Rather than limiting players to class-specific ships, I think the OPPOSITE direction would be far better - to get away from the strict adherence to 'Tank/DPS/Healer' in the form of 'Tactical/Engineering/Science'.
It's limiting for player Captains, and it makes the bridge officer system very unlike what we'd expect of 'Star Trek' - instead, I'd go with looser classes, using the shows' model of 'Command/Operations/Sciences'.
Here's a basic idea of how it might work:
COMMAND - Covers command and piloting, i.e. COs and XOs, plus shuttle pilots and helmsmen/flight controllers. Commanders get access to a wide variety of general skills, plus ship command-specific ones. Helmsmen skills relate to things like ship speed/manoeuvrability and any powers of that type.
OPERATIONS - A wide group, covering all the engineering disciplines, as well as the security/tactical departments. In practical game terms, this would essentially be the current 'engineering' and 'tactical' classes for boffs, combined into a two-branch 'superclass' (bear in mind that there's no swapping between branches, so no 'security-engineers'!)
SCIENCES - Again, covers two distinct sub-classes: science and medical. This would effectively strip all the 'healing' abilities (medical tricorder, hyposprays, etc.) from 'science' officers, giving them to the dedicated 'medics'.
As well as making classes feel more like 'Star Trek' divisions, plus allowing more options for customisation, the ideas above would also go most of the way to making bridge officers feel like actual 'officers', such as 'helmsman', 'chief medical officer', chief engineer', since it'd make it possible for such assignments to actually be workable in-game.
Should be pretty simple to make the above tweaks to the boff system, but for players, I reckon the best way of implementing the changes would be a 'best of both worlds' solution. Rather than limiting players to being 'Ops Captains' or 'Sciences Captains'
I was thinking that tactical, engineer and science remain the same 3 classes they are. In Star Trek lore anyone who captains a ship generally has one of these backgrounds but also has to learn about "Command" as well.
I was thinking that Command wouldn't be a class you choose since everyone is a captain, everyone would have it, but rather a seperate skill tree that has abilities dedicated entirely to commanding a ship and your crew. Some of the ship skills at the moment could probably be moved into there and since its something everyone has to learn before they get a ship in Star Trek it could have its own skill points seperate from the current one.
This would generally divide all the skills in STO into 3 catagories.
Ground - based on your background class, tactical, engineer or science
Space - also based on your background class
Command - not class specific skills reguarding your ship and crew, maybe linked to the crew system, crew moral, diplomacy, etc
Rather than limiting players to class-specific ships, I think the OPPOSITE direction would be far better - to get away from the strict adherence to 'Tank/DPS/Healer' in the form of 'Tactical/Engineering/Science'.
It's limiting for player Captains, and it makes the bridge officer system very unlike what we'd expect of 'Star Trek' - instead, I'd go with looser classes, using the shows' model of 'Command/Operations/Sciences'.
Here's a basic idea of how it might work:
COMMAND - Covers command and piloting, i.e. COs and XOs, plus shuttle pilots and helmsmen/flight controllers. Commanders get access to a wide variety of general skills, plus ship command-specific ones. Helmsmen skills relate to things like ship speed/manoeuvrability and any powers of that type.
OPERATIONS - A wide group, covering all the engineering disciplines, as well as the security/tactical departments. In practical game terms, this would essentially be the current 'engineering' and 'tactical' classes for boffs, combined into a two-branch 'superclass' (bear in mind that there's no swapping between branches, so no 'security-engineers'!)
SCIENCES - Again, covers two distinct sub-classes: science and medical. This would effectively strip all the 'healing' abilities (medical tricorder, hyposprays, etc.) from 'science' officers, giving them to the dedicated 'medics'.
As well as making classes feel more like 'Star Trek' divisions, plus allowing more options for customisation, the ideas above would also go most of the way to making bridge officers feel like actual 'officers', such as 'helmsman', 'chief medical officer', chief engineer', since it'd make it possible for such assignments to actually be workable in-game.
Should be pretty simple to make the above tweaks to the boff system, but for players, I reckon the best way of implementing the changes would be a 'best of both worlds' solution. Rather than limiting players to being 'Ops Captains' or 'Sciences Captains'
I cannot properly express the depth of my loathing for the possibility of locking captains to ship type. Not in the English language, and especially not within the rules of the forum.
It has a similar stench to Galaxies' NGE, albeit on a smaller scale. "Let's take away options people have been playing with for more than a year to make the game 'better'" is an idea that should die in any rational and profit-minded brain long before reaching the tongue.
Must admit I like that other idea, it would be interesting to try an mmo without the dps/tank/healer type gameplay... It would fit the lore to a t, but I fear a complete overhaul like that would scare people away, and if it didn't work then STO could go the same way as SWG. Roleplayers would feel right at home with it tho.
I agree with OP entirely, including the 2 fixes mentioned at the bottom. It's silly to have to respec when I decide to switch from a fleet escort to the refit for a little change of pace, and even sillier (well, dumb really) to waste points on both in the same spec.
I cannot properly express the depth of my loathing for the possibility of locking captains to ship type. Not in the English language, and especially not within the rules of the forum.
It has a similar stench to Galaxies' NGE, albeit on a smaller scale. "Let's take away options people have been playing with for more than a year to make the game 'better'" is an idea that should die in any rational and profit-minded brain long before reaching the tongue.
Yeah we all know how dumbing down SWG worked out. Don't do it! :eek:
The developers should actually be going the other way. Ships shouldn't be tied to a class, but rather be open for armament based on what the player wants. For instance, if I want to refit an Akira to be a science ship, then I should be allowed to do so by being able to pick the BOFF stations for that particular model. That actually represents canon better then what we have now since the shows all reserved the right to kitbash different ships to whatever the script needed.
Like the Enterprise turning from an exploration to Military vessel to combat the Xindi in Enterprise?, or the USS Phoenix ( Nebula class) being used as a war vessel against Cardassians in TNG?
Well, maybe not the Phoenix as that didnt change. It just picked on smaller ships than it. The Enterprise NX got refitted to change classes itself tho.
I think the best answer is still changing the bridge officer layout for each ship class.
If you are tac and get an assult cruiser, fine. You loose the commander engineer (replaced by lt comm) and gain a tac lt commander. It would be the same difference in game now with the Sov and Excelsior Refit.
That way you have less tank and more DPS, fitting with the tac role.
I think the best answer is still changing the bridge officer layout for each ship class.
If you are tac and get an assult cruiser, fine. You loose the commander engineer (replaced by lt comm) and gain a tac lt commander. It would be the same difference in game now with the Sov and Excelsior Refit.
That way you have less tank and more DPS, fitting with the tac role.
Just my $0.02
Yes exactly. In a game that goes out of its way to give everyone something, its a bit silly that we can't really pick which ship we want to fly at max rank if we care about min-maxing stats.
Rather than limiting players to class-specific ships, I think the OPPOSITE direction would be far better - to get away from the strict adherence to 'Tank/DPS/Healer' in the form of 'Tactical/Engineering/Science'.
It's limiting for player Captains, and it makes the bridge officer system very unlike what we'd expect of 'Star Trek' - instead, I'd go with looser classes, using the shows' model of 'Command/Operations/Sciences'.
Here's a basic idea of how it might work:
COMMAND - Covers command and piloting, i.e. COs and XOs, plus shuttle pilots and helmsmen/flight controllers. Commanders get access to a wide variety of general skills, plus ship command-specific ones. Helmsmen skills relate to things like ship speed/manoeuvrability and any powers of that type.
OPERATIONS - A wide group, covering all the engineering disciplines, as well as the security/tactical departments. In practical game terms, this would essentially be the current 'engineering' and 'tactical' classes for boffs, combined into a two-branch 'superclass'
SCIENCES - Again, covers two distinct sub-classes: science and medical. This would effectively strip all the 'healing' abilities (medical tricorder, hyposprays, etc.) from 'science' officers, giving them to the dedicated 'medics'.
As well as making classes feel more like 'Star Trek' divisions, plus allowing more options for customisation, the ideas above would also go most of the way to making bridge officers feel like actual 'officers', such as 'helmsman', 'chief medical officer', chief engineer', since it'd make it possible for such assignments to actually be workable in-game.
Should be pretty simple to make the above tweaks to the boff system, but for players, I reckon the best way of implementing the changes would be a 'best of both worlds' solution. Rather than limiting players to being 'Ops Captains' or 'Sciences Captains'
That would work for some vessels which can double as something else, not all can tho. Some ships are built for a specific class and can't be retrofitted enough to change to another. Theres no way the Defiant could be a cruiser (not enough crew and its not meant for long exploration), theres no way that the USS Pasteur from TNGs All Good Thigns could be a tactical vessel nomatter how many tactical officers you put on it.
I dont see adding/removing a console or two fixing this, would be nice if it did and was that simple
Have to say I'm against this idea. I like that I can slap a sci or tac officer in a cruiser... ESPECIALLY at lower levels. Taking things away from a player base is not a good way to balance anything. It was made this way, it's been this way for a year now, to change it would be a mistake.
The idea I liked best in here was the one put forth by zapgun. It would be an actual good change.
The proposal I refer to (for those too deep in the thread to remember) was to have a basic 'captaincy' skill that applies to /all/ ships, and 1-2 level skills in a particular ship. That would make more players happy, than the proposal to restrict them. I'd even start flying my Galaxy X with my tac again once in a while, if we had that, since she wouldn't be crippled by the skill system in it.
That would work for some vessels which can double as something else, not all can tho. Some ships are built for a specific class and can't be retrofitted enough to change to another. Theres no way the Defiant could be a cruiser (not enough crew and its not meant for long exploration), theres no way that the USS Pasteur from TNGs All Good Thigns could be a tactical vessel nomatter how many tactical officers you put on it.
I dont see adding/removing a console or two fixing this, would be nice if it did and was that simple
we are talking about captains not bos
and youm can skill your captain the way you want and take what you may find usefull its doesnt care what ship you fly
Not a good idea. Actually, it should be simpler to fly different ships without having to respec every time.
My proposal is very simple, nothing too far fetched or unfeasible: get rid of al he "hyper-specialized" skills. Right now, at tier 5 there are at least 2 different "ship captain" skills for each ship class.
When I got my Nebula, I decided to respect into "Science Vessel Retrofit". The result is that I can now use the Nebula and the Intrepid, but had to say "goodbye" to my old Luna class. Just cut it down to just 3 classes for Tier 5 as well.
And the system could still be improved - I have 8 ships in my inventory, but can really use only 2 of them (Nebula and Intrepid Refit); What would be nice, is to have the skill to captain one class of ship affectiong the other classes in the same tier, perhaps limited to a fraction of the points. Example:
Tranquilizers kicking in, love this topic and can't wait to see how much more it's grown with everyones ideas and opinions by morning, but for now it's time for me to turn in for the night.
As a player who has every combination of ship and captain possible, I agree wholeheartedly with the OP. Not all of my captains are Admiral and I don't want their ships basically taken away from them because they are on the wrong career path.
Thank you.
Splitting skill points between Ground and Space. That's a good idea. Work off of that. Most of my chcracters almost totally ignore their Ground skills because it seems more prudent to spend my points in Space skills, which are more crucial. I can get by on Ground with practically nothing spent given the right weapons and kits.
Now to be clear, this doesn't mean I want you to force me to spend skill points in Ground that I would otherwise spend in Space. That would feel like a nerf. No, think about making Ground skills a separate section and giving it its own allotment of skill points separate from Space skills.
From a practical STO/Cryptic C-Store income point of view, restricting Captains to a certain ship class would kill C-Store sales for ships. (Nebula? Defiance? B'rel Bird-of-Prey? Guramba Siege Destroyer?).
This in itself is a *very* bad idea for real life Cryptic income/profit reasons.
From a player perspective, things would get very boring if your character's career (Eng/Sci/Tac) and even claustrophobic. As it is, many Feds players enjoy playing Engineering career, and tend to experiment with Cruiser / Escorts / Science_Vessels. Restricting ship class to character's career would become very boring for players.
So everyone loses in this proposal--Cryptic would lose real life income, and players may become bored playing a (small) fixed number of ships restricted by your character's career.
From a practical STO/Cryptic C-Store income point of view, restricting Captains to a certain ship class would kill C-Store sales for ships. (Nebula? Defiance? B'rel Bird-of-Prey? Guramba Siege Destroyer?).
This in itself is a *very* bad idea for real life Cryptic income/profit reasons.
Considering you can't buy those ships at the level the restrictions are in place, not really. The only ship that would have to be changed would be the Connie.
I agree with the OP that forcing captains into specific ship types would devastate the free-form gameplay flexibility that STO currently has as an advantage over other pigeon-holed games. If I want to play a character that is stuck in a box and forced to experience content in a certain way, I will play World of Warcraft.
Please do not make this change. It would weaken a lot of the customizability and extensibility of STO.
Sorry Dstahl, but that's the absolutely worst idea from you I ever read.
. . .
The skill systems just needs TWO simple fixes.
1) Let all weapon type skills cost the same. The weapons are mostly the same, and the skills all have the same effect. At the moment most people use the weapons with the cheapest skills.
2) Reduce the number of T5 ship skills. We don't need 3 skills for each type. Make one for escorts/birds of prey, one for cruisers, one for science vessels and one for carriers.
I agree completely. If this were a petition, I'd sign it in a heartbeat.
Not sure if this has been suggested yet or not, but why not have your captin gain "ship XP". The more you fly a ship, the better you get at flying it. Better turning, more shields, increased power to subsystem bonus, all that kind of thing. You would get xp through space combat. This way you would level up your captin with whatever kind of ship you wanted them to specialise in.
The problem with the skill system as far as captains go is that the skills are vague, passive, and often confusing. There should never be a question of what, precisely, a skill does. So all these skills that are just buffs to BO skills you may or may not ever have need to go away in favor of something else. Your class should be a generic buff to all skills of that class type, probably also in learning speed.
So for example, if I'm a Science captain, I expect my Science BOs will benefit from my advanced knowledge and learn their skills faster and better than someone with a Tactical captain. That would make the "Science Captain" etc. skills vanish immediately. They don't make sense anyway. A Science captain doesn't train to be a Tactical captain without effectively switching class. You should be able to pick up Tactical captain skills (as I mention below), but you shouldn't have a generic buff skill like that.
On the ground, your skills should be what your kit is now. If the BOs have active skills, the Captain should too.
For the BO skills, they should be more of a talent that you can rank up. It always bugs me that my BO can know say, Beam Overload III but never learned Beam Overload I, and even moreso that I can't use 4 high level skills because it doesn't work that way. If each BO can only have 4 skills, that's fine, but make them 4 trees each of which can go to the highest level.
The Captain, similarly, should have the same option. After all, we're all Starfleet. As a Captain, I should have 4 of those too, in addition to having some passive buffs like to the ship, the type of weapon, etc.
The passive Captain buffs should be more directly laid out as well. None of this "+5 to Deflector" nonsense. It should be more like "Tractor Beam Specialist: +10% to strength of all tractor beams." Or "Crack Shot: "+10% chance to disable a sub system." Or "Navigator: +10% to starship maneuverability."
For display purposes, these skills should be sorted by the class they fall under. Your specific 4 captain skills in one tab. The available generic captain skills in one, and then the specific sci/tac/eng in a tab each. That will make it easier to view and less confusing as to what affects what.
Not sure if this has been suggested yet or not, but why not have your captin gain "ship XP". The more you fly a ship, the better you get at flying it. Better turning, more shields, increased power to subsystem bonus, all that kind of thing. You would get xp through space combat. This way you would level up your captin with whatever kind of ship you wanted them to specialise in.
Could it be tied to the different vessel piloting skills and adjusted so ships within your class choice are easier to gain XP upon than those outside your class choice?
The problem with the skill system as far as captains go is that the skills are vague, passive, and often confusing. There should never be a question of what, precisely, a skill does. .
It would be nice to not have to use the pulldown window to check what BOff abilites are helped by what Ctoon skills. Each Ctoon skill should have a complete list of what it helps towards BOff abilites.
So for example, if I'm a Science captain, I expect my Science BOs will benefit from my advanced knowledge and learn their skills faster and better than someone with a Tactical captain. That would make the "Science Captain" etc. skills vanish immediately. They don't make sense anyway. A Science captain doesn't train to be a Tactical captain without effectively switching class. You should be able to pick up Tactical captain skills (as I mention below), but you shouldn't have a generic buff skill like that.
Ctoon skills with ones own class choice should cost less? Corresponding BOffs abilites that fall within the Captains career choice should cost less as well?
Originally Posted by K-Tar
Sorry Dstahl, but that's the absolutely worst idea from you I ever read.
. . .
The skill systems just needs TWO simple fixes.
1) Let all weapon type skills cost the same. The weapons are mostly the same, and the skills all have the same effect. At the moment most people use the weapons with the cheapest skills.
This would work if they also rolled back the changes that were made in Season 1.2. Ships running 8 beams fundamentally altered the game.
Comments
It's limiting for player Captains, and it makes the bridge officer system very unlike what we'd expect of 'Star Trek' - instead, I'd go with looser classes, using the shows' model of 'Command/Operations/Sciences'.
Here's a basic idea of how it might work:
COMMAND - Covers command and piloting, i.e. COs and XOs, plus shuttle pilots and helmsmen/flight controllers. Commanders get access to a wide variety of general skills, plus ship command-specific ones. Helmsmen skills relate to things like ship speed/manoeuvrability and any powers of that type.
OPERATIONS - A wide group, covering all the engineering disciplines, as well as the security/tactical departments. In practical game terms, this would essentially be the current 'engineering' and 'tactical' classes for boffs, combined into a two-branch 'superclass' (bear in mind that there's no swapping between branches, so no 'security-engineers'!)
SCIENCES - Again, covers two distinct sub-classes: science and medical. This would effectively strip all the 'healing' abilities (medical tricorder, hyposprays, etc.) from 'science' officers, giving them to the dedicated 'medics'.
As well as making classes feel more like 'Star Trek' divisions, plus allowing more options for customisation, the ideas above would also go most of the way to making bridge officers feel like actual 'officers', such as 'helmsman', 'chief medical officer', chief engineer', since it'd make it possible for such assignments to actually be workable in-game.
Should be pretty simple to make the above tweaks to the boff system, but for players, I reckon the best way of implementing the changes would be a 'best of both worlds' solution. Rather than limiting players to being 'Ops Captains' or 'Sciences Captains'
I was thinking that tactical, engineer and science remain the same 3 classes they are. In Star Trek lore anyone who captains a ship generally has one of these backgrounds but also has to learn about "Command" as well.
I was thinking that Command wouldn't be a class you choose since everyone is a captain, everyone would have it, but rather a seperate skill tree that has abilities dedicated entirely to commanding a ship and your crew. Some of the ship skills at the moment could probably be moved into there and since its something everyone has to learn before they get a ship in Star Trek it could have its own skill points seperate from the current one.
This would generally divide all the skills in STO into 3 catagories.
Ground - based on your background class, tactical, engineer or science
Space - also based on your background class
Command - not class specific skills reguarding your ship and crew, maybe linked to the crew system, crew moral, diplomacy, etc
It has a similar stench to Galaxies' NGE, albeit on a smaller scale. "Let's take away options people have been playing with for more than a year to make the game 'better'" is an idea that should die in any rational and profit-minded brain long before reaching the tongue.
Yeah we all know how dumbing down SWG worked out. Don't do it! :eek:
Well, maybe not the Phoenix as that didnt change. It just picked on smaller ships than it. The Enterprise NX got refitted to change classes itself tho.
If you are tac and get an assult cruiser, fine. You loose the commander engineer (replaced by lt comm) and gain a tac lt commander. It would be the same difference in game now with the Sov and Excelsior Refit.
That way you have less tank and more DPS, fitting with the tac role.
Just my $0.02
Yes exactly. In a game that goes out of its way to give everyone something, its a bit silly that we can't really pick which ship we want to fly at max rank if we care about min-maxing stats.
I dont see adding/removing a console or two fixing this, would be nice if it did and was that simple
The proposal I refer to (for those too deep in the thread to remember) was to have a basic 'captaincy' skill that applies to /all/ ships, and 1-2 level skills in a particular ship. That would make more players happy, than the proposal to restrict them. I'd even start flying my Galaxy X with my tac again once in a while, if we had that, since she wouldn't be crippled by the skill system in it.
and youm can skill your captain the way you want and take what you may find usefull its doesnt care what ship you fly
Here's what Picard has to say on the matter.
coud you guys PLS START TO READ BEFORE YOU POST AN SHORT LINED REPLY ?
against what? dstahls specific ship idea or what i replyed to?
if one of the devs reads this he will never be able to know what you mean
My proposal is very simple, nothing too far fetched or unfeasible: get rid of al he "hyper-specialized" skills. Right now, at tier 5 there are at least 2 different "ship captain" skills for each ship class.
When I got my Nebula, I decided to respect into "Science Vessel Retrofit". The result is that I can now use the Nebula and the Intrepid, but had to say "goodbye" to my old Luna class. Just cut it down to just 3 classes for Tier 5 as well.
And the system could still be improved - I have 8 ships in my inventory, but can really use only 2 of them (Nebula and Intrepid Refit); What would be nice, is to have the skill to captain one class of ship affectiong the other classes in the same tier, perhaps limited to a fraction of the points. Example:
Science captain - 9 points in "Research Science Vessel (+52 bonus)
Any T5 Science Vessel -.> +52
Any T5 Escort -> 50% (+26)
Any T5 Cruiser -> 50% (+26)
I don't know if I managed to bring the point across
Take care all, keep up the brainstorming
Thank you.
Splitting skill points between Ground and Space. That's a good idea. Work off of that. Most of my chcracters almost totally ignore their Ground skills because it seems more prudent to spend my points in Space skills, which are more crucial. I can get by on Ground with practically nothing spent given the right weapons and kits.
Now to be clear, this doesn't mean I want you to force me to spend skill points in Ground that I would otherwise spend in Space. That would feel like a nerf. No, think about making Ground skills a separate section and giving it its own allotment of skill points separate from Space skills.
:cool:
This in itself is a *very* bad idea for real life Cryptic income/profit reasons.
From a player perspective, things would get very boring if your character's career (Eng/Sci/Tac) and even claustrophobic. As it is, many Feds players enjoy playing Engineering career, and tend to experiment with Cruiser / Escorts / Science_Vessels. Restricting ship class to character's career would become very boring for players.
So everyone loses in this proposal--Cryptic would lose real life income, and players may become bored playing a (small) fixed number of ships restricted by your character's career.
In short, a bad proposal for all concerned.
Considering you can't buy those ships at the level the restrictions are in place, not really. The only ship that would have to be changed would be the Connie.
Please do not make this change. It would weaken a lot of the customizability and extensibility of STO.
I agree completely. If this were a petition, I'd sign it in a heartbeat.
So for example, if I'm a Science captain, I expect my Science BOs will benefit from my advanced knowledge and learn their skills faster and better than someone with a Tactical captain. That would make the "Science Captain" etc. skills vanish immediately. They don't make sense anyway. A Science captain doesn't train to be a Tactical captain without effectively switching class. You should be able to pick up Tactical captain skills (as I mention below), but you shouldn't have a generic buff skill like that.
On the ground, your skills should be what your kit is now. If the BOs have active skills, the Captain should too.
For the BO skills, they should be more of a talent that you can rank up. It always bugs me that my BO can know say, Beam Overload III but never learned Beam Overload I, and even moreso that I can't use 4 high level skills because it doesn't work that way. If each BO can only have 4 skills, that's fine, but make them 4 trees each of which can go to the highest level.
The Captain, similarly, should have the same option. After all, we're all Starfleet. As a Captain, I should have 4 of those too, in addition to having some passive buffs like to the ship, the type of weapon, etc.
The passive Captain buffs should be more directly laid out as well. None of this "+5 to Deflector" nonsense. It should be more like "Tractor Beam Specialist: +10% to strength of all tractor beams." Or "Crack Shot: "+10% chance to disable a sub system." Or "Navigator: +10% to starship maneuverability."
For display purposes, these skills should be sorted by the class they fall under. Your specific 4 captain skills in one tab. The available generic captain skills in one, and then the specific sci/tac/eng in a tab each. That will make it easier to view and less confusing as to what affects what.
Occasionally (rarely even) , I make some sense.
Surely its a bug.:p
But I really like this idea; Could it be tied to the different vessel piloting skills and adjusted so ships within your class choice are easier to gain XP upon than those outside your class choice?
This would work if they also rolled back the changes that were made in Season 1.2. Ships running 8 beams fundamentally altered the game.