Star Trek Online Forum » General Discussion » How to do Multi Crew Ship

The problem with multicrew ship is how to make everything fun during all phases of combat.  Here is my little idea.

STO Starship Combat Mechanic /W 3 man crew

Introductions:
The three man crew of any starship is composed of the Captain, Tactical Officer and Science Officer. Each position is responsible for specific actions during combat. These actions could be activation of equipments or altering the setting of those equipments. These roles together handle the ship operations as determined by the architrave.

Ship architecture is composed of the navigation system (restricted to thrusters and impulse during combat), Shields which are the primary form of defense (HP), weapons to deal damage, sensors (determines which enemy ship can be locked and which enemy can lock onto you), subsystem/equipment performance (slowly reduced as the shields take damage), repair teams to recover the performance of subsystems, and Energy Generation/Energy Consumption.

Every ship has a specific amount of Energy to be used and a rate to which Energy is replenished. All equipment operates on a cycle and requires Energy to activate at the beginning of each cycle. The total amount of Energy is allocated for use by the three Officers. Each Officer has a pool of Energy (a portion of the ship’s total Energy capacity) which replenishes as a percentage of the total amount of energy replenished by the ship. The Captain Position set the amount of Capacitor for each position as well as the portion of replenished Energy from the ship’s Energy recharge.

Example:
USS Kelvan
Total Energy Capacity: 10,000
Total Energy Recharge Time: 5minutes (300seconds)
Total Energy Recharge Rate: 33.3/Second

Captain
Captain’s Energy: 2,000 (20% of the ship’s Total Energy Capacitor)
Recharge rate: 5/Second (~15% of the Total Energy Recharge Rate)
Recharge Time: 400Seconds (Only indirectly related to the Total)

Tactical
Tactical station’s Energy: 5,000 (50% of the ship’s Total Energy Capacitor)
Recharge rate: 20/Second (~60% of the Total Energy Recharge Rate)
Recharge Time: 250Seconds

Science
Science station’s energy: 3,000 (30%)
Recharge rate: 8.3/Second (~25%)
Recharge Time: 361.5Seconds

PART I: The Captain
Role: The Captain assumes the roles traditionally handled by the Pilot and Engineer. During combat, the captain flies the ship, takes Energy from one station and transfers it to another if the need arises and assigns damage control deals to repair damaged subsystems.

Navigation: Ships gain benefits from moving. As the shields are damaged, areas of the shield are weakened to allow increased damage to those areas. By moving the ship, a Captain could take advantage of an enemy’s weakened side or prevent an enemy from hitting his ship’s weakened side. After turning the weakened side away from enemy fire, the captain could then assign damage control teams repair the weakened shields.

PART II: The Tactical Officer
Role: The Tactical officer operates the offensive and defensive systems of the ship.

Weapons: All weapons operate on a frequency basis and deal more or less damage depending on frequencies the enemy’s shields are hardened against. The tactical officer could shift the frequency of the weapons to take advantage of frequencies the enemy is not hardened against. There is no way to determine what the enemy is hardened against other than trial and error.

Shields: Shields operate on frequency hardening. A tactical officer could harden the shields against several available frequencies but not all the available frequencies.

Example:
A Klingon disruptor can fire on the following frequencies:
101.1 GHz
101.2 GHz <<< The Klingon’s tactical officer decides to shoot at 101.2 GHz.
101.3 GHz

The USS Kalvan’s tactical officer can harden against 2 of 3 frequencies:
101.1 GHz <<< Hardened
101.2 GHz <<< Hardened
101.3 GHz

The frequencies 101.1 and 101.2 are Hardened and takes less damage if hit on those frequencies. The Klingons weapons operate at 101.2 GHz and thus the USS Kalvan takes less damage.

During combat, the Tactical officer could shift the hardening to any of the available frequencies. In addition, using certain equipment could weaken the shields against a specific frequency for a time. The Tactical officer could re-Harden against those frequencies but the process would not mitigate as much damage.

PART III: The Science Officer
Role: Scans the target for useful information, ECM and ECCM.

Scanning: A Science Officer could scan an enemy’s ship to determine what frequency their weapons are operating on and what frequency they’re trying to shift their weapons. However, the Science Officer can’t determine the shield frequency. In addition, the use of certain equipment requires a build-up time which leaves a noticeable clue as radiation or strange energy reads. The Science Officer could identify which equipment is being prepared and what frequency it is being fired on, giving your ship a heads up.

When enemy shields are weakened from weapons fire, the Science Officer could scan the enemy to determine which side is weakened as well as the progress of the enemy’s damage control teams.

ECM: All sensor locks operate on a specific set of frequencies. If more than one ship attempts to lock on your ship using the same frequencies it would take each ship additional time to lock on to you. A Science Officer could jam lock frequencies but not all the available frequencies could be jammed. This means that at any given time, your ship is only lockable by sensors of a specific frequency. On a Meta Gaming level, this means that at any given time your ship could only be attacked by a fixed number of enemies. It’s important to note, however, that additional enemies could shift their lock frequency to something you’re not jammed against if they’re willing to pay the lock time penalty.

The Science Officer could shift jamming frequencies if more people are trying to lock on using a new frequency rather than one that’s already jammed.

Other equipment provide various effect such as Transponder Spoofy (A Federation Spoofing the transponder of a Klingon ship to appear as a Klingon) and Decoy. Just to name a few.

ECCM: Electronic Counter-Counter Measure. On the simplest level, the Science officer  shifts the lock frequency to something that’s not being jammed by the target. The Science officer would also need to counter Transponder Spoofing, Cloaking, Decoy plus various other tricks.
 

 the problem, a 3 man crew ship is a big shuttle =p, the way the decided to go with 1 player 1 ship, group up and raid and whatnot, is about the only way everyone could get in and enjoy the game.  i know i know, every troll and flamer and fanboi bleedingly wants guilds to run one huge ship, but thats just not practicle =p

It would be admittedly cool for a guild of 50 people to crew one super-dreadnought like 40 people each man different guns for different sections etc etc.  That's really all it is it would be really cool to have a ship with the ability to focus and fire on 40 different targets at once.

Using this system I outlined, it's still possible for 1 PC to pilot a ship.  There would obviously be a way to switch interfaces between the three position.  While 1PC can do the job of 3PCs, 1PC could not perform as many actions per minute.  In addition, 1PC could only access the basic abilities of the other two positions so that only critical functions are accessible.  A "Captain" will only have access to his full library of Navigation and Engineering skills while only able to use basic Tactical and Science skills.  A "Science Officer" will have access to basic "Captain" and "Tactical Officer" skills while having full access to Science skills.

This in effect creates diversity of roles analogue to the Tank, Healer, DPS archtypes in Fantasy MMOs.  While a regular party in other MMOs usually compose of 6PCs, for this system there should be no more than 3PCs per ship.  3PCs could handle just about all aspect of combat.

Within these 3 roles you have different classes.  For Tactical Officer, you could have classes that use Pulse Phasers(Dagger).  Another job uses Beam Phasers(1h Sword), another use Phaser Canons (2H weapons), another use Photon Torpedoes (range) and another use Shuttles (Pet jobs).  Another Tactical class has better shield skills (Tank).

For Captains, you could have Engineer or Pilot.  Pilot has the best Navigation skills with some Engineering skills.  Engineers (healer) offer better damage control with some Piloting skills.

The Science officers are the support classes.  An ECM specialist is the debuff class.