http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5dduwtt5rMYou guys have now exceeded graphically every single previous and current Star Trek game ever made and you're only in alpha. It's also equal or better in many ways than the visual quality of many Trek theme fan movies.
The phaser arrays are looking cool but they look like they need a lot of work too. They were firing in what looked like an extremely random manner, however, this served to display the arc flexibility, with the rear most phasers firing forward, and the forward most firing backwards, so well done there, no one has done that before. I only would have liked to have seen them able to depress their fire a bit closer to the hull. That's personal preference and I can back that up with some examples, but it doesn't diminish the achievement of such a flexible weapon system at all.
The down side is it appears as if the cool down on the main array is what was limiting its use, requiring the use of the other arrays. They all also appeared to be firing in a low power mode, at least for the majority of the time, considering the small convergence effect and general use of single rather than multiple arrays. The only major downsides to the arrays was the base of the shot hopping around, rather than smoothly sliding, and that it moved at all. If I were to see such hopping my expectation would be extremely short duration shots due to lack of build up convergence as seen below at the end of the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=divN4uS2Bzo#t=0m23sI also noticed that the rear torpedo tube fired five torpedoes rapidly. It should be noted that at least in one instance when a full spread was ordered fired from the rear tube only three torpedoes were fired. I personally have no issue with the rear tube being capable of firing five rapidly, it doesn't mean full spread has to be changed from three, and I have no issue with the rear full spread being five either. I only believe it needs to be noted so any deviation is a conscious decision rather than a mistake.
I just had an idea in regard to phasers with sliding bases. If possible, I think it would be a great visual feature to have the array elements which the beam base approach glow in preparation of the beam base's approach. The further from the base the less glow there would be, and trailing elements would not glow at all, only preceding elements would glow. In this way we get a kind of active convergence which fits better with the start-up convergence.
