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A Dilemma
countesscorvinna
Member Posts: 12 Arc User
So, I bought a ship the other day for my tactical officer. After some conversation on ESD, and seeing the plans for the game, I had to wonder: What will happen to the ships when they raise the level to 60? Will they get raised up to the new ships? Will they just become obsolete? There are quite a few fun ships at T5...and I'd hate to see them become obsolete or have to be re-bought.
I've only seen posts that glance over this topic so far, without anyone really talking about it. And, the dilemma becomes this...if we, the players, do not know what will become of our ships, whether they be lobi store, lockbox, z-store, or fleet ships...should we even bother to buy them? I guess it would just be nice to know, before I had the urge to get a new ship, if it would actually be worth it. I just hate feeling like I might be wasting time and money on something. So, if anyone knows, or has seen a post or interview or anything about it, feel free to point me in its direction.
I've only seen posts that glance over this topic so far, without anyone really talking about it. And, the dilemma becomes this...if we, the players, do not know what will become of our ships, whether they be lobi store, lockbox, z-store, or fleet ships...should we even bother to buy them? I guess it would just be nice to know, before I had the urge to get a new ship, if it would actually be worth it. I just hate feeling like I might be wasting time and money on something. So, if anyone knows, or has seen a post or interview or anything about it, feel free to point me in its direction.
Post edited by countesscorvinna on
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This is an excellent question.
The answer? Nobody knows.
The devs have thus far, to my knowledge, been utterly silent about it. This means that there are several relevant scenarios that I can think of:
1. They are planning on moving to T6 and leaving the large number of T5 ships in the dust, and are likely being quiet both because it has not been finalized and because they are well aware of the massive negative backlash this will cause. Note that even if they give away free ships at T6, there will still be a great deal of backlash because a lot of people invested heavily in T5 ships, and many have been using their ships for years, and they remain effective even into the era of fleet ships; furthermore, this means that to get a fancy version of the ships they love that is still competitive, or to even match their new, free T6 ship, they may have to buy their entire private fleet over again... if they bother to buy a ship at all.
2. They are planning on moving to T6 and are aware of the backlash as in scenario 1), and are trying to think of ways to move current T5 ships to T6. Presumably if they want to avoid scenario 1), they will figure out a way to do this without a fee or massive dilithium cost, or else they're only going to be looking at a (very slightly) muted version of 1).
3. They are quietly watching and waiting and hoping that 1) and 2) are not a fact and trying to think of a way to dress things up favorably, but will not actually go through with it if they think they'll alienate most of the playerbase that has actually spent money on the game.
4. They honestly have no idea what's going to happen, are nervously looking at all of these outcomes, and are trying to figure out how to both make the sales quotas and keep the backlash from melting the servers.
5. What we think of as the coming of T6 is actually the wholesale abolishment of the tiered ship system entirely. What would replace it is not readily apparent, although they would have to carefully balance not ticking off large quantities of current customers and managing to make a profit.
6. T6 will be a dud, and will have very little improvement over T5 ships. Note this includes the possibility that we already have an effective T6 in the Odyssey, Vesta, Steamrunner, Bortasq', and Fleet Ship lineup.
7. Not a thing will happen, and more T5 ships will continue to pop out now and again.
Note that I imagine that if there is no free (or extremely cheap, dil-based method, NOT real cash) way of upgrading the ships, there will be a lot of people turned off as to ever paying real cash (or possibly even grinding dil) to pick up a pay ship again. And the devs know this.
Also note that I am fairly certain the devs realize that new ships can only carry them so far, and if they're in it for the long haul they will need to find other ways of making money. Note the sheer demand for dil and the recent crashes in the dil exchange - this indicates they may be moving in that direction by giving a lot more incentive to hoard and spend dilithium, and making its acquisition require more real dollar input.
Although I may be naive, I am optimistic that, at the very least, the devs are aware of the fact that if they invalidate all of the purchases made over the years, they will essentially bite the hand that feeds them, and many will either ragequit or simply not bother with buying anything else.
Once again, this is my personal speculation; once again, we have NO IDEA of what's going to happen at this time, and while I'd love to hear a point-blank, flat-out answer, the reality is that even in the best of scenarios they probably aren't allowed to talk about it yet.
However, I expect some "refit" item or whatever, to bring your T5 ship up to T6, from cash shop. Something for 400-1K zen.
Starbases only go up to T5 and produce up to T5 ships.
There's no mechanism in place to handle T6 ships anywhere - and there are no such ships.
It makes no sense for ships to require anything beyond "Captain" already, because Admirals don't necessarily command individual ships.
However: if you look at ships layouts you'll see they have room for 5 equipment slots of each kind, 5 front weapons, 5 rear, 5 consoles, etc.
What I am expecting of lvl60 is being able to command your other ships, manned by your BOffs, at the same time you fly your own.
This seems likely. We already have fleet modules and Cryptic wants our money really, really badly.
They could make this quite interesting tho, like a more significant version of Eve Onlines ship-rigging...
where you actually have some options in regards to your upgrades - allowing a bit of customization of actual stats.
He's dead, Jim.
This is what I expect, and this is when I expect I will walk away from the game.
equal parts cynical and helpful
I suspect this will eventually be what happens, but only time will tell for sure.
I think we can safely expect to see more T-5+ ships for VA and above, and some of those will push the bar out to the limit. But I don't see any C-Store ships really becoming obsolete. They'll always be better than the "free" ships.
For one thing, those ships will have consoles, equipment, and set bonuses that the "free" ships don't and won't get. The oldest T-5 C-Store ships will probably always suffer in comparison to the newer ones, but there's nothing stopping Cryptic from revisiting them if they get too underpowered. Or, possibly, reducing the price of them.
It's important to note where all of these ships fit into the STO "ecosystem".
Yes, Fleet ships have better stats... but they're also much harder to obtain, aren't any more "free" than a C-Store ship is, and lack the C-Store consoles. They're designed to complement the existing C-Store ships, not necessarily to replace them.
Yes, Lockbox ships tend to have better stats... but they're also harder to obtain and aren't any more "free" than a C-Store ship is... arguably they're far more expensive to get.
Neither Fleet nor Lockbox ships are absolutely necessary to play the game. They may, and probably do, have some advantage in PvP. Mostly, whether it's a C-Store, Fleet, or Lockbox ship, it's all about novelty... a new ability, a new skin, etc.
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In a F2P/cash shop based game like STO has become, you have an entirely different issue. STO has been parked at Lv. 50 for some time. The devs have almost completely exhausted the supply of canon ships, even dipping into the novels now (Vesta). People have amassed fleets of these things at $25 a pop, largely because they have nothing better to do. I personally own every Z-Store escort on the Fed side and several of the cruisers. That's a couple hundred bucks of real money that can't be made up just through gameplay.
I don't necessarily think upgrading your ships to T6 needs to be totally free. You are getting increased value because you are getting a better ship. What they need to do is something like the Fleet Ship discount. Kick in like 500 Zen to bump a ship up to T6, except that these need to be account wide unlocks, not a single purchase like the Fleet Ships.
It's also possible, as has been suggested, that Fleet ships and their contemporaries are T6. That would also be totally fine, since it changes nothing and allows even free RA level ships to remain useful.
I just invested too much time and money in my Ship collection as it is now, including building two Tier 5 Starbases (fed+kdf) for the 10% better PER CHARACTER Fleetships (i guess you could already call that Tier 6 if you wanted.)
...in fact the Tier 5 Starbase Fleetships aren't even available yet to the big fleets (we are getting there february-ish, my fleet is AFAIK 2 weeks behind the first to finish).
I hope Cryptic is at least intelligent enough to not make the mistake of making EVERYTHING in STO obsolete that we have worked for so far.
It took them 3 YEARS to get the current line of ships, the Fleet Ships are a good indication what would happen if they went for another ship upgrade.
probably $50 bound per char Ship upgrade tokens in the C-Store or something like that ;P
Pretty much all ships that are not 10 consoles, are all but obsolete.
I would say that 10 console ships are already the unofficial T6 ships in that sense.
I suspect all we'll see is Mk XIII.
There could also be more oo gear that scales beyond this - which would be an ininteresting approach actually (and a buff to the old scaling gear).
One reason is: Mk XIV is becoming cumbersome.
The other's are:
- keeps some headroom for future updates
- doesn't affect overall balance much
I think they also said it would "drop", so I suspect we'd see a mixture of Mk XII and Mk XIII dropping in those zones.
I kinda like the idea of oo stuff scaling to Mk XIV while ordinary gear drops in Mk XIII.
Adding a set of zen-modules that can customize and upgrade T4/5 ships to T6 level might be interesting, too.
It could be simple, like a set of 3 modules: Tac, Eng & Sci.
Tac adds +1 to a Tac or Universal bridge officer slot, 1 Tac console & some crew.
Sci adds +1 to a Sci or Universal bridge officer slot, 1 Sci console & some shield.
Eng adds +1 to a Eng or Universal bridge officer slot, 1 Eng console & some hull HP.
There are also possibilities of... adding a captain slot to ships this way.
Of course we would need to be able to promote a BOff;
but it makes sense if we were to command more than one ship at a time...
so that T6 ship isn't really yours... the T6 ship is your other ship. ;-)
He's dead, Jim.
Honestly, the main thing I want from a level cap increase is more skill points. Gear and ships take 2nd place IMO because that's going to be a lot of skill points to work with. I'm gonna guess around the half-million mark.