These are schematics of art design. Where are the visual 3D working model with the consoles so attached to each vessels. So everyone would get some sort of idea of what they're getting with these new type of ships.
How and what are they equip with? Not just show text, show the actually visual images. Are they coming with stock MK 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 weapons, warp core, deflector, impulse, shields? Any universal consoles or locked consoles. Things like that.
while cloak is great for movement and alpha strike, surely you want to be harder to
target during combat as well, if the materials and designs they are using improve on
that, would that not be an added bonus?
best explanation so far. which the devs didnt come up with yet ,-)
a flat design is useful for having less hittable surface (look at the achilles class for example)
i think the main problem with these ships was, that they changed to much at once. hull and material =bad idea and leaving trek
hullshape+old materials= fine
old shapes+new material= fine (still not for me but o-k-a-y)
changing both and presenting that double-changed version was just accidentally wrong and a hard hit for "oldschool" st fans
i say: im okay with the intelships shape if they come with the material of the last picture.
im also okay if the guardian would come with the new material.
but i wouldnt mix that ;-)
and please PW/Cryptic:
please dont make us buy a specific version of a ship or a specific to get rid of that material
(like with the dyson)
(so tac intel phantom=darkmaterial and sci intel phantom light grey material, so i have to buy both ...)
Well written blog that talks the talk for a great corporate level design pitch. Brad's words by themselves convinced me there was great focus and talent behind this... and then there was the actual pictures of the Fed ships, and it all fell to pieces.
I don't get it. JamJamz & Co did such a great job with ships like the Ambassador and the new Voyager (Intrepid class) makeover, but these "intelligence" ships are not intelligent at all. This is gamey and late 90s level quality for a non-Star Trek game. But then you look at the Rom KDF ships, and it's a complete 180. All the investment went into those. I'm happy for those factions, KDF needs more bada*s ships, but these Fed ones don't fit proper Starfleet (maybe Section 31 in very limited quantities, but thats it). They would never see screentime in a tv series.
In the future, try to think more like Andrew Probert or Rick Sternbach, not Lockheed Martin.
i think it is easy to forget that while there are many many of us playing this game, in the
story arc, we are a single player.. in terms of the story line there will only be a very small
number of these ships, if not only 1 of each, so that does play into the s31 style setup.
Yet, we also wanted players to be able to further customize these ships to fit their own preferences. To that end we have been creating numerous configuration options for each ship as well as enabling traditional faction materials.
Yah for this, with a bit of rejigging these ships might be passable. Cryptic may have just done the best thing for Delta Rising.
It a shame that Cryptic stuck to science, engineering and tactical, rather than just giving us a brand new class of ship called I don't know, the intelligence class. Rather than shoehorning in the idea that there a science, tactical and Cruiser class intelligence ships, which to me just doesn't make sense. It make more sense that the Federation, Romulan and Klingon would work together produce a one of special intelligence class vessels to explore the Delta Quadrant and get the lay of the land there.
Before Star Trek 2, every (canon) starship was laid out like the enterprise
Before "The Battle" no starship had 4 nacelles
Before season 3 of DS9, the federation had no tough little warships
Before the pilot of VOY, no ship had external moving parts
Point: Just because the aesthetic is in a different direction, they can still be federation ships. If someone on the internet had come up with the Defiant without it being in the show, everyone would have said the exact same things about it not looking like a starfleet ship.
As far as the angular "stealth" design goes, the idea is that it's meant to remind someone if a stealth craft, not that space ships need those shapes to be stealthy (but is scifi, so they can technobabble a justification if they want).
In the end, this is the direction they went with the intelligence ships, but if you don't like them, no worries, there will still be more traditional designs coming too.
Thing is, I kinda like the Eclipse. I like 4 nacelled cruisers, I quite like the broad but thin nacelles on the ship, and I like that it doesn't much look like an Enterprise (they always seem too grand for me to be comfortable with them); I just wish it had a softer shape, and a visible bridge, and decent sized bussard collectors like it has in that little concept pic.
I'm really, really, torn on this ship. I kinda love it and hate it in equal measure; and, while I want to get it, if I did get it I'd spend the whole time I'm flying it around wishing everything about it was just a little bit different (and that will bug me no end).
as i read the blog about the artwork for the intelligence ships, down to where the design template inspirations were listed, i was wondering why not make these intelligence ships higher tier "versions" or "skins" of existing ships, instead of completely different class ships entirely?
for example, the escort intelligence ship is modelled after the defiant and the tempest classes of ships. the defiant is my favorite ship to use, and i would probably use it over any of the tier six ships because i like it so much. even if i were to purchase the delta pack and have all of the intelligence ships at my disposal, i would still probably use my defiant. so, what if the intelligence escort were just a higher level model of the basic defiant? because there are the tactical escort, its refit, its retrofit, and its fleet variant. why not make it so that the intelligence escort is the next one up from that (and maybe have its own fleet variant as well)?
i believe this would make a lot of players who, like me, enjoy the visuals that come with using their favorite ships, and who also don't like the half-assed "upgrade" modules that can be used to bring tier five ships up to the diet coke tier six level, diet coke meaning without all the bells and whistles.
making these intelligence ships compatible skins for tier five ships would make a whole lot of us players happy. especially us lifetime members.
Will the romulan vessels actually have some parts customization, or are we doomed to forever have only the one set with the zen-cost very-slightly-different refit set on every vessel ever?
Surely more than just A romulan design was done? Or have those gone the way of the secondary deflector slot as well?
I swear, it's like trying to convince you guys to remember Birds of Prey exist. Look, we want more art and parts because we like what these ships look like. If none of us gave a flying **** at all about them, we wouldn't clamor for more bits to individualise them.
PS: Birds of prey exist, and one of these days a klingon special should actually get to be one. They make raiders, NOT only battlecruisers ever. A science ship wouldn't be bad as well.
In the end, players will have the option to fully embrace our new Intelligence aesthetic, complete with its aggressive and stealthy style, or tweak components and materials for a more traditional look.
So does that mean I can use the Defiant Retrofit and Sao Paulo skin on my new Phantom Intel Escort?
Because that would be petty awesome cuz I love the Sao Paulo design.
So does that mean I can use the Defiant Retrofit and Sao Paulo skin on my new Phantom Intel Escort?
Because that would be petty awesome cuz I love the Sao Paulo design.
Ian Richards @STO_JamJamz Sep 3
Intel ships will have the expected array of faction-appropriate materials, veteran materials included.
I like that there are other design possibilities for the various Federations ships (alternate skins, filling in the donut), but do the KDF and Rom ships also come with access to alternate hull materials and/or alternate components? Also, are there plans to round out the KDF and Rom Intelligence Ship options (3 Fed Intelligence Ships vs 1 each KDF/Rom Intelligence Ship)? I know a big part of this is putting concerns about the whole "Tron" visuals to rest in order to sell the Ops Pack, but there is still a significant gap in value between what a Federation-main (or Federation-only) player gets out of it compared to what KDF-/Rom-main (or KDF-/Rom-only) player gets out of it. There is little reason for the latter group to purchase the Ops Pack rather than buying the ships you'll use most piecemeal, "Tron" visuals or no.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
Here's my rationale for disliking the current (Especially the Scryer) design for the Intelligence ships:
We know what ships in Star Trek look like for the 22nd, 23rd and 24th Centuries. We also know what ships look like in the 26th Century, albeit only shown briefly, and as a schematic. Lastly, we know what ships look like in the 28th Century (Wells Class).
Is it so hard for Cryptic to bridge the gap in terms of design, from the 24th Century style, and moving ships in the direction of the 26th/28th Century style? Don't even have to work hard to justify a more 28th Century style look in the 25th Century, when you added a bunch of timeships to the game. Something I have a big time dealing with, since it wouldn't be very canon to keep ships from the 28th Century flying around in the 25th. Imagine the amount of temporal violations committed by their mere presence.
The Intel Escort is the only ships I might possibly consider flying, but the Scryer and the Cruiser looks bad in various ways (both with Intelligence material, and standard Federation materials). The Cruiser looks bad for having incredibly angular and pointy nacelles, and flip-floppy pylons that look like they'll break just by looking at them. Hiding the bridge and windows doesn't make sense, when you already have ships ingame which can "hide" the windows during combat. The Scryer, has from my understanding, not 1, not 2 but THREE potential Deflectors. You have the underslung deflector in a standard stardrive position. You have the top-hanging deflector reminiscent of the "pods" from the Luna Class. And lastly, you have the "strip" at the forward edge of the saucer, which is very similar to the strip on the forward edge of the Escort (which I assume to be a deflector). It also fails in it's design lineage off the Luna, by cutting up the saucer into a "doughnut" shaped design. Lots of wasted space there, which could've been used for important tactical and intelligence subsystems.
Now for the gimmick: The Intelligence Probes. Why? Ships have a full range of sensor capabilities of their own. Tactical Officers can easily scan for weaknesses in both enemy power grids, weapon arrays and shield systems. What use would these Intelligence Probes have?
And finally: Stealth. Useless concept is useless. We have cloaking devices, we have battle cloaking devices, and we have enhanced cloaking devices. All of which 100% obscures ships from being visible to the enemy. Designing ships that are more angular, more sleek, and using materials that are reminiscent of 21st Century Aircraft is just wrong, plain and simple.
I'm sure the designers have put a lot of effort into working on these ships, but they are far from my taste, and I feel they have no place in the Star Trek IP.
This is definitely what I would expect an Section 31 Starship to look like. As to them not holding a classic Federation feel... what reason would Section 31 have for follwing starfleet designs? In fact it would be the opposite, if the configurations are unknown their actions cant be traced back to Starfleet. (Of course I am assuming these to be Section 31 ships which may not be true).
You know, it is a nice that the process was described in the blog. The problem with stealth that was not considered by the dev team is function. In a stealth craft, nothing exists without function. In the fed escort there is a connecting piece between the aft end of the warp nacelles that serves no functional purpose. In the Steamrunner, that connection housed the ship's deflector. In the T6 ship it holds only a few windows as if it was the ship's pub. Useless addition! It is like the Defiant and the Steamrunner were first cousins and they had an illegitimate inbred baby one night.
In the cruiser, the warp nacelles are paper thin. In the F22 fighter and in every modern submarine that ever existed, the engines are still a major part of the pass of the machine, sometimes over half of the machine's volume. Not like the wings of a fighter that only hold flaps for maneuvering. Did the dev team not consider the stealthiest platform ever devised by modern militaries, the nuclear submarine? These tubes are 30 to over 50 percent propulsion system.
It is nice to see that the dev team thought it through and I am not slamming them for a few major oversights. But in the end, these ships are simply too hideous to pilot. They are also so wrong at the fundamental level that I would still rather fly my 9 console mirror ship (against the 11 console T6s) than these disgusting monsters.
This is definitely what I would expect an Section 31 Starship to look like. As to them not holding a classic Federation feel... what reason would Section 31 have for follwing starfleet designs? In fact it would be the opposite, if the configurations are unknown their actions cant be traced back to Starfleet. (Of course I am assuming these to be Section 31 ships which may not be true).
I remember in a podcast they were talking making a Sec' 31 ship that was mostly black and could cloak.... but it was almost a year ago.....
I'm sorry to people who I, in the past, insulted, annoyed, etc.
Instead of coming up with totally new boats that bear only a passing familiarity with the ships of Star Trek I'd rather you stick with the classic designs and simply improve the internals like weapon slots and consoles.
I don't want to fly some heretofore unknown ship which just happens to come with the registry "NCC;" if I'm playing "Star Trek Online" and in the Delta Quadrant to boot there is only one ship I am interested in: Voyager.
I'm not trying to rain on the dev's parade but I hope most people would agree with me: If it ain't broke don't fix it.
Looking at these new intel ships I find myself thinking "why not a T.I.E. Fighter?"
"The first vessel that I served on as captain was called Stargazer. It was an overworked, underpowered vessel, always on the verge of flying apart at the seams. In every measurable sense, my Enterprise is far superior. But there are times when I would give almost anything... to command the Stargazer again." -- Jean-Luc Picard, Captain, U.S.S. Enterprise.
I like that there are other design possibilities for the various Federations ships (alternate skins, filling in the donut), but do the KDF and Rom ships also come with access to alternate hull materials and/or alternate components? Also, are there plans to round out the KDF and Rom Intelligence Ship options (3 Fed Intelligence Ships vs 1 each KDF/Rom Intelligence Ship)? I know a big part of this is putting concerns about the whole "Tron" visuals to rest in order to sell the Ops Pack, but there is still a significant gap in value between what a Federation-main (or Federation-only) player gets out of it compared to what KDF-/Rom-main (or KDF-/Rom-only) player gets out of it. There is little reason for the latter group to purchase the Ops Pack rather than buying the ships you'll use most piecemeal, "Tron" visuals or no.
i find it a more than a little funny that the term 'tron visuals' is being thrown around in such a
derogative manner. is it really that strange a concept to use these glowing colours to highlight
and accentuate the lines of these ships, and in the faction colours too.. totally crazy eh? oh
hang on a minute.. aegis set anyone?
Really wish they had stuck more to the concept designs and followed through with keeping the textures cleaner on the fed ships. I do like the klink and romulan stuff. The fed ships just look like they lost out in translation from concept to finished product. I do like the little probe thing. Saw another image of it in one of the other dev post and it still looks good.
Like others have posted Id really love to see further work on the roughs also the center one and the lower right one look nice.
i find it a more than a little funny that the term 'tron visuals' is being thrown around in such a
derogative manner. is it really that strange a concept to use these glowing colours to highlight
and accentuate the lines of these ships, and in the faction colours too.. totally crazy eh? oh
hang on a minute.. aegis set anyone?
People complained about it with Aegis too. Luckily, we can turn the visuals of sets off.
Comments
How and what are they equip with? Not just show text, show the actually visual images. Are they coming with stock MK 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 weapons, warp core, deflector, impulse, shields? Any universal consoles or locked consoles. Things like that.
Thanks!
Time will only tell!
best explanation so far. which the devs didnt come up with yet ,-)
a flat design is useful for having less hittable surface (look at the achilles class for example)
i think the main problem with these ships was, that they changed to much at once. hull and material =bad idea and leaving trek
hullshape+old materials= fine
old shapes+new material= fine (still not for me but o-k-a-y)
changing both and presenting that double-changed version was just accidentally wrong and a hard hit for "oldschool" st fans
i say: im okay with the intelships shape if they come with the material of the last picture.
im also okay if the guardian would come with the new material.
but i wouldnt mix that ;-)
and please PW/Cryptic:
please dont make us buy a specific version of a ship or a specific to get rid of that material
(like with the dyson)
(so tac intel phantom=darkmaterial and sci intel phantom light grey material, so i have to buy both ...)
i think it is easy to forget that while there are many many of us playing this game, in the
story arc, we are a single player.. in terms of the story line there will only be a very small
number of these ships, if not only 1 of each, so that does play into the s31 style setup.
Yah for this, with a bit of rejigging these ships might be passable. Cryptic may have just done the best thing for Delta Rising.
It a shame that Cryptic stuck to science, engineering and tactical, rather than just giving us a brand new class of ship called I don't know, the intelligence class. Rather than shoehorning in the idea that there a science, tactical and Cruiser class intelligence ships, which to me just doesn't make sense. It make more sense that the Federation, Romulan and Klingon would work together produce a one of special intelligence class vessels to explore the Delta Quadrant and get the lay of the land there.
Thing is, I kinda like the Eclipse. I like 4 nacelled cruisers, I quite like the broad but thin nacelles on the ship, and I like that it doesn't much look like an Enterprise (they always seem too grand for me to be comfortable with them); I just wish it had a softer shape, and a visible bridge, and decent sized bussard collectors like it has in that little concept pic.
I'm really, really, torn on this ship. I kinda love it and hate it in equal measure; and, while I want to get it, if I did get it I'd spend the whole time I'm flying it around wishing everything about it was just a little bit different (and that will bug me no end).
for example, the escort intelligence ship is modelled after the defiant and the tempest classes of ships. the defiant is my favorite ship to use, and i would probably use it over any of the tier six ships because i like it so much. even if i were to purchase the delta pack and have all of the intelligence ships at my disposal, i would still probably use my defiant. so, what if the intelligence escort were just a higher level model of the basic defiant? because there are the tactical escort, its refit, its retrofit, and its fleet variant. why not make it so that the intelligence escort is the next one up from that (and maybe have its own fleet variant as well)?
i believe this would make a lot of players who, like me, enjoy the visuals that come with using their favorite ships, and who also don't like the half-assed "upgrade" modules that can be used to bring tier five ships up to the diet coke tier six level, diet coke meaning without all the bells and whistles.
making these intelligence ships compatible skins for tier five ships would make a whole lot of us players happy. especially us lifetime members.
thank you for your consideration.
Darkrider
Ship in middle with nacelles from bottom left ship would be nice.
Starship Concepts.
d,
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Please keep the QQ to a minimum.
>>>PUNISH THE FEDs<<<
>>>Positive Feedback from a PvE HERO<<<
Surely more than just A romulan design was done? Or have those gone the way of the secondary deflector slot as well?
I swear, it's like trying to convince you guys to remember Birds of Prey exist. Look, we want more art and parts because we like what these ships look like. If none of us gave a flying **** at all about them, we wouldn't clamor for more bits to individualise them.
PS: Birds of prey exist, and one of these days a klingon special should actually get to be one. They make raiders, NOT only battlecruisers ever. A science ship wouldn't be bad as well.
Because it's shiny? :P
I'm sorry to people who I, in the past, insulted, annoyed, etc.
So does that mean I can use the Defiant Retrofit and Sao Paulo skin on my new Phantom Intel Escort?
Because that would be petty awesome cuz I love the Sao Paulo design.
The KDF and Romulan ships are not so far off the mark. The Fed ships though look completely alien.
jking, love the design!
Ian Richards @STO_JamJamz Sep 3
Intel ships will have the expected array of faction-appropriate materials, veteran materials included.
https://twitter.com/STO_JamJamz/status/507302498067963904
The fed sci's saucer looks like a hemorrhoid pillow
Sweet thank you wilv
We know what ships in Star Trek look like for the 22nd, 23rd and 24th Centuries. We also know what ships look like in the 26th Century, albeit only shown briefly, and as a schematic. Lastly, we know what ships look like in the 28th Century (Wells Class).
Is it so hard for Cryptic to bridge the gap in terms of design, from the 24th Century style, and moving ships in the direction of the 26th/28th Century style? Don't even have to work hard to justify a more 28th Century style look in the 25th Century, when you added a bunch of timeships to the game. Something I have a big time dealing with, since it wouldn't be very canon to keep ships from the 28th Century flying around in the 25th. Imagine the amount of temporal violations committed by their mere presence.
The Intel Escort is the only ships I might possibly consider flying, but the Scryer and the Cruiser looks bad in various ways (both with Intelligence material, and standard Federation materials). The Cruiser looks bad for having incredibly angular and pointy nacelles, and flip-floppy pylons that look like they'll break just by looking at them. Hiding the bridge and windows doesn't make sense, when you already have ships ingame which can "hide" the windows during combat. The Scryer, has from my understanding, not 1, not 2 but THREE potential Deflectors. You have the underslung deflector in a standard stardrive position. You have the top-hanging deflector reminiscent of the "pods" from the Luna Class. And lastly, you have the "strip" at the forward edge of the saucer, which is very similar to the strip on the forward edge of the Escort (which I assume to be a deflector). It also fails in it's design lineage off the Luna, by cutting up the saucer into a "doughnut" shaped design. Lots of wasted space there, which could've been used for important tactical and intelligence subsystems.
Now for the gimmick: The Intelligence Probes. Why? Ships have a full range of sensor capabilities of their own. Tactical Officers can easily scan for weaknesses in both enemy power grids, weapon arrays and shield systems. What use would these Intelligence Probes have?
And finally: Stealth. Useless concept is useless. We have cloaking devices, we have battle cloaking devices, and we have enhanced cloaking devices. All of which 100% obscures ships from being visible to the enemy. Designing ships that are more angular, more sleek, and using materials that are reminiscent of 21st Century Aircraft is just wrong, plain and simple.
I'm sure the designers have put a lot of effort into working on these ships, but they are far from my taste, and I feel they have no place in the Star Trek IP.
THE END
This is definitely what I would expect an Section 31 Starship to look like. As to them not holding a classic Federation feel... what reason would Section 31 have for follwing starfleet designs? In fact it would be the opposite, if the configurations are unknown their actions cant be traced back to Starfleet. (Of course I am assuming these to be Section 31 ships which may not be true).
In the cruiser, the warp nacelles are paper thin. In the F22 fighter and in every modern submarine that ever existed, the engines are still a major part of the pass of the machine, sometimes over half of the machine's volume. Not like the wings of a fighter that only hold flaps for maneuvering. Did the dev team not consider the stealthiest platform ever devised by modern militaries, the nuclear submarine? These tubes are 30 to over 50 percent propulsion system.
It is nice to see that the dev team thought it through and I am not slamming them for a few major oversights. But in the end, these ships are simply too hideous to pilot. They are also so wrong at the fundamental level that I would still rather fly my 9 console mirror ship (against the 11 console T6s) than these disgusting monsters.
I remember in a podcast they were talking making a Sec' 31 ship that was mostly black and could cloak.... but it was almost a year ago.....
I'm sorry to people who I, in the past, insulted, annoyed, etc.
Instead of coming up with totally new boats that bear only a passing familiarity with the ships of Star Trek I'd rather you stick with the classic designs and simply improve the internals like weapon slots and consoles.
I don't want to fly some heretofore unknown ship which just happens to come with the registry "NCC;" if I'm playing "Star Trek Online" and in the Delta Quadrant to boot there is only one ship I am interested in: Voyager.
I'm not trying to rain on the dev's parade but I hope most people would agree with me: If it ain't broke don't fix it.
Looking at these new intel ships I find myself thinking "why not a T.I.E. Fighter?"
"The first vessel that I served on as captain was called Stargazer. It was an overworked, underpowered vessel, always on the verge of flying apart at the seams. In every measurable sense, my Enterprise is far superior. But there are times when I would give almost anything... to command the Stargazer again." -- Jean-Luc Picard, Captain, U.S.S. Enterprise.
i find it a more than a little funny that the term 'tron visuals' is being thrown around in such a
derogative manner. is it really that strange a concept to use these glowing colours to highlight
and accentuate the lines of these ships, and in the faction colours too.. totally crazy eh? oh
hang on a minute.. aegis set anyone?
Like others have posted Id really love to see further work on the roughs also the center one and the lower right one look nice.
People complained about it with Aegis too. Luckily, we can turn the visuals of sets off.