Funny, I can (virtually) walk into the C-store and plunk down the Zen (money) and walk (Vritually) out with an Oddy 3-pack or (if I'm feeling masochistic) the Bortasque 3-pack.

Anniversary ships go into the store, and the store-versions of the Oddy are BETTER than the free version according to some-this is the business aspect you're ignoring-the likely fate of the anniversary ships after the event, is...

to be sold to anyone who wants one and has the money.

NOT like the Steamrunner, which was a cross-promotion with another company and therefore, held to be unique by contractual obligation.


It's going to be sold-so the question is, after the event, do you REALLY think yet-another-cruiser is going to sell well in a market as small as the KDF, esp. one with a subpar hull (you DID spec 30K there-that's escort territory), and 'AVERAGE' for KDF cruisers turning rate?

Esp. at a price point where it's competing with fleet-modules for the Tor'Kaht (Cryptic's not introduced a single budget ship either side since 2011 or so), which is, as you've admitted, probably the single best cruiser in the game?

Here's my problem with your proposal in a nutshell: It's neither good for the faction, nor for the business, and pretty much rigged for failure from the start.

Not saying it's BAD for the faction-but it offers nothing we don't already have access to with superior designs.

Unless you're into driving the bus, a turn rate of 10 on a KDF BC is average, on a Fed's cruiser it would be phenomenal, but this isn't being built for the Feds, is it?

Nyet, 'tis being built for the KDF side, and we've GOT a nice selection of better-than-the-feds-have Cruisers already. Your proposal offers nothing to sell after the event, meaning it becomes a waste of bandwidth and effort in the long term.

We're a small enough market that redundancy is pretty much of no use from the business side of the ledger, and it's the business side that counts for points. To draw enough out of the faction to make the investment worth the effort, it's got to be something with a pretty-near guaranteed draw, something that people WILL part with their hard earned money/zen for, AFTER THE EVENT IS RUN.

Cruisers aren't it.

You're clinging to that assumption that the C-store bundle has to be anything like the Free version, despite stating that the C-store versions of the Odyssey and Bortas are better then the free ones, awfully hard..

They can do whatever they want with the c-store ones. They probably will do a sci/tac/eng bundle just like they have done with the Odyssey and Bortas and will probably do with the Ambassador.

But I'm not talking about the C-store bundle.

I'm talking about the free ship.

Which will have absolutely no bearing on what the C-store bundle will be..

For the free ship, there is no price point because it's free

except in determining whether or not the c-store version will ever see the light of a computer monitor after the event.

the 'free' version is a taster to see if it's worth the effort to continue. Stahl's already said we're a rotten market to sell things to, and that they've lost (potential) money by putting things in the store for us to buy-it was the primary reason given why KDF got so little development time.

The "free" version, here, is a test to see IF we're even worth bothering with-ergo, it needs to be a "Home Run", or in Golfer's term, an "Eagle", or if you like Gridiron, a 90 yard run to a touchdown, in Hockey or Football(Soccer) a "Goooooooooooooaaallllll!!!!" kicked from the far side of the field.

It must be spectacularly successful, so successful that it erases three years of failure.

What you're proposing doesn't DO that. It's a field-goal kick because you can't score a touchdown, a penalty kick.

an "also ran". 2nd Place in a race of 2 competitors. NOT what will get us further Development work by proving the faction's a good market.

A Raptor analogue would work almost as well as making it a 'real' science ship, but a cruiser? not so much.

And what exactly are you basing that on?

The Bortas was hated, despised and rejected almost immediately, and they still put out 3 C-store versions of it..

The models are probably already done. Feedback on the free one will likely have little to no bearing on the C-store version(s), since they'll likely be very, very different ships..

It's like using customer feedback on a base-model Dodge Charger to decide whether or not to continue to sell the SRT-8...

I guess the Bortas was spectacularly successful, huh?

No..No it wasn't..

Also, Stahl's blaming the community for lack of sales of a ship that was terrible to begin with is a joke. Since when does a business blame the potential customer base for not buying something they don't want?

and AFTER the Bortas, how many KDF ships showed up, hmmm?

Yah, zero. (the vet rewards and fleet ships don't count.)

point being that, for all intents and purposes, this is going to be a trial to see if we're worth marketing to-it needs to be something more than Wunjee is going to buy, and not be a complaint generator due to a stack of failure associated with it (like the Bortas, which still has supporters).

Success means hitting all the right notes-your suggestion would see people ******** about the "Slow turning BoP with no Battlecloak", it won't sell.

An Escort MIGHT sell, but a sci ship?

that WILL sell. esp. if it has most of the graces of a Bird of Prey (good manuever, battlecloak, all universals) and mitigates most of the flaws of the BoP class (low survivability, short of consoles).

AFTER the event folks will pay money for it, which they won't if they are looking at an underperforming, underpowered, and overpriced Cruiser.

big picture time: this ship needs to be a hit, or it'll be another three to five years before we see another attempt, if ever.

Because the Bortas was terrible. But so were the C-store versions..

That's the big one there.

The C-Store versions are very different from the free Bortas. But they're still awful, and they're ridiculously expensive. They weren't ships that the KDF players wanted, so the KDF players weren't going to buy them. No KDF player I ever saw asked for a Fed starcruiser with cannons. The very mention of anything less-maneuverable then a Negh'Var would've been laughed down instantly.

If Cryptic took the time to know their playerbase and what their playerbase wanted, they'd know that.

That's their own damn fault for not listening. It has nothing to do with the FREE ship and everything to do with the REAL MONEY ship being terrible when it didn't need to be.

They can still give us a FREE battlecruiser version of the K'Vort..

And then..

Then

Get this

Wait

Guys

Wait seriously

Wait

Guys

SELL US a science and escort version of it as the post-event bundle!

You know, ships people actually want, instead of the Bortaswhale?

You're missing it. again. for this to work, it's gotta be a hit from the beginning, not tacked on after it's already hit fail.

THAT was the Bortas lesson, in a nutshell-the variants were tacked on AFTER IT ALREADY FAILED. didn't do any good, and didn't impress the money-men, the bad reputation was already cemented in stone. You're trying to repeat what's already not worked once, but on, frankly, an underpowered, underperforming, and eventually overpriced cruiser that most players will look at as "The slow turning bop with no Battlecloak".

Visual cues COUNT in making and cementing impressions. Moreso than half-forgotten scenes from episodes unwatched since the eighties.

It's like stylng a family economy sedan like a supercar-it will only carry the stigma of poor performance, even if you paint it red, and if you then offer a supercar version, people will only remember the crap performance of the initial version.

Lesson being; WE HAVE ENOUGH GOOD CRUISERS that a poorly designed one has little to no place in the lineup.

None of the free "event" ships have ever been a "hit from the beginning".

Even the free Odyssey was a disaster and was terribad on so many levels it wasn't even funny.

You're making it sound like the free version of the ship has to be accepted by all, adored and loved for them to even consider releasing completely different versions of the ship, on models that they've probably already made..

That simply isn't the case. The free version will have little to no bearing on whether or not people will buy the C-store version.

What will guarantee people buy the C-store version is listening to the playerbase and giving the playerbase ships they want to buy..Something they failed miserably to do with the Bortas, and that's why it was such a tragic failure. Because they didn't listen..

The free one's going to be a toy. It's not going to be something that's meant to be competitive. It's meant to look pretty and whet people's appetites for better versions of it that they can sell on the c-store for ridiculously high prices.

The free one needs to make people say "Hey, this is neat, but I wish it had......"

And then that's what you give them.

And then they'll buy it..

Now, what is yet to be seen is if they'll do it right this time and give the playerbase ships to buy that they actually want.

And the free one has little to no bearing on that, because the playerbase knows the free one will be trash compared to what the C-store pack will be.

Toyota Supra. Performance car with a family car base that has achieved legendary status despite all of the above. Nobody remembers the **** base model, they remember the 2JZ twin-turbo rocket that was still based on a family car's platform...

Except...the Oddy had something we're not going to ever have with a Klink ship:

The name "Enterprise".

makes up for a host of problems, that name, buys a second look and a second chance. As for your Supra argument-not a supercar, it got its reputation solely as a "Tuner's car" in the hands of teenagers, so it's mostly invalid-a pony car is a pony car, and the Supra was the japanese equivalent of the original mustang-a pony car.

In this case, you're advocating "The slow Bop with no turn or Battlecloak"-no matter HOW good the follow-on is (or is planned to be) that's what's going to hang on it, 'cause mom's not going to loan it to her kid for school.

going through the discussions, the KDF market is very performance focused, so you don't have a lot of wiggle-room, it's also small, so the odds of a poor initial showing NOT impacting sales are, frankly, minimal, unlike the 200 million or so auto-buyers out there.

Finally, by limiting it to a Cruiser, you're hamstringing the brand from the outset-there are better Cruisers already available and plentiful, it isnt' likely to get what you'd consider a 'fair hearing' much less get the kind of favourable response you're hoping for-people only ask for things to be added if they actually LIKE the thing they're adding to.

do a little market research, if you can show a massive groundswell of "Gee, we really need another Battlecruiser" that isn't as large as the market for another Raptor, much less the market for a better Bird of Prey, weill....I'll be damned surprised.

(for that matter, most of the "we want____cruiser" wants a K'tinga or Vor'cha variant, not your K'Vort-as-a-cruiser. again, appearance matters.)

fundamentally, your argument has no legs, mate, it's based on more supposition and your personal hopes, than on feedback you can find in the forums or the community.

Your business-case-scenario's already played out and failed, this should strike you as being "Not a good sign", and not as confirmation of your personal biases.

The Enterprise-F is an Odyssey Tac cruiser. The original Odyssey was not the "Enterprise"..

Irrelevant. A performance car based on a family car that nobody really even knows about, let alone cares about. It's a direct contradiction to your "performance car being dragged down by it's humble roots" comparison. There are many such stories in the automotive industry. Ever heard of the Pontiac GTO? How about the humble LeMans that the GTO was based on that nobody's ever heard of?

Not to someone who doesn't want to pay any money, there aren't.

And what're you basing that on?

Again, we're talking about ships that can have anything adjusted on them. If they want to make class-specific variations for the C-store, nothing's stopping them. The free ship shouldn't be a requirement for filling voids in the KDF line-up. That's asinine.