I am new at forums so forgive me if I am to informal but I have something important to say.
I am a relatively new member only 200 days and I also have three admirals and I have been noticing something that is like the elephant in the room. Well, this elephant is that we don't feel like admirals (absurd isn't it) :rolleyes: , for what I think is that we don't command fleets. I don't mean player fleets but our own personal fleets maybe consisting of our former ships. I know what you're going to say, you're going to say well you already have those ships under you're command why don't you just go fly them again. Well, I have one answer for this, our former ships suck:mad: choose between a dreadnought or a star cruiser, I think dreadnought wins. I mean all our old ships do is take up space in a ships slot, for which I have yet to fill out on any of my characters. So, I propose an innovative solution to this problem make our old ships mean something to us by creating something like the Doff system for it. This would bring out whole new missions for us like assist in colony evacuation, you would not be able to put that in the Doff system but you could order one of your old ships to go do it (someone get a mop and bucket because I just blew someone's mind). Ok, now lets broaden the scope of this a little more, like when you call fleet support, instead of some dumb frigate showing up, how about one of your old ships shows up. Lets expand this even more to bridge officers, you could then have some of your bridge officers take command of your ships, because really who uses all of their bridge officers. Lets combine those separate thoughts how about you automatically call in fleet support when you warp in and they behave just like your bridge officers on the ground, I mean why try to reinvent the wheel. WOW, what have I just done, have I just connected fleets to bridge officers to the Doff system. Someone call an ambulance because I have given the Devs a heart attack.
I would really like comments on this especially from the Devs to see if this is passable or not or if they are already working on this.
Additional: I have got other ideas that I will post when I have formulated my thoughts.
Comments
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?p=2893000&highlight=off+screen#post2893000
You are right. The impact and scope of missions assigned to you as an Ensign are the same as Vice Admiral. Scan 5 this, kill 5 that, save galaxy. There is no sense of progression.
Adding entire ship DOffs would help make us more of an Admiral. Also having our ships accompany us on select space missions (as our BOffs do on ALL ground missions) would add some much needed scale to the latter end of the game.
I too thought these ideas were insane, but asked anyways. About a year later, the Devs announced the Dutty Officer system, with the off screen missions I had hoped for. Heretic and the rest of the team have done a fantastic job. I hope to see them push forward.
Admirals are supposed to command fleets, yes, but only very rarely was it ever shown in ST actual fleets of ships. 99% of the time it was one single ship. And I think always having an entourage of NPC ships following you everywhere in a fleet is about as far from feeling "Trek" as you can get.
A major theme of Star Trek was the captain and his ship, and in fact several times throughout the IP's history notable captains have actively turned down, avoided, or even surrendered the rank of Admiral to be a captain again and command a ship.
The way to solve this is to simply ditch the admiral rank altogether as the pinnacle of character achievement. Set max rank as Captain and then just it's you and your ship and your adventure in the stars. People will stop asking why they are Admirals with no fleets.
With the new DOFF system, the Admiral rank and pips can be earnable via ranking up multiple categories in the DOFF system (which demonstrate your prowess in management and direction), but the rank and pips are basically cosmetic additives for those who want to RP like that.
I'm with this, I'd like STO to move more in the direction of a Captain, his crew and ship, off exploring strange new worlds, rathe rthan being one of thousands of Admirals in space because clearly there's not enough desks on Earth.
That sir is petty if you would get upset over having a fictitious title changed, on a GAME, that has no bearing in real life. I can see the OP's intent on keeping things more "real" and wouldn't mind a change like this. Its not like your player level or access to the higher tier vessels would be changed. I can totally see the new ranks being
Ensign
Lieutenant J.G.
Lieutenant
Lieutenant Commander
Commander
Captain
Rear Admiral
And yes I am including the rear admiral rank in this tree the way it is designed now, only because Kirk was an admiral and he commanded the Enterprise for a time... so why not. The OP's idea of having your Boff's get promoted to captain your old vessels during the call for fleet support is a wonderful idea. This would ensure that you kept decent gear and properly trained Boff's on your old vessels, and could easily be folded into the Doff system with missions of their own.
Look at my signature.
Acctualy Kirk was not in command of the Enterprise, in The Wrath of Kahn he just happened to be on bored for a training cruise, when Kahn attacked. The the highest ranking officer would then take command. Kirk just had a desk job at that time in the acadomey.
Back to the main topic, think of what they would have to change in order for the Lv cap to be captain: decrease Lv cap from 50 to 40 (don't want to have twenty ranks for captain), change what ships you can buy at what ranks (think about, you would suddenly have five different ships open to you at captain, think of what it would be like being new to the game and suddenly having all of these chooses), and finaly if we implimented this harder to rank up thing, we would loose lots of F2P, because lose of instant gratification (no one playing for free actualy wants to work to feel like they have accoplished something). The ranking system is fine the way it is, the problim is with the admirals.