Star Trek Online at Ten Ton Hammer

Ten Ton Hammer: Players are naturally going to try and create their own races, or recreate that one really obscure race. With the cosmetic customization for ships, will there be ways for them to make a ship that helps distinguish their race a bit more from a cosmetic standpoint?

Craig Zinkievich: I think those players will be able to do some things, but definitely at first release the two major factions are going to be the Klingons and the Federation. So the majority of the ships that the Federation players will be flying and customizing will still look very Starfleet. We don’t want to make it so that you can go in and customize the ships to the extent that you have the Oscar Mayer Weiner Bus flying in space. It still is very Starfleet, very Federation.

On the Klingon side I think there’s a little bit more freedom, because you have the Klingons, the Gorn, the Orion – you have a few more races that have their “look” that can be played with. But you’re definitely not making crazy crazy, you’re staying within the military that you are.

Bridge officer selection adds another layer of depth to ship customization.

Ten Ton Hammer: With the bridge crew, how large of an influence do they have on the overall abilities of a given ship class? Do they reflect the innate abilities of the ship, or enhance them? How will that relationship work?

Craig Zinkievich: It’s an interesting, parasitic relationship between the ship and the bridge crew. One of the things that the ship configuration defines are how many of what type of bridge officers can be on that ship when you’re in space flying that ship. You’ll have your stable of guys, but which ones are active or which ones are actually on the bridge is specified by the configuration or class of your ship.

Having said that, the coolest powers that are in the game currently for me are bridge officer powers, the things that your bridge officer has. You ask your Worf to line up the photon torpedo spread, you ask your Data to realign your deflector dish to send energy pulses back at the person who’s attacking you. So it feeds upon itself – the ship defines what sort of officers you can have on the bridge or what kind of permutations you can have, but then your officers really affect the way that your ship functions.

So if you get a more escort class ship, you’ve got more tactical guys, you’ve got more pew-pew. If you’ve got a science ship you probably have more seats for science officers on the bridge, and so the science guys can actually bring their really cool skills to the ship.

Ten Ton Hammer: Do you think that’s an area min/maxers are going to really get into?

Craig Zinkievich: Definitely. What’s really cool, going back to the customization, it’s like, OK, I got this science ship that has those extra science stations,  and maybe I’m a science officer so that would be really, really specializing. But then I have 4 or 5 science officers in my stable that I’ve really worked on – who am I going to slot today? Who am I going to use today? How do I feel like playing my role today? It’s actually really exciting and cool.

Ten Ton Hammer: So far, what would you say is the coolest part of ship combat, or what aspect have you been enjoying the most?

Craig Zinkievich: I think the positional aspect of ship combat is really, really cool. In team play it adds another order of magnitude to the strategy that’s available. Knowing that, say let’s all go to the port side and maybe your third guy’s  got his photon torpedo salvo lined up and ready to unload is just waiting and trying to get to that side to bring down the shields. That sort of cooperation or synchronization within teams I think is really awesome.

In terms of game development, it’s neat how every once in a while you find gameplay in things that you didn’t mean for gameplay to show up in. In space your sensors definitely can see much farther than you can engage, and there’s that sort of ‘engage’ range where you know what the range of your weapons are, you know what range the enemy’s weapons are and how far away they are. So there’s that sort of ‘hundred units’, that little bit of time right before you’re actually in combat where you’re really analyzing how they’re situated, what ships they have or what configuration they’re coming at you with. You’re lining all your power up to go into combat. It’s that breath before the plunge that’s become actually really exciting in the game, and we never planned on it or expected that to be a big aspect of it. But it’s how the whole team, in that very short period of time kind of figures out what they’re about to do, get their ships all configured in a way that goes into this next battle and then goes in. That, to me, is something that just came out of the blue and is a really exciting part of the game.