posted on June 13th, 2009, 2:56 pm
Everyone vote Pakled!
Then we can have nearly any hull we want in game. Plus, the Pakled smuggle things to the Cardies all the time, so once Mercs go in, shouldn't be a problem at all getting Cardies with them. (Of course, good odds that the Pakled are already using a great deal of cardie-tech in their ships.)
Here's my initial 'gameplay base' for Pakled.
The starbase can produce construction ship, mining ship, and 'Pakled freighter'. A large ship for a scout, it's not particularly impressive other than it's size. At least at first.
There is no 'shipyard' per se. Instead there's a Salvage Yard. Think of it like one of those ship junkyards. There are 4 buttons in it that work a little bit like warp-in. 'Salvage Destroyer', 'Salvage Cruiser', 'Salvage Battleship', and the hardest to unlock 'Salvage Dreadnought'. You pay an amount of resources and supply when you click one of the buttons, a bit of time passes, and you get a random ship of that hull-class. This could be anything ranging from an Oberth (complete with it's TOS stats) to (incredibally low chance) a modern vessel like an unupgraded Rheinn. Even possible to get an Andorian or Vulcan vessel.
The 'research' buildings are replaced by the Scavenging Facility. Think of it kinda like a chop-shop. You feed a ship to it, like the A2 core Technology Assimilator, and it takes it apart. But it doesn't steal special weapons. In fact, no Pakled vessel gets those. Instead, it unlocks at random one of a set of upgrades. These upgrades, once available, can be installed on any ship 'produced' by the Pakled. Captured ships cannot recieve these, so the most likely fate of those ships is to be scavenged for upgrades.
Example would be that you get a B'rel - You then send it to the scavenging center, and hope. You get unlucky, and instead of giving you Klingon Disruptors, Klingon Hulls, or Klingon Torpedos, it gives you Klingon Shields. Still, better than your TOS shields on that Oberth. So, you open the Tech window on the Oberth, and select Klingon Shields. It's shields are upgraded now.
Each upgrade can only be done once, however. The categories would be different for each hull-class (making Dreadnought incredibally difficult to manage, even if you can get one) as in 'Klingon Shields - Destroyer'. The categories would be 'Energy Weapons', 'Shields', 'Torpedoes', 'Sensors', 'Engines', 'Hulls'. So if you get a Constitution hull, and upgrade it with Romulan Shields, Klingon Torpedoes, Federation Hulls, and Dominion Polaron Beams, you can still upgrade it's sensors and engines, but it's shields, torps, hull, and energy weapon are set in stone now.
It would give the Pakled a very, very different playstyle, and a unique visual, as the Freighters would make up the bulk of their fleet due to being cheap (and while weak naturally, fully upgradable with scavenged technology which can make them formidable) but many, many kinds of hulls could easily be seen within their forces.
And fortunately, they would go easy on the Devs for audio. They don't exactly say a lot of things. 'We need things, things to make us go.' 'Make us strong.' 'We are strong.' They aren't up to alot of great dialog.
--however, it is impossible to change a poll I think (the question and numbers I believe) so even though the post is corrected, the poll cannot be 
. I wonder if the NPC version will get something like that... 
