Bridge crew: customizeable or random?

[THORN74]

I know there have been lots of discussions reguarding the bridge crew NPCs and their roles, but im not sure if this aspect has been discussed.

Will we be able to customize our bridge crew to the same extent as our main toon?

or will they just be randomized?

i would personally like to be able to pick the race and gender, while randomizing their name and physical appearance.

what about the rest of you?

[jayrelo]

I know there have been lots of discussions reguarding the bridge crew NPCs and their roles, but im not sure if this aspect has been discussed.

Will we be able to customize our bridge crew to the same extent as our main toon?

or will they just be randomized?

i would personally like to be able to pick the race and gender, while randomizing their name and physical appearance.

what about the rest of you?

check out some of the faqs out there, you'll find that yes, you can customize the name, race, looks, gender of your npc's.

its a pretty darn cool function if cryptic holds true to that. it allows our own connection with our 'pets'.

[THORN74]

i must have missed that one

i have read the faq several time, but i didnt see anything reguarding this.

[Crux]

From Ask Cryptic 3

How customizable will Bridge Officers be? Will players be allowed to choose their race, gender, name and/or physical appearance?

You will be able to fully customize your Bridge Officers' race, appearance, gender, name and physical appearance. It wouldn't be a Cryptic game if you couldn't. You will also train and customize their skills and abilities throughout their career.

[Trekkie]

I definitely would not have liked it as much if random bridge crew members were assigned to a captain, so I am glad that the developers realized that it is an important issue and decided to allow a lot of room for customizing individual bridge crew members.

[jayrelo]

i concur.

thank goodness cryptic is so custom friendly. it gives me daydreaming fun fits here and there on how my bridge crew should look like, names, functions, etc. on fear of having a geekasm, i'll conclude this is how a game should immerse us. especially a mmorpg. especially a trek mmorpg.

[Vulcan_Sipho]

all female orion slavegirl crew FTW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Warsaw]

check out some of the faqs out there, you'll find that yes, you can customize the name, race, looks, gender of your npc's.

its a pretty darn cool function if cryptic holds true to that. it allows our own connection with our 'pets'.

Wow... thats awesome. Thats the first thing Ive read about this game so far cause I just found out the official site was up. :( *slaps himself for not knowing sooner* and thats great news! Im getting pumped for this game!

[AaronH]

One thing I have been thinking about, is that currently the idea is that you are your captain. I was thinking is that really going to be the case? With fully customizable and controllable bridge crews do we really need that distinction? I think it is going to be less a Role-playing game and more a story telling game. You aren't your character, you are the story teller of your ship. You control the actions of all your characters.

[jayrelo]

One thing I have been thinking about, is that currently the idea is that you are your captain. I was thinking is that really going to be the case? With fully customizable and controllable bridge crews do we really need that distinction? I think it is going to be less a Role-playing game and more a story telling game. You aren't your character, you are the story teller of your ship. You control the actions of all your characters.

thats who the cap'n usually is, right?

[AaronH]

thats who the cap'n usually is, right?

No. There is a distinct line between a storyteller and a captain.

[jwick4471]

i concur.

thank goodness cryptic is so custom friendly. it gives me daydreaming fun fits here and there on how my bridge crew should look like, names, functions, etc. on fear of having a geekasm, i'll conclude this is how a game should immerse us. especially a mmorpg. especially a trek mmorpg.

Confession: I often catch myself daydreaming in the middle of class about the bridge crew/senior staff customization- figuring out what races would work good in each position. Major geekasms. And I know I'm not the only one.

[marscentral]

Storyteller? I prefer Puppet Master muahahaha!!

But you do make a good point, we will almost be playing storytellers. We'll be telling half the story, Cryptic the other half.

[alucard1]

One thing I have been thinking about, is that currently the idea is that you are your captain. I was thinking is that really going to be the case? With fully customizable and controllable bridge crews do we really need that distinction? I think it is going to be less a Role-playing game and more a story telling game. You aren't your character, you are the story teller of your ship. You control the actions of all your characters.

Odd thought came to mind over this... something that I've actually been wondering for a while now.

You say that you really aren't the captain.. but a story-teller for the ship... and I've heard the pov of the player being the "ship."

My 'question' is about the naming of the ship. I know you start off on a smaller ship, and then progress to bigger/better ships as you "level. Using the Enterprise as an example, Could you name your first ship Enterprise, and then name your second ship Enterprise as well?

Sorry for the off topic... but I've been curious about that for a while now.

- Peace

[marscentral]

My 'question' is about the naming of the ship. I know you start off on a smaller ship, and then progress to bigger/better ships as you "level. Using the Enterprise as an example, Could you name your first ship Enterprise, and then name your second ship Enterprise as well?

Sorry for the off topic... but I've been curious about that for a while now.

- Peace

I believe we will be naming our ships, so we will presumably have the option to retain our ship names.

[andrewprofit]

I know there have been lots of discussions reguarding the bridge crew NPCs and their roles, but im not sure if this aspect has been discussed.

Will we be able to customize our bridge crew to the same extent as our main toon?

or will they just be randomized?

i would personally like to be able to pick the race and gender, while randomizing their name and physical appearance.

what about the rest of you?

The most reasonable system would be for a captian to select from a candidate pool. Once candidates are selected their skills would be modifiable by the captain so that he could send them to training for a certain number of skill points. Training would depend on the attributes of the candidate.

The next most resonable system would be to select from different races sex, the races would have different attributes, you can train them up on skills and name them.

[Omega990]

Here's hoping for some good customization.....i'm actually DROOLING over the thought - which is bad.

[Fernos]

all female orion slavegirl crew FTW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nope mechanics are in place where you can't have an all one or the other crew, you will choose from so many males so many females, and so many races.

Cryptic is going to make the game as plausible as possible so no ships names USS Pimpmasta with an all girl crew. :rolleyes:

[marscentral]

Nope mechanics are in place where you can't have an all one or the other crew, you will choose from so many males so many females, and so many races.

Cryptic is going to make the game as plausible as possible so no ships names USS Pimpmasta with an all girl crew. :rolleyes:

I haven't seen them mention either a mechanic limiting gender or species, nor a limit on ship names. Nothing Cryptic has said so far suggests that a ship full of Orion women is impossible. All we know about our regular crew is that establishing links to different worlds will open up other races and the bonuses they could bring.

So far, no ship naming policy has been announced. I believe Game Informer said that we'll get to name our ships when we build them, but no limitations were suggested. The only assumption we can realistically make is that they will hold us to the EULA, no profanity and no copyrighted names.

[Silverspar]

I haven't seen them mention either a mechanic limiting gender or species, nor a limit on ship names. Nothing Cryptic has said so far suggests that a ship full of Orion women is impossible. All we know about our regular crew is that establishing links to different worlds will open up other races and the bonuses they could bring.

So far, no ship naming policy has been announced. I believe Game Informer said that we'll get to name our ships when we build them, but no limitations were suggested. The only assumption we can realistically make is that they will hold us to the EULA, no profanity and no copyrighted names.

I am sure standard naming policies will apply, basically no offensive names, and I am sure Cryptic might go the extra mile and prevent numbers being subbed for letters as well. Not to mention, over on the Champions forums, one of the devs there talked about testing out a new naming convention for Champions Online that, I believe was said, would allow for more than one person to possibly have the same name, though not much was actually said on how that would work.

[Tylor_Liles]

Okay if two ppl cant have ships' with the same names or resistry #'s, who exactly gets The only
USS ENTERPRISE(NCC-1701-?) i think we'd be on the ENTERPRISE 1701-F by 2409.the ENTERPRISE 1701-E would be 35-37 years old by 2409,

so is the new ship of class being Designed around the big E or what?

[marscentral]

I seriously doubt Enterprise, Voyager or Defiant will be available.

[Deyvid]

I highly doubt that the USS Enterprise or the Excelsior etc will be player-owned or player-controlled. We may (hopefully) interact with them during missions, but I doubt any player will get the Enterprise as their own ship. That would be like saying who gets to play as Frodo or Gandalf in Lord of the Rings Online, or who gets to be Neo in Matrix Online, or who gets to be the one and only Smurfette in Smurfs Online: Smurftastic Adventures.

(Okay I made up that last one but you get the idea).

[jayrelo]

however, the point still has merit. i think he's asking more about the registry numbers, as in, when you get your new ship, can you use the same name + the letter in chrono order.

like if my ship is called sexybeast
well, if i get a new ship, will it be called sexybeast A? i'm guess no, since it will be a different class of ship. now, if you got the same class of ship, this might apply. but yeah, i don't know how thats going to work out for sure, but educated guesses can be made from cannon, lore, and rationale.

[Deyvid]

Well going with the presumption that we lose our existing ship when we upgrade to a new ship, I think it may be possible that the new one would be able to use the same name and registry of your previous ship, since you wouldn't be keeping that previous ship, and it would be up to you to decide if you want to continue using the same name/registry or come up with a new one when you upgrade ships. But until Cryptic releases more info on naming rules and the naming system (does each ship on a single account need a unique name/registry, when a single player goes from escort class to cruiser class) we won't really know for sure.

I still don't think they will allow us to name our ships Enterprise even if we use a different registry (such as 1701-X), but from past experience with other MMOs, there may be players attempting to get around it with names like Interprise or Enterprize or Entepriser etc.

[jayrelo]

I still don't think they will allow us to name our ships Enterprise even if we use a different registry (such as 1701-X), but from past experience with other MMOs, there may be players attempting to get around it with names like Interprise or Enterprize or Entepriser etc.

thats fine, makes it easier to make fun of those nerfs.

[Silverspar]

Okay if two ppl cant have ships' with the same names or resistry #'s, who exactly gets The only
USS ENTERPRISE(NCC-1701-?) i think we'd be on the ENTERPRISE 1701-F by 2409.the ENTERPRISE 1701-E would be 35-37 years old by 2409,

so is the new ship of class being Designed around the big E or what?

Ship age matters little. Look at some of those Excelsior class vessels. That ship is nearly 100 years old and yet still going strong. It's quite possible the Enterprise E is still in service, but I would not expect it as generally the only Enterprise to not be destroyed was the Enterprise A, all the rest eitehr were destroyed or met a mysterious end (Enterprise B destroyed under mysterious circumstances).

[jayrelo]

Ship age matters little. Look at some of those Excelsior class vessels. That ship is nearly 100 years old and yet still going strong. It's quite possible the Enterprise E is still in service, but I would not expect it as generally the only Enterprise to not be destroyed was the Enterprise A, all the rest eitehr were destroyed or met a mysterious end (Enterprise B destroyed under mysterious circumstances).

starfleet has always treated teh enterprises with the best treats. if the enterprise is in the game, i see it at the very least having a major sexy refit or to have an 'f' ready to roll out and make all of us want to emode dry hump it till the nacelles fall off and they have to refit it again.

yeah, i just said that. :)

[ShawnCooks]

i will get the best bridge crew out there thats all i have to say