all, so that the dev team can use it for reference.

Once the rebalancing is complete, he'll post the document in the staff room. (So sorry, guys)

By the way, i'm in the middle of making another of my uber-threads at the moment; i'm hoping to post it tonight or tomorrow. (I make all my big posts in notepad before posting them)

The thread is all about the "life" of ships - building them, ranges, mothballing/scrapping, and so on.

I've been talking to Dafedz a lot about it, and we've had to make some minor changes to things that were discussed in the forums to make sure that they work in the game.

Anyways, my thread will explain it all, so keep a look out for it.

You should send Dafedz a PM to express your concerns as well.

I'm glad to hear that has been cleared up

Though I would like to have a copy of the file in order to be able to write the ship descriptions since, as it stands now, it is quite difficult to write something new for each ship (and it gets progressively difficult). Besides, you do want to have the majority of it to be about te abilities of the ships.

Surly ship abilitys should be correct and cannon to the ships in trek? if so the discriptions should be similar to the ability of the ships in the series and films.

Jade's right there, for descriptions just write up what we know of the ship types, their designations and fleet roles etc. Their stats don't matter so much for this.

There is a significant difference between Cruiser and Heavy Cruiser though. Yes the Excelsior slots in between the Constellation and the Niagara, as it does in canon. The Excelsior Heavy Cruiser is the strongest and best technology available at Tech 5. One tech later the Niagara inherits much of it but at a lower cost and maintenance. This is the difference. A Cruiser is going to be superior than a Heavy Cruiser of say 30 years before.

you cant stick to cannon as there is are completely new ships in that ship list, and there is no really consistancy with cannon firepower (the defiant as an example... ) at this point I reckon it should be loosely based on cannon, but strengths changed to allow for playibity(sp?)....

if anyone is happy with the setup like that i guess they can mod it!

I agree with what you say, Perry, except the bit about the Command Cruisers not having an effect on the battlefield in BOTF.

If you have a bunch if ships on the battle field against another bunch of ships, then all your ships would simply fire their weapons and hope for the best.

If there is a Command Cruiser present though, then your ships will shoot to hit, rather than shoot and hope for the best. This is easiest to see when your ships start firing torpedoes - your uncommanded ships will fire everything they've got, but if a Command Cruiser is present, they will fire enough to take out the ships they are targeting, and that's it.

Try it yourself if you don't believe me. Save your game right before a big battle, then play it first without the Command Cruiser, then reload the saved game, and play it with the Command Cruiser. It might be just one additional ship, but the improved outcome of the battle should far exceed this minor change.

The reason why Command Cruisers were pointless is because the Heavy Cruisers had the same capability as the Command Cruisers - afterall, they were often simply larger, uprated, versions of the Command Cruisers.

I agree that in BOTF2, this blurring should not happen. Command Cruisers should be able to co-ordinate fleets, but Heavy Cruisers should not. Otherwise, Heavy Cruisers would be better named as Heavy Command Cruisers, but that's being pedantic...

Well I think this certainly needs more discussion - in fact, it is worthy of its own thread.

We'll need to ask Jig about it though, since he will be the one who has to program all this additional stuff.

Unique moves would be great, and BOTF did have it's own unique moves - they were just very few in number. Command ships Circled whilst Fast Attacks Harried, Command ships could Assault, whilst Fast Attack couldn't...

If you check out your files, you'll find that there are pictures for moves that were never implemented in the game. I've posted these pics before in another thread.

Anyways, we won't be able to decide on what moves *could* be possible until we know what classes will be available in the game. We already have a shiplist, but Dafedz is currently reworking it, so we might find that there are new or altered classes.

Until then, there isn't any point in creating any moves. Plus we would need Jig's approval, of course...

The idea of unique moves would be interesting, but I think you could finely tune the ships to unique abilities much more easily. Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I see it there are basic classes of ships:

Medical/Triage
Transport
Colony
Scout/Surveyor/Probe
Frigate/Destroyer/Attack Ship
Heavy Destroyer
Escort
Cruiser/Battle Cruiser (Early command?)
Heavy Cruiser/Warhawk
Tactical Cruiser
Command/Explorer/Dreadnought/Warbird/Attack Cruiser/Battleship

Transport and colony ships I wouldn't bother with, except perhaps to add them as a negative to fleet speed. The others I would figure you could specialize by using different values for the following stats:

Maneuverability-chance to avoid incoming enemy weapon's fire, decreases attack accuracy when evading
Damage Reduction-reduces fleetwide damage or casualties
Accuracy-pretty self-explanatory, the chance to hit an enemy ship
Firepower
Shield Strength
Sensor Range-ability to detect enemy ships further away, earlier warning
Interception-chance to intercept and prevent a ship from escaping
Recharge rate-shields and weapons, although possibly split into two categories
Point-blank fire-ability to attack ships within say 500 meters
Ranged assault-attack from further away
Coordination-slight boost to all stats fleetwide


This way, you'd have it easily able to balance out and have specifics for your different ships. The figures would look something like this:

Medical/Triage-reduce fleet casualties/damage in battle by 15% at level 1, 20% at level 2, can be cumulative up to say 50%, balances out because these ships have essentially no firepower and weak shields

Transport-if anything, maybe a fleetwide damage reduction or increase to the chance to capture/salvage ships in combat, same percentages as medical

Colony-nothing in battle, except maybe drop fleetwide speed by 20% at level 1, 15% at level 2, 10% at level 3, same speed penalty could apply to Medical and Transport

Scout/Surveyor/Probe-minimal shield and firepower, maneuverability 3, recharge rate 2, sensor range 6

Frigate/Destroyer/Attack Ship-maneuverability 6, recharge 3, sensor range 3, interception 6, point-blank 7, shield and weapon strength 3, coordination 1, accuracy 2

Heavy Destroyer-maneuverability 8, recharge 5, sensor range 4, interception 8, point-blank 9, shield and weapon strength 4, ranged 2, coordination 1, accuracy 3

Escort-maneuverability 10, recharge 5, sensor range 3, interception 9, point-blank 11, shield and weapon strength 5, ranged 3, coordination 2, accuracy 2

Cruiser/Battle Cruiser (Early command?) man. 3, recharge 5, sensor range 3, interception 4, point-blank 3, shield and weapon strength 5, ranged 5, coordination 3 (5 if this is a command ship), accuracy 4

Heavy Cruiser/Warhawk-man. 5, recharge 7, sensor range 2, interception 3, point-blank 2, shield and weapon strength 7, ranged 7, coordination 1, accuracy 5

Tactical Cruiser-man. 6, recharge 8, sensor range 2, interception 4, point-blank 3, shield and weapon strength 8, ranged 6, coordination 0 or 1, accuracy 5

Command/Explorer/Dreadnought/Warbird/Attack Cruiser/Battleship-man. 2, recharge 10, sensor range 5, interception 5, point-blank 3, shield and weapon strength 7, ranged 5, coordination 6, accuracy 5

Of course, the coordination could only be cumulative to a certain extent, say 2 or maybe 3 command ships worth. The variable could alter a bit as the ships rise in tech level, like I mentioned with the medical, and the values I put in just came out of thin air. The point is simply to illustrate what each ship type would naturally be better at. Destroyers and the like would sacrifice accuracy, sensor range, and shield/weapon strength for maneuverability and close-quarters fighting strength whereas the larger ships would have greater accuracy, recharge, ranged attacks, and shield/weapon strength at the expense of maneuverability and close-quarters fighting. And, of course, you'll always want to have a command ship or two to grant the extra boost in coordination to your fleet. The noncombat ships I also added in as a means of reducing casualties and perhaps damage at the expense of fleetwide speed/maneuverability since your attack ships will need to protect these fragile ships.

Does this idea sound more balancing/acceptable, and I would think this would be a LOT easier to program than unique maneuvers for each ship or ship class.

Ritter, you exactly explained what I meant all along in this thread only better. As stated before, each ship has its own role in the fleet, though the current shiplist doesn't reflect that role. Things like this would add all the diversity we need in its own right.

You did forget one stat in your list, though. A while ago we've been talking about the possibility to scan nebulae, black holes, pulsars, etc, etc for research points and to find hidden things and such. If that is still going to be in, we need a stat called 'research'. Naturally, scouts and surveyors would be best in that while Heavy cruisers and destroyers fail in that area and the Defiant will have an astounishing value of 0.

After this has been implemented (which I very much advocate) I fail to see why we can't have some special moves for certain classes as well. While we don't have to have a special move for everything, some special classes might have one. A 'duck and dodge' maneuvre for the Defiant sounds good. A 'bombard' maneuvre for the steamrunner and Intrepid class for instance (using their Tri-Cobalt torpedoes as is canon, yet I don't know if those will be in), the Picard-maneuvre for the Galaxy, etc, etc.

At this instance I may renew my idea to paint the ship names (and their NCCs probably) on the hull. As I understand 3d-engines it should not be too difficult to have a shader adjusting the specific texture to add just a small "NCC 1701-E" at the right point of the saucer ^^

That was one idea, jig. The second, probably much easier to program in and more balanced out over the races, etc. is to extend the properties of each ship. Instead of having individual stats limited to number of phasers/torpedoes and their damage, shield and hull points and speed, we add a rang of other abilities that can vary per ship (to distinguish better between say, a cruiser and a destroyer. Abilities like maneuverablity, accuracy, point-blank damage, etc. Check the post of ritter on the previous page for more details.

That is more the issue at this point than the special maneuvres for some type of ships (which would still be fun if it were possible).

At this point i am collecting data and getting up to speed and i understand what you are saying. In botf you built the biggest strongest ship usally wich left a whole list of ships unused.Currently in the staff room we are talking about firing arc ships speeds and attributes.Ill do my best in trying to make every ship have a usefull function.

Which is what i think was meant to be in botf, except it didn't quite work out

Can some one answer me on this one.
Dose the Defiant class has pulse or plain phasers mounted. I know that he has both but in BotF it only fired plain one. I like the pulse.

Pulses were NEVER in BOTF - but they will be in our game.

Jig has said that if we saw it in the films/series, then we will see it in the game. Obviously this doesn't apply to super-weapons like the Genesis probe or the Scimitar's kill-all weapon, but Phase Canons, Photonic Missiles, Phasers, Photons, Quantums, Plasmas, Pulse Canons, Disruptor Pulses, Disruptor beams and anything that i've forgotten will all be in the game.

The engine will also use particle effects, so instead of the weapons being flat and boring as in BOTF, the Torpedoes will spike and flash, and the beams will glow and have particle effects.

If hit, your ships will start to leak plasma and whatnot from their engines, and there will be several different damage textures for each ship, rather than one generic one to show increasing amounts of damage.

That sounds better than BOTF, doesn't it?

yea it does MOE but will you be able to have pluse on diffrent ships would it be posible to take others wepons and put them on ur ship ????? or is this not posibl3e