Perpetual Star Trek MMO red shirted

[zabuni]

From Lum's blog (http://brokentoys.org/2008/01/14/the-trek-curse)

Warcry link (http://www.warcry.com/articles/view/breakingnews/2802-Breaking-News-P2-Out-As-Star-Trek-Online-Developer)

I would have liked to see what really happened here. As Lum said, almost the perfect unperfect license, but everyone wants to play star trek.

Although the screenshots were not pleasing to say the least (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=40787&highlight=star+trek).

[NowhereDan]

If this turns out to be true (and really, with all the craziness coming out of Perpetual, is there a lot of doubt?) I think it's for the best. I'm a huge Trek fan, so I want it done right, or not at all. Everything I'd seen about STO thus far (which amounts to what's been put out online) rubbed me the wrong way, so I'm glad to hear they've junked it and started fresh. The question is, who's this "other Bay Area developer" that has allegedly picked it up? There are only a couple of MMO developers in the area, unless it's a new startup.

[DennyA]

Well, at least it's still in the works. The eight-year-old me who used to play Star Trek with my buddies still wants to play this.

Given the stories from Perpetual, probably best for the franchise.

[Tom McNamara]

Well, Ubisoft and EA can be considered Bay Area developers, as can Eidos. And the Hellgate folks are based here. There are probably some others -- that's just off the top of my head.

[Kunikos]

Isn't SEGA still out there? and Nihilistic?

[NowhereDan]

Yeah, but MMO developers. EA and Eidos are in the area, but they wouldn't be developing it in the area. EA might send it out to Mythic, and Eidos... I don't think they've ever even done an MMO. Flagship (Hellgate folks) were on my list of MMO devs in the area, but methinks they're too busy with Hellgate at the moment for another full-fledged project.

[Kunikos]

You wouldn't consider Phantasy Star Online games MMOs?

[NowhereDan]

I'd consider them developed in Japan and published by Sega. The story refers to a Bay Area developer.

[hong]

Perpetual Star Trek is a good description of the franchise, you know.

[Sarkus]

I think that blog has it right on, namely that everyone had different expectations about what "Star Trek" is. Just look at the debates about which is the best movie, then throw in original setting versus TNG, and it just goes on and on.

The other problem centers around Star Trek's basic formula of travelling around on ships and doing different things. How do you make that work as an MMO? What are the classes? Who gets to be a captain and who get's to be a redshirt? It's just a near impossible idea, because it's a franchise defined around starship officers, and not just the setting.

[XPav]

Puzzle Pirates has crews, with captains and officers, why can't Star Trek?

For the enterprising sort (hah!), screw the Navy, join a free trader / pirate / merc / merchant crew.

[HRose]

Confirms the tard MMO's first rule:

When you don't know how to make one MMO, make two.

[NowhereDan]

The idea of having each player as a member of a crew simply wouldn't work - it would require too much cooperation amongst players who don't know each other. How many missions would be ruined by griefers who join in, then lower the shields when the fighting is about to start? Now, if you wanted to do that for a Bridge Commander type game where six or seven people could join a team and crew a bridge, that'd be cool, but not in an MMO. What would be a far better system is if everyone's a captain, and you upgrade your AI crew as one way of increasing your stats (the other would be upgrading your ship's hardware). Of course, then there's a zillion starships flying around, which isn't quite Trek either (though it's not the worst concession made for a licensed game I've ever heard of).

I think the ground-based stuff is foolish to try. Unless you think you're going to make the first successful non-violent MMO (hint: you're not) Trek is a horrible misfit for ground-based play. There just isn't enough good action on the ground in the shows/movies, which is why Elite Force always felt like the franchise was tacked on to a decent shooter. If you wanted to make it feel like Trek, 90% of away team missions would be talking to random aliens and scanning stuff with tricorders. I'm a sucker for all things Star Trek, and even I don't want to play that game.

Of course, you can't have an MMO without avatars, so you'd need to have a mode where you can walk around your ship, with maybe a basic shooter mini game to fight off boarding parties.

[HRose]

Yep, I know very little of the Star Trek franchise but I think it could only work with very different premises.

Instead of a combat game you would have a diplomatic game. With rewards and incentives toward that direction, and combat possible but with heavy costs and only optimal in very rare situations.

Then you break the license by letting people building their own federations and decide whether to aggregate or not.

Something like large-scale strategic game, where most of the game for the entry player should be managing his own fragment. Production, economy, research, exploration (generated space, if a zone isn't visited for an amount of time, it gets once again randomized). Then you scale things up, and specialize activities.

Just for a vague idea, think to Galactic Civilization as a basic model, instead of WoW. I think there are a number of browser-based space strategy games that already figured out most of the game design. You just need to make it 3D, pretty and usable.

The only problem with the Galactic Civilization model is that you can't have it progressive as a MMO. So, as I hinted, you need system to priodically reset and recycle the world so that it doesn't need to scale up exponentially in size over time.

Interesting idea: to incentive player's interaction you use a concept of AI slots. So for example you can set up a mineral extraction process, you need ships to mine, then collect the minerals, reprocess, etc... Instead of doing this all by yourself step by step, you have a number of slots for your "crew". The more you gain experience, the more the single guys develop skills and also you get more "slots" to build more complicate queues and automate processes. Of course another player could then join you, so you suddenly have two times the number of crew members to use.

You can call it "grouping"...

[Miramon]

An acquaintance was hired as lead designer for STO a couple of years ago, I think he lasted a couple of months -- and he is conscientious, competent, and easy to deal with. Whatever the fundamental problems with the game conception and approach, I'm guessing that management problems were worse.

[Jeff Green]

Confirms the tard MMO's first rule:

When you don't know how to make one MMO, make two.

Yeah, wasn't the original spin on the Gods & Heroes cancellation that they'd now have more time/resources to spend on Star Trek Online?

[Reldan]

What would be a far better system is if everyone's a captain, and you upgrade your AI crew as one way of increasing your stats (the other would be upgrading your ship's hardware). Of course, then there's a zillion starships flying around, which isn't quite Trek either (though it's not the worst concession made for a licensed game I've ever heard of).

If you wanted to make it feel like Trek, 90% of away team missions would be talking to random aliens and scanning stuff with tricorders. I'm a sucker for all things Star Trek, and even I don't want to play that game.


So... you instead captain a starship that flies around the galaxy talking to random aliens and scanning stuff?

[Soapyfrog]

Just license EVE and build a Star trek MMO from that. Anything else would be crap anyway.

[Brian Rucker]

Crew based gaming can and does work. I've been involved in MUDS/MUSHes with cooperative starship travel and combat and I have, on and off, a small PA that's centered around PoB (player on board) ships in SWG.

I both agree and disagree with NoWhereDan on how best to approach this mechanic. Yes, one should focus entirely on key positions where a player can make a difference and constantly have things to fiddle with in order to keep the ship doing what it's supposed to do (at least in stressful situations like combat). But I think it could work for a MMORPG if it's designed intelligently.

As for away team missions, well, I don't think generic grindage would be very rewarding or immersive. On the other hand, you probably can't handscript stories of consistant quality and versimillitude for Star Trek fanatics.

Some abstract middle ground might work with many random elements inserted certain mission archetypes. But how do you make iconic aspects of Star Trek away missions relevant and fun? There are games I've scanned things before and I was interested in the results. With scanners the trick might be figuring out what you want to scan for and trying to narrow the results within a limited number of tries: "Animal, mineral or vegetable?"

But making that relevant and keeping it from bogging down gameplay would be a trick.

I do like the idea of focusing to some degree on NPC crew rosters as aspects of the experience grind rather than just pouring into a main PC. What's he gonna do? Learn new spells and wear fancier armor?

[Hugin]

Just license EVE and build a Star trek MMO from that. Anything else would be crap anyway.

Eve's gameplay doesn't resemble Star Trek very much at all.

[RepoMan]

I desperately crave an insider's story on this. I work one floor above the Perpetual offices in downtown SF, but I have little idea what's actually going on there.

What I really want to know is, if this is true, what the hell is Perpetual still doing? As far as I know they haven't shut the doors yet. Are they still working on their "MMO platform"? Maybe they'll lay off everyone except a handful of coders....

Edit: Looks like WarCry says they're doing just that (http://www.warcry.com/articles/view/breakingnews/2802-Breaking-News-P2-Out-As-Star-Trek-Online-Developer).
As a company, P2 Entertainment will continue on with their profitable Perpetual Platform, which has been licensed to industry leaders like BioWare, and refocus their core business on the casual games market.
Ah me, another casual-games convertee, it's Ritual all over again.

[ravenight]

The idea of having each player as a member of a crew simply wouldn't work - it would require too much cooperation amongst players who don't know each other. How many missions would be ruined by griefers who join in, then lower the shields when the fighting is about to start?

Pirates of the Carribean Online shows how this could be done - you just have each player be both a captain and a crew member, so that they can go out solo if they want, but you get more bang if you bring a whole crew with you. Since people can be better at different aspects of crewing the ship (in PotCO this is basically just different types of cannon balls - chain shot, grape shot, etc), you get a lot of value out of working together. As for griefing, just don't let anyone but the captain do things that are completely retarded (like your drop the shields example) and you will have no more griefing than in any mmo.

[RepoMan]

Whoa, and look who's in Lum's thread, pulling an HRose!
(http://brokentoys.org/2008/01/14/the-trek-curse/#comment-31481)So, the question is, how do you make a fun MMO that is based on exploration and adventure, while keeping the sucke…I mean gamers, paying for it month after month? Now *that* is the hundred pound gorilla in the room.

As I posted in my dev blog, I already predicted that this would fail, right from speaking with them back in 2004.

http://www.3000ad.com/forum/index.php?s=&showtopic=46000002&view=findpost&p=158097

My guess is that whoever gets this license and having no experience with the Star Trek mythos let alone space games in general, is just going to be burning through someone else’s money because it can and ultimately will fail.
IM IN UR COMMENTZ, PIMPIN MY PREDICKSHUNZ

http://www.3000ad.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smack.gif

[Lum]

All Derek Smart-related comments in that thread unrelated to the topic will be brutally removed in an Orwellian fashion. My blog will not be another platform in the Forever War, thanks.

[HRose]

Crew based gaming can and does work. I've been involved in MUDS/MUSHes with cooperative starship travel and combat and I have, on and off, a small PA that's centered around PoB (player on board) ships in SWG.
Yes, problem is, once again, that you can't expect this to work on a game that should have a wide commercial appeal. It's like "forced grouping". You need a way to introduce players to the game, and let them play when they want instead of having to be completely dependent on other players in the group/crew.

But how do you make iconic aspects of Star Trek away missions relevant and fun? There are games I've scanned things before and I was interested in the results. With scanners the trick might be figuring out what you want to scan for and trying to narrow the results within a limited number of tries: "Animal, mineral or vegetable?"
Again, I'm not an expert of Star Trek, but some concepts are not that hard to translate to a game. I mean, they are MUCH, MUCH HARDER to translate to an imitation of WoW.

Imho, it's more complex and risky to try to make Star Trek as a clone of WoW than trying to make it different.

The concept of scanning could stay easily. On Eve-Online you scan asteroids for minerals, and now you scan systems to discover secret spots/missions/whatever. In Star Trek, mixed with the idea of "resetting" space, you can use some variables and then generate alien worlds randomly. It would get redundant, but if what you discover in a world is relevant to a strategic layer, then you would introduce a concept of "usability", so players care less about getting the usual results as they are more interested to find a good spot with good resources that they could use to establish a base.

You just need to switch the paradigm. From rpg/hack&slash that is at the basis of WoW and similars, to a strategic/management game archetype.

P.S.

By the way, Derek Smart makes good points in that comment. Some of those we have already commented here.

[NowhereDan]

So... you instead captain a starship that flies around the galaxy talking to random aliens and scanning stuff?
And/or blowing them up, yes. Space combat in Star Trek is interesting; ground combat is not. On the ground, there are two unique weapons: phasers (around four or five types) and a Klingon pointy thing, known to nerds as a bat'leth. To make things remotely interesting you'd have to make up all kinds of extra weapons and equipment that would make it feel not at all like Star Trek - much like Elite Force, except an order of magnitude worse. You'd have Starfleet officers carrying Cardassian disruptors for some reason, which no makey the sense.

Crew based gaming can and does work. I've been involved in MUDS/MUSHes with cooperative starship travel and combat and I have, on and off, a small PA that's centered around PoB (player on board) ships in SWG.
Those are both very devoted groups of players that make up a small portion of the online gaming population and (I'm guessing) mostly play on RP servers. In those cases, yeah, that style of gaming would work beautifully. But I want a game that people like me can play.

I do think that in order to have a full Trek experience there should be some of the ground-based diplomacy/science stuff, but they should be limited to hopefully enjoyable minigames and should not come at the cost of the space-based combat that would be the meat and potatoes of any Trek game. If you have the development time, go for it.

Pirates of the Carribean Online shows how this could be done - you just have each player be both a captain and a crew member, so that they can go out solo if they want, but you get more bang if you bring a whole crew with you. Since people can be better at different aspects of crewing the ship (in PotCO this is basically just different types of cannon balls - chain shot, grape shot, etc), you get a lot of value out of working together. As for griefing, just don't let anyone but the captain do things that are completely retarded (like your drop the shields example) and you will have no more griefing than in any mmo.
I definitely like this approach - promoting teamwork without necessitating it is always ideal. However, how can you have a Trek game where only the captain controls the shields? I mean, what are the tactical officer and chief engineer doing if not making sure the shields stay up in a battle?

[Brian Rucker]

I remember a time when nobody ever thought roleplaying games would be popular because they appealled to an odd few. Now everyone's playing Final Fantasy or World of Warcraft.

You really don't have to be a roleplayer or a deep thinker to appreciate the teamwork and comradery of cooperative shipboard model. Someone just needs to make one that works - SWG's fails because there's no context for it. Just splatting static mob swarms. If you had a game with PoBs and a setup like Eve Online or PoTBS - watch out.

[Enidigm]

I think ship crew manning could work if you tied it into experience. And, some harsh penalties.

There will be very few griefers that "Grind" for a year, to get inside the ship's bridge, only to lower shields at the last second for kicks. Especially if they die when the ship gets destroyed. ^^.

Star Trek Online i think would be a pretty interesting game if they actually made it into more than just a bridge simulator. Unlike Star Wars (imo), Star Trek's property has a greater portion of it's universe unwritten, and has a greater scope for invention, and has a more static universe lending itself to exploration. The whole Rebellion/Empire dynamic doesn't really have much in the way of "ordinary" people in Star Wars, and if you're not on one or the other side, you're a damn dirty pirate. It was always implied the vast majority of the citizens in Star Trek were just ordinary "colonists", most of whom sat idly by waiting for a passing ship to rescue them from whatever disaster they'd unleashed this week (mining too greedily and too deep!).

[z22]

What's the likelihood of being able to play a Klingon or Romulan (my preference)? My guess is 0%.

I agree with others, that the best approach is to be a captain with a crew that gains XP along with you. Allow players to captain ships as part of the Federation, or it's allies, pirates (Orion), and best of all, the bad guys I mentioned above.

[Slainte Mhath]

Wow. Perpetual's management must be completely insane (or just really incompetant). First they abandon Gods and Heroes, which was nearly finished (I was in the beta) to focus on STO. That seemed strange at the time since they had a publisher (SOE) already and seemed to be only a few months away from releasing, but you could see how it would be a move made out of monetary considerations if they were going broke (later revealed to be exactly the case). So then they try to dodge creditors by unloading all their assests to what is basically a shell corp while the original goes bankrupt. Now faced with lawsuits from that decision they cancel the only property they had left that would have had a chance to generate income. It's not like they were being sued for millions either, as the PR company probably would have settled for $100K or so as that's near what they were owed.

It's too bad Perpetual couldn't manage themselves better. I don't know how STO would have turned out, but Gods and Heroes was pretty cool and I would have liked to see it get completed or at least sold to SOE or someone who could finish the job.

[Gordon Cameron]

Klingon Guard hits you for 42.
You are afflicted by Bat'Leth Rend.
You attack; Klingon Guard dodges.
Klingon Guard is afflicted by Vulcan Nerve Pinch.
Your Phaser Shot crits Klingon Guard for 98.
Klingon Guard dies, you gain 122 experience.
Congratulations! You have reached Level 4.

[Funkula]

You receive loot: [Klingon Blood Wine]
You receive loot: [Daqh'taGH of the Tribble]
You receive loot: [Broken Tricorder]

[Chowhound]

Dude, you ninja'd that Daqh'tagh! Need before greed, man! We said so when you joined!
kkthx 4 grp, bai
Ensign Ipwnyrazz has logged off.

[Gordon Cameron]

Vulcan racials are OP. Nerf Nerve Pinch.

[RepoMan]

LFG: 2 Redshirt Meatshields

[Hugin]

It won't let me make my quarter-Romulan-quarter-Klingon-quarter-Andorian-quarter-Q dual bat'leth weilding Federation security officer Lieutenant Commander Drizzillidan.

This MMO sucks.

[Slainte Mhath]

http://www.lovelongandprosper.com/pix/gorn.jpg

Make me a playable race Bitchessssss!

[RepoMan]

You have been hit by a Salt Sucker. [Salt -99]
You scream horribly.

http://www.magickrituals.com/saltsucker.jpg

You have ugly pockmarks all over your body.
You have died.

Who says there were no good MMO creatures in Star Trek? The fucking salt sucker scared the holy piss out of me as a kid.

[Gordon Cameron]

Yeah, that was some brilliant design work by legendary monster creator Wah Chang.

Incidentally, I never miss an opportunity to say or write "Wah Chang."

[Alan Dunkin]

Looks like Cryptic may be nabbing it, according to some rumors.

--- Alan

[Sepiche]

Klingon Guard 001 says "You've ruined your land, you'll not ruin mine!"

[Andrew Mayer]

Klingon Guard hits you for 42.
You are afflicted by Bat'Leth Rend.
You attack; Klingon Guard dodges.
Klingon Guard is afflicted by Vulcan Nerve Pinch.
Your Phaser Shot crits Klingon Guard for 98.
Klingon Guard dies, you gain 122 experience.
Congratulations! You have reached Level 4.

You know, a lot of people would probably play this.

[NowhereDan]

Looks like Cryptic may be nabbing it, according to some rumors.

--- Alan
Haha, that was the other Bay Area MMO dev on my short list, but I didn't want to say it in case I was the only one who had thought of it. If it's true, it doesn't bode well for the Marvel MMO that was rumored to have hit a snag a while back, does it?

[John Reynolds]

You reach the level cap and a message flashes across your screen: Holodeck session over.

[Soapyfrog]

Eve's gameplay doesn't resemble Star Trek very much at all.
I very much disagree, it's pretty much the same on all important points.

[Shadari]

I very much disagree, it's pretty much the same on all important points.
Can you travel backwards in time?

[Hugin]

I very much disagree, it's pretty much the same on all important points.

Star Trek plots heavily feature mining and commodity trading?

Eve gameplay heavily features planetary exploration?

Ships in Star Trek need to use choke point warp gates to travel between systems (aside from the one wormhole in DS9)?

Eve has combat inside of ships corridors and cabins?

Sure, you can change the ship models and make the faction races different alien species from the Trek universe, but the fundamental gameplay of Eve is not Treklike at all.

[Malderi]

Make a Bridge Commander combat system into a persistent world with ship upgrades (level = new ship, plus items like upgraded phasers, torpedoes, shields, etc.) and PvP between races in massive battles and you've got me fucking sold. The BC combat system could very easily translate to an MMO, I think. It doesn't even need to be all PvP... you can have computer-controlled ships all around, just waiting for you to warp in and blast away. No character classes or healers or tanks or mage or any of that bullshit, just a bunch of ships, guns, and explosions.

Edit: And I don't care if it's not "trek-like". Use the IP for the ships and all, and have lots of PvE missions that might be similar to a Trek episode. But let me go blow up some Cardassians/Klingons/Romulan/Federation when I want to.

[NowhereDan]

Make a Bridge Commander combat system into a persistent world with ship upgrades (level = new ship, plus items like upgraded phasers, torpedoes, shields, etc.) and PvP between races in massive battles and you've got me fucking sold. The BC combat system could very easily translate to an MMO, I think. It doesn't even need to be all PvP... you can have computer-controlled ships all around, just waiting for you to warp in and blast away. No character classes or healers or tanks or mage or any of that bullshit, just a bunch of ships, guns, and explosions.

Edit: And I don't care if it's not "trek-like". Use the IP for the ships and all, and have lots of PvE missions that might be similar to a Trek episode. But let me go blow up some Cardassians/Klingons/Romulan/Federation when I want to.
There are a few things wrong with that scenario, the first of which being that the BC combat system wasn't fun. Knock down one shield, target shield generator, target warp core, rinse, repeat. The fact that the beam weapons all had pin-point accuracy at any range was mostly to blame for that, I think. And then there was how they had all of them to fire full two-second bursts, which resulted in two constant lines between ships in combat and a grating sound effect. Mods fortunately fixed the latter problem, making combat fun to watch (I used to spend hours setting up battles and watching them play out), but not so much to play. And there's also the problem where you'd end up with ships being upside-down half of the time (yes, there's no up in space, but relative to each other) which almost never happens in Trek. There needs to be movement on the Y-axis, but the ship orientations shouldn't be changing.

Also, leveling up giving you a new ship is good in theory, but it would result in the player going through too many ships, and you'd have no emotional investment in them. I'd think of ships more as mounts in WoW - you earn a new one periodically, but not every level. You should spend some time with a ship, upgrading it, tuning it, and getting to know it. I envision a ready room you could decorate with items accumulated from missions, models of the ships you've commanded, etc.

I would probably model the level/skill system after the original Galaxies setup (don't hit me), in that there are no player classes, but you'd get to choose your skills from a range of professions - several areas of tactical abilities, diplomacy, engineering, etc. This would play well into the concept of allowing solo play but also encouraging players to group up and crew one ship, as players would not be bound to one role but could still specialize.

I totally agree that you need to be able to play as, at the very least, Federation, Klingon, or Romulan. Otherwise PvP makes no sense, and doing Federation quests all day every day would get boring.

*edited to fix a typo

[Coca Cola Zero]

I very much disagree, it's pretty much the same on all important points.

The core of Eve is limited resources, resource wars and commerce. One of the core defining bits of Star Trek lore is that shit doesn't exist anymore, at least on a large-scale societal level. So uh, yeah I agree with the people disagreeing with you.

[Alan Dunkin]

Not unless you're Ferengi...

--- Alan

[Janster]

Uhm just to add my voice here..

That Repo was wrong about one major thing...eve combat kicks absolute ass..and its not for the faint hearted. Just avoid fleet combat as you will eat the lagmonster.

But as a pilot who did blockade running in eve I must admit that just hasn't met its match anywhere yet.

That aside, the ability to be a crew no a major ship piloted by other players that just sounds kick ass.

It has to be done right, but come on..just make sure your guild/clan/whatnot owns the ship and has the pilot rights sorted out.

Janster

[NowhereDan]

Apparently we were right about Cryptic (http://www.warcry.com/news/view/80708-P2-Entertainment-To-Lay-Off-Star-Trek-Online-Dev-Team-Today)
That is, if this source was right about anything in the first place. Which they probably are.

[Gedd]

Just because they're picking up some of P2's staff doesn't mean they're taking the license as well. They may be putting together a team for a different project and grabbing some of P2's better people before they find jobs elsewhere.

Or maybe they are going to take the license and they figure this is the quickest/easiest way to get back to work on the game without starting from scratch.

Hopefully we'll hear one way or the other soon.

[Soapyfrog]

Star Trek plots heavily feature mining and commodity trading?

Eve gameplay heavily features planetary exploration?

Ships in Star Trek need to use choke point warp gates to travel between systems (aside from the one wormhole in DS9)?

Eve has combat inside of ships corridors and cabins?

I do not think the mode of intersystem travel is fundamental to the EVE engine. The use of warp gates is a game design decision not related to what the engine is capable of.

Avatar combat: ditch it completely unless you can do it well. If you can do it well then you probably wouldn't need to license anyone else's engine. Even then, Avatar combat is not necessarily excluded from an EVE-licensed game.

Economics; I would hope ANY MMO would have a decent economic model. But again, EVE's particular market system is not fundamental to the engine (obviously).
Sure, you can change the ship models and make the faction races different alien species from the Trek universe, but the fundamental gameplay of Eve is not Treklike at all.
The ship combat is Trek-like. But you of course miss the point; the gameplay almost window dressing, it's an engine capable of supporting an MMO population that is the truly technically hard part. On that chassis you should be able to build whatever you like.

[Hugin]

But you of course miss the point; the gameplay almost window dressing, it's an engine capable of supporting an MMO population that is the truly technically hard part. On that chassis you should be able to build whatever you like.

Can the Eve engine support planetary environments and ship interiors?

[Janster]

Not yet, but they are working on ship interiors...as for planet..not sure..but space stations yes..

But it will be purely decorative I think..nothing in terms of combat or pew pew.

Jan

[Pishtaco]

Since social relationships should be more important than spacial ones, ditch the 3d engine. Spend the money on top quality 2d flash animation instead and make it a browser game. Maybe this will even get rid of the need for separate servers.

Represent the player's character, backstory and abilities through some kind of card mechanic. Make some of these earnable and some buyable. Have some elements of gameplay come from making choices a few times a day and seeing what other people are doing, browser-game style, and some away-team missions where you group up and play together for an hour.


Disclaimer: My image of Star Trek fans is shaped by my mother being the biggest one I know.
Disclaimer 2: the only game I've played with a card mechanic was the Down in Flames demo, which was cool.

[Soapyfrog]

Can the Eve engine support planetary environments and ship interiors?
Since they are working on ambulation and atmosphereic flight, I would imagine it is possible.

But of course the FIRST thing you need in a Star Trek MMO, is the ability to pilot your starship through and between 10s of 1000s of star systems. The chief draw of Star Trek are the cool ships, the space combat, the travelling through galactic vistas... not collecting 10 bat'leths from Klingon Sergeants for a quest.

[NowhereDan]

Since social relationships should be more important than spacial ones, ditch the 3d engine. Spend the money on top quality 2d flash animation instead and make it a browser game. Maybe this will even get rid of the need for separate servers.
No offense, but that is the worst thing I've ever heard. Ever.

[Gordon Cameron]

No offense, but that is the worst thing I've ever heard. Ever.

This is worse. (http://youtube.com/watch?v=XC73PHdQX04) (It's even trek-related!)