Ships! Star Trek Online community Q&A answers, part 2
Ryan: Why are there ancient starship classes like Constitution, but not older classes that were still around during the Next Gen and DS9, like Excelsior?
The Constitution is actually a re-imagining of the old-school Connie, so it's really just as modern as the other ships you'll see in the game. We took our starship choices very seriously, but realized we wouldn't be able to please everyone with the choices we made. Ultimately, the fun factor and balance came first. However, that's not to say that as we develop the game beyond launch that we won't be adding more ships for players to fly.
Camenecium: My favorite ships of all Star Trek (and SFB and FASA SCS) are the D7 and K't'inga. Will it be a single class? What tier and type of ship will it be?
The K't'inga appears as a Tier 3 Battle Cruiser. As for the D7, there are enough temporal anomalies that its appearance is likely.
Marix: Will ships of different classes (IE: escort/science/engineering) have different combat styles? Will a small Bird of Prey and defiant class move faster at impulse and do a lot of circling and swerving whilst a large engineering cruiser's moves slower and tries to punch in as much damage as possible whilst repairing itself?
Definitely. Escorts are the quick-moving, precision-striking ships of the fleet. They're not as hardy as other ships, but they're tough to hit and can fit cannons, which are high-damage, almost sniper-style weapons. Cruisers are big ships with a big crew and huge engines that provide them lots of power, so they can fit a lot of guns, send big boarding parties and repair their hull and subsystems very quickly. And Science ships can detect cloaked vessels, use tractor beams to hold other ships in place and expose a weak side, take out shields with powerful tachyon beams, and lend aid to other ships in need.
Matthew: Will any of the ships in the game, particularly the Prometheus, have the ability to use multi-vector assault mode?
We just don't have the technology to make that happen. Also, from a game design standpoint, how do you really work it out so a player can control multiple parts of a ship? What happens if one or more parts of the ship get blown up? It raises a lot of questions for an option that doesn't really add much to the play experience, on a practical level. That, and the Prometheus broke apart to better shield crew – it didn't really provide much tactical superiority.
Javert: With the collapse of the Romulan Empire, is the Treaty of Algeron (treaty between the Romulans and the Federation stipulating that the Federation would not pursue research on or equip their vessels with cloaking technology without explicit permission from the Empire) still in effect, and, if so, why?
Starfleet vessels do not use cloaking technology as standard practice. There have been notable exceptions to this rule, and the same holds true for the current state of the Federation.
Massively: See you next week!
