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Extending the Admiralty System to support episode play.
ihatepwe735
Member Posts: 337 Arc User
Over the years players have asked to play from their ships bridge. This is impractical due to the way that the STO engine works.
However, the Admiralty system exists as a way to send ships on automatic missions, and PvE Queues prove that players can, from anywhere, be sent to an instance, play through, and then get returned to their Ground map.
As such, we can propose combining these two systems:
* Integrate the Admiralty system with the available missions & episodes and let players send their ship cards on these missions.
* These admiralty missions only work for cards that have a ship setup and available to the player.
* When the mission countdown completes, the player can accept the mission, resulting in the player being taken to the missions starting location in the selected ship - if in a party - group members are invited along to. This behaviour exists in the PvE queue mechanism.
* When the player completes the mission, they are returned to where their character was in space-dock / whatever.
This opens up the entire gamut of PvE mission & episode content to players using the queue system once they have unlocked the Admiralty system.
Benefits:
* To players - access to more content without leaving the comfort of their admiralty office / social hub / ship bridge / fleet HQ etc. Fantastic for roleplayers who also wish go get some questing done.
* Access to all those strange out of the way dailies without spending hours flying about.
* Because ships can only be sent once, there is a need to have multiple ships ready in order to send them on missions. This drives:
* more dilithium usage because more ship gear needs to be made
* more ship purchasing to ensure there are sufficient ships to cater for regular and mission admiralty missions. And to have uber ships available for any dailies.
Better immersion, more zen sold. Benefits all round.
However, the Admiralty system exists as a way to send ships on automatic missions, and PvE Queues prove that players can, from anywhere, be sent to an instance, play through, and then get returned to their Ground map.
As such, we can propose combining these two systems:
* Integrate the Admiralty system with the available missions & episodes and let players send their ship cards on these missions.
* These admiralty missions only work for cards that have a ship setup and available to the player.
* When the mission countdown completes, the player can accept the mission, resulting in the player being taken to the missions starting location in the selected ship - if in a party - group members are invited along to. This behaviour exists in the PvE queue mechanism.
* When the player completes the mission, they are returned to where their character was in space-dock / whatever.
This opens up the entire gamut of PvE mission & episode content to players using the queue system once they have unlocked the Admiralty system.
Benefits:
* To players - access to more content without leaving the comfort of their admiralty office / social hub / ship bridge / fleet HQ etc. Fantastic for roleplayers who also wish go get some questing done.
* Access to all those strange out of the way dailies without spending hours flying about.
* Because ships can only be sent once, there is a need to have multiple ships ready in order to send them on missions. This drives:
* more dilithium usage because more ship gear needs to be made
* more ship purchasing to ensure there are sufficient ships to cater for regular and mission admiralty missions. And to have uber ships available for any dailies.
Better immersion, more zen sold. Benefits all round.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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Comments
Currently you can already get to any queues from your social HUB, you just need to put your ship active.
This system adds no constraints - in the same way that PvE queues and Alerts still exist on the Sector maps - the Queue interface adds a more convenient way to play that content without leaving your current social / event hub.
So, the proposed system:
* Uses the existing Queue mechanism to show that STO has an existing way to send a player / team of players to a map instance and return them to their social hub when that task completes.
* Uses the existing Admiralty system to show that STO has a way to give the player a list of missions, send their ship-cards on missions - and collect on those missions when a time interval has passed.
What I want added is:
- a new system that collates all the content that players currently still require the sector space map to access into a list of available missions similar to the Admiralty system. i.e. missions, episode missions, repeatable missions, patrols, dailies (such as on Nakura, New Romulus), other specials (Dilithium mining dailies etc) and nebula/cluster "visitations" into a single list.
- Allows the players to - OPTIONALLY - use this new screen to dispatch ship-cards - for ships they actually possess - on these missions as an alternative to flying there manually. In the same way the Queue system removes the need to fly to the Queue locations or Alert locations.
- Implements a time sink to ensure it doesn't trivialise the process.
- Allows players to - at their leisure - "claim" the ready missions, teleporting them to the starting location with their team mates and in the ship they had sent on the mission.
- As with Queue content, when the mission is done they return to the Social Hub.
The benefits are:
* Its an alternative not a replacement to using sector space to travel to mission / daily locations. But this has precedent in the Queue system.
* It drives demand for ships - as if players want to optimise their time and queue for more than one patrol / missions / whatever they need a configured ship per item they wish to simultaneously do
* It provides an opportunity for RP, as players can spend more time on the bridge of their ship - a frequently requested feature as an alternative to sector travel.
* It provides an additional revenue stream opportunity to Cryptic as they can sell more ships - drives up the value of dilithium used to equip more ships which increases Zen sales and allows Cryptic to sell additional concurrent mission slots for more Zen.
* Over an above the need to simply have more ships - it increases the value in having a fleet of ships pre-configured to be optimal for various tasks as you can now simply send specialist ships on specialist tasks.
* An opportunity to more naturally integrate foundry content
* A more natural way for "in progress" and "available" missions to be presented to the user consistently, and obviate the need to have a BOFF interrupt the player randomly with news that a new TFO / storyline progression is now available.
* A more natural way for Cryptic to add new "micro" content without worrying about where on the sector map it would have to hang.
I don't see any benefit at all. Feels more like trying to turn STO into a Facebook game where you just send things on their way and wait for the reward. I'd rather... I don't know... PLAY THE GAME than treat it like one big mobile or facebook passive game.
I feel like you are responding to some other idea. Perhaps I explained it wrong.
It leverages the Queue system capabilities; I.e. you actually do the mission by going to an instanced map.
Are you proposing we actually use the ship cards as if we set them up ourselves like a normal ship or just like something from Starship Creator where we oversee it?
Because if its actually controlling them... we can already do that through normal gameplay, with our own builds. Using a Cryptic generated build in the past has led to complaints because they aren't well optimized. Prime example is when we fly the Enterprise-C in Temporal Ambassador, with the ship mounting a turret as well, as well as Step Between Stars where we fly a Dyson Destroyer.