After over a decade, Star Trek Online is planning on updating its Earth Space Dock to match some recent canon representation—though they wanted it to be a surprise. Oops.
The blog for this update was initially posted, both onto the site and social media, as being an immediate update. However, it seems someone had hit a publish button instead of a scheduling button, so instead, we have a spoiled surprise, like your bestie telling you they’re going to your surprise birthday party. It happens.
Regardless, it’s a nifty preview of a big mostly-cosmetic update for the Earth Space Dock, with explanations given by an Environment Artist known as “Taco.”
The current iteration of Star Trek Online’s ESD has lasted more than a decade, after the devs admit to caving to fan demands to use the space dock actually seen in Star Trek III and The Next Generation. This upcoming iteration is mostly cosmetic, meant to bring it closer to the new canon seen in Star Trek: Picard’s third season, where the new Enterprise F emerges from the “Probert Station.” The artists didn’t have official plans, so they extrapolated from what was shown in the new show.
This new ESD has some notable changes due new tech, visual updates, and the updates to Star Trek Online. For one, this new ESD is modular instead of one big station for future dev ease. While several areas were changed mostly visually to match the new style, including a dock or few, this does mean some parts are bigger in size as a result.
Plus, Earth is getting “a bit of a facelift” too to make it “FEEL large again” (verbatim from the blog). They’ve added 8k textures to the actual planet, and the clouds are programmed by multi-layer morphing tools so you’ll likely never see the same thing twice.
However, due to these new changes, the Fleet Yards aren’t technologically (really, fictional-mathematically) possible, so they’ve been removed, and drydocks are being brought out in lieu for players who still want some nifty screenshots. Plus, there’ll be some quality-of-life changes for landing, which gives players chances for… more screenshots!
There’s no official timeframe for the new updates (besides “a later date” in bright red on the blog), but maybe it’s Soon™ due to the attempted queuing of this post. (My condolences to the social media team.)
