Shields up!
Perpetual developer Eric Heimburg tells us a little more about combat in the infant Star Trek Online project. Piloting your craft through a two dimensional plane with the ability to exploit three-dimensional space is the plan; and if you can figure out how this works, string theory is probably as easy as pie for you. Mmm, pie.
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.
More dev blog goodness from Perpetual and the Star Trek Online crew here.
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Features, InterviewsThu, Oct 27, 2005Ethec
