I've been a Star Trek follower for a number of years canon and in the past few years fanon.
Star Trek Online has always puzzled me on how could it even work and is probably the real reason its so damn hard to develop.
Choosing an era, configuration of vessels, what races are included are pretty generic discussion and nailed in the first few weeks of development. But its the more difficult ones such as
- Concept of speed. If a 3D galaxy map is included then players pretty much would have the galaxy as there oyster and could literally go anywhere.
Titles such as Mass Effect touched and effectively got round this fact of speed by way of the Babylon 5 like Jump Gate/Mass Effect drives to jump from system to system though there are millions of stars and systems in all directions you could only jump around the galaxy point to point with a Mass Effect drive/Jump Gate.
Star Trek doesnt have this. We have Warp Drive to travel from system to system. but with at least 14 different speeds as in impulse 1/4,1/2,3/4 and full impulse now in the show Impulse is used when they enter a system and can transverse the system with quite rapid timing. then theres ten levels of warp speed. so how fast if you look at the map is everyone travelling.
If the vessel is called back to earth and youre on the other side of Beta quadrant how long is it really going to take gametime wise. months?
- Map - Stellar Cartography
Can you indeed visit every planet, doubtful.
the main ones will be there earth, vulcan, kronos, romulus etc. in the 3 years of TOS they laid out the boundaries of the Klingon and Romulan neutral zones and borders. So if you cross them what will happen will a you be turned back or destroyed after violating their space.
Playing Races outside of the federation so the ability to crew a warbird or talaxian garbage freighter can they be done. Can for that matter, be discharged from starfleet if you fail to many missions or make wrong decisions.
On board a starship - is every position a playable position. such as helm, navigator, tactical etc. so if interior play is MMO so youre going to need a team that will actually "take commands" and in play execute them, and the tactics of a battle will be squarely down to the captain and commander. This I doubt will ever work in a MMO scenerio as everyone wants to turn the vessel, everyone will want to press the fire button. rather than telling someone else to do it. because if they didnt, got on and left their post or just for instance logged off as battle wasnt going wel. then what?
perhaps interior lobbys at a Starbase - would work as "Lobbys" to go out on missions as a team.may work better.
Random threats - ok, so imagine youre out in space and suddenly in star trek style a anomaly appears a gravity well or time distortion. in the show its typical of a member of the crew being the link to solving the situation if nobody is an android for example how do you deal with an onboard reverse evolution virus.
Or can occurrences happen like the Caretaker situation and end up in the Gamma Quadrant of the galaxy...it is a 75 year trip at maximum warp to get back to Federation space or even about Q flicking the vessel across space and time.
But one the big ones that everyone and i know i want to do is deal with a confrontation on a big scale - Battling a borg cube or number of cubes as a fleet of real time commanded starships. Its going to take coordinatation not just shooting the tracker beam hub. Like those Big Daddys in Bioshock they should take time to take out and take down. So could a team be manually controlled beam over destroy those internal node generators that exist in places in the cube 1st person style while the starships outside continue to take a pounding and perhaps be destroyed.
your team is successful is destroying the node generator.
Scenerios likely to happen - the manually controlled transporter chief player has got bored looked at the transporter and the walls of the small room what if he/she wanted to be part of the action and went to his quarters to look out the windows at the action. or like everyone will want to see the action from the bridge. How does the team beam back?
- If the ship the player comes from is destroyed. where do they return to? sure another ship but they dont know anyone there....from here also what happens to the players of the destroyed starships.
- Respawning and injury.
I just touched on this is paragraph above, respawning ok youve died dont know maybe you fell off a cliff on a away team mission or got killed by your console blowing up (as theres no fuses in the 24th century) likewise you got injured by your console or plasma burn. how do you return to playing again? in a single player campaign itll be restart mission or something like waking up in sick bay before or after the accident. In MMO terms...respawning back at the beam down point is possibly the only option (as your pattern is still saved...in the buffer or something) if you have an accident like the console blowing up or plasma burn do you wake up in sick bay instantly, before or after the events. after could be in battle a reasonably long time and anything longer than 10 seconds the real time player is likely to log off.
- Leveling up. does this mean at the very start of the game everyone is an ensign at starfleet academy (a good idea for training and learning how it all works) so who is in control of the vessels out in space, how long is development through the military ranks. can i multi task/multiclass while training for helm develop engineering skills as well. You never know when theres a stricken vessel out there that needs assistance. having a points system for each rank and leveling up through them fair enough so once a team has developed with your friends online what happens when youve all reached captain? if youve played together youll be ranking up around the same. so would you be forced to step down from your role on your vessel with your friends as say Helmsman to become captain with a new crew on another starship?
So these are some of the development woes of STO. Dont get me wrong i would like to see them pull of a Star Trek MMO universe and i will buy it. im just spectical of how it will actually function.
