What if someone doesn't want to be captain of a Starship, but would rather just serve on one, casually going about his or her career just taking orders? What if the thought of crawling around in jeffries tubes repairing broken equipment or carrying reports from one department head to another actually appeals to someone? Is there ever going to be room in this game for those who just want to kill time while immersed in the Star Trek universe?
Now before you scream "NO!!! I never want to have to do this," let me assure you that what I'm going to be talking about in this thread will not be mandatory at all, but rather, will present a gameplay OPTION that would run parallel to the normal game, but would flow at a different pace and be played from a different perspective...
How one might get into this content
Ideally, since you start off as an ensign who happens to be on the bridge at a critical moment in the Borg incident, then this is technically where the "serve on a Starship" content begins. When you get to Starbase 1 and talk to Admiral Quinn, Talking to him about "My own ship?" would present the option to either accept the assignment or decline. If you accept, then gameplay continues as normal. If you decline, then the Admiral will assign you to the USS Sovereign, an old and outclassed vessel on the verge of falling apart, but with a long history of successful missions both in and our of combat. It would have been torn up badly in the battle with the Borg and needing a lot of good officers serving on board. The admiral will tell you that it will be a lot of work without the prestige of command, but no less importamt. He would then prompt you with, "What's it to be, Ensign... The [insert player ship name here] as her captain? Or the USS Sovereign as a member of her crew?"
If you choose the Soveerign, then you begin that aspect of gameplay. And when you reach your next rank, you will have an opportunity to take command of your ship or continue serving...
As much as I love me some options, I'm not sure I'd encourage Cryptic to pour resources into this, since what you're describing would require them to pretty much create a parallel, completely separate game, and I still have no mini-skirts in the current game and my klingon has yet to get a pve mission to beam down to a planet and scan 5 objects for no apparent reason.
1) Idea seems terrible. No offense.
2) Cryptic has a lot of more important things to do.
3) If that's the level of excitement that you're looking for in your spare time, maybe get a part time job instead? :P
Yh this would add alot of longevity to the game which is what alot of people seem to be craving at the moment. They could just put this into the game and they could upto double playtime to max level.
Born and grow up(maybe choosing skills similar to fallout)
Starfleet academy
Serve on NPC ship doing missions
That ship gets involved in the fight with the Borg and you get put in charge starting the game from where it begins now.
I would like them to finish the game they started before making a new game for me to play inside of the game I'm currently playing.
I think that finishing this game would add more to the longevity of this game than suddenly changing course and NGE-ing things up. If I want a new game experience, I'll play a new game.
I can't currently think of any other way to stress what a bad idea this is, but will probably have some new material by my next post.
While I do see your side of things and that a fair number of people would get a kick out it you have to look at it realistically.
Developing a whole other side to the game would take a lot of developer time and therefore money. As it stands the dev team has it's hands full with the side of the game that exists and the time to implement your suggestions just doesn't exist. If every single member of the community were yelling for it, heck if it was just "most" of them, I'm sure they'd look to putting it in but alas the interest on that level doesn't seem to be there.
In a few interviews now I've heard CZ (STO Producer) say that very early on they had to make the decision of "is this a game or is this a simulator" and they fell to the side of game and are very committed to that.
Alas if you are to ever get the gameplay you want it looks like it will be from another game.
Yes im not saying Cryptic should just drop everything to do this as that would be quite frankly ridiculous with the game in its current state (no end game to name one bit).
However might be a good expansion. maybe to start there as new players or if your already playing to be forced to go back due to being kicked out or something.
Yes im not saying Cryptic should just drop everything to do this as that would be quite frankly ridiculous with the game in its current state (no end game to name one bit).
However might be a good expansion. maybe to start there as new players or if your already playing to be forced to go back due to being kicked out or something.
Just spit balling for the future here.
That's all this proposal is... a suggestion for optional content that might be added LATER to eventually let this game offer something to everyone, from the action-craving casual crowd to the immersion-seekers looking to kill some time in a Star Trek universe that more closely resembles what they see in every Trek series that has ever been.
Perhaps this could be a C-Store series of missions, the first of which grants a character slot specifically designed for it. So the entire thing could be entirely optional... But because each mission installment might be a C-store item, it would be directly funded by the enthusiasts who enjoy it.
As to there being a full expansion based on this... I would rather retail expansions add the Romulan and Cardassian factions...
From watching alot of the threads on the boards about this I think its time we develop a Star Trek sims, that way people can clean space toilets till thier hearts content.
What your talking about is a completely separate game that is not Star Trek Online. I like your idea... but it would require a full game re-write. The devs have said they "may" add some content to allow you explore more of your ship. But the fundamental game is based around the concept you are the Captain.
I will echo the words of others and say they are a lot of other things in STO that need to be added to maintain the player base. I think it's unlikely they devs will tangent from the fundamentals of the game too much...
As it is 2 weeks into the game I've almost completed all the content available. I'd like to see more missions, raise the level cap and replace all the scan 5 object missions with something more detailed and less mundane before they look at re-writing the game.
From watching alot of the threads on the boards about this I think its time we develop a Star Trek sims, that way people can clean space toilets till thier hearts content.
This. As fun as people who ask for this may THINK it would be, they'll get tired of it very, very quickly.
This. As fun as people who ask for this may THINK it would be, they'll get tired of it very, very quickly.
Then explain to me why, in MMOs like SWG which give you the freedom to play as heroic or as mundane as you wish, attracts so many people who like to devote their time to going out, gathering resources, bringing them back to their shop and craft stuff?
These people are a viable subset to the MMO community as much as any others. Yet the games that come out now almost totally neglect and marginalize them. They are out there, in larger numbers than many would care to admit. And they've got money to spend as well...
But they won't spend it on a game that offers them no opportunity to just BE in the trek universe.
The die hard trek fan, on average, wants a game that simulates the Star Trek experience, which an MMO by design is pretty much the only type of game that can do so. Why do you think so many people that say they are leaving cite the game not being enough like Star Trek among the other problems.
You put the Star Trek name on something, you also attract a pre-existing audience that is typically IGNORED for the sake of people who, to a large extent, care NOTHING about Star Trek, and will likely only play the game until the next big MMO comes along. The died-in-the-wool Trek fan, if offered an opportunity for his Trek fantasy to come true in a virtual sense, will remain subscribed from start to finish, in spite of technical glitches.
I still maintain that these are the people Cryptic SHOULD have designed this game for. If designed properly, even the casual crowd would find the game appealing. But as it is now, the game favors those who care nothing about the fact that Starfleet Officers, in time of war or not, would not recklessly massacre everything they see. They do things that would bore many of those players, but would excite those who actually "get" Star Trek. Either way, the ones that do not care about the IP will not stay any longer than it takes for the next shiny new MMO to come out, no matter how vehemently Cryptic caters to them. But if cryptic would just throw the die-hard trekkies a bone every once in a while, they'll stay for the lifetime of the game.
Then explain to me why, in MMOs like SWG which give you the freedom to play as heroic or as mundane as you wish, attracts so many people who like to devote their time to going out, gathering resources, bringing them back to their shop and craft stuff?
Yes, the option to play heroically or mundanely is really the strongest feature of SWG but that is not precisely what it is. Even the traders and the entertainers are actually heroic. The express that heroism through the ability to make choices. They do not actually "serve" they provide a service for which they can set a value to for others to pay or not to pay.. That distinction is VERY important.
Then explain to me why, in MMOs like SWG which give you the freedom to play as heroic or as mundane as you wish, attracts so many people who like to devote their time to going out, gathering resources, bringing them back to their shop and craft stuff?
Actually the very reason SWG got NGE'd is because the ability to play however you wanted wasn't attracting enough subscriber numbers and was generating too many complaints.
I'd like to be able to serve on the bridge of another player's ship, and vice versa. It really wouldn't be much different from existing MMO group leadership models, and would make the ship bridges more relevant to the game and more dynamic to occupy.
I think that kind of functionality would add a lot of "MMO" and team feeling to game, as well as adding some potential consequences for command decisions. Poor captains would find their officers putting in for transfers!
"Officers and gentlemen - captains all - except for Finney, and his one mistake! A long time ago, but they don't forget..."
The layout of the USS Sovereign
Similar to the USS [playershipname] (tutorial version) and the USS Khiitomer, the Sovereign would have the bridge, engineering, sickbay, transporter room and varrious decks that conect the rooms that are on them, connected to each other in turn by the turbolift.
It would not be a to-scale representation of the interior of a Starship, in that every single jeffries tube, crawlspace and corridor will not be included. But all the familiar interior areas of a Starship featured in one of the shows would be there, and there would be just enough corridors to walk through to make sure that you can't just pop aimlessly from one location to the other like a Q-wanna-be...
Each of the locations would have actual functionality. With consoles that can be interacted with, furniture to sit on, etc... They would also have waypoints for mission-related props and actors to be loaded in on the fly, making the experience dynamic...
Mundane Tasks
Being an engineering officer and mindlessly having to crawl around in jeffries tubes fixing damaged relays and such would be extremely boring, if such content existed just for the sake of giving players something to do. Ahhh... but if by fixing enough of them, you boost the ship's systems significantly for the next encounter.
Or when the ship is evacuating people from a stricken vessel, orders are issued to get to the transporter toom and beam up X number of refugees and escort them to a Cargo Bay, and you actually work the controls doing exactly that...
Missions
Missions in this gameplay alternative would progress one after another with random destinations and random encounters. Some things will happen on the ship. Some would happen on another ship. Some would be on a planet surface, etc. Sector space would be circumvented, replaced by an at-warp travel time countdown. While at warp, if you look out of any of the windows, you would see the starlines.
One assignment might have you patroling corridors from point-A to point B, and then suddenly, you're repelling boarders.
From watching alot of the threads on the boards about this I think its time we develop a Star Trek sims, that way people can clean space toilets till thier hearts content.
What if someone doesn't want to be captain of a Starship
There are only 11 people that would want to be something other than Captain of a Starship, and they aren't going to add features that doesn't benefit the masses.
Actually the very reason SWG got NGE'd is because the ability to play however you wanted wasn't attracting enough subscriber numbers and was generating too many complaints.
Wrong!
They attracted PLENTY of people at first, but they couldn't keep them because the game was loaded with bugs and there was very little Star Wars content to play through. I read all the "farewell" letters that were posted on the boards. And almost all of them complained that bugs weren't being fixed and the gam,e didn't feel like Star Wars. SOE just deleted them. And instead of doing what people begged them to do, they changed the core game mechanics and ****ed a lot of people off... And then they did it again six months later. And still, no Star Wars content was forthcoming. People left in droves because SOE refused to do what was obvious from the start: Fix bugs and add Star Wars content...
This reminds me of how excited I was when I was reading Perpetual's ideas, in particular the one where each server was in-fact one ship. If I remember right the concept was that all the players served on the server ship thing as its crew. Each month or whatever the ship would go off on a new adventure and the crew would be presented with new content and missions. If you think about it, the Star Fleet ships have crew numbers in the thousands, so everyone would be a part of a larger game.
There were all sorts of cool ideas that was being thrown around. Playing as a crew member easily gets shot down because developers and a lot of players assume that everyone wants to be the captain, or that the average player lacks the brainpower to work with others. Which at times I would agree, lol. Unfortunately to take on game play of that magnitude you would need a ridiculously huge development team and a lot of imagination. So sorry to tell you that as awesome of a game that would be, the first mention of playing as a crew member, or having to rely on other players, you will get comments about cleaning space toilets from the unimaginative masses.
Unfortunately to take on game play of that magnitude you would need a ridiculously huge development team and a lot of imagination. So sorry to tell you that as awesome of a game that would be, the first mention of playing as a crew member, or having to rely on other players, you will get comments about cleaning space toilets from the unimaginative masses.
I know. I cannot help that. But I refuse to just sit on any idea that I feel would add content for yet one more subset of MMO players who would gladly spend their money on the game if it let them just BE in the Trek universe they see on the shows...
This reminds me of how excited I was when I was reading Perpetual's ideas, in particular the one where each server was in-fact one ship. If I remember right the concept was that all the players served on the server ship thing as its crew. Each month or whatever the ship would go off on a new adventure and the crew would be presented with new content and missions. If you think about it, the Star Fleet ships have crew numbers in the thousands, so everyone would be a part of a larger game.
There were all sorts of cool ideas that was being thrown around. Playing as a crew member easily gets shot down because developers and a lot of players assume that everyone wants to be the captain, or that the average player lacks the brainpower to work with others. Which at times I would agree, lol. Unfortunately to take on game play of that magnitude you would need a ridiculously huge development team and a lot of imagination. So sorry to tell you that as awesome of a game that would be, the first mention of playing as a crew member, or having to rely on other players, you will get comments about cleaning space toilets from the unimaginative masses.
First off, the largest Federation ships had crews of only 1000. The Galaxy class had thousands of people, but only around 1000 of them were crew. The rest were families, and stuff needed to support families, like schools and religious institutions.
Secondly, any idea from Perpetuals days was nothing more than an idea. They invested millions of dollars of someone elses money to make "ideas," and when the people giving them that money wanted something in return, they had no choice to file bankruptcy, because, believe it or not, a game is more than just some cool ideas. Perpetual didn't seem to know that.
Finally, I agree that the principle of being the crewmember of a starship in a game is cool, the reality is actually not so rosy. Most people would be doing nothing but preparing hyposprays or cleaning warp plasma conduits. Over and over. For months. Would you really pay 15 bucks a month to clean warp plasma conduits in a game over and over again?
I know. I cannot help that. But I refuse to just sit on any idea that I feel would add content for yet one more subset of MMO players who would gladly spend their money on the game if it let them just BE in the Trek universe they see on the shows...
You missed his point. His point is that it would cost more money to implement than they'd make on new subscribers coming in solely on said content.
I heard from a bird that cryptic was talking about adding boarding party missions. some battles may have your ship boarded and you have to take your away team to fight off enemies in your interior. This is an extension on another rumor i heard about having more rooms for your ship's interior. The bridge is cool but you can't do much there.
If both of these come to fruitition, then you'll already be able to invite teammates onto your ship for missions. Shared bridge crews would be the next logical step.
I actually thought something similar to this would serve as the tutorial for the game. You end up running around a NPC starship as it plods towards the Vega sector, fetching X, taking Y to person whilst learning the basics of the game. THEN you get thrown to the borg in order to get your own ship.
Would have been more immersive but one assumes it was too complex for Cryptic to impliment.
This would essentially be a completely-different game. Frankly, STO already feels too much like you're being pushed along a line and too little like you have the authority a captain should have.
This would essentially be a completely-different game. Frankly, STO already feels too much like you're being pushed along a line and too little like you have the authority a captain should have.
Every mission in every show puts ship and crew where Starfleet Command ORDERS them to go...
I heard from a bird that cryptic was talking about adding boarding party missions. some battles may have your ship boarded and you have to take your away team to fight off enemies in your interior. This is an extension on another rumor i heard about having more rooms for your ship's interior. The bridge is cool but you can't do much there.
If both of these come to fruitition, then you'll already be able to invite teammates onto your ship for missions. Shared bridge crews would be the next logical step.
The Boarding Party missions aren't "rumor." They wanted to add this stuff at launch, but didn't have time. Also, these missions are more along the flavor of you board them, not the other way around, though I'd be surprised if they didn't let us defend our own ships from boarding parties.
Also, having ship interiors isn't "rumor" either. That was another thing they took out to make the launch date.
First off, the largest Federation ships had crews of only 1000. The Galaxy class had thousands of people, but only around 1000 of them were crew. The rest were families, and stuff needed to support families, like schools and religious institutions.
My bad... Should have said up to the thousands. Amazing how up to a thousand crew would all be cleaning toilets all the time. Now thats a lot of toilets! Even a hundred or so brave souls all hurtling through space with the singular purpose of making sure that the heads work properly. I know that on the shows and movies it seemed that everything on the ships were ran by like 9 people, but surely the rest of the complement were doing some interesting things that didn't involve a plunger, or take the occasional disrupter shot in a red shirt.
Comments
2) Cryptic has a lot of more important things to do.
3) If that's the level of excitement that you're looking for in your spare time, maybe get a part time job instead? :P
Born and grow up(maybe choosing skills similar to fallout)
Starfleet academy
Serve on NPC ship doing missions
That ship gets involved in the fight with the Borg and you get put in charge starting the game from where it begins now.
I would like this
I would like them to finish the game they started before making a new game for me to play inside of the game I'm currently playing.
I think that finishing this game would add more to the longevity of this game than suddenly changing course and NGE-ing things up. If I want a new game experience, I'll play a new game.
I can't currently think of any other way to stress what a bad idea this is, but will probably have some new material by my next post.
Developing a whole other side to the game would take a lot of developer time and therefore money. As it stands the dev team has it's hands full with the side of the game that exists and the time to implement your suggestions just doesn't exist. If every single member of the community were yelling for it, heck if it was just "most" of them, I'm sure they'd look to putting it in but alas the interest on that level doesn't seem to be there.
In a few interviews now I've heard CZ (STO Producer) say that very early on they had to make the decision of "is this a game or is this a simulator" and they fell to the side of game and are very committed to that.
Alas if you are to ever get the gameplay you want it looks like it will be from another game.
However might be a good expansion. maybe to start there as new players or if your already playing to be forced to go back due to being kicked out or something.
Just spit balling for the future here.
That's all this proposal is... a suggestion for optional content that might be added LATER to eventually let this game offer something to everyone, from the action-craving casual crowd to the immersion-seekers looking to kill some time in a Star Trek universe that more closely resembles what they see in every Trek series that has ever been.
Perhaps this could be a C-Store series of missions, the first of which grants a character slot specifically designed for it. So the entire thing could be entirely optional... But because each mission installment might be a C-store item, it would be directly funded by the enthusiasts who enjoy it.
As to there being a full expansion based on this... I would rather retail expansions add the Romulan and Cardassian factions...
I will echo the words of others and say they are a lot of other things in STO that need to be added to maintain the player base. I think it's unlikely they devs will tangent from the fundamentals of the game too much...
As it is 2 weeks into the game I've almost completed all the content available. I'd like to see more missions, raise the level cap and replace all the scan 5 object missions with something more detailed and less mundane before they look at re-writing the game.
This. As fun as people who ask for this may THINK it would be, they'll get tired of it very, very quickly.
Then explain to me why, in MMOs like SWG which give you the freedom to play as heroic or as mundane as you wish, attracts so many people who like to devote their time to going out, gathering resources, bringing them back to their shop and craft stuff?
These people are a viable subset to the MMO community as much as any others. Yet the games that come out now almost totally neglect and marginalize them. They are out there, in larger numbers than many would care to admit. And they've got money to spend as well...
But they won't spend it on a game that offers them no opportunity to just BE in the trek universe.
The die hard trek fan, on average, wants a game that simulates the Star Trek experience, which an MMO by design is pretty much the only type of game that can do so. Why do you think so many people that say they are leaving cite the game not being enough like Star Trek among the other problems.
You put the Star Trek name on something, you also attract a pre-existing audience that is typically IGNORED for the sake of people who, to a large extent, care NOTHING about Star Trek, and will likely only play the game until the next big MMO comes along. The died-in-the-wool Trek fan, if offered an opportunity for his Trek fantasy to come true in a virtual sense, will remain subscribed from start to finish, in spite of technical glitches.
I still maintain that these are the people Cryptic SHOULD have designed this game for. If designed properly, even the casual crowd would find the game appealing. But as it is now, the game favors those who care nothing about the fact that Starfleet Officers, in time of war or not, would not recklessly massacre everything they see. They do things that would bore many of those players, but would excite those who actually "get" Star Trek. Either way, the ones that do not care about the IP will not stay any longer than it takes for the next shiny new MMO to come out, no matter how vehemently Cryptic caters to them. But if cryptic would just throw the die-hard trekkies a bone every once in a while, they'll stay for the lifetime of the game.
Yes, the option to play heroically or mundanely is really the strongest feature of SWG but that is not precisely what it is. Even the traders and the entertainers are actually heroic. The express that heroism through the ability to make choices. They do not actually "serve" they provide a service for which they can set a value to for others to pay or not to pay.. That distinction is VERY important.
Actually the very reason SWG got NGE'd is because the ability to play however you wanted wasn't attracting enough subscriber numbers and was generating too many complaints.
I think that kind of functionality would add a lot of "MMO" and team feeling to game, as well as adding some potential consequences for command decisions. Poor captains would find their officers putting in for transfers!
"Officers and gentlemen - captains all - except for Finney, and his one mistake! A long time ago, but they don't forget..."
Similar to the USS [playershipname] (tutorial version) and the USS Khiitomer, the Sovereign would have the bridge, engineering, sickbay, transporter room and varrious decks that conect the rooms that are on them, connected to each other in turn by the turbolift.
It would not be a to-scale representation of the interior of a Starship, in that every single jeffries tube, crawlspace and corridor will not be included. But all the familiar interior areas of a Starship featured in one of the shows would be there, and there would be just enough corridors to walk through to make sure that you can't just pop aimlessly from one location to the other like a Q-wanna-be...
Each of the locations would have actual functionality. With consoles that can be interacted with, furniture to sit on, etc... They would also have waypoints for mission-related props and actors to be loaded in on the fly, making the experience dynamic...
Mundane Tasks
Being an engineering officer and mindlessly having to crawl around in jeffries tubes fixing damaged relays and such would be extremely boring, if such content existed just for the sake of giving players something to do. Ahhh... but if by fixing enough of them, you boost the ship's systems significantly for the next encounter.
Or when the ship is evacuating people from a stricken vessel, orders are issued to get to the transporter toom and beam up X number of refugees and escort them to a Cargo Bay, and you actually work the controls doing exactly that...
Missions
Missions in this gameplay alternative would progress one after another with random destinations and random encounters. Some things will happen on the ship. Some would happen on another ship. Some would be on a planet surface, etc. Sector space would be circumvented, replaced by an at-warp travel time countdown. While at warp, if you look out of any of the windows, you would see the starlines.
One assignment might have you patroling corridors from point-A to point B, and then suddenly, you're repelling boarders.
Just fleshing things out a little further...
lol well said
There are only 11 people that would want to be something other than Captain of a Starship, and they aren't going to add features that doesn't benefit the masses.
Wrong!
They attracted PLENTY of people at first, but they couldn't keep them because the game was loaded with bugs and there was very little Star Wars content to play through. I read all the "farewell" letters that were posted on the boards. And almost all of them complained that bugs weren't being fixed and the gam,e didn't feel like Star Wars. SOE just deleted them. And instead of doing what people begged them to do, they changed the core game mechanics and ****ed a lot of people off... And then they did it again six months later. And still, no Star Wars content was forthcoming. People left in droves because SOE refused to do what was obvious from the start: Fix bugs and add Star Wars content...
There were all sorts of cool ideas that was being thrown around. Playing as a crew member easily gets shot down because developers and a lot of players assume that everyone wants to be the captain, or that the average player lacks the brainpower to work with others. Which at times I would agree, lol. Unfortunately to take on game play of that magnitude you would need a ridiculously huge development team and a lot of imagination. So sorry to tell you that as awesome of a game that would be, the first mention of playing as a crew member, or having to rely on other players, you will get comments about cleaning space toilets from the unimaginative masses.
I know. I cannot help that. But I refuse to just sit on any idea that I feel would add content for yet one more subset of MMO players who would gladly spend their money on the game if it let them just BE in the Trek universe they see on the shows...
First off, the largest Federation ships had crews of only 1000. The Galaxy class had thousands of people, but only around 1000 of them were crew. The rest were families, and stuff needed to support families, like schools and religious institutions.
Secondly, any idea from Perpetuals days was nothing more than an idea. They invested millions of dollars of someone elses money to make "ideas," and when the people giving them that money wanted something in return, they had no choice to file bankruptcy, because, believe it or not, a game is more than just some cool ideas. Perpetual didn't seem to know that.
Finally, I agree that the principle of being the crewmember of a starship in a game is cool, the reality is actually not so rosy. Most people would be doing nothing but preparing hyposprays or cleaning warp plasma conduits. Over and over. For months. Would you really pay 15 bucks a month to clean warp plasma conduits in a game over and over again?
You missed his point. His point is that it would cost more money to implement than they'd make on new subscribers coming in solely on said content.
If both of these come to fruitition, then you'll already be able to invite teammates onto your ship for missions. Shared bridge crews would be the next logical step.
Would have been more immersive but one assumes it was too complex for Cryptic to impliment.
Every mission in every show puts ship and crew where Starfleet Command ORDERS them to go...
The Boarding Party missions aren't "rumor." They wanted to add this stuff at launch, but didn't have time. Also, these missions are more along the flavor of you board them, not the other way around, though I'd be surprised if they didn't let us defend our own ships from boarding parties.
Also, having ship interiors isn't "rumor" either. That was another thing they took out to make the launch date.
My bad... Should have said up to the thousands. Amazing how up to a thousand crew would all be cleaning toilets all the time. Now thats a lot of toilets! Even a hundred or so brave souls all hurtling through space with the singular purpose of making sure that the heads work properly. I know that on the shows and movies it seemed that everything on the ships were ran by like 9 people, but surely the rest of the complement were doing some interesting things that didn't involve a plunger, or take the occasional disrupter shot in a red shirt.