Small hull ships with higher max Officer count

[xdesperado]

Currently you only can get up to 5 officers on small/medium ships.
This not only limits who you promote/keep as officers, but also effects how well you can do some other things. If I go with a crew combat team, they may be short on dice pool for being successful in a number of missions. Example being early story line missions having good negotiate skill with a save or two for it would be very useful but on a small ship with limited officers I either make a dedicated "face" or a crew combat officer. Hard choices are fine and getting players to focus their endeavors is good, but forcing them to sacrifice what are almost critical abilities is frustrating.

Another issue with not having higher officer count small ships available is that it severely limits the usefulness of the Dry Dock. Having a small fast ship available to run quick missions, while also having a large ship with lots of cargo/special modules/weapons etc. to support other activities when time isn't a critical issue sounds great. Unfortunately I either have to limit myself to 5 Officers with my larger ships or else end up firing officers any time I decide I want to run my faster smaller ship. With ST Classic we could pretty freely move between various ships all outfitted for various rolls which was great. Currently with ST Frontiers it's decide what ship you want to run forever and that's it other than possible variations on the same ship or hull size.

[xdesperado]

Not sure if it would break game balance but a possible solution would be to allow all ships to have the same max officer count. Small ships would have to sacrifice weapons or other components to be able to house 7 officers but then it's players choice and would allow you to freely move your officers at least between any ships you own as long as they have been outfitted with the required number of officer quarters.

Another option though probably harder to implement would be for you to select officers to leave on your larger ships while they are in Dry Dock (they'd basically be ship tending, making sure that systems were all in order and ready for action when the captain returns and want's to take the ship out of port.) Would also provide a chance for some interesting rumors like; Starport closed on (where your ship is docked) and your a few jumps away running missions with your smaller ship. Do you rush back and try forcing your way in to recover the ship or hope the officers (and your docked ship) can ride out whatever has closed things down.

[fallen]

Thanks for the feedback! We'll keep working on ship balance, but that is likely to always stay as one of the restrictions of small ships -- smaller crew and smaller officer count. We'll keep working to make ship swapping easier as we can without breaking the balance completely.

[maddemiurg]

I think a M3400 ship with 6 officers and 24 crew should be fine balance wise. There are 5/30 M3400 ships that get a lot more dice. Even 7/24 would be fine but it's gonna look weird from progression standpoint. 6/30 is probably ok for a high end M5000 ship or even an odd 7/24 one.

Personally I don't value officer count that much and +6 crew is definitely much stronger than +1 officer in my book, but if some people want more officer slots, why not.