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Vice Admiral - as a dog's body?
kamenskshax
Member Posts: 20 Arc User
One thing that has always bothered me about Star Trek, and is exaggerated further in STO is the role of Vice Admirals and Captains, especially in ground missions.
Why on earth (or heaven) would you send a Vice Admiral to clear out some borg drones? Why would you send a VA to rescue some junior officers from Tholians? When you have a dangerous space mission, you send a competent field officer, not a top ranking admiral.
I am sure that this is not satisfactory to many people, and I'm equally sure that no solution will be considered, but wouldn't it be fun if you could RP your bridge officers and choose the most appropriate for any mission. You could use your tac Lt Cdr to take on a tricky ground mission, or a Sci Boff for an exploration mission etc - yes, those BOFF's that after 50 teambuilding levels you lovingly created, kitted out and then dropped like you drop the girl with the hair lip when Scarlett Johannson becomes available....
As a concept you cannot expect admirals to just drop in to dangerous missions (unless they go rogue) and do the hand to hand dirty work, especially a Federation Admiral - I can fully understand a KDF senior officer having to prove him/herself on a daily basis, but it doesn't fit in with the ethos of the Federation. It was pretty dubious with Captain Kirk going into unknown situations gun-ho - but I suppose you could argue that Captain is a field rank. You don't see many Colonels on the front line in Afghanistan, so why would an evolved society in 2409 risk Admirals as blatantly as they do?
Why on earth (or heaven) would you send a Vice Admiral to clear out some borg drones? Why would you send a VA to rescue some junior officers from Tholians? When you have a dangerous space mission, you send a competent field officer, not a top ranking admiral.
I am sure that this is not satisfactory to many people, and I'm equally sure that no solution will be considered, but wouldn't it be fun if you could RP your bridge officers and choose the most appropriate for any mission. You could use your tac Lt Cdr to take on a tricky ground mission, or a Sci Boff for an exploration mission etc - yes, those BOFF's that after 50 teambuilding levels you lovingly created, kitted out and then dropped like you drop the girl with the hair lip when Scarlett Johannson becomes available....
As a concept you cannot expect admirals to just drop in to dangerous missions (unless they go rogue) and do the hand to hand dirty work, especially a Federation Admiral - I can fully understand a KDF senior officer having to prove him/herself on a daily basis, but it doesn't fit in with the ethos of the Federation. It was pretty dubious with Captain Kirk going into unknown situations gun-ho - but I suppose you could argue that Captain is a field rank. You don't see many Colonels on the front line in Afghanistan, so why would an evolved society in 2409 risk Admirals as blatantly as they do?
Post edited by kamenskshax on
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The "Ranks" in the game simply show your progression through the game. You "Starfleet rank" can be set by costume options and title choices, RP-wise. If you compare Star Trek and STO, the players all are "Captains" from lvl 1 ti lvl 50. They never act as any other rank, not Lt., not Commander and not Admiral, they always do the Captain's work.
Prior to TNG, the Captain also led away teams - it's a bit odd but "believeable" that they reintroduced this practice, though I'd really love a "play your first officer" mechanic ^^
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100% agree
system Lord Baal is dead
I take your point though there are threads like this and each one has (usually) some kind of solution) - I guess I got the focus wrong in my wording - it was more about having playable BOFFs than the VA conundrum....
there was talk i think a whlie back something like that you pick you Frist Offcer and would be able to play as them but dont take my word to the bank on that
system Lord Baal is dead
If they rather be a Captain or Ensign then you can be so and the game can tailor the conversation accordingly.
However there may be problems with this primarilly in STF's as they only would send the best and most experienced officers/warriors into battle so Ensign may not be the best rank to use.
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
or put the maximum rank you can gain as captain and maybe for those guys who really lead a fleet, they can be vadm or adm.
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system Lord Baal is dead
The theory being that most of the single-player PVE content is suitable for "go here, do this" type commands.. while the STFs and other higher-rank endgame stuff are best suited for "you make the decisons" ranks.
The problem with that idea though, is the idea of Starfleet willfully giving command of a starship to anyone under the rank of Lieutenant Commander.
Of course if it were my game to write, you'd start off in deep space, encountering the borg.. find yourself on a ship where all the officers are dead, and your natural leadership skills and quick thinking put you in the center seat, with a crew that backs you up. Now surrounded by enemies, you have to fight your way back to Federation space, and return your crew home. Starfleet learns of your situation, and grants you field promotions at certain stages along the way, until you return home and you can get those promotions officially.
It's not too far a stretch from the current tutorial, but my version would have you not returning to Earth until you've reached level 10, where you can get a refit for your ship, new crew and Boffs.
Of course, the game is 3 years old now, and they're not about to go back and rewrite the whole thing.
That would be Gordan Freeman.
STO Forum member since before February 2010.
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I actually avoid success entirely. It doesn't get me what I want, and the consequences for failure are slim. -- markhawman
O and btw, Science Chuck Norris sounds awesome.
Yeah, that's right.
While an interesting idea, this would essentially make the first ten levels a tremendous slog you have to get through to do ANYTHING with other players - or, indeed, anything else at all. This is not exactly the sort of thing I would want to deal with as an incoming player - or even an old hat at this. It turns from a tutorial into a very forced sequence of missions, likely single player. While I enjoy single player content a great deal, and prefer any content where you at least have a realistic option of going solo, I like the option at least of being able to socialize with others. And it's pretty theme-breaking to let someone divert from that to go traipse around ESD chatting in zone chat about why it's a bad idea to stick your Miranda's weapon slots full of multi-type turrets.
First off, I'm going to side with Captain Kirk on this one. Some leaders are very much "TRIBBLE the orders, I'm going to lead from the front." In fact, IIRC Patton was rather well-known for having to be restrained from fighting himself. That said, at the rank of captain you're still in combatable (so to speak) ranks, so far as I know, as that's the equivalent of a colonel in the army. And frankly, most people do not want to be Ensign Ricky (except, of course, for Ensign Ricky on YouTube), they come to Star Trek Online to be Captain Kirk - and one of the quirks that made him so renown was probably the fact that he did lead from the front. I for one wish I could use my bridge officers a lot more, but I wouldn't want to substitute them for my character in action.
Now, the Admiral problem is something else. This is an atmospheric problem with Star Trek Online, not unlike the entire "ship exploding" mechanic (which is another problem in and of itself). However, unlike graphically watching your beloved ship be blown to smithereens (and you with it), this one is a bit more easily ignored, IMO, and is easier to explain away if you're willing to make a few leaps, or at least bend your head around some possibilities.
There are also some various ways of explaining it that I have contemplated. Keep in mind that realistically speaking, unless the whole of the Federation is defended by a fleet of 40-50 ships (not terribly likely even in the most stringent of canon), Starfleet is going to be a VAST organization with many, many millions of individuals. There is the possibility that one in a million might manage to rise that rapidly into command. Assume perhaps a few billion Starfleet officers (IIRC the estimate of the population as of 2370 or so was around 900+ billion Federation citizens - and I'd imagine several trillion Federation citizens would not be unrealistic), and you have a playerbase, at least sufficient to explain the tons of ships you run into from an individual standpoint.
It also stands to reason that things are happening that are very different than other time periods. My own self-RP basically says that Vega Colony was an utterly MASSIVE event involving thousands upon thousands of ships. And the Borg were concentrated on a specific, concerted attempt at assassinating every officer they could. Essentially some sort of a decapitation attack. As the Borg are said to be "different" and "incomplete," IIRC, it is possible this failed somehow and they aren't pushing the advantage after they kill the commanders. But this leaves a large vacuum of officers. Combine that with presumable losses in the Klingon war and other factors and you MIGHT have room for rapid promotions, especially if these are clearly a group of prodigies.
But to Vice Admiral? Well, let's lay aside the fact that Starfleet so far as we have seen doesn't let the Admirals fly anything other than a desk for the most part. I personally believe that it's entirely possible that we may be looking at a cultural difference of some sort. It's possible some cultures have top-heavy organizations to some level of deliberateness. Perhaps whatever part of Starfleet we're attached to has this philosophy - Admiral Quinn is a Trill, after all, and considering their preoccupation with symbiosis, it's not entirely unreasonable to assume that their fundamental strategies and thoughts on such subjects as hierarchy are different at a cultural level. It's also possible that our portion of Starfleet is in DESPERATE need for commanders, possibly even to the VA rank. And they can't afford to transfer anyone more experienced in in the numbers they'd need. Not only does this lead to rapid promotions out of desperation, this also leaves the VA's active because they can't afford to leave all the flag officers behind. It also may be a reason that all these young hot-shots are willing to take the promotion in the first place - a 23 year old ensign is probably not going to want to go to flying a desk, they're going to want to spend at least a couple decades exploring and saving the universe. Plus it might explain why so many relatively inexperienced commanders have higher-grade ships - not only are they getting results, but they belong to "our" section of Starfleet, but they lack commanders, so putting the prodigies at the helm is better than the considerable risks brought on by the downtime required to retrain experienced captains, shuffle around crews, etc.
THAT MOUTHFUL SAID, at least for VA's, I personally try to ignore it. My characters wear captain pips, and I use the 'Captain' title. Except for my Klingon character, who I leave as Lieutenant General, because quite frankly he'll just kill you and mount your head on his ready room wall if you object to him going out into battle.
As a note, I am aware that some of these explanations are contrived. That said, large portions of Star Trek are, so I suppose in a roundabout way it sort of fits.
But one thing to remember - the story of STO is largely written that we player captains are the Kirks of our day. As such, unusual stuff will often come up in one way or another.
I've always been of the opinion that Cryptic probably could have gotten away with having 1 Admiral rank available to players, and still have it be plausible under the "Commodore" rule.
In the system I envisioned a long time ago, the player is a Lieutenant (JG) when they head into the Tutorial. When their senior officers are killed, they are field promoted to Lieutenant, and given command of a small ship.
So your progression would be:
Lieutenant (1-15)
Lieutenant Commander (16-30)
Commander (31-40)
Captain (41-45)
Rear Admiral (Lower Half) (46-50)
This progression scheme and rank setup to me, was plausible, because back in Kirk's time, Commodores were still out in the field doing the hard work, as was evidenced by Commodore William Decker.
But to think that a Rear Admiral (Upper Half) much less a Vice Admiral would be out and about in combat zones, is pretty ridiculous and can not have any sort of plausibility whatsoever.
But, then the question comes "What about expansions?" - The answer to that is either keep adding levels to the Rear Admiral (LH) rank, or begin an alternate advancement tree, which has no impact on numerical levels or ranks.
Seems simple enough to me.
Sadly however, because this wasn't introduced during the initial design of the game, it's pretty much impossible to implement anymore. We've gone too far to unbreak that egg now. We have the omlet already.
"You shoot him, I shoot you, I leave both your bodies here and go out for a late night snack.
I'm thinking maybe pancakes." ~ John Casey
Note: OK, the STF and other Captain only events are a bit harder to explain. But it's a game, canon has to yield to fun sometimes. Not evertything Star Trek will translate to an MMORPG format.
Well, there's what I always do for this.
Namely? There's more going on on the planet than we see.
You and your fellow captains have likely ordered your officers to organize several away missions. However, since you are - by a wide margin - more skilled than anyone else, and you lead from the front, and you're with other captains in the same boat, you essentially take point. The others soften up defenses and make distractions. You on the other hand charge straight into the lion's den to kill said lion, because you're the only one who has a chance in hell of stopping it.
I got the idea from one of the Romulan missions where the dialog flat-out says that your regular away team has been scattered all over the area, and considering the entire place is a war zone it's not hard to imagine that they might well be fighting their own battles and softening up defenses/troops there.
I seriously doubt, for instance, in Defera, that the only invasion zone is that one city. There could be probes and attack squads all over the continent. Defera probably doesn't have only one sacred temple full of artifacts the Borg are drooling over on the entire planet.
First off, I think that they could substitute in, not just Commodore, but also Fleet Captain, and maybe toss in a more made-up rank. I believe Fleet Captain AND Commodore were used in the series.
That said, I don't think that this egg is broken necessarily; it would simply require the will to swap it around. Make it level-based, have the titles unlock as you hit certain ranks, and so forth. So when you're at level 50, you CAN be a VA - but if you'd rather be an RA, Captain, Commander, etc. you're still within your right. Although why you'd want to be addressed as Ensign So-and-so (unless your name is "Ricky"
That said, I don't think they have the will to do the swap - for reasons that frankly elude me.
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- Decouple the ranks from levels
- Levels are used to determine a player's eligibility to do episode missions / get gear of various Mks - this allows Cryptic to keep adding levels ad infinitum as new content gets rolled out.
- Ranks are simply titles earned as milestones. Players can choose a rank that ALL NPCs will address them by throughout the game.
That wouldn't please everybody, because not everybody levels via story missions. There is thus only one milestone that everybody can be expected to achieve:
Levels.
I do favor the idea of letting people pick which rank NPCs will use to refer to them, although for every person who would object to being called "Vice Admiral" when playing on their 1,000th day of play, you'll find another who objects to being called "Lieutenant" on his first.
But they are being called Lieutenant on their first day of play anyway.
Yes; and more than a few complain about that.
A number of people playing this game want a 100% correspondence between the roles different ranks play on the TV shows and the roles they play in game. Changing it in one direction (letting people pick a rank to be called from those they've earned, but still requiring them to earn it first) appeases one crowd, but not another.
The only way to make both crowds happy (and I don't favor doing this) would be to let you pick ANY rank to be called, and just completely decouple that from play rewards altogether.
It's not an argument against what he was saying; just an additional consideration that will come to the fore if his suggestion is implemented. The current thread traffic for "let me stop at Captain" will be replaced with thread traffic for "let me start at Captain".
My position is close to that of the person to whom I was responding; let us pick any rank title we've earned as the one used to address us. Where I differ from him is in decoupling it from level and coupling it to milestones, because the only milestone that is consistent across all styles of play is level. Folks who level to 50 from doffing or PvP shouldn't be required to still be "Lieutenant" just because they skipped the story; especially if it's not their first character.
If you truly support decoupling, there is a strong argument that will be made for decoupling it completely from everything, and just making it selectable. I don't favor that; I think that in a game inspired by Star Trek, ranks add more to the experience as a label for advancement tiers than they subtract from immersion, *IF* you allow people to select what the NPCs call them, in addition to the selectable titles and rank pips we currently have.
NPCs refer to player character's by their name and/or rank already. They address you by name when passing through on ESD or when entering the Drozana Station pub. Couldn't it be made a state-based check from the character info in addition to the name?
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A level 1-10 Ensign or 11-20 LJG having their own ship doesn't burn my suspension of disbelief motors anymore than anything else in this game.
500 years in the future and we still look like schmucks when getting our ID photos taken...