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 specific, though we are assured they will play a "key role" in ship operations. Each ship will have a variety of stations of different types available to it, with different ship classes favoring differing focuses on their allotment of stations. For example, a Science vessel may be comprised of mostly Science stations, while  Escort ships focus on Tactical stations, and Cruisers on Engineering stations.

Naturally, a Science Officer can only man a Science station and so forth. There is another caveat, however. Each station will also have a maximum rank associated with it, and a Bridge Officer accessing a station that is lower ranked than he is will only be able to utilize his skills earned up to the rank of the station. For example, a Science officer at Commander rank would only be able to access his skills up to the Lieutenant rank if he accesses a Lieutenant ranked station.

...this just doesn't sound...right...

I do see the rationale behind designing ships to be basically solo-elements, but that imho doesn't really capture the Star Trek idea. So it boils down to Cryptic doing a space MMO in a Star Trek skin to make quick cash, rather than trying to capture the spirit of the shows. And before someone comes to say "but it would be boring or technically unfeasable", then I'd like to say "If you can't do it right, don't bother doing it at all". Well, my opinion anyway - I'm sure they'll produce something that a bunch of people will be able to enjoy.

I've been highly critical of Cryptic's approach to STO, but this system of CREWS makes  sense to some extent.  Even if we had, as I desired, large multi-crewed ships populated by guilds, you'd really need to represent the vast number of remaining crew members, or NPCs, in some fashion.  To this extent, a statistic representing them works. It reminds me of a few submarine simulations I've played actually, where ancillary crew members are shuttled between positions and simply provide increased efficiencies or capabilities.

Having said that, the Bridge Officer system still feels dodgy to me, especially if I'm only playing a UI overlay like EVE.

What? No medical officers? Only science officers? Yeah, hey Data, Jadzia, Spock, you can stay. Crusher, Bashir, McCoy, and the Doctor, you guys don't exist anymore.

Great job capturing the spirit of Star Trek Cryptic! I can't wait to see the game bomb like Champions did.

Please, mess this game up more for Star Trek fans, being 18 atm, I still grew up watching TNG, and I still probably know more about Star Trek then any of the guys over at Cryptic do. Fuck, give me a programming team, I'm currently studying Game Design with honours, I will make a better MMO than these guys.

 Anyone else getting the feeling this is a bit of a Pirates of The Burning Sea clone? What is Cryptic doing to keep this out of that category?

I like the Idea of Red shirts running around the ship... But for me to Forgive the Stupidity of makeing this "Eve-Lite" you will need there to be 20 or so Diffrent areas for my crew to lvl up in. IE the Core bridge crew and their Subordants. The Enginering department is not run by Jordy and 20 red shirts. They are skilled people Jordy picked and had a hand in training. They are skilled enough for him to Leave Enginering, Take a shower and goof off on the Holodeck. They can even handle what he tells them via comlink so he can be on the bridge in major battles, or while scanning some moon.

They might pull it off... But I have a feeling as a Trekie I will be passing on this.

Originally posted by Lasastard

...this just doesn't sound...right...

I do see the rationale behind designing ships to be basically solo-elements, but that imho doesn't really capture the Star Trek idea. So it boils down to Cryptic doing a space MMO in a Star Trek skin to make quick cash, rather than trying to capture the spirit of the shows. And before someone comes to say "but it would be boring or technically unfeasable", then I'd like to say "If you can't do it right, don't bother doing it at all". Well, my opinion anyway - I'm sure they'll produce something that a bunch of people will be able to enjoy.

I know how do you feel.

This almost starts to sound like an RTS, with managing your crew like a resource. Puts a rather different face on things.

 Oh yeah, we also need a Pirates!  mini-game when a boarding attempt occurs :P

Originally posted by mrroboto40

Please, mess this game up more for Star Trek fans, being 18 atm, I still grew up watching TNG, and I still probably know more about Star Trek then any of the guys over at Cryptic do. Fuck, give me a programming team, I'm currently studying Game Design with honours, I will make a better MMO than these guys.

It's pretty clear that they don't give a damn about the IP. When the lead devs said all Trek fans want to be the captain and indicated how much of the game was combat - I knew they didn't get it.

Originally posted by MMO_Doubter

Originally posted by mrroboto40

Please, mess this game up more for Star Trek fans, being 18 atm, I still grew up watching TNG, and I still probably know more about Star Trek then any of the guys over at Cryptic do. Fuck, give me a programming team, I'm currently studying Game Design with honours, I will make a better MMO than these guys.

It's pretty clear that they don't give a damn about the IP. When the lead devs said all Trek fans want to be the captain and indicated how much of the game was combat - I knew they didn't get it.

I agree, I think Perpetual was on better road than Cryptic.

Insert generic jab at Cryptic not getting "The Show" here in spite of my lack of information on the game, first hand experience of the game or, really, experience designing and make any game let alone an MMO. Clearly that will show'em I can do better!

In my opinion it sounds like an strategy game. It may be fun. Im can't know if it will be fun or not just by reading it. But I think that a most common approach to the "fill up your spaceship" problem would have been better. Why not reinvent the wheel and take the tank, dps, healer design to space?. Nobodye made it yet and it could have been a lot of fun. I mean:

Tank: Manage the ship direction, select the ships route. Flying strategy. Owner of the ship / Captain.

Dps: Manage the laser cannons or whatever they are named.

Healer: Manage the shields and repair the ship.

This could have been a lot of fun and involve a lot of player interaction. While the design of  Cryptic sounds fun, it looks more as a design of a single player strategy game. We still need to try it to see if its fun, it could be it is, but it can make the game be too much solo friendly, you will have enought to do managing your crew you will have no time to talk to other players.

Originally posted by MMO_Doubter

Originally posted by mrroboto40

Please, mess this game up more for Star Trek fans, being 18 atm, I still grew up watching TNG, and I still probably know more about Star Trek then any of the guys over at Cryptic do. Fuck, give me a programming team, I'm currently studying Game Design with honours, I will make a better MMO than these guys.

It's pretty clear that they don't give a damn about the IP. When the lead devs said all Trek fans want to be the captain and indicated how much of the game was combat - I knew they didn't get it.

Exactly this. They don't give a damn about the IP.

They just want to get it out as fast as possible and make some quick bucks on suckers who will bite on their Lifetime and 6-month sub offers. Just like they did with Champions Online.

Cheers

Im a Star trek fan and I think it sounds good. Dont know what you morons complain about? Sure, it will probably be "wow-in-space" kinda themeparkish game, but hey, not every game can be as popular as EVE you know... ;)

Originally posted by Securion

Im a Star trek fan and I think it sounds good. Dont know what you morons complain about? Sure, it will probably be "wow-in-space" kinda themeparkish game, but hey, not every game can be as popular as EVE you know... ;)

 

 

Calling someone moron based only on thing that they do not share your point of view is really pathetic and it shows your lack of intellect.

I have always enjoyed the shows and movies. I am a fan, but not the type that would go to a convention or anything.

From what I have seen, they got the look of the IP down, but that's about it. What made the show great, was the interaction between the crew members. They became a family on your TV. Watch it enough, and you felt like one of them.  Usually, when one character's weakness got them in trouble, it was always some other character's strength that saved the day.

This idea that everyone will be a captain, and piloting their own ship. I don't like it one bit, and it will more than likely cause me to pass on this release. To me, its all about the players being the crew.  Them saying that this approach was unusable is total BS. Its harder, yes. It would require more design, yes. But in my opinion would have made something unique to MMORPGs and true to the IP.

It could have been so amazing. Crafter type people could have played engineers, did maintenance and upgrades to the ship and its subsystems. Combat oriented people could play security and tactical officers. Flight simulator type players could be the pilots. Social players could play various other roles on the ship including doctors, etc.

Depending on estimated players at release,  I would have had a certain amount of ships per faction available to become crew for. I would have based the tutorial on Star Fleet, designed similar things for the other factions. Depending on your performance through the tutorial I would have allowed the best "scores" to have priority to the better ships.

The ships and their captains, that is harder. Not sure I would make that player or system run. But in the end, that would have been a fun problem to tackle from a design point of view.

Those are just some quick ideas. I am sure there are plenty more to be had with an IP like Star Trek.

I think Cryptic took the easy way out, and lied about this everyone wants to be captain crap. Like some people have stated before, I think they are more interested in quick money pay out from IP interested players, than in making something original or true to the IP.

Having not played this game, I cannot know any of this for sure. These are just my impressions thus far from watching the development.

The design is so much less than a good Trek MMORPG could have been, that it annoys me.

Originally posted by Lasastard

...this just doesn't sound...right...

I do see the rationale behind designing ships to be basically solo-elements, but that imho doesn't really capture the Star Trek idea. So it boils down to Cryptic doing a space MMO in a Star Trek skin to make quick cash, rather than trying to capture the spirit of the shows. And before someone comes to say "but it would be boring or technically unfeasable", then I'd like to say "If you can't do it right, don't bother doing it at all". Well, my opinion anyway - I'm sure they'll produce something that a bunch of people will be able to enjoy.

I agree. It so is NOT like Star Trek, which always was a lot about social things within the crew.

Originally posted by Longswd

This almost starts to sound like an RTS, with managing your crew like a resource. Puts a rather different face on things.

 

 Oh yeah, we also need a Pirates!  mini-game when a boarding attempt occurs :P

 

 

Agreed! They also need to stop screwing up Star Trek with this crap. 3 types of officers, and they're little more than a set of stats? 

In ST:TO, we had tons of officers. Weapons, Navigation, Medical, Science, Engineering, Tactical, Communications, so on, so forth. That's what I really wanted to see in STO, and it would help carry the spirit a little more. They better still have those randomly generated planets, because the combat and exploration are the only other bits they have left to capture, after screwing up the space stuff.

Originally posted by Greyed

Insert generic jab at Cryptic not getting "The Show" here in spite of my lack of information on the game, first hand experience of the game or, really, experience designing and make any game let alone an MMO. Clearly that will show'em I can do better!

Oh, so now all a company has to do is make a game better than what the consumers can make? Wow, that must mean EVERY game is good. No. I don't care if I can't make anything, I expect them to make a quality game. Like someone else on these boards said "If it can't be done right, don't bother doing it at all." It seems that they can't do Star Trek right, if it's difficult, so be it, but that's no excuse for a subpar game. They chose to do it, they tried, if they fail, they fail, no excuses. As I said, I don't give half a horse shit if I can do better, that doesn't matter. What matters is that the game DOES capture the spirit of Star Trek, because they did choose to do a STAR TREK game.

As for first hand experience with the game, no, few people have had that. That doesn't mean that the system that is very clearly described, the Bridge Officers, is stupid. Star Trek didn't have just 3 bridge officers. Again, as I said before, Star Trek had many officers, not 3.

Originally posted by DaX.9

Originally posted by Securion

Im a Star trek fan and I think it sounds good. Dont know what you morons complain about? Sure, it will probably be "wow-in-space" kinda themeparkish game, but hey, not every game can be as popular as EVE you know... ;)

 

 

 

Calling someone moron based only on thing that they do not share your point of view is really pathetic and it shows your lack of intellect.

You just did the same thing only with more sophistication heh.

IRT topic; I think I will have to play it to see how it flows but from what i've been hearing from the people who have given the game a try, it seems like the mechanics work quite well.

I'm sure I'll probably get flamed for this, but I still think it would have been a lot cooler design for the game if it took 'guilds' to run large ships... if the game leant more towards a 'simulation' feel.  I could be totally wrong... we'll see what Cryptic does.. but after playing Champions Online, I'm not expecting anything revolutionary or even really impressive...

Originally posted by DeaconX

I'm sure I'll probably get flamed for this, but I still think it would have been a lot cooler design for the game if it took 'guilds' to run large ships... if the game leant more towards a 'simulation' feel.  I could be totally wrong... we'll see what Cryptic does.. but after playing Champions Online, I'm not expecting anything revolutionary or even really impressive...

While that is understandable, its just not reasonable. Not only would it make a lot of people NOT play, having to make sure your whole guild is on just to fly or even a certain amount. That and the certain jobs on the ship would be way too tedious or just incredibly boring. They chose what fits best for everyone, and sorry but manning your own ship is still pretty frickin sweet...

Originally posted by DeaconX

I'm sure I'll probably get flamed for this, but I still think it would have been a lot cooler design for the game if it took 'guilds' to run large ships... if the game leant more towards a 'simulation' feel.  I could be totally wrong... we'll see what Cryptic does.. but after playing Champions Online, I'm not expecting anything revolutionary or even really impressive...

This would be an AWESOME idea. Yeah, it would end up with a much smaller player base but could be really cool... REALLY COOL.

Originally posted by Djfusion

While that is understandable, its just not reasonable. Not only would it make a lot of people NOT play,

How many people is the proposed design going to make NOT play?

having to make sure your whole guild is on just to fly or even a certain amount.

Not a problem, actually. Just treat shipboard missions as dungeon runs. You have to have enough people for those. You could even PUG some crew from the nearest Starbase for a run, or resort to the NPCs for unmanned stations.

Solo content could be shuttle missions, missions on the base, or holo deck simulations.

That and the certain jobs on the ship would be way too tedious or just incredibly boring. They chose what fits best for everyone, and sorry but manning your own ship is still pretty frickin sweet...

You have no imagination at all. You might be right for the job of MMO dev.