Star Trek Online (STO) Executive Producer Dan Stahl took some time to field another round of questions for4 the STO community today in the latest "Ask Cryptic". The latest round of questions spanned several topics and Stahl served up some information that should make several STO players happy.

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style="font-style: italic;">STO keeps warping in new content and changes.

As part of the ground combat updates, Cryptic is planning to add some first-person shooter style optional elements such as allowing players to switch to reticule mode for manual aiming. Additionally, the team is trying to speed up the flow of ground combat by decreasing the time it takes for a weapon to fire after a player clicks. This should help make the slow feeling of STO's ground combat feel a bit quicker.

Stahl also briefly touched on the Vivox voice integration system that is scheduled to go live with Season 4 this summer and come with its own UI to allow for simple communication between players. Stahl served up one new piece of information that should excite STO fans, Starfleet Academy and Klingon Academy are both in development for the game.

If you're curious to know how many Feature Episodes you'll be seeing in 2011, Stahl had a little insight into that as well.

While we are still adjusting schedules and hiring the necessary staff, our current projections show us starting up Feature Episodes after Season 4 launches and then continuously releasing the Episodes from that point forward with a maximum of 2 weeks off between series. This puts 3 Feature Episode series definitely on the books, and we’re trying to get in one or two more before the end of the year. So out of the 26 weeks in the second half of the year, we expect there to be Feature Episodes at least 15 of those weeks and we’re shooting for 20 and if we’re lucky then maybe 25 weeks of episodes (but that’s a huge stretch with no downtime between series). Much like a TV series, we are limited by the amount of time it takes to make the episodes, and we are doing as many as we physically can without burning out the team.

Source: Ask Cryptic STO