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Star Trek Online News
Star Trek Online: Timeline Video Part One
Oct 14th
A new video for Star Trek Online has surfaced over at GameSpot. The video, which is part one in what we’re guessing will be a series of videos, details the timeline of Star Trek Online, which takes place 30 years after the Star Trek film "Nemesis."
Cryptic Studios was pretty smart with the video, too, as the developers speaking about the game’s lore are set against a backdrop of explosive gameplay footage. So, for those of us who don’t really care one way or the other how things came to be or what’s going on, we may learn something unintentionally as we drool at the juicy action footage.
Check out the new video here!
Star Trek Online: DevChat Reveals Details on Progression
Oct 13th
The transcript for the October 8th DevChat is now available for viewing. Apparently, a bit of a bug has been going around the Cryptic Studios offices and the developers weren’t on hand for the chat, but Cryptic Studios’ Community Lead Awen and Community Representative Rekhan were there to field questions on ship tiers and player progression.
Some excerpts from the transcript below:
On skill points:
<Cryptic_Rekhan> <OuroborosAgain> When you gain skill points is there a pool so you can either use them for yourself of a BO? or do your BOs have to do things with you to skill up?
<Cryptic_Rekhan> You gain skill points for your captain, and skill points for your Bridge Officers enter a different pool. As you complete episodes, you’ll gain skill points for both sets. The Bridge Officer pool goes across all your Boffs, even if they weren’t stationed or on the ground with you during particular episode. We did it this way because who’s to say your other Boffs weren’t contributing "off-camera"?
On "Retcons":
<Cryptic_Rekhan> <CaptLykke> Q: If you use your skill points in one way, and find out that its wrong path you taken, can you reset them, and use them in the correct way you really wanted ?!
<Cryptic_Rekhan> More >
Star Trek Online: Crew and Bridge Officer Details
Oct 13th
Details on the crew and bridge officers in Star Trek Online have been revealed in an update published on the Star Trek Online website.
Crew is basically a ship statistic representing your ships "red shirts" and the amount of crew your ship has determines the efficiency with which a variety of tasks are performed. Crew will be required for repairing hull or subsystem damage, repelling boarding parties, attacking on boarding operations (which have now been revealed to serve the function of damaging an enemy ships subsystems), and more. The amount of crew you have on hand will determine how effective they are at performing these tasks, and they can be injured or killed in battle. Crew members that are injured will become unavailable until they are fully healed in your ships sick bay, and the rate at which they are healed and put back into service is dependent on your ships medical equipment and your Science Officers’ skills.
Each ship class can hold a different amount of crew, with the smallest ships being able to hold as little as 50 crew, while large cruisers can hold crew of up to 1,000.
Details on the Bridge Officers role in gameplay are a bit less More >
Star Trek Online: Ships Overview, Roles, and Customization
Oct 6th
A new article posted on the official Star Trek Online gives an overview of the various types of ships available in Star Trek Online, as well as how they differ from one another. Also described, albeit briefly, is the type of visual customization players can expect for their ships.
Visual customization is described as:
Visiting a ship “tailor” will allow you to change the color of your ship, the nacelles, the neck and/or nacelle pylons, its saucer, its name, its registry number and so on. And since ships have paperdolls and Bridge Officer stations, the decisions you make in how you outfit the ship’s weaponry, impulse engines, shields, deflector dish and mods guarantee your gameplay experience will be unique to other players, but at the same time still feel like Star Trek.
Moving on from there we learn about the various ship types:
- Bridge Officer station arrangement. Science vessels favor Science Officer stations, Escorts favor Tactical Officer stations and Cruisers favor Engineering Officer stations.
- Utility. Science vessels are innately able to detect cloaked ships and are specialized in subsystem targeting. Cruisers have lots of crew, repair very quickly and lots of power to distribute across their subsystems. Escorts are the gunboats of the Federation fleet; More >
Star Trek Online: Ask Cryptic: Player Progression Pt. 2
Oct 1st
Cryptic Studios is looking to take questions on player progression for their next entry to the "Ask Cryptic" Q&A series.
These questions are intended to be the final set of player progression questions as they intend to move on to other subjects going forward. So if there are still some things you are confused or curious about, make sure you get a word in now or forever hold your peace!
Be sure to read Cryptic’s primer on player progression as well as the previous Ask Cryptic entry before you submit your new questions, as you don’t want to waste your submission on something that’s already been asked.
Once you’ve done all that, you can submit your new questions at the designated forum thread here.