Dev Chat: October 20

[Rekhan]

Next Tuesday, October 20, at 11:30 a.m. Pacific time (we’re GMT -7 right now), we’ll be holding a developer’s chat in the official Star Trek Online IRC chat!
This week's topic is player progression. We've talked about this previously in an Ask Cryptic, but we'd like to use this chat for any follow-up questions you'd like to ask the devs in real time.
The chat is scheduled to last 30 minutes. If you can’t make it due to time constraints, we’ll be posting a transcript of the chat on the forums.
If you’d like to join us, point your IRC program of choice toward #STO on coldfront.net, or click right here for a Java client, then type "/join #STO" in the input area. And if you can’t make it, just reply with your question in this post’s comment thread. We’ll be selecting questions from the thread to put to the developers.


Link to the news article.

[osena]

cool that sounds nice

[knightofhyrule730]

What progression is there after admiral?

Obviously no ranks follow, but are there levels? or whatever are in between the ranks?

[TFO_KillSwitch]

would be nice to see some dev chats at night . when thos who work durign the day can be on
but thats the brake of working for a living lol

[shadows802]

It was mentioned that at admiral we would have been roughly half way to maxing out the skill sets, about how many skil sets are there in all? how many in each "chain" or "tree"?

[Arokh72]

Originally Posted by TFO_KillSwitch

would be nice to see some dev chats at night . when thos who work durign the day can be on
but thats the brake of working for a living lol

Or at a good time for those of us overseas, I'm not getting up at 0530 for anyone.

My questions are:

1) You've given us a hint at the engineering side of things, can have some hints for the other professions such as Science. For example will we have medical as a science tree..think Dr Crusher and the USS Pasteur?

2) How will Klingon rankings and professions differ or be the same as Federation. Example if on Science you work on shield buffs as Federation, would a Klingon scientist have weapon buffs instead, or improved cloaking e.t.c?

[Deltab]

1) What will the Klingon ranks be? Will they be like Major, Colonel, and General?

2) What kind of ships classes will the Klingons advance through? Will they have different functions like the Science and Tactical ships?

3) Can one go from a Tactical ship to a Cruiser and then back while they are leveling form Commander, to Captain, then to Admiral?

[Swordopolis]

Other than new ships and higher BO ranks, what else becomes available ("unlocks") as a direct result of skill and rank advancement?

[Darkthunder]

Originally Posted by Deltab

1) What will the Klingon ranks be? Will they be like Major, Colonel, and General?

One idea sprung to mind for Klingon officer ranks (partially canon). I have included the Federation equivalent within brackets [ ]:

Depending on which route you decide to specialize in (i.e Engineering, Science, Tactical)
Engineering Officer [Lieutenant]
Science Officer [Lieutenant]
Weapons Officer [Lieutenant]

The last one is canon from multiple episodes involving Klingons. The other rank names felt appropriate depending on how you start your character. Next up:

Engineering Specialist [Lt. Commander]
Science Specialist [Lt. Commander]
Weapons Specialist [Lt. Commander]

Building upon the first rank, but showing that this Klingon officer is more specialized within his/her field. The last three ranks are similar to your suggestion, and also fairly canon to the shows:

Captain [Commander]
Colonel [Captain]
General [Admiral]

Offhand, there have been multiple Klingon Captains throughout the years, among others the Captain who transported Captain Picard and Lt. Commander Data to Romulus during the "Reunification" episodes.

Colonel Worf was seen in Star Trek VI
General Worf is part of the STO timeline (i.e the TNG Worf)
General Chang was the main villain of Star Trek VI

If you forego the idea of having a "Specialist" rank on the 2nd tier, then basically bump up the ranks and include a new one:

Captain [Lt. Commander]
Colonel [Commander]
General [Captain]
Dahar Master [Admiral]

Kang, Kor and Koloth were the mostk nown Dahar Masters in the Klingon Empire.

Just suggestions that Cryptic may or may not use for the Klingon ranks :P

[ExAstris]

1. Is there a point at which a player gets diminishing or capped returns for skill point accumulation? If so, would it be easier to make a new character and crew to get a fully skilled escort ship, or would it be faster to cross train a captain already skilled in engineer/science (and deal with not having the innate class skills or any of the associate ground skills/abilities)?

2. It has been mentioned that ships of various tiers generally have more/higher BO/equipment slots than the ship(s) below it indicating there are some exceptions. Are there any notable exceptions in the progression tree that render particular ships as effective as ships of another tier (assuming maxed out stats/equipment/etc on both ships), but were simply placed in a different tier in order to fill all the tiers in? (The Akira-Defiant, Galaxy-Sovereign, and Olympic-Intrepid placements are key concerns here)