Star Trek Online

A few days ago, we reported on the early hours of Star Trek Online, the new MMO from Cryptic that entered into open beta testing earlier this week. We’ve since had plenty of time to dig into the space and ground combat, skill system and upgrades, and even play a little bit of the unlockable Klingon faction. Here is our full report along with screens taken from our time in the game.

At the end of our last look at the game, which you can read here, we’d completed the introduction as a young Star Fleet officer, having been promoted to our first command during a crisis period for the Federation. Threats lay heavy upon the galaxy – war with the Klingons, the reemergence of the Borg, and deeper, more mysterious dangers that seem to be looming on the horizon.

The early missions that follow the game’s introduction do a fine job of establishing many of the complex and interconnected game systems that govern play. The first and most significant is the skill system – the primary way to build up your avatar’s abilities and have them rank up. Players acquire skill points by completing missions and defeating enemy forces. Once attained, they need to be spent upon various abilities that improve your in-game actions. We initially threw some points into Starship Command for added maneuverability and damage with our ship, and then several points into energy and projectile ship weapons, so that our phasers and torpedoes would pack more of a wallop. With the last skill points we’d built up during the introduction, we fleshed out our ground capabilities – improving our own personal combat skills and our ability to command away team members and improve the use of their skills.

Spending these points helps to ascend the long road through the ranks of Star Fleet, the leveling system of the game. Every rank has 10 grades (levels) that build up as you play. After the introduction, players will already have moved out of their roles as Ensigns to become Lieutenants. From there, the progression is Lieutenant Commander, Commander, Captain, and Admiral. Each new rank brings with it a new tier of abilities, weapons, and missions. However, more notably, it gives players their next tier of ship.

Star Fleet ships are split into five tiers to match the corresponding ranks. Every player begins the game as the captain of a light cruiser. However, at the Earth spacedock that serves as home base for the Federation, players can quickly customize the look of their craft within the constraints of that ship's class. For our ship we changed out the saucer and nacelles, and altered the color scheme for the exterior before heading out for our first major missions. It’s fairly limited this early in the game. It will take many hours to reach the second tier of ships, but at that point the options expand dramatically. Beginning as a Lieutenant Commander, players are able to choose between fast and dangerous escort ships, heavy and well-fortified cruisers, and technologically advanced science ships.

The following hours of play were filled with numerous missions that had us crisscrossing the nearby regions of space. An overview “Sector Space” map allows for easy transversal across the galaxy between systems, but it’s only once you enter a system and its surrounding space that you’ll dive into space combat. In addition, many systems will have ground sections attached to missions located there – requiring you beam down for exploration, negotiations, or most commonly, ground combat. We tackled one mission that had us negotiating to end a work stoppage on a Federation mining colony. Another mission sent us into a heated space battle with the reptilian Gorn after their attack on a science facility. Still another demanded we patrol several separate star systems for signs of Klingon incursions into Federation space.

Along the way we were automatically placed in open instance groups with other players who were attempting the same missions we were. Though this feature can be turned off to play solo, the open instance approach often sends players into much larger and more exciting battles than they might encounter alone. With three or four player ships as allies and a commensurate number of enemy cruisers and fighters, space battles can become impressively explosive affairs. If you like the team you’re automatically assigned to, you can stick with them for several upcoming missions. When you’re ready to head out solo once again, it’s easy to leave.

We also explored another largely group-focused activity called Fleet Actions. These massive battles had us dropping in with a large group of other players to tackle extremely large battles. For Trek fans, imagine the really big battles in the latter seasons of Deep Space Nine or the opening battle against the Borg in Star Trek: First Contact, and you’ll have a good sense of what Cryptic is going for with these sessions. These large-scale battles are objective driven, and can be found scattered about the galaxy – easy to drop into when you want a break from the mission tree.