The Away Team has arrived on the planet's surface, Captain.

Last week, I expounded upon the conflict that has always existed between Star Trek and Star Wars. This week, I’ll continue onwards, getting you readers up to date  on Cryptic’s take on the legendary spacefaring odyssey.

Star Trek Online begins in the year 2409, roughly thirty years after the events of the movie “Star Trek: Nemesis”. The Federation and the Klingons are at the brink of war once more, as power plays within the Klingon Empire and well-intentioned-but-ill-advised responses to those power plays from Earth and her allies all but destroy the famous Khitomer Accords, which had granted peace between the two factions.

The Neutral Zone has therefore become a PvP battleground, with Starfleet and the Klingons duking it out for tactically advantageous planets and resources, revenge and justice. Defiant-class vessels swoop in amidst a trio of Birds-of-Prey pulse phasers firing while the Klingons in turn break off, only to turn back around, their disruptor cannons blazing menacingly. It’s a scene that we’ve seen through the TV series, and several Star Trek games have attempted to capture the essence of those moments. It is the method that they engage in those conflicts within this MMO that makes Cryptic’s Star Trek Online something special, not just among other Star Trek games, but among other science fiction offerings as well.

Star Trek Online’s space combat is very tactical, and consists of four main elements: shields, weapons arcs, engine output, and crew ability. The first two keep the action moving in space, with weapons arcs probably rather self-explanitory. Shields are displayed as a segmented ring around the ship, four in total, one each to cover the Port, Aft, Starboard, and Forward sections of the ship, each one with its own bank of hit points. Engine output allows you to reinforce the shields during a tough combat scenario, give phasers and disruptors more punch, increase the mobility of the ship, or other miscellaneous functions. Finally, what crew you have assigned to what station determines what abilities your ship has in this combat. One talented tactical officer might enable you to fire several torpedos all at once, for example.

Officers are quite the inspired game mechanic, once you understand what Cryptic has done. As each player is the captain of their own starship, officers function as something approaching a cross between World of Warcraft’s armor and weapons, and combat pets. Each starship has bridge stations, places you can slot your officers…much like a traditional MMO’s equipment slots. On away teams, up to four of your officers can accompany you, providing important skills down on the ground as well. Further, they can each be given equipment and gain experience. Did your Captain go down in that firefight? If you have a skilled doctor as part of your senior staff, they’ll be able to bring you right back up and ready to fight.

Obviously though, there’s more to a Star Trek game than fighting. Exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations has always been a core mission statement for Star Trek, and that tradition is carried forward utilizing Cryptic’s procedurally generated worlds. In essence, using the same technology that powered almost everything behind Spore, Cryptic has generated strange new worlds indeed. Cryptic’s leading man, Craig Zinkovich, has gone on record to state that this was his personal design goal…that the game be able to really deliver the experience of exploration.

Backing all this up is Cryptic’s vaunted avatar customizability, applied not only to your Captain, but to your officers and even to your Starship. Would you like to see your 24th century starship kitted out with hull plating straight from the era of Captain Kirk? It’s possible. Want your bridge officers to all come from alien races never seen in the series? Possible as well. Would you like your starship’s ship registry to be NCC-1337? Yes, you can designate even that detail.

Beta’s coming soon, should be within the next few weeks. Despite stiff competition from Bioware’s Star Wars and their all-out approach, Cryptic’s offering still shows a lot of promise. Let’s see if they can boldly go and create the compelling gameplay needed to win the hearts of rabid Star Trek fans everywhere.

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