Your definition of endgame doesn't really concern me since endgame can be done in any T5 9 console ship and up...and that's before considering the endgame smallcraft content as well.
None of it really matters when the complaint is about what ships are seen while flying about...and...endgame really isn't involved in flying about since it's pop a queue and you're there.
you clearly missed the point didn't you? if you hadn't you could have at least written something relevant.
the point was that first of all there are a lot less ship models out there than ships. a lot of the faction ships are only statistically different while they share the same model. you simply cannot visually distinguish the T4 intrepid from the T6 pathfinder. I assume people would favor the statically most powerful Intrepid variant regardless of the playability of the other variants. but even that doesn't matter here an Intrepid variant is an Intrepid whether it's the T4, T4R, T5, FT5, T5-U, FT5-U, or T6. they are all the same ship and the difference is only statistical.
further more you can use pathfinder or discovery parts on any of the intrepid variants but in the end regardless of your choice people still recognize the ship as an intrepid variant. for this same reason ships that have variants like the Dyson science destroyers and the vesta's are counted as one. it's like adding custom body parts to a fort mustang it will look significantly different but it will still preform the same and look like a fort mustang (at least enough to recognize what it is).
finally ships not used in the endgame are usually abandoned after the leveling process. so some models like the Miranda are hardly seen at all because of this. people usually just fly though sector space whit whatever they have set active to do queued content whit. you'd still see them fly around in the queued maps this isn't exactly exclusive to sector space either.
all of this significantly deflates the numbers you were using that was the whole point.
and practically no-one flies shuttles in sector space so where where you even going whit that one?
Why does it bother you so much what ships other folks are flying? How does that actually affect anything you're doing?
it neither bothers nor does it affect me. does that mean I can't make a statement about what I believe to be the ideal distribution of ships?
this is about crypic visually communicating that we play 3 factions and not a bunch of random aliens . that can be very effectively done if you control the distribution of ship models and that doesn't mean cool alien ships cannot be around.
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.
the racial trait and boff traits are triple that of a fed
fed is sitting at 6.5% crit 76% sev
rom is sitting at 21% crit 95% sev
same gear setup no fleet tact consoles on breen ship
i know theres ways of closing the gap a little bit, i hear you can get romulan boffs from fleet stuff for the fed side, but i also was told i would get a good boffs with space traits for getting diplo 4..
ill believe it when i see it or read it
you can get a pirate which adds a small flat damage bonus. Its better than what feds have from stock races.
From memory, and not playing feds much so I could be wrong...
you get 2 SRO roms, and at least 2 pirates (the new intel guy from DR and your diplomacy choice). You may get TWO pirates from diplomacy, a blue and a purple, not 100% sure.
There is no doubt that rom officer bonus is huge. Its better now .... until this last patch I had to use a BRO white intel officer, now I trained my SRO and am back to a full crew again
There are a LOT of non-Fed ships, yeah. It has certainly damaged the emersion factor but at this point, its gone so far there is no turning back. Those Lock Box ships are so good people will always want to fly them.
If you're worried about immersion factor, maybe we could also just let people choose which faction they display as to other players in the UI?
An easier solution to this problem would be channel filters in social zones like ESD. Originally this was an idea to support roleplayers but here's how it would work.
You add a toggle-able "faction purist" tag to your character's options, only selectable if they qualify by flying a non-lockbox ship. This tag generates one of three states on your character, "qualified and selected" for those flying ships that qualify and have opted in, "qualified and not selected" for those that fly ships that qualify but have not opted in and "not qualified" for those flying ships that simply do not qualify. Then when the zone population is large enough to justify generating enough channels that sorting the population by tags would be efficient enough to not affect performance, should happen around 20 channels or so, the game will generate a designation for one channel that makes it "faction purist." Any player that is "qualified and selected" will be directed there, and players that are "qualified but not selected" will be directed into that channel as needed to maintain a minimum population, finally any player marked as "not qualified" will be directed to any of the other channels. This channel will also be labelled from the main map so players can transfer channels at will if they qualify.
The beauty of this system is that it doesn't require any precious processing power be spent converting ships in your line of sight into a different kind of ship, and the only downside is that players like me, in a lockbox ship, don't need to interact with players upset about seeing so many lockbox ships.
I did a quick read of this post, so I apologize if this has been posted before.
I do agree with the OP to an extent. I play a Federation character as my main (I do have both a KDF and ROM alts) and want that character to feel like a Federation character. He flies only Federation designed ships with phasers even. He only flies alien ships when it's required or I am "role-playing" that it's a one-off mission (much like Sisko taking the Jem'hadar attack ship out).
I think the problem I have is not the number of alien ships available, but if there is an alien ship (whether for purchase with ZEN or Lobi or free) that has a BOFF and console layout that would really groove with my play-style I am forced to fly that alien ship with it's alien hull design. This is primarily why I don't buy ships for real money.
If the possibility to change the hull design of a ship to look more faction based within reason (example, take a Kobali cruiser and make it look like a Sovereign class) I would be more inclined to buy ships from Cryptic. I want to play the game with my play-style, but also look like what I want to.
Sadly, this kind of programming will never happen in the game, so Star Trek: Online/Cryptic will never get real money from me.
These races make up the fabric of Star Trek besides the Starfleet ships
Sure it's disconcernting to see how many people prefer Alien faction ships to Starfleet ones but you start off with only those ships, and as you get to end game you get bored and want to try Alien ships
Fed and Klingon 3rd rate ships is why krono's and ESD have so many alien ships in orbit
Really? Cause I run 1 Fed and 10 KDF toons. It's rare to see more than one or two alien ships in the Qo'noS system. In the Sol System on the other hand? It's rare not to see an alien ship.
I'd say that Feds are trying to suppress something...
Hell, in thinking about it...all 10 of my KDF toons are flying KDF Zen boats. My Fed...switches around between 3 faction ships and 8 non-faction ships, primarily in the non-faction ships. It's not often I'm in the Fleet Nebula, D'Kyr, or the Phantom...I'm usually flying something else.
Comments
you clearly missed the point didn't you? if you hadn't you could have at least written something relevant.
the point was that first of all there are a lot less ship models out there than ships. a lot of the faction ships are only statistically different while they share the same model. you simply cannot visually distinguish the T4 intrepid from the T6 pathfinder. I assume people would favor the statically most powerful Intrepid variant regardless of the playability of the other variants. but even that doesn't matter here an Intrepid variant is an Intrepid whether it's the T4, T4R, T5, FT5, T5-U, FT5-U, or T6. they are all the same ship and the difference is only statistical.
further more you can use pathfinder or discovery parts on any of the intrepid variants but in the end regardless of your choice people still recognize the ship as an intrepid variant. for this same reason ships that have variants like the Dyson science destroyers and the vesta's are counted as one. it's like adding custom body parts to a fort mustang it will look significantly different but it will still preform the same and look like a fort mustang (at least enough to recognize what it is).
finally ships not used in the endgame are usually abandoned after the leveling process. so some models like the Miranda are hardly seen at all because of this. people usually just fly though sector space whit whatever they have set active to do queued content whit. you'd still see them fly around in the queued maps this isn't exactly exclusive to sector space either.
all of this significantly deflates the numbers you were using that was the whole point.
and practically no-one flies shuttles in sector space so where where you even going whit that one?
it neither bothers nor does it affect me. does that mean I can't make a statement about what I believe to be the ideal distribution of ships?
this is about crypic visually communicating that we play 3 factions and not a bunch of random aliens . that can be very effectively done if you control the distribution of ship models and that doesn't mean cool alien ships cannot be around.
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 think we should get a lockbox that's all ships that are different for each faction.
Feds: Jupiter & Typhoon class
KDF: There is unused NPC Nausican, Gorn, and Orion Dreadnoughts
Romulan's: they would either have to create something or they get their Allied faction ship.
Then Chase that with a Terran Empire Box
Feds: T6 Command Odyssey, and T6 Intel Galaxy-X
KDF: T6 Command Bortas, T6 Intel B'rel
Romulans: T6 Command Scimitar & and T6 Intel Mogai
In the case of these command and Intel ships make a LT.-> LTC and give them a Hybrid slot.
you can get a pirate which adds a small flat damage bonus. Its better than what feds have from stock races.
From memory, and not playing feds much so I could be wrong...
you get 2 SRO roms, and at least 2 pirates (the new intel guy from DR and your diplomacy choice). You may get TWO pirates from diplomacy, a blue and a purple, not 100% sure.
There is no doubt that rom officer bonus is huge. Its better now .... until this last patch I had to use a BRO white intel officer, now I trained my SRO and am back to a full crew again
If you're worried about immersion factor, maybe we could also just let people choose which faction they display as to other players in the UI?
If the race is shown on screen it should get at least one ship.
2) What starfleet regulation prohibits captaining of a non-starfleet vessel?
You add a toggle-able "faction purist" tag to your character's options, only selectable if they qualify by flying a non-lockbox ship. This tag generates one of three states on your character, "qualified and selected" for those flying ships that qualify and have opted in, "qualified and not selected" for those that fly ships that qualify but have not opted in and "not qualified" for those flying ships that simply do not qualify. Then when the zone population is large enough to justify generating enough channels that sorting the population by tags would be efficient enough to not affect performance, should happen around 20 channels or so, the game will generate a designation for one channel that makes it "faction purist." Any player that is "qualified and selected" will be directed there, and players that are "qualified but not selected" will be directed into that channel as needed to maintain a minimum population, finally any player marked as "not qualified" will be directed to any of the other channels. This channel will also be labelled from the main map so players can transfer channels at will if they qualify.
The beauty of this system is that it doesn't require any precious processing power be spent converting ships in your line of sight into a different kind of ship, and the only downside is that players like me, in a lockbox ship, don't need to interact with players upset about seeing so many lockbox ships.
I do agree with the OP to an extent. I play a Federation character as my main (I do have both a KDF and ROM alts) and want that character to feel like a Federation character. He flies only Federation designed ships with phasers even. He only flies alien ships when it's required or I am "role-playing" that it's a one-off mission (much like Sisko taking the Jem'hadar attack ship out).
I think the problem I have is not the number of alien ships available, but if there is an alien ship (whether for purchase with ZEN or Lobi or free) that has a BOFF and console layout that would really groove with my play-style I am forced to fly that alien ship with it's alien hull design. This is primarily why I don't buy ships for real money.
If the possibility to change the hull design of a ship to look more faction based within reason (example, take a Kobali cruiser and make it look like a Sovereign class) I would be more inclined to buy ships from Cryptic. I want to play the game with my play-style, but also look like what I want to.
Sadly, this kind of programming will never happen in the game, so Star Trek: Online/Cryptic will never get real money from me.
This is Star Trek... not Starfleet Trek
These races make up the fabric of Star Trek besides the Starfleet ships
Sure it's disconcernting to see how many people prefer Alien faction ships to Starfleet ones but you start off with only those ships, and as you get to end game you get bored and want to try Alien ships
Really? Cause I run 1 Fed and 10 KDF toons. It's rare to see more than one or two alien ships in the Qo'noS system. In the Sol System on the other hand? It's rare not to see an alien ship.
I'd say that Feds are trying to suppress something...
Hell, in thinking about it...all 10 of my KDF toons are flying KDF Zen boats. My Fed...switches around between 3 faction ships and 8 non-faction ships, primarily in the non-faction ships. It's not often I'm in the Fleet Nebula, D'Kyr, or the Phantom...I'm usually flying something else.