we are really expecting users to explore the galaxy themselves to see some of the "great sights" in Star Trek.
so it's another case of expecting the player to go out into the galaxy and find these fractions.
THIS IS HUGE! It reminds me of Mass Effect and how you could explore to find side missions and collection hunts, but better. Mass Effect didn't let you land at major worlds or find major factions unless it was story related.
- What can you say about the main hero of the game?
MW: He is not your traditional Starfleet Captain, and it would be fair to say that his personality has some pretty rough traits, however, he is valued by the Admirals and has people looking out for him from high places. I don't want to give too much away but I would say that as a character he is going to give you a lot of surprises.
A predetermined personality for the character is fine since that only narrows our scope of actions to fit the personality, but doesn't limit our roles and the abilities we can use for those in-character actions. It's mentioned that this will be a hybrid RPG, I hope that means that depending on what abilities we use, those abilities will max out and expand and open up not just new action solutions but verbal solutions. I mentioned it at the STO forum, Science, Engineering, and Combat specialties can all realistically offer these possibilities. Diplomatic could be a hybrid or specialized set of abilities. If you're sciency, you may notice an incongruity in the story someone tells you. If you are Diplomatic, you may notice facial twitching, blinking, or slow artificial emotional reactions. Combat specialty would let you kick a person through a window in order to end a conversation!
This size means that the Excalibur cannot maneuver particularly quickly and is reliant upon strong defenses and support from the rest of the fleet for protection. There is more to say about the Excalibur, but I think the rest can wait a while longer [smiles].
Previously when these things were mentioned concerning the Excalibur I didn't like it, but it struck me that this isn't too different from the Galaxy class. The Galaxy-class is not a combat ship, it's a long duration community with loads of science labs, sensors, civilians, and happens to be heavily defended and armed. But, for all of that multirole nature, even though it can't be as powerful as a dedicated war ship ton for ton, it isn't sluggish nor weak. And there are larger ships. If anything the Excalibur should be right up there with the maneuverability of the Romulan ships and at least the Galaxy.
- Which ship’s stations can be managed?
MW: We are working on the interface in a very natural way, so most of the major consoles will have actions assigned to them, however, in terms of active "LCARS" (Library Computer Access & Retrieval System) rendered into the scene that will be difficult to do and we have already decided to avoid that mostly.
Keep in mind, stations aren't fixed. There is at least one episode where Geordi says, "Engineering" and a back wall console turned into an engineering console.
- What orders can be given to away teams?
MW: General orders such as "investigate" or "capture" for the most part, if you want to do anything more complicated on an away mission you will need to do that yourself.
Left 4 Dead has a good group control system, I hope something like that is used. Mostly they're smart enough to take care of themselves and you. Mass Effect's system isn't so bad but could be better.
- Will it be possible to board an enemy’s ship and use it afterwards?
LA: Yes, we do intend to add a system that allows you to board enemy ships and stations, as long as their shields are offline. As for taking command and using an enemy ship, keep in mind that repairs in Excalibur will be a lot more realistic than in games like, let's say, Star Trek Armada (2000-2001). Most of the time when you are able to shoot an enemy ship down enough to take possession of it and disable all crew, it'll be way too damaged to be of any help. Of course, the Borg are an exception.
Great.
(yes, we do have the Prometheus class) as well as some other tech like the Breen disabling weapon and the special cloaking device from the movie Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991).
Would you be willing to make a special Prometheus that is somewhat larger and doesn't break apart?
The Breen disabling weapon was famously worked around and very permanent when effective. I don't know how I feel about a weakened form of the weapon that causes temporary total system failure, actually not that good, but it would be great for a Dominion War simulation.
I don't think the cloaking device was special, I think it was only a matter of power. There has to be something about the technology that is simply impractical beyond being able to shoot at the origin of weapons fire, instead of having to use the silly although fun gas tracking system. Otherwise, why was the technology dropped only to be seen again in Nemesis? I don't buy the idea of it being a one off technology. Maybe expensive. Even with that, it's still pretty damn practical for ambushes by packs of small ships. So, it must be impractical, perhaps in multiple ways. First, perhaps cost of construction, I don't think it has any special property beyond energy efficiency, or more likely enhanced cloaking against energy leak since running weapons and cloak all at once must create a lot of emissions. Then there would be the need for more power, you would either need to run your warp core at higher power for longer periods, or require a second reactor, or enlarged reactor. So, you either carry more mass and limit internal volume, or risk a finicky wear prone reactor. Lastly, the energy density of their warp core may have been too low at the time to run shields too, and not being able to use shields may have been seen as too much of a weakness, perhaps thanks to automatic firing on weapon origin. With that, if an ambush doesn't kill all the enemies on the first volley, then the cloak firing attacker would be obliterated by the return fire thanks to lack of shields. In the end, it may have purely come down to power density and reduced cloak effectiveness while running high power systems.
