JudgeDredd
Posts: 8573
Joined: 11/14/2003 From: Scotland Status: offline
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H Sometimes you get pulled into missions as you pass by (instances if you want to call it that). These are enemy contacts. There's a whole bunch of people normally already there and you are all fighting to the same goal. In the example I mentioned with the Borg, there were maybe 20 Federation ships in there and the idea is to beat the Borg. However, with everyone going there own way it proved impossible when I was in there. No structure or cohesion to what was going on...so it was going to be difficult to win. I gave up and left the instance in the end. Other times, you may go into a sector and there may be other people there. I noticed in the BETA that you would group together to do the mission, whether it was on land or in space and there would be a team leader...again people don't obviously have to follow the team leader and some don't. But I expect as the game progresses and people understand the mechanics more, these will be less like solo missions and more like structured battles. Everyone gets a ship at the beginning. As you go through the game, you will be awarded staff for your bridge (up to 3 I think...maybe more later, I'm not sure)...one Tactical, one Science and 1 Engineering. As you get promotoed, other ship classes become available. The five commissions are Lieutenant, Lieutenant Commander, Captain (something else) and Admiral. Each of these has 10 levels. As you gain levels, you use the skill points to progress your character and your team. Things like I have a Tactical Officer and she has a Photon Torpedo skill. When I'm attacking a ship and I click her "buff" torpedo icon, I have 30 seconds and if I fire torpedos in that 30 seconds, 2 are fired (but only once). Then I have to wait for the remainder of the 30 seconds to "cool down" before I can use that again. Now I can assign skill points to her Torpedo "buff" and this effectively (I think) increases accuracy and reduces the "cooldown" time for each level from one to nine. as an example, when I first got her and her skill level on this "buff" was 1, her torpedo accuracy was low and it probably had a 1 minute "cooldown". For each level between 1 and 10, her accuracy increases (5 maybe 10% something like that) and the "cooldown" drops...so now at level nine, she rarely misses when I fire photons and the cooldown period is down to 30 seconds. All characters assigned to you (including you) have these "traits" or skills. And they can be upgraded as you gain points from completing missions. Also as you go through, you can buy or pickup technology for you ship or your "away" team. For example for my ship, these include things like Phasers MkII which have 145DPS (damage per second) as opposed to your original phasers of 90DPS and for your surface party I had a suit that allowed me to build a level 5 turret...another one I had allowed me to lay mines near my team (I gave that to my tactical officer). Phasers on your ship have an arcs of fire (240 degrees I think). I picked up a disrupter the other day that had greater damage, but was limited to 45 degrees, so I sold that. You can pick up devices for your ship as well, like deflector enhancer or a science item and have 3 or 4 of them to attach to your ship...again, I don't know if you get more as you get promoted to bigger ships. I think I'd say it's Warcraft in the Star Trek world, but it's been done very well imo and is very Star Trek feely. There's no real cohesion between players at the moment and there's no way that I know of knowing if your going into an instance that requires other people or not.
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