[MooseUpNorth]

Originally posted by DeadZone:
Needless to say, their movements looked real silly

Not sure anything could be done about Borg ships, but the movement of other ships could be modelled quite well with some tweaks.

The first step would be to reduce the speed to 50% of the original values. (This does wonders for collision detection, btw.)

Acceleration would have to be reduced dramatically, and especially maneuverability would have to be reduced somewhat. Maybe 1:2 to 1:4. Maneuvering thrusters and afterburners would have to max out less than a ship's original maneuverability. These need to suppliment, not overwhelm.

Ships would then perform in a more stately fashion, and feel approximately Trek-like.

I've been playing with the idea of doing a Trek total conVersion. Staryards.com has a number of trek models from various eras.

If I follow through with this, I would allow the player to purchase from a number of ship types like: Miranda, Steamrunner, Excelsior, Galaxy, Defiant (very expensive prototype), there seemed to be a few others.

As "others", I could include the maquis (pirates), Klingons, Cardassians, Romulans, and the Dominion. I could potentially include Borg ships as a sithrak type.

The big challenge I'm working on is scale, trying to make the scale between ships, planets, and distances between objects a little more reasonable.

The challenge is that expanding the size of the star system tends to kill my framerate. Slideshow city.

In any case, I'll let you guys know how it goes. No guarantees though, my time/interest is somewhat fragmentable these days.

What I'd like to know is how you guys might feel if I were to hand-balance the ships, and made additional components unbuyable/uncapturable.

They wouldn't necessarily map in strength to StarFury originals (destroyer, cruiser, etc), these would be hand-set up approximately according to the ship class involved.

For example, the Miranda and Steamrunner classes would map out to approximately cruiser strength.

Sovereign would be similar to a battleship, while the Galaxy would be vaguely more similar to a carrier.

There would be no fighters, exept possibly run by the maquis, or expressly launched by stations.

Progress would be entirely through taking on "Starfleet" missions, both campaign and random. Successful missions would grant influence points, redeemable for repairs and (eventually) assignment to better ships, either culminating in a Galaxy or Sovereign class ships, or even one of the new Defiant class assault destroyers.

Thoughts?