The April edition of the ongoing Star Trek Online Ask Cryptic series has arrived on the official site. The questions come directly from fans and are answered by STO's producer Dan Stahl. This month's topics range from the possibility of altering PvP to a more FPS perspective to voice chat to whether or not the Typhoon class will ever be made available to players.
While NPC ships are roughly similar to player ships, there are some big differences that prevent us from easily converting an NPC ship into a Player flyable one. Textures are generally lower rez on NPC ships and they do not contain all of the "skeletal structure" of Player ships that impacts power usage. That said we have considered making Player variants of ships such as the Typhoon and Jupiter Class. It all boils down to what’s next on our priority list of ships. Right now the short list for Feds is Oberth, Ambassador, Vesta (if we can agree with CBS on using it), and the player created Enterprise. We are also working on additional variants of existing ships to add more customization options across the board.