Customizable Ship

I am disappointed to see that true ship customization is missing from ST:O

There are some really nice ships, but the BoFF station layouts completely suck for my play style.

I would love to see Cryptic release a Base Customizable Ship for each class (Engineer, Science, Tactical) + 1 carrier option, with purchasable upgrades.

Base stats for each ship would not change (like hull, or crew numbers), but you could fully customize the normal stuff (color, patterns, bridge options, saucer, etc.) but also be able to purchase specific layouts for Boff Stations, Consoles, and Devices.

So for an example, the base ship could have space for 6 BoFF Stations, all of which could be either universal, or purchasable for a specific class of BoFF.

If I want to purchase a Commander Station for Tactical, I would pay TRIBBLE amount, or if I wanted to purchase it as a Universal Station, I could pay yyy amount and be able to change the BoFF assigned on the fly.

I wouldn't have to switch ships to switch layout for whatever I was doing in game at the moment.

With Consoles, set the ship up with the max available number, but you could then "buy" the slots.

So if the ship had 10 consoles available, I could pick where I wanted them with a max number per option. So you could only have say 5 max per section. I wouldn't be able to slot 10 tactical and no Science or Engineer, but I would be able to slot 5 Tactical and 3 science and 2 Engineering, or 3 Engineering and 2 Science, or whatever combo I wanted.

Heck, maybe even make it possible to buy more Console slots. Maybe the ship would have a base number of 10, but you could buy up to 2 more.

I also think Batteries should be split off from other devices. Have 3 Device slots for batteries, and then 3 for other stuff. With a base number available, like 1 of each, with the option to buy up to 2 more for each, this way you can upgrade the ship to slot all 3 batteries, and up to 3 other devices.

With a carrier, you could get 1 hangar as base, but be able to buy up to 3 more.

If and when the game expands to have more ranks, with ships appropriate to the new ranks, some of us may or may not want to upgrade the ship itself, but we would most certainly buy better upgrades for the existing ship.

Not only would Cryptic have another path to make money (yeah, I know people will hate this idea just for that, but they ARE a company and need to make money) but we would also not be so restricted by the current options on the ships that exist already.

Cryptic also wouldn't "have" to keep releasing new ships (paying designers, coders, etc.) hoping that the user base will buy them so that the company makes money.

Personally, I could seriously see me buying the Scimitar, if I could pick the console and BoFF layout, otherwise, I don't think I will be spending the money for it.