StarDestroyer.Net BBS

In the vein of one of my favorite comic book game series, the X-Men Legends/Marvel Ultimate Alliance games, I give you the following concept, one I'm calling....

Star Trek Legends.

Yes, an action-RPG using TNG-era Trek characters, or maybe even multi-generations (Trek and time travel are mixed often enough). Maybe some tweaking necessary from the base XML/UMA mechanics (since everyone will have rudimentary ranged attack capability with phaser/disruptor pistols) to make it all work, but I suspect that done right it might be a fun video game outing (and let's face it, Trek needs them considering common Trek video game fare).

Oh, and yes, I am insane. Thank you for asking.

The problem is the fighting--everyone has phasers, and assuming there are enough pieces of cardboard to hide behind, you might get a good back-and-forth game of phaser whack-a-mole going... but where's the actual fun of it? Star Trek combat is usually awful.

Covenant wrote:The problem is the fighting--everyone has phasers, and assuming there are enough pieces of cardboard to hide behind, you might get a good back-and-forth game of phaser whack-a-mole going... but where's the actual fun of it? Star Trek combat is usually awful.

Ripped Shirt Kirk gets +100 to melee (combined with Kirk-Fu perk) and 90% resistance to all ranged weapons.

Covenant wrote:The problem is the fighting--everyone has phasers, and assuming there are enough pieces of cardboard to hide behind, you might get a good back-and-forth game of phaser whack-a-mole going... but where's the actual fun of it? Star Trek combat is usually awful.

Probably treat getting hit by phasers as the same as being hit by wizard fireballs or mutant energy blasts from other games of this genre.

You wear mirrors or reflective clothing.

Covenant wrote:The problem is the fighting--everyone has phasers, and assuming there are enough pieces of cardboard to hide behind, you might get a good back-and-forth game of phaser whack-a-mole going... but where's the actual fun of it? Star Trek combat is usually awful.

Surely their must be a few good examples of Star Trek combat to draw on?

In any case, why limit one's self to phasers? Star Trek has demonstrated other weapons and tactics, on occasion. The most obvious are Klingon melee weapons and Borg nanoprobes, but their are other examples. The one that immediately comes to mind is Worf's grenade launcher from Insurrection (I think). Also, I don't watch a lot of Enterprise, but didn't their commandos during the Xindi arc have machine guns?

Maybe the game could just bend canon a little by taking all the rarely shown examples of non-phaser/disruptor weapons and making them standard issue?

Actually Enterprise would be a great setting for such a game. Their MAKOs were heavily armed and could justify all sorts of combat gadgets like grenades, shields and whatever else, making them the combat wizard. T'Pol as a science officer could carry around some wierd Vulcan tech making her the team healer. Archer would be the all-round team leader, Trip the rogue-like mechanic character, and so forth. The more hands-on approach of the Enterprise crew compared to the "stay on the bridge and technobabble" of quite a bit of the next gen series makes such an approach work fairly well. Of course the same formula can be executed with the Original Series too, as for next gen... somehow I have trouble picturing Picard karate-chopping a dude for massive damage.

Logically everyone would have basic melee and basic ranged attacls, and each character would have "talent" skills specializing them. When you play XML2, do you have Cyclops punching that Prelate of Apocalypse, or do you have Cyke zapping him from range with optic blasts while Wolverine or Juggernaut do the punching?

The Romulan Republic wrote:Surely their must be a few good examples of Star Trek combat to draw on?

Though this isn't what you had meant, if I was handed this project, I'd motion-capture some stuntmen doing the moronic ST:TOS kinds of attacks, wall jumps, and so forth and make it so any time you get forced out of phaser range, your guys would square off and fight one of those stupuid swirling melees--with klingons stumbling backwards into boxes as your team stands roughly in the center. And then use musical notes to accentuate the hits. It'd be fun.

The Romulan Republic wrote:In any case, why limit one's self to phasers? Star Trek has demonstrated other weapons and tactics, on occasion. The most obvious are Klingon melee weapons and Borg nanoprobes, but their are other examples. The one that immediately comes to mind is Worf's grenade launcher from Insurrection (I think). Also, I don't watch a lot of Enterprise, but didn't their commandos during the Xindi arc have machine guns?

Most of your characters use phasers, and only phasers, and phasers are as good as they really need to get. Plus, if you move from a phaser to a phaser rifle, all you end up doing is giving a more powerful phaser to a guy--dull! And the difference between a disruptor and a phaser is just the color it makes when you shoot it, so that's kinda irrelevent. As are klingon melee weapons, except for those rare times you're playing as Klingon. I'd give Sulu a sword though.

Even so, in one of these types of games, having a more powerful ranged weapon isn't really all that much fun to look at. You could let someone swap out their hand phaser for a phaser rifle if you wanted, but by and large having a squad of ranged attackers ends up pretty silly.

You're a lot better off having each of the characters, like in XML, with special powers, talents, and advantages.

• -Science and Engineering Officers get Tricorders that can be used to investigate the area, nonbiological threats and find hidden things and alternative paths.
  -Medical Officers get medical Tricorders and medkits that can heal, insta-stun a foe, and investigate biological threats.
  -Security and Tactical Officers use improved phasers or rifles and act as party buffers with their 'tactics' commands.
  and so forth.

So you maintain the XML-style stereotype system, but cater it to the fact that a Star Trek game should have a lot more emphasis on needing to accomplish little tasks with combat in the meantime rather than just walk around punching out Borg.

The Romulan Republic wrote:Maybe the game could just bend canon a little by taking all the rarely shown examples of non-phaser/disruptor weapons and making them standard issue?

It's still boring. For a first person shooter, sure, throw in more Phasers. But for this there's almost no point, as the Phaser is just a "bzzzzzt!" you do from long range when you're not in the fray. More importantly, a phaser is a bit of a grab-bag of abilities, and having people change their phaser settings from high stun to low kill (melt) to disintergrate would let you do a lot of stuff with your phasers in-combat and capture a bit of that Star Trek feel by giving people a reason to hold back a second, flip their phasers to melt, and zap some barrels--or in a situation where blasting the barrels is bad, forcing you to do melee and Stun. Really, you want to have more ways to solve problems and less stupid little battles, and then it'd work. But the combat would be mostly dull unless the different guys had a variety of different things to do besides getting to the end of the level, and combat went by relatively quickly--I found XML combat dull too though, way few options and just repeating ad infinitum.