Everyone wants something.
What's better - to keep on making special exceptions, or solve the underlying problem?
(which is that people want to fly their favorite ship, whatever that may be, at the level cap - and right now, only those lucky enough to have those ships in Tier 5 can.)

Arguments about some ships being older than others, or more "logical" for a given tier, etc, are missing the point. This isn't about what "makes sense" in a computer game with made-up rules in a entirely made-up universe, it's what will make people (un)happy.

This I agree with.



This I don't. This isn't your grandfathers excelsior, this is a new ship that looks like a old design. Personally I feel that the term "Retrofit" is kinda lacking, but then again so is attack Hortas as pets. Like the Vulcan ship, the Excelsior is large enough to get all new gear.

People said "This is the 21rst century" in 2000, not much had change since 1999. Granted we are looking at what 30-35 years in game time since the Dominion wars? I can see original frontline ships being moved to lessor roles while new ones take the front line, except in a time of war. Retrofitted, the larger ships would still pack a punch, though not as great as a "State of the Art" ship of the line. If the ship is freshly built as "State of the Art", it's large enough to be a front line ship, just like the vulcan science ship.

Though I generally support the fly what you want crowd, some ships seem to small to make the jump (sorry, Connies).

Believe it or not, whats unlogical makes me Unhappy. just saying. It already annoys me that there's no official uniform, and that people are using borg parts/reman shields on ships. Lets not make shuttles capable of one shotting borg Cubes now please.

If the Akira is a newer ship, and designed to fight Borg, then there's no reason it shouldn't be a T4 or T5 ship.

If it's currently a T3 I wonder what will replace it?

indeed.

here's how I see it, the Excelsior class was used on the frontlines as a "frontline cruiser" in the dominion war, however at the time the ship design was OVER 90 YEARS OLD (USS Excelsior launched in 2290, the dominion war was in 2373) in spite of this the designed seemed to serve well and the latest refit of it proved capable of fighting the defiant in a straight up fight (Defiant was one of the most powerful ships in starfleet at the time)

I don't think an excelsior being capable of playing with the big boys is totally outside of consideration.

yes by rights it should be slightly inferior to a sovvy or galaxy, but there's a lot of factors that aren't covered in this game that would be part of it. a galaxy is proably a lot more comfortable a ride, and proably faster, then a excelsior.

The problem is we also all have ships we don't like. Or it's even more complicated then that.

TOS Constitution - I am currently watching the remasted TOS episodes, I enjoy it, I enjoy the ship. But if you put it next to a Galaxy or even the Constitution Refit, it look like a Japanese Godzilla Costume with zipper next to, say, a Jurrassic Park Raptor. It's just something I don't want to see these things together. I might be able to appreciate them in their respective contexts, but mixing them doesn't work.

On the other hand, I don't want people to be denied their favorite ships either. They pay this game for getting a Startrek experience, they have no less rights to it then I do. So, a possible compromise could be to have a special player option to ignore other people's costume and see a 2409 appropriate costume instead. (evne though I am not necessarily a fan of all those ships, at least then the game is internally consistent and somewhat more believable.)

On the gripping hand, I don't want Carriers in this game. At all. Carriers are not part of the Startrek experience. There are awesome franchies out there with awesome fighter and carrier combat. Startrek isn't one of them. That the KDF has it is bad enough. I don't want to take away people's toys, that's unfair as well, but if you really must have a Carrier, don't ruin the Akira with it, instead level your KDF char.

sadly the Akira has somehow captured the imagination of some trek fans as some super torpedo boat/carrier.

honestly if the akira carried the amount of craft some people claim it does it must not have much room to carry many Torps

Well, that's the part where we all will have to make accomodations. I currently get seriously annoyed every time I see a T5 Excelsior, a design I don't like, but I only can ignore it and keep playing.

If the ship upgrade was in game, I had plans to upgrade my Constitution look alike, the Excalibur class I think it is, as I "see" it as a "logical" 25th century version of the original, so I'm with you that I won't like to see a 1701 prancing around at top tier. Still, I don't want other people to dictate MY choice of ships, so I will (mostly) keep my mouth shut and ignore the anachronism. Other people are entitled to their ration of fun, and if that involves flying a Constitution, well, it's their choice.

Besides, it's a c-store ship. There shouldn't be any ships in the c-store to begin with, but making people purchase their favorite ship, and forcing them to leave it behind after ten levels of play sounds very suspiciously as a scam.

When the new T6 ships appear there will be a lot of complaining on the part of T5 ship owners, regardless the fact happily ignored by them that they have played with them for the equivalent of more than ten levels. Compared to the Constitution or NX people, their ships have more than made their worth, but they won't see it this way.

I think the difference is that the Connie/NX/Oberth aren't and never have been sold as endgame content, stuff like the Galaxy-X, Kar'fi, Excelsior-R etc are. It's moving the goalposts so to speak.

Getting back on topic, I think an Akira-R would be best saved for T6. At T5 all I can see it doing is rendering the Fleet Escort it's younger dumber sibling. I was very suprised it was only at T3 when I started playing though, but I think part of the reason for that is that Cryptic thought it'd be helpful for maintaining intrest in new players if they could get to some of the cooler ships faster.

The error Cryptic made was assuming that people would want to give up their favorite ships just by moving a tier.
I hated moving from Nova to to Golfball.

Champions Online didn't have that issue - you can keep your favorite costume regardless of tier. Other games might have it, if equipment causes visual changes.