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 href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/117"
target="_blank"> style="font-style: italic;">Star Trek Online
could very well raise the bar in terms of href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/63231" target="_blank">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.
style="font-weight: bold;">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.
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Star Trek Online Game Page.
