First I have to say Thank You for this cool blog . Its nice to know the whole thinking process behind making these ships. And for the confirmation that we will be able to use faction specific materials. Thats a big thing for alot of players.
I know I'm in the minority, but I really like the look of the ships.. with the exception of the cruiser. I've never been a fan of the "stretched" look... and meh, on four nacelles.
All of these ships look, to me, like logical advances in tech for the ST universe. The Sci ship with the "doughnut" hole is very reminiscent of one of the Perpetual designs that, obviously, never made it into game. From what I recall, way back in Beta... people were disappointed then that those ships wouldn't be showing up in STO now that Perpetual was gone.
The Escort looks like a next-gen Defiant to me...
I like the sharp edges, and the darker color palette. I don't mind the "Tron" highlighting. I'm anxiously waiting for the launch of the EP so that I can actually FLY the darn things.
Your are not the only one. These are my general thoughts aswell. Like the designs and looking forward to fly these Intel ships.
Impressive, after all the negative critics they still think that their ships look good and belong into Star Trek.
Loss of reality.
>implying a handful of picky nerds' opinions define the reality of the situation
>implying only ships that are well liked upon release can belong in Star Trek
>mfw
I'm sure you guys aren't reading anymore and your designers are off in the corner crying, but.. seriously, those concept sketches are beautiful and it seems like you tossed away so much beauty in favor of pure functionality.
I know its meant to invoke the modern stealth planes, but those angles and lines look far better on a jet plane than on a Star Trek style warp ship. Federation ships should be sleek and curved, not squared and angled.
Can we have those concept designs as an optional skins for the ships? I think the upper right is what the eclipse should look like.
Everyone complaining that the angular designs are "low poly" or "1990s CGI" are completely missing the point. They're made that way to evoke the look of actual, real-world stealth aircraft like the F117 and B2, not mid-generation computer games.
And those who declare that ill-defined future "sensors" shouldn't behave like RADAR (note acronym), you're probably right. And starships shouldn't maneuver like surface ships or fighter planes, or engage in combat at ranges of less than ten kilometers. Nor should most intelligent life look like human actors with makeup and stuff stuck to their noses and/or foreheads. What's your point?
Again, I think Trek logic trumps real world logic, Trek physics (even when in error) trumps real world physics.
The height of stealth in Trek was always birds of prey and warbirds.
If this took cues from those ships, it would make sense.
Taking cues from a stealth bomber doesn't especially make sense and it seems like these designs, which started out somewhat attractive and interesting, got uglier with each pass.
The Phantom looks okay. The angular philosophy really doesn't work with saucers and protruding nacelles.
The FED intelligence ship designs look as if they borrowed from the Dreadnought design from Star Trek Into Darkness.
I understand the look of the ships have to make players think of "Stealth" whilst using them, I would have thought a more smoother/sleeker design would have been appropriate from the how the Federation ships designs have progressed.
The Romulan design is great as it looks like a natural progression for them, the Klingon design I'd have to see the actual model to decide on that one.
So, I can only understand from what has mostly been said in this post that the players would only get Federation ships just for what the ships give and not the looks.
implying the majority of players which like to play a Star Trek game instead of Tron (which would be the majority of players in STO)
implying that ships should at least look halfway like they would belong to the specific faction (aka Federation)
Implying that there are more and more players leaving the game due to the massive design failures that have been introduced lately
let me see.. 15 maybe 20 individuals posting negative comments about the ships, that
hardly constitutes a majority of opinions. especially when you consider the 2000+ people
who logged onto the podcast on friday 1700+ who were on till the end of the show,
and of those 2000+ there were no more than a few naysayers, and i mean a few. i love
having the ability to express my opinion in these forums, a game of this size with such a
varied player base needs it, but it would be kind of arrogant of me to suggest that i speak
for a majority, because while my opinions may fall in line with a % in some way, that is at
best all i can say. aside from cryptic/pwe none of us here are in any postion to state any
figures or reasons for people joining or leaving the game..
...in local news, forum sources imply that Massive design failures have led to an ever decreasing
player base in Star Trek Online...
...in local news, forum sources imply that Massive design changes have led to an ever
increasing new player base in Star Trek Online..
there may be some truth in either of those, who can tell? certainly not you or me..
and hey... just because so many people watch the daily news does not mean that they like the content.
same goes for livestreams
I really cant believe you are trying to compare a game podcast to a real world
news programme. that is wrong on so many levels that im not even going to
get into it.
It's sad the KDF only gets one intelligence ship. If the intent was to give each faction a ship for each main 'class' of vessels, then KDF should at least get an intelligence raider (aka Bird of Prey). That would even fit in the theme of stealthy spy ships. Better still would be to give them an intelligence raptor or somehow a carrier as well.
Similar for Romulans: Though their typical ships are all warbirds and mostly tactically focused, they still have the so-called 'warbird battlecruisers' that could have been represented among intelligence ships.
I was hoping that imbalance between factions (and fractions) would be getting solved soon, but from the tone of this blog, it seems these 5 intelligence ships are it for a long time. Not sure if other intelligence ships are even planned at this point.
On another note, I wonder how the 4 pleasing, visibly federation ship sketches on the second pic became the 3 FED intelligence ships that not only don't fit at all among FED designs, but also simply don't look well, not even with normal materials as shown lower (personnal opinion of course). I understand the goal was to make them different than a typical FED ship, but they're just too far off and more fitting for other franchises than Star Trek.
TOIVA, Toi Vaxx, Toia Vix, Toveg, T'vritha, To Vrax: Bring in the Allegiance class. Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider. Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
I like the aesthetic you guys used for the new Intel ships! They definitely stand out in the mix, and bring an "alien" flavour that I appreciate (why do all Starfleet ships need to look the same anyway?!) I think you guys hit the nail on the head in meeting your design goals, and I can't wait to get my hands on them!
The Klingon and Romulan ships look nice, but they don't stand out to me. Tbh, I still can't tell half of the Rom and KDF vessels apart, and these don't help me.
I will definitely buy the Phantom and I look forward to the imminent alpha strikes, but I hope you'll consider still allowing me to apply a more traditional "Defiant" skin to this Intel Escort.
I would slightly disagree with you about how an Intelligence ship should look. True Intelligence vessels look just like every other ship, but have better electronics and communications equipment. For instance, an intelligence ship could look like an Oberth Class scout, would act like an Oberth Class scout, but would have better electronics and science and sensing equipment.
You shouldn't be able to point at an intelligence asset and say, "There's their intel ship." Any more than you would point at a person and say, "He's a spy."
This is just my two cents.
I would slightly disagree with you about how an Intelligence ship should look. True Intelligence vessels look just like every other ship, but have better electronics and communications equipment. For instance, an intelligence ship could look like an Oberth Class scout, would act like an Oberth Class scout, but would have better electronics and science and sensing equipment.
You shouldn't be able to point at an intelligence asset and say, "There's their intel ship." Any more than you would point at a person and say, "He's a spy."
This is just my two cents.
hiding in plain site does have its uses, so i can see where you are coming from but
these ships have been designed to 'not' be seen by enemy forces as they gather intel. In
situations where combat occurs, thier reduced profile and agility, coupled with updated
alien materials and technology are designed to make them harder to target. the visual
highlights etc are for the players benefit, to give us a sense and feel of being in a specialist
style ship with different feel to what we are used to. i think this is more true of the fed line,
sneaky sneaky isnt really our thing, we tend to announce our presence, step up to the
plate and shake hands before combat starts lol
*edit
actually in some ways it may have made sense to take the fed designs even further from the
new intel style closer to that of the Roms or the KDF, this line of work is more in there ball
park, i guess thats why thier ships have retained a much more recognisable look.
I posted it earlier (as has several others), but the concept ships look way better than the final designed ships. I would pay money for the concept ships, but not what's available to buy.
I think straight edges wasn't a great idea and isn't exactly "Federation" looking, not to say they couldn't be with the right design. These final designs are just not my style and (TO ME) are ugly. That's my opinion.
Now the black paint scheme, that's okay. Putting that paint scheme onto a more Federation-looking ship and giving it the stealth-like abilities (such as a cloak) would say "Intelligence" to me. It doesn't need to look like a 20-21st century stealth ship to be "stealthy".
Bring in those concept ships, slap them with the black/lit-blue lines, stealth abilities, and then I'll give you my money.
The sneaking suspicion I have is that those concept art ships were designed by John Eaves back when he worked for perpetual (he never worked for cryptic) and those concept art drawings had nothing to do with the design process for these ships. The way I see it somebody pulled those drawings out of the archives to create this bull**** article about how much work they put into these ships.
Yeah its cynical but we have already identified those ships to be John Eaves' designs and he never worked for cryptic, cryptic just inherited the designs he did for perpetual 5 years ago.
Personal issue with the entire notion of "stealth" and star ships with cloaks and other such common tech aside... The Fed ships seems to lack a certain je ne sais quoi or somethin', somethin' with the look and feel. I also thought Fed design was centered around fundamental shapes with one dimension distorted or augmented by another basic shape so to speak but I'm not artist....
Anyway, the Rommie and Klink offerings are solid designs in my opinion and well done to say the least but the Fed side missed the train it seems....
If you are looking for an excellent PvE fleet consider: Omega Combat Division today.
Former member of the Cryptic Family & FriendsTesting Team. Sadly, one day, it simply vanished - without a word or trace...
The Federation ships have always had a form of elegance of their own style. However, these new Fed ships look like that was all thrown out the window. Even if those ships were in another game, and didn't represent any faction od Star Trek, they would still be ugly in my opinion.
The modern day stealth ships have a sleek, yet still elegant design. They have the shapes they do because it helps radar to bounce off in a different direction than back at the source of the radar. This helps them to have such a small radar signature that they don't show up.
If this was what the new design was intended to do, then they wouldn't need cloak, because the ships would already be invisible to such types of scans. All they would need to do is use a dampening field to mask their energy signature.
However, as I look at these ships, they don't resemble the stealthy appearances of modern day stealth ships. The only Fed ship I think looks halfway decent is the Phantom. The only reason I kinda like it is because it is a combination of the bug ship, and the Defiant. And I like both of those ships.
Leader of Elite Guardian Academy.Would you like to learn how to run a fleet? Would you like to know how to do ship builds (true budget as well as high end)?The join the Academy today!
I Love the new ships. now you can be to much of a purist and say if it's not in the show it's not trek but I think they look like a natural progression of what can be seen in the show.
when you look at how the constitution became the galaxy and then the soverign then the elcipse seems like a natural progression. from the conny to the galaxy it became bigger. though the galaxy reminds me of mister macky from southpark the head is to big. the souvling isn't smaller but looks longer/elonggated and sleeker. the neck shortens. this trend contues into the eclipse. the neck is gone and the ship looks more sleek than the sovering. the four enginge set up makes it look faster than other ships of it's size.
the phantom looks like the successor of the definant. much like the milenium falon and the ebon hawk share design choices but are crearly from a difrent age.
the scryer is something I've wated a long time to see. I love the negaive space in the saucer crypic should have made in house models featuring that a lon time ago. the ring look like it could house labs and sensors while the center can house the bridge and more sensitve area's. the deflector on top looks weird.
the klingon looks to slick to be klingon. you expet their cruisers to be bulky that's not like inteligence ships. I think a raider would be a more suitable choice and a BoP even better.
It looks agressive. It looks romulan. It looks deadly. It's awsome and it definatly looks like a bird simular to traditional romulan ships.
most ship look to angular espessialy the federation ships but that makes more sense if that is unique to the inteligence ships....
THE NEW CRAFTING SYSTEM IS TERRA-BAD First of all it's not even a crafting system! It's just a dumb game system that's nothing more than a glorified slots machine.
second the "special items" you hope will be the saving the saving grace are messed up to.
I'd really like to see some more in-game screens of the different materials. And whatever other variations are available.
No, of course they don't usually rely on radar.
They use [TECHNOBABBLE] sensors. The hull consists of a [TECHNOBABBLE] and [TECHNOBABBLE], which coupled with the special angled hull distorts the [TECHNOBABBLE] sensor signals so they do not detect the ship as easily as would normally be the case, and further assists the ship's cloaking device.
I was really looking forward to the expansion, until I saw the ship designs. Sorry, but I was extremely disappointed with them. They don't look like a "good fusion" as they are missing some of the key elements of star trek ships (mostly the nacelles). The one fed ship I'd be interested in,the Eclipse, just looks like this weird elongated boxy flat monstrosity. The KDF & Romulan ships aren't bad, but the FED ships are horrible. Now I will say, I like the concept art FED ships the best and if you go back to those I might actually spend the money on one.
And while I am a Star Trek fan, I'n not a die hard traditionalist when it comes to ship designs. My Favorite ship series-wise is Voyager. In game (Looks only) I would say the recon science vessel. I do think you should make a special tier 6 "Delta quadrant " variant of Voyager (Intrepid class) since it's kinda the basis for the existance of the delta quadrant
Comments
and we all know, ye cannae change the laws of physics!
Your are not the only one. These are my general thoughts aswell. Like the designs and looking forward to fly these Intel ships.
Loss of reality.
>implying a handful of picky nerds' opinions define the reality of the situation
>implying only ships that are well liked upon release can belong in Star Trek
>mfw
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
implying that ships should at least look halfway like they would belong to the specific faction (aka Federation)
Implying that there are more and more players leaving the game due to the massive design failures that have been introduced lately
they are not reading the negative feedback
10k DPS Vesta threads: 1; 2
I know its meant to invoke the modern stealth planes, but those angles and lines look far better on a jet plane than on a Star Trek style warp ship. Federation ships should be sleek and curved, not squared and angled.
Can we have those concept designs as an optional skins for the ships? I think the upper right is what the eclipse should look like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwCtDmS1eEc
FEDERATION FLYING INTELLIGENCE FRISBEE
admit it, you naughty you!!!!
awesome!! i was eagerly awaiting someone pulling out my favorite Scotty line
Again, I think Trek logic trumps real world logic, Trek physics (even when in error) trumps real world physics.
The height of stealth in Trek was always birds of prey and warbirds.
If this took cues from those ships, it would make sense.
Taking cues from a stealth bomber doesn't especially make sense and it seems like these designs, which started out somewhat attractive and interesting, got uglier with each pass.
The Phantom looks okay. The angular philosophy really doesn't work with saucers and protruding nacelles.
I understand the look of the ships have to make players think of "Stealth" whilst using them, I would have thought a more smoother/sleeker design would have been appropriate from the how the Federation ships designs have progressed.
The Romulan design is great as it looks like a natural progression for them, the Klingon design I'd have to see the actual model to decide on that one.
So, I can only understand from what has mostly been said in this post that the players would only get Federation ships just for what the ships give and not the looks.
let me see.. 15 maybe 20 individuals posting negative comments about the ships, that
hardly constitutes a majority of opinions. especially when you consider the 2000+ people
who logged onto the podcast on friday 1700+ who were on till the end of the show,
and of those 2000+ there were no more than a few naysayers, and i mean a few. i love
having the ability to express my opinion in these forums, a game of this size with such a
varied player base needs it, but it would be kind of arrogant of me to suggest that i speak
for a majority, because while my opinions may fall in line with a % in some way, that is at
best all i can say. aside from cryptic/pwe none of us here are in any postion to state any
figures or reasons for people joining or leaving the game..
...in local news, forum sources imply that Massive design failures have led to an ever decreasing
player base in Star Trek Online...
...in local news, forum sources imply that Massive design changes have led to an ever
increasing new player base in Star Trek Online..
there may be some truth in either of those, who can tell? certainly not you or me..
you already can find more in this newly started topic here
+ way more in previous topics or on facebook
the amount of people which say "hey thats what we have been waiting for" on the other side is pretty low so far
and hey... just because so many people watch the daily news does not mean that they like the content.
same goes for livestreams
I really cant believe you are trying to compare a game podcast to a real world
news programme. that is wrong on so many levels that im not even going to
get into it.
The reasoning given is fine and all, the execution looks like something I'd expect from the N64 days.
Similar for Romulans: Though their typical ships are all warbirds and mostly tactically focused, they still have the so-called 'warbird battlecruisers' that could have been represented among intelligence ships.
I was hoping that imbalance between factions (and fractions) would be getting solved soon, but from the tone of this blog, it seems these 5 intelligence ships are it for a long time. Not sure if other intelligence ships are even planned at this point.
On another note, I wonder how the 4 pleasing, visibly federation ship sketches on the second pic became the 3 FED intelligence ships that not only don't fit at all among FED designs, but also simply don't look well, not even with normal materials as shown lower (personnal opinion of course). I understand the goal was to make them different than a typical FED ship, but they're just too far off and more fitting for other franchises than Star Trek.
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!
The Klingon and Romulan ships look nice, but they don't stand out to me. Tbh, I still can't tell half of the Rom and KDF vessels apart, and these don't help me.
I will definitely buy the Phantom and I look forward to the imminent alpha strikes, but I hope you'll consider still allowing me to apply a more traditional "Defiant" skin to this Intel Escort.
You shouldn't be able to point at an intelligence asset and say, "There's their intel ship." Any more than you would point at a person and say, "He's a spy."
This is just my two cents.
this seems like reverse thinking to me. I will say this.
Thank God I can upgrade my old ships. Swing and a miss, like the dyson ships in my opinion.
hiding in plain site does have its uses, so i can see where you are coming from
these ships have been designed to 'not' be seen by enemy forces as they gather intel. In
situations where combat occurs, thier reduced profile and agility, coupled with updated
alien materials and technology are designed to make them harder to target. the visual
highlights etc are for the players benefit, to give us a sense and feel of being in a specialist
style ship with different feel to what we are used to. i think this is more true of the fed line,
sneaky sneaky isnt really our thing, we tend to announce our presence, step up to the
plate and shake hands before combat starts lol
*edit
actually in some ways it may have made sense to take the fed designs even further from the
new intel style closer to that of the Roms or the KDF, this line of work is more in there ball
park, i guess thats why thier ships have retained a much more recognisable look.
I think straight edges wasn't a great idea and isn't exactly "Federation" looking, not to say they couldn't be with the right design. These final designs are just not my style and (TO ME) are ugly. That's my opinion.
Now the black paint scheme, that's okay. Putting that paint scheme onto a more Federation-looking ship and giving it the stealth-like abilities (such as a cloak) would say "Intelligence" to me. It doesn't need to look like a 20-21st century stealth ship to be "stealthy".
Bring in those concept ships, slap them with the black/lit-blue lines, stealth abilities, and then I'll give you my money.
Yeah its cynical but we have already identified those ships to be John Eaves' designs and he never worked for cryptic, cryptic just inherited the designs he did for perpetual 5 years ago.
Anyway, the Rommie and Klink offerings are solid designs in my opinion and well done to say the least but the Fed side missed the train it seems....
ingame: @.Spartan
Original Cryptic Forum Name: Spartan (member #124)
The Glorious, Kirk’s Protegè
The modern day stealth ships have a sleek, yet still elegant design. They have the shapes they do because it helps radar to bounce off in a different direction than back at the source of the radar. This helps them to have such a small radar signature that they don't show up.
If this was what the new design was intended to do, then they wouldn't need cloak, because the ships would already be invisible to such types of scans. All they would need to do is use a dampening field to mask their energy signature.
However, as I look at these ships, they don't resemble the stealthy appearances of modern day stealth ships. The only Fed ship I think looks halfway decent is the Phantom. The only reason I kinda like it is because it is a combination of the bug ship, and the Defiant. And I like both of those ships.
DELTA PRICE RISING
when you look at how the constitution became the galaxy and then the soverign then the elcipse seems like a natural progression. from the conny to the galaxy it became bigger. though the galaxy reminds me of mister macky from southpark the head is to big. the souvling isn't smaller but looks longer/elonggated and sleeker. the neck shortens. this trend contues into the eclipse. the neck is gone and the ship looks more sleek than the sovering. the four enginge set up makes it look faster than other ships of it's size.
the phantom looks like the successor of the definant. much like the milenium falon and the ebon hawk share design choices but are crearly from a difrent age.
the scryer is something I've wated a long time to see. I love the negaive space in the saucer crypic should have made in house models featuring that a lon time ago. the ring look like it could house labs and sensors while the center can house the bridge and more sensitve area's. the deflector on top looks weird.
the klingon looks to slick to be klingon. you expet their cruisers to be bulky that's not like inteligence ships. I think a raider would be a more suitable choice and a BoP even better.
It looks agressive. It looks romulan. It looks deadly. It's awsome and it definatly looks like a bird simular to traditional romulan ships.
most ship look to angular espessialy the federation ships but that makes more sense if that is unique to the inteligence ships....
First of all it's not even a crafting system! It's just a dumb game system that's nothing more than a glorified slots machine.
second the "special items" you hope will be the saving the saving grace are messed up to.
Don't you mean "Treknobabble"?
And while I am a Star Trek fan, I'n not a die hard traditionalist when it comes to ship designs. My Favorite ship series-wise is Voyager. In game (Looks only) I would say the recon science vessel. I do think you should make a special tier 6 "Delta quadrant " variant of Voyager (Intrepid class) since it's kinda the basis for the existance of the delta quadrant