http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/12/17/fleet-admirals-to-live-up-to-their-name-in-sto/
According to the article when our toons hit Fleet Admiral Cryptic will let us command our own mini-fleets the same way we command our away teams (although in my day we called them Landing Parties). I like this idea in that it'll be useful for much higher powered missions and more thought provoking play. I have one request though:
Let those fleets we command be composed of the other ships in our toon's possession.
I miss seeing some of my lower level ships in action since they are too miserably underpowered to handle my VA ranked missions. If they weren't then I'd be probably be flying my constitution class almost constantly.
Now, the fast thinkers in the crowd will have already figured out some exploits like ditching all the lower powered ships in their fleets for VA level ships and equipping them all with purple grade parts. I think Cryptic is staffed with people fast thinking enough to figure out how to nerf griefers like that without ruining the game for everyone else.
The other request I would have is that we get to choose which of our bridge officer toons get promoted to captain and will take over those old ships in our personal fleets.
I think that would help to not only further personalize the game but also let us mix and match abilities and vessels better.
Thoughts?
Comments
its been suggested fleet amdiral would get "pet" lower tier ships ...this will clog the screen up even more..imagine if photonic fleet was set off at same time..gah
i want to control one ship and one ship only , i will not be made a desk jockey admiral
Fine, but don't ruin it for the rest of us. :P
I can't wait for that!
In missions below that however, I don't see the point. They have been scripted with one player ship in mind and so only missions meant for multiple players will have any relevance to this
Its possible that future admiral mission content will be tailored to admirals in command of fleets. At least some of them. I see this fleet command in this manner more than using it to solo play missions already specifically geared for team play (STFs). Though being able to do that would be nice too.
I'd rather be able to send these ships out on other missions, rather than leading conga lines of NPCs through Undine space.
No matter how many pets you get it will always be 100% impossible to Solo the STF's as they all contain puzzles that can only be completed by way of human interaction.
I think those "conga lines" could be fun as long as it's a special mission type and not the default.
Likewise with crew sizes.
If you made the default away team your captain, two named bridge officers, and a redshirt (not always an actual redshirt but a random "Ensign Ricky" with a department related to the mission and the ability to promote that random buy into a permanent BO), I think that would be more dynamic and promote teaming since you'd have a choice between three NPCs or four players doing the same content. Teaming would make the game easier then.
Also, I'd like to see RTS-style missions in the vein of City of Heroes' arena where your Captain/ship is not physically present and you use the BO controls and a free roaming camera to complete a mission without an avatar who can directly influence the game.
At Fleet Admiral 1, you're allowed to promote on of your bridge officers to Captain. Then you get a ship to follow you around like a BOff on the ground. That ship's class is determined by the officer's class. Every few levels (FA3, FA5), the ship gets bigger. Then the process repeats until you've filled out a five-ship fleet.
I believe we'll have a Captain rank BO under the crew system in S4 but that it will be closer to how Spock or Scotty were captains who served under Kirk, aboard his ship.