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A Modest Proposal To Solve The So-Called "Admiral Problem"
unangbangkay
Member Posts: 10 Arc User
I don't usually do these types of "my suggestion" threads, but here's one that I thought would be feasible enough. As in the title, I'm referring to STO's "Admiral Problem".
Forum vets have heard canon nerds and RP people complain about this a thousand times, but for the uninitiated, the "Admiral Problem" is the massive proliferation of characters at Vice Admiral/Lieutenant General rank in STO. There are, simply put, too many admirals!
Considering that officers of that rank are rare in any legitimate real-world military (which Star Trek is based on), and usually have far more authority than any player character (heck, they're usually stuck behind desks!), it simply doesn't make a whole lot of sense, even with the many "headcanon" rationalizations that have popped up over the years.
Obviously, this is a minor problem in the grand scheme of things. "Vice Admiral" is simply an arbitrary rank, a different way of saying "Level 50", and a way to justify costume pieces that allow players to dress up like Admirals if they want. Unfortunately many of the solutions proposed so far either unfairly impose the will of RP'ers on everyone (like rejiggering the rank structure to top out at "Captain") or preserve the less-than-ideal status quo. And let's face it, some players LIKE being called "Vice Admiral". No one should hold that against them.
Thusly, I came up with this minor proposal that, in my estimation, should help to satisfy all parties. It's probably been proposed before (perhaps even by me, but sadly the forums have a sucky search function), but I believe that with STO's new focus on revamping existing systems, now might be a good time to raise the discussion again.
Without further ado, here it is:
That's it. It's very simple, and could probably be done by an unpaid intern in a couple of weeks during a lull period between seasons.
How does this make sense? That's also very simple. In most real-world navies (which Starfleet is based on), tradition dictates that the commanding officer of any vessel be referred to as "Captain" regardless of their actual rank. This serves to emphasize that person's role as the commanding officer of the vessel, and confirms that person's authority when it comes to the day-to-day operations of the ship.
As a captain, you may have an admiral aboard your ship, but that admiral will (on paper at least), have no say in how YOU command the ship. He may tell you where to go, but it is YOUR role to decide how best to get there. He may tell you to attack an enemy, but it is YOUR responsibility to order your crew to fire the weapons.
This minor change solves virtually every aspect of the "Admiral Problem". It explains how an ensign may be put in command of a starship, explains how a player may end up taking marching orders from a much lower-ranked NPC, and solves the many awkward instances of your bridge officers calling you "Rear Admiral, Lower Half" (ridiculous!).
And there you go. Simple, sensible, and easy. Heck, I believe we're even seeing its effects in some of the newer content. Many dialog boxes and popups simply don't refer to players by their rank, and if I recall correctly, some simply say "Captain" anyway.
Let's finish that job and make everyone happy!
Forum vets have heard canon nerds and RP people complain about this a thousand times, but for the uninitiated, the "Admiral Problem" is the massive proliferation of characters at Vice Admiral/Lieutenant General rank in STO. There are, simply put, too many admirals!
Considering that officers of that rank are rare in any legitimate real-world military (which Star Trek is based on), and usually have far more authority than any player character (heck, they're usually stuck behind desks!), it simply doesn't make a whole lot of sense, even with the many "headcanon" rationalizations that have popped up over the years.
Obviously, this is a minor problem in the grand scheme of things. "Vice Admiral" is simply an arbitrary rank, a different way of saying "Level 50", and a way to justify costume pieces that allow players to dress up like Admirals if they want. Unfortunately many of the solutions proposed so far either unfairly impose the will of RP'ers on everyone (like rejiggering the rank structure to top out at "Captain") or preserve the less-than-ideal status quo. And let's face it, some players LIKE being called "Vice Admiral". No one should hold that against them.
Thusly, I came up with this minor proposal that, in my estimation, should help to satisfy all parties. It's probably been proposed before (perhaps even by me, but sadly the forums have a sucky search function), but I believe that with STO's new focus on revamping existing systems, now might be a good time to raise the discussion again.
Without further ado, here it is:
Let's just look over all the mission text in the game that refers to the player's rank (probably using the <PlayerRank> dialog tags like in the Foundry, and change it to say "Captain" (or "Commander" in the case of Romulan characters).
That's it. It's very simple, and could probably be done by an unpaid intern in a couple of weeks during a lull period between seasons.
How does this make sense? That's also very simple. In most real-world navies (which Starfleet is based on), tradition dictates that the commanding officer of any vessel be referred to as "Captain" regardless of their actual rank. This serves to emphasize that person's role as the commanding officer of the vessel, and confirms that person's authority when it comes to the day-to-day operations of the ship.
As a captain, you may have an admiral aboard your ship, but that admiral will (on paper at least), have no say in how YOU command the ship. He may tell you where to go, but it is YOUR role to decide how best to get there. He may tell you to attack an enemy, but it is YOUR responsibility to order your crew to fire the weapons.
This minor change solves virtually every aspect of the "Admiral Problem". It explains how an ensign may be put in command of a starship, explains how a player may end up taking marching orders from a much lower-ranked NPC, and solves the many awkward instances of your bridge officers calling you "Rear Admiral, Lower Half" (ridiculous!).
And there you go. Simple, sensible, and easy. Heck, I believe we're even seeing its effects in some of the newer content. Many dialog boxes and popups simply don't refer to players by their rank, and if I recall correctly, some simply say "Captain" anyway.
Let's finish that job and make everyone happy!
Post edited by unangbangkay on
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Somebody was going to say it.
Oh, wow. Didn't see that coming. :-)
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As for the suggestion it self, technically anyone in charge of a ship is called Captain so that would work.
TRIBBLE Hydra! Hail Janeway!
That's also an option, but it would require actual programming work and potential changes to how titles are displayed and reacted to in the game by NPCs. Have you ever seen an NPC refer to you by your accolade/mission title in the game? I've never seen an NPC call me "Moist" or "Torpedo Target" or "MACO Commander".
By comparison, there's possibly some kind of text file or foundry database file sitting on the server that contains all the dialog in the game, formatted with tags to tell the game which terms to use from an index. Similar systems are used in all manner of games, and lie at the core of how many games' single-player dialog can be modified (see: Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate, Fallout games, and others).
TL;DR you have a valid point, but my solution is the path of least resistance and most feasibility (in my opinion)
Yes, I noticed this, too, but again, my proposal contradicts nothing. As noted, no matter what rank you are, if you command a ship people on the ship will call you "Captain". So the NPCs can still praise your rising star and address you as "Captain", which makes a lot of sense since even as "Admiral" players have almost no authority that reflects the responsibilities of actual admirals.
Heck, if we did have those responsibilities and duties, STO would be a strategy/tactical game, with players commanding squadrons of starships. At best they might have a "flagship" that they'd stay in but those flagships would be captained by actual captains rather than themselves personally, since they'd be occupied by running the battle at the macro level.
Hmm, a massively multiplayer Star Trek tactical game doesn't sound too bad at all
Please? Thank you.
Lately it's particularly hard to accept that I'm supposed to be an Admiral in STO. The Dyson sphere ground battlezone: Admirals getting called up to fight on the front lines in a ground war, with only two people selected from their ship's senior staff to protect them?
Shouldn't Admirals be sending security detachments to handle that kind of stuff, while they deal with strategic planning or something?
Bad enough the game made me an Admiral; it doesn't even seem to realise it did it.
What "Admiral Problem?" *evil glare*
*grabs popcorn*
I wasn't suggesting that Titles be used in dialogue, just that we should be able to set our desired rank the same way that we set our Titles. Dialogue tags that refer to our rank would then use the rank we set.
TL;DR? I didn't feel your proposal was too long, and I did read it. I quite agree with it. But I'd still like to see an option to set rank.
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Assuming that the game dialogue is using a 'rank' tag, that would be ideal.
But basically, it's a problem that doesn't require a solution. I don't think sufficient people care enough about it for Cryptic to do anything about it.
I would have preferred if the game had been purely skill-based with fewer ranks, with the ranks detached from xp and related to time spent in-game or related to how deeply one has gone into the story, something like that, plus the above-mentioned "you're a captain if you're in command of a ship" thing. But the system we have is so entrenched it's not going to change at this late stage.
- Separate ranks from levels
- Make ranks into titles that can be unlocked upon reaching a certain level
- Player Characters can choose whichever of the currently-unlocked ranks they want, and that would be what NPCs would address you as.
Consequently, episode mission, item unlocks, exchange filters and ship tiers would all have to be tweaked so that their level requirements become simply Level 10 and Level 50 rather than Lieutenant Commander(10) and Vice Admiral (50).
End Result I get to be a Level 50 Captain, you could be a Level 50 Admiral, somebody could even be a Level 50 Lieutenant.
Furthermore, Cryptic can then easily increase the level cap for content (60? 70?) without having to devise increasingly ridiculously high ranks to go with them.
Yes, it's more a workaround than a solution, but my point is that my workaround is a very simple solution that requires no changes to the way anything is displayed. It simply requires a Find-and-Replace of the "player rank" tag in whatever file contains all the dialog with the word "Captain".
We can already do that very thing in the Foundry when writing NPC and mission dialog, simply by not using the "Player Rank" tag and writing "Captain". I'm working on a foundry mission based on a doff assignment chain and this is what I'm doing. Cryptic being the people that invented the foundry and claiming that it's not too dissimilar from the tools used to create mission content, I'd like to believe that it's well within their capabilities.
As I mentioned in my wall of text, Cryptic could have an unpaid intern do it over the weekend and it would take very few man-hours away from real problems.
Compare that to adding, "Player Rank" tags to every single accolade and rank title in the game, which would likely require a minor rejiggering of how rank tags are displayed in the game during dialog (which is the goal of my solution, mind you), as well as adding some kind of distinction between "player level" (which is represented by the rank) and "player title" (which is the thing we can set in the record), and rules to determine which one is shown in mission dialog and text pop-ups.
At the risk of sounding like the guy who only says "no", those are just the points of concern I can think of off the top of my head. I'm no game designer, but as I see it all those require more work than my (modest) proposal
How about this instead.
The problem is, as I have stated repeatedly, is that all these changes (which have been proposed before by other players annoyed by the admiral problem), would require work. Work on an admittedly small problem in a very low-priority segment of the game (it's been demonstrated that accomodating role-players is a low priority for most MMOs, STO included).
My solution, as I have said, is essentially as simple as editing single text or database file (assuming STO's approach to dialog is anything like certain other games or its own foundry). At its most comprehensive it might require delving into the missions in whatever Foundry-like tool Cryptic uses to create missions.
The other proposals, at their most comprehensive require:
- Reworking the way accolade titles are represented in NPC dialog and mission text
- Reworking the way accolade titles are shown versus player ranks
- Reworking the way ranks are represented in the first place
- Having Leonard Nimoy (who is in no condition to work at the moment) record new "congratulations" dialog for leveling up to a new rank block
This forum is fond of talking about how time is money, and my idea is much "cheaper" to execute. It may not be a perfect solution, but as I see it it's a light solution that addresses the concerns of all parties - the ones that want to be called admiral, the ones that want less admirals, and the ones that want something more historically accurate.
-Leonard Nimoy, RIP
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We should not be admirals because well we don't do admiral stuff like command squadrons.
Now for fleet commanders who actually run a fleet, well IMHO they should get to use Vice admiral because well they actually run the show and his senior officers in that fleet should be rear admirals, rest of us captain or commodore.
Admiral rank should be set aside for those who actually run fleets.
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Mhm I think this
Is easier. Just changing the "player rank" script to address the customized one. That would actually not be a big deal, far less work then going through every piece of dialog AND it allows a wider range...
After all... some WANT to be Admiral. My tac used to "stay" lt.Cmdr on the defiant (RP wise just as a temporal assignment like Worf). My Romulan goes by "Subcommander" (since Subcommanders actually commanded Warbirds, see the infamous Taris, and the Rank just sounds cooler and more "Romulan" to me then Commander or Admiral) ect ect.
So this is the way to go IMO. Same should be done for BOs BTW, since not all of them should be commander.
The judgement will be "demotion" to captain.
Of cause, there is the question of what would be offensive enough to actually get you in front of a court in the first place... After all, how many of us aren't/havn't:
Gonna be pretty hard to top those.
Read that "demotion" approach over and over. Honestly I don't think its necessary. Just make it customizable. Why overcomplicating things?
The ones who do not want to be admirals do not RP as admirals anyway.
(also, no matter how much the people who want to be admiral ignore that obvious fact: RPing as Admiral means staying in ESD^^ So everyone who does RP as Admiral and isn't on ESD is doing it wrong... )
We're not sure it would be easier, because again, it would require changing the reference of the "Player Rank" tag to call the title, and we don't know if the dialog is built to do that in the current scripting (though I think the job would be simple enough). Recall that there is not a single instance anywhere in the game where any NPC refers to the title you select in your record.
Obviously since the game is capable of seeing your full name, it's possible to call up that information, and it's not a big logical leap to change the reference, like you suggest, but in my estimation it would take less effort to conduct a blanket find-and-replace in the mission dialog.
It would also require no actual new "mechanical" features which could potentially cause bugs. The only risk here would be a potential typo. Let's remember that STO is such an intricate game that somehow Cryptic, in the process of fixing some unrelated bug, managed to break ship customization in such a way that we could equip two different nacelles on each side of the ship for a little while.
Development ain't easy, and any solution that minimizes the amount of coding to do is probably the preferable one.
Actually we are sure and this part IS easy. And yes, cnaging the reference if "player rank" is exactly what we ask for. That a simple enough script. Relatively easy at least. I don't know much about programming, but even I know that this script isn't more then one line.
And referring to the "current" title... well it MIGHT be a fix... although I don't think being addressed as "mater recruiter Darklighter" or "heavy hitter Darklighter" would be a good think. If they are working out that, they should just add a new customizable rank feature. That can't be that hard.
Tell that to Admiral Ross...
The best solution I would offer from years of debating this is:
1) Let the player set their display rank and have this be in the tailor interface, based on pips selected.
2) No pips/stripes/baldric/insignia visible for a uniform top? The player is addressed as Captain or maybe you simply add a non-visible rank selector to the uniform interface at the tailor.
This would auto-update rank based on costume slot being worn.
I also think it would be more consistent with the way ship selection works now to have species be set in the tailor and each costume slot to have its own species and trait loadout attached. This would be how re-species could work.
You could only change costumes while on social or sector maps. And I'd add an animation for the change, maybe a transporter effect coupled with replicator effect. Kinda like CoH's costume change auras. It would look more polished than the rapid cut costume changes in game now.