Proposal: Starship Specialization Tokens

roborobin96

This is an idea that came up in another thread, and I decided to expand on it.

In essence, this idea is to allow players to add a specialization to their starship, similar to how Specialization Qualifications for Bridge Officers work. Theses tokens (or whatever you may call them, I couldn't come up with a better name) would grant a starship the built-in Starship Mechanics of either Intel, Command, Pilot or Temporal Starships. They would NOT grant hybrid BOff slots, or anything else beyond these abilities, and only one should be active at a time. They should either be craftable after having spent all possible points in the specialization desired, or be purchasable from either the Dil store or the C-Store.

What do you guys think?

byozuma

Well, if it doesn't change the nature of the ship then it's little more than a pointless prefix. What makes the specialized ships specialized isn't the prefix, but the specialized crew station that comes along with. Sure, you'd have the ship abilities but the abilities aren't really game-changing enough to make this worthwhile. And then there's the potential of stacking specializations if you don't limit this to unspecialized ships. That would make the specialization appealing as you could then have a command cruiser with the specialized command station and the abilities of both a command vessel and whatever other prefix you apply.

This runs the risk of being useless or broken. I'd rather not have either.

baddmoonrizin

Something like this would actually cut into ship sales, the game's life's blood.

szerontzur

So... Pilot maneuvers for Flagships/Dreadnoughts and Cloaking(Intel) for any ship in the game?

Sorry, I just can't see how this wouldn't be a massive amount of work while simultaneously putting the game in a worse position, across the board.

roborobin96

@byozuma#0956 : I mainly had this in mind for T6 ships that lack a "full" specialization, like for instance the T6 Defiant. It has a BOff slot with Pilot specialization, but lacks Pilot Maneuvers, which only the Pilot Escorts have. Also, concerning "stacking" specializations, I already said that you should only be able to have one active at a time, so that you can't add another specialization on top of the one you already have (to keep your command cruiser example, the ship would keep the Command BOff slot, but its built-in abilities would change, for example from Inspiration Abilities to Molecular Reconstruction). Though it might be better to limit this to ships lacking a full specialization, and maybe make it irreversible.

@baddmoonrizin : How would it cut into ship sales? Because if it would, it would definitely be a bad idea.

@szerontzur : Cloak is actually not an inherent Intel starship ability, only Gather Intel and Warp Signature Masking are.

nightken

roborobin96 wrote: »

@byozuma#0956 : I mainly had this in mind for T6 ships that lack a "full" specialization, like for instance the T6 Defiant. It has a BOff slot with Pilot specialization, but lacks Pilot Maneuvers, which only the Pilot Escorts have. Also, concerning "stacking" specializations, I already said that you should only be able to have one active at a time, so that you can't add another specialization on top of the one you already have (to keep your command cruiser example, the ship would keep the Command BOff slot, but its built-in abilities would change, for example from Inspiration Abilities to Molecular Reconstruction). Though it might be better to limit this to ships lacking a full specialization, and maybe make it irreversible.

@baddmoonrizin : How would it cut into ship sales? Because if it would, it would definitely be a bad idea.

@szerontzur : Cloak is actually not an inherent Intel starship ability, only Gather Intel and Warp Signature Masking are.

cloak, or better cloak if it would normally have cloak, is one of the things that makes intel spec ship, intel spec ships. that why delta lunched with feds getting a bunch of ships with cloak.

roborobin96

nightken wrote: »

roborobin96 wrote: »

@byozuma#0956 : I mainly had this in mind for T6 ships that lack a "full" specialization, like for instance the T6 Defiant. It has a BOff slot with Pilot specialization, but lacks Pilot Maneuvers, which only the Pilot Escorts have. Also, concerning "stacking" specializations, I already said that you should only be able to have one active at a time, so that you can't add another specialization on top of the one you already have (to keep your command cruiser example, the ship would keep the Command BOff slot, but its built-in abilities would change, for example from Inspiration Abilities to Molecular Reconstruction). Though it might be better to limit this to ships lacking a full specialization, and maybe make it irreversible.

@baddmoonrizin : How would it cut into ship sales? Because if it would, it would definitely be a bad idea.

@szerontzur : Cloak is actually not an inherent Intel starship ability, only Gather Intel and Warp Signature Masking are.

cloak, or better cloak if it would normally have cloak, is one of the things that makes intel spec ship, intel spec ships. that why delta lunched with feds getting a bunch of ships with cloak.

Cloak is not exclusive to Intel ships, however.

nightken

roborobin96 wrote: »

nightken wrote: »

roborobin96 wrote: »

@byozuma#0956 : I mainly had this in mind for T6 ships that lack a "full" specialization, like for instance the T6 Defiant. It has a BOff slot with Pilot specialization, but lacks Pilot Maneuvers, which only the Pilot Escorts have. Also, concerning "stacking" specializations, I already said that you should only be able to have one active at a time, so that you can't add another specialization on top of the one you already have (to keep your command cruiser example, the ship would keep the Command BOff slot, but its built-in abilities would change, for example from Inspiration Abilities to Molecular Reconstruction). Though it might be better to limit this to ships lacking a full specialization, and maybe make it irreversible.

@baddmoonrizin : How would it cut into ship sales? Because if it would, it would definitely be a bad idea.

@szerontzur : Cloak is actually not an inherent Intel starship ability, only Gather Intel and Warp Signature Masking are.

cloak, or better cloak if it would normally have cloak, is one of the things that makes intel spec ship, intel spec ships. that why delta lunched with feds getting a bunch of ships with cloak.

Cloak is not exclusive to Intel ships, however.

and that matters why? full intel ships by definition have cloak.

if you don't believe me, heres the blog: arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/7004273-tier-6-intel-starships

so any token to upgrade to full intel have to add/upgrade cloak and add gather intel/Expose Vulnerability.

way too much work and would cost sells down the line. and that just intel.

roborobin96

nightken wrote: »

roborobin96 wrote: »

nightken wrote: »

roborobin96 wrote: »

@byozuma#0956 : I mainly had this in mind for T6 ships that lack a "full" specialization, like for instance the T6 Defiant. It has a BOff slot with Pilot specialization, but lacks Pilot Maneuvers, which only the Pilot Escorts have. Also, concerning "stacking" specializations, I already said that you should only be able to have one active at a time, so that you can't add another specialization on top of the one you already have (to keep your command cruiser example, the ship would keep the Command BOff slot, but its built-in abilities would change, for example from Inspiration Abilities to Molecular Reconstruction). Though it might be better to limit this to ships lacking a full specialization, and maybe make it irreversible.

@baddmoonrizin : How would it cut into ship sales? Because if it would, it would definitely be a bad idea.

@szerontzur : Cloak is actually not an inherent Intel starship ability, only Gather Intel and Warp Signature Masking are.

cloak, or better cloak if it would normally have cloak, is one of the things that makes intel spec ship, intel spec ships. that why delta lunched with feds getting a bunch of ships with cloak.

Cloak is not exclusive to Intel ships, however.

and that matters why? full intel ships by definition have cloak.

if you don't believe me, heres the blog: arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/7004273-tier-6-intel-starships

so any token to upgrade to full intel have to add/upgrade cloak and add gather intel/Expose Vulnerability.

way too much work and would cost sells down the line. and that just intel.

I believe you. Yes, all Intel ships so far had Cloak. I would not want this token to add Cloak however, since this would mean that (almost) any ship could get Cloak. Let me reiterate: I primarily had this in mind for T6 ships that lack the inherent abilites of Intel, Command, Pilot, and Temporal starships. I've always wondered why, for example, the T6 flagship cruisers lack the "Inspiration" abilities of the Command cruisers. Because having them would really fit a ship with a "flagship" role.