http://www.podcastugc.com/archives/861
While I agree with both ideas. Star trek online does need advancement to keep going, and it needs variety, to keep people interested. The only issue I have is star ships, need to stay completely competitive, not for their attributes. Because people grow a personal attachment to a look or design of their ship. It is basically their customized space character, its obvious cryptic realized this early on, with the amount of customization they gave ships. Along with Romulans having all tier ships available at end game.
I have idea, that would satisfy the need to, maintain your space character's look. Any class of any ship should be able to get the stats/layout of another of a similar class. Aka cruisers with cruisers, escorts with escorts, battle-cruisers with battle-cruisers. But in order to take one layout, and place it on another ship you must own that ship. Thous it won't hurt cryptic business, perhaps even improve it.
I know this would take a lot of engineering time to implement, I think it would be worthy investment business wise. I however don't want this to be easy way out for, not balancing engineering, tactical, science bridge layouts.
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What we do know is the T6 ships are designed to take advantage of a new class of [redacted] boff, which is the primary driver of what sets them apart from T5 ships. Al said as much in the podcast.
So just as with Tac/EWng or Sci boff abilities, this new class will have a set of skills you can leverage that are unique to them. Up to 4 assuming they have a similar development scale as other boffs.
Which rank of skill becomes available may also be tied to your progression from 50 to 60.
Likely the layouts of the ships will be similar to what we've seen in the past, the only difference will be a range of new powers.
I'm speculating here, but it seems the most likely outcome.
Reasonable speculation, but if there effectiveness is so great, that they preform better in every way say pve events or pvp. Then that's what people will play. Its one of the reason tact heavy layouts are so sought after in current content.
I think the new boff, will likely be more tied to the new ship class, especially commander version.
Cryptic might give us more boff slots for [redacted]
My character Tsin'xing
Now if we can just transfer that awesome Odyssey bridge to all cruisers as well
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I really don't care about the money/Zen/resources needed to make these ships fully belong in the same weightclass as any end-game T6 ship. I just want to have the option, the possibility to do that regardless of the manner in which it would be obtainable.
I have no issues bying a T6 ship, if I can buy a skin I like for aditional 500 Zen or such - or if I'm able to use a skin from a C-Store T5 ship I already own as long as it's in the same carreer class. I'd be more than fine with that. Just don't force me to change my belloved ships that I've been using for a long time and have light RP stories built around them if I want to have a top-notch ship after Ex.2, that won't end well.
The only ones I'm a little unsure on implementation would be romulan ships which have no concurrent classes. Only two ships who could trade layouts/stats would be Ha'apax and D'deridex. They could of course make the lockbox ships, give specific alt stats for warbirds...
redacted=we dont know yet
I kinda agree. Ship skins, though?! They'll never do that.
But yeah, most of my lockbox ships I'm pretty attached to.
Look at some of the earlier ships; the Intrepid and her skins, the Galaxy (pre Tier #5) and her skins, then take a look at the more recent releases. The Ambassador is limited, the Avenger has nothing (except for different nacelle positioning), and most of the Republic Ships come with two skins per ship, compared to the three - five that some older FED ships have.
KDF ships (most of them) also suffer here. I think the exception is the B'rel (and skins) along with the Vor'cha/Tor'khat. I'm completely with you in that some people grow attached to certain ships, but I'm not convinced Cryptic understand that, not fully anyway.
For every one player who purchases a brand new ship, I'd think there is equally the same number of people (if not more) who would rather stick with their Galaxy, Defiant or Intrepid.
There has been so much secrecy and hush-hush surrounding the tier 5 ship updates, but there have been many hints too. But every time Geko speaks, he throws my own hypotheses off. At first, I thought that he was hinting that tier 5 ships will be upgradeable via R&D. He shot that down at STLV, but the hints were still there at a system like that, perhaps a retrofit system or something. Hell, there was a possibility that every ship in the game could be upgraded to tier 6 with the hints.
But here... he mentions the 180ish tier 5 ships and how it would be too much work to upgrade them, implying that tier 5 upgrades may be for specific ships, perhaps along the lines of what happened when "tier 5.5" ships became a thing. But then if that's the case, why the secrecy in the first place? If it's not a new feature he's waiting to unveil, why does it need to be kept from us this systematically?
No, there's definitely something new here. I just can't pinpoint what it is from the hints, which seem so all-over-the-place, it's like there isn't really anything they did do to the ships to upgrade them. But they've confirmed that they have.
Sigh. I don't know.
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Now I'm worried. If I hear Geko right, it looks like T5 ship won't get any upgrade. He says we'll still be able to 'continue to use your old ships.' But he seems to say there won't be any upgrade for them. "You will still be able to use those." is NOT the same as making them 'competitive' (other than putting Mk XIV gear on them.
That's how I interpret that as well. Sounds about like saying you can use a T4 ship in endgame right now and succeed, but not be as good as a T5 or T5.5.
[speculation] Now imagine if they go a step further and do fleet T6 ships at some point down the road, and they'll be even farther behind. [/speculation]
I agree here. The "hero ships" of the various series each should have a playable representation at the highest Tier. I'm even ok with having the old Constitution class refit and represented somehow, with some sort of virtues to allow it to play on the top level field.
It's disingenuous to make the material that inspires the game play as second-class citizens within it.
Soo, basically what you've invented here is the "costume."
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and even if you did the post would likely get deleted before long.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Funny you should mention that--once upon a time in Earth & Beyond (2002-2004) I was berated in chat by a player who told me that if I wasn't doing Markov Chain analyses of trade routes to determine the most efficient way to earn credits, then I wasn't having proper fun.
I told him that it was a game, not my career, that he didn't understand "fun," and to kindly direct his attentions elsewhere. That last bit took exactly seven letters to express.
46 minutes and some seconds...is where the question of ships is raised. For those that want to avoid having to listen to 46 minutes of other stuff...
...so that you can hear Geko say, "Wait for the blogs..."
I'd be happy with that outcome.
It would make balancing the T4/5 ships much easier if it's just these new Boffs and their abilities that give T6 the edge. I suppose it would all depend on what specific trees will be available, and how horribly OP these new abilities will be.
Going by this assumption, I'm starting to see these new Boffs as 'star pupils' that you take on and train using abilities from your own specialisation tree. As if you were preening them for command so to speak.
I badly want to see more information on these trees. That's the thing that'll make or break the expansion for me.