Topic: Direction

[[UFP]Exeter]

For some time I have been working on the basic mechanics of the game, including 3D graphics, physics, interface etc. I am nearly at a point where the main storyline can impact this.  Er have been discussing this in a storyline post in the development area.  I will posta description and open for opinions and a "vote" for 1 about a week, then the direction will be decoded.  I am finalizing integration of the physics collision detectionas that is much easier to determine where it actually hits etc.

In each, I have looked into copyright/licensing, models ( required and what I have) and expandability.  Here are the options.

Note, all require license from CBS as they currently hold copyright for Star Trek.  We can also use from EAW.  ADB is out.

1.  Present this in the era of the 4 year war, Klingon vs Federation, storyline mostly developed.  This was developed by FASA under license from Pramount, but their license expired, so wold need one from CBS.  We have maybe 3 or 4 models we can currently use, but ship specs and 2D images are available.  Mainly Klingon and Federation ships, but other races can be involved. This also would require permission from the author of some fan books but he had license from FASA games.  So no real licensure is required except from CBS.  THis will require many models, ships etc.

2.  The one is the Romulan / Federation war, first spoke of in TOS.  Few models required, as it is very early.  Jut extract what we can online for the story.  This one is very cannon.  Many missiles and some beams, probably nx style ships, and early warbird. 

3.  A future war, after Scimitar / Voyager and Dominion war.  A new race very warlike, attacks in the klingons/Romulans.  Federation has improved technology from the Borg (Voyager) and is asked for help.  Details to be worked out.  I own quite a few models that we could use to supply the new rce, that I call the Shay-den.  We can use all the models from EAW.  We can also add our own.  This gives us the opportunity to really push the limits.

I understand it might be easier if the ability to see something would help, I m working on that, but there is only one developer, me.  Takes time.  But I hope to actually finish this year.  I am a coder, so the code is much easier for me, graphics design and model building takes alot of time for me. 

I have a few screenies that are older, ans lwy open for comments.  THe last one is the tactical, those are some 3d models I have for testing.

[Tulwar]

I think we do not need the Four Years War storyline to do a game in the pre-TOS timeline.  TOS refers to a battle with the Klingons.  Jean Luc may have been exagerating when referring to that "war."

From TOS, we gather that there were only 12 starships like the Enterprise.  It makes sense that a war between the UFP and the Klingon Empire would have been a series of skirmishes where neither side had the resourses to threaten each other's homeworlds.

This has the added advantage of a pretty limitted order of battle.  The Enterprise is one of the newist star cruisers, boasting the highest capacity phasers and even Photon Torpedoes.  Should you want older cruisers, like the Reliant, that's up to you.  At this point, filling up slots in the fleet becomes downwardly mobile.  There would be system defense boats (SDB) and beefed up combat shuttles (CS), and starships designed to destroy them, and, of course to escort the cruisers.  With administrative shuttles being common, this would mean a total of 5 models per navy, for the basic game.

Cruiser
Destroyer
Escort
Sys Def Boat
Combat Shuttle

I avoid the word 'frigate,' because it means something completely different in both SFB and FASA.

While system SDBs could be handled as regular starships, I would really like to see the code designed to handle them as PF's are handled in SFC, but separate from the shuttle system.  I really can't see any other way to handle CS's except as SFC does currently.  That being said, I don't see the navies of this era being sophisticated enough to use any type of carrier, but it would only be needed for bases and planetary defenses.  I have no idea how complex this can be, but it doesn't sound like the type of thing that can be modded in.


Remember: KISS

[EschelonOfJudgemnt]

The Axanar folks are walking the fun jig right now, making a movie that cannot show a profit (it's no longer a fan film if they profit, at which point CBS gets annoyed).  They've already made the conscious decision to take the words Star Trek out of their promotional material and such going forward.  That being said, yeah it's still very much Star Trek (the Big E is featured in Prelude to Axanar).

Where you are looking to CBS for the 'primary' rights to use the Star Trek name, that'll cover you on the CBS end.  It'd be interesting to see how the Axanar guys might react to having a computer game made using their designs.

It'd be fairly easy to combine the Fasa stuff with the Axanar stuff - essentially just more ship designs.  Both cover The Four Years War.

The FASA material covers a number of time periods, not just The Four Years War.  That being said, the 'early years' stuff isn't really detailed much in the released FASA material, although I'm sure some fans of the game have come up with stats for the Archer-era Enterprise and such by now.

On the ADB thing, I never really understood why Steve Cole didn't like what Taldren did to make SFB into a 'real time' simulation.  I know he was a big Mac guy, but SFC was a PC release, which played into this.  I do remember some of the backstory here r.e. some question about royalties getting paid, but for a new game that shouldn't be a factor.  ADB can be a bit short sighted at times... And of course they may want more for a SFB 'sub-license' these days than various computer game developers are willing to pay.

Steve Jackson games has sort of the same problem (over-valuation of their licenses) which is why we haven't seen a Car Wars or Ogre/GEV computer game any time recently.  I for one would love to see modern computer game versions of either of these games (using the mechanics as a strong starting point, not necessarily a literal adaptation).  In particular, Ogre/GEV in real time would be interesting.  A turn based version would be less compelling to most gamers (outside of hard core board gamers).

[[UFP]Exeter]

I have done ome research and this wiki page does a good summary of the romulan war.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Earth-Romulan_War

The Romulan war fits well with your idea and is pre TOS, and is not well covered in other games etc. 

I would also add some freighters.