Star Trek

Sole players like myself should be able to captain/pilot any shuttle type of vessel and permanently own it. It makes sense to be in a guild to command and crew the larger vessels. But still, I think having the ability to have 5/6 players in control of a shuttle is cool to.

Seizing other ships is a great idea...just wondering how it could work though...

There will be permanent commission and temporary comissioned ships. I'm sure ensigns will be allowed to pilot shuttles, they do need to go from place to place too for missions too. If you want a bigger ship though, earn the rank needed for it, and gather the crew needed to run it.

As for ownership, I think some of you forget the fact that you'll be part of the federation "military", there is no "yours" everything including all permanent commissioned ships and stations, and anything captured are still federation owned.

I don't see a need for crews to own their own bases either, if you want a place to gather, pick a station and go to it, you wanna run one, then earn your captain rank and hope they put in station commissions.

'Own' is the wrong word then...but you get the idea. Picards ship is the Enterprise, Janeways is Voyager. If you got assigned to different ships every time you logged on, that would suck.

Here's how I think it should be done- I hope I'm not repeating someone else- There should be three kinds of organizations-crews, squadrons and fleets. A crew would be the crew of one ship, a squadron would be a group of small ships or a small group of ships and a fleet would be a large group of ships. Each starship would require a minimum number of players to form a crew for it. If the crew drops below that number the commision is suspended until it reaches the minimum number again. This would stop captains from booting everyone and keeping the ship to themselves however it wouldn't do much to prevent that whole crew from being offline all the time. I don't think this whole ships and crews thing has ever been done in an online game before. If anyone has played one where it has perhaps they might have some better insight.

i think this would be a great idea and may i say that getting our, the fans input is a a nice change of pace.
thank you ever so much just for asking.

I must echo the above sentiment "forcing player behavior is never a good thing".  I have also experienced that guild experiences are not always a good thing.  If you restrict ship comissions to some ratio of the player base, then you are just begging for power-gaming l337 DUD35 to monopolize the number of available ship comissions.  

Everyone that plays STO will want to command a starship at some point.  You want to marginalize some players into some sort of separate system though.  I think that you need only one commission system.  If players have ships, then crews will form naturally as like-minded players find each other.  After all, a real player should be much better than an NPC in some position.  Having an all NPC crew would be a handicap of sorts; Captains should want to recruit players.  

I suggest that you make 'guilds', by whatever name, into starbases (perhaps smaller ones).  Players and ships can then join this type of 'guild'.  The station command (local admiralty) can offer larger groups of players available to crew ship positions, and have more ships available for the position that you want to play (and at the level that you want to play at).  

Perhaps some ship upgrades are available only via starbase refits.  A guild/starbase could use some sort of system (perhaps collective member prestige) to purchase upgrades that are then made available to member ships.  Different guilds/starbases will then pick different upgrades based upon their preferences.  The players and ships should naturally migrate towards whatever they then value in terms of playstyle and available upgrades.  

If ships need to return to their starbase (Guild-Admiralty or NPC-Admiralty) after each mission or mission group, then you will have a naturally occuring social center where ships and players can find each other.  Make something akin to mission terminals where players can see what positions are available to choose from and ships can see what players are offering to serve.  This way players who want more combat/crafting/exploration/etc will find like minds to play with.  People will bounce around at first, and then most will settle more permanently into those ships/crews that are available when they are and for what they like.  

Sometimes I'll want to Captain my ship with my friends as crew, and other days I'll crew for one of my friends on their ship.  Perhaps you can use a temporary grade reduction system for the duration of the mission to make things fit the command structure.  If I log-on at a time that is outside my normal hours when my usual friends are on (maybe late at night, due to some insomnia), I may just use an all NPC crew for an easy mission just to pass some time.  

This setup will allow solo-play, group-play, and guild-play; all at the same time to suit any players inclination at any particular moment.  It will provide freedom of choice, which is always a good thing to give players.  Making the use of a real player result in significant gain over an NPC will ensure that crews will be more full (and reduce the number of ships at any time), especially for the more challenging missions.  

My 0.02.  

And many thanks for asking for our input.  /3cheers for PE

The concept, as presented, works well for the guild I have in SWG. We truly desire a change to another game that can hold the social experience along with adventure and fun. Although I am the guild leader, there's a good 30 people that basically are the 'guild leaders'. We rent a 100-man vent, and regularly play on a daily basis together as we've become good friends over the past two years in SWG. Many have gone on to other games, but the comradery remains.

The idea of a fleet or squadron that has multiple ships attached sounds like the perfect fit for our guild. No one wants to be the dictator, but we all adhere to a chain-of-command in the process of overcoming a quest or large PVP battle.

Just to add the thread is over 5 months old now and Daron already got all the replies he wanted and said so, but none-the-less, keep going, just don't expect a response from PE. The ship/crew system is the most unique (well E&B is dead now) and important aspect of STO and I am sure will be the most fun, it makes this it's own MMOG and much less of an EQ clone.