Star Trek

Ok you know it's going to happen. If you in space or on an away mission, you going to get killed in one way or another.

So what should happen in STO when you die?

Lets post ideas on it here and talk about it.

Possibly no death. There might always be an emergency beam outs, the ship might never be totaly destroyed. Might only be a question of downtime while healing. Death is uncommon among the heroes in star trek (even if it does occur).

As we know cloning exists, but it would be wrong to be cloned everytime you die. And memories does not copy when cloned in Star Trek.

I guess there will be no real "death" in most situations, only damage and emergency escapes/beamouts. Recoverytime will be the worst punishment for personal damage, repairs and replacement of destroyed systems will probably be the worst that happends to ships, possibly that a ship can be destroyed but the crew gets away in escape pods.

but if the ship is destroyed, all the work/money put into it will be gone.

unless there will be an insurance type thing, like you pay a certain percentage of any income, and you'd get a new ship, or something, it needs to be perfect for it to work well

Get used to changing ship, becuase they wont give a fresh crew a sovereign or defiant class ship immidietly. We will probably change ship at least half a dozen time before we get one of the really good ones anyway, and if we lose a ship, well, since that is supposed to be a rare thing thing for a crew of heroes then we will probably have none to blame but ourselves. In the Federation it is better to retreat than to throw your life away.

Be careful with your ship, all your friends and good NPCs are aboard so dont throw it all away while there is still a chance to retreat.

Probably Latinum or Prestige would be lost...assuming they use either system...

Latinum could be used to buy Ships and Recources...

Prestige Determains Range and Skill Points...

But then again it depends on system used!!!

Here's my thought on how to handle death...

When you die you get put in a torpedo case and shot at a planet that just happens to have been redesigned by one of those genesis bomb thingies (I'm sure there's lots of those around) then a while later your crew (Freinds) have to come back and reclaim your corpse!?

Or...  Maybe when your character dies, Q will be there standing in front of you telling you he's god...  And then you have to go back in time and change what you did that made you die, and then you're alive again!?

Or...  Maybe there will have been a simbiotic subspace alien living in your brain that fights to bring you back to life for you!...

Or...  Maybe you'll do something much more exciting and regain conciousness in a Med lab with an EMH staring at you...

Perma-death is and will be an option that I'm sure will be explored by the devs.  I hope that there will be a way to avoid it (ie a "Save" point idea) where you are penalized with loss of skill(s) since your last "Save" or at least a skill penalty (5% loss on all skill for each death until you make x amount of exp; max of 25%) so that there is a reason to avoid death if it is not perma-death.

Maen

Perma death is consistant with the continuity ONLY if it applies to those wearing red shirts exclusively...

Even though in Star Trek it's rare that characters actually die, but it does happen. I think that this should also happen here. If a Medical officer(NPC) can't save you and your character dies, then you should have a choice of if you want to be reborn as a new officer in StarFleet, so if you die with the rank of Captain and alot of XP points; then you would be reborn as a Captain with a new name and if you want a new face or you can keep your old one, but you'll have no XP points and you would have to start again, this would be the same for all the ranks.  

Or if you want to change what you do, i.e. become a trader, smuggler, Engineer, etc. but choosing this option you would start again from an equal rank level to that you had before but again you wouldn't have any XP points.

To be consistent with the universe it is based in (24th C) then it would be the Yellow shirts, not the Red, except in those rare cases where they allow us to transport back in time to Kirk's era...just watch out for the Bureau of Temporal Investigations;)

They will likely put you 'out of action' when you are defeated as opposed to a death. In fantasy games it's easy to say death leads to resurrection. In other sci-fi titles it isn't out of the question to use a cloning booth to regain the character. But in Star Trek, either the patient is revived by the miracles of modern medicine, or...he's dead, Jim (and very rarely there might be interjection by a supranormal alien force) .

So, we will likely always see the characters merely out of action due to injury (and I'm sure you'll heal up and be on your way again). If destruction of the player ship occurs, they will likely just make it a given that the escape pods or emergency beamout occurred (depending on where you are).

What would be truly interesting is that if you were on a mission and lost the ship or shuttle, perhaps escape does temporarily strand you and you may still have to try and finish the mission as well. I don't expect that to be a regular event upon ship desctruction, but a specific mission event.

That would be kinda kewl...stranded on a covert mission to, say, Romulus, and trying to find your way home again!

Quote (Maeniel @ Sep. 13 2004, 9:36 am)

To be consistent with the universe it is based in (24th C) then it would be the Yellow shirts, not the Red, except in those rare cases where they allow us to transport back in time to Kirk's era...just watch out for the Bureau of Temporal Investigations;)

I stand corrected...  Thank you.  

If you want to stay alive, don't put on a red shirt and volunteer for an away mission.....

Red Shirt = Star Trek insta death

How will they do it? I dont know  

How would I like to see it done?

Well taken into consideration that players will die often (its just the way it is) death should not be permanent nor should it be a turn off to the game. Now death still needs to have risk and penalties (players should want to avoid death) however death should not be a punishment like you did something wrong, often death can be completely out of the players control when you take connection issues into play.

So what would be my ideal plan for death?

Ship death:

When you are on a mission or you encounter an enemy ship and this ship takes you down to the point where you can no longer fight, you should be given a few options.  The first should be to run, depending on the ship thats attacking you and its faction it may follow or not. Ships can return to dock to instantly fix their ship for a cost or they can slowly repair them selfs (if you have an engineer, he can help speed the auto ship repair both during battle and after a fight). A ship would still take battle dmg however that would after a time need to be fixed at a star port of some kind.

Now if your ship reaches the max dmg point one of a few things should happen. The first could be that the ship will leave you disabled (this depends on your faction standing with the attacker and or moral standing of the attacker). In this event Starfleet (or whatever you faction is) will send out a ship to pull you back to port. The attacker could also ask you to give up things like weapons or supplies in return for them to leave (forcing you to return to a star port to re-stock). You should also be given the chance to fend off a boarding attempt. If all fails and your in for bad luck, the ship will destroy you. But wipe away the tears, your life is not over. If your ship is completely destroyed you and your crew should be sent back to the last star base you where are and loses all xp, loot and other items gained during you last voyage. Your ship will then end up in the docks and display as in for repairs. Your will have to wait 15min to 2 hours depending on the class of the ship until you can get your ship back. This will avoid newer players from having to wait so long (making death become larger as you grow). Once your ship is back it will be still be damaged making you have to pay for repairs or have your ships crew fix it for you.

Combat death:

Once you are on a ground mission or away mission death should be handles differently. Once you reach 0 hp you are thrown into an unconscious status. If you have a medic with you he/she can revive you during the battle with half of greater heath. If you don't have a medic or your medic goes down too but others survive, any player can revive another with 1hp and a temporary stat penalty. This will avoid players from having to restart every time a player dies and keep players in the fight. Now if all members die you can select the release button and you will be sent to your ships medical station with full hp and a minor stat penalty. If your not from a ship you will be sent to the last planet or space port you where at. If all members of your group die on a mission and release, your mission will be failed (solo players are considered a group of 1).

The stated ideas would give risk to death but avoids having a game that punishes the player and takes from the fun. Its also a system that would increase as you play, so the longer you play the harder death becomes (good for new players to get used to the game).