Troop carriers

posted on June 4th, 2011, 11:46 am

well those dudes in ds9 had starfleet comm badges and starfleet weapons. and took orders from starfleet officers and shared starfleet ranks.

there's very little info on those soldiers, and what little info we have is conflicting.

if they are not starfleet then why do they share ranks tech and take orders from sisko?

if they are starfleet then, well actually there's no problems with that, but it wasnt explicitly stated in the show.

i think starfleet would have ground troops, as they are for defence as well as exploration.

posted on June 5th, 2011, 2:56 pm

Well, if there aren't going to be troop ships, then how about an option to fill up the normal ships with troops?  The crews are rather low on most of their ships - we know the Galaxy can comfortably fit 1000.

Would it be possible to produce the craft with the current crews, but with a higher maximum limit that can only be reached via a special method (not just recrewing at a shipyard)?

posted on June 5th, 2011, 3:05 pm

Building with less than the maximum (similar to a stock Starbase), combined with the area recrew that the Borg have would simulate a ship being fulled with the extra crew. Wouldn't effect crew strength, though.

posted on June 5th, 2011, 3:18 pm

Well, I was thinking something more along the lines of actually simulating a troop buildup for a planned attack.  If the crews build up quickly and easily on their own, it really wouldn't be any different than just building the ships with that many to begin with. 

If it were something like the Borg crew accumulation, it would have be toggleable, slow, and cost something to do.  And, somehow, make it so that repairing in a shipyard won't take the crew over normal construction levels.

I do like the idea of all races regaining normal crew just being near their bases, though - the shuttle traffic and transport range justify that.

posted on June 5th, 2011, 3:34 pm

That opens a way to make ships virtually unboardable if they are close enough to a station.

I agree it's rational that stations and ships not under attack and with full life support should refill themselves without player interaction. After all, a ship's captain close enough to any station would request crew members transferred and station commanders would request additional personnel without the "guy in charge" (that's us) having to allow or order it.

But it might be exploitable. I don't know exactly how, but I guess someone somewhere will find a way.

And in any case, this feature is only loosely related to the subject at hand: Fed troopships. And I'd say "no" to them.