Massively's Star Trek Online community Q&A: Space combat!

Will space combat be more of a arcade style of gameplay or more of a tactical plan your moves out type of thing?

When fighting the Borg will it be as complicated as the tv show makes it with them adapting to your weapons and shields?

How large an advantage will Klingons have with their cloaking systems? Will the Federation have some sort of an inherent advantage itself to offset it to a degree, say superior shield systems or typically better engines given same tiered ships?

Oh, I realize that, dudemanjac, and I also realize science vessels will be fairly good at detecting them, too. However, they're still advantages in that situation, if only because the Federation has to spend resources to deal with cloaks if they engage in pvp content. To have a balanced game, there should be something that Klingons have to deal with (spending their own resources, to do it well), if they're to overcome the Federation -- be it some natural advantage to shields, or repair rates, engine power, science capability (even on non-science ships), etc. etc. etc.

I'm just curious to know if there's anything special that the federation is innately good at, or unique, which will balance Federation vessels against Klingons in PvP.

What will happen when you "die"? Loss of experience? Loss of bridge officers? Loss of ship?

How will the use of our weapon systems and abilities be limited during combat? Will the game use some sort of energy bar of sorts or is it primarily cooldown based?

I noticed in the PAX footage a lot of micro-management of the shields during combat, will we be able to hotkey the individual shifts from port to starboard shields for instance, can we hotkey the "balance shields" command as well?

Will there be boarding parties? If so, can you capture vessels, or does that just disable them or something?

How far will you be able to zoom out during combat and exploration in system? Sometimes getting a really far away view of combat would help in a tactical sense. Pictures would be appreciated here... :P

(I've been playing Dragon Age: Origins on my PC and that has a tactical view that has been really helpful. You can really zoom out and see everything that is going on.)

Are there plans for active boarding operations, either in regular ship to ship combat, or (especially) in Borg-opposed operations?

More specifically, will it ever be possible to cripple a ship then send an away team to go hand-to-hand in the halls? Or in Borg encounters, since the established Borg strategy has always been to remain behind adaptive shields while transporting drones onto the enemy ships to begin the assimilation process, will this be reflected in the game, or will they be limited to a big cub on ship phaser battle?

ugh... "big CUBE on ship phaser battle?" is what I meant to say.

Dang, sticky "e" key.

Why is combat so important in STO? Why does it happen frequently?

In the tv series they do not fight during one whole season, it happens only in the final episodes.

Why is it different here, is this not Star Trek?

(all said in a Data's kind of tone)

Why is combat so important in STO? Why does it happen frequently?

In the tv series they do not fight during one whole season, it happens only in the final episodes.

Why is it different here, is this not Star Trek?

(all said in a Data's kind of tone)

In some of the gameplay vidoes that we've seen (which I understand are all pre-alpha), it looks like the vessels that are destroyed have little more than a "pop" when they die. Considering these are massive vessels, has this been improved recently to give each ship a kind of "last hurrah" when that hull is breached? If not, are there plans to improve this in the future?

Also, will this game have a tactial feel similar to the old Starfleet Command games, where you could utilize almost everything on your ship, from ECMs to Tractor Beams? Or is it more focused on movement and shield management?

How many bridge officer abilities do we have available in space combat (abilities per npc) and can we change them on the fly?