So, after reading this post, I am taking away from what I read, that it was always the plan to only have 2 intel ships for the KDF, and RR. While the Federation gets 4 ships, included in the Delta Rising pack.:(
I had thought at first that the developers ran out of time, and wanted to launch Delta rising before a ship was created for each ship class, for each faction. But, now this blog confirms it was the plan from the beginning.
The Federation ships are beautiful, however, I really only play Romulan characters, with a token Federation and klingon character existing. With this is mind, I do not plan on purchasing the Delta Rising pack, as there is just not enough in it, for those of us who like playing mainly a secondary faction, whether that be the Klingons or Romulans. I would implore you make schematics for the 2 missing intel ship classes, that the klingons and Romulans do not yet have in the Delta Rising pack, and include this is the Delta Rising pack, as ships to come after the release date.
I was really looking forward to the expansion, until I saw the ship designs. Sorry, but I was extremely disappointed with them. They don't look like a "good fusion" as they are missing some of the key elements of star trek ships (mostly the nacelles).
I do think you should make a special tier 6 "Delta quadrant " variant of Voyager (Intrepid class) since it's kinda the basis for the existance of the delta quadrant
* Bingo.
** I read somewhere that we would be receiving 3 "upgrade tokens" to upgrade our existing ships for the Delta quadrant bruhaha and I hope the Intrepid class (Fed. Science Vessel Retrofit) is one of those eligible for the upgrade. If not... what's the point of Delta?
** I read somewhere that we would be receiving 3 "upgrade tokens" to upgrade our existing ships for the Delta quadrant bruhaha and I hope the Intrepid class (Fed. Science Vessel Retrofit) is one of those eligible for the upgrade. If not... what's the point of Delta?
There are 3 upgrade tokens in the DR operations pack, if that's what you meant.
Before Star Trek 2, every (canon) starship was laid out like the enterprise
Before "The Battle" no starship had 4 nacelles
Before season 3 of DS9, the federation had no tough little warships
Before the pilot of VOY, no ship had external moving parts
Point: Just because the aesthetic is in a different direction, they can still be federation ships. If someone on the internet had come up with the Defiant without it being in the show, everyone would have said the exact same things about it not looking like a starfleet ship.
As far as the angular "stealth" design goes, the idea is that it's meant to remind someone if a stealth craft, not that space ships need those shapes to be stealthy (but is scifi, so they can technobabble a justification if they want).
In the end, this is the direction they went with the intelligence ships, but if you don't like them, no worries, there will still be more traditional designs coming too.
Honestly, I'm niot saying they can't make new Fed designs that are radically different per se -- just that when they do, don't come to the playerbase claiming 'a major design goal (with regard to these Fed ships) was:
Fusion to achieve a blending of originality and familiarity; to take a familiar starting point for each ship and apply our Intelligence language to create a merger of something unique and familiar
Again, they achieved it with the KDF and RR faction ships but IMO failed HARD with the Frd ships in the above regard, yet they want to claim that is was a design goal for said Fed ships.
In other words they need to be honest with us and themselves.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
The sneaking suspicion I have is that those concept art ships were designed by John Eaves back when he worked for perpetual (he never worked for cryptic) and those concept art drawings had nothing to do with the design process for these ships. The way I see it somebody pulled those drawings out of the archives to create this bull**** article about how much work they put into these ships.
Yeah its cynical but we have already identified those ships to be John Eaves' designs and he never worked for cryptic, cryptic just inherited the designs he did for perpetual 5 years ago.
Let's think about this for a second.
Cryptic owns the Perpetual concept art.
Now with that in mind, what sounds more plausible - they pulled the concepts out of their afts to back up their story; OR they looked at old concept art before they began the design process for inspiration?
Again, they achieved it with the KDF and RR faction ships but IMO failed HARD with the Frd ships in the above regard, yet they want to claim that is was a design goal for said Fed ships.
In other words they need to be honest with us and themselves.
Failing at their goal doesn't mean that it wasn't their goal, it just means they failed at it. How is that dishonest?
Funny, the drawing style is unmistakably similar to John Eaves. Your "Intelligence" designs may be conceived of, and developed entirely in-house, but the concept art image from the blog, is clearly based on, or directly copied from John Eaves.
Funny, the drawing style is unmistakably similar to John Eaves. Your "Intelligence" designs may be conceived of, and developed entirely in-house, but the concept art image from the blog, is clearly based on, or directly copied from John Eaves.
So recently I have found the term 'lol' to be rediculous for use when typing, but honestly I am not sure how else to express how much I am laughing at this so LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.
Also I want to ask this. What happened with the fed ships? Was everyone so afraid of offending each other by saying the ships looked bad, that no one said anything untill it was too late?
They apparently should remind me of Starfleet design because they were taken from someone working on canon Star trek ships... Pity the end result doesn't look so well.
TOIVA, Toi Vaxx, Toia Vix, Toveg, T'vritha, To Vrax: Bring in the Allegiance class. Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider. Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Again, I think Trek logic trumps real world logic, Trek physics (even when in error) trumps real world physics.
The height of stealth in Trek was always birds of prey and warbirds.
If this took cues from those ships, it would make sense.
Taking cues from a stealth bomber doesn't especially make sense and it seems like these designs, which started out somewhat attractive and interesting, got uglier with each pass.
The Phantom looks okay. The angular philosophy really doesn't work with saucers and protruding nacelles.
Well, the Phantom isn't particularly angular to begin with. A bit jagged at the front, but otherwise it's quite curvy. Unlike the Eclipse, which looks like some kind of duelling weapon.
Funny, the drawing style is unmistakably similar to John Eaves. Your "Intelligence" designs may be conceived of, and developed entirely in-house, but the concept art image from the blog, is clearly based on, or directly copied from John Eaves.
Im thinking folks are at cross purposes here. Nobody was saying that the 1st image of 4 ships was
in house work, thats an assumption you guys have come up with yourself. That work follows this
bullet point -
Fusion to achieve a blending of originality and familiarity; to take a familiar starting point for each
ship and apply our Intelligence language to create a merger of something unique and familiar.
Most people who have been playing for years know Johns work, we are you could say familiar with it.
Im pretty sure Taco's response was referring to the finished product. Even John took inspiration from
elsewhere, as pretty much any designer or artist does in any industry, so stop trying to find reasons to
be spitefull, just because you didnt get the design you wanted, or the ability to upgrade your current
ships to T6. i get that some people dont like the new ship designs, its a naturally subjective thing, but
come on, you guys are acting petty, petulant and just downright childish.
Yep! Even john Eaves thinks Suricata's work is awesome! (You did read the blog right? You read the part where Eaves was crediting Suricata?)
Not quite. Eaves drew the original ship and Suricata made the CG model afterwards. So it's an Eaves design.
However, reading the comments down the page made by Eaves, I caught this:
johneaves
June 17, 2009 at 1:06 pm
it was originally a rough I drew when I was applying for the job over at Perpetual Entertainment, and fleshed it out a bit to be the award.
So it's something that he drew for Perpetual. Since everything that Perpetual made got turned over to Cryptic, I assume that this model did as well. Meaning that even though it's an Eaves design, it's most likely Cryptic's property. I don't think there's any problems here. It does contradict Taco's comment though, unless he was talking specifically about the final Intel ships we got and not the concept art.
So it's something that he drew for Perpetual. Since everything that Perpetual made got turned over to Cryptic, I assume that this model did as well. Meaning that even though it's an Eaves design, it's most likely Cryptic's property. I don't think there's any problems here. It does contradict Taco's comment though, unless he was talking specifically about the final Intel ships we got and not the concept art.
in engineering design i used to use a storyboard presentation system for showing my
current progress on a project, it was very simple, and followed along the lines of -
. Inspiration
. Concept
. Product
the great thing was, that you could keep repeating the process, by feeding in the last
product to the Inspiration point. it really used to help me avoid designers block. looking
at the layout for the post it is almost a mirror of how i, along with many others i know,
used to layout the process.
on top of this, i really cant believe a company of this scope would blatantly infringe on an
artists intellectual property. i really do think people have jumped to conclusions here, but,
it would be nice to have that confirmed.
*note
thanks to Ian451 this post makes more sense once you have read post #234 below..
in engineering design i used to use a storyboard presentation system for showing my
current progress on a project, it was very simple, and followed along the lines of -
. Inspiration
. Concept
. Product
the great thing was, that you could keep repeating the process, by feeding in the last
product to the Inspiration point. it really used to help me avoid designers block. looking
at the layout for the post it is almost a mirror of how i, along with many others i know,
used to layout the process.
on top of this, i really cant believe a company of this scope would blatantly infringe on an
artists intellectual property. i really do think people have jumped to conclusions here, but,
it would be nice to have that confirmed.
I think you're misunderstanding my comment. Are you aware of the history between STO, Perpetual, and Cryptic?
Funny, the drawing style is unmistakably similar to John Eaves. Your "Intelligence" designs may be conceived of, and developed entirely in-house, but the concept art image from the blog, is clearly based on, or directly copied from John Eaves.
Please tell me this is a communication mistake Taco because those drawings are CLEARLY Eaves'. Yeah they belong to you but you still need to credit Eaves' work rather than passing it off as work you just did. Unless Eaves just went back in time and posted those ships on his blog back in 2009 the way I see it: http://makeameme.org/media/created/plagiarism-plagiarism-everywhere.jpg
when Taco refers to thier concept artist and his work, he will be talking about thier progression
and final work.. because that is what is relevant and what this discussion is meant to be about.
they even mention in the design brief about using something familiar as a starting point, what is
more familiar than Johns work.
Seriously Cryptic, Im sure the designer you have is a nice fellow, but thry dont get Fed design. Just outsource Fed ships to Eaves, and you both can make money hand over fist. Theres a reason we all want to buy Eaves ships at first glance.
Again, I'll beat this dead horse again, use IN GAME POLLING to show players ship concept art and see what we ACTUALLY want to buy, not what a few Cryptic employees think is cool. Pretend we are all consultants at the ship yard. Ask us, it will save you lots of dev time. Also, you should open up more design contests, pay the owner well, and DONT butcher their winning design like you did the Odyssey. Even though the original and Cryptic versions were still ugly.
Eaves, and probably a few players, have the Midas touch when it comes to sexy Fed ship design. Sorry, but non of your designers on staff have it.
STO: @AGNT009 Since Dec 2010
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
So how did we get from cool low swept futuristic Federation styling to, polygonish, sharp edged and designed by Tholians looking? The only ship that has some promise to me is the escort, the cruiser I'm not so sure about, I'd need to see more of it, and the science ship just looks like a chew toy I'd give to a pet I don't really like.
I don't get the concept of intelligence having an esthetic, current intelligence organizations go out of their way to look inconspicuous, not go finding ways to make themselves stand out. All of this blue glowing nonsense and dramatic design difference mark these ships as out of the norm and deserving of greater scrutiny, the complete opposite of what an intelligence organization would seek. Angular faceted surfaces equating stealth is an outdated concept even today, it may have applied with the F117 with the limited research of the time but modern stealth aircraft look nothing like that while achieving the same ends, in a future with exotic masking technologies the actual shape of a craft would be irrelevant.
So the question is why is it so hard for the developers to design a Starfleet ship that looks like a Starfleet ship? The game is Star Trek, not BSG, Babylon 5, Tron or some horrific crossover. You can still be original and creative without completely departing from the universe in which you are supposed to be based, but if you guys really don't like making Star Trek style ships maybe Cryptic needs to hire somebody who does.
If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
Comments
So, after reading this post, I am taking away from what I read, that it was always the plan to only have 2 intel ships for the KDF, and RR. While the Federation gets 4 ships, included in the Delta Rising pack.:(
I had thought at first that the developers ran out of time, and wanted to launch Delta rising before a ship was created for each ship class, for each faction. But, now this blog confirms it was the plan from the beginning.
The Federation ships are beautiful, however, I really only play Romulan characters, with a token Federation and klingon character existing. With this is mind, I do not plan on purchasing the Delta Rising pack, as there is just not enough in it, for those of us who like playing mainly a secondary faction, whether that be the Klingons or Romulans. I would implore you make schematics for the 2 missing intel ship classes, that the klingons and Romulans do not yet have in the Delta Rising pack, and include this is the Delta Rising pack, as ships to come after the release date.
* Bingo.
** I read somewhere that we would be receiving 3 "upgrade tokens" to upgrade our existing ships for the Delta quadrant bruhaha and I hope the Intrepid class (Fed. Science Vessel Retrofit) is one of those eligible for the upgrade. If not... what's the point of Delta?
There are 3 upgrade tokens in the DR operations pack, if that's what you meant.
Seriously, people, those Intelligence ships are hideous. They look nothing like Star Trek ships at all.
Honestly, I'm niot saying they can't make new Fed designs that are radically different per se -- just that when they do, don't come to the playerbase claiming 'a major design goal (with regard to these Fed ships) was:
Again, they achieved it with the KDF and RR faction ships but IMO failed HARD with the Frd ships in the above regard, yet they want to claim that is was a design goal for said Fed ships.
In other words they need to be honest with us and themselves.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Let's think about this for a second.
Cryptic owns the Perpetual concept art.
Now with that in mind, what sounds more plausible - they pulled the concepts out of their afts to back up their story; OR they looked at old concept art before they began the design process for inspiration?
Failing at their goal doesn't mean that it wasn't their goal, it just means they failed at it. How is that dishonest?
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
http://images-cdn.perfectworld.com/arc/a6/0a/a60a643f572346b40ade42aeae1c4c4f1410803690.jpg
Funny, the drawing style is unmistakably similar to John Eaves. Your "Intelligence" designs may be conceived of, and developed entirely in-house, but the concept art image from the blog, is clearly based on, or directly copied from John Eaves.
EDITED: There we go, found it on John Eaves blog: http://johneaves.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/tim-suricata-makes-matt-wrights-award-a-cool-model/
I'm sorry, what were you saying?
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
So recently I have found the term 'lol' to be rediculous for use when typing, but honestly I am not sure how else to express how much I am laughing at this so LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL.
Also I want to ask this. What happened with the fed ships? Was everyone so afraid of offending each other by saying the ships looked bad, that no one said anything untill it was too late?
They apparently should remind me of Starfleet design because they were taken from someone working on canon Star trek ships... Pity the end result doesn't look so well.
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!
Well, the Phantom isn't particularly angular to begin with. A bit jagged at the front, but otherwise it's quite curvy. Unlike the Eclipse, which looks like some kind of duelling weapon.
My character Tsin'xing
Did they work together on them or something?
in house work, thats an assumption you guys have come up with yourself. That work follows this
bullet point -
Fusion to achieve a blending of originality and familiarity; to take a familiar starting point for each
ship and apply our Intelligence language to create a merger of something unique and familiar.
Most people who have been playing for years know Johns work, we are you could say familiar with it.
Im pretty sure Taco's response was referring to the finished product. Even John took inspiration from
elsewhere, as pretty much any designer or artist does in any industry, so stop trying to find reasons to
be spitefull, just because you didnt get the design you wanted, or the ability to upgrade your current
ships to T6. i get that some people dont like the new ship designs, its a naturally subjective thing, but
come on, you guys are acting petty, petulant and just downright childish.
Not quite. Eaves drew the original ship and Suricata made the CG model afterwards. So it's an Eaves design.
However, reading the comments down the page made by Eaves, I caught this:
So it's something that he drew for Perpetual. Since everything that Perpetual made got turned over to Cryptic, I assume that this model did as well. Meaning that even though it's an Eaves design, it's most likely Cryptic's property. I don't think there's any problems here. It does contradict Taco's comment though, unless he was talking specifically about the final Intel ships we got and not the concept art.
Mine Trap Supporter
Even less interested in getting T6 ships.
in engineering design i used to use a storyboard presentation system for showing my
current progress on a project, it was very simple, and followed along the lines of -
. Inspiration
. Concept
. Product
the great thing was, that you could keep repeating the process, by feeding in the last
product to the Inspiration point. it really used to help me avoid designers block. looking
at the layout for the post it is almost a mirror of how i, along with many others i know,
used to layout the process.
on top of this, i really cant believe a company of this scope would blatantly infringe on an
artists intellectual property. i really do think people have jumped to conclusions here, but,
it would be nice to have that confirmed.
*note
thanks to Ian451 this post makes more sense once you have read post #234 below..
I think you're misunderstanding my comment. Are you aware of the history between STO, Perpetual, and Cryptic?
Mine Trap Supporter
Please tell me this is a communication mistake Taco because those drawings are CLEARLY Eaves'. Yeah they belong to you but you still need to credit Eaves' work rather than passing it off as work you just did. Unless Eaves just went back in time and posted those ships on his blog back in 2009 the way I see it: http://makeameme.org/media/created/plagiarism-plagiarism-everywhere.jpg
What i was trying to explain is the format used in the blog is showing a simplified design process -
Inspiration (Johns Art) - Concept (Thier progression) - Product (end result)
I think what many people are seeing or assuming is -
Concept (Johns Art) - More Concept (Thier Progression) - Product (End Result)
when Taco refers to thier concept artist and his work, he will be talking about thier progression
and final work.. because that is what is relevant and what this discussion is meant to be about.
they even mention in the design brief about using something familiar as a starting point, what is
more familiar than Johns work.
Mine Trap Supporter
My character Tsin'xing
::gets my popcorn ready::
Seriously Cryptic, Im sure the designer you have is a nice fellow, but thry dont get Fed design. Just outsource Fed ships to Eaves, and you both can make money hand over fist. Theres a reason we all want to buy Eaves ships at first glance.
Again, I'll beat this dead horse again, use IN GAME POLLING to show players ship concept art and see what we ACTUALLY want to buy, not what a few Cryptic employees think is cool. Pretend we are all consultants at the ship yard. Ask us, it will save you lots of dev time. Also, you should open up more design contests, pay the owner well, and DONT butcher their winning design like you did the Odyssey. Even though the original and Cryptic versions were still ugly.
Eaves, and probably a few players, have the Midas touch when it comes to sexy Fed ship design. Sorry, but non of your designers on staff have it.
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
I don't get the concept of intelligence having an esthetic, current intelligence organizations go out of their way to look inconspicuous, not go finding ways to make themselves stand out. All of this blue glowing nonsense and dramatic design difference mark these ships as out of the norm and deserving of greater scrutiny, the complete opposite of what an intelligence organization would seek. Angular faceted surfaces equating stealth is an outdated concept even today, it may have applied with the F117 with the limited research of the time but modern stealth aircraft look nothing like that while achieving the same ends, in a future with exotic masking technologies the actual shape of a craft would be irrelevant.
So the question is why is it so hard for the developers to design a Starfleet ship that looks like a Starfleet ship? The game is Star Trek, not BSG, Babylon 5, Tron or some horrific crossover. You can still be original and creative without completely departing from the universe in which you are supposed to be based, but if you guys really don't like making Star Trek style ships maybe Cryptic needs to hire somebody who does.