Recently I've been thinking about this particular subject. There are already many different ship classes introduced in STO and there will be certainly more to come. Existing canon ships are not problem in this matter since they are already established and accepted by most of the fans or players in this case as good designs (at least majority of them).
However, STO devs have already made (and are still making) their own designs too. Some of them look very good (like Odyssey, Armitage, Venture, Guardian...) while others are not so good or are completely awful. Now we all know that the beauty is in the eye of beholder so that to some people certain designs seem nice and to other they don't.
In order to avoid that problem, I was thinking about the idea of giving players the ability to design their own ships or at least to give more freedom to ship customization. Yes, there are plenty of different ships already that we can choose from and there is some form of customization, but it doesn't seem enough for me and probably for (some) other players too.
So how I would change the way of current ship customization. We already have some key elements of the ships and those are saucer section, secondary hull, nacelles, neck and upper structure/roll-bar/mission pod. With these parameters defined we should be able to expand to more than just familiar ship designs.
For example: You could build a ship with Sovereign's saucer section, Akira's warp nacelles, Intrepid's secondary hull and Nebula's upper structure/roll-bar.
That would be example of easier system which would include already existing models and their parts.
Another more complex systems would be one where you can build entirely new parts and put them together in order to construct your own vessel. Such customization system would be even better and more fun to do. It would give much needed freedom in creating non-canon fan made designs.
For example: You could build a Sovereign class with 3 or 4 nacelles, or you could be entirely new class of ship consisting only of saucer with built in nacelles, or a ship with two saucers connected by secondary hull with nacelles. There would be literally endless options in such customization system and I think that it would please all of the current and new players as well.
So, what do you think of this brilliant idea? Do you think it is possible? Will with ever be realized and when it could be expected if it would? Feel free to discuss.
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Would you like to be able to build ships from scratch? 95 votes
Yes, but with existing models only.
Not so sure about it, but yes if it would be possible.
Not at all. I'm fine with starship customization as it currently is.
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Rayzee
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torgaddon101
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SUPPORTING PLAYABLE CARDASSIAN AND DOMINION FACTIONS!
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Fleet Defiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support | Fleet Manticore Kinetic Strike Ship | Tactical Command Kinetic Siege Refit | Fleet Defiant Quantum Phase Escort | Fleet Valiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support
Turning the Galaxy-X into a Torpedo Dreadnought & torpedo tutorial, with written torpedo guide.
"A good weapon and a great strategy will win you many battles." - Marshall
I knew using Kinetics would be playing the game on hard mode, but what I didn't realize was how bad the deck is stacked against Kinetics.
therefore you would not end up with a ship that is uniquely you, you would end up with a ship that looks remarkably similar to many of the other designed ships if not at times even identical.
there is no way cryptic would ever allow you to truly design you own ship by drawing what it looks like in some kind of 3d editor to be uploaded into the game, that is the only way a ship design would be truly your own and unique only to you.
at the end of the day I would rather see the devs concentrate of creating content and fixing bugs then working on this.
they could spend a great deal of time working on implementing an idea such as this but at the end of it you would find that those schematics for unique designs were not as unique as you thought they were when you see 100s of players who got the same unique schematics and at the end of the day you would not be building ships from scratch, you would be building a ship that cryptic had designed for you in those unique schematics unless in your wildest dreams you imagine the devs are going to spend hours and hours designing 1000s and 1000s of unique schematics so we would all get a different one.
at best all you would end up with is a lot of time spent working on your creation only to find many others had the same thing.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
I think that would be a nightmare in programming/design to get everything to match up.
This question has been asked before and that was the answer that was given.
However, it would be nice if we could say, craft an actual ship, and we could visit our own personalized dry dock and see the various stages of it's construction, maybe even space walk around the frame and walk among various ship sections that are undergoing work, have a chat with the construction crew etc. That however would be no easy feature for Cryptic ti implement (especially with all the ship variants).
Maybe one day...
This .
Tactical Team sucked, once upon a time. I got it buffed. Don't think for a minute that Cryptic ignores forum feedback.
There is so many what ifs and restrictions that would need to be built in...right now I think the time would be spent better elsewhere.
Which do you like?
Nuking the entire world?
Nuking the city you live in?
Giving horizons2052 all your money?
See? In option 1 and 2 you die. In option 3 you live. Which one do you logically choose? Number 3 of course. But that is not how polls work though, is it? NOPE! So this is a failed poll.
1) Cryptic makes money off of individual ships. I think it may be overdone as a cash cow option for them but I also get that you go with what works.
2) While individual ships have a development cost for each, I think most are fairly profitable now. And they keep people employed and so even if having US design ships could be more profitable in the very long run (say, with a fee each time we customize), Cryptic developers do work closely together and I doubt we'd see a boat rocking disruption that would involve laying off longterm employees in ship art or systems. If what works keeps your friends employed (and it does work) then something that may or may not work that would involve laying off trusted coworkers doesn't strike me as the Cryptic way. I think the artists might fare okay here but systems designers would be in more jeopardy... again, for an unproven system.
3) IP rules and considerations.
I think it could happen but it would involve either the game going into a maintenance mode for parts of development or would end up only happening in the event that some series of updates and player departures/influxes turned ground into the dominant play form and cash cow of the game. You can imagine what the odds are for that yourself.
Now... I could imagine the basic idea you describe being applied to ground weapons. Because ground already gets less focus (revamping ground weapons wouldn't involve layoffs) and it could create new forms of player interest/affection for ground. It's a revamp of a product that ISN'T as financially lucrative if they build a gun customization system.
1.) The attrocities some people are capable of creating is immersion breaking to say the least and sometimes even induces spontanious vomiting at the screen. But on the other hand I wouldn't want to be against such a tool since for every abomination people create, they also create beautiful ships.
2.) It would be already enough (for me) if I could choose the shield visual effect at the starship tailor...I mean, why isn't this option in the game already similar to the ground armor which can be made visible at any time.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Why? CBS said so.
The closest we will likely to ever come to making our own ships is if Cryptic implemented a Ship building system that resulted in the infamous Star Trek Kitbashes. For an example, you having to own the Peregrine and the Intrepid, and the result is the Yeager. Or owning the Ambassador and Galaxy to get access to the Niagra-class.
such incredibly easily satisfied players around here. guess that comes with being with sto so long perhaps for some people. makes cryptics job incredibly easy though and explains much of the direction and mechanic changes they tend to go. and seriously, i am laughing, a sad, rueful laugh at how little can make some players content. why strive for new frontiers, the calling card of star trek franchise when you can just be happy with what little you already have.
no great adventurers in that group that's for sure.
Donate Brains, zombies in Washington DC are starving.
hmm, maybe they could insert a kind of minigame at Utopia planitia, where you can build your ships from scratch. Not to use it or anything just as a passtime. Maybe even extend that by making people poll on some designs.
I'm not against it really, but I just know that giving players free hand means that we'll be looking at some extremely ugly ships in earth orbit and that actually bothers me.
yet again I will remind you that whatever parts you use to build your ship you will only be using the parts that cryptic have programed for you to use and add to this there would likely be restrictions on what parts could be used with what parts, this will inevitably end up with many players building a ship that looks remarkably similar to yours.
just think of the amount of different uniform choices we have, we can customize to our hearts content yet you still find yourself standing next to someone who has exactly the same outfit as you do.
I just don't see the point, sure I want to strive for new frontiers in the game but this does not include playing starship lego with a load of pre designed parts the devs have put there for me to use, this involves exploring new content the devs have put there for me to explore, hopefully with new star systems, new planets and new aliens.
that new content will not be there for me to explore if the devs are wasting their time on this starship building lego set.
and seriously, i am laughing, a sad, rueful laugh at how little can make some players content. why strive for new frontiers, the calling card of star trek franchise when you can just be happy with starship lego.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.