Any one know when these ships come out and a cost?
I checked out the calender, but yesterday was the last day for the C store updates. Next month?
No one knows for sure. From the last Cryptic response I saw, it sounded like the delay was over finalizing ship abilities and possibly implementing a tier 3 free version of the ship to go with the tier 5 C store version.
As far as cost goes the best I could guess currently is somewhere inbetween the cost of the original Constitution and the Galaxy X. I would guess it would be alot closer to the Constitution price than the Galaxy X price myself.
mmm... someone tell me how the Excelsior class makes sense as a tier-5?
How makes it sense my rusty Miranda class can fight off two Negh'Vars easily without any problems? Canon in this game has recently rated being "Soft-Canon", so they can easily say the Excelsior just underwent a major internal refit. Besides that, there are already so many un-canon things in this game, having more options at T5 is the very least of them.
Seriously, people keep requesting "iconic" ships for endgame - me too. The Excelsior is well known from the movies, from TNG over DS9 to Voyager. It was present in virtually every fleet battle the Federation too place in. With the Lakota refit it was demonstrated the Excelsior is far from being outdated. Also I'd simply love to see much more variety in terms of ships out there in STO space. Currently there is no such variety out there. Do you remember any combat where only Galaxys, Defiants and Sovereign took place? I sure don't, there was always a broad mixup of ships included. I say Cryptic should recreate this, and many people are requesting it too.
How makes it sense my rusty Miranda class can fight off two Negh'Vars easily without any problems? Canon in this game has recently rated being "Soft-Canon", so they can easily say the Excelsior just underwent a major internal refit. Besides that, there are already so many un-canon things in this game, having more options at T5 is the very least of them.
Seriously, people keep requesting "iconic" ships for endgame - me too. The Excelsior is well known from the movies, from TNG over DS9 to Voyager. It was present in virtually every fleet battle the Federation too place in. With the Lakota refit it was demonstrated the Excelsior is far from being outdated. Also I'd simply love to see much more variety in terms of ships out there in STO space. Currently there is no such variety out there. Do you remember any combat where only Galaxys, Defiants and Sovereign took place? I sure don't, there was always a broad mixup of ships included. I say Cryptic should recreate this, and many people are requesting it too.
I can agree with this, canon regarding ship combat and tiers has already gone to hell in this game so I dont see why not. More variety at T5 the better...like how in the Dominion War Starfleet has varied fleets of ships with Excelsiors, Mirandas and Galaxy class cruisers too.
I can agree with this, canon regarding ship combat and tiers has already gone to hell in this game so I dont see why not. More variety at T5 the better...like how in the Dominion War Starfleet has varied fleets of ships with Excelsiors, Mirandas and Galaxy class cruisers too.
I suppose you guys are right; the imagery that can be achieved in-game from having more variety present at once is more important than the ships' relative strengths being consistent with canon, since it's not consistent in that manner anyway as is
mmm... someone tell me how the Excelsior class makes sense as a tier-5?
It doesn´t.
At all.
But trying to talk sense into museum ship lovers is futile. Your individual immersion problems and canon doubts will be ruthlessly ignored and ridiculed. Prepare to be assimilated.
But trying to talk sense into museum ship lovers is futile. Your individual immersion problems and canon doubts will be ruthlessly ignored and ridiculed. Prepare to be assimilated.
It makes absolutely perfect sense; I'm not sure why you don't think so.
The Lakota was a refit Excelsior with improved weaponry and it took on the Defiant -- with a vastly less experienced crew and with the captain of the Lakota refusing to use Quantum Torpedoes (and who knows what else). The Defiant is a Tier4 vessel, it makes sense that the Lakota refit would be also Tier4. Considering that the old Tier4 ships are getting refit upgrades, it makes sense that in a time of war that Starfleet would further refit the workhorse of their fleet to be up to par, especially if they're doing so with these "aging" Galaxies, Intrepids, and Defiants.
You may not like the Excelsior, but there's absolutely no logical reason why it doesn't have a place as a Tier5 ship, especially considering how successful of a design the Excelsior is -- thoroughly proven in countless missions and battles, and completely reliable. There's a reason it's called the "workhorse" of the fleet.
As others point out, we fly around in Miranda and Constitution class Cruisers in the early ranks of the game, and how old are they? Yet we're able to slug it out against much newer Negh'var Battle Cruisers, not to mention countless other ships. It's not like Star Trek Online rigidly conforms to canon to begin with; a Tier 5 Excelsior not only makes sense but hardly bends the story of the game we play, either. I'm not sure why this particular suggestion breaks your immersion, but situations already in-game do not.
mmm... someone tell me how the Excelsior class makes sense as a tier-5?
Personally, I would adjust rewards (skill points earned, merits earned, medals earned) to reflect the ship you are commanding. Commanding Refits with inferior base stats compared to standard Tier 5's would yield greater rewards in all things (PVE and PVP). Sure it's going to be tougher, but with the help of others, it could be more rewarding. Who knows? It could even promote teaming in PVE! Don't send an Excelsior to do a Sovereign's work, right? Send 2 or 3 instead!
Tier 5 refits would retain their basic ship stats (it's pretty hard to add hull points and crew compliment to a design that doesn't get any bigger).
Weapon slots can scale up to Tier 5 standards since there's no shortage of weapon ports on any Star Trek model. Perhaps consoles, too.
Bridge Officer slots would accommodate whatever is appropriate at Tier 5 (It's not like your Commander Science Officer demands luxurious crew quarters only a Star Cruiser could provide).
So to reiterate, refits (and maybe all lower tiers) should provide a greater challenge at Tier 5, complimented with greater rewards for their accomplishments. Yeah Sulu's got a bigger, badder ship, but Kirk is more than capable of holding his own.
mmm... someone tell me how the Excelsior class makes sense as a tier-5?
They started buliding new Excelsiors 10 years ago. It basically kept only the frame of the ship, while all internals were upgraded to technology that was developed in the past 40 years.
Alternatively:
The Excelsior frame was always designed for a high degree of adaptability and modularity. When the initial Transwarp Drive design failed, this was a disappointment only for the transwarp R&D team, the ship itself was easily outfitted with state of the art conventional warp drives.
Every major ship designed after the Excelsior provided similar adaptability. Ambassador, Galaxy, Nova, Intpreid, they were all designed with this type of modularity in mind.
The high adaptability of Starfleet ships of the line has given them an excellent reputation - and it has been not just used by the large engineering design teams, but also by each individual crew to adapt to the unexpected.
If and when we do get the Excelsior Class, I want the modified design. Like the Excelsior we saw in "Paradise Lost" and "For the Uniform" on DS9.
The model is the refit version, take a look at a couple of other Excelsior threads or visit the drydocks in Sol System on Tribble - Excelsior is docked there.
That's nice to know, and definitely means there's no reason to balance the Excelsior against her (hardly) unique power!
Just a note of Clarification. THe Diplomacy Corp will allow you to change your Transwarp to a specific Base, The Excelsior can Transwarp to ANY sector, with or without a base.
Since PVP is more or less easily accessible, this is a nice non-pvp power up. this could be looked at in a PVE bonus.
A question that this might pose is, how much affecting is this to the PVE side? Thoughts?
If it is indeed to be another c-store item .... then id expect at least to have it own bridge and customisation options.
No more rip offs thanks.
Seeing that pic of it in drydock makes me eager for it though , and how i always expected to get new ships , after the initial limp ceremony we have now for obtaining new ships , id love to see a cutscene of your ship leaving dock for the first time then finishing up by zoomining into your bridge or something.
Just a note of Clarification. THe Diplomacy Corp will allow you to change your Transwarp to a specific Base, The Excelsior can Transwarp to ANY sector, with or without a base.
Since PVP is more or less easily accessible, this is a nice non-pvp power up. this could be looked at in a PVE bonus.
A question that this might pose is, how much affecting is this to the PVE side? Thoughts?
It depends if the Tier3 ship has the Transwarp Drive or not. If it does, then it might speed up the level process for Commander rank a tad. But really, it doesn't take very long to get from Sector to Sector. The worst part is Transwarping back to Sol spacedock to sell the junk in your inventory, and then returning to the last spot you were at. Even then, it's not a long flight-- and you can easily bypass that by selling stuff to the replicator (at a reduced price). It also depends on how long of a cooldown this ability has. Does it have any at all? Or is it 30 minutes? We have no info.
On a Tier 5 ship, I don't think it will have any real effect.
I hope the OP is joking. How can you compare over 100 years old ship with a realtively moder battleship as a Sovereign? I really hope Excelsior is a Tier 2 ship howerver it should be in game since the beginning.
I hope the OP is joking. How can you compare over 100 years old ship with a realtively moder battleship as a Sovereign? I really hope Excelsior is a Tier 2 ship howerver it should be in game since the beginning.
Since the Lakota Refit (which is apparently what this is) was in use during the dominion war just like the Galaxy, Defiant, Intrepid, Nebula, etc. would you also like them dropped to T2?
Lets get the Klingons while we're at it with their ships that were around back then, they have too many good things going for them anyway....just kidding!! Please don't hurt me!;)
It depends if the Tier3 ship has the Transwarp Drive or not. If it does, then it might speed up the level process for Commander rank a tad. But really, it doesn't take very long to get from Sector to Sector. The worst part is Transwarping back to Sol spacedock to sell the junk in your inventory, and then returning to the last spot you were at. Even then, it's not a long flight-- and you can easily bypass that by selling stuff to the replicator (at a reduced price). It also depends on how long of a cooldown this ability has. Does it have any at all? Or is it 30 minutes? We have no info.
On a Tier 5 ship, I don't think it will have any real effect.
It also depends if this ability replaces the original Transwarp or if it is a different one, meaning you get basicly two transwarps: The regular which everyone has to transwarp you to a base and the different one which transwarps you to any system. If you'd have two versions, then it would indeed have a slight benefit for PvE, since you can easily jump back to Sol, do your business there, jump back to the system you want and keep going. On the other side this just saves a couple of minutes. I doubt someone would level significantly faster with this new transwarp.
I hope the OP is joking. How can you compare over 100 years old ship with a realtively moder battleship as a Sovereign? I really hope Excelsior is a Tier 2 ship howerver it should be in game since the beginning.
Oh please, not this useless discussion again. The Excelsior has been refitted a couple of times to stay competetive, the Devs also stated it would be a T5 ship, maybe with an alternate T3 variant. Also:
How do you explain that I can easily defeat two Negh'vars, Klingons most advanced warship, with my Miranda class - which by the way is much older in design than the Excelsior class? The whole "canon" thing is rather off in this game. It is good to keep it sometimes, but sometimes it is just better to develop the GAME and not the Trek.
I hope the OP is joking. How can you compare over 100 years old ship with a realtively moder battleship as a Sovereign? I really hope Excelsior is a Tier 2 ship howerver it should be in game since the beginning.
yeah lets make 100 year old design a frontline ship. It would be like Ford making the Model T again and selling it as a luxury car. :rolleyes:
Yeah, welcome to the Trek of Cryptic.
Where the ships are nothing but costumes and everybody is OK with that.
To be fair, they DID make up some techno babble about ships being highly modular, thus the form not making much of a difference. Or something like that.
Also there´s this damn canon Defiant, where a ship that´s barely a third of a cruiser can actually be on par with it.
So this whole "museum ship lovers" vs "common sense" TRIBBLE for tat is an exercise in total futility.
I found just ignoring the whole thing and when it all becomes too ridiculous, just kissing the whole game good bye is the proper way to deal with it.
yeah lets make 100 year old design a frontline ship. It would be like Ford making the Model T again and selling it as a luxury car. :rolleyes:
Amount of years besides, the Model T design is vastly different than cars of today. The Excelsior design is not very different than other Tier 5 Cruisers, such as the Sovereign. Your analogy doesn't hold up; it's more like a car from the '50's-'70's compared to a modern car, in terms of design. People tune up and fix those era vehicles all the time to be just as roadworthy and luxurious as modern automobiles. In the town that I live, there's a yearly auto show where people come to show off their spruced up vintage cars... but I'm going off on a tangent now. You can't honestly make me believe such things are impossible for Federation engineers.
Excelsior refit a tier 5? sheesh! The Lakota was going to lose to the Defiant, and it's tier 4 (this game anyway). I see it as tier 3, 4 at most. There's no way starfleet would could/would upgrade an Excelsior to surpass a Galaxy. The refit couldn't beat a defiant, no way it would touch a Galaxy. Yes, Galaxy > Defiant. But now its the same rank as a Sovereign...
But whatever I suppose. Nobody should look at this game as an accurate portrayal of ship characteristics and capabilities with regards to Star Trek canon.
For fun, my Ship Hierarchy:
Sovereign
Galaxy, Prometheus (maybe, still mysterious)
Akira
Defiant
Nebula (maybe with the lower group)
Ambassador, Excelsior Refit, Intrepid
Norway, Steamrunner
Sabre
Nova, Centaur
Just a suggestion, but make the T3 look like the NCC 2000 and the T5 look like the Lakota or such... I don't think I would have any problems with that. It's not the age of the ship that forces it into service as a frigate or something like that, or relegates it to retirement...
It's not the size of the hull the determines T3 or T5...just look at the Klingon side...lol
I am just hoping that it comes out as a T5 ship...that way I don't have to lumber around in this galaxy class starship refit....
Frankly I hope eventually ALL ships are refitted for the highest tier.
The arrangement of ships in this game has left something to be desired from the get go.
There's no reason for the game to penalize a player for flying the type of ship that they like best, when depending on the skills of the crew, any ship is Star Trek could accomplish just about any goal.
Deep Space Nine would have played out exactly the same if the Defiant had been a Sovereign class, an Excelsior class, or a 1992 Buick Skylark.
Just a suggestion, but make the T3 look like the NCC 2000 and the T5 look like the Lakota or such... I don't think I would have any problems with that. It's not the age of the ship that forces it into service as a frigate or something like that, or relegates it to retirement...
It's not the size of the hull the determines T3 or T5...just look at the Klingon side...lol
I am just hoping that it comes out as a T5 ship...that way I don't have to lumber around in this galaxy class starship refit....
I really like the idea of the NCC 2000 look for the Tier 3 model and the Lakota for the Tier 5 refit. Very fitting.
Comments
No one knows for sure. From the last Cryptic response I saw, it sounded like the delay was over finalizing ship abilities and possibly implementing a tier 3 free version of the ship to go with the tier 5 C store version.
As far as cost goes the best I could guess currently is somewhere inbetween the cost of the original Constitution and the Galaxy X. I would guess it would be alot closer to the Constitution price than the Galaxy X price myself.
How makes it sense my rusty Miranda class can fight off two Negh'Vars easily without any problems? Canon in this game has recently rated being "Soft-Canon", so they can easily say the Excelsior just underwent a major internal refit. Besides that, there are already so many un-canon things in this game, having more options at T5 is the very least of them.
Seriously, people keep requesting "iconic" ships for endgame - me too. The Excelsior is well known from the movies, from TNG over DS9 to Voyager. It was present in virtually every fleet battle the Federation too place in. With the Lakota refit it was demonstrated the Excelsior is far from being outdated. Also I'd simply love to see much more variety in terms of ships out there in STO space. Currently there is no such variety out there. Do you remember any combat where only Galaxys, Defiants and Sovereign took place? I sure don't, there was always a broad mixup of ships included. I say Cryptic should recreate this, and many people are requesting it too.
I can agree with this, canon regarding ship combat and tiers has already gone to hell in this game so I dont see why not. More variety at T5 the better...like how in the Dominion War Starfleet has varied fleets of ships with Excelsiors, Mirandas and Galaxy class cruisers too.
I suppose you guys are right; the imagery that can be achieved in-game from having more variety present at once is more important than the ships' relative strengths being consistent with canon, since it's not consistent in that manner anyway as is
Bring out the Nebula and Ambassador
At all.
But trying to talk sense into museum ship lovers is futile. Your individual immersion problems and canon doubts will be ruthlessly ignored and ridiculed. Prepare to be assimilated.
It makes absolutely perfect sense; I'm not sure why you don't think so.
The Lakota was a refit Excelsior with improved weaponry and it took on the Defiant -- with a vastly less experienced crew and with the captain of the Lakota refusing to use Quantum Torpedoes (and who knows what else). The Defiant is a Tier4 vessel, it makes sense that the Lakota refit would be also Tier4. Considering that the old Tier4 ships are getting refit upgrades, it makes sense that in a time of war that Starfleet would further refit the workhorse of their fleet to be up to par, especially if they're doing so with these "aging" Galaxies, Intrepids, and Defiants.
You may not like the Excelsior, but there's absolutely no logical reason why it doesn't have a place as a Tier5 ship, especially considering how successful of a design the Excelsior is -- thoroughly proven in countless missions and battles, and completely reliable. There's a reason it's called the "workhorse" of the fleet.
As others point out, we fly around in Miranda and Constitution class Cruisers in the early ranks of the game, and how old are they? Yet we're able to slug it out against much newer Negh'var Battle Cruisers, not to mention countless other ships. It's not like Star Trek Online rigidly conforms to canon to begin with; a Tier 5 Excelsior not only makes sense but hardly bends the story of the game we play, either. I'm not sure why this particular suggestion breaks your immersion, but situations already in-game do not.
Personally, I would adjust rewards (skill points earned, merits earned, medals earned) to reflect the ship you are commanding. Commanding Refits with inferior base stats compared to standard Tier 5's would yield greater rewards in all things (PVE and PVP). Sure it's going to be tougher, but with the help of others, it could be more rewarding. Who knows? It could even promote teaming in PVE! Don't send an Excelsior to do a Sovereign's work, right? Send 2 or 3 instead!
Tier 5 refits would retain their basic ship stats (it's pretty hard to add hull points and crew compliment to a design that doesn't get any bigger).
Weapon slots can scale up to Tier 5 standards since there's no shortage of weapon ports on any Star Trek model. Perhaps consoles, too.
Bridge Officer slots would accommodate whatever is appropriate at Tier 5 (It's not like your Commander Science Officer demands luxurious crew quarters only a Star Cruiser could provide).
So to reiterate, refits (and maybe all lower tiers) should provide a greater challenge at Tier 5, complimented with greater rewards for their accomplishments. Yeah Sulu's got a bigger, badder ship, but Kirk is more than capable of holding his own.
They started buliding new Excelsiors 10 years ago. It basically kept only the frame of the ship, while all internals were upgraded to technology that was developed in the past 40 years.
Alternatively:
The Excelsior frame was always designed for a high degree of adaptability and modularity. When the initial Transwarp Drive design failed, this was a disappointment only for the transwarp R&D team, the ship itself was easily outfitted with state of the art conventional warp drives.
Every major ship designed after the Excelsior provided similar adaptability. Ambassador, Galaxy, Nova, Intpreid, they were all designed with this type of modularity in mind.
The high adaptability of Starfleet ships of the line has given them an excellent reputation - and it has been not just used by the large engineering design teams, but also by each individual crew to adapt to the unexpected.
The model is the refit version, take a look at a couple of other Excelsior threads or visit the drydocks in Sol System on Tribble - Excelsior is docked there.
Also Mustrums explenation makes sense....
Just a note of Clarification. THe Diplomacy Corp will allow you to change your Transwarp to a specific Base, The Excelsior can Transwarp to ANY sector, with or without a base.
Since PVP is more or less easily accessible, this is a nice non-pvp power up. this could be looked at in a PVE bonus.
A question that this might pose is, how much affecting is this to the PVE side? Thoughts?
No more rip offs thanks.
Seeing that pic of it in drydock makes me eager for it though , and how i always expected to get new ships , after the initial limp ceremony we have now for obtaining new ships , id love to see a cutscene of your ship leaving dock for the first time then finishing up by zoomining into your bridge or something.
It depends if the Tier3 ship has the Transwarp Drive or not. If it does, then it might speed up the level process for Commander rank a tad. But really, it doesn't take very long to get from Sector to Sector. The worst part is Transwarping back to Sol spacedock to sell the junk in your inventory, and then returning to the last spot you were at. Even then, it's not a long flight-- and you can easily bypass that by selling stuff to the replicator (at a reduced price). It also depends on how long of a cooldown this ability has. Does it have any at all? Or is it 30 minutes? We have no info.
On a Tier 5 ship, I don't think it will have any real effect.
Since the Lakota Refit (which is apparently what this is) was in use during the dominion war just like the Galaxy, Defiant, Intrepid, Nebula, etc. would you also like them dropped to T2?
Lets get the Klingons while we're at it with their ships that were around back then, they have too many good things going for them anyway....just kidding!! Please don't hurt me!;)
It also depends if this ability replaces the original Transwarp or if it is a different one, meaning you get basicly two transwarps: The regular which everyone has to transwarp you to a base and the different one which transwarps you to any system. If you'd have two versions, then it would indeed have a slight benefit for PvE, since you can easily jump back to Sol, do your business there, jump back to the system you want and keep going. On the other side this just saves a couple of minutes. I doubt someone would level significantly faster with this new transwarp.
Oh please, not this useless discussion again. The Excelsior has been refitted a couple of times to stay competetive, the Devs also stated it would be a T5 ship, maybe with an alternate T3 variant. Also:
How do you explain that I can easily defeat two Negh'vars, Klingons most advanced warship, with my Miranda class - which by the way is much older in design than the Excelsior class? The whole "canon" thing is rather off in this game. It is good to keep it sometimes, but sometimes it is just better to develop the GAME and not the Trek.
Completely serious!
Yeah, welcome to the Trek of Cryptic.
Where the ships are nothing but costumes and everybody is OK with that.
To be fair, they DID make up some techno babble about ships being highly modular, thus the form not making much of a difference. Or something like that.
Also there´s this damn canon Defiant, where a ship that´s barely a third of a cruiser can actually be on par with it.
So this whole "museum ship lovers" vs "common sense" TRIBBLE for tat is an exercise in total futility.
I found just ignoring the whole thing and when it all becomes too ridiculous, just kissing the whole game good bye is the proper way to deal with it.
A major refit like the Lakota
Amount of years besides, the Model T design is vastly different than cars of today. The Excelsior design is not very different than other Tier 5 Cruisers, such as the Sovereign. Your analogy doesn't hold up; it's more like a car from the '50's-'70's compared to a modern car, in terms of design. People tune up and fix those era vehicles all the time to be just as roadworthy and luxurious as modern automobiles. In the town that I live, there's a yearly auto show where people come to show off their spruced up vintage cars... but I'm going off on a tangent now. You can't honestly make me believe such things are impossible for Federation engineers.
People have been using this tactic for ages when their arguments don't hold up or are flat out wrong. I don't blame you.
But whatever I suppose. Nobody should look at this game as an accurate portrayal of ship characteristics and capabilities with regards to Star Trek canon.
For fun, my Ship Hierarchy:
Sovereign
Galaxy, Prometheus (maybe, still mysterious)
Akira
Defiant
Nebula (maybe with the lower group)
Ambassador, Excelsior Refit, Intrepid
Norway, Steamrunner
Sabre
Nova, Centaur
It's not the size of the hull the determines T3 or T5...just look at the Klingon side...lol
I am just hoping that it comes out as a T5 ship...that way I don't have to lumber around in this galaxy class starship refit....
The arrangement of ships in this game has left something to be desired from the get go.
There's no reason for the game to penalize a player for flying the type of ship that they like best, when depending on the skills of the crew, any ship is Star Trek could accomplish just about any goal.
Deep Space Nine would have played out exactly the same if the Defiant had been a Sovereign class, an Excelsior class, or a 1992 Buick Skylark.
BAH!
Can't believe I missed a perfect chance for a Spaceballs reference.
I really like the idea of the NCC 2000 look for the Tier 3 model and the Lakota for the Tier 5 refit. Very fitting.
I love the Constitution line, in case anyone was wondering