I think this would be a good idea. Rather than have shields change the appearance of your ship, why not just make a slot for hull material that only changes the looks? You could then equip any shield you want with any look.
Cryptic could also make money on this. Lots of F2P games make money on aesthetics, but cryptic never had good c-store options for aesthetics.
They did have that. Ship costumes. Those were turned into Fleet Ship variants.
But I wouldn't mind being able to use different visuals without being locked into a particular set.
It was never like what the OP suggested. These were just additional sets of parts for ship customization you could buy in the C-Store for certain T5 ships.
Yeah, it is weird that different shields make your hull look different. But I guess Cryptic found it easier to attach the graphic change command there than making it separate.
Same with Impulse engines making your Warp speed faster.
You'd think the shield visuals would, you know, affect the visuals of your shields.
Funnily enough, this is exactly what happens but, for argument's sake, you want the Romulan Rep Shield look on your ship, in order to have this, you're forced to use the Romulan shields, which are a very poor shield compared to many others that are available...
What the OP is suggesting (or at least how I interpreted it) was that if you had the Romulan Shields, you could place that in a 'uniform/appearance shield slot' so that your ship has that look, but then equip Fleet Shields to actually use as your defensive shields...
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But I wouldn't mind being able to use different visuals without being locked into a particular set.
It was never like what the OP suggested. These were just additional sets of parts for ship customization you could buy in the C-Store for certain T5 ships.
The argument that this would confuse PvPers is not valid, because we can already disable shield/engine/deflector visuals to not give away our gear.
it is just a vanity issue, so why not?
Would have a nice sideeffect of cleaning up thoose who dont know how to turn their visuals on or off.
Sorry, but the Reman Set just looks awful on the Ambassador and several other ships :cool:
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Another option would be a 'uniform unlock' style of system, like the Ground Set Uniform Unlocks perhaps?
Although personally, I like the way it is.
Same with Impulse engines making your Warp speed faster.
Funnily enough, this is exactly what happens but, for argument's sake, you want the Romulan Rep Shield look on your ship, in order to have this, you're forced to use the Romulan shields, which are a very poor shield compared to many others that are available...
What the OP is suggesting (or at least how I interpreted it) was that if you had the Romulan Shields, you could place that in a 'uniform/appearance shield slot' so that your ship has that look, but then equip Fleet Shields to actually use as your defensive shields...
Maybe link it to warp/singularity core (which would necessitate adding a few, obviously).
But yes, an unlocking feature for the ship tailor would be good either way.