What do you think the new tier of ships will have?
5 Fore weapon slots?
Double layered shields?
Ship abilities like those of retrofits?

tell me what you think the next tier of ships should have.
Personaly I'd like to see a ship with 2 shielding slots, one slot for regenerative or resilient type shields, and the other slot for what ever you want. I think that'd be nice cause then I could have a Resilient type shielding with a Covariant type shielding, and have strong shields. But hey that'd be over powered, so to work around that, I'd say make it so when the main shields are disalbed or drained, the 2nd shields kick in, until the shields are repaired.

While interesting lets go back to trek technology and sensible thinking.

T6 ships are of different ranges. They should have a range of abilities that venture to the life of ship mechanics
they should have command slots as well as lt cmdr slots but you exchange of a ensign slot. They should have the ability to trade out consol slots. This means if i want to transform a tactical slot into an engineering slot i can do so. example: I have 2 tactial slots and i took one of those slots and moved it to my science area which had 2 as well. My end result now has 3 science slots and 1 tactical slot. To me this is true ship refiting and allocation abilities.

The max on each slot area should be 5. Also the weapons slots could have this ability as well. Retrofits commendations are given out after great strides in missions have been completed. refit commendations can go for at least 2 a month to keep the game in its mmo capacity.

There can be side torpedo launchers as well.

My guess is the tier 6 slots will be the ones with "craftable" or "changeable" configurations, allowing us to arrange the bridge stations and console slots to fit our current assignment, within reason.

Where has it even been said that there will BE a Tier 6 of ships?

I believe that if there is a Tier 6, it will be a special function of that tier of ship, and not additional capabilities. Like perhaps a Tier 6 ship will be able to be a flagship that can command other ships. It will still have the same combat abilities as a Tier 5 ship, and Tier 5 ships will still be usable for those who don't want the special Tier 6 function.

Unless some sort of ship upgrade system is on the horizon, and the devs (as well as players) seem adamantly opposed to the idea, I sincerely doubt the devs will begin introducing a Tier of ships that makes all the ships at Tier 5 obsolete.

Tier 6? I'm hoping for a Commander, Lieutenant Commander, Lieutenant Commander, Lieutenant bridge officer arrangement to be standard. A few ships, ones considered 'heavy specialists' or 'hybrids' like the Qin Raptor, Galaxy-R or MVAE would be given Commander, Commander, Lieutenant, Lieutenant arrangements. This arrangement removes a highly limited ensign ability in favor of a potent LC or Com ability and, almost as importantly, gives a net ability gain of 0, cause I've already got too many powers.

There would only be a few exclusive "Tier 6" ships, like the new Enterprise, the vast majority of Tier-6 would be reached via "refitting" existing Tier 5 vessels. The refit formula for your ship would be determined by the ensign slot that's being scrapped so your ship maintains the same number of different profession BOFF powers.

Special abilities paid for with console slots like saucer seperation, cloaking devices, battle cloaks, multi-vector, and the cloak/lance combination of the Galaxy-X would be turned into specialized consoles with limited 'share-ability' between similar types of ships. This new versatility will be balanced by the introduction of 'inspection scanning' that will allow you to see the weapons and console arrangements of a ship that has been within 10 kilometers of you at any point in the last 30 minutes. This will be a feature useable while dead and awaiting respawn.

I like the idea of adjustable console positions so I'll say a total of 11 consoles but with an enforced minimum of 2 and a maximum of 5.

Number of weapons should stay the same.

I would like to see Tier 6 ships start to phase in tech developed after voyagers return

as long as the Tier 5 get the ability to 'upgrade' to Tier 6, I'll be totally fine with it otherwise... *sighs* there's gonna be a LOT of forum raging over the bought Tier 5 ships...

but anyway, I definitely think Tier 6 should get 5 weapon slots (5 fore and aft for cruisers, 5 fore 4 aft for escorts, 4 fore and aft for science vessels, to keep with the current lineup); possibly the two shield slots, and that second backup shield idea sounds good; and possibly upgrades to the Boff lineups, hull and console slots, most definitely

as long as the game balance isn't destroyed, i'll be all be fine

Yeah, they should let you upgrade your tier 5 to tier 6, but then again, I'd just like to see some new ship designs and tech for the ships, like weapon slots for the sides of the ships, universal slots, and some other techs.