Star Trek: Online : Ask Cryptic
2 min readA new Ask Cryptic has been posted by Star Trek: Online, covering player progression.
Topics addressed by Ask Cryptic include: ship size, new bridge officers, player skills, player progression and joining missions that one has already completed.
One question posed asked about the advantages of lower-tiered ships. “There were concerns that large ship numbers of higher level players would end up cruising around in the big top-tier ships, especially since they are given automatically upon obtaining a certain rank. Will there be enough advantages particular to the lower-tier ships to make them worth using even if a player can access higher tiers?”
Cryptic explained that more than one factor determined performance when it comes to the ships. “The difference between a tier 4 and a tier 5, the difference between a Defiant and Prometheus, for example, is more about differentiation than raw power. It’s not a linear progression; it’s a difference of around 5 percent in terms of overall ship performance between tier 4 and 5. So the disparity between the two is very small. Effectively, a tier 5 ship is twice as good as a starting ship, and a tier 4 ship is 80 percent better than a starting ship. And that’s just the ship. Once you factor in your skills, your Bridge Officers and your items, the performance difference between the ships is very small, which means you can choose which ships you want to fly and when, rather than being forced into one ship just because it’s better than the others. It’s about letting players find the ships that accentuate their play style, rather than forcing people into one specific template.”
Another player wanted to know what experience a new bridge officer have if the player was an admiral. “As an Admiral you’ll get Bridge Officers of all ranks,” said Cryptic. “You’ll find fully decked-out Commander Bridge Officers, and you’ll find fresh Ensign Bridge Officers, and the opposite. You may find a ‘common’ Bridge Officer that’s a Commander and has all his skills maxed, but his skills and traits are average. But you may find an Ensign who has no skill points invested, but offers rare traits and skills to your crew. So you can find an Ensign with high potential or a Commander who’s advanced through his career but isn’t anything special. Or you may get lucky and find a Commander who’s really awesome and all decked out. You run the whole range at any given time in your career.”
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