Currently at Tier Five we have sub-ship types broken down into groups of one or two ships, and beyond an attempt to waste the skill points of those who enjoy flying multiple ships I can't entirely see the reason for this, either from an in-game or meta-game perspective.
Often when someone has their Captain set up they way they want they aren't anxious to tinker. There's a saying, "If it ain't broke; don't fix it!" This becomes an issue when part of Cryptic's business model is trying to sell ships to the masses. People are often basically looking at two choices; (1) buy the ship and perform sub-par with it since you don't have the appropriate skill (which is a kick in the shins when you're paying to be mediocre in something), or (2) give up what you have by respec'ing into this new ship (which is not only a sacrifice, but also a second investment of either merits, real cash, or one of the limited supply of respec tokens we're given). To be frank... both of those are negative, and will be more likely to drive potential consumers away from a new product, as opposed to drawing them toward a sale.
Some will argue this is an attempt to make Captains "more distinct"... but does it? Not really. There is no minimum amount of skill points required to be invested in a skill in order to fly a new ship. The math behind the scenes is changing, but ultimately having the skill doesn't allow for you to do anything new or different, just better. Ultimately you may be a "Star Cruiser Captain" because you've spec'ed into it 9 points, but someone else can just as easily be a "Star Cruiser Captain" with none by parking his butt in the seat. It's not even like those nine points will universally make you better, since if the rest of your skill choices stank, the guy who's unskilled with the ship could still be better thanks to having made better choices in his other skills, and how they boost his BOff abilities.
Which brings us to the roleplaying thought frame. Does it make sense, from a character perspective, that your Captain needs to be skilled in "Assault Cruiser Captain" as opposed to "Star Cruiser Captain" if he wants his Sovereign to turn better? Not really. Let's remember that you're the Captain, not the guy sitting at the helm. Your helmsman might need to get some training under his belt to make the ship respond as it should, but the Captain? No way. His job really doesn't change much ship-to-ship. You can argue about basic ship types since the ship skills could be viewed as a form of "advanced tactics" and a Science Vessel isn't going to fulfil the same role as an Escort, but ship-to-ship? Let me paint a picture...
Scene - Star Cruiser Bridge. The Captain sits in his chair, leaning forward intently with a cocky look on his face. The crew putters about nervously as the red alert lights flash across the bridge. A Cardassian cruiser sits on the view screen, silent, ominous...
Communications Officer: "Captian, should I open a channel?"
Captain: "Yes Ensign, let's see what these mischevious True Way devils have to say for themselves! Their attacks on the local Federation colonies will not go unanswered!"
Tactical Officer: "By the Prophets! Captain they've launched photon torpedoes!"
Captain: "Red Alert! Shields up! Evasive manoeuvres... HARD TO PORT!"
Helmsman: ""Wait... I'm sorry Captain, did you say port? Yeah, I'm gonna have to stop you right there. You're obviously used to flying an Assault Cruiser, this is a Star Cruiser. Totally different animal. We don't have a port here. No, no. You see, what you call port, we call shillishabinibong, because you see, on a Star Cruiser the inherent..."
Captain: "I don't care! Just DO IT!"
Helmsman: "No, no. This is important. Protocol and such. You see, when you say 'port' instead of 'shillishabinibong' that..." *ship violently explodes as multiple torpedoes impact the hull*
So... yeah.
What I'd suggest is breaking down the ships into three simple groups at all levels; Science Vessels, Tactical Vessels, Engineering Vessels. Simply base which skill a ship uses off of what their Commander-level power corresponds to. If you're a Battle Cruiser or Cruiser with an Engineering Commander BOff slot, then you're in an Engineering Vessel. Simple. Easy. Effective.
That obviously leave the Bird-of-Prey as the odd man out. I'd be tempted to file that under Tactical, since the base stats have the most in common with Raptors and Escorts (forward-heavy weapon placement, fragile ship and a bonus to weapon power), but since the BoP is the only ship that can be made to focus on Science from Tiers 2 to 4, I'd suggest tossing it there instead (if you need a lame justification beyond that, the Battle Cloak and Universal Slots are Scientific Marvels... see, Sciencey!).
I totally agree, not only does the current tree make moving between ships difficult (it's not like the UI's random moving of skills doesn't do this already) but the skill tree is becoming a joke. It's an absolute mess off skills just being thrown in all over to try and accommodate extra ships.
Personally, I always advocated that Bridge Officers should play a more significant role in how your ship performs. As you said, the Captain is just the person in the middle in overall command, it's the Helmsman that actually flies the ship.
However, the Commanding Officer's unfamiliarity in the ship design was an underlying plot point in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Admiral Kirk's lack of knowledge of the new Enterprise design lead to two deaths in the transporter room and almost caused to the destruction of the ship itself by an asteroid.
The Commanding Officer has to know the performance envelope that his vessel operates in, and how it can be pushed. There have been plenty of instances where the Captain knew something was wrong with his ship by the way the deck plates vibrated, the sounds the engine made, and so on. I think that is what they are trying to represent with those stats...
And in MMO terms, games where a skill tree is present usually have you pick into specific weapon types. Using WoW as an example, a warrior would spec into about one and a half talent trees out of three, and each roughly benefits two-handed, dual wield, and shields respectively.
Its to make you think hard about what kind of role you really want to be and invest into it. It makes sense to make everything equally available from a convenience standpoint, but diversity is better when its an MMO with so many players.
And its not like they ban you from using ships you didnt spec into, if you wanted to change ships for awhile. You'll just not be as good flying with it.
However, the Commanding Officer's unfamiliarity in the ship design was an underlying plot point in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Admiral Kirk's lack of knowledge of the new Enterprise design lead to two deaths in the transporter room and almost caused to the destruction of the ship itself by an asteroid.
The Commanding Officer has to know the performance envelope that his vessel operates in, and how it can be pushed. There have been plenty of instances where the Captain knew something was wrong with his ship by the way the deck plates vibrated, the sounds the engine made, and so on. I think that is what they are trying to represent with those stats...
umm not to nerd out but kirk had nothing to do with the transporter accident.....but u are right about the asteroid/wormhole effect that happend
I never seen MMO that require points to spent for diferent level of same weapon/skill/role
In WoW style - you want to be feral druid, ok but put in cat points on each 10 lvls... saber cat, lion cat, tiger cat :eek:
Sound silly isn't it
Cause this is what we got with those points.
I think those buffs had to be moved in general ship categories.
I find it a very useless addition to the game to add more tier 5 skills.
I don't like to attribute "malice" before ignorance, but this seems only be required to sell us respecs.
If they want to do something with the skill tree that's actually useful to the game:
1) Split ground and space skills into two seperate categories with their own skill points.
2) Mirror the space skill system for ground. You can pick skills of all classes, and there is a "general" tree of skills.
3) Fix the issue that higher tier weapons cost more skill points without giving any reward for it.
4) Add passive effects to Tier3 to Tier 5 Science Skills so that spending points on those skills is even meaningful even if you don't use bridge officer or Captain abilities affected by it.
T4:
Kitang BoP
T4-raptor (yes, you can tell I've not much experience with raptors)
Vorcha cruiser
T5:
It should just be this:
BoP
Raptor
Cruiser
Carrier
This way people have more freedom to choose. Do I want to fly a karfi or a voquv today? Do I want to fly my nausican destroyer or my raptor today? Do I want to fly my orion marauder or my vorcha refit today?
I'd bet more people would try out different ships if they didn't have to respec into it to get full maneuverability and durability.
More people would buy C-store ships cause they wanted to try it out to see if they like it or not, and not having to worry about the skill tree again.
And in MMO terms, games where a skill tree is present usually have you pick into specific weapon types. Using WoW as an example, a warrior would spec into about one and a half talent trees out of three, and each roughly benefits two-handed, dual wield, and shields respectively.
I'm right there with you... to a point.
This isn't entirely analogous to what you're suggesting. This isn't the equivalent of being forced to spec into swords over axes, or one-handed over two-handed... this is the equivalent of having to spec into individual swords. It's like having to put points into The Sword of a Thousand Truths as opposed to The Sword of Ages, and having those expended skill points not effect the other.
That's inane.
As I suggested, I think there should be division... but an almost individual level? Star Cruiser separate from Assault Cruiser? Negh'var separate from Vor'cha? That's a bit much.
Stuff all the Cruisers into a skill I can see. All the Science Ships. All the Escorts. All the Battle Cruisers. All the Raptors. And all the Birds-of-Prey and Carriers. Going beyond that is... questionable. At best.
Its to make you think hard about what kind of role you really want to be and invest into it. It makes sense to make everything equally available from a convenience standpoint, but diversity is better when its an MMO with so many players.
Read again. I very specifically suggest breaking them up in my initial post, just more reasonably. Whether you're in a Star Cruiser or Assault Cruiser your role is functionally identical, and they would only breakdown past that based on individual tooling that would be fairly irrespective of ship type, and based more on other skills.
I'm not suggesting you should be able to use swords, and axes, and longbows and staves with equal facility, but I am suggesting that you should be able to wield both a Longsword of Flames and a Longsword of Frost.
However, the Commanding Officer's unfamiliarity in the ship design was an underlying plot point in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Admiral Kirk's lack of knowledge of the new Enterprise design lead to two deaths in the transporter room and almost caused to the destruction of the ship itself by an asteroid.
The Commanding Officer has to know the performance envelope that his vessel operates in, and how it can be pushed. There have been plenty of instances where the Captain knew something was wrong with his ship by the way the deck plates vibrated, the sounds the engine made, and so on. I think that is what they are trying to represent with those stats...
If we were talking about highly specific functions, sure. But we're not. We aren't even talking about the issuance of any but the most basic commands, such as "Go there!" We are, after all, talking about a bonus to manoeuvrability, hull and shields, not linking the phaser's cycling matrix into the warp core reactor to boost the variance modulation so that your beams will more readily penetrate the shields on borg sphere.
These are passive bonuses which reflect basic functionality. If I bark for my helmsman to make a course correction he isn't going to do it any slower because I'm more familiar with a slight variation of the ship type we're in.
Ahh, the militaries of the world spend millions if not billions a year doing a thing called 'convert to type'.
For instance a fast jet pilot comes out of training with basic knolwedge of how to fly a fast jet
(in the UK it's a Hawk TMk1a/128) and then spends further time learning how to fly the type of aircraft he's deployed to. If that pilot is then transferred to another type of aircraft he has to do this thing called 'convert to type' which teaches him the specifics of the new aircraft... once that is done his/her currency on the previous type expires. It's got to the degree of complexity that shifting between major sub models of the same tpe of aircraft (Chinook Mk2 to Mk4) is handled the same way. Same for captains of warships, but most of the convert to type is handled around crew resource management; a situation which would be even more critical on space going vessels.
Both aircraft and navy crews spend a significant amount of thier time keeping this currency up to date; skills fade is a major issue.
Not so familiar with civilian training programmes but I can't seeing them being that much different. (bar zero flight time)
So not only does it make sense from a MMO perspective but it also makes perfect sense from a RL perspective; I would quite frankly forcibly prevent anyone who is not current from commanding a piece of militar hardware of that level of sophistication.
How bout specing into how good your helm officer is at piloting the size of ship your in? so its a more border range of ships that fall into it.
For Large ships, it'll include Assualt, Star, Exploration Cruisers for the Engineering ships for example, cause they are all quite large compaired to a Smaller ship so would be different to control. But size is different per ship cause you could have both Large and Small Escorts in the same tier etc
Technically, the skill tree doesn't represent our personal skills but rather the relative skill of our crews. afterall, Captains don't pilot, fire weapons, or open hailing frequencies on a ship. Once you understand this conceit, you can stomach the tree just fine.
It makes perfect sense to imagine that you've "trained" your crew to adjust better at rotating than another crew that trained better at repairing subsystems - none of our Captains are doing these actions by ourselves. This isn't Star Wars; this isn't the Falcon.
Ahh, the militaries of the world spend millions if not billions a year doing a thing called 'convert to type'.
For instance a fast jet pilot comes out of training with basic knolwedge of how to fly a fast jet
(in the UK it's a Hawk TMk1a/128) and then spends further time learning how to fly the type of aircraft he's deployed to. If that pilot is then transferred to another type of aircraft he has to do this thing called 'convert to type' which teaches him the specifics of the new aircraft... once that is done his/her currency on the previous type expires. It's got to the degree of complexity that shifting between major sub models of the same tpe of aircraft (Chinook Mk2 to Mk4) is handled the same way. Same for captains of warships, but most of the convert to type is handled around crew resource management; a situation which would be even more critical on space going vessels.
Both aircraft and navy crews spend a significant amount of thier time keeping this currency up to date; skills fade is a major issue.
You're not crew. You're not the guy at the controls of... anything. You don't need to be trained in the specifics of guiding the bow of the ship, you just need to know how to issue course commands to the guy who does that. That's not something that's going to change between a Star Cruiser and an Assault Cruiser.
Technically, the skill tree doesn't represent our personal skills but rather the relative skill of our crews. afterall, Captains don't pilot, fire weapons, or open hailing frequencies on a ship. Once you understand this conceit, you can stomach the tree just fine.
It makes perfect sense to imagine that you've "trained" your crew to adjust better at rotating than another crew that trained better at repairing subsystems - none of our Captains are doing these actions by ourselves. This isn't Star Wars; this isn't the Falcon.
Problem here being that your crew, beyond a few members, don't follow you and the ones that do follow you (your Bridge Officers) have their own skill lists. If I move from a Defiant with it's piddling crew to a Galaxy I don't suddenly find my new 1950 crew members requiring training on how to fire phasers, or how to initiate attack pattern alpha, but for some inexplicable reason they are less prone to being able to follow course corrections and basic commands regarding navigation? There's a breakdown there.
As far as Captain skills which might seem a bit out of place for a Captain, usually a suitable explanation can be found, or at least manufactured. With weapon skills for instance, I would put it down to your Captain's general competence when it comes to what to shoot at. Essentially you've learned which spots of a hull are frequently more vulnerable to the precision strikes of a phaser able to burrow deeply into an enemy's hull, and which areas have large numbers of critical systems loosely grouped and close to the surface, thus being more vulnerable to the blast from a photon torpedo. You're giving more efficient commands, such as telling your tactical officer to target the spot one metre aft of the strut to the port nacelle, where armour tends to be thinner to account for the equipment that must often be run between the adjacent warp core and that nacelle.
Most of the skills make some degree of sense to be relegated to a Captain. I even accept some degree of ship-specific knowledge, like knowing how an Escort can manoeuvre under fire might not apply to a giant lumbering Cruiser. But between ships so similar as to only be differentiated by an Ensign BOff slot and a console? Two ships with exactly the same impulse modifier and turn rate? Nah.
Problem here being that your crew, beyond a few members, don't follow you and the ones that do follow you (your Bridge Officers) have their own skill lists. If I move from a Defiant with it's piddling crew to a Galaxy I don't suddenly find my new 1950 crew members requiring training on how to fire phasers, or how to initiate attack pattern alpha, but for some inexplicable reason they are less prone to being able to follow course corrections and basic commands regarding navigation? There's a breakdown there.
There's no breakdown - if skills are representative of your crew then they would have issues with the Defiant's systems after moving. They still know how to fire weapons for max effect and repair subsystems, however the knowledge of a specific ship's "sum-of-all-parts" has changed: so features that are a sum of parts (like the stress the structural field can take or the maneuverability are affected).
You've trained the crew for months to run maneuvering drills on a Galaxy and now you're on Defiant. The skills that carry over are everything but those ship skills. The ship skills represent that unique of the ship that doesn't carry over - like knowing how much power and how it can be diverted to engines for maneuverability.
It's also analogous to tweaking your car's engine performance. If you buy a new car, those tweaks are gone and you're back to square one.
You're not crew. You're not the guy at the controls of... anything. You don't need to be trained in the specifics of guiding the bow of the ship, you just need to know how to issue course commands to the guy who does that. That's not something that's going to change between a Star Cruiser and an Assault Cruiser.
In terms of your main claim... utterly wrong. However like everyting in life a certain clarity may help.
While a port and starboard bearing is never going to change is you're confusing basic training with specific to type. Someting I did cover in my orginal post (was I unclear in any aspect?). In STO this is covered by the tier 1 command skill (the learn to fly aspect); the bonuses for each specific type is the 'learn to fight aspect'.
So an assault cruiser and star cruiser will have differing performance characterics which need to be taken account of before you can actually exploit the full capabilities of the vessel. As I said previously I would not allow anyone who is not current on a specific vessel anywhere near the con...
STO does massively simplify the whole equation (Crew resource managment, which it's essentially covering, is a whole docterate in itself) of large vessel command but it's got it fundamentally right...
So once again for good measure... bad idea...sorry.
There's no breakdown - if skills are representative of your crew then they would have issues with the Defiant's systems after moving. They still know how to fire weapons for max effect and repair subsystems, however the knowledge of a specific ship's "sum-of-all-parts" has changed: so features that are a sum of parts (like the stress the structural field can take or the maneuverability are affected).
Problem being that those are new phaser banks, or at least their placement across the hull is new, and so will the targeting sensors be. That's going to have an effect on their ability to fire weapons as much as a new impulse manifold will effect a crew's ability to manoeuvre the ship. Those are new subsystems they're trying to repair also.
Yet those things are unaffected. So your "sum of all parts" theory doesn't seem to reflect all of the parts, just the structural integrity field, impulse manifold and shield buffers, and even then only in a few isolated ways (since other skills with effect those systems aren't similarly required to have their own skill, or included in the ship-specific skill which exists).
What is effected is very narrowly defined, and as a captain you have little control over those things in a way which would result in marked changes on a ship-to-ship basis unless those ships were drastically different. This assumes that the skills reflect the captain's base ability to offer things like helpful navigational commands, in which case it should apply to a broader range of ships as I've suggested.
Now, assuming it does come down to crew instead then it still doesn't jive. There needs to be more per-ship skills (like Star Cruiser Weapons Targeting) to reflect their familiarity or lack thereof with those individual systems on these ships (much as a new impulse manifold, shield buffer or structural integrity field generator seems to throw them off), or the effects of the per-ship skills in the game should be broadened to encompass pretty much everything that the crew touches including having an impact on pretty much every bridge officer ability, and other basic functionality such as targeting the enemy and causing damage.
So an assault cruiser and star cruiser will have differing performance characterics which need to be taken account of before you can actually exploit the full capabilities of the vessel.
Beyond a Science Console and a Science BOff station they actually don't. Their manoeuvrability, shields and hull are precisely the same, and that is what is effected. In fact, you likely stuffed the impulse engines, shields and armour consoles from your old ship into the new one. Gotta love this new modular design stuff...
These ships aren't vastly different, and most of the major components are interchangeable. On top of that, you're not interacting with them, you're interacting with the crew.
You're barking orders.
If the Captain's skills truly are Captain's skill then once you say, "twelve degrees to starboard" it's up to the helmsman to make that happen. Your exact knowledge of the minutia of the engines (or lackthereof) is ultimately immaterial to the typical function of the ship. You aren't opening a channel to main engineering every time you turn and telling them to adjust the anti-matter flow by 2.3 Cochrans because because the intermix chamber in the Star Cruiser's warp core is finickier than the Assault Cruiser's. That's their job, and they're either doing it or they're not. And, as said previously, if your skills represent the crew's skills then much more of them need to ship-specific than currently are or the ship-specific skill needs to cover more.
I totally agree, not only does the current tree make moving between ships difficult (it's not like the UI's random moving of skills doesn't do this already) but the skill tree is becoming a joke. It's an absolute mess off skills just being thrown in all over to try and accommodate extra ships.
Personally, I always advocated that Bridge Officers should play a more significant role in how your ship performs. As you said, the Captain is just the person in the middle in overall command, it's the Helmsman that actually flies the ship.
that is how it is. The helmsman flies the ship. the Capt'n gives the orders to make the ship operate, the BO's make the orders happen.
Picard didnt have an issue from the star gazer to the Enterprise. Riker didnt have an issue commanding the derelict fed vessel in a wargame sim. Data didnt have an issue commanding the ship during the Klingon Civil War.
Doesnt seem to be an issue piloting alien vessels or Borg vessels either. Paris and Picard could also pilot shuttles superbly.....so i dont see why we are "gated" into only being able to fly one ship per respec (granted your personal use of skill points of course). IMO, you should be able to fly a cruiser and then switch to an escort at your leisure. I mean you prolly all ready have different BO's for a cruiser/escort/science vessel anyways.
Read again. I very specifically suggest breaking them up in my initial post, just more reasonably. Whether you're in a Star Cruiser or Assault Cruiser your role is functionally identical, and they would only breakdown past that based on individual tooling that would be fairly irrespective of ship type, and based more on other skills.
I agree with the idea of simplifying down to Escort/Cruiser/Science spec distinctions.
However, it might break things up along more interesting lines if they did it a different way:
So, for example, you'd spec into all ships with an extra tac slot. (Ie. Refit Defiant, Assault Cruiser, Tactical Science.) It's a different kind of specialization but it maintains the "everyone is a hybrid" philosophy and maybe helps discourage the Engineers = Cruisers, Science = Science thinking.
Comments
Personally, I always advocated that Bridge Officers should play a more significant role in how your ship performs. As you said, the Captain is just the person in the middle in overall command, it's the Helmsman that actually flies the ship.
The Commanding Officer has to know the performance envelope that his vessel operates in, and how it can be pushed. There have been plenty of instances where the Captain knew something was wrong with his ship by the way the deck plates vibrated, the sounds the engine made, and so on. I think that is what they are trying to represent with those stats...
Its to make you think hard about what kind of role you really want to be and invest into it. It makes sense to make everything equally available from a convenience standpoint, but diversity is better when its an MMO with so many players.
And its not like they ban you from using ships you didnt spec into, if you wanted to change ships for awhile. You'll just not be as good flying with it.
umm not to nerd out but kirk had nothing to do with the transporter accident.....but u are right about the asteroid/wormhole effect that happend
In WoW style - you want to be feral druid, ok but put in cat points on each 10 lvls... saber cat, lion cat, tiger cat :eek:
Sound silly isn't it
Cause this is what we got with those points.
I think those buffs had to be moved in general ship categories.
I don't like to attribute "malice" before ignorance, but this seems only be required to sell us respecs.
If they want to do something with the skill tree that's actually useful to the game:
1) Split ground and space skills into two seperate categories with their own skill points.
2) Mirror the space skill system for ground. You can pick skills of all classes, and there is a "general" tree of skills.
3) Fix the issue that higher tier weapons cost more skill points without giving any reward for it.
4) Add passive effects to Tier3 to Tier 5 Science Skills so that spending points on those skills is even meaningful even if you don't use bridge officer or Captain abilities affected by it.
T2:
BoP captain
Raptor captain
Heavy warship captain
Cool, I can live with that
T3:
Norgh BoP
Name-of-T3-raptor-that-i'm-forgetting-right-now
Ktinga cruiser
T4:
Kitang BoP
T4-raptor (yes, you can tell I've not much experience with raptors)
Vorcha cruiser
T5:
It should just be this:
BoP
Raptor
Cruiser
Carrier
This way people have more freedom to choose. Do I want to fly a karfi or a voquv today? Do I want to fly my nausican destroyer or my raptor today? Do I want to fly my orion marauder or my vorcha refit today?
I'd bet more people would try out different ships if they didn't have to respec into it to get full maneuverability and durability.
More people would buy C-store ships cause they wanted to try it out to see if they like it or not, and not having to worry about the skill tree again.
I'm right there with you... to a point.
This isn't entirely analogous to what you're suggesting. This isn't the equivalent of being forced to spec into swords over axes, or one-handed over two-handed... this is the equivalent of having to spec into individual swords. It's like having to put points into The Sword of a Thousand Truths as opposed to The Sword of Ages, and having those expended skill points not effect the other.
That's inane.
As I suggested, I think there should be division... but an almost individual level? Star Cruiser separate from Assault Cruiser? Negh'var separate from Vor'cha? That's a bit much.
Stuff all the Cruisers into a skill I can see. All the Science Ships. All the Escorts. All the Battle Cruisers. All the Raptors. And all the Birds-of-Prey and Carriers. Going beyond that is... questionable. At best.
Read again. I very specifically suggest breaking them up in my initial post, just more reasonably. Whether you're in a Star Cruiser or Assault Cruiser your role is functionally identical, and they would only breakdown past that based on individual tooling that would be fairly irrespective of ship type, and based more on other skills.
I'm not suggesting you should be able to use swords, and axes, and longbows and staves with equal facility, but I am suggesting that you should be able to wield both a Longsword of Flames and a Longsword of Frost.
If we were talking about highly specific functions, sure. But we're not. We aren't even talking about the issuance of any but the most basic commands, such as "Go there!" We are, after all, talking about a bonus to manoeuvrability, hull and shields, not linking the phaser's cycling matrix into the warp core reactor to boost the variance modulation so that your beams will more readily penetrate the shields on borg sphere.
These are passive bonuses which reflect basic functionality. If I bark for my helmsman to make a course correction he isn't going to do it any slower because I'm more familiar with a slight variation of the ship type we're in.
For instance a fast jet pilot comes out of training with basic knolwedge of how to fly a fast jet
(in the UK it's a Hawk TMk1a/128) and then spends further time learning how to fly the type of aircraft he's deployed to. If that pilot is then transferred to another type of aircraft he has to do this thing called 'convert to type' which teaches him the specifics of the new aircraft... once that is done his/her currency on the previous type expires. It's got to the degree of complexity that shifting between major sub models of the same tpe of aircraft (Chinook Mk2 to Mk4) is handled the same way. Same for captains of warships, but most of the convert to type is handled around crew resource management; a situation which would be even more critical on space going vessels.
Both aircraft and navy crews spend a significant amount of thier time keeping this currency up to date; skills fade is a major issue.
Not so familiar with civilian training programmes but I can't seeing them being that much different. (bar zero flight time)
So not only does it make sense from a MMO perspective but it also makes perfect sense from a RL perspective; I would quite frankly forcibly prevent anyone who is not current from commanding a piece of militar hardware of that level of sophistication.
You're right - it was Scotty and they damn near killed Bones.
For Large ships, it'll include Assualt, Star, Exploration Cruisers for the Engineering ships for example, cause they are all quite large compaired to a Smaller ship so would be different to control. But size is different per ship cause you could have both Large and Small Escorts in the same tier etc
It makes perfect sense to imagine that you've "trained" your crew to adjust better at rotating than another crew that trained better at repairing subsystems - none of our Captains are doing these actions by ourselves. This isn't Star Wars; this isn't the Falcon.
You're not crew. You're not the guy at the controls of... anything. You don't need to be trained in the specifics of guiding the bow of the ship, you just need to know how to issue course commands to the guy who does that. That's not something that's going to change between a Star Cruiser and an Assault Cruiser.
Problem here being that your crew, beyond a few members, don't follow you and the ones that do follow you (your Bridge Officers) have their own skill lists. If I move from a Defiant with it's piddling crew to a Galaxy I don't suddenly find my new 1950 crew members requiring training on how to fire phasers, or how to initiate attack pattern alpha, but for some inexplicable reason they are less prone to being able to follow course corrections and basic commands regarding navigation? There's a breakdown there.
As far as Captain skills which might seem a bit out of place for a Captain, usually a suitable explanation can be found, or at least manufactured. With weapon skills for instance, I would put it down to your Captain's general competence when it comes to what to shoot at. Essentially you've learned which spots of a hull are frequently more vulnerable to the precision strikes of a phaser able to burrow deeply into an enemy's hull, and which areas have large numbers of critical systems loosely grouped and close to the surface, thus being more vulnerable to the blast from a photon torpedo. You're giving more efficient commands, such as telling your tactical officer to target the spot one metre aft of the strut to the port nacelle, where armour tends to be thinner to account for the equipment that must often be run between the adjacent warp core and that nacelle.
Most of the skills make some degree of sense to be relegated to a Captain. I even accept some degree of ship-specific knowledge, like knowing how an Escort can manoeuvre under fire might not apply to a giant lumbering Cruiser. But between ships so similar as to only be differentiated by an Ensign BOff slot and a console? Two ships with exactly the same impulse modifier and turn rate? Nah.
You've trained the crew for months to run maneuvering drills on a Galaxy and now you're on Defiant. The skills that carry over are everything but those ship skills. The ship skills represent that unique of the ship that doesn't carry over - like knowing how much power and how it can be diverted to engines for maneuverability.
It's also analogous to tweaking your car's engine performance. If you buy a new car, those tweaks are gone and you're back to square one.
In terms of your main claim... utterly wrong. However like everyting in life a certain clarity may help.
While a port and starboard bearing is never going to change is you're confusing basic training with specific to type. Someting I did cover in my orginal post (was I unclear in any aspect?). In STO this is covered by the tier 1 command skill (the learn to fly aspect); the bonuses for each specific type is the 'learn to fight aspect'.
So an assault cruiser and star cruiser will have differing performance characterics which need to be taken account of before you can actually exploit the full capabilities of the vessel. As I said previously I would not allow anyone who is not current on a specific vessel anywhere near the con...
STO does massively simplify the whole equation (Crew resource managment, which it's essentially covering, is a whole docterate in itself) of large vessel command but it's got it fundamentally right...
So once again for good measure... bad idea...sorry.
Problem being that those are new phaser banks, or at least their placement across the hull is new, and so will the targeting sensors be. That's going to have an effect on their ability to fire weapons as much as a new impulse manifold will effect a crew's ability to manoeuvre the ship. Those are new subsystems they're trying to repair also.
Yet those things are unaffected. So your "sum of all parts" theory doesn't seem to reflect all of the parts, just the structural integrity field, impulse manifold and shield buffers, and even then only in a few isolated ways (since other skills with effect those systems aren't similarly required to have their own skill, or included in the ship-specific skill which exists).
What is effected is very narrowly defined, and as a captain you have little control over those things in a way which would result in marked changes on a ship-to-ship basis unless those ships were drastically different. This assumes that the skills reflect the captain's base ability to offer things like helpful navigational commands, in which case it should apply to a broader range of ships as I've suggested.
Now, assuming it does come down to crew instead then it still doesn't jive. There needs to be more per-ship skills (like Star Cruiser Weapons Targeting) to reflect their familiarity or lack thereof with those individual systems on these ships (much as a new impulse manifold, shield buffer or structural integrity field generator seems to throw them off), or the effects of the per-ship skills in the game should be broadened to encompass pretty much everything that the crew touches including having an impact on pretty much every bridge officer ability, and other basic functionality such as targeting the enemy and causing damage.
Beyond a Science Console and a Science BOff station they actually don't. Their manoeuvrability, shields and hull are precisely the same, and that is what is effected. In fact, you likely stuffed the impulse engines, shields and armour consoles from your old ship into the new one. Gotta love this new modular design stuff...
These ships aren't vastly different, and most of the major components are interchangeable. On top of that, you're not interacting with them, you're interacting with the crew.
You're barking orders.
If the Captain's skills truly are Captain's skill then once you say, "twelve degrees to starboard" it's up to the helmsman to make that happen. Your exact knowledge of the minutia of the engines (or lackthereof) is ultimately immaterial to the typical function of the ship. You aren't opening a channel to main engineering every time you turn and telling them to adjust the anti-matter flow by 2.3 Cochrans because because the intermix chamber in the Star Cruiser's warp core is finickier than the Assault Cruiser's. That's their job, and they're either doing it or they're not. And, as said previously, if your skills represent the crew's skills then much more of them need to ship-specific than currently are or the ship-specific skill needs to cover more.
that is how it is. The helmsman flies the ship. the Capt'n gives the orders to make the ship operate, the BO's make the orders happen.
Picard didnt have an issue from the star gazer to the Enterprise. Riker didnt have an issue commanding the derelict fed vessel in a wargame sim. Data didnt have an issue commanding the ship during the Klingon Civil War.
Doesnt seem to be an issue piloting alien vessels or Borg vessels either. Paris and Picard could also pilot shuttles superbly.....so i dont see why we are "gated" into only being able to fly one ship per respec (granted your personal use of skill points of course). IMO, you should be able to fly a cruiser and then switch to an escort at your leisure. I mean you prolly all ready have different BO's for a cruiser/escort/science vessel anyways.
I agree with the idea of simplifying down to Escort/Cruiser/Science spec distinctions.
However, it might break things up along more interesting lines if they did it a different way:
So, for example, you'd spec into all ships with an extra tac slot. (Ie. Refit Defiant, Assault Cruiser, Tactical Science.) It's a different kind of specialization but it maintains the "everyone is a hybrid" philosophy and maybe helps discourage the Engineers = Cruisers, Science = Science thinking.