That would require re-building the game from the ground up, at worst.

And at best, it would take years to make another engine that's compatible with this game.

So overall, it's not a cost-effective thing to do, much as people might like it.

Yes, Alpha was trickery, similar to putting it into the backdrop. In reality, that planet can appear bigger because only half of it is made (the half facing you) and there is no collision.


All Engines have limitations. Our engine is actually very good overall, and we hear that everytime we hire someone from another company. Yes, there are limitations, but we are always adding to it, and improving on things. We will not be tossing it out and using something else.

Many of the limitations we work with, are due to the types of games we make. MMOs have special limitations over most single player games. Turns out, having to render 100's of characters at once, and sync data between all of them is a bit of a hindrance.

Seeing as you regularly update the code base of the engine (Season updates), maybe some effort should be made to improve or lessen the restrictions currently in place, and put them into the next code base? It's rather odd that other games (game engines) manage to correctly use cameras, or correct usage of large objects like planets, and yet... The engine in use for STO (which is so great according to you), have these (imho) ridiculous limitations that no other engine has.

just curious - which MMO engines are used in MMOs that render planets properly because it's certainly neither SWToR or EVE Online?

No game is perfect, but EVE is certainly closer when it comes to planetary and station ship-scale than STO.

STO was launched in 2010 built on hardware designed for a game released in 2009 (CO). EVE was launched in 2003.

Better coders at CCP? Better hardware? I'm curious really.

Well instead of making planets bigger why not make ships and structures in space smaller and tighten the camera a bit. The problem isn't with overall planet scale its with relative planet scale. Making everything smaller and adjusting camera and distance units would have the same effect as making the planets bigger, just a thought.

The limitations I mention aren't some arbitrary limit imposed by software, it's things like the inaccuracies of floating point math as your numbers get bigger and bigger.
Other games may handle things differently, I don't know how they work under the hood. From my understanding, it is not trivial to 'fix' the scale issue.

Making everything else smaller in game is an even more insane task. There are more non-planets than planets in game, and shrinking all of that is a monumental undertaking, and would still suffer from the lack of precision.

I agree our planets are too small, but making actual, physical (in game) objects, of that scale, is not something we can do. Nor do I think it is terribly important. I agree that I would love to be able to do so, but I think that doing some trickery, and shoving them into the backdrop is a decent compromise.

I have no real issue with the scale of objects in "System space", but in Sector Space, it's certainly noticable.

Flying past Deep Space K-7 in my Intrepid, I felt as thou the station was of a pretty good scale. When entering the "Sherman System" however, the station felt huge

TL;DR: Scale IS important, and adds to the immersion factor. Something which clearly, the devs at Cryptic have forgotten. Sure, you write alot of good stories on the episodes. But you forgot the immersion of most players wanting to play Star Trek Online, to get the FEEL of Star Trek. The feel of flying through space at faster-than-light velocity etc. The revamping of the "astrometrics" in Sector Space certainly helped, but it could also be better. Tired of the age-old argument of "good enough", when things CAN be done better. For the betterment of both the players, and your potential profits.

Crappy game = less customers, less income
Good game = more customers, more income, word-of-mouth causes increased customer interest

I don't really have a problem with the current scale. Planets are still huge. The only scale problem I have in the entire game is that the Moon is WAY too close to Earth.

In what way does it get more accurate? Wouldn't using processors with higher bit ratings give you more room for precision?