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Romulan Starbase/Fleet Logic Error
tilarta
Member Posts: 1,801 Arc User
A random thought occurred to me this morning.
So I went to a large fleet (Starfleet Allegiance) and asked them how many characters they had.
The answer was 469.
This means that if 31 members of their fleet goes down the Starfleet path and invites their Romulan characters, they will hit their member cap and be unable to invite new members.
So, the choice is either to kick out all alts to make room for the Romulan Characters or start a new Romulan fleet from scratch.
That second option is what caused me to raise the Vulcan Eyebrow.
Cryptic claims that not having to build a starbase/fleet from scratch was one of the factors for not making the Romulans truly independent.
But given the above example, they'll have to do it anyway!
I fail to see how building a Starfleet base with Romulans is any different from building a Romulan base.
Personally, in that situation, if I was going to have to build a whole new base, I'd rather work on a pure Romulan one then a Starfleet one.
So I went to a large fleet (Starfleet Allegiance) and asked them how many characters they had.
The answer was 469.
This means that if 31 members of their fleet goes down the Starfleet path and invites their Romulan characters, they will hit their member cap and be unable to invite new members.
So, the choice is either to kick out all alts to make room for the Romulan Characters or start a new Romulan fleet from scratch.
That second option is what caused me to raise the Vulcan Eyebrow.
Cryptic claims that not having to build a starbase/fleet from scratch was one of the factors for not making the Romulans truly independent.
But given the above example, they'll have to do it anyway!
I fail to see how building a Starfleet base with Romulans is any different from building a Romulan base.
Personally, in that situation, if I was going to have to build a whole new base, I'd rather work on a pure Romulan one then a Starfleet one.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Post edited by tilarta on
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Personally I just wish Dstahl would come out and say "We wanted to put the Romulan faction in but due to Time/Budget/Game tech constraints (or whatever the reason may be), we are unable to make a fully fleshed out independent faction. Therefore we felt the best solution was to make them a sub-faction of the Federation and KDF, thereby giving them as much unique content as we can, whilst still allowing them access to all the areas and systems the established 2 factions already have".
{UFP}Thomas45 - Thomas Nixon U.S.S. Majesty Unbound
Edit: Random spelling errors due to lack of caffeine in system.
Your main fleet is big enough to progress through fleet advancement without a struggle.
And your Romulan alts can help fill the ranks of the smaller fleets.
Win-Win.
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And then, it's not just a "what are we to do about new Romulans members?" issue so much as it's a "you've reached membership cap" issue. I'd say just do whatever it is you'd do when you get to that high a number anyways.
Besides, I am pretty sure that Romulans will have their own starbases at some point. I doubt it's not even an issue about not having the time here; Cryptic has been working in this expansion for months now. They made a conscious decision to not incorporate Romulan-specific starbases when the expansion launches.
As for the future? That's anyone guess. But My money is on having Romulan starbases at some point. (if I remember correctly, I think this was even hinted at in a Dev Blog or something.)
Fleets of this size are in the minority, and there will be many more players in fleet of less than 100 truely active players. So while their decision will not help the minority of players who belong to fleets of 200+ plays, it will help the majority of player who belong to fleets < 50 players who are still working towards T4 or T5.
I agree that if I was in a large fleet that had the manpower to produce a 2nd starbase, I would probably want a choice of a Romulan starbase. But the majority of players in Fleets who don't have the manpower would be screaming about being forced to grind for the "new cool stuff" and how this is just another "money grab".
I'm hoping that the large fleets will create new fleets for their Romulan toons, and ally themselves to the KDF. So as individual players they now have access to 3 sets of kit. While those in the smaller fleets can focus on completing their original starbases.
Yes, Starbase system is designed around a 20 to 25 member fleet.
This is why 100+ fleet have difficulty in members actually being able to acquire fleet credits.
Win-Win? Not at all, who wants to waste resources on smaller fleets? The grinding the huge megafleets have had to do to get where they are in Starbase progression is of unimaginable proportions. Most members of large mega fleets would not want to even consider splitting their resources.
Others may not view it as such, but the grinds Cryptic has introduced and will continue ot introduce create a stratified system where players are brutally punished for going down a rung of progress.
No, fleets of that size can't just casually build a second much less a third starbase. My fleet is in the position being a large fleet closing in on T5 and our KDF base is nowhere near what even medium sized feet's can do. If you were to ask any fleet member about starting a second Fed starbase most would simply laugh at the absurdity of it.
I think most of us will start a new Rom alt if only to so SOMETHING BESIDES GRINDING. Sure, we'll fill in spots in other fleets but we'll mostly be dead weight I bet even if there'll be a few exceptions like always.
My own plans mainly revolve around taking my sci at out of the fleet and filling her spot with a Rom sci alt, assuming I decide to keep it after lvl 50.
"Megagrinding"? No one in a "huge megafleet" has any idea what grinding is.
That's just it, we are quite aware of how much we've ground and how if it wasn't for the fleet being so full how many times more we would have had to grind than what we did. Personally I think bothering with the fleet system outside a mega fleet is pretty pointless and a type of self flagellation. Why do players do that to themselves? I can understand getting started and steaming along at first, but surely by the time fleets get to t3 fleets can see just how long a trip its going to be.
i hope Cryptic will take the "reskin" route after May.
Large fleets have the option to form an associated fleet for their alts, and could fill those membership slots much more easily than an existing small fleet could.
I am absolutely NOT in favor of expanding cap for megafleets at the expense of the smaller fleets. Because the expanded cap doesn't have to be used for alts... it could be used to grab new players that otherwise might choose a smaller fleet.
500 players is a large, large number. It should be enough for anyone except possibly an international "club" whose membership transcends STO.
Now if the megafleets can convince Cryptic to support an application process for expanding the fleet size up to 1000, rather than automatically expanding the cap for every fleet, I will withdraw my objection.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
I was not aware Cryptic was in the business of being Social Engineers when all people want is to be able to play how they want with the people they want - that's all fleets do.
{UFP}Thomas45 - Thomas Nixon U.S.S. Majesty Unbound
I think the majority of players are in fleets that have the manpower to produce a single starbase. And there is a minority who are in mega-fleets who could produce a 2nd if enough of there members who wanted to. And there is also a minority in "personal" fleets who will only clear T3 after a great amount of effort.
There are dual faction fleets out there at the moment which aren't "mega-fleets".
So they're already working on 2 starbases at the same time.
Right. I wasn't aware there were any missions or instances where all 400+ players could play together at the same time.
When players play, they're going to tend to play with the same small group of people. All megafleets are is a large collection of said small groups.
Point being, the game is not structured around megafleets any more than it is structured around small five-man fleets. Additionally, other fleets besides megafleets want the opportunity to grow their membership and megafleets shouldn't be allowed to suck up all of the available players.
My suggestion was merely allowing for the idea that an association of Gamer or Trek fans might want to all belong to the same in-game fleet and I am on board with those groups applying to have exceptions to the fleet membership cap.
But frankly I don't see Cryptic doing that. The caps exist for performance reasons and have nothing to do with "Social Engineering". So I have more than one reason to oppose an automatic increase in membership cap.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
Wow, someone from Cryptic is going to show up at a persons house and flog them every few hours for a week? That is brutal.
:rolleyes:
It's been proven already that anyone from any fleet can be invited to a Starbase, and buy anything that the starbase has to sell, but use their own fleets provisions for doing so.
So if you had to split into 2 fleets, no one is going to lose out on any item being sold on the main fleets SB, as long as there is someone there who can invite them into the SB. The only thing the 2nd fleet needs to do, is get their SB to the point where they can produce provisions.
This is pretty much my thoughts right here.
I mean, I have friends I invite to my SB all the time.
Making an alt-fleet isn't really an issue IMO. If you are part of a mega-fleet, then there would easily be enough people to handle dealing with an alt-fleet.
The only thing those alts couldn't get easily is fleet ships. Which if that is the case, then the alt-fleet would have to probably focus on tactical for the most part. But aside from that, they could still have easy access to anything else needed.
You'll never see a Romulan fleet starbase. You may see a Romulan starbase pop up as a space object, maybe even with some amount of interior space to be used in a FE.
the sad part of this is the fact, that if we knew this plan 6 months ago, we would already have a T4/T5 starbase, now we have a T1, as we just have started, and the resources from previous months sunk to other people Starbases.
i really hope they will NOT change this path once more in a month.
I think the reason for this is so Cryptic doesn't have to make new Romulan versions of all the 200,000 dilithium projects. And if they made a Romulan Starbase without them they would be sacrificing a lot of revenue because there would be a lot of folks working on Starbases without special projects, projects that would not have 200,000 dilithium spent on them, costing Cryptic money.
Like much of the new Romulan Faction, this 'feature' seems to have been decided by money.
But I'm not sure that joining a KDF fleet because your Starfleet fleet is full up is a good idea.
1. KDF Gameplay bugs are never fixed.
Why would you choose a faction in the game that never gets bugfixes?
2. KDF Storylines are too one-dimensional.
It's not a good idea to play those stories if you like the diversity of Starfleet gameplay.
3. You're limited to KDF ships.
What if you wanted the Starfleet ships instead?
Hence why I referred to Starfleet only for the sake of this post, since it's what the majority of players will do anyway.
And yes, this entire faction does sound like laziness to me.
I think the true reason we're not getting Romulan specific bases is the amount of modelling and level design they'd have to do:
Starbase Models T0-T5.
Starbase Ops, Tactical, Science and Engineering levels.
Starbase Special Project modifications, including unique Romulan variations.
Embassy Lobby, Embassy Ops, Embassy Shuttlebay.
Embassy Special Project modifications, including unique Romulan variations.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Yup, I'm going to have to agree with this. I don't see Romulan fleets getting starbases ever.
This pretty much comfirms too me that Romulans are a race choice for Fed and kdf players who want to play Romulan alts in the existing fleets. Romulan "themed"fed/kdf fleets will be few in number.
Reskin ftw. Seriously I have several friends who have mentioned that they are going to make a Romulan only faction and start the grind all over again. I have also seen several people mention here on the forums that they will be doing the same thing. So Cryptics excuse of "not wanting players to have to grind again" is worthless.
Not necessarily.
From what I read, it sounds like Romulans will have the choice to start their own fleets (either Fed or KDF allied) and will have the option to exclude non-Romulan characters.
I can see role-players going that route as well as some of the Romulan fans.
What isn't clear is whether those Romulan-exclusive fleets will be able to build their own KDF or Fed starbases. I assume so, but I'm waiting to see some kind of clarification.
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