Here's a suggestion for a (I hope near) future expansion: dedicate the expansion to redesigning systems, balancing and fixing bugs.
Add some new contents, sure, but this game is in a serious need of major service.
Lower tier ships that were top tier in the past are no longer used, so vast majority of the ships in this game is used only for a day or so then discarded for next tier while a player is leveling from 1 to 50. About 2/3 of the ships in game and c-store are unused and no one is buying those any longer, new players leveling up to 50 simply ignores them and get the top tiers instead.
Make these ships a bit faster, more nimble and harder to hit and with highly specialized traits that'll make them potentially able to surpass t5 ships in specific roles and circumstances like shorter cool down on tractor beams or rapid fire or kills carrier pets better. They won't get used all the time like t5/6 ships but they are cheaper so a player can buy a few of them, fit them out and switch over to one for a situation when his/her t5/6 ship is a bit lacking in.
Same with weapons, anti-protons are hugely popular while the difference between some others is mostly what colour they are, give them more pronounced effects.
Same for some other equipments.
Skill points needed to get to lvl 50 is 366,000 with many interesting episodes to progress through. players sometimes need to do an extra patrol mission or some doff missions to top off the xp and gain access to next mission in the chain, but it's still good progression and keep the story going. Delta episode missions is do 1-2 missions, grind for most or a day or two to get to minimum level of next mission, lvl 60 takes a massive 1,498,620 skill points and now has no meaningful way of even grinding them. When it came out players teamed up with their best ships and gear to grind patrols on highest difficulty to get the required xp then it got nerfed repeatedly. Now most players I've seen have given up on getting to lvl 60 for more than their main toon. Getting to lvl 60 is required to use alot of the new contents, one of which is to make meaningful use of the specialization traits, which has alot more than 10 points in that which should provide good contents for those who play and gradually gain skill points beyond lvl 60.
Make lvl 60 at 1,098,000 skill points which meant getting from lvl 50 to 60 requiring double that of 1 to 50, that should be sufficiently scaled. Make the delta episodes minimum level requirement lvl 50-55 and increase the skill points reward for them so there's minimal grinding outside of the episode to go through it and finishing the episode has bonus reward of fastest way to get lvl 55. After that boost the skill points gain in foundry, fleet action, pve queues etc where ever you want to increase the number of player activity so they can use those as a path to lvl 60. Time to get from lvl 50 to 60 should not be more than double what it takes to get from 1 to 50, remember there are the specialization skills as incentive to keep getting loads of skill points beyond lvl 60.
There's many bugs and glitches in the game, the exchange search filters, missing/clipping graphics for tailor gears (big one is Sci Doctor 3 chest gear missing for fed and one arm bent out of shape for rom), mods and equipments not applying their effects, game mechanics not working as it should. Many of these are quiet major or obvious and have been unchanged for very long time.
I'm not saying all needs to be fixed or fixed right away by next expansion, but as time goes by this game has been gathering more and more issues that the developers seems to be delegating to lower priority than pushing out new contents. The new contents needs a good clear environment to settle in and your existing player base deserve a little reverse in the the number of bug/glitches/issues that is affecting current game play. A good and stable game will attract new players and keep them, a bad bug ridden one will eventually lose more players than gain new players no matter how many shinny new contents you push out.
One of STO's biggest competitors is Eve online, they launched a disastrous expansion called Incarna few years ago and spent their efforts on the next expansion on mainly fixing up years old bugs and re-balancing contents which turned out an amazingly successful expansion that gained/regained alot of players.
0