Hello and welcome to Joe and STO! I don’t post often, but I do hope you see I post meaningfully. Today, we learned that all ships in STO will become cross-faction!
Your Human Federation captain can finally know what it feels like to fly a Bird of Prey!
Your Orion KDF can know what battle without a Cloaking Device feels like!
Your Klingon Fed can finally feel at home in their homeworld’s Command Battlecruiser!
Do either of the following to unlock this feature:
- Have (raise?) a KDF character to Level 65.
- NOTE: This must be a KDF-faction character from the start. It can’t be Romulan or Jem’Hadar that choose to ally themselves with the KDF. It doesn’t have to be a Discovery-era Klingon or an actual Klingon! It just need to be a species that can be and is made by picking “Klingon Defense Forces” in the Character Creation screen.
- Pay 2,000 Zen (on sale for 1,000 Zen during the Anniversary Event) without having/raising a KDF-faction character to Level 65.
- This way you never have to touch a Klingon character but reap all the benefits of being able to use their ships. 😉
This seems like a fun idea! But like any change, this one has ripple effects throughout the Exchange and private trade channels.
Let’s look at the good, bad, and ugly of this change.
GOOD IDEA: All Ship Purchases Are Good Across All Characters!
Some T6 ships are basically copy-and-paste versions of a Federation ship, such as the Edison Temporal Warship versus the Chargh Temporal Warship. These are basically the same ship with slight hull & shield strength changes depending on things the Klingon (“KDF”) version gets the Federation (“Fed”) doesn’t (like a Cloak). If you have one, you’re not missing much not having the other(s).
Others are different enough to be better than another version. Take the Endeavor Tactical Star Cruiser versus the Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird. Both ships come with the same console and Starship Trait, but one’s a 4 forward/4 aft weapon placement with 4 Tactical console slots, 4 Engineering, and 3 Science. The Khopesh, on the other hand, is a 5/3 with 5 Tactical slots, 3 Engineering, and 3 Science. Generally, 5/x with 5 Tactical slots wins out. As well, the Khopesh is a Dreadnought, so it gets a Hangar Bay (to launch fighters/frigates). Before Romulan ships became cross-faction, the Khopesh was a Federation player’s dream for DPS. After, they got to indulge.
Now that the faction-specific walls are coming down, your characters will have more options than they would have otherwise.
- Do you have a good Federation torpedo build but don’t have the Legendary T’Liss? Try the Enhanced Battle Cloak of the Kor Bird of Prey with your Federation equipment.
- If you’ve had a Crossfield Science Spearhead waiting to be used, give your KDF character one of the better (and more fun) Science-based ship platforms.
- Is the Chargh strictly better than the Edison for your build idea? Now your Federation character can go grab the Chargh and be better off for it!
Those are just a few examples.
If you don’t care about being “canon” (Federation players in Federation ships, for example), this will now let you use whatever ship best fits your build rather than what’s best in your faction. Do you have $30 (give or take for taxes) and want a Klingon ship, but your Federation character would also love it for its setup? Well, just buy the Klingon version and you’re good to go either way!
THE BAD (maybe): Some Ships Become Mostly Customization Options
One of the downsides here could be if you’ve bought ship bundles in the past that have Federation, KDF, and Romulan ships (and a few recently that also include a Jem’Hadar ship). Before, if you wanted a ship for both a KDF and Federation character, you’d buy the bundle to have both the KDF and Fed versions. The Bundle is then effectively account-unlocked (Federation version for Federation and Fed-aligned characters, KDF version for KDF and KDF-aligned characters).
Now that all ships will be cross-faction, if we were to get 3- or 4-ship bundles, chances are anything beyond your desired faction will mostly just be a cosmetic change.
When a ship is what I call a “copy-and-paste” of a similar ship(s) in a Bundle, there tend to be relatively minor differences in stats depending on the special thing a faction’s version of the ship gets.
- Federation doesn’t get any kind of built-in cloak outside of Intel ships.
- KDF ships get a Cloak (sometimes Battle Cloak).
- Romulans get a better Battle Cloak than most KDF ships.
- Jem’Hadar ships get Vanguard Wingmen.
These changes are also accompanied by different Hull and Shield Modifiers to make up for their relative advantages (or disadvantages) to each other. For example, let’s look at the Temporal Warships and how their stats compare to a Federation version of the ship.
- Edison (Federation): 40,500 max base hull, 0.9 Hull Modifier, 1.15 Shield Modifier
- Chargh (Klingon, adds a Battle Cloak): +2,250 max base hull, +0.05 Hull Modifier, -.05 Shield Modifier
- Kohlhr (Romulan, upgrade to a Romulan Battle Cloak but uses a Singularity Core with less base subsystem power): +/- 0 max base hull, Hull Modifier, Shield Modifier
- Jem’Hadar Vanguard (Jem’Hadar, no Cloak but 2 NPC Wingmen to assist with attacks, shield healing, and shield debuffs on the enemy): -6,750 base hull, -0.15 Hull Modifier, +0.05 Shield Modifier
Best I know, there’s not enough difference to prefer one version of a “copy-and-paste” ship over another except for looks. Expert builders, please feel free to prove me wrong as I honestly would like to know what makes, say, a Chargh Temporal Destroyer more preferable to an Edison Temporal Destroyer or a Vor’ral over a Narendra (the latter two being Support Cruisers in a 2-ship Bundle).
Having said all that…if you’re the type who mostly wants to look cool flying your ship and your damage output is fine no matter which ship you choose, then this may actually be a blessing. Some visuals, like the Federation Blue AEGIS visuals, are tied to a specific faction. The Discovery Vanity Shield also has a different look depending on if your character is Federation or KDF. This way, Fed ships can now look Tron Red with the KDF’s AEGIS visuals, or Klingon ships can enjoy the Federation Discovery Vanity Shield look.
THE UGLY: Cross-Faction Boxes Cease to Exist, MUST Have Ships for Gear
A counterbalance to having faction-specific ships, consoles, and starship traits was to put the consoles and traits available in a Lockbox, the Lobi store, or every so often as unlocks for characters of the opposite faction.
Starting Tuesday, we won’t have most of those Cross-Faction boxes available. Why? Because now that, for example, a KDF captain can fly an NX Escort Refit, there’s no need for a Cross-Faction Equipment Box since the KDF captain can “just” grab an NX Escort Refit to get the console, trait, and now the ship itself for actual use.
What does this mean? I put up a Tweet Series yesterday while I was deciding what to cover in this blog post. The series:
What does this mean, using a quick example?
Say you wanted the Black Alert starship trait for a KDF-based character. Because it was only ever on a Crossfield-class ship (Science Spearhead and Legendary Temporal versions), which is Federation only, Cryptic made it available as a chance drop in that Lockbox as a Starship Trait reward box (or choice Starship Trait box for the Infinity Lock Box). While Federation captains had to pay out 500 million EC+ (or ~$140-$200 for the Legendary Starships Bundle), the KDF could pay under 10 million EC for it. Not too bad for a fun little trait!
Once Tuesday, January 26th’s patch is installed and the game comes back from maintenance, aside from the few reward boxes that will remain because they were in players’ inventory or bank or on the Exchange, there will be no more new “Cross-Faction”-style boxes dropped (Lock Boxes) or purchasable (Lobi Store). KDF players will have to get a Crossfield-class Science Spearhead or the Legendary Starships Bundle to get the Black Alert trait (and Mycelial Ambush console).
What does this mean for the price of ships? Theoretically, it means your ships will cost a lot more. For Lockbox ships, this may mean they finally cross the 1,000,000,000 EC barrier (“One Billion EC”). It was not that long ago, perhaps the past 2 years, Tier 6 Lockbox ships were around 500,000,000 EC.
The worst part of this may just be Promotional-level ships. In June 2017, Cryptic raised the Exchange limit to 1.5 Billion EC to accommodate larger item sales like Promotional-level ships. I heard the day this information dropped there were 0 Promotional ships on the Exchange. Either they sold, or they went to private Trade channels. Either way, public listings of expensive ships may yet again be a thing of the past.
For the players who tend to open a ton of Lockbox/Promo Boxes for the big ship grand prize, this isn’t a problem in the slightest. It may even reinvigorate them to get back in and try to see how many ships they can pull before their real cash capital and their in-game EC run completely out. But for the “Average Joe” (see what I did there? 😉 ), not having public sales will mean having to learn what goods aside from EC will be required to grab certain ships. I’ll give you a hint: Players selling ships tend to want to keep trying for more ships, so they’ll usually take Master Keys and Promotional R&D/DOFF boxes in lieu of some or all EC, depending on how many you have to trade.
THE (possible) SAVING GRACE: Account-Wide C-Store Purchases
So what could save this “travesty” of players needing specific starships for their trait, console, and/or other special gear that otherwise came from those “Cross-Faction”-style boxes? Well…we’ve had the answer for nearly a year now.
The first possibility is more Legendary Bundles. While the ships to be included in them are technically different than their counterparts on which they’re based, they do come with all previous versions’ Tier 5 (per-character unlock) Starship Trait, consoles, and usually any special gear that ship came with (like the Mirror Crossfield Science Destroyer‘s Experimental Weapon on the Legendary Temporal version). This already solves the above issue with Black Alert and Mycelial Ambush in a sense: any player who has the Legendary Starships Bundle from last February (and offered a few times since) can claim a Legendary version of the Crossfield, level it up to Tier 5 Mastery, and they have Black Alert usable!
Let’s not forget Mudd’s Choice Packs! The previous one, “Faith of the Heart,” had possibly 3 ships to choose from: two cross–faction and 1 NX Escort Refit for Federation captains. For KDF players, this really was more like 2 ships and a Cross-Faction Equipment Pack. Now that all ships are available to all factions, the KDF should now have the NX Escort Refit available to them (though we don’t have firm confirmation, it would be implied by the announcement since choosing that gave Federation players the NX Escort Refit ship).
POSSIBLE SAVING GRACE #2: More Klingon Ships Possibly on the Way!
…Okay, yes, I know that seems a bit backwards. “If this is to give KDF access to Fed more ships, why would they make more KDF ships after this?”
We’ve seen that any player faction/sub-faction other than Federation and Discovery Federation didn’t get a lot of love in 2020, and 2019 started seeing 2-ship packs with few Romulan/Jem’Hadar counterparts. But do you want to guess why?
It’s because Everybody Loves Federation.
According to AmbassadorKael, STO’s current Community Manager at the time of writing this post, because a significant amount of the playerbase is Federation it’s made doing ships not aligned or usable by the Federation difficult to justify financially. Now that Federation players will have access to KDF ships, the financial consideration is recalculated and may actually increase the chance of getting more Klingon ships.
The quote from AmbassadorKael on Reddit:
ambassadorkael Community Manager 1 day ago
“This is actually the opposite. 🙂 The problem we’ve had in the past is that, since the vast, vast majority of our players are Fed Captains, making ships that are exclusively for other factions made no financial sense. But if those Fed Captains can fly other factions’ ships, then we can make Klingon ships that are super amazing and still have it make sense.
“However – the vast majority of new ships from the shows that we’re getting are Fed ships, so I don’t expect the trend to *completely* change overnight. But it puts more ammo in Thomas and Jeremy’s pocket to make ships that aren’t just Federation.“ (final emphasis mine)
POST-PUBLICATION BONUS BENEFIT #1: Experimental Ship Upgrades Go Farther/Have Extra Value
One thing I forgot when I published this was the Experimental Ship Upgrade Tokens (“T6-X tokens”). In case you’ve forgotten or have been away from the game for a while, T6-X tokens take your T5-U or T6 ship and makes them T6-X, giving the following benefits to that ship class:
- +1 Universal Console Slot (meaning any type of console can slot in here)
- +1 Device Slot
- A Starship Trait slot usable only by that particular ship class.
- NOTE: “Ship class” means there’s a distinction between, for example, the Discovery-era Constitution-class Miracle Worker Flight Deck Carrier and the Legendary Temporal Flight Deck Carrier, even though both appear to be Discovery-era Constitutions.
One of my dilemmas in using T6-X tokens is that the ships I want to use them on, I tend to only use them on a certain faction because, well, they’re faction-locked. Legendary Defiant on a Federation character, Vo’Devwl on a KDF character, it feels like my upgrade token will be one-and-done.
NOT SO FAST! Remember, T6-X tokens unlock that upgrade on all future claims of that ship class across your account. How would you like to start your next KDF character with a T6-X Legendary Warship? Your next Federation character with a T6-X Vo’Devwl (hangar pets in the early game are soooo powerful… 😉 )? I figured that’s how you felt.
So yeah, now that $10 T6-X token has more value as you could get more use out of it.
POST-PUBLICATION BONUS BENEFIT #2: Admiralty Gets MUCH Easier (more than it already was)
If you’ve been playing STO for a long time, chances are you’ve amassed quite the collection of C-Store ships. Chances are likely a lot of those are of a single faction, and possibly you have a ton of all factions’ ships.
Yet sometimes, the faction you play and buy for the least has a tough time with running out of Admiralty Ships. You may be a heavy KDF player, in which case your Federation characters suffer in Admiralty or vice-versa.
That won’t be the case anymore.
One of the benefits of this change is you’ll get all the other faction’s Admiralty Ship “cards”, as well.
KDF short on Science ships, but you’re a Federation Science ship lover? This update is definitely for you.
Constantly using 12-hour and 18-hour ships as “pass tokens”? Now you’ll have many more, so keep plugging them in without as much fear of actually running out of decent ships.
Extra extra hidden benefit? If you’ve bought cross-faction bundles that have ships with, “Ignores +/- [type] Event”, you’re getting quite the extra boon. If you’re using 12-hour and 18-hour ships as “pass tokens” (slotting 1 and running the mission without regard for actual success chance), this should let you save the powerful “Ignore” ship cards for the missions you really want to complete.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Is This Good or Bad?
Like any change in a game, some people will benefit immensely (those with the Cross Faction-style reward boxes, those with few resources [in-game and real life] who’ve amassed an army of one faction’s ships or the other), for others this will be a detriment (good consoles once cheap now require expensive ships or price-inflated remaining Cross Faction-style packs; those who’ve bought many of the multi-faction Bundles so they could have access to certain ship types/gear/traits no matter their character), and for yet others they’ll be indifferent (those who don’t go for the top end of DPS/tanking, those who only buy a single Lockbox/Lobi/Promo ship they’re wanting because it looks cool or fits their theme, those who only bought Romulan or Jem’Hadar versions of ships because they were truly cross-faction).
Where do I stand? I think it’s mostly good. I do wish the Cross-Faction style of packs weren’t going away. That was one of the things that allowed lower-end players and those on limited budgets to jump up the damage charts so quickly: relatively cheap and easy access to things like Dynamic Power Redistributor Module for KDF/Romulans or Ceaseless Momentum for Federation players.
However, I think the benefit outweighs the costs.
- Cryptic/PWE can find other ways to get those ships/equipment into players’ hands. There’s a possibility the next Event Campaign will be a choice of Lockbox ship or perhaps even a Promotional-level ship, we could see Mudd’s Market choice packs and/or more Legendary starships.
- Players can experiment with features, ship platforms, traits, and consoles they otherwise couldn’t use prior (Section 31 Heavy Command Battlecruiser for KDF, or D7 Miracle Worker Flight Deck Carrier for Fed as a couple examples).
- Now that Federation players can get a hold of any faction’s ship, we may see more emphasis on non-Federation ships moving forward (as time and TV appearances of new ships allow).
No one’s saying the Federation will suddenly become innundated by KDF ships.
No one’s saying you can’t still use KDF ships on KDF characters.
This simply opens up options. You’re not really in a fight against anyone but yourself (PvP notwithstanding) and your own ability to contribute to a group’s ability to clear TFOs and other queues.
Enjoy what you enjoy. Be sure to let everyone else do the same.
I hope this has been somewhat informative. It at least lets me express my feelings, vent a little about the loss of a helpful feature of the game, and maybe, just maybe, it helps you see the light of day if you were against this or brings up new thoughts about what this change means to the game.
May this change allow you to break some walls for yourself. 🙂
Cover image modified from John S Turner / A Collapsed Wall using a picture of a Na’Qajej Intel Battlecruiser (AKA “Cleave Ship”) from STOWiki. The KDF and Federation logos come from Star Trek Online’s character creation screen.
Joe and STO 
