Ship Refit System

rhazedurile

The last time I saw something like this discussed was back in 2011, and I've batted around the idea from time to time, but to regroup on this:

I am proposing a ship refit system much like the T5U tokens, but for all tiers of ships. The idea is to have a ship for a character that can progress through the tiers, and be refit for the next tier, even from tier 1 to tier 6 using ship refit tokens that will advance a ship to the next tier.

For new characters, as part of the leveling process, one free refit token is granted up to tier 5. Tier 6 would need to be purchased from the ZEN store. For existing characters wanting to refit a new class of ship, a refit token for each tier up to tier 6 would need to be purchased from the ZEN store. That would make it conceivable to buy a tier 1 ship and then progress it through the tiers up to tier 6.

Tier 6 ships could still be offered via the ZEN store with a few extras, such as universal consoles to provide an incentive for that ship, but this refit system would make it possible for everyone to have their endgame ship of a favorite class.

The final refit would put ships at the T6 equivalent of their ship type (sci, tac, eng). BOFF stations I would recommend as many universal as possible, and device/weapon slots should increase to meet each tier type. T6 would also activate the mastery system for each ship.

I could see this being a great revenue stream fro STO, and a fun way for captains to beef up our ship rosters for those ships we've been wanting to fly at end game.

Thoughts?

kesselrunner

This would be a really good idea. Give players a little more freedom when it comes to their ship of choice.

I think it could be done through the existing ship mastery system. By gaining experience with each tier of your ship you can gain one tier of mastery. T1 ships would only have an experience bar to fill up, but upgrading it to T2 with a full xp bar would activate the first tier of mastery. T3 ships would then have two mastery tiers, T4 would have three, T5 would have four and T6 would have all five with the extra ship skill suited to the type or class of ship.

jcsww

This is something I thought should have personally have been there from the very beginning, but on the flip side, it doesn't make sense for PWE's current money making system. Just think of how much they would not make on T6 Connie's from the lock box alone. I do support the death of the free-to-play and freemium models though.

rhazedurile

I suppose you could always exclude the "sacred" ships like the Connie.

arionisa

As I've said before, based on bits and pieces the Devs have said in the past, this idea is impossible. Every ship is a complete package in the database and there is no means of modifying them. Other than the skins for appearance any change to a ship is basically a new ship that just happens to be almost exactly the same as the old one.

Even a T5U is not actually an upgraded T5, it is exchanging your T5 for a brand new ship that is almost exactly the same but better and is called a T5U.

To even simulate the ability to mod/upgrade ships would require the ship design team to literally dream up every possible mod a player might want to do and then design brand new ships to match every single one of those. Considering that some of us are still waiting for our LTS Jem ships, and almost everyone with Rom toons are getting a bit upset with new FED and KDF ships coming out but no new Rom ships, having the ship design team spend the next few years creating a slew of new ships that are just minor changes to existing ships so that players can simulate modding thier ships makes no sense at all, practically or financially.

I say the next few years because the design team has stated that creating a brand new ship takes anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, so I am sure that even creating a "new" ship that is just a minor change to an existing ship is going to take more than just a few mouse clicks and we're talking literally hundreds of "new" ships being created.

rhazedurile

One day short of a month necromantic resurrection of this, but I'm looking at the Discovery Starter Pack with a ship that scales with you. Not quite what I originally had in mind, but I wonder now if this is something that can be done for other ships.

Buy the ship you want, and have it scale with you.