Star Trek Online at Ten Ton Hammer

Any MMO bearing the Cryptic Studios name is bound to have a staggering amount of customization options available to players. But what happens when you take that core concept and extend it far beyond the cosmetic and fully into the realm of functional mechanics?  Thanks to a robust alien creation tool, upcoming Star Trek Online could very well raise the bar in terms of cosmetic options, but character customization doesn’t end there, not by a long shot. Ten Ton Hammer recently sat down with executive producer Craig Zinkievich to discuss ship customization, learning some interesting details about the impact of bridge officers along the way.

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.

• Click here to read the rest of the exclusive STO interview with Craig Zinkievich!