Dear Perfect World Entertainment,
I fell in love with Star Trek long before the came along and when the game went viral with F2P model, I immediately joined the adventure. It is the game that I return to every year to play. I like how the story unfolds, how new ideas are coming up, kudos to the writers. I am also an alt-oholic, love levelling new toons.
However, there has been one thing that really bothered me. Whenever I got a promotion, I had to discard my trusted ship who took care of me in the previous missions. We got used to work together, me and the crew. Then at every level, I have to switch.
The whole point of a captain, crew and ship is to build up trust and loyalty, because everyone's lives (or even the galaxy's fate) depends on it. Why get rid of a tested ship?
We have now the T6 scaling starships, which are awesome, brings back that Star Trek feeling a bit (altough, until I farmed out its trait). Also with the power creep, all inferior tiered ships are nothing more than a stepping stone towards the Tier 6 (c-store, fleet, lobi, lockbox). Why not use these ships as skins for a brand new idea: levelling starships.
Just like with character creation, you can select a class. Let us create our dream ship. Let us pick the focus of the ship (engineer/tactical/science), which would select the commander seating (our trusted Number One, even if it's Tovan Khev or someone else). Then we could pick a subclass of the ship (which is based on Mastery Packages). This would also set the ship up for playstyle: hull/shield/turn/impulse/inertia stats, number of weapons and any special ship abilities or options (for example: secondary deflector for science focused ship). Once we have selected these, we could pick a skin for our beloved ship (with certain limitations based on the previous selection), using all those skins that are already in the game and can be unlocked for free when selecting that starship. Despite cross-faction flying feature in the game, each faction could only select its own original faction's skins.
This newly created ship will not have any specialist seats, any special consoles, any unique weapons. It will be a classic leveling ship. At start, we would have 2-1 weapon layout, 1-1-1 console each and 1-1-1 ensign seats. Once we reach level 10, we get to tier 2, where we can upgrade this ship. Add a weapon (fore or aft), make your number one a leutenant (automatically based on the selected starship class), plus gives an option to open a new bridge officer seat on the ship. Also, the player can select where to put that 1 more console slot. And it can go on as you reach new tiers, as can be seen below:
Source for starship classes/categories: Counteryolo's
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkDI5tHHVkw
Starship Tier Character Level Weapon Slots Consoles Boff Slots (no specialists)
Tier 1 1-9 3 (2-1) 3 (1-1-1) 3 (one ensigh each)
Tier 2 10-19 4 4 5 (2-1-1-1)
Tier 3 20-29 5-6 5 8 (3-2-2-1)
Tier 4 30-39 6-8 7 10 (4-2-2-2 or 4-3-2-1)
Tier 5 40-49 6-8 9 12 (4-3-3-2 or 4-3-3-1-1 or 4-3-2-2-1)
Tier 5U 50-59 6-8 10 no improvement
Tier 6 60+ 6-8 11 13 (4-3-3-2-1 or 4-3-2-2-2 or 4-3-3-3)
No universal seats, but the player can select which options to upgrade/promote. Mastery package can be unlocked, but no starship mastery attached/gained. No unique universal console or weapon.
Once you have reached level 65 and unlocked your ship's full potential, then you can go to your fleet starship and can upgrade it even further, using 5 fleet modules and 20k fleet credits, just like you would buy a fleet T6 ship. Also, you can apply the experimental upgrade on it to unlock your ship's full potential. This way, your beloved little ship is ready for endgame and you would not have to get rid of it to buy a "better ship". Still no specialists are on your bridge or any specialization abilities, so what could you do?
You'd go to the Zen store and you could buy a specialist seat:
Specialist seat Zen cost (suggestion)
Ensign 500
Leutenant 1000
Lt. Commander 1500
Commander 2500 - this would also add full specilization abilities to your beloved ship, for example pilot manouvers if you made this seat a Pilot. Molecular reconsturction if Temporal, Innovation effects and the extra universal console for Miracle Worker, etc.
Analysis for business perspective:
Pros:
+ makes the player invest (time and possibly money) for its ship that has been with her/him throughout the story
+ reusability of old starship skins, but still gives the possibility of further retrofitting (like the Nova and Saber had) and package releases (huge interest in the old skins, but lacks the t6 versions - space barbie is real)
+ this ship and the unlocks would be character based only, so no account unlocks
+ would prevent initially F2P leaving the game, due to the mid-game struggle where the difficulty spikes hard and F2P cannot keep up => more players retained, more chances for them to invest/spend on the game (see: Counteryolo's
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjBB53ntCnU)
Cons:
- invest time and money for developing this new feature
- this could only be done for newly created characters
I would really love to your hear your feedback on this idea, from the company and also from the players themselves. If this would have been developed, what kind of ship you would have?
Here are 2 of my dream ships:
tactical destroyer: 5-2 weapons layout, 5 tac-2 eng - 4 sci consoles, cmdr tactical, ltcmdr sci, ltcmdr eng/CMD, lt eng, ens tac boffs. Skin: Maelstrom for FED/Somraw for KDF
science scout: 4-2, 4 tac, 2 eng, 5 sci console, cmdr sci, ltcmdr tac, ltcmdr eng, ltcmdr sci. Skin: Olympic class with Hope skin
Comments
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
You're not going to get this for free, except for the free event ships. Ship sales keep the salaries paid, servers running, and voice actors for the story episodes and TFOs.
to be fair,not all do. I don't believe any of the temporal T6 ships or the first intel ships can be used by new characters
ALL Tier 6 ships are in fact scaling ships. Even the Temporal and the Intel ships scale.
The only ones that don't are the original Jem'Hadar ships from the Gamma Vanguard pack. They first have to be unlocked by a Jem'Hadar character by completing its Level 6 starship mastery.
The Paladin/Ranger combination temporal ship can be used early on, I started using it with my AoY character as soon as I hit the shipyard the first time well before I got to the 25th century. I am fairly sure the Chronos Temporal Dreadnought Cruiser can be used the same way, or at least from the time the character first gets to ESD, Qo'nos, or Mol'rihan (though oddly enough not the flotilla).
T6 Ships aren't supposed to have full availability of equipment before level 50, and they unlock as you level. 'Tis not a bug.
> yes the idea of ship that levels with you is already in game, but the other aspects the OP talks about would never fly with the gmae community as a whole. many of the extra things asked for would just not work.
> props to the OP for the details and time he spent putting it together.
Thank you for noticing it
This levelling ship would lack what makes the c-store/lockbox/lobi ships: specialist seats, traits and consoles. It would be a very basic ship in terms of performance, thus would not make the t6 ships redundant. It would essentially be a fleet ship at high cost, with additional costs for specialist seating.
But why do you buy a T6 starship? Either from the Zen store or from the exchange? Why would/did you buy the Arbiter or the Gagarin? Or perhaps the Atlas? Was it how the ship looks? Or the default boff layout appealed to you? Perhaps for the stats (impulse/turn rate/hull) of the ship?
Yep, Space Barbie
So if a fleet version exists you can upgrade regular > fleet > -U > - X for 3 different level-ups.