If they could add a few 'themed' rooms that could be 'tacked' onto our interiors, it would help somewhat. At the least a type of engineering room relevant to our ship class - how is a Defiant going to have a Sovereign's warp core? It's not. So escorts get Defiant style warp cores and small engine rooms, for example.
I think that some rooms of our choice, too, would be a pretty cool addition, which we could select in the ship designer interface like we do currently our bridge and the 'size' of our ship interior.
Engineering Captains might prefer the ambiance of an Engineering Lab or Computer core room (one of those secret rooms just off Engineering where Geordi always walked out of with a spring in his step :p) on their ship.
Tactical Captains might prefer the feel of a fully stocked armory or torpedo bay or phaser relay room that they could visit, whereas a Science Captain might want a Sensor Maintenance bay or Astrometrics, to give the idea their sensors are in tip-top condition and really play up on that Science ship feel. All pointless as regards interaction and practicality, but they'd add tonnes to the feel of our ship.
As for interactibility, a holodeck we could visit instead of a computer in our ready room, for Mission Replay, would make more sense If we could choose what paintings were in our ready room at least, or in our Captain's ready room, would be nice too...
I'm more against ship-based bank access--our cargo bays are our inventories unless my captain is carrying an aegis set and reman set on his/her person. :p
I can see a DOFF unlocking inventory tabs though--like a Supply Officer.
I am all for ship-based access to our "banks" (although I am also not in favor of the term "banks", since it is clearly cargo/storage, not a financial institution). The way I look at it, our inventory (I) is like our ready cargo area, stuff arranged for ready access at a moment's notice. Our "banks" on the other hand, are more like deep storage. Located on our ships (which is how we can access and manage it at any base cargo terminal), but may take some time/work to transfer items to our ready hold. It's like that box of sweaters up in the attic... it's there, you can get to it, but it might take a moment to get to it to bring it down and put in your closet when fall/winter comes (but at least you don't have to drive across town to get it from your "bank" :p or just buy an entire new set of winter clothes).
STO already has player housing. They're called "ship interiors" in this game, but the concept is basically the same.
Yes it does.
And that's exactly how what they're called in the episode.
The problem is that most people think of player housing as a private space that is both customizable and functional. Right now, ship interiors in Star Trek Online are neither of those things.
The optimist in me doesn't quite see it the way you guys do. Peregrine I'm a long time player of City of Heroes as well and I understand your feelings on the issue. For instance, I have wanted for a long time to have the option of vaulting the ceilings further, widening the corridors or just having one big ground plot, and filling in the walls myself. That being said, I feel like STO is going in a different direction, and I can see some pretty killer ideas down the road.
Check out this post I made for ideas that I've gotten on how they can release alternate types of Captains out there. I don't think my ideas are that far fetched, based on what I've seen Stahl say in the past. Also, this is Star Trek, its not City of Heroes. While City of Heroes is a pretty large game, it never had the kind of Podcasting or Vlogs (I really hate to call the MMORGUE or STokEd a Vlog. I'd rather watch them than any similar TV show on the cable) that this game has gotten.
Foundry here already feels like so much more than Mission Architect, and I love architect... but it feels so much more confining and... hollow. What I mean by Hollow is that Architect sets up this notion of a 'Training Arena' not unlike what the Xmen have, except that Dr. Aeon is selling it to Supers to train on. I never liked it conceptually, and it sadly doesn't give you the kind of immersion that Foundry does. You can link the missions to anything anywhere. Its beautiful. If you think the mission stinks, ignore it, strike it from the record. Foundry is the next generation in a lot of ways, and this sort of innovation to gameplay has a lot of potential.
Don't lose hope Peregrine!
I'll post a link to my other forum post so you can see what kind of ideas I have for the future of 'development' in this game, and how it might allow people to play concurrently with the bigshot captains as merchants. I really would like to see more input on the topic. I think that we the players have done a lot to give the developers ideas on this game. For the most part I love the dialog that we have back and forth with them. Lets keep it up!
Oh!!! and in reply to what Jeremy and Peregrine were discussing on the Mmorgue I had a thought. There are elements of our bridge that can be customizable, but I dont' see why the hallways can't be standard. Stahl has commented he'd like to see us be able to gain more functionality and customization in our ship interiors. I don't see why we can't have a mixture of customization and standardization depending on location within the ship. (I'd love to see Engineering effected by slotting Aegis or Borg sets though). I'd love to see Cargo bays actually store items. I'd love to see an Astrometrics lab store anomaly data. I'd love to see an armory store weapons for the captain, so we have a place to put away all these unique goodies we earn from featured episodes. I'd love to see the mess hall capable of storing foods. I'd also love to see a way we can have an Account-bank, which we could use to transfer things like BOFFS, or even Purple Borg items we've earned on other captains (I've had to throw these away). Storage as it stands now is not enough, I think we all agree. I'd love to see a way to break down items that may not be useful to us, for their requisite parts (maybe with some getting lost). All these ideas I think would be a boon to the game, but I'm comfortable with it taking time for it to be released. I think its very possible, and like I said before I'm still quite optimistic. There has been talk already that Crafting will be done aboard ship, and that the DOff system is likely going to be inherent to that.
I am all for ship-based access to our "banks" (although I am also not in favor of the term "banks", since it is clearly cargo/storage, not a financial institution). The way I look at it, our inventory (I) is like our ready cargo area, stuff arranged for ready access at a moment's notice. Our "banks" on the other hand, are more like deep storage. Located on our ships (which is how we can access and manage it at any base cargo terminal), but may take some time/work to transfer items to our ready hold. It's like that box of sweaters up in the attic... it's there, you can get to it, but it might take a moment to get to it to bring it down and put in your closet when fall/winter comes (but at least you don't have to drive across town to get it from your "bank" :p or just buy an entire new set of winter clothes).
Yes. I agree with this. I see personal inventory as more along the lines of things that I or my boffs are carrying, as well as things that are being prepared to beam up to cargo bays/astrometrics/engineering/etc. I for one would love if we could access storage more in this way. It would be a great way to go inside our ships with a purpose. Crafting is another good purpose (with specification perhaps for each captains ship). Ship-board missions are another great purpose of our interiors, and I really hope we can get this down the line.
I think if Cryptic wants to add fully customizable player housing, they should probably just tack that onto starbases. NPC ones at initially, and Fleet bases when they come along. But rather than zoning you into an enclosed space containing nothing but you and whatever NPCs you might've put there, it should be like a deck (or rather, a section of a deck) of a starbase with multiple players' non-instanced rooms attached. (Assigned as you go. If later on you want to neighbour up with a friend, I guess there'll be a token on the C-store to have your quarters' contents transported to identical quarters on another deck.)
Different bases could have different themes - certainly the standard corridors aren't going to pass for DS9's habitat ring - and different views out the window depending on whether you picked (if you're a Fed) ESD, DS9, K7 or SB39. (I don't know the names of any Klingon bases, but I figure if we throw in Drozana they ought to make it to three at least, right?) And there could be different types of rooms. Quarters on the outside with windows, science and engineering labs on the inside without. (Those are really the only two I can think of off the top of my head that I think would be popular enough to warrant creating. Except, perhaps, social areas. But if you put a ton of those on one deck, the instance population limit's going to spread what little crowd there is pretty thin.)
Or they could make places you can beam down to on different worlds where you can get some place, like Andoria, Vulcan, Risa or if you're looking for a bargain, Earth. (Though technically that's the planet New Jersey's on.) I always like the Vulcan village concept art Perpetual used to have on its site. The KDF would need some planets added first though, to make that work.
At any rate, then those people who want to spend their days moving furniture around (For the Glory of the Empire!), create a mini-museum showcasing 101 uses for rare particle traces or just stockpiling Tribbles in anticipation of the Klingon ambassador's arrival, can do so without it interfering with any missions Cryptic might want to run onboard ships.
Me, I'd much rather have something to do on board the ship itself. As one hauling around two dozen weapons in his inventory, an armory doesn't sound like a bad idea.
Yes, with each new system upgrade and Featured Episode I'm finding that its getting harder and harder for my older characters to store their items. Even worse is some of these items have a certain collectible feel to them, and I'd hate to have to delete them for this reason, just to be able to use my inventory. Shipboard storage really is something we ought to have, and I think it would give us fun reasons to use our ships interior.
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