Will the fleet size be judged by the fire power or amount of ships. I kinda think the fire power and tatical advantage should be very important but also the # of ships is important as well. What do you guys think?

I do not know if there is an absolute scale in the works. Relative strength will become apparent when they start butting heads.

Because a fleet of Explore III is a big diffrence compared to a fleet of explore I.

Surly it will be decided the the weapons, for example

a klingon explorer 3 could have shield strength of say 750 with 4 forward disrupter's and one forward, on e rear torpedo launcher

a klingon type 1 explorer could have shield of 250 2 forward disrupter's and 1 forward torpedo launcher

one would assume the type 3 would also have more advanced engines.

so id say 2 type 1 explorers could not take on a single type 3 - and so forth though the ship ranks. it will be determined by the weapons,shields,hull & engines of ships this will involve a lot of game balancing for example it could end up that fleet of klingon type 2 battle cruisers could take on a equal sized fleet of cardassion dreadnoughts simply because of the of the way the ship schematics worked out, and both sides would have to re balanced again to make it more realasic because a dreadnought should have no trouble taking on 2 or even 3 type 2 battle cruisers

I agree!

Are we talking about from an intelligence perspective?

As such it would a big job determining which enemy Excelsior was the same spec as the NX-2000 and which was armed like the Lakota. Also the Romulans and Klingons could routinely cloak and decloak ships at random making keeping track almost impossible. Combining that with counter intellignece, rumour and propaganda.... Any estimate could be well out. Even capturing and interrogating a high ranking official or a defector joining the cause might not give accurate information.

Maybe 'estimated fleet size' and 'estimated fleet strength' would be better...?

I believe that is exactly how Mike intends to have sensor readings will work; even if you've got a good scan, you can't always be 100% sure it is accurate. Cloaks would realistically always be one step ahead of sensor techs since you need to develop a cloak before you can develop a sensor to detect it. But even non-cloaked ships might have some stealth technologies - scouts for instance have highly efficient engines, which *may* make them harder to detect due to their reduced-power Warp fields. Obviously that's conjecture until the sensor-vs-cloak implementation is fully worked out, but it's a possibility that things like this could be taken into account.

As your tech goes up so should your ability to scan.

That's how the ships are currently set up. For instance, the Tech 0 Icarus class Surveyor has a scan Strength of 2 and a Sensor Range of 4. The Tech 9 Nova Class Surveyor has a Scan Strength of 5 and a Sensor Range of 7. The later ship design therefore has sensors that are both more accurate and are capable of detecting enemy fleets from a longer range.

If you have an older ship will anything increase as your tech goes up?

No, because ships don't technically get upgrades of any kind. This is due to the way the game works - if ships had upgrades, you would effectively double the size of the ship data in the game. If you take into account the fact that we've got over 400 designs in the game, that's a hell of a lot of upgrades that need to be implemented, and a lot of extra processing the game would have to do. I also don't know if Mike has actually programmed such a capability in anyways; with the current set up, new ship designs are replacements, rather than upgrades.

If you have an explore I and you want to buy an explore II can you recyle the I and reduce the price of the II?

Yes, that's how we *intend* it to work. You'll be able to send a ship to be "upgraded". But what will actually happen is the ship will be recycled then any resources acquired from it will be used to build the new ship, which will be a whole new ship - it'll have a new name and everything, unless Mike adds in some new system where the ship is then lettered (Eg so you send the USS Enterprise to be "upgraded. The new ship would then be automatically named USS Enterprise-A. Such a system has NOT been added yet because there is no upgrade system yet). I don't even know if the crew will transfer over to the new ship, so it's possible that your new ship will also start with a green crew again. Hopefully Mike will find a way to ensure this doesn't happen though.

They'll have different crew sizes though...

Well yes, so perhaps it could be modified by a random percentage change in the experience to represent crew retirement vs crew career advancement vs taking on new cadets, but that would be up to Mike to decide. And that's assuming he decides to allow experience to be passed on.

Then again, i've just thought about some of the planned changes he discussed with me...this discussion might be moot because of those. Damn I wish I could discuss them with people now coz that would be an interesting thread. Oh well, i'll have to leave it at that.

So just so I understand this right, if you send a Constitution for a refit when it becomes available it can be rebuilt as a Constitution Refit, yet that process is actually no different if the same ship later wants to become an Ambassador??

If this is the case no worries, but so long as we can take out these refits with a mod. I'd rather the ships just got old and were retired. Also, I really really hope there are no letter deignations, not unless there are going to be registration numbers in the game (which would be pointless). I for one hated this in BoTF, the letter is NOT part of the ship's name!!!!

Yes SOM, that's what will happen. I know it sounds wierd but that's only because there are anomalous ships in the shiplist such as the Connie refit and the B'rel. But would people really accept the shiplist if neither of these icons of Trek design made it into the shiplist? I think not. So we'll just have to put up with things like this. Obviously if Mike does allow some sort of upgrade system though, that would be one way around it, especially in a later mod.

The letter designations was a just an idea on my part. Mike has not mentioned any such features to me, so I don't know if he's even thought of anything along those lines. For that reason, there's little need to worry. As for changing registry numbers, I believe that is done in Legacy by swapping the hull texture where the registry number is with a random numbered texture. I don't know if something like this possible in the combat system, but I imagine it would be in if Wolfe is able to program in the capability. Then it would just be down to our texturers to make a couple of registry number textures.

People will accept what they're given, right?
No need to be a zealot, it's only a game, right? Or so I'm told.

This is a Trek forum, Iceman. Trekkies can be an unstoppable force when they want to be, especially if they're gamers.

I haven't seen the 4600+ silent majority post anything about it. Do you still want to tally votes?