The Ranger is a Tier 5 TOS style Battlecruiser, and the Paladin is a Tier 6 31sth century style Battlecruiser. The Paladin can use the Ranger skin.
But
- It cannot use the universal console (Photonic Decoy Beacon) from the Ranger.
- It's bridge officer layout is actually incompatible with the Ranger. The Ranger has a Lt.Cmdr Science slot, and the Paladin has no Lt.Cmdr Science or Lt.Cmdr Universal slot. So there are loadouts that are possible on the Ranger, but not on the Paladin. That's very unusual.
But also:
- The Ranger is not upgradeable, so it's clearly not meant in any way as a "budget" endgame ship either. But that means its console is basically useful for about 10 minutes of game time.
What's up with that? Were the Ranger and Paladin originally meant as completely separate ships, and the only later decided to add the custome swap options because they didn't have time to make "real" alternate skins? But the two ships still clearly follow a similar design language. Was that an accident? Was the BO layout of the Paladin discovered at the last minute as a copy of another ship, and thus altered, but the Tier 5 ship was forgotten? Was the Photonic Decoy Beacon deemed overpowered? Or was it simply not working right with other ship skins for some reason?
Did someone have a brain TRIBBLE when these ships were made?
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Comments
Same here. Which is a pity because it's a rather interesting TOS design. Why they choose to cripple it is beyond me.
You will find the explanation in the Threads where we were officially informed about the changing of Red Alerts to PVE Queues, the elimination of the Temporal Maurauders Red Alert, and the removal of the dedicated Omega Marks Box from the Borg Red Alert. In other words it doesn't exist.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'