To tell you the truth, i've been converted by this game.
I used to like TNG et all more, before I got SFC and started learning about SFB.
after I got SFC, I kinda 'connected' with the TMP era ships more; They seem more elegant, somehow.
Kinda like a steam locomotive and a diesel one; The new diesel ones are sleak, and powerful, but there's just an undefinable *something* In the brass and iron of a steam locomotive.
Like Aircraft warfare, WW I Iron battleships and 18th century naval combat. Modern warfare is effecient, but nothing really brings out a, shall we say, truely naval spirit in modern combat, like TMP/SFC style fighting. SFC and the TMP counterpart have a distinctly naval "Thundering guns of the 42 fleet" feel to them, right from the small but lethal plucky DDs to the massively proud and arrogant BBs.
Perhaps I like TMP more now because of the SFB part of SFC: The feeling of a cunningness and ablity but vulnerablity in in DDs FFs and LCs, Perhaps fighting desperatly in my F-DD against a trio of Klingons in a border skirmish, or nervously starting at every little change in music tempo whilst inside a nebula, The combination of a fertile ground for imagination and the DEEP tatical roots of SFB hooked me deep. You FEEL fast and fragile in an FF, you feel well nigh invincible in a BB, and as slow as a bloated horta on anestestizine. Whether squinting into a suns harsh glare, nervously switching cameras in a asteroid field, or the awe at the first time of seeing the city world in OP, orbiting into the night zone where a hundred billion souls light up the surface, the FEEL of SFC has endeared me far more towards the TMP era (and SFB) than TNG.
Come to think of it, with SFC I feel that TMP has more character now, something for everybody; From fast and furious FFs, to the dangerous and delicate DDs, the stalwart CCs, and the massive and arrogant DNs and BBs I find something I don't see in any trek show; A fleet with diversity and character, and battles won by wits and tatical ablity rather than technobabble a la deus ex machina.
The game tugs on my sense of wanderlust. An underscovered country so to speak, full of beauty, wonder, and the most perilous of danger.
I've played alot of other tatical games, all the common ones like starcraft, Command and conquer, tankrus, star control and the like. Though all were good in their own right, they all have the *feel* of arcade games; button mashers.
Other games, such as Age of Sail 2: Privateer's Bounty have that elusive missing link that I so dearly desire in games; That feel of wonder, of... what should it be called... let's say 'engrossing fantasy.' The similarities of AoSII:PB and SFC are astounding; If one were to model water and sky instead of space, show ships of seas instead of stars, it would disguise itself quite readily.
Although it's too late, to make a long story short I should say I like TMP much better than TNG, cheifly because of SFC and SFB.
Please excuse the long, spammy post. Any implied mentioning of TNG versus TMP gets me thinking about this, and I suppose I couldn't just let it lie this time.
Aaaaanyway, I was thinking along the line of "If one can't create new weapons, there might be a way to hack the old ones INTO permuted versions of themselves and make them suitable for use as new weapons.
You peeps still haven't told me what happens when a ship runs into a web.
From The Federation Destroyer "New Horizons,"
Holocat.