I recently happened across a thread where a player complained that he had grown very much attached to the Miranda-class all Fed characters started out with, yet felt that it was underpowered now that he's at Captain rank.

Similarly, I came into the game with the initial goal of obtaining an Intrepid-class vessel, but now fly the Odyssey simply for its high hull strength, console slots, max number of fore and aft weapon slots as well as the perfect mix of ranked BOff stations.

I was wondering what the community's general thoughts are on a system where players could purchase using in-game currency the following:

• Additional weapons slots (up to a maximum of 4 fore and 4 aft)
  
  
• Additional console slots (up to a maximum of 3~4 for each of Tac, Sci and Eng)
  
  
• Various combinations of ranked BOff stations (up to a maximum of 11~12 total powers)

The main purpose of this system would be to increase ship customability by decoupling each ship classes' emphasis on particular careers e.g. Intrepid class currently has a stronger leaning towards Sci BOffs

My primary fear, however, is that this may end up with massively overpowered ships that breaks game balance, as well as violating canon (e.g. a science vessel having a heavily tactical BOff / weapon loadout).

Thoughts?

Bad idea. You will HAVE TO purchase maximum number of all those slots, and if you haven't you become as underpowered as Miranda.
Ang if you make global limit (e.g. maximum 9 consoles) it will be just like all slots are universal.
It will destroy everything.
Its easier to think about ability to change visuals. E.g. some holo emmiters with unlimited time.

There is a Tier 5 Intrepid, it's a C-Store ship.

So you can fly it without it being under powered.

I find this funny because the Klingons pretty much just get the same ships every tier and want more variety. The Feds get many many choices and want less.

I'm pretty sure they will never implement an upgrade program.

I'm fine with the low(ish) hull strength of the Intrepid / Intrepid retrofit. However, as a Tac player who regularly uses High Yield, Beam Overload, Torpedo Spread and Fire At Will concurrently in the same engagement, that won't work for me - there's only one Lt. Tac slot available, and one cannot switch BOffs during combat.

Guess I'll have to stick with the Odyssey, and accept the fact that each ship is optimised strictly for only one of three career paths.

I'll let you in on a little secret.

Its not the arrangement of Boffs / Consoles that determine your effectivness, it is the player skill and how you build with what you have.

I would also say that keeping the career and the ship paths different for the best outcomes, I would not want to run a Sci officer in my Intrepid, the DPS loss would be sustantial.

P.S I would be totally supprised if your Oddy does more DPS than my Intrepid, infact, I don't think it is possible given the current mechanics of the combat system.

I have a very difficult time understanding the design behind limiting the number of Bridge Officer Abilities to what Tier Starship you were using. I can understand the limitation in weapon slots, device slots and console slots. However, the Bridge Officer Abilities doesn’t make sense to me.

This would TOTALLY imbalance some ships if you gave them carte-blance to change the spec of the ships.

Maybe, just maybe, a MAX of 1 amendment to any given ship at a time (purchasable from the c-store for 240c? one off charge per ship).

This would allow you to switch one console slot to another, so Tac > Sci, or Eng > Tac.

Or allow you to switch 1 Boff power (not a boff, just 1 power), so you could switch that unwanted Ens Tac on the Defiant-R to an Eng Ens for example. Or perhaps that Lt. Cmd Eng slot on the GX to a Tac,

So for the GX you would have (if you use the above example)

Lt. Cmd. Tac (upgraded from the Lt. Tac)
Ens. Tac
Cmd. Eng
Lt. Eng (down graded from the Lt. Cmd. Eng)
Lt. Sci

or, 3 Eng (-1), 2 Sci and 4 Tac (+1) consoles.

Restrictions might need to apply, for example:

Can't have 2 cmd level boffs (by upgrading the Lt Cmd),
Can't have more than 5 of any console (looking at you Operations Oddy Eng Consoles)

More I think of it, the more I really REALLY like this idea.

Comments?