Thursday, January 14, 2010

Red Alert

One of the best parts of Star Trek Online is the space battles. The graphics are top notch as is the sound.  I could describe it more, but I'd rather show you.  Continue on for a video of some fights with Orion pirates.




One of the concerns people have with the combat is that it will get tedious.  It is a valid concern and depends on how the quests later on in the game are structured.  Hopefully they are about quality fights rather than quantity.  In the video, the first fight took a lot longer than it should have due to my poor piloting.

You want to concentrate your fire one a single shield segment rather than all over the place.  I had issues staying aligned and ended up hitting multiple shields causing the battle to take longer.  In the second fight, I did a better job.

Fights in STO are about balancing attack, defense, speed and auxiliary (turn rate/repair) power levels.  Of course every enemy is different, so you have to do this as you go.  I wish they added scanning in the game.  Imagine being able to get an idea of the weapons and capabilities an enemy has.  Just knowing how many for and aft weapons they have would be nice.

I've read several STO opinions that state it is just like Champions Online.  While they do share a common code base and UI, I don't remember anything like space combat in CO.  Ground combat is a different story, but what do you expect?  There are only so many ways to do ground combat in an MMORPG.