Away team management

[tom_riker01]

Apologies in advance if this has already been discussed to death, but this was mainly a quetion for the Devs.

I'm aware that I will be making my own character, i.e. the Captain, and that I will be getting to customize my bridge crew. My question is this: Will it be possible to send a security team to a planet's surface with my captain sitting up on the bridge, like Picard tends to do? I'm only asking because not every away mission has the captain along for the ride. Which leads me to the main question, if the captain stays aboard ship, will I be controling every member of the team I send to the surface, just the security chief, or will I be sitting on the bridge sipping tea?

[Flatfingers]

Apologies in advance if this has already been discussed to death, but this was mainly a quetion for the Devs.

I'm aware that I will be making my own character, i.e. the Captain, and that I will be getting to customize my bridge crew. My question is this: Will it be possible to send a security team to a planet's surface with my captain sitting up on the bridge, like Picard tends to do? I'm only asking because not every away mission has the captain along for the ride. Which leads me to the main question, if the captain stays aboard ship, will I be controling every member of the team I send to the surface, just the security chief, or will I be sitting on the bridge sipping tea?

If you can get one of the developers to answer your question, we will treat you like some kind of minor deity.

For a while, anyway. :)

In the meantime, someone else can chime in if they know otherwise, but I don't believe we've heard anything official said that would support a theory that you -- the commander of your personal ship -- won't be a part of any away mission involving any of your NPC bridge crew. In other words, I don't believe you'll be able to stay on your ship and send NPCs somewhere else as an away team.

I think that fits in with Cryptic's other announced design decisions, in which only the features that have obvious opportunities for non-stop Action gameplay for your character are being considered for implementation in the initial version of this game. If STO's design team don't see a way to do plenty of rules-based gameplay action in a feature, then my perception is that that feature doesn't make the cut.

So you being on the bridge while your away team is off somewhere doing the Actiony things seems to me to be something that this group of game designers would not favor. And my guess is that this would probably be the case even if there were some way for you to remain on your ship but still control what your away team does.

But I could be missing an important aspect of your idea. Is there some way you could describe this idea to show how it would have lots of active gameplay opportunities for the character you're playing, even though your character isn't a part of the away team?

--Flatfingers

[Anichent]

That doesn't sound so bad. I would love to take control of my cheif of security for an away team mission, while my character waits on the bridge...then, If we are attacked in orbit I take control of my ship with my captain and have to rescue my away team by finding the right time to lower my shields.

[Jamisicus6]

There wasn't anything about it in the voonchat so try sending the question straight to Cryptic like they suggested

[phifur]

That a good question. I for one don't want to play my Captain all the time. I would like to send my first officer or other bridge members on away missions. Remember a Captain place is on this ship ;)

[tom_riker01]

To answer Flatfingers question:

I should clarify. I know I will have my own character (the captain), but I'm under the impression that you will be leveling your bridge crew and customizing their stats as well. Obviously you won't be playing them while aboard ship. But when your on a planet, will you still retain control over only the captain, or will you be able to send your science officer or first officer or security chief to the surface and be able to control them.

For instance, I want to send my security chief (Lt. Ferris) to the surface along with two redshirts to bring back a fugitive. My question is this: Does the captain have to come along, or will I be roleplaying Lt. Ferris giving orders to the redshirts, or will I be roleplaying everybody?

As for keeping it actionpacked, the only difference between getting my character phasered to death and my security chief is that I will have to spend time and resources building up my next security chief, rather than losing the captain. Losing a bridge officer is not a desirable thing. If I understand it correctly, you're essentially building up ALL of your bridge crew just like your character. So I thought that if the captain stayed aboard ship, you would probably retain control of at least one bridge officer that was sent to the surface. You don't want to lose any of them anymore than you want to lose the captain, so I have just as much desire to send my security officer diving for cover when the disruptor blasts start flying as much as the captain. And in keeping with Star Trek tradition, the redshirts I would assume are screwed.

I realise Kirk went to every planet they stumbled on to, and that wasn't very realistic. Next Gen was a little more believable. The captain can always lead the mission if he so desires, but there are circumstances where he shouldn't always be leading the pack.

As for getting experience or whatever the equivalent is, I'm guessing you get experience based on accomplishing the mission and you can then distribute the awards amoung your character and command crew. So regardless of whether the captain sits drinking tea, or is down on the planet fighting for dear life, if you choose to build up his command skill you can, but you may want to improve your tactical officers phaser targeting abilities first. In short, I'm guessing you as the gameplayer will be dividing up the spoils of accomplishing the mission amoung your entire bridge crew, so it won't matter whether I lead the away team, or my security chief does. Either way, I don't want ANY of them to die off.