Topic: HELPING TO DESIGN A BETTER MOUSE TRAP

[Tulwar]

How about "Federation and Empire?"  

[Tulwar]

Cleaven might not like the music, but it's a big deal for me.  When I took the bridge of a Lyran ship, there was no turning back!  

[IndyShark]

I'd like to see the bording party actions changed. Capturing enemy ships is too easy. Once they are badly damaged, you can beat on them until 2 marines are left and capture them as easy as you please.

I'd like to see each ship have built in defences such that a BC has "14" ghost marines. You can capture her, but you better send over 20 marines to do it. Ghosts don't fight (but on board defenses sometimes kill), but they make larger ships harder to capture. Having said that, PP for capturing shoudl be increased and there is always a chance the ship will blow up.  It would be nice to have a sensor reading on how many crewman are left and if the ship still has any atmosphere left. If the ship loses life support and atmosphere, you can tow her home, but your marines can't capture her unless they wear spacesuits 24x7. (Not popular with the marines since you can't smoke cigars...)

Oh, and Klingon ships should be capable of mutiny like SFB. That was a cool rule and made the battle interesting until the bitter end.

[Lepton1]

Off-topic a bit or alot.  Someone mentioned Harpoon 3 on this thread I think.  So I checked it out and downloaded the demo. Seems pretty complicated.  Is it worth wading in deeper into the pool if I am not looking for a spot-on immersion sim like this one?  Can someone recommend a PC based naval board game if there is one?

[The_Infiltrator]

Quote:
I'd like to see the bording party actions changed. Capturing enemy ships is too easy. Once they are badly damaged, you can beat on them until 2 marines are left and capture them as easy as you please.

I'd like to see each ship have built in defences such that a BC has "14" ghost marines. You can capture her, but you better send over 20 marines to do it. Ghosts don't fight (but on board defenses sometimes kill), but they make larger ships harder to capture. Having said that, PP for capturing shoudl be increased and there is always a chance the ship will blow up.  It would be nice to have a sensor reading on how many crewman are left and if the ship still has any atmosphere left. If the ship loses life support and atmosphere, you can tow her home, but your marines can't capture her unless they wear spacesuits 24x7. (Not popular with the marines since you can't smoke cigars...)

Oh, and Klingon ships should be capable of mutiny like SFB. That was a cool rule and made the battle interesting until the bitter end.  

There are detailed rules for capturing in SFB. Such as guards, changing crew units to militia when boarded, where the control spaces are, what capturing these control spaces mean, etc.

Whether or not putting this into a SFC game would be worth it or not is up to debate.

[Cpt. Chaos]

Quote:
I am still convinced that if we present a proposal from a unified community (not to meantion buyer base for the company) then the SFC series and Star Trek games as a whole will continue to be produced.

Well, let me ask you something:  Produced by who?

Remember, Taldren are designers, the reason they made SFC3 at all was becuase they made the transition to Activision from Interplay when the licenses switched...

Activision has taken the position that they no longer intend to abide by the licensing deal, therefore, they will most likely not be producing or distributing any additional Trek titles.

Since this whole thing may well end up in court, we could be talking years before Paramount is free to assign the license to another producer (I am not a lawyer, never mind an expert on copyright law; take this as the uninformed guess that it is...)

As I understand it, Taldren did buy some rights to Orion Pirates?  (someone with definite info on this, please jump in!)

Therefore, the only possible trek game in the forseeable future (next few years) may have to be one based on OP, assuming Taldren can, and decide to, find another producer/distributor, or decide to distribute themselves by meanse of e-commerce...  I don't know the legal problems here, so they may not even be free to try something like that, perhaps until a new official Trek licensee is established.

The other possibility is that Paramount and Activision settle out of court, either with Activision no longer the licensee, In which case Taldren would have to make another jump, or, with Activsion retaining the rights, under some new financial agreement, in which case, they would have to decide that another in the SFC series, designed by Taldren, is in their financial interest, as opposed to any number of other types of Trek games, designed by who knows who...

So, just who are we supposed to be producing this design proposal for?

My own best hope is that Taldren were able to design and produce and distribute an 'upgrade' to OP, that included some of the features 'We' have been asking for.

But that's only my own pipe-dream...

Chaos

[Cleaven]

Quote:
Cleaven might not like the music, but it's a big deal for me.  When I took the bridge of a Lyran ship, there was no turning back!  

Not that the music is good or bad, it just gets in the way.

<New Guy> Can you repeat that. I couldn't hear you over the music.
<Me> Ahh yeah, You need to turn that down.
<New Guy> What was that?  

[Ifrit]

I'd love to see another entry in the SFC series, but I suspect that SFC3 will be the last in the line.  I'm reading these posts with an eye to a completely new game, a tactical combat simulator that would make no explicit references to SFC or SFB (but would instead use a flexible set of rules that could be modified by the players themselves).  This would put an end to some of the SFB arguments, since people could play with whatever rules they wanted, but no one would ever be completely happy (since some SFB rules would be impossible to replicate).  On the other hand, I don't think that SSCF-Patterson is recommending that we try to design such a game ourselves (and since this is a thread on a Taldren Forum, it might not be the best place to discuss such a project either way), but it would be interesting to hear how other people would reduce their favorite rules (either existing or hypothetical) to a general set of properties.  AV is probably the only rule in SFC3 that would be hard to replicate (without coding is explicity into the game), but SFB has all sorts of exotic components, such as ESG and web -- could those be duplicate using a set of more general (and hence unlicensed) rules?

[SSCF-Patterson]

Ifrit,

Why not?

The worst that can happen is we fail. But at least we will have made a decent attempt at trying to keep the SFC series alive.
I for one am williing to give it a shot.

[Mr. Hypergol]

 

Quote:
 Since this whole thing may well end up in court, we could be talking years before Paramount is free to assign the license to another producer  

 

Quote:
 The other possibility is that Paramount and Activision settle out of court, either with Activision no longer the licensee, In which case Taldren would have to make another jump, or, with Activsion retaining the rights, under some new financial agreement, in which case, they would have to decide that another in the SFC series, designed by Taldren, is in their financial interest, as opposed to any number of other types of Trek games, designed by who knows who...
 

It won't be years because of the principle, "time is money".

It's in Paramount's interest to just drop the deal with Activision and make a new deal with someone else as soon as possible.  If Paramount goes years without Trek games being made it's just money lost for everyone involved.  It's also not worth the legal costs to fight Activision while Paramount is losing money because no Trek games are being made.  I'm sure this is what Activision is betting on.

I think the liscense will be split up after what just happened to Activision.  Activision just bit off more than they could chew.  The same would be true of any other company.

I think Activision and Paramount will settle out of court very quickly.  Paramount will want to distribute the liscensing to other companies as quickly as possible.  Activision want's their money back so they can move on too.

I guess it is possible that after they settle Activision still gets a piece of the pie for a lower price.  I can see them getting the TNG liscense again.  I seriously doubt Activision would want the TOS liscense.

As far as SFC is concerned, if Activision get's the TNG liscense again you can just about bet they won't make a sequel to SFC3.  The best hope for more TNG SFC is if another company gets TNG Liscense and takes a stab at SFC4.  Still I think this is unlikely based on the sales performance of SFC3 and what the TNG liscense would cost.

The big question for the entire SFC line is whether the SFC product line would split with the Trek liscense.  If Activision gets the TNG liscense "only" does this mean they retain the rights to all future uses of the SFC name?  If they do, Activision could kill the SFC line off completely with no hope of even another TOS based game....i.e. SFC: Galaxies at War, even if some other company owned  the TOS liscense.  Or perhaps a simple renaming of the game would solve this technicality?  Hell it might be better to dump the name "Starfleet Command" anyway, because it's kind of been tarnished by SFC3's sales performance.  Forget "Star Trek SFC Galaxies at War"....just call it "Star Trek Galaxies at War".

Now what about the TOS liscense?  Let's just assume that the SFC line can split with the Trek liscense.  Are you guys ready for some "wild" speculation?  Here goes.......If Trek is in general decline you can bet that TOS is the "most declined"....for this reason I bet it's a lot cheaper than the other parts of the Trek liscense making it in a price range that smaller publishers might be able to afford.  I wonder if Taldren could afford something like that?  If Black 9 is a big hit they might be able to have enough money to afford TOS liscensing.  What would this mean....I wonder?  Could Taldren afford to self publish another SFB based SFC using an enhanced OP engine......perhaps maybe a subscription service?  Could they make an SFC that adds a strategic layer based on F&E?  I wonder what it would take to create a senario like this?

For those of us who long for SFC Galaxies at War based on the original SFC games, we can only hope that whoever gets the TOS liscensing got it cheap and it's worth their while to fund the completion of the SFB based game storyline.  And we have to hope that the SFC line can also be split so Activision or whoever gets the TNG liscense can't kill the line off for good.  It would be nice to know what the possibilites were, however remote.
         

[Tulwar]

Yes, this lawsuit puts a damper on everything.  We can only hope.  

[Cleaven]

If there was to be a fire sale, I'd like to see ADB get rights to electronic media for SFB.

And I want a bike, and a pony , and train set, and a ......  

[Scipio_66]

Quote:
If there was to be a fire sale, I'd like to see ADB get rights to electronic media for SFB.

And I want a bike, and a pony , and train set, and a ......  
--------------------
 Vaiyo A-O
A Home Va Ya Ray
Vaiyo A-Rah
Jerhume Brunnen G

The dead do not care about fire sales.

-S'Cipio  

[Cleaven]

Quote:

Quote:
If there was to be a fire sale, I'd like to see ADB get rights to electronic media for SFB.

And I want a bike, and a pony , and train set, and a ......  
--------------------
 Vaiyo A-O
A Home Va Ya Ray
Vaiyo A-Rah
Jerhume Brunnen G

The dead do not care about fire sales.

-S'Cipio  

.... new series of Lexx, and TOS DVD's and .... some other stuff!
 

[mbday]

Ok I have thought about this for some time and I have talk to some people. It seams that SFC3 has the sme things as SFC2. WHat this means is much of what we are looking for are here. We just need to get Taldren and Act. to open these back up to us for use. I.E. The races. The ships, the Wepones, And many of the other things.  If we could get some of this back it might make the game better and get us headed in the right diraction for the game that we would all like to see.
I say lets see what we can get truned back on and added back in and how long would it take.
I would like to See SFC3 with many of the SFC2 systems.  

[Ifrit]

If the SFC3 source code ever became available, I'm sure that a lot could be done with it (judging by everything that Khoromag has done with SFC2), but 'Continuous Space' sounds like an entirely new game.  SSCF-Patterson, are you thinking of a new game, or simply changes to made to the existing SFC platform?  

[Ifrit]

I killed the thread!
I didn't even mention MIPMAP FILTERS, and I still KILLED the THREAD!

But with the OP patch out, this is not surprising...  

[Dogmatix!]

Aye, matey, that you did!  Arrrrrrrr.....



 

[Ifrit]

Perhaps I should be proud of this accomplishment -- with a single swift post I dispatched the thread, severing the sinewy veins that carried the bile of countless arguments to its belly (where the compressed anger of countless fans was converted into flame, and subsequently vented out either one end or the other of the terrible beast).  

[Dogmatix!]

A feat to make even this Klingon Warrior proud!