Question for the devs.- Ship Classes

[onibocho]

I normaly do not like to ask questions directly at the devs since I personaly don't like to needle someone at work. But I can't help myself in this reguard. There are alot of posts concerning ship classes but up till now we have only a vague idea what you are planning to make available to us. It might be asking to much but can you at least give us a general overview to the ship classes you plan on including so far? It doesn't have to be final but at least give us something to picture ourselves in before launch. You can put it out then modify it as you progress but it will help focus our discusions on what is realy going in instead of waisting alot of post space on fruitless speculation. And to be frank, the curiosity is killing me.:D

[Flixi]

an interesting question. But for me it is even more important to know if we can really stick to one class for a long time of our gameplay. e.g. I really want to fly a Bird of Prey from that time on when i get it until endgame if possible.

I mean I would hate it to replace my ship all "3 levels" or all "5 days" just because ship stats force me to do so.
I know this goes a bit against all the people discussing which ship has better stats, but for gameplay reasons I wouldn't like to see so big gaps between the stats of common ship classes.

[Yavin_Prime]

I'm sure as the game gets closer and closer to launch they'll start releasing more information. As it stands though the game is in a alpha state right now... I'd guess information like that will slowly come out as the dev team gets closer to beta, or shortly after beta starts. I will be honest though once they announced STO they realy started letting news about the game flow, so I don't think we'll be kept in the dark to long. I think what Cryptic wants to do is finish it, or at least finalize a concept before ven talking about it to the public (which is what any good company should do).

So in short... sooner or later they'll tell us :p

[Munky99999]

I really hope the game is very open sandboxed. During the dominion wars for example... Martok and worf commanded a bird of prey. If skill and rank mattered... he'd be in one of the biggest ships.

Hopefully a highly skilled captain in a small ship like a bird of prey can fight a larger ship and effectively destroy it.

As for ship classes. I suspect they will have quite a wide range of different ships available from the start. Even then.. once the game in released... nothing is stopping them from creating new ships and new classes. So really nothing is to worry about.

[Neogunmetal]

Here is a thought for everyone even the DEVS....since we have shipyards and starbases will you be able to have multiple ship classes that you can switch between....because what if a mission would be hard for a titan class but would be easier for an intrepid class...you could switch between ship that you aquired depending on the misson?!?!?!?!?!?

[boydyma]

there are some pretty valid questions there. i think the answers lie in the interviews we've seen from jack and the rest of the crew from cryptic.

the starships will be customisable... geometry, paintjobs, decals, systems. This leads me to believe that there will be no set ship tree... except for the style of gaming you wish to persue in STO. be it exploration... fighting... or just plain old trash hauling (cargo).

and from what i have seen there will be no *SET* endgame. It will be an evolving process as new tech becomes available.

im hoping that you arent *forced* to change ships. and as Jack has said on a few occasions. cryptic are about *fully customisable* characters ships etc. so i dont think they will *force* us to move on from our tricked our nova class. to go to a galaxy if we dont want to. it'll just peeve a few people off. and drive away customers.

as for building ships etc. i have a suspicion that that will occur but with limitations... IE you cant build a thousand promethiuses and just own everything. it sounds like it will be a pretty robust thing to build your own ship, gather resources etc. it will be more of a fleet thing rather than a personal thing....
but. as for changing classes. im not sure if it would be possible... maybe have a fleet parking lot for *shared* ships? lol.
as it stands the starships will be customisable to a degree. so THAT should be all that you need to worry about. swap a few modules, change the crew around slightly, same ship. different role....


i'd LOVE to see what you could DO to the starships rather than what classes, because most of the classes will be already made... galaxy class nova class sovereign class, they can all be seen in the gameplay trailer... albeit *modified* pretzel saucer, tricked out warp nacelles, different weapons etc.


*fingers crossed*

[onibocho]

I just would like a general picture of what new designs they have come up with and what old ones they will be keeping.

I am very sure things like staying with a prefered ship and an open ended story line are where they are going with this but I would love to have something to picture it with. The raw material we will have to customise with. Since though there is a wide range of customisation, which is Cryptics trade mark, there has to be class and faction limits. A Sabre, though costomized, is still a Sabre. An Akira is still an Akira, ect.

I am just very curious to see what they have on the drawing board. To see what I have to work with when I play.

[Ahsoka]

Maybe there have not said anything yet, because they dont even know.

Everything they are still working on it

[Jupiter117]

an interesting question. But for me it is even more important to know if we can really stick to one class for a long time of our gameplay. e.g. I really want to fly a Bird of Prey from that time on when i get it until endgame if possible.

I mean I would hate it to replace my ship all "3 levels" or all "5 days" just because ship stats force me to do so.
I know this goes a bit against all the people discussing which ship has better stats, but for gameplay reasons I wouldn't like to see so big gaps between the stats of common ship classes.

I agree with you. I'd like to be able to stick with a ship I can be comfortable with.:cool:

[Trekkie]

I also would like to see more information about ship classes released since it is a very important aspect of the game.

[Saladin_Class]

I also would like to see more information about ship classes released since it is a very important aspect of the game.

We all would