Hello folks, I am new to the forums and relatively new to the game. However that being said, I raised a question based on the current direction most of the new ships are taking. Can there be a spot designated for the special console that comes with the ship that same spot be used for other universal console spots?

This means when a person opens their new ship , that they are not sacrificing an engineering, tactical, or science slot just to house the special console. Now, if a person decides to add the additional consoles then those would need to be thrown into the other console areas.

The other aspect would be fleet ships versus C-Store counter parts. To this area I pose that if the ship does not normally come with a special console that it should not be part of the fleet vessels. The fleet ships tend to give better stats and an additional spot compared to none fleet counter part. So the sacrifice is a slot space over stats. (Feel free to say fleet ships should take the special console slot into consideration)

Again, this post is only because of the direction I see ships taking. Some vessels that require three special consoles to do an ability and that is a huge sacrifice to any player. You wouldn't buy a car where you're spare tire replaces your passenger side seat would you? The aforementioned analogy is an extreme case, but still, even cars have a place for that spare that does not require removal of other key functions.

There's a bit of a history here.

C-Store Ships used to only have 8 Console slots, with their abilities just inherent to the ship. A change rolled around that turned those abilities into Universal Consoles, and at the same time they gave ships a 9th Console Slot to put the consoles in, so in effect there was no change unless you wanted to swap out your special console for something else.

Honestly, I would prefer that they turned at least some of the Universal Consoles into Devices -- the Cloaking Device, Subspace Jump, Magnetic Grappler, Point Defense, etc. -- and just gave all ships 4 Device Slots. There's definitely an argument to be made that some combinations of console powers may be over-the-top, but it just sounds like a lot more fun to me, and gives you a little more room to really customize your ship.

Yep, one of the more popular suggestions for improvements.

The other line of thought of course follows the OP's suggestion and adds special console slots to all ships that can only slot the universal/special consoles. I'd suggest 3 of these slots at Tier 5 so the 3 console sets could be slotted on the ships if this approach was taken.

Unfortunately, Cryptic to date hasn't given any indication they are considering any improvements in this area. Which is somewhat odd as they keep putting out new special ability consoles. Making it easier to use all of this stuff would probably improve sales for them.