What changes would you make to STO and why? Please keep in mind that STO is a free to play game but has to turn a profit to continue service.
Example: As much as players may wish to have a fully customisable ship with all universal boffs and consule slots, this would kill lock box and Cstore vavariant ship sales.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
This and making a BETTER exploration system considering Starfleet's primary mission is the exploration of new worlds. Lets go find some eh?
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
Preferably both. If I had to pick one or the other, boff layout. Shpoks, I think it was, posted one that looked interesting in another thread: LTCCDR ENSLTC LT, although I'd personally like the ensign to be universal.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
1. Get the licenses from Activision to use their ship designs. Hate to say, but many of their Armada ships look way better than most of Cryptics (not saying the all suck, they made some really good ones too). I'm sure a Romulan Griffin class would be popular.
2. Make the refined Dilithium pool account wide, or at the very least, allow usage of the account bank with it to store it for other characters. I know there is the dil exchange route, but you lose something while using it and its just tedious.
3. "Fix the damn Galaxy-R"
4. Fix model issues like the Galaxy Dreadnought's misaligned hull components and missing D7 / K't'inga engine glow.
5. Allow ALL playable ships to have fleet symbols in their hull customization. Romulan ships still can't use any and the same goes for tons of KDF and a few Starfleet ships.
This sounds really interesting, but 'codex' is the old word for a book. ^Please expand on above and what your defined 'codex' means...
Certainly.
Weapons: You loot/craft/earn certain weapons in the game, and the codex begins to reveal more information about these weapons. Not only what the common weapons stats are, but the uncommon, rares, ultra-rares, ultra-violets, and gold versions are as well.
You would need a weapon of each type for your ship's computer to register them. Dual cannons, single cannons, turrets, etc.
Example- once you owned (even at one point) all of the plasma weapons in the game, your codex entry for plasma weapons would display at-a-glance not only all of their stats, but also some in-universe lore regarding plasma weapons. Particularly the history of using them, which enemy groups were known to use them and why, and possibly including as-of-yet-unknown lore that we have not yet discovered.
Accolades: Essentially, this would be Accolades 2.0 -- all accolades could be re-organized and displayed in your ship's codex, and after earning various types of accolades, lore could be unlocked to expand on what you have already discovered.
Example- You have unlocked all of the accolades for the 4,800 FE Series, killed 1,000 Dominion/True Way on the ground, killed 200 Dominion/True Way ships, and earned the accolades for taking max Polaron damage.
Now, your codex reveals more information about the Dominion and what they have been up to since the Dominion War -- and subsequently what the aftermath of the 4,800 FE series was for the Dominion.
The more you learn from doing missions and earning accolades, the more the codex reveals in-universe lore.
Crafting: The codex would keep a list of your recipes and progression of the crafting system, and the more you craft -- the more you learn, the more you research... the more in-universe lore you receive. The technobabble behind various crafting aspects, what they do, who uses them, and why they are used.
Enemies: The more ships you encounter, the more your codex stores on them. Once you encounter every ship type (including named ones), for an enemy group, your codex would open up a lore entry for the ships that enemy group uses, what their weaknesses and strengths are, what powers they use in combat, and in-universe lore describing the culture behind the ships and what they were designed for.
CXP Progress: Your codex would contain everything there would be to know about duty officer assignments the more you run doff assignments. The various missions and what doff traits would be needed for critical successes/failures. In-universe lore could accomodate this as you unlock CXP tiers -- and offer some insight as to what your duty officers actually do when on assignment. This could include humorous anecdotes whenever you send them on shore leave (for instance).
Post-2409 Storylines: The Path of 2409 created a documented series of events that led us to the current game timeline. With the timeline changing to 2410 -- once you run all of the story missions, you unlock the Path to 2410.
The codex would display stardates and lengths of time that would confirm when these events happened and how long they took, and offer some information that perhaps we did not see at first, or connections and references we might have missed -- or were deliberately in the dark on unless we also did various other missions to shine some light on them.
Powers: The codex would display a list of all of the powers in the game, and a comprehensive system of what power levels would affect what, what skills affect what. Instead of the 'tool tips' to describe 'Examples' of powers, the codex would display every possible power there is to have in the game and what skill points they would fall into.
No more guesswork. No more conjecture. Just hard facts and statistics as provided by the horse's mouth.
A codex system would provide some much-needed lore and information, and give players an incentive to do everything there is to do in order to gain information and knowledge as to make them a better player.
These are just examples. The benefits of what a codex UI could do in STO are virtually limitless. It would be the one and only source of information you would ever need in the game, instead of having things spread out over so many different systems, or relying on a third-party website like stowiki, where personal opinion and conjecture has a history of being peddled as 'fact', thus confusing players.
Just like in Dragnet, a codex UI would be "Just the facts, ma'am."
And I don't consider this an unreasonable change -- since everything that would be in the codex is already in the game.
This and making a BETTER exploration system considering Starfleet's primary mission is the exploration of new worlds. Lets go find some eh?
I'll go one better and say make a better exploration system, and leave the clusters in until it's done.
Given Cryptic's track record on 'things we'd like to do in the future' we could be waiting years to get a replacement for a system there is no urgent need to remove in the first place.
Weapons: You loot/craft/earn certain weapons in the game, and the codex begins to reveal more information about these weapons. Not only what the common weapons stats are, but the uncommon, rares, ultra-rares, ultra-violets, and gold versions are as well.
You would need a weapon of each type for your ship's computer to register them. Dual cannons, single cannons, turrets, etc.
Example- once you owned (even at one point) all of the plasma weapons in the game, your codex entry for plasma weapons would display at-a-glance not only all of their stats, but also some in-universe lore regarding plasma weapons. Particularly the history of using them, which enemy groups were known to use them and why, and possibly including as-of-yet-unknown lore that we have not yet discovered.
Accolades: Essentially, this would be Accolades 2.0 -- all accolades could be re-organized and displayed in your ship's codex, and after earning various types of accolades, lore could be unlocked to expand on what you have already discovered.
Example- You have unlocked all of the accolades for the 4,800 FE Series, killed 1,000 Dominion/True Way on the ground, killed 200 Dominion/True Way ships, and earned the accolades for taking max Polaron damage.
Now, your codex reveals more information about the Dominion and what they have been up to since the Dominion War -- and subsequently what the aftermath of the 4,800 FE series was for the Dominion.
The more you learn from doing missions and earning accolades, the more the codex reveals in-universe lore.
Crafting: The codex would keep a list of your recipes and progression of the crafting system, and the more you craft -- the more you learn, the more you research... the more in-universe lore you receive. The technobabble behind various crafting aspects, what they do, who uses them, and why they are used.
Enemies: The more ships you encounter, the more your codex stores on them. Once you encounter every ship type (including named ones), for an enemy group, your codex would open up a lore entry for the ships that enemy group uses, what their weaknesses and strengths are, what powers they use in combat, and in-universe lore describing the culture behind the ships and what they were designed for.
CXP Progress: Your codex would contain everything there would be to know about duty officer assignments the more you run doff assignments. The various missions and what doff traits would be needed for critical successes/failures. In-universe lore could accomodate this as you unlock CXP tiers -- and offer some insight as to what your duty officers actually do when on assignment. This could include humorous anecdotes whenever you send them on shore leave (for instance).
Post-2409 Storylines: The Path of 2409 created a documented series of events that led us to the current game timeline. With the timeline changing to 2410 -- once you run all of the story missions, you unlock the Path to 2410.
The codex would display stardates and lengths of time that would confirm when these events happened and how long they took, and offer some information that perhaps we did not see at first, or connections and references we might have missed -- or were deliberately in the dark on unless we also did various other missions to shine some light on them.
Powers: The codex would display a list of all of the powers in the game, and a comprehensive system of what power levels would affect what, what skills affect what. Instead of the 'tool tips' to describe 'Examples' of powers, the codex would display every possible power there is to have in the game and what skill points they would fall into.
No more guesswork. No more conjecture. Just hard facts and statistics as provided by the horse's mouth.
A codex system would provide some much-needed lore and information, and give players an incentive to do everything there is to do in order to gain information and knowledge as to make them a better player.
I really like your idea, and seems reasonable.
I don't dislike the wiki, but some info is either outdated, incorrect or inexistent, and while I know I could just sign in and try to fix some things... I really have no idea about where to find some stats other than finding/buying those items.
"In every age,
In every place,
The deeds of men remain the same..."
I don't dislike the wiki, but some info is either outdated, incorrect or inexistent, and while I know I could just sign in and try to fix some things... I really have no idea about where to find some stats other than finding/buying those items.
I'm personally of the opinion that you shouldn't have to sign in to fix things to begin with. It shouldn't be the responsibility of the players to give information of the game, it should be Cryptic's responsibility to consolidate and organize this information in-game in a neat and orderly fashion. They were the creators of this information to begin with, the buck stops with them.
I am not saying there would not be mistakes, typos, etc., but at least there would be accountability on Cryptic's part to correct and clarify, and not some random IP address logged on the wiki that has no obligation to be impartial, unbiased, or even correct on their wiki entries.
I don't think devs themselves know what is what in this mess they created. If they can be bothered to make a book to list which bonuses are base and which are final, they should have just done away with base to begin with. Whoever came up with the idea of basing dmg bonus on mk 0 should be fired.:rolleyes:
Other games like Eve is infinitely deeper in term of mechanics, yet they base it on concise, clear, metrics at the bottom to build upon. Sto ended up with all kinds of weird unbalanceable mechanics because Cryptic just throws things on top of an unstable pile.;)
I'm personally of the opinion that you shouldn't have to sign in to fix things to begin with. It shouldn't be the responsibility of the players to give information of the game, it should be Cryptic's responsibility to consolidate and organize this information in-game in a neat and orderly fashion. They were the creators of this information to begin with, the buck stops with them.
I agree with you about this.
When I started to play STO I was disappointed because there weren't an in-game encyclopedia, just the tooltips, and some times they lack information.
Just an example
Starship Engine Performance
Captain (Tier 4)
This skill grants you a flat bonus to your Engine power level How much power per skill level?, increasing Starship speed, and benefitting abilities which feed on Engine Power Which abilities? , including some weapon systems Which weapons? and special consoles Which consoles? .
I know I can find all this information if I search on the forum, but this should be available in-game, and in the same screen/window
"In every age,
In every place,
The deeds of men remain the same..."
When I started to play STO I was disappointed because there weren't an in-game encyclopedia, just the tooltips, and some times they lack information.
Just an example
I know I can find all this information if I search on the forum, but this should be available in-game, and in the same screen/window
If anything, a codex UI would help Cryptic when it comes to their own game just as much as it would help the players.
Everything they would need to know is already right there when it comes to creating future content/weapons/ships, and how it affects what is already established.
Imagine a STO where everything is documented, verified, confirmed, and leaves no room for theory or personal opinion.
Imagine a database where everything you have done and experienced not only has an established history of 'your' story, but starts to make connections to other missions and stories in the game, and reveals just how connected the universe is to one another. And how doing one thing on Cardassia ends up affecting someone's decision to do something else on New Romulus.
Imagine a STO where you become a better player because of what you decide to research yourself instead of relying on others' opinions. The codex is just there to document everything and put everything into a formatted perspective.
And you think Cryptic is going to be better at 'updating' an in-game 'codex'?
They are the only ones who have the information to begin with -- therefore putting that job in their lap means we hold them accountable.
It is not about accuracy, it's about accountability.
You can blame Cryptic for getting a codex entry wrong, and documenting it. And then expecting (over and over again) for them to correct it, and having it in plain view it needs to be corrected.
You can't blame a random IP address for putting a vague assumption on the wiki and holding an IP address accountable for misinforming the players.
If anything, a codex would just give more players justifiable reasons to hate on Cryptic -- and as far as I'm concerned, that's one thing I think a lot of players are looking for.
The haters of the STO forums should support my idea for giving them more ammunition to use against Cryptic if anything else.
Alright, I'm sure I posted this a couple of years ago as well.
Federation : Start out the game at the academy. Level's 1-12 are all quest based.
Lv1-Lv3 is your first year at the academy.
Lv4-Lv6 is your second year at the academy.
Lv7-Lv9 is your third year at the academy.
Lv10-Lv12 is the final year.
It's basically the tutorial for the first two years. Teaching you things like how to move the ship, crafting, reputations, dilithium, ground and space combat. The third and fourth years take place mostly inside the holodeck at Starfleet Academy. Here, you get to 'relive' famous events in Starfleet history. This would be a great way to tie in the movies & tv shows by allowing players to fight establish first contact with the Andorians, fight the Xindi, fight Khan, route out corruption and stop the assassination of the President, save whales, try to stop the Borg, the battle of Deep Space Nine and Cardassia, etc.
The final mission at Starfleet Academy is the Kobayashi Maru test that you could take normally, or find the Kirk way to beating it.
THEN the game gets into conflicts on multiple sides and you're pressed into command at Lv12 and commissioned a Lieutenant.
The Klingon version would be something similar while reliving glorious battles of times past. Kahless' uniting the Empire up through the Klingon attack of Deep Space Nine and the Battle of Cardassia 2.
The Romulan version would be something like from the early days against the Empire to filling in details on the Rumulan/Terran War to being drawn into the War with the Dominion.
1. Add more open zones. Convert old fleet actions into open zones.
2. Add a new daily to replay a randomly selected episode from any story arc. Rewards 1440 Dilithium.
3. Remove deep space encounters and patrols, replace with a new distress signal mechanic that triggers at a random system in each sector block. Each sector block will have it's own daily for completing one distress signal mission in any system for 440 dilithium. Each mission rewards a container with scaled loot. Missions will be the same in a particular system, but each sector block will have a variety of combat and non-combat missions to do, both space and ground. Each mission will also have bonus objectives which rewards additional loot.
4. Add an accolade store/reward system. Rewards are aesthetic or vanity items.
5. Actually repair injuries in our sickbay. Actually repair ship injuries at a dry dock. Because why not?
6. Ship interior revamp, with a functional holodeck which you can run various recreational simulations (new type of playable content that can be created in the foundry, or perhaps sold by Cryptic in the C-Store), new interiors, crew uniforms, and the ability to create a custom layout for your ship. Also, more rooms (shuttlebay, science lab, armory, astrometrics, etc) because why not?
7. Add more uses for GPL, and more sources to acquire GPL. Black market.
8. Convert all 24 hour cooldowns into 20 hour cooldowns because why not?
9. Add an auto-fill button for reputation projects.
10. Add more unique space and ground devices into the game.
11. Fix the Galaxy, add the K'vort class, and just let everyone fly a T5 Cruiser (Constitution, Exeter, Excalibur, Vesper). Flip the bird at CBS for being moronic hypocrites.
12. Convert all standard cloaks and cloaking device consoles into battle cloaks and consoles. Yes Feds, you still need to use a damn console. Deal with it. (and try to universally fix cloaking mechanics while we're at it)
13. Revamp the Jupiter class into a Fed Carrier with an updated design, add Ju'day type frigates, and pray the feds will be happy with it.
14. Oh, and add a playable Typhoon too...I guess. That's what people want, right?
15. Mirror universe skins and registries for all ships! ...Somehow!
16. Social device filter/opt-out so people will finally shut up about it.
17. Allow players to craft EXACTLY what they want.
18. Make EC more plentiful through normal gameplay...but not too plentiful.
19. Bring back TERRORDOME, just as it was (with some story updates)...because people want it that way for some reason. Updated to reward a chunk of dilithium, Ph4t l3wt drops, and a choice of marks. Use your new counter-command stuff!
20. Tribble terrarium. Because why not?
21. Update Romulan faction characters with new computer voice, plasma weapons for quantum shadows, unique kit colors, new skins for mines, drones, turrets, etc.
22. New Romulan Carrier with several new pet types unique to Romulan faction.
23. New Dahar Master costume for KDF. Because seriously, why the hell not?
24. Revamp small craft combat, possibly as a third type of combat system that functions similar to a flight sim. (if it's actually possible)
25. Smoother and more responsive ground combat. Now you can dodge as soon as you actually trigger it! WOW!
26. Sector Space revamp or removal. Removal would involve adding functionality to bridges.
27. Bring back the old school STF's (assuming they still exist somewhere) as a calendar event. Because *sigh* why not?
28. Add z-axis impulse mechanics to ships. (a second impulse bar represents vertical ascent or descent, disabled at full impulse) Now you can move up and down!
29. Tractor beam revamp. Sci ability renamed as combat tractor beam. All ships now come equipped with a standard tractor beam that is used to tow space objects as an additional gameplay element. (start a space towing business! :P)
30. Tricorder/Sensor Array revamp. Can now be configured with a filter to display mission objectives, friendly NPCs, hostile NPCs, crafting nodes, interactables, friendly or hostile players, etc.
31. Away Mission System uses bridge officers and small craft. They appear similar to duty officer assignments in various sector blocks, but uses your shuttles and bridge officers instead. Assignments are longer but rewards are MUCH greater. Success depends on quality of bridge officers and equipment equipped to them as well as your shuttle. (pending)
32. All outfits can be worn anywhere. Off-duty options merged with standard tailor options. This game's already ridiculous as it is, so why the hell not?
33. All warp in/warp out animations now appear similar to the shorter arrive/depart animations used in the Dyson Sphere and the shorter transwarp animations. No more long map transitions.
34. Dedication to Foundry improvements and accessibility.
35. Revamp the Cardassian and Fed Romulan story arcs.
36. Reintegrate bridge officer voices into the game with an opt-out option.
37. Minigames! Poker, Tongo, Parrises Squares, Hoverball, Tennis, and everything else I missed... Play with your bridge officers or friends and fleetmates!
38. Various ship polish updates. Quality pass for all low-quality uniform options from launch.
39. Bug fixes. Maybe that'll get people to play more...
40. More "reasonable" alt friendly changes!
41. Divorce rank and level. Captains can be captains. Admirals can be admirals. Anyone can be whatever. Stop crying.
42. Take every opportunity to reduce the amount of loading screens players have to deal with.
I would add player domiciles. Located on fleet starbase or faction planet. Crafters could create the furniture. The idea has been visited before we got the fleet starbases and that's cool.House bank for mainenance payments. The could start out as simple appartments at first, grow to a klingon stronghhold or farm/factory the science professions can do an elite academy. It can belong to the account as a whole.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I was Klingon before Klingon was cool.
Dev request: Please add Bank console access and Mail console access in the KDF orbital shipyard map (interior). There are consoles already in place which could have this access functionality added.
Why? Because I enjoy changing ships from time to time; I'd like to have this access while visiting the orbital shipyard. It's something very simple for the devs to consider for the KDF faction.
Minimal work, too, as consoles already exist in the KDF orbital shipyard map (interior).
(Yes, a really simple request. Thanks for your consideration!)
1. remove exploration zones/missions. place zones (nebulas/star clusters) in spector space like the azure nebula then have exploration missions as random encounters as you travel through sector space. slower speeds incur more encounters, at slipstream you can bypass them altogether
2. choice to engage encounters automatically or have to click to engage them as it is now. i like the idea of just setting my ship to fly through sector space and then randomly be thrust into a scenario, whatever that scenario is.
"what happened? we were supposed to be flying to ESD, why aren't we at warp anymore?"
"sir, we encountered a sub space distortion which prevented us from maintaining our warp field and we're getting a distress call from a nearby ship"
3. interactive doff missions. i like the idea of having to fly my dr to the war zone, fight through a blockade and beam him down. or participate in a security mission. should get some extra XP for participating in playable doff assignments. in fact, just mix the interactive doff missions with the exploration, you have enough doff missions to create a varied story base.
4. better sensor scan, not the cpt ability but the scan mechanic. i'd like to scan a ship and get data back which could show in the info tab of a target: weapons, abilities, shield type, deflector, consoles...
5. sensor probe, let me shoot a probe to gather all those anomalies/materials rather than fly within 6km of each one. i'm in starship after all
6. subsystem targeting for all. no starship captain of any faction worth his weight is unable to target an enemies subsystem
Given totally free reign, I'd fire the entire marketing department, and most of the brass, first. Then, no longer being pressed by greed, I'd instruct the devs to start fixing bugs. No, not just to killl a few bugs, but, like the Husnock, to wipe *all* of them out!
Then I'd let them work on interior play more. And sell bridge elements, to be assembled in various combinations. And I'd tell the devs to start selling ship costume skins (for the full space sets we own). And I would undo 'Season 9: The Desolation of Hawk,' and give ppl their reputation traits back: also, *all* of them.
^^ And, after all that has been done, I probably wake up. :P
STO needs to bring the Federation and Klingon ships up to the current
level of the Romulan ships. I've been playing Romulan off and on for
the last couple of months and the are severly over powered compared
to the other faction ships.
I would add player domiciles. Located on fleet starbase or faction planet. Crafters could create the furniture. The idea has been visited before we got the fleet starbases and that's cool.House bank for mainenance payments. The could start out as simple appartments at first, grow to a klingon stronghhold or farm/factory the science professions can do an elite academy. It can belong to the account as a whole.
love every word. I love to craft furniture for my base or what not....love it all i would add this its easy and simple would lead to better base interior's. But i think we should be able to craft interiors of our ships
Imagine that picking color palet to furniture style for interior of ship it give another aspec that would draw players in
STO needs to bring the Federation and Klingon ships up to the current
level of the Romulan ships. I've been playing Romulan off and on for
the last couple of months and the are severly over powered compared
to the other faction ships.
agree too...simple but great idea if they fix this they fix pvp...........................So i really really really suport this
Comments
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
This would serve three purposes.
1: It would make the stowiki obsolete -- as information would be provided directly by Cryptic, and not the conjecture or ignorance of players of STO.
2: It would organize and expand upon in-game lore and allow people to understand the in-universe even further.
3. It could neatly and cleanly provide a progression system in which the player could undertake to better understand the Star Trek universe.
This and making a BETTER exploration system considering Starfleet's primary mission is the exploration of new worlds. Lets go find some eh?
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
In what way? BOFF stations or consules?
arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1203368/pve-content-a-list-of-gamewide-polishing-pass-suggestions
Preferably both. If I had to pick one or the other, boff layout. Shpoks, I think it was, posted one that looked interesting in another thread: LTC CDR ENS LTC LT, although I'd personally like the ensign to be universal.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Gold Players would get an additional 1,000 over this. LTS gets an additional 2,000.
This sounds really interesting, but 'codex' is the old word for a book. ^Please expand on above and what your defined 'codex' means...
CLASSIFIED
[/SIGPIC]
I third it.
I like it in swtor, even though I'm to lazy to go out my way in hunt things down.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
2. Make the refined Dilithium pool account wide, or at the very least, allow usage of the account bank with it to store it for other characters. I know there is the dil exchange route, but you lose something while using it and its just tedious.
3. "Fix the damn Galaxy-R"
4. Fix model issues like the Galaxy Dreadnought's misaligned hull components and missing D7 / K't'inga engine glow.
5. Allow ALL playable ships to have fleet symbols in their hull customization. Romulan ships still can't use any and the same goes for tons of KDF and a few Starfleet ships.
"Let them eat static!"
Certainly.
Weapons: You loot/craft/earn certain weapons in the game, and the codex begins to reveal more information about these weapons. Not only what the common weapons stats are, but the uncommon, rares, ultra-rares, ultra-violets, and gold versions are as well.
You would need a weapon of each type for your ship's computer to register them. Dual cannons, single cannons, turrets, etc.
Accolades: Essentially, this would be Accolades 2.0 -- all accolades could be re-organized and displayed in your ship's codex, and after earning various types of accolades, lore could be unlocked to expand on what you have already discovered.
Now, your codex reveals more information about the Dominion and what they have been up to since the Dominion War -- and subsequently what the aftermath of the 4,800 FE series was for the Dominion.
The more you learn from doing missions and earning accolades, the more the codex reveals in-universe lore.
Crafting: The codex would keep a list of your recipes and progression of the crafting system, and the more you craft -- the more you learn, the more you research... the more in-universe lore you receive. The technobabble behind various crafting aspects, what they do, who uses them, and why they are used.
Enemies: The more ships you encounter, the more your codex stores on them. Once you encounter every ship type (including named ones), for an enemy group, your codex would open up a lore entry for the ships that enemy group uses, what their weaknesses and strengths are, what powers they use in combat, and in-universe lore describing the culture behind the ships and what they were designed for.
CXP Progress: Your codex would contain everything there would be to know about duty officer assignments the more you run doff assignments. The various missions and what doff traits would be needed for critical successes/failures. In-universe lore could accomodate this as you unlock CXP tiers -- and offer some insight as to what your duty officers actually do when on assignment. This could include humorous anecdotes whenever you send them on shore leave (for instance).
Post-2409 Storylines: The Path of 2409 created a documented series of events that led us to the current game timeline. With the timeline changing to 2410 -- once you run all of the story missions, you unlock the Path to 2410.
The codex would display stardates and lengths of time that would confirm when these events happened and how long they took, and offer some information that perhaps we did not see at first, or connections and references we might have missed -- or were deliberately in the dark on unless we also did various other missions to shine some light on them.
Powers: The codex would display a list of all of the powers in the game, and a comprehensive system of what power levels would affect what, what skills affect what. Instead of the 'tool tips' to describe 'Examples' of powers, the codex would display every possible power there is to have in the game and what skill points they would fall into.
No more guesswork. No more conjecture. Just hard facts and statistics as provided by the horse's mouth.
A codex system would provide some much-needed lore and information, and give players an incentive to do everything there is to do in order to gain information and knowledge as to make them a better player.
These are just examples. The benefits of what a codex UI could do in STO are virtually limitless. It would be the one and only source of information you would ever need in the game, instead of having things spread out over so many different systems, or relying on a third-party website like stowiki, where personal opinion and conjecture has a history of being peddled as 'fact', thus confusing players.
Just like in Dragnet, a codex UI would be "Just the facts, ma'am."
And I don't consider this an unreasonable change -- since everything that would be in the codex is already in the game.
I'll go one better and say make a better exploration system, and leave the clusters in until it's done.
Given Cryptic's track record on 'things we'd like to do in the future' we could be waiting years to get a replacement for a system there is no urgent need to remove in the first place.
I really like your idea, and seems reasonable.
I don't dislike the wiki, but some info is either outdated, incorrect or inexistent, and while I know I could just sign in and try to fix some things... I really have no idea about where to find some stats other than finding/buying those items.
In every place,
The deeds of men remain the same..."
I'm personally of the opinion that you shouldn't have to sign in to fix things to begin with. It shouldn't be the responsibility of the players to give information of the game, it should be Cryptic's responsibility to consolidate and organize this information in-game in a neat and orderly fashion. They were the creators of this information to begin with, the buck stops with them.
I am not saying there would not be mistakes, typos, etc., but at least there would be accountability on Cryptic's part to correct and clarify, and not some random IP address logged on the wiki that has no obligation to be impartial, unbiased, or even correct on their wiki entries.
Other games like Eve is infinitely deeper in term of mechanics, yet they base it on concise, clear, metrics at the bottom to build upon. Sto ended up with all kinds of weird unbalanceable mechanics because Cryptic just throws things on top of an unstable pile.;)
When I started to play STO I was disappointed because there weren't an in-game encyclopedia, just the tooltips, and some times they lack information.
Just an example
I know I can find all this information if I search on the forum, but this should be available in-game, and in the same screen/window
In every place,
The deeds of men remain the same..."
If anything, a codex UI would help Cryptic when it comes to their own game just as much as it would help the players.
Everything they would need to know is already right there when it comes to creating future content/weapons/ships, and how it affects what is already established.
Imagine a STO where everything is documented, verified, confirmed, and leaves no room for theory or personal opinion.
Imagine a database where everything you have done and experienced not only has an established history of 'your' story, but starts to make connections to other missions and stories in the game, and reveals just how connected the universe is to one another. And how doing one thing on Cardassia ends up affecting someone's decision to do something else on New Romulus.
Imagine a STO where you become a better player because of what you decide to research yourself instead of relying on others' opinions. The codex is just there to document everything and put everything into a formatted perspective.
That is the codex I would like to see in STO.
They are the only ones who have the information to begin with -- therefore putting that job in their lap means we hold them accountable.
It is not about accuracy, it's about accountability.
You can blame Cryptic for getting a codex entry wrong, and documenting it. And then expecting (over and over again) for them to correct it, and having it in plain view it needs to be corrected.
You can't blame a random IP address for putting a vague assumption on the wiki and holding an IP address accountable for misinforming the players.
If anything, a codex would just give more players justifiable reasons to hate on Cryptic -- and as far as I'm concerned, that's one thing I think a lot of players are looking for.
The haters of the STO forums should support my idea for giving them more ammunition to use against Cryptic if anything else.
Federation : Start out the game at the academy. Level's 1-12 are all quest based.
Lv1-Lv3 is your first year at the academy.
Lv4-Lv6 is your second year at the academy.
Lv7-Lv9 is your third year at the academy.
Lv10-Lv12 is the final year.
It's basically the tutorial for the first two years. Teaching you things like how to move the ship, crafting, reputations, dilithium, ground and space combat. The third and fourth years take place mostly inside the holodeck at Starfleet Academy. Here, you get to 'relive' famous events in Starfleet history. This would be a great way to tie in the movies & tv shows by allowing players to fight establish first contact with the Andorians, fight the Xindi, fight Khan, route out corruption and stop the assassination of the President, save whales, try to stop the Borg, the battle of Deep Space Nine and Cardassia, etc.
The final mission at Starfleet Academy is the Kobayashi Maru test that you could take normally, or find the Kirk way to beating it.
THEN the game gets into conflicts on multiple sides and you're pressed into command at Lv12 and commissioned a Lieutenant.
The Klingon version would be something similar while reliving glorious battles of times past. Kahless' uniting the Empire up through the Klingon attack of Deep Space Nine and the Battle of Cardassia 2.
The Romulan version would be something like from the early days against the Empire to filling in details on the Rumulan/Terran War to being drawn into the War with the Dominion.
1. Add more open zones. Convert old fleet actions into open zones.
2. Add a new daily to replay a randomly selected episode from any story arc. Rewards 1440 Dilithium.
3. Remove deep space encounters and patrols, replace with a new distress signal mechanic that triggers at a random system in each sector block. Each sector block will have it's own daily for completing one distress signal mission in any system for 440 dilithium. Each mission rewards a container with scaled loot. Missions will be the same in a particular system, but each sector block will have a variety of combat and non-combat missions to do, both space and ground. Each mission will also have bonus objectives which rewards additional loot.
4. Add an accolade store/reward system. Rewards are aesthetic or vanity items.
5. Actually repair injuries in our sickbay. Actually repair ship injuries at a dry dock. Because why not?
6. Ship interior revamp, with a functional holodeck which you can run various recreational simulations (new type of playable content that can be created in the foundry, or perhaps sold by Cryptic in the C-Store), new interiors, crew uniforms, and the ability to create a custom layout for your ship. Also, more rooms (shuttlebay, science lab, armory, astrometrics, etc) because why not?
7. Add more uses for GPL, and more sources to acquire GPL. Black market.
8. Convert all 24 hour cooldowns into 20 hour cooldowns because why not?
9. Add an auto-fill button for reputation projects.
10. Add more unique space and ground devices into the game.
11. Fix the Galaxy, add the K'vort class, and just let everyone fly a T5 Cruiser (Constitution, Exeter, Excalibur, Vesper). Flip the bird at CBS for being moronic hypocrites.
12. Convert all standard cloaks and cloaking device consoles into battle cloaks and consoles. Yes Feds, you still need to use a damn console. Deal with it. (and try to universally fix cloaking mechanics while we're at it)
13. Revamp the Jupiter class into a Fed Carrier with an updated design, add Ju'day type frigates, and pray the feds will be happy with it.
14. Oh, and add a playable Typhoon too...I guess. That's what people want, right?
15. Mirror universe skins and registries for all ships! ...Somehow!
16. Social device filter/opt-out so people will finally shut up about it.
17. Allow players to craft EXACTLY what they want.
18. Make EC more plentiful through normal gameplay...but not too plentiful.
19. Bring back TERRORDOME, just as it was (with some story updates)...because people want it that way for some reason. Updated to reward a chunk of dilithium, Ph4t l3wt drops, and a choice of marks. Use your new counter-command stuff!
20. Tribble terrarium. Because why not?
21. Update Romulan faction characters with new computer voice, plasma weapons for quantum shadows, unique kit colors, new skins for mines, drones, turrets, etc.
22. New Romulan Carrier with several new pet types unique to Romulan faction.
23. New Dahar Master costume for KDF. Because seriously, why the hell not?
24. Revamp small craft combat, possibly as a third type of combat system that functions similar to a flight sim. (if it's actually possible)
25. Smoother and more responsive ground combat. Now you can dodge as soon as you actually trigger it! WOW!
26. Sector Space revamp or removal. Removal would involve adding functionality to bridges.
27. Bring back the old school STF's (assuming they still exist somewhere) as a calendar event. Because *sigh* why not?
28. Add z-axis impulse mechanics to ships. (a second impulse bar represents vertical ascent or descent, disabled at full impulse) Now you can move up and down!
29. Tractor beam revamp. Sci ability renamed as combat tractor beam. All ships now come equipped with a standard tractor beam that is used to tow space objects as an additional gameplay element. (start a space towing business! :P)
30. Tricorder/Sensor Array revamp. Can now be configured with a filter to display mission objectives, friendly NPCs, hostile NPCs, crafting nodes, interactables, friendly or hostile players, etc.
31. Away Mission System uses bridge officers and small craft. They appear similar to duty officer assignments in various sector blocks, but uses your shuttles and bridge officers instead. Assignments are longer but rewards are MUCH greater. Success depends on quality of bridge officers and equipment equipped to them as well as your shuttle. (pending)
32. All outfits can be worn anywhere. Off-duty options merged with standard tailor options. This game's already ridiculous as it is, so why the hell not?
33. All warp in/warp out animations now appear similar to the shorter arrive/depart animations used in the Dyson Sphere and the shorter transwarp animations. No more long map transitions.
34. Dedication to Foundry improvements and accessibility.
35. Revamp the Cardassian and Fed Romulan story arcs.
36. Reintegrate bridge officer voices into the game with an opt-out option.
37. Minigames! Poker, Tongo, Parrises Squares, Hoverball, Tennis, and everything else I missed... Play with your bridge officers or friends and fleetmates!
38. Various ship polish updates. Quality pass for all low-quality uniform options from launch.
39. Bug fixes. Maybe that'll get people to play more...
40. More "reasonable" alt friendly changes!
41. Divorce rank and level. Captains can be captains. Admirals can be admirals. Anyone can be whatever. Stop crying.
42. Take every opportunity to reduce the amount of loading screens players have to deal with.
I was Klingon before Klingon was cool.
Dev request: Please add Bank console access and Mail console access in the KDF orbital shipyard map (interior). There are consoles already in place which could have this access functionality added.
Why? Because I enjoy changing ships from time to time; I'd like to have this access while visiting the orbital shipyard. It's something very simple for the devs to consider for the KDF faction.
Minimal work, too, as consoles already exist in the KDF orbital shipyard map (interior).
(Yes, a really simple request. Thanks for your consideration!)
1. remove exploration zones/missions. place zones (nebulas/star clusters) in spector space like the azure nebula then have exploration missions as random encounters as you travel through sector space. slower speeds incur more encounters, at slipstream you can bypass them altogether
2. choice to engage encounters automatically or have to click to engage them as it is now. i like the idea of just setting my ship to fly through sector space and then randomly be thrust into a scenario, whatever that scenario is.
"what happened? we were supposed to be flying to ESD, why aren't we at warp anymore?"
"sir, we encountered a sub space distortion which prevented us from maintaining our warp field and we're getting a distress call from a nearby ship"
3. interactive doff missions. i like the idea of having to fly my dr to the war zone, fight through a blockade and beam him down. or participate in a security mission. should get some extra XP for participating in playable doff assignments. in fact, just mix the interactive doff missions with the exploration, you have enough doff missions to create a varied story base.
4. better sensor scan, not the cpt ability but the scan mechanic. i'd like to scan a ship and get data back which could show in the info tab of a target: weapons, abilities, shield type, deflector, consoles...
5. sensor probe, let me shoot a probe to gather all those anomalies/materials rather than fly within 6km of each one. i'm in starship after all
6. subsystem targeting for all. no starship captain of any faction worth his weight is unable to target an enemies subsystem
and i like the codex idea
Then I'd let them work on interior play more. And sell bridge elements, to be assembled in various combinations. And I'd tell the devs to start selling ship costume skins (for the full space sets we own). And I would undo 'Season 9: The Desolation of Hawk,' and give ppl their reputation traits back: also, *all* of them.
^^ And, after all that has been done, I probably wake up. :P
level of the Romulan ships. I've been playing Romulan off and on for
the last couple of months and the are severly over powered compared
to the other faction ships.
love every word. I love to craft furniture for my base or what not....love it all i would add this its easy and simple would lead to better base interior's. But i think we should be able to craft interiors of our ships
Imagine that picking color palet to furniture style for interior of ship it give another aspec that would draw players in
agree too...simple but great idea if they fix this they fix pvp...........................So i really really really suport this