TREKCORE > GAMING > STAR TREK ONLINE > DESIGNER DIARY > Space Combat

PUBLISHED: Nov 18, 2005
AUTHOR: Eric Heimburg

Hello again! This is Eric, here to talk about space combat. As Daron alluded to a few weeks back, we're beginning to have a solid picture of how ship combat works - and there has been some concern about the direction Daron mentioned. I'd like to elaborate a little bit on what Daron mentioned and explain the reasoning behind our model.

First off, although Daron mentioned 2D, our space combat is in 3D. The ships are 3D models, and the planned graphics engine should make our space combat look absolutely gorgeous. One of our goals for space combat is to create a cinematic experience - we want players to really feel like they are living out scenes from an episode or movie. This means lots of camera angles are available, including space shots, bridge shots, and scenes from around the ship. We expect space combat to be, in a word, breathtaking. When many people hear "2D" they think of sprites or other antiquated technology, and that isn't what we're talking about here.

What Daron was referring to was 2D movement. This is indeed our baseline for movement - it's the starting point from which players can diverge when they need to. This means that players will be able to steer the ship without having to take three dimensions into account, in general. Some people have reacted as if this was a travesty of canon, but that isn't true at all. Actually, we're modeling exactly what we see in the shows. You rarely see a battle where one of the vessels is pointed upside down or rotated 90 degrees. Heck, the number of times we've seen the Enterprise in a vertical direction can be counted on one hand. Most of the time, the ship is shown in a 2D plane, facing off against other enemies in roughly the same 2D plane. This is because Star Trek battles are not about dog-fighting and outmaneuvering. They're about strategy and outthinking one's opponent.

Also, keep in mind that oftentimes a crew of players is going to be working together to control their vessel, not just one player, so we want the entire crew to have exciting and interesting things to do. This is another reason to avoid focusing too heavily on heading and azimuth decisions: we don't want to overly glorify the role of the person steering the ship. The entire bridge crew should have an equal part in determining the fate of the vessel. This reflects the spirit of Star Trek: while the pilot is important, and certainly saves the day occasionally, success in most episodes comes from the interaction of the entire bridge crew working together.

Finally, 2D movement helps make the game accessible. STO needs to reach a large market, and in order to do that, it has to be easy to learn. Piloting a ship needs to be almost second nature. It certainly can't require elaborate training. In fact, that's a universal rule for STO: the very basic version of every game concept can be grasped very quickly, but it has hidden depth. Just because we're making the game accessible doesn't mean we're dumbing it down - we're just introducing the complexity slowly, over time. While a young ensign might only be able to handle movement in a 2D plane, a seasoned veteran knows many tricks and maneuvers that take the ship out of that plane. They might do this to attack the top or underside of an enemy, get between two enemy ships, or escape into a nebula. 3D movement isn't missing from STO, but it's also not an immediate and constant concern.

It's worth saying explicitly: we aren't making a star ship simulator here. Simulation-based games appeal to too limited a subset of players: people who happen to love Star Trek, *and* are strongly analytical, *and* who love complex games that take many hours to learn. However, we aren't making an arcade shooter, either. We've simply abstracted away the actual nuts and bolts of ship movement because they don't need to play a big part in Starfleet battles - the important part of a battle is not a ship's angle, but what clever things the ship does during the fight. So this decision doesn't hurt the game's immersive atmosphere or the strategic experience aboard the ship. In fact, just the opposite: by simplifying the everyday angle calculation, we free up the crew to do the really interesting things that actually win battles: pulling off fancy maneuvers the enemy isn't expecting, adjusting phasers to overcome unusual enemy shields, hacking into enemy computers, and all the other exciting things we see bridge crews doing in shows. We want to deliver the dramatic moments of the TV shows - without getting bogged down in the dull parts.

Although the hardcore sim fans won't be entirely happy with this choice, they may be just the sort of people who get the most out of STO's space combat. If you have the analytical skills needed to master a space simulation, you'll be able to spot the depth and complexity of STO's system. Much of this advanced strategy may go right over the head of a more casual gamer, but this depth will allow the hardcore gamer to take on harder missions, defeat tougher opponents, and boldly go further than any other Star Trek game has allowed.

Our plan for STO's space combat defies simple categorization - it's not quite like any other Star Trek game that's come before it, so it can be hard to compare it to other games. More details will be forthcoming in the months ahead. What we're aiming for, though, is to perfectly meet our goals of being accessible yet deep, of being exciting yet immersive.

We're still evolving our plans for space combat (as well as just about everything else), so we're open to change. We're especially interested in hearing suggestions that help us meet our goals: space combat needs to be easily understood but have deep gameplay, it must be immersive yet exciting, and it needs to be solo-player accessible while being very group-friendly. It's a tricky problem, and the more you can collaborate with us, the better our game can be.

Until next time!