I'm sure this might have been a topic in the past, for sure. If it wasn't, then I am glad I am posting this! Either way, it's something I'd like to see some brainstorming / why-we-can't-do-that stuff! This has to do with three things in particular.

Simply put: I can alter anything about my character's physical appearance. Like, literally. Anything. I think it would be nice if we could do the same for our ships. Change the height, length, width, color whatever on our starships. I love my Intrepid Class, but maybe I want to change where the rear tractor beam comes from on my ship. So, I think it'd be nice if we could change the 'spawn points' per se, of our weapons / animations. I could move my tractor beam spawn point to the deflector in front, right above the hanger bay in back. Something like this picture would be cool. If I don't want my rear beams firing from x, y, z points on the rear of the ship, wouldn't it be nice to change them to points a, b, c? It sounds sorta complicated, so I am not really going to ask for much here.

Second, subsystem targetting! My favorite thing to do as a science officer on a science ship. But...weapons, auxiliary, shields and engines. ._. Well, that's quite the list you have there. I am going to reference Bridge Commander here (as I will do many times in this post) with this picture . What I appreciated most about Bridge Commander was its attention to detail. Now, I couldn't find a good screen shot, but if you clicked on any of the drop-down bars under 'enemies', you'd have a SLEW of subsystems. Right down to the sanitation systems, if you got that mod. >.> <.< And those subsystems were at certain 'hit point' locations on the ship, so that when you manually targeted torpedos or phasers, or clicked on that subsystem, it would direct your fire to that -specific- part of the ship and you'd take out that subsystem. If you wanted to disable an enemy ship, you could knock out their engines and weapons and leave them adrift. I like that better than just shooting at an NPC in Star Trek Online until green smoke comes out of it.

And that leads me to my final point! Localized damage! When my ship gets under 75% health, doesn't matter where it got shot. All of my hull plating fades away. 50%, it's even worse! And my nacelles start to spark. You get the idea. My last Bridge Commander reference is a bit over the top, but the idea I am trying to communicate is how the damage shows up where the vessel is being hit. Not everywhere. If the shields are breached, the damage shows up here.

I think all three of these things would greatly improve the game's functionality and user experience!

Been suggested and asked for many times previously. Some devs are for it, some are against. Considering the very high cost it would probably take to do something like this in dev time and money, I for one doubt it will ever happen. One of the devs just mentioned the amount of time it took to place the new ship that's coming out this week in the ESD window.

edit:One of the devs also mentioned that they way the ships are created, they exist around a pivot point. Everything has to be balanced around that pivot point for the graphics to work. Messing with that will cause issues.

No offense but I feel this is very disrespectful towards the folks trying to help out here in the forums. You just basically told us that you can;t be bothered to use the search function to look to see if this topic has been discussed before and even if we have, you;re going to start yet another thread on the topic. We just had another player ask us why there are so many threads on the same topic. You just proved that poster's point.

Also now a moderator has to take the time to combine all these threads together. If they don;t, other players searching for this topic will just be harder because the material will now be spread out even more. And there are some forums that posting a much repeated topic will and you in hot water for doing so.

I mean no disrespect but maybe using the tools available may be something to consider. I mean they used the library computer all the time on the shows, right? Not sure why it;s such an alien concept around here.

edit: Oh and a suggestion to fix your sig image before someone notices it and reports you. The limit is 500 x 150 pixels. The title you hold in a bit of irony.

While I can see a lot of people using the first part to make their ships more Canon in size, i could also see a lot of people making giant defiants, or mini galaxy-xs, of in the case of people, just a random mish mosh of sizes which would look ridiculous on ships which i'm sure CBS wants to avoid.

The second one though i would like simply because i find it weird that my nacelles have weapons on them. It just seems odd to me to have beams firing from them during combat. Although i also like the idea of a more specific targeting and targeting area damage. I would love to be able to single out a ships engines/weapons/shields and so on and actually SEE the damage there. It would add a lot of interesting gameplay, especially for Klingon raiding as well as fed side missions where you need to disable rather than destroy. PvP might be more annoying though since it would effect that more as well. Although ground combat could use the same system. Target the weapon to disable their gun or blast the bat'leth out of their hands. Target their legs to cause movement debuff with a limping animation added. Or head shot for extra damage. It would add a reason to play in shooter mode at least.

o.o; I'm sorry, I didn't realize this was so much of a problem. I rarely ever go on the forums. I fixed the signature problem -- I've had that since the forums when it first opened, so I had no clue it was a problem. I am not particularly sure what to do to the post since I can't delete it. x.x

In regard to the forum post you linked, I simply didn't consider using the search feature. I didn't desire to be spoonfed; I had an idea and I figured I'd post about it. I apologize for the...inconsiderate nature of my post.

Re: can change your character in just about any way:

Try making a character with a beer gut.

my friends and I are starting to play with it to make charecters that look like anime charecters or comic charcters. I know a few people already did the Joker lol.

Maybe down the line it can be an optionf or a higher graphics setting to show damage on a specific place?

Weapons locations and specific damage sections of the ship make sense but ship size would be weird.