Massively's Star Trek Online community Q&A: Space combat!
by Kyle Horner 
Nov 16th 2009 at 4:00PM
Filed under: Sci-fi, New titles, News items, Star Trek Online
We'll give you until the end of Tuesday, November 17th to submit your questions in the comments section below. Following that, we'll round up a cross-section of the most popular and most poignant space combat questions and by next week your answers will be here, straight from the folks at Cryptic. As before, we're open to suggestions on next week's Q&A topic, so feel free to throw your hat into that ring while you're typing 'em up.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Phil said on 4:58PM 11-16-2009
Will space combat be more of a arcade style of gameplay or more of a tactical plan your moves out type of thing?
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dudemanjac said on 5:09PM 11-16-2009
Tactical. You will have to keep an eye on your different shields and make sure that the weak ones are not exposed to the enemy.
ARimer said on 5:45PM 11-16-2009
When fighting the Borg will it be as complicated as the tv show makes it with them adapting to your weapons and shields?
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Ryan said on 6:51PM 11-16-2009
How large an advantage will Klingons have with their cloaking systems? Will the Federation have some sort of an inherent advantage itself to offset it to a degree, say superior shield systems or typically better engines given same tiered ships?
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dudemanjac said on 7:43PM 11-16-2009
Good science officers let you see cloaked ships.
Ryan said on 8:02PM 11-16-2009
Oh, I realize that, dudemanjac, and I also realize science vessels will be fairly good at detecting them, too. However, they're still advantages in that situation, if only because the Federation has to spend resources to deal with cloaks if they engage in pvp content. To have a balanced game, there should be something that Klingons have to deal with (spending their own resources, to do it well), if they're to overcome the Federation -- be it some natural advantage to shields, or repair rates, engine power, science capability (even on non-science ships), etc. etc. etc.
I'm just curious to know if there's anything special that the federation is innately good at, or unique, which will balance Federation vessels against Klingons in PvP.
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OldBoy said on 8:05PM 11-16-2009
The Federation is innately good at winning in the end, since that's where all the shows writers come from.
dudemanjac said on 8:35PM 11-16-2009
I don't remember if it was like this in the show but aren't cloaks tied to shields in that if you have cloak up shields are a no-go? It would be nice if a well placed hit stops those shields from coming back up at all or at least extremely weakened.
FanBoy said on 7:12AM 11-17-2009
What will happen when you "die"? Loss of experience? Loss of bridge officers? Loss of ship?
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-Drexel- said on 10:13PM 11-16-2009
How will the use of our weapon systems and abilities be limited during combat? Will the game use some sort of energy bar of sorts or is it primarily cooldown based?
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-Drexel- said on 5:38AM 11-17-2009
I noticed in the PAX footage a lot of micro-management of the shields during combat, will we be able to hotkey the individual shifts from port to starboard shields for instance, can we hotkey the "balance shields" command as well?
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GrandPotato said on 8:03AM 11-17-2009
Will there be boarding parties? If so, can you capture vessels, or does that just disable them or something?
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DandalfTheWhite said on 10:20AM 11-17-2009
How far will you be able to zoom out during combat and exploration in system? Sometimes getting a really far away view of combat would help in a tactical sense. Pictures would be appreciated here... :P
(I've been playing Dragon Age: Origins on my PC and that has a tactical view that has been really helpful. You can really zoom out and see everything that is going on.)
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eddie said on 10:52AM 11-17-2009
Are there plans for active boarding operations, either in regular ship to ship combat, or (especially) in Borg-opposed operations?
More specifically, will it ever be possible to cripple a ship then send an away team to go hand-to-hand in the halls? Or in Borg encounters, since the established Borg strategy has always been to remain behind adaptive shields while transporting drones onto the enemy ships to begin the assimilation process, will this be reflected in the game, or will they be limited to a big cub on ship phaser battle?
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eddie said on 10:53AM 11-17-2009
ugh... "big CUBE on ship phaser battle?" is what I meant to say.
Dang, sticky "e" key.
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Lok1 said on 11:01AM 11-17-2009
Why is combat so important in STO? Why does it happen frequently?
In the tv series they do not fight during one whole season, it happens only in the final episodes.
Why is it different here, is this not Star Trek?
(all said in a Data's kind of tone)
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Lok1 said on 11:02AM 11-17-2009
Why is combat so important in STO? Why does it happen frequently?
In the tv series they do not fight during one whole season, it happens only in the final episodes.
Why is it different here, is this not Star Trek?
(all said in a Data's kind of tone)
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dudemanjac said on 1:24PM 11-17-2009
You will notice there was more and more combat as the shows moved forward coming to all out war near the end of DS:9. This is based thrity years after the last movie which was packed with fighting. The details you can find on the site but there is a full on war going on if I read correctly. There are also missions that don't require fighting, but atthis point in the timeline, lots off ppl are supposed to be dying.
Descender said on 11:52AM 11-17-2009
In some of the gameplay vidoes that we've seen (which I understand are all pre-alpha), it looks like the vessels that are destroyed have little more than a "pop" when they die. Considering these are massive vessels, has this been improved recently to give each ship a kind of "last hurrah" when that hull is breached? If not, are there plans to improve this in the future?
Also, will this game have a tactial feel similar to the old Starfleet Command games, where you could utilize almost everything on your ship, from ECMs to Tractor Beams? Or is it more focused on movement and shield management?
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Mikx said on 7:44PM 11-17-2009
How many bridge officer abilities do we have available in space combat (abilities per npc) and can we change them on the fly?
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