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Total Ship Fabrication
bladepriest
Member Posts: 25 Arc User
I would like to suggest an upgrade to the current creation system. We already have everything that we need to build star ships and ships that are better than the standard ships of the line. I would like to see a more specific creation process due to the cost of the items that can be created at Memory Alpha.
For instance if you are going to create a deflector dish allow the player to determine the value of each area boosted. This can already be done to a certain degree however I am talking about creating exactly what you want. All that would be left is assigning a cost to the item created. The same process could be applied to all items that are place upon ships and to the personal equipment that we carry upon us at all times.
The same would be applied to the manufacturing of ships. Instead of giving an extra slot on a ship that may or may not makes sense as to the placement let us decide how our ships are set up. Since all of the individual aspect of the various ships have already been put in the game its just a matter of being able to put those skins on ships that they were not originally intended. This can be seen in the series with the birth of the Nebula Class ships.
They have Galaxy Class saucer sections with the rest of the ship being radically different in overall design and use. Now granted some of the combinations might seem to be silly or inefficient however I pose the question how do new ship designs make the cut. When the Defiant came in DS9 the ship was unlike anything that we had seen before. This kick started a rush of new ship designs and some very good looking ships. Even the most well known ship in the entire series, the Enterprise received a major make over when they changed to the Sovereign Class.
My point is that many of the players that I have talked to have thought the idea, at worst interesting, at best a great idea. I have proposed this on the forums a few times in a thread that I cant seem to find. Here is what I propose the system to look like, all cost are in dilithium:
Base ship class (Carrier, Cruiser, Destroyer, Escort or Science): 50,000
This would give one slot of each of the following:
Weapon (fore and aft)
Defector
Engine
Shield
Weapons
Each additional weapon slot: 1,000
Ability to add cannons: 5,000
Special weapons (from a specific ship i.e. phaser lotus from the chimera): 25,000 each.
Engineering, Science and Tactical slots: 5,000 each (Although this seems high it would keep people from creating ships with 5 slots in each)
Device Slots: 1,000
Abilities: Non ship specific abilities i.e. +5 bonus power to subsystems, 5,000
Ship specific abilities i.e. saucer separation or phaser lance 15,000
Base Hull: 1/1, if you want 50,000 hull it will cost you 50,000.
Shield Modifier: 100 per .01, if you want a shield modifier of 1 it will cost 10,000
Turn Rate: 1000/1 if you want a turn of 15 then you will be paying 15000
Bridge Officers: 5000 each and 1500 per rank
I am aware that there are some things that I have probably left out but this gives a rough idea of what I am talking about. The prices may seem high but they would be in accordance with the current creation system. This would also keep uber ships from being too common costing more than 500k Dil on average. This is not too say that they will not be out there and as time goes on they will be more common as with everything
A similar system would be in place for the individual consoles and non consumable items. For instance here?s an example of a deflector and shield arrays build:
Deflector Array Type: Positron, Neutrino ect: 5000
Each additional modifier beyond base: 2000 to a maximum of 3
Shield Array Type: Covariant, Regenerative ect: 5000
Each additional modifier beyond the base: 2000 to a maximum of 3
This individualization of the various ships and pieces would indeed be a much more preferable method that what is currently in place, at least from what little reactions that I have been able to get via short term discussions. I bring this to everyone else to get the general reactions to this suggestion. Please keep in mind this is just an example of prices and not set in stone.
Although i realize that haters are gonna hate and that you will never make them happy I am looking for some constructive criticism about truly make our own ships to our specs.
For instance if you are going to create a deflector dish allow the player to determine the value of each area boosted. This can already be done to a certain degree however I am talking about creating exactly what you want. All that would be left is assigning a cost to the item created. The same process could be applied to all items that are place upon ships and to the personal equipment that we carry upon us at all times.
The same would be applied to the manufacturing of ships. Instead of giving an extra slot on a ship that may or may not makes sense as to the placement let us decide how our ships are set up. Since all of the individual aspect of the various ships have already been put in the game its just a matter of being able to put those skins on ships that they were not originally intended. This can be seen in the series with the birth of the Nebula Class ships.
They have Galaxy Class saucer sections with the rest of the ship being radically different in overall design and use. Now granted some of the combinations might seem to be silly or inefficient however I pose the question how do new ship designs make the cut. When the Defiant came in DS9 the ship was unlike anything that we had seen before. This kick started a rush of new ship designs and some very good looking ships. Even the most well known ship in the entire series, the Enterprise received a major make over when they changed to the Sovereign Class.
My point is that many of the players that I have talked to have thought the idea, at worst interesting, at best a great idea. I have proposed this on the forums a few times in a thread that I cant seem to find. Here is what I propose the system to look like, all cost are in dilithium:
Base ship class (Carrier, Cruiser, Destroyer, Escort or Science): 50,000
This would give one slot of each of the following:
Weapon (fore and aft)
Defector
Engine
Shield
Weapons
Each additional weapon slot: 1,000
Ability to add cannons: 5,000
Special weapons (from a specific ship i.e. phaser lotus from the chimera): 25,000 each.
Engineering, Science and Tactical slots: 5,000 each (Although this seems high it would keep people from creating ships with 5 slots in each)
Device Slots: 1,000
Abilities: Non ship specific abilities i.e. +5 bonus power to subsystems, 5,000
Ship specific abilities i.e. saucer separation or phaser lance 15,000
Base Hull: 1/1, if you want 50,000 hull it will cost you 50,000.
Shield Modifier: 100 per .01, if you want a shield modifier of 1 it will cost 10,000
Turn Rate: 1000/1 if you want a turn of 15 then you will be paying 15000
Bridge Officers: 5000 each and 1500 per rank
I am aware that there are some things that I have probably left out but this gives a rough idea of what I am talking about. The prices may seem high but they would be in accordance with the current creation system. This would also keep uber ships from being too common costing more than 500k Dil on average. This is not too say that they will not be out there and as time goes on they will be more common as with everything
A similar system would be in place for the individual consoles and non consumable items. For instance here?s an example of a deflector and shield arrays build:
Deflector Array Type: Positron, Neutrino ect: 5000
Each additional modifier beyond base: 2000 to a maximum of 3
Shield Array Type: Covariant, Regenerative ect: 5000
Each additional modifier beyond the base: 2000 to a maximum of 3
This individualization of the various ships and pieces would indeed be a much more preferable method that what is currently in place, at least from what little reactions that I have been able to get via short term discussions. I bring this to everyone else to get the general reactions to this suggestion. Please keep in mind this is just an example of prices and not set in stone.
Although i realize that haters are gonna hate and that you will never make them happy I am looking for some constructive criticism about truly make our own ships to our specs.
Post edited by bladepriest on
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But I can easily see how smart players, rich players, and pay players could easily run past free.
I realize we don't want people making ships with like 4 commanders and able to equip all the best gear and have the highest hull rating in the game, but then just set some hard limits instead of pricing these things at a level only a small number of players can achieve in a decent time frame.
For instance, as far as bridge officers go, we could have a 11-power space limit, and say you can't have more than 1 Commander slot. At the most, that gives you space for 1 LT-commander and 2 Lieutenants (or 2 lt commanders and an ensign), which is just above par for most ship configurations and would make this option attractive to min-maxers without being too overpowered. And that's for a 4-BoFF setup, never mind that many ships have 5-boff setups. Perhaps charge extra for making slots "universal".
Also, set a max Shield/turn rate/Hull rating for each tier of ship. It can be a little above what we have currently, but it shouldn't be so much that a custom escort can take more damage than a stock cruiser.
I did some math using your numbers, and, okay, assuming someone earns 8K dil a day every day, they could afford to recreate a non-fleet, Vice Admiral tier science vessel after just under a month. So maybe your numbers aren't entirely unreasonable, but if someone wants to really trick it out and go above and beyond (or worse, they're a casual player that nets a max of ~3k a day), we're talking a ridiculous amount of time and effort. And nevermind that such a player won't be able to spend dil on anything else while they save up: Fleet projects, Reputation projects, Doffs, crafting materials, etc.
I dunno, I feel the game is grindy enough as it is, and the thought of paying over 200K dil for a ship of my own design turns me off enough to not want to bother. Not that the idea doesn't have merit, but I feel that new features should be more inclusive, rather than "grind or gtfo", like New Romulus, which I went to once and never looked back.
To maintain balance, any "upgrade" will need to have a corresponding "downgrade." For example, if turn rate were increased, then something else would have to be decreased, like hull points, impulse speed, etc. Basically every option should have a trade-off to counter-balance it.
Now, if you really wanted to do something like this what might work is a points system, kind of like the one in the latest Call of Duty. The idea is that you get various options that you can choose to pick, and you can pick any combination you want, but the total number of options is limited. That could potentially allow for this kind of customization without creating excessive prices or insanely powerful ships. But doing this would make it much harder for Cryptic to sell new ships, and would require an enormous amount of programming work, so I can't imagine it happening.
DStahl has been mentioning alot of things in the past... Very little of it has ever come true.
As far as the counter balancing is concerned that would be more in the cost than what you can actually fit in. I would never expect this to be cheap by any means but it should only be limited by what the player can think of. I was looking at a ship today on the Klingon side and for the life of me I can't remember which one, and it cost 120k for it and it didn't even have what I wanted on it.
Look at it like this how many thousands of DIL are people having to spend on their fleet star bases just to get to a level so that they can spend up to $25 just to get a ship that fits most of their requirements? Then in 6 months, if that long another series of ships comes out and they are bigger and better than everything before. We have seen this before with every game out there and is a necessary evil of the industry and it will never go away. Now why not pay a little (or maybe a lot) more for a ship that fits you perfectly? This way no one can complain about the latest and greatest being "glass cannons" or some other less that pleasant name.
As players we will be putting in a great deal of time into this game only to be partially satisfied with what someone else thinks we want. Why not put into a game a lot of time to get what we actually want out of it? Ok so it cost a little more, big deal. In the long run you will be spending a lot less on upgrades than what you would be spending the DIL on something worthwhile.
For example just look at the ships when the game first came out. I wasn't playing then but I would be willing to bet vital parts of my anatomy that the ships then were not as powerful as the ones are now. Just look at the Vesta class and tell me about being over powered and that's a science ship.
One thing I am not trying to do is copy any particular game so that STO is more like game X or even game Y. Having played the game for a while now and actually reading the content on the missions has convinced me that the players and some of the designers know very little about what it means to call a game Star Trek. This is an age old argument that I don't wish to rehash by any means but I only bring it up because it backs up the fact that we as players have been put in a almost freelancer style play set up.
Doesn't matter. That 'the devs are considering it' is all any forum poster can realistically hope for when presenting ideas. That's true of any game forum.
I agree with everything that your saying. I in no way meant this to be set in stone or for this to be a 10 commandments of any sort
Now I realize that it had to be worked on for sometime before it had all the bugs worked out but once it did it was a fearsome ship. To the best of my recollection, up until that time many of the features on the Defiant didn't exist. Much more the ship was completely overpowered for its size.
Now imagine what you could do with a dedicated ship yard and the builders to actually take it out on proper shakedown cruises like every other ship that gets OKed by starfleet. They dont just hit a few buttons on a replicator pad and poof there it is. there is a lot of behind the scenes stuff that takes place before we get any ship even though we just go pick one out and get in and drive away.
As far as no dealing with a portion of the game, the creation system has taken a huge hit just in the time that I have been playing. I used to see lots of people at Memory Alpha and now it looks like a ghost town. Now this isn't to say that I spend every waking hour at memory alpha as a valet counting how many people actually go through there but when I am there, a few times a week, the numbers are a fraction of what they were. It because the cost of making anything worth while has become too expensive.
Take the Aegis set for instance. In order to get the entire set you have to spend something in the neighborhood of 45K DIL. Now this is a very expensive set yet if you paid that cost for every slot it would come out to well over 300K DIL. Now I haven't gone through every single piece that can be created to verify the cost but rather taking an average of some of the better pieces that can be made via crafting. My point is if you are gonna have to pay an insane amount for things that we make, shouldnt we get exactly what we want ratehr than something that we settle for?
Would it be fair to only have the functionality of a ship be what you want? Maybe it's the skins of the ships that we would like to see changed to something different.
With the release of several new ships with some pretty cool abilities and skins I would like to hear some other people's opinions on what they think about a "total ship fabrication system". Was I way off the mark on suggesting something of the nature or would it be a good idea?
Would it be something that we would have to pay for in chunks? For instance, pay "X" amount for all the skins in the game and another "X" amount for the ability to build a ship in the manner we so choose but have a set of generic skins. If so what would be a reasonable amount to charge for something of this nature? Would it be cold hard cash? Lobi? Zen? Latinum? EC?
Since my first attempt to get this thread going bombed horribly since the gun was jumped based on the fairly random number I generated was taken as set in stone rather than just an example. If we were allowed to build our own ships it would be expensive and even more so than the ships we are given by the designers.
Imagine trying to go out and buy a car that is factory made to specifications "X". Now lets go out and buy all of the parts and pay someone else to build that car from those parts. It would be much more reasonable to go down to your local dealership and sign a few pieces of paper and drive away rather than waiting weeks or months for you car to be put together.
Now take all those parts and put them together yourself. Yes you're gonna save a lot of time but how many people have that skill set? You will be saving yourself a lot of money but the time is still eaten up putting everything together by yourself. Once again the dealership is a better option for most people because they want it now in our instant gratification lifestyle.
Something else that might be suggested would be to have to have your your starbase up to a certain point before you could design super ships. After all even though the local garage downtown can repair almost everything on my car they are not equipped to design a new and unique vehicle and then manufacture that vehicle from the ground up. That would require a major retooling of the garage. Thus needing a more advanced shipyard for more powerful ships.
I know that I have used some examples that may be mistaken but I would like to emphasize that this is just examples of things that could be done and not set in stone. Rather than tear me down and stating how much of an idiot that I am please take the time to try and come up with what you think might be a reasonable attempt at what would be an acceptable system to Cryptic. This is not to say that I can't stand criticism but rather don't find one aspect that you don't like and proceed to rip me a new one. This is a brainstorm session and not finger pointing session.
This amount has been the cost in the zen store for a number of ships. This has obviously been paid for by numerous people and will continue to be paid for for some time. Is this expensive for a single ship yes indeed. I have been saying for some time that paying that much fora single ship is too much and then end up paying that much for a ship :mad:
Maybe paying the $50 for a C-store item that allows us to build multiple ships say three for the cost of the item. Whether it would be bound to character or account or could be sold would to be determined.
What do you guy think?
I would kill to be able to make my own ship in terms of boff layout, consoles and weapon layout.
As long as the skin is restricted to the class, there should be no issues
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree
on the topic: idea is ofcourse nice, mechwarrior online does it and some other games. STO will probably never have it. too bad, but that's how it is.
Love this idea. Perhaps two BOFF Respec packs to chose from.
One pack to give the 11 power space limit for the build-your-own ships that use any ship part currently owned in ship customisation, with the hull tier size determining the console slots.
The second respec pack to just change the current BOFF spaces to full universal. This will entice captains to fly their older ships again (after updating everything of course ! )
I am glad to hear that some of you like the general idea or this and I am not the only person in the world who like customization in their game.
As far as the skins are concerned I would want to be able to change those as well. From my personal standpoint I have never really cared much for the standard design of the Federation ships and have always prefered other species ship since they seem to have a little more diversity that I enjoy.
After all if you can build say 20 ships what's to stop you from putting the nacelles from ship 3 on ship 8 with the saucer from ship 14 and the hull of ship 7. Other than the size difference in the ships most of the ship have the same basic layout and should be able to be modified to work in a ship that it was never designed to work with. This can be seen in TNG with the introduction of the Nebula Class.
As far as the game is concerned it would simply be a skin swap and since most of the ships have multiple skins for that class of ship why not just put those skins in a pool that can be access during ship creation? I realize that there would have to have some coding involved to deal with the scale issue between the ships but I would think that wouldn't be any more of an issue than anything else we get from any game. There will be bugs to work out and all that but it should be able to be fixed easier than more non fixed issues in the game.
Now I pose another question to anyone who cares to answer. How much wasted space is there on most ships? I understand this is a very relative question when talking about the various factions as Klingon ships are much more spartan than federation ships and I can on guess about Romulan ships. How much space on those same space frames could be put to different uses? We can see several examples of identical ships have radically different internal layouts and uses.
The Federation ships for instance are not generally warships just as Klingons ships are nor generally Science ships. Yes I know that there are exceptions to every rule but I am talking about the general run of the mill ship. Take the Avenger class ship for instance. It is indeed a true warship. This is something that the Federation doesn't do very often but it has and it is a nice little ship. How much extra room would you have if you scaled it up to the size of a Sovereign class? What could you do with all of that extra space?
Would you put in better science facilities or more firepower or even redundant systems? How about an extra warp core or even secondary shielding? What about an addition or reinforce structural integrity field system or even built in ablative armor?
This is an example of the scaling up but on the opposite end of the scale there is no realistic way to get all of the firepower and abilities at the same level of Scimitar into a Peregrine fighter. However if you go back through the series you can find references to the Defiant have Galaxy class power cores and even upgraded weapons. Keep in mid that at the time of the introduction of the Defiant the Galaxy class was still sporting the famed Enterprise. Although the Defiant didn't have some of the science and engineering labs that was on the larger ships it was all in all a tougher ship than most ships out there.
This can be seen in the movie First Contact. Granted it is something that you have to listen to that is in the background of the conversation that is going on but the Defiant takes several hits that were destroying other ships and ended up surviving the battle. Granted it had practically nothing left but engines by the time the Enterprise came into the picture but its still an example of being tougher. This is supposed to be represented by the bonus while moving but I don't know of any escort that can take more hits than nearly any cruiser of the same level. I also realize this is a balance issue and I am fine with it.
My point is that the size of the ship will have some effect on the amount of stuff that you can put into the ship but far from the only thing. As we can see from the game all of the newest ships are becoming smaller and smaller and packing more of a punch. If you add about 10-15% to the overall size of a ship you should be able to add the aspect of another class to the ship. That would allow an additional computer core and the labs and stuff to go with it. I only bring that aspect into it because someone will address it if I don't and tell me I don't know what Im talking about. Well as we as a species don't have the ships or the capability to make them nobody knows what they are talking about until we do.
Now that is all fine and good trying to base everything in the real world as far as justifying the ability to have the amount of customization as what I'm talking about but lets face it this is a game and we can put what ever we want to put in it. If Cryptic wanted to make a fighter sized ship that had all the power of a Unimatrix then they can. Now this would be a completely frightening ship that can kill you in one shot from 23km away and is launched from a ship that isn't that much larger in waves of 4 they could. Now this would be completely unrealistic and I hope that nobody thinks that I am suggesting that should be the new Borg STF because I'm not.
I am trying to suggest that with the customization aspect there should be a little more line of thinking when it comes to the size of the ship. Science ship are fairly small and maneuverable and can have commander level BOFF stations and up to five console slots. Some of those same science ship also have high rankings in other aspects be it tactical or engineering and there isn't much of a difference in the size of the ships if any at all regardless of the crossover.
If you add a mere 10-15% more to the size at most I would think that there would enough space to place an upgrade of the third ship type. Hell with some of the bridges available you almost need to take a taxi from the communication station to the tactical station. I know that people like to have pretty ships but thats a lot of wasted space that could have more equipment put in there to make a more effective ship.
Lets say for instance that to add an upgraded station that it takes ten cubic yards of space on a ship and the same for another console slot. Now this is about a 30'x30'x30' area which is about the size of a house. Now with the advances in miniaturization a vast number of things can be put in that space and this doesn't even account for replicators. In that are you could place an additional computer core and at least one station dedicated to that core. Now with that you have just upgraded a BOFF station by one level. Even on an Oberth class at a mere 180 meters this comes out to 18 cubic yards on the low end which is nearly double my projected numbers. This would almost allow both a BOFF station upgrade and console to go with that station.
If you run the numbers for something the size of a Sovereign class then you would get a whole lot more for that same 10% of the size of the ship. You would be able to add all of the capabilities of the Oberth class used in the previous example and still have enough room to launch Defiants off the aft of the ship. Now on the Sovereign this would bring the size from 680-700 (depending on your source) up to around 750-775 meters long. I realize that sounds like a lot but keep in mind most of these ship have redundant systems and vast spaces devoted to entertainment and dignitaries and things of that nature. Granted this is not every ship and I admit that but in the Federation that is the majority of ship and almost all of the cruisers.
I just did a little research and it looks like most escorts and science ships are generally under 250 meters in length with very few getting above that length. Most are under the 200 meter mark. If you were to bring all of the science and tactical ships up to the high end of what's considered faster ships at about 400 meters you could double (at least) the number of BOFF stations and consoles that could be put on a ship. Now this doesn't take into account special firing modes or separation modes of some of the ships. That is why the Prometheus is on the top side of the size for escorts with a length of 415 meters and is still sporting a turn rate of 16 which is a breath under the Defiant class with a 17 and is just under two and a half times larger than the Defiant.
Even though size should make a different in order to keep some game balance, as I have shown it doesn't really seem to make that big of a difference.
Mainly, I'm tired of training and promoting my bridge officers and then getting stuck with an "Ensign" station for my highly trained Commander.
Also you could add a "special device" slot for like a cloaking device, phaser lance, saucer separation or w/e.
I see 2 issues:
issue 1) is that they would have to be very, very careful not to allow someone to make a seriously OP ship. 5 up front weapon escort, for starters? All tactical consoles, no engi or sci glass cannon build? People who KNOW the game in depth could come up with some nasty ideas in a hurry.
Other issue is how it is obtained. Money? that makes the game even more pay to win esp if these ships dominate pvp. Crafting? Its an idea, as I get a vibe that most people do not craft much, might breathe life into that game area. A big easter egg hunt (go gather things, research, earn favors to get your ship built?) --- it could be an entire season's content with the ship being your final reward. I would much rather see it this way (final reward of a lot of content) than some sort of awful grind (earn 1 billion dil and its yours! type stuff).
And finally, however it is earned, it needs a do-over. This would be my take on the zen/c-store side of it --- if you made a ship that is no good, pay 500 zen and re-customize it.