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Solutions for the Bridge officer Station upgrade debate!
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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
Warning, a bit of a read. 
Q: Why should Bridge officer Stations be upgradeable?
A: To allow players the option to continue playing the game with their favorite Starship configurations:
Q: How will we maintain the balance that the game offers by making this change?
A: The balance in the game will be maintained by very few changes to the actual game itself and by already in game mechanics explained in detail below.
How Bridge officer Station upgrades will work:
For a price at the C-Store: A Lower Tier Ships will be allowed to upgrade their bridge officer consoles in accordance with the system for bridge officer stations already in game.
I.E.: For example sake: A Tactical configurations will be able to upgrade its tactical bridge officer station to the maximum. Following, the engineer station second to maximum and lastly the science. Under this setup a fully upgraded constitution configuration could have: a Commander Engineering console, a lieutenant commander science Station and a lieutenant tactical officer station.
Lower Tier vessels will not however be allowed to add bridge officer stations! Only upgrade the existing Stations on the vessel in accordance with the already established theme of Science, Tactical and Cruiser. The Miranda Configuration will by default fall under the Cruiser Classification thereby making it a Cruiser as it is a light Cruiser.
The upgrades to the Bridge officer Stations will not mean more console upgrade slots. The Miranda configuration, for example, will still only have one Tactical Device Slot upgrade, one engineer device slot upgrade and one science device slot upgrade. This is going to be for balance reasons.
Q: Balance: Why this setup would maintain the integrity of the games balance.
A: Lower Tier vessels by default have lower hull strength or hit points.
A: Lower Tier vessels by default have fewer consoles slots, not to be confused with Bridge officer Stations. Therefore, lower Tier Configurations have less ability to give passive bonuses to bridge officer skills, damage resistances and etc.
A: Lower Tier vessels by default have less device slots.
A: Lower Tier vessels by default have fewer bridge officer stations.
A: Lower Tier vessels by default have fewer weapon slots.
In all, the lower Tier vessel configurations are, even with the addition of upgraded Bridge officer Stations, simply outclassed by the higher Tier vessels in firepower, survivability, maximum skill bonuss achievable, maximum resistances achievable, maximum weapon output and bonuses achievable.
Q: So what have we essentially done? And why would the addition of upgraded bridge officer Stations be attractive?
A: What we have done is to simply, allow our ranked up bridge officers and Captains to be able to use skills that were otherwise unavailable to them in the lower Tier vessels, to be made available.
This change would have hardly any effect on the balance of the game as a whole due to the already listed disadvantages for using the lower tier vessel configurations. However, the FUN factor would certainly increase, because, although the lower Tier vessels would still be outclassed in a great many ways against the higher Tier Starships, the lower tiers would have the option of a lot more tricks to Toy around with their superiorly equipped opponents.
I hope that this suggestion goes well with the community, and if Ive over sighted anything, please, lets openly discuss!
Q: Why should Bridge officer Stations be upgradeable?
A: To allow players the option to continue playing the game with their favorite Starship configurations:
Q: How will we maintain the balance that the game offers by making this change?
A: The balance in the game will be maintained by very few changes to the actual game itself and by already in game mechanics explained in detail below.
How Bridge officer Station upgrades will work:
For a price at the C-Store: A Lower Tier Ships will be allowed to upgrade their bridge officer consoles in accordance with the system for bridge officer stations already in game.
I.E.: For example sake: A Tactical configurations will be able to upgrade its tactical bridge officer station to the maximum. Following, the engineer station second to maximum and lastly the science. Under this setup a fully upgraded constitution configuration could have: a Commander Engineering console, a lieutenant commander science Station and a lieutenant tactical officer station.
Lower Tier vessels will not however be allowed to add bridge officer stations! Only upgrade the existing Stations on the vessel in accordance with the already established theme of Science, Tactical and Cruiser. The Miranda Configuration will by default fall under the Cruiser Classification thereby making it a Cruiser as it is a light Cruiser.
The upgrades to the Bridge officer Stations will not mean more console upgrade slots. The Miranda configuration, for example, will still only have one Tactical Device Slot upgrade, one engineer device slot upgrade and one science device slot upgrade. This is going to be for balance reasons.
Q: Balance: Why this setup would maintain the integrity of the games balance.
A: Lower Tier vessels by default have lower hull strength or hit points.
A: Lower Tier vessels by default have fewer consoles slots, not to be confused with Bridge officer Stations. Therefore, lower Tier Configurations have less ability to give passive bonuses to bridge officer skills, damage resistances and etc.
A: Lower Tier vessels by default have less device slots.
A: Lower Tier vessels by default have fewer bridge officer stations.
A: Lower Tier vessels by default have fewer weapon slots.
In all, the lower Tier vessel configurations are, even with the addition of upgraded Bridge officer Stations, simply outclassed by the higher Tier vessels in firepower, survivability, maximum skill bonuss achievable, maximum resistances achievable, maximum weapon output and bonuses achievable.
Q: So what have we essentially done? And why would the addition of upgraded bridge officer Stations be attractive?
A: What we have done is to simply, allow our ranked up bridge officers and Captains to be able to use skills that were otherwise unavailable to them in the lower Tier vessels, to be made available.
This change would have hardly any effect on the balance of the game as a whole due to the already listed disadvantages for using the lower tier vessel configurations. However, the FUN factor would certainly increase, because, although the lower Tier vessels would still be outclassed in a great many ways against the higher Tier Starships, the lower tiers would have the option of a lot more tricks to Toy around with their superiorly equipped opponents.
I hope that this suggestion goes well with the community, and if Ive over sighted anything, please, lets openly discuss!
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
I love this idea and have wanted it from the very beginning. If I want to fly around in an Akira-class or TOS Constitution my entire career, LET ME, but let me upgrade the stations to be comparable to at least a Captain or RA level ship.
EDIT: The only difference I would suggest: let consoles be added to bring the ship up to at least Captain or RA level. I think the balance will hold out with the reduced shields and hull that the lower tier ships have.
I initially agreed with you, but I wanted to give very little reason for resistance of the idea.:rolleyes:
It is of my opinion, that, that of what you find to be a pointless contention amongst some of the community, others, including myself, would find it to be a rather satisfying enhancement to the game for a multitude of reasons. A few Ill share with you below:
Aesthetics Many players simply do not like the higher Tier ship configurations, however, are forced into using them because you MUST use them in order to gain access to the higher tier bridge officer skills which are needed in late game content.
I believe having access to most, not all of the bridge officer skills for lower tier ships, will not adversely affect the game, and yet, allow players to be competitive enough against the AI in Episodic, Fleet Actions and Elite content; wherefore they can still play with low Tier configurations at the cost of decreased survivability in comparison with a better suited Tier Vessel.
Albeit, people will say you can already use the lower Tier vessels whenever you want, simply equip them with equipping better gear. Truthfully, it simply is not actually feasible to do so without the proper bridge officer skills to maintain some sort of survivability in ship to ship combat. Tier I Bridge officer skills, and even to an extent Tier II Bridge officer Skills, do not cut it against Borg opponents at the vice admiral level or even for that matter, much of anything else.
Diversity- Many people like to have unique or slightly different configurations than that of the rest of the rest of us. Im not particularly a fan of the mish mashing of vessel configurations within a particular class. However, it does indeed add diversity. On to my point, at the latter end of the games content, you see the same basic ship configuration over and over again. Cryptic has done a great job in trying to add more ships to the game! I congratulate them on this effort! However, the question has to be raised, would seeing an excelsior variant, Akara or constellation or Brel configuration late game be such an eye sore? As the game is now, you wont see anyone seriously using a Constitution or Miranda Configuration at the Vice Admiral level against the Borg or in a fleet action. Why? It is suicide to go into a fight like that with only three Tier I Bridge officer skills. Ive tried it and it isnt fun at all, but I think it could be if I only had a few extra bridge officer skills to help me along the way.
Desire- People want to be able to use their favorite ship configurations! That should not mean making every ship configuration on equal footing, as that wouldnt make for much of a game. However, the opposite shouldnt occur whereas you are almost forced to leave your favorite configurations behind, whilst the entire time longing to have been able to take them onto that next journey, that next un-explored sector or even on that dangerous encounter with the Borg simply because you lack that one Bridge officer skill that youve already earned from one ship to the next. It just doesnt seem logical!
I could go on, but I think I already have. For now I guess Im just grateful that on the lower Tier configurations you are not locked out of using your Captains higher Tier Skills.
My educated guess is that BO stations on a ship are pretty much hardcoded to that ship model. Therefore, they would need new code that would allow changes to both the ship model and to the UI for console upgrades. Plus C-Store updates. Plus testing for balance issues. Plus only Cryptic knows what under the hood. Coding cycles are already stretched to the limit for something that doesn't give Cryptic much bang for the buck.
It's cheaper and easier for them, not to mention more lucrative, to release new ship variants that look like the old ships but with better stats.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for ship upgrades if Cryptic can find a way to make them happen. There are certain ships at certain tiers that I can't stand to look at and would prefer not to fly if I could avoid it.
This. Sadly the OP had no solutions for it.
The solution is implied, but i'll spell it out. It will cost a player some cryptic points at the C-store for each upgrade as I stated in the OP. It is assumed that, that money will pay for the change to the game.
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