M'kay, I should have made this a little bit more clearer before. Sorry my fault.
What I mean is that all of the canon ships should be kept because otherwise the game wouldn't be the same. The sister classes however that cryptic developed such as the cochrane, quasar, vesper; many of them should look more futuristic (as in 25th century or late 24th). They should look sleek; more eye catching and advanced. A lot of those sister vessels however are bulky looking, not eye catching or futuristic looking; hell they don't even look like they were built to exceed warp 8, let alone travel at slipstream.
What would be nice to see is the non canon sister starships look more eye catching, more advanced and futuristic and sleek.
Oh and by the way, I think the community manager a brilliant person who goes beyond his job at cryptic. Good on you mate.
So what you're saying is just that you think that, for the most part, the alt-configuration designs Cryptic came up with in the early days are terrible. I agree with you wholeheartedly (with some few exceptions - notably, mostly the ones that lean towards 'sleeker', so we agree there too) and wonder if you've actually seen the abomination that is the Imperial Class up close and held your lunch. I daresay that some, like the Galaxy-variant Emissary, are just plain daft and barely an improvement over the 'legoprise' used in some early Cryptic publicity screenshots. This is, however, all subjective.
That said, at least we don't have the 'dog with an itchy butt'-Class Enterprise-F from Perpetual's vaporware. At least the Odyssey is an eldritch abomination with strange non-euclidean geometry rather than a worm-afflicted canine.
all the links from the first post are from Bridge cimmander modded or not cryptic cannot use private designs unless through contests or CBS says they like the design and allow it.
as for cryptic making their own ships. they do, but all of them must be approved by cbs as well. i however miss the old skin packs that arent around anymore. some of them looked truly awesome.
even "canon" designs have limitations to CBS's authority on if they want it in game or not. the biggest example of this is the constitution class ship, and her sister ships from the excalibur to the Exter. the constitution is strictly forbidden from a T5 version, which is why the Cruisers of T2 are not allowed Fleet variants, even if you dont add in the connie skin options, these ships, and the miranda from T1 are expressly forbidden from ever becoming T5.
all the links from the first post are from Bridge commander modded or not cryptic cannot use private designs unless through contests or CBS says they like the design and allow it.
I am aware of that, and as a result I did not plan for those links to be used as a direct copy, more as inspiration in which Cryptic can look at alternative nacelle designs, deflector designs and hull configuration which has a 25th century look to them, rather than the bulky and ugly designs for many of the other vessels.
All of the alt-configuration designs don't have to look almost exactly like the canon ship they are based on. The exploration cruiser and assault cruiser is a perfect example in which the galaxy and emissary ship's alternative config classes look almost exactly the same. Different configurations and looks that show 25th century design in them would look much better than the current designs for many of the alternative ships.
Beta Antares Shipyards advanced Starship development project.
CLASSIFIED
I welcome the cannon ships and this for me is partly why i play the game and grind out
however it would be nice to add some new designs in as well but there is always the risk that the new ships will look as ugly as hell and take away the vision of star trek in how they are designed.
just remember that most of the stuff now that this game offers could be classed as cannon in the star trek universe until they bring out a new series or movie of star trek set in the 24th century so i hope perfect world get it right
My favorite ship design in the game right now, the Oslo, is non-canon. The Norway class however is, but they couldn't make that because the original CG files are corrupted and lost forever and CBS would not allow it to be scratch-built.
However, if you know the Norway from the final episodes of TNG: (closest ship in image)
And then look at the Oslo class that Cryptic designed, I don't think many would disagree it was a natural progression. The Oslo may not be completely 2409, it's probably at least 10 years older, but definitely a true progression.
And no, ships don't have to look sleeker. They have to look more practical. The Oslo pulls off "sleek" even if it's angular and has probably the most unique pylons on a Fed starship. The angular look is important to convey aggressiveness. The Armitage and Thunderchild are much to of a foppish dandy's ship to me.
Basically:
-High tier Escorts must look aggressive
-High tier cruisers must look bulky but semi-sleek
-High tier science vessels should look sleek made out of sleekness.
But they all have to look practical.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] bloodpact.net
"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it."
Ships have to look practical and belong to their class (such as tactical, science etc.). Both the armitage and thunderchild look similar structurally and if one looks foppish, then the other one looks it too.
The Oslo however, well it looks bulky like a carrier, not really that threatening, and if you've seen alot of the fan art I have seen of ships from the late 24th, early 25th, then the oslo looks like it was developed a decade after the Akira. DO some research on when certain ship classes were developed in the ST universe and you'll find the designs become more advanced rather quickly as technology and knowledge is developed further.
Another thing; a lot (if not the majority) of STO users will agree that the canon ships are the nicest and most eye catching ships in the game. That is because the structure of the ship had already been pre-developed by the original veteran developers of star trek. Cryptic didn't redesign the ships, they already had the work done for them, they just had to gain the rights to use them.
Now the reason why they are so popular both in the game and tv series and movies is because the original team based them on practicality and they tried to make them generally eye catching and belonging to their genre of ships. In the mid 24th century when developing the galaxy they wanted a large ship. That would require a large warp core which would require large nacelles etc. The sovereign, required a streamlined hull to achieve higher warp speeds with less power consumption and more efficiency. Streamlined hulls in space are similar to streamlined boats in water, so you know how it works...
Now in the year 2409 it has been 30 years after the last movie. They're not going to take a step back and make the ships bulky again. They can't because slipstream technology requires a ship to look sleek, made out of sleekness in order to function as efficiently as possible, unless they're going to write out slipstream technology altogether (which I doubt).
Also another thing to note with differences with the canon and non canon vessels is that there are little to no added bits on the hulls of the canon ships which gives them the slightly sleek outlook (if you don't know what bits im talking about, look at the abomination that was the imperial class).
There aren't a lot if any forward facing bits on any of the vessels that are big either, such as deflectors and the saucer sections edging. If the features are big then they slope them to retain the sleek profile and if required they recessed them into the hull (great example is the Akira and sovereigns deflector). Many of the non canon vessels however have done the opposite. In my architect's opinion the Oslo and Chimera's deflector ruins it, the cochrane's secondary hull and nacelles while a good idea don't fit the science profile or overall look.
Seriously I could ramble on about all of the problems with the non canon ships but this post is already long enough as it is.
Beta Antares Shipyards advanced Starship development project.
CLASSIFIED
I for one am all for having canon starships in game. But at the same time I want to see new designs that has a clear influence from the previous starship lines.
For instance the Odyssey has a look that it was influenced by the Soverign. I would like to see more ships like this cause I dont want to make my Odyssey my "F" designation so I will skip over that one. So I would like to see more non canon starship designs that follow the flow of evolution like was done with the Odyssey.
While this is the topic I would put forward seeing a NX refit. When I say NX refit I dont mean take and make the NX a T5 ship. No I mean make a NX refit like we have the Constitution and the Constitution refit. There was four different proposed upgrades to be done if Enterprise didnt get cancled and any of those four could be picked and added in game to add a semi canon starship. Then theres other starships that are not canon that can be used.
Then you dont even have to keep your ideas among yourselves, theres quite a few people out there on the links above that have created their own ideas of starships some of which are quite interested and some actually look quite canon and good.
I could list literally thousands of different non canon ships that others have come up with. I just hope that the devs will look through the above website cause they have ships from pre TOS all the way to TNG era`s and quite a few of the TNG era ships are such a futuristic design that they could offically be a design coming out now in game.
the one thing that bugs me as STO goes forward is the lack of customization options for alot of the new ships to be released . we have alot of the earlier released ships with 2 or more skins to choose from to mix and match . this is where i think cryptic drops the ball. give us the option to make this one ship look unique whether is just different nacelles or pylon angles or other addons .and it can be costumes for the ships if needed for that extra $$ for the effort into the new ship and its skins . you have the store there is no reason for these options not available for each class of ship thats released .
I just dug out my issue of Game Informer that had a preview of STO long, long before release, complete with screenies and concept art of some ships in action.
Wow, just wow, some of those designs were sleek, sexy, and beautiful. And the original idea seemed to support full customization. Now, I'm sure the CBS licensing stuff is why we will never seem totally customizable ships, but surely Cryptic can go back into some of the old artwork and pull out a few awesome ship designs. There was a cruiser with a 29th century sleekness and a sort of rounded triangle primary hull that was just gorgeous beyond belief.
I support a move to more sleekness in new ship designs - the Fleet Regent model makes me want to curl up and die.
My guess is "hope" keeps people not playing but posting on the forums. For others, its a path of sad realization and closure. Grieving takes time. The worst "haters" here love the game, or did at some point.
I just dug out my issue of Game Informer that had a preview of STO long, long before release, complete with screenies and concept art of some ships in action.
Wow, just wow, some of those designs were sleek, sexy, and beautiful. And the original idea seemed to support full customization. Now, I'm sure the CBS licensing stuff is why we will never seem totally customizable ships, but surely Cryptic can go back into some of the old artwork and pull out a few awesome ship designs. There was a cruiser with a 29th century sleekness and a sort of rounded triangle primary hull that was just gorgeous beyond belief.
I support a move to more sleekness in new ship designs - the Fleet Regent model makes me want to curl up and die.
Chances are that these were Perpetual designs. I think Cryptic pretty much threw out those designs and came up with their own. Have to ask a dev that was working on STO from the start why they tossed those designs.
I just dug out my issue of Game Informer that had a preview of STO long, long before release, complete with screenies and concept art of some ships in action.
Wow, just wow, some of those designs were sleek, sexy, and beautiful. And the original idea seemed to support full customization. Now, I'm sure the CBS licensing stuff is why we will never seem totally customizable ships, but surely Cryptic can go back into some of the old artwork and pull out a few awesome ship designs. There was a cruiser with a 29th century sleekness and a sort of rounded triangle primary hull that was just gorgeous beyond belief.
I support a move to more sleekness in new ship designs - the Fleet Regent model makes me want to curl up and die.
I agree, the whole evolution of starships over time in the Star Trek universe for the federation has constantly got leaner and sleaker. You got the constitution going to the Excelsior which was longer and sleaker than the small Constitution. Then you went to the bigger Ambassador which had angles and some sleekness to her it wasnt till the Galaxy class that we started to see large improvements in sleakness. You have the neck with this nice prowl like curve to it, you got the underbelly of the engineering hull under cut at the aft end. Then you got the Soverign that got even sleaker by removal of the neck connecting saucer to engineering hull but now for the Odyssey it seems like now we added a double neck and tried to keep the sleakness. Big reason why I want sleaker ships that look like their based off the Soverign and is a step forward before I put a F registry number on one.
While I love the older ships and they are great for use in fleet activities that we do I still want to see advance ships coming out cause I dont want to be flying a Galaxy X or Soverign 2 years from now. I want to upgrade over time just like starships would evolve over time.
I just dug out my issue of Game Informer that had a preview of STO long, long before release, complete with screenies and concept art of some ships in action.
Wow, just wow, some of those designs were sleek, sexy, and beautiful. And the original idea seemed to support full customization. Now, I'm sure the CBS licensing stuff is why we will never seem totally customizable ships, but surely Cryptic can go back into some of the old artwork and pull out a few awesome ship designs. There was a cruiser with a 29th century sleekness and a sort of rounded triangle primary hull that was just gorgeous beyond belief.
I support a move to more sleekness in new ship designs - the Fleet Regent model makes me want to curl up and die.
I think you'll find that if it's more than 6 months before release then the screenshots would be from the Perpetual Entertainments concept art of what they were planning before the company went bump and Cryptic brought the rights to STO.
Comments
So what you're saying is just that you think that, for the most part, the alt-configuration designs Cryptic came up with in the early days are terrible. I agree with you wholeheartedly (with some few exceptions - notably, mostly the ones that lean towards 'sleeker', so we agree there too) and wonder if you've actually seen the abomination that is the Imperial Class up close and held your lunch. I daresay that some, like the Galaxy-variant Emissary, are just plain daft and barely an improvement over the 'legoprise' used in some early Cryptic publicity screenshots. This is, however, all subjective.
That said, at least we don't have the 'dog with an itchy butt'-Class Enterprise-F from Perpetual's vaporware. At least the Odyssey is an eldritch abomination with strange non-euclidean geometry rather than a worm-afflicted canine.
as for cryptic making their own ships. they do, but all of them must be approved by cbs as well. i however miss the old skin packs that arent around anymore. some of them looked truly awesome.
even "canon" designs have limitations to CBS's authority on if they want it in game or not. the biggest example of this is the constitution class ship, and her sister ships from the excalibur to the Exter. the constitution is strictly forbidden from a T5 version, which is why the Cruisers of T2 are not allowed Fleet variants, even if you dont add in the connie skin options, these ships, and the miranda from T1 are expressly forbidden from ever becoming T5.
I am aware of that, and as a result I did not plan for those links to be used as a direct copy, more as inspiration in which Cryptic can look at alternative nacelle designs, deflector designs and hull configuration which has a 25th century look to them, rather than the bulky and ugly designs for many of the other vessels.
All of the alt-configuration designs don't have to look almost exactly like the canon ship they are based on. The exploration cruiser and assault cruiser is a perfect example in which the galaxy and emissary ship's alternative config classes look almost exactly the same. Different configurations and looks that show 25th century design in them would look much better than the current designs for many of the alternative ships.
CLASSIFIED
[/SIGPIC]
however it would be nice to add some new designs in as well but there is always the risk that the new ships will look as ugly as hell and take away the vision of star trek in how they are designed.
just remember that most of the stuff now that this game offers could be classed as cannon in the star trek universe until they bring out a new series or movie of star trek set in the 24th century so i hope perfect world get it right
Recruitment Officer Darren
However, if you know the Norway from the final episodes of TNG: (closest ship in image)
http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100402181328/memoryalpha/en/images/d/d9/Norway_class.jpg
And then look at the Oslo class that Cryptic designed, I don't think many would disagree it was a natural progression. The Oslo may not be completely 2409, it's probably at least 10 years older, but definitely a true progression.
And no, ships don't have to look sleeker. They have to look more practical. The Oslo pulls off "sleek" even if it's angular and has probably the most unique pylons on a Fed starship. The angular look is important to convey aggressiveness. The Armitage and Thunderchild are much to of a foppish dandy's ship to me.
Basically:
-High tier Escorts must look aggressive
-High tier cruisers must look bulky but semi-sleek
-High tier science vessels should look sleek made out of sleekness.
But they all have to look practical.
bloodpact.net
"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it."
-Michelangelo
Ships have to look practical and belong to their class (such as tactical, science etc.). Both the armitage and thunderchild look similar structurally and if one looks foppish, then the other one looks it too.
The Oslo however, well it looks bulky like a carrier, not really that threatening, and if you've seen alot of the fan art I have seen of ships from the late 24th, early 25th, then the oslo looks like it was developed a decade after the Akira. DO some research on when certain ship classes were developed in the ST universe and you'll find the designs become more advanced rather quickly as technology and knowledge is developed further.
Another thing; a lot (if not the majority) of STO users will agree that the canon ships are the nicest and most eye catching ships in the game. That is because the structure of the ship had already been pre-developed by the original veteran developers of star trek. Cryptic didn't redesign the ships, they already had the work done for them, they just had to gain the rights to use them.
Now the reason why they are so popular both in the game and tv series and movies is because the original team based them on practicality and they tried to make them generally eye catching and belonging to their genre of ships. In the mid 24th century when developing the galaxy they wanted a large ship. That would require a large warp core which would require large nacelles etc. The sovereign, required a streamlined hull to achieve higher warp speeds with less power consumption and more efficiency. Streamlined hulls in space are similar to streamlined boats in water, so you know how it works...
Now in the year 2409 it has been 30 years after the last movie. They're not going to take a step back and make the ships bulky again. They can't because slipstream technology requires a ship to look sleek, made out of sleekness in order to function as efficiently as possible, unless they're going to write out slipstream technology altogether (which I doubt).
Also another thing to note with differences with the canon and non canon vessels is that there are little to no added bits on the hulls of the canon ships which gives them the slightly sleek outlook (if you don't know what bits im talking about, look at the abomination that was the imperial class).
There aren't a lot if any forward facing bits on any of the vessels that are big either, such as deflectors and the saucer sections edging. If the features are big then they slope them to retain the sleek profile and if required they recessed them into the hull (great example is the Akira and sovereigns deflector). Many of the non canon vessels however have done the opposite. In my architect's opinion the Oslo and Chimera's deflector ruins it, the cochrane's secondary hull and nacelles while a good idea don't fit the science profile or overall look.
Seriously I could ramble on about all of the problems with the non canon ships but this post is already long enough as it is.
CLASSIFIED
[/SIGPIC]
For instance the Odyssey has a look that it was influenced by the Soverign. I would like to see more ships like this cause I dont want to make my Odyssey my "F" designation so I will skip over that one. So I would like to see more non canon starship designs that follow the flow of evolution like was done with the Odyssey.
While this is the topic I would put forward seeing a NX refit. When I say NX refit I dont mean take and make the NX a T5 ship. No I mean make a NX refit like we have the Constitution and the Constitution refit. There was four different proposed upgrades to be done if Enterprise didnt get cancled and any of those four could be picked and added in game to add a semi canon starship. Then theres other starships that are not canon that can be used.
NX-01 upgrade 1 - This upgrade has four nacelles.
http://www.shipschematics.net/startrek/images/federation/cruiser_nx01a.jpg
NX-01 upgrade 2 - Simmilar to above but only had three nacelles, one is mounted on center line.
http://www.shipschematics.net/startrek/images/federation/cruiser_nx01b.jpg
NX-01 upgrade 3
http://www.shipschematics.net/startrek/images/federation/cruiser_nx01c.jpg
NX-01 upgrade 4 - this is what I feel would have been canon.
http://www.shipschematics.net/startrek/images/federation/cruiser_nx01d.jpg
Then you dont even have to keep your ideas among yourselves, theres quite a few people out there on the links above that have created their own ideas of starships some of which are quite interested and some actually look quite canon and good.
Andromeda class
http://www.shipschematics.net/startrek/images/federation/battleship_andromeda.jpg
Texas class
http://www.shipschematics.net/startrek/images/federation/battleship_texas.jpg
Lunar class
http://www.shipschematics.net/startrek/images/federation/cruiser_lunar.jpg
I could list literally thousands of different non canon ships that others have come up with. I just hope that the devs will look through the above website cause they have ships from pre TOS all the way to TNG era`s and quite a few of the TNG era ships are such a futuristic design that they could offically be a design coming out now in game.
Wow, just wow, some of those designs were sleek, sexy, and beautiful. And the original idea seemed to support full customization. Now, I'm sure the CBS licensing stuff is why we will never seem totally customizable ships, but surely Cryptic can go back into some of the old artwork and pull out a few awesome ship designs. There was a cruiser with a 29th century sleekness and a sort of rounded triangle primary hull that was just gorgeous beyond belief.
I support a move to more sleekness in new ship designs - the Fleet Regent model makes me want to curl up and die.
Chances are that these were Perpetual designs. I think Cryptic pretty much threw out those designs and came up with their own. Have to ask a dev that was working on STO from the start why they tossed those designs.
I agree, the whole evolution of starships over time in the Star Trek universe for the federation has constantly got leaner and sleaker. You got the constitution going to the Excelsior which was longer and sleaker than the small Constitution. Then you went to the bigger Ambassador which had angles and some sleekness to her it wasnt till the Galaxy class that we started to see large improvements in sleakness. You have the neck with this nice prowl like curve to it, you got the underbelly of the engineering hull under cut at the aft end. Then you got the Soverign that got even sleaker by removal of the neck connecting saucer to engineering hull but now for the Odyssey it seems like now we added a double neck and tried to keep the sleakness. Big reason why I want sleaker ships that look like their based off the Soverign and is a step forward before I put a F registry number on one.
While I love the older ships and they are great for use in fleet activities that we do I still want to see advance ships coming out cause I dont want to be flying a Galaxy X or Soverign 2 years from now. I want to upgrade over time just like starships would evolve over time.
I think you'll find that if it's more than 6 months before release then the screenshots would be from the Perpetual Entertainments concept art of what they were planning before the company went bump and Cryptic brought the rights to STO.