I'm not like NPC's with a bazillion hitpoints.
OW! *rubs arm*
Sorry. couldn't help it.--
Okay, this is like a cross between: Star Trek Invasion (for the PS1), Bridge Commander, Starfleet Command (played nonlegit copy for demo purposes, as I have done with most of the other games I now own. that would include Bridge commander, if I could find a copy that wasn't so outrageously expensive and not bundled with all the other games I already got.)
and finally, Elite Force.
Now, before I start, I'd like to say that weapons would be implimented in this way:
Torpedoes do the most hull damage, but are not as effective against shields. Photons have a slight tracking ability when fired at it's fastest speed i.e. the photon torps travel as fast as they can to their target. slow 'em down to get better tracking. we know from STVI that they do track targets and alter course. They're not dumb-fire like BC suggests
Quantum Torpedoes don't really have much of a variable speed, nor much of a better tracking ability,we haven't actually seen them fired away from their targets like photons have, to my recollection, in fact, they're more powerful BUT they're more difficult to strike mobile maneuvering targets with. Borg cube and sphere and the phoenix in FC were both 'relatively' stationary. by that I mean those 3 wasn't changing speed or course at the time of the 3 battles. So bigger bang, but not nearly so effective in 'close combat'.
The next set of weaponry are the pulse weapons. Defiants' pulse weapons, Klingon/Romulan Pulse disrupters etc. They're weapons of destruction, if you will. Fixed firing arcs, sufficiently wide on the larger ships (and wider still on the klingon BOP because the mounts include swivel mechanisms) but smaller ships, less room for turning the emitters around. Defiant has a significanty larger vertical arc than a horizontal one, for instance, although mostly due to the positioning rather than mechanics.
Used to weaken shields and/or destroy targets - they are not weapons of precision.
And now, Beam weapons. A range of power-per-second. A good scale is, say, Defiants' phasers in 8 seconds continuous to do same damage as a single volley from the pulse weapons.
They are precision weapons, used to disable. The federation used them for such, although their power can be varied for the different combat goals, if a ship is low on torpedoes and/or doesn't carry pulse weapons.
--
So that's sorted out...
Story is, The dominion War is breaking out, and hundreds of ships are suddenly being attacked across a, sector... (say, 10ly-wide sector, dont have the star charts to indicate what the actual name for 10x10x10 ly cube of space is called)
Now, these are not all starfleet. Civilian included, and you're in charge of a large wing of patrol-role ships. Small 'Fighters' if you will.
And that's how you start off. In a 3D strategic view, you set course and all that, it shows a pseudo turnbased/real time view of the fight. i.e. a turn represents an hour or something, and you could do everythign from just strategic. But like the numbers game, sometimes that human touch tips the scales with luck adding or subtracting. A general can still lose a war despite having superior numbers if his strategies aint right.
So it's like SFC. Move your ships to intercept enemies etc in sectors... and then battle!
Now it's like Star Trek Invasion... You're in control of a Patrol ship. It's relatively weak on weapons, but decent enough shields. You'll get to upgrade your 'micro fleet' soon enough. But first, battle. Here the BC/Invasion spacesim feel comes into play. Some BC-like micromanagement, Boost engines when torpedo warnings come in, or shields. Then back to weapons, etc.
You can then disable the ships through that precision stuff I was onabout - weapons (for single-emitter stuff, like a jemhadar bug ship - all it's front-mounted weapons.) yadda yadda.
Varying difficulties produce varying enemies, easy being two or three ships versus civilian, etc. Insane? suicide rams when they're damaged so engines become priority. once those are gone, you can shoot from their blind spots! Etcetera.
now the fight is over, and you get supplies and stuff, to upgrade your ship, and your wing. You can opt for downsizing any ships to fighters - ships capable of toe-to-toes with bug ships, to maneuverable for regular beam weapon target locks (so weak shields) so high offense, low defense.
Or upgrade to fully fledged starships, but higher difficulties present the suicide ram thing, which wont work on fighters or the 'patrol craft' that you start with. But with the starships, you get the wider selection of weapons plus large supply of torpedoes.
Also, you can take the scenic rather than strategic route, i.e. drop down menu, select the nearest battle and 'fly' your way there. And like MMO's with overlapping 'zones' for on-the-fly loading like in World of Warcraft, it loads the data for the overlapping regions you're in, unloading the ones your leaving. this way, it can provide an on-the-fly feel of large fleet engagements in the later stages of the 100-ship-plus in a single sector stuff without a hundred ships actually being in proximity to each other.
You know, really take the space sim bit to great length.
Now comes the Elite Force side of things.
If you've got a starship, and you take a 'capture' mission... here's why you just dont blow the crap out of your target with pulse weapons.
in the fight, pulse weapons take down the shields, and precision-strike at key points - engines, weapons, and transporters so they can't beam aboard when you beam over.
Then you got to Squad-FPS mode, beaming over as a Security officer/or otherwise..
Ammo is in the form of self-recharging packs, like in Mass Effect 1 (only that was 'heat') so none of that power station/crystal crap in the EF games.
also, the gui doesn't provide a HUD. Rather, a CoD4MW-like "shoot from the hip or raise up to aim".
Use a rifle, and you gotta follow your squad NPC who has a tricorder taking you where-ever (or bring up a padd with the downloaded map of the decks) or go tricorder and a hand phaser, tricorder giving you the map plus locations of nearest lifesigns
Movement wont be quite so restricted... crouch, jump, etc... all there. No photon-jumping though.
..
Just a dream though. It'd be f*cking hard to do.
