Yep, the Akira is far too young to be T5. Those ships have to mature first.

Im trying to find something to compare the Excelsior, its like ... mmm ... that ship gets upgraded with every decade it seems. i doubt there are 2 excelsiors alike. at least, those are my thoughts on the matter. It doesnt offend me like the thought of other ships on max tier, and its not like my view on the matter is utterly subjective. However:

Correct! And tbh this Thread is heading to the wrong direction, if people cant state reasons and just go "zomg no im right, no IM right" well then its pointless rly. As i stated before, i dont see the lack of logic in having the akira at 5 because its a relatively new design. (and this part IS subjective) and i rather like its looks. but i wouldnt shed a tear should it not be upgraded (wich it wont) nor would i jump with joy should it be upgraded (because i dont play a tac officer)

I do however hope that one day we can at least upgrade a ship to one, or 2 tiers higher. Or that tiers get removed, and just the basic strength of said ship design stays (would still mean that the current tier 1 ships would be weaker then any current tier 5, so it wouldnt change anything lol)

The excelsior makes ship tier look illogical.

Everytime the discussion comes up for any ship, there's the big old excelsior sitting there like a hippopotamus that just passed gas.

Woops!

So you know, each hot button issue about new ships, retrofits, console layouts, ship balance and tiers invariably comes back to the Excelsior.

Unfortunately Cryptic stepped in it big-time with ye ole Excelsior. It's a C-Store ship. They can't correct their problem because customers paid real money for the ship.

Instead they keep infuriating potential new customers by not putting out equivalent T5 ships of the ships THEY love. Be it a Constitution or an Akira or a Wambundu.

If only they could free us of ship tiers with some system that lets people upgrade each ship to a new tier. My god how many happy players would there be if they just allowed that level of customization and happy levelling progression?

But nope. Instead we stick to their rigid ship tiers with one glaring "we are totally gonna make a mint off of this ship in the C-Store" error.

Reap what you sow dev team. These questions and these requests won't go away. People want to fly their favorite ship. And the Excelsior is sitting right there at T5 big and shiny and saying to everyone else, Why Not Me Too?

Majorly this. Though they could let the current owners keep it, and allow new Excelsiors evolve from tier 3.

T5 Wambundu FTW!!!

I can tell you one. His name begins with "Darth" and ends with "Thanatos".

The ship upgrade system does not prevent from selling ships in the C-store. Take for instance the Steamrunner. It could be sold in the C-store as T2, for example, and then the player should upgrade it IF he/she wants to fly it at T5. This would reduce the appaling amount of T5 ships and T5 versions of lower tier ships.

So, correctly used, it could reduce the mess of T5 ships that is one of the most visible obstacles to adding a sixth tier of ships. Also, obviously, T5 ship owners could upgrade their current ships to T6, WITH a ship upgrade system in place.

I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. That being said, even if we throw out the Excelsior in this analysis, there still is very little stopping the Akira from being a T5 ship. From a canon standpoint, it makes a fair bit of sense...as the Sovereign, Defiant, and Prometheus are roughly the same age and already at T5.

From a gameplay standpoint, it seems like a no-brainer to me. Make it an escort that is something between an escort and a cruiser (like the Nebula is something between a science ship and a cruiser...higher than average hull with lower than average turn rate for its classification) with the following layout:

Commander Tac
Lt. Commander Eng
Lt. Science
Lt. Tac
Ens. Tac

4 Tac Consoles
3 Eng Consoles
2 Sci Consoles

You can even give it some sort of special ability in the manner of the MVAM Prometheus, as a removable console (I've heard people mention the Chain Reaction Pulsar from Armada, but I don't think Cryptic could get the rights to it. Maybe some sort of anti-Borg something?).

Make it cost 500 emblems or 1200 cryptic points.

I came up with this in about five minutes. So, why can't we do this again?

Looking at the Akira and how it was designed, I think there should be some trepidation toward making it tier 5. In canon, it was designed to be a carrier. However, we know there shouldn't be a Fed carrier as part of differentiating the factions. So I'm looking at other games, like Legacy where Akira was known as a torpedo boat because of the launcher in the center of the pylons. Perhaps some sort of 360 degree torpedo ability and/or spread?

"Did ya get that thing I sent ya?"

Mudd's the name, Harcourt Fenton Mudd. Also known as Mudd the First, as in "first in line for this."

I think they should seriously merge ship tiers in groups of two, making this somewhat irrelevant.

An upgraded Excelsior went head to head with the Defient in DS9 and more than held its own.

So why shouldnt it be high Tier?

Also on another topic, anyone who says the Akira should have been the Tier 4 instread of the Defient really missed the pattern of the Captain tier.