I've been playing today and this idea came to my mind. What you guys think of allowing admirals to assign their surplus bridge officers to the command of their additional ships?

Two things gave me this idea. First of all was Starfleet Command. In that game you could buy (or capture, but this is asking for too much) an additional two ships to be part of your own fleet. Second, was the small 5 man groups we have already in place for STO.

So basically what i am suggesting is allow us to create a NPC 3 (or even 5) group just as player groups, and have the game difficutly scale in the same proportion (without increasing the loot threshold, admirals don't really care for loot, only for challenges ).

It would work like this. I hit admiral, go to a spacedock, visit the shipwright and now the button "assign officer" would be avaible for every ship i have (up to a limit, and only T4- ships. No NPC fleets of T5 ships). So, i select my Defiant-class escort, hit that button and a window pops up. I then select one of my officers to fly that ship. When i undock the ship would be there following me.

Now, the controls could be the same as the ground NPC officers. You would have passive mode, go to position (2D), attack my target, etc. And also would have that officer's skills avaible for you to use.

Ah, and another thing. Players wouldn't be allowed to bring in their own Boff fleets for Fleet Actions and DSE's.

So, what you devs and the community thinks about this idea?

This actually isn't bad. Given proper DEV time, it could even be expanded to potentially more than that. Maybe allowing your fleetmates (other players) access to your ships to use. They would have positives or negatives based on their actual rank v the ship type of yours they are using.

I'll have to give this some thought and maybe post again later.

Yea, i thought about that as well. Actually Perpetual wanted to do this, but Cryptic reasoned that people don't play the game to be a lower officer on someone else's starship, they play to command their own starship

But i don't fully agree with that reasoning. Just remember that Worf was the commanding officer on the Defiant (Sisko would take command for special missions, since we've only witnessed perhaps two or three days per MONTH on the DS9 timeline), but man the tactical console on the Enterprise-E.

This idea of NPC fleets afaik would be easy to implement in the short-term, since the system is already in place for ground-combat. They only need to make it work in space as well.

it would be interesting tinkering with your own fleet. Great idea!!!!!

Put a Lt Cdr in a Constitution class with some Boffs and use up the weapons you aquired while at a lower level. Maybe even command them in a PvP environment. It would open up a lot of gameplay options.

bump for great justice.