And they can probably live without a new costume piece or ship model. You don't need any of the extra art. It's not even really content, just art.

My kid has more damn cash in his pocket than I do

I actually don't mind the cryptic store and the way it works. Every time I log in I open up the c-store tab to see if there is any new goodies that are interesting and I may want to purchase. I just wish I had some self control to wait to buy some things as there have been two reduced price sales thus far :p

Heh. Touche.

Preaching to the choir here. I totally agree with you.

I wasn't defending the OP. Just trying to give a possible explanation as to the root or catalyst of the OP's rant. I don't think it's a reasonable rant. But I do think it might be rooted in lack of available funds for whatever reason.

well... we COULD discuss if the pricetags are "reasonable".... i see way better stuff as Xbox 360 DLC for less money, so... yeah it's borderlining for what it actually delivers.

Well, you have to admit that it looks bad/shady when there's almost as many Klingon bridges in the C Store for extra cash than there are included in the game.
As for 'it's only fluff artwork', take a look at Klingon uniform choices or even Klingon ship exterior light options (Feds have 4, Klingons have one default). Looks like the art department should be catching up on things that should have been in the game at launch, not padding wallets with C Store 'fluff'.

And how exactly do you suppose they are going to pay for all that art time?

C-store art pays for itself, it doesn't have to come out of somebody else's budget. Providing more free content is harder: there's only so much money to go around from subscriptions, and would you prefer to spend it on bridges and costume pieces, or on new NPCs and mission maps?

They did in fact ask everybody precisely that question a couple of months ago, and appear to be following the response they got. Meanwhile, since C-store art pays for itself, they can keep churning that out regardless - it doesn't take any time or money away from the subscription-funded efforts.

Let's take a closer look at that, like you suggest.

There's currently one default bird of prey stretched out over 5 tiers. That's 5 birds of prey.

The federation has 3 cruisers per tier, 5 tiers, and 2 special T5 skins. That's 17 cruiser skins.

Here's what I need you to find for me, you, and the art department ...

12 MORE Bird of Prey designs.

Links to pictures please.

Your point is only valid if the art team finishes free content and updates earlier than the other departments (i.e. coders), and has 'free time' to make C Store items. Speculating that this is the case is, well, speculation, and can't be a valid basis for a discussion point. 'Pay for the art time'? Are you also assuming that instead of having an actual art staff that works for them full-time, they hire out extra external artists, and pay them by the job, or by the hour?
My point still stands, the artwork for the Klingon side is perhaps 1/3 that of the Federation side, including ships, bridges, uniforms, casual clothing (which doesn't exist), and so on, and so on. Which I guess is fine, if you never roll a Klingon character and are asked to pay C Store points for what is essentially free on the Federation side.

No, you don't get it. Subscription fees provide them with a certain amount of money. From that, they can pay the salary of X staff - they'll be doing continual analysis to work out precisely how many. That money gets distributed between art, writing, map design, coding, and whatever else needs doing.

If they also provide C-store items, those will pay for more staff. They do not detract from the amount of money spent on subscription-funded content. It is not the case, as you imply, that the entire art department works on a single project - for the most part, each artist will be working on something independently from the others, and some of them will be working on free content (like fixing the ship models) while others will be working on C-store content. If they were not producing C-store items, then they would not spend more time on free art - there would be no way to pay them. They'd be reassigned to a different project, or else they'd have to lay off staff.

(They probably don't assign individual artists to work full time on C-store items - they'll divide the budget up so that a given artist might work 30 hours a week on subscription content, and 10 hours a week on C-store content, and the budget will be stated in man-hours rather than headcount - but it works out the same)