It?s a nice feature that we can join both Space and Ground Fleet STF with toons below level 10, but is it really necessary to put them in the same pool as the VA50 crowd?

While the stats and level might be adjusted upwards, a "white" lvl 8 Miranda still doesn?t scratch any shields in there. Pretty frustrating for both the lvl 8 and the lvl 50 in there.

Realistic in a Trek-sense though.

I mean, with Starbases under attack for example, you'd want to throw anything that can fire phasers/tetryons/antiprotons etc etc at the attackers.

That would be fine if an infinite number of ships were able to join. But since the Fleet STFs are limited it creates a problem. 5 Mirandas won?t even be able to penetrate the shields on a single Negh?Var, so they might as well sit there and let the timer run out.

The Fleet STFs should either be subdivided by level ranges as SB24 and the Mirror Event are or limited to 44+ like normal Borg STFs

The thing about those lower level ships is their purpose changes, and the player has to change with it. It is all about the targets you choose your maneuverability you bring to the battle. Those lower level ships should be focused on the smaller fighters and light cruisers, and when those targets are unavailable they should be able to get themselves onto the weak/open shields of the slower/larger ships because they have the speed and turn rate to do so. Yes the escorts will dish out the damage better, but they should not be the ones taking care of fighters and light cruisers, their DPS is needed for the meatier targets to take them down quick. If your tanks are doing their job you will only have to worry about aoe abilities like BFAW and TS. There is not fleet in the real world or in star trek cannon that is full of only the Heavy Cruisers or Battleships/Carriers.

I have not been involved in any fleet battles but it would have been cool to have certain things you would want to have your lower class ships do (besides what I mentioned earlier). For example, your starbase weapons had a malfuction, you need several ships to fly next to the Starbase and perfrom a few repair scans on it to bring the weapons back online. You wouldn't want your escorts handling that because they are the damage the tanks need behind them to win in combat.

Then please create a new toon, take your Miranda into one of the new fleet STFs and see how frustrating it is if you can?t even down a Bird of Prey and will struggle with a plasma torp or neural warhead.

Remember that new toons don?t have any space skills whatsoever. You?ll have HY1 from the Tac Boff which you get from the tutorial and that?s it.

It?s even worse than people who used to take shuttlecraft or runabouts into normal Borg STFs. At least they had their VA space skills and access to RA/VA-level equipment.

This sounds like more a individual fleet management issue than one the devs should tackle.

Perhaps your fleet should get together and decide on a minimum allowed rank to participate in the fleet missions?

/headdesk

Gonna go out on a limb here and say the point ran over you at flank speed.

But lets throw the suggestion into the pot:

Sorry new guy. I know we said we'd help you and all when you joined. But look, we really only wanted you to go out there and farm dilithium and data samples for us so us 1337p33p5 dont have to. What do you mean you want to do the fun stuff with the rest of the fleet? Get your aluminum can of a light cruiser there and farm like theres no tomorrow. Because if you don't reach your quota, there wont be.

The klingons won't be able to fill out a 15 man Starbase defense in a month (when the pop surge dies down)without the lower levels involved.

It's fine, the content isn't tuned to be that hard anyway. The lower level ships can concentrate on smaller craft and do their part.

Allowing lvl 11s with lvl 50s is completely idiotic and needs to be hotfixed out straight away. Completely ruins the game for the rest of the team.

I did one with my Lt Cmder toon, not realizing it would throw me in the same group of 5 with VAs. I did my best, but it was hard to contribute. It's not a huge deal for the fleet defense, but in NWS or blockade it just about will sink a team.

I like the idea of the whole fleet getting to participate, of a tactical wing of Mirandas fighting alongside a sovereign... much more canon; you never saw a Dominion war episode that was just 5 galaxies against a Dominion fleet.

That said, there needs to be some sort of fix. If you want to keep with the "fleets" theme, then maybe remove the 5-man minimum for mixed level fleets. e.g. 1 VA = 2 Cmdr = 4 Lt. So you might run one with 5 VAs, and the next might be 3 VAs, 2 Cmdrs, and 4 Lts.