Hands-on: Star Trek Online

Sep 4, 2009

The idea behind most MMOs resembles the one established in ye olde timey days of pen and paper role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. You take your character on adventures, collect loot, and gain power as you increase in level. That's simple enough. Star Trek Online takes a different approach, one that is meant to convey the feeling of starring in an exciting episode of the beloved television series: Star Trek Online puts you in the big chair, allowing you to live out your dreams of being the ship's captain, relaying orders to your dedicated crew of officers.

You see, in Star Trek Online, you're in direct control of the captain (your primary avatar), your ship (because who wouldn't want to pilot these bad boys) and the bridge crew (because Star Trek is as much about teamwork as anything else). Your travels will take you and your crew to many different locations, both in space and on the ground, and you'll never be in one place for very long, always moving on to the next adventure.

Customization Station

If you're a fan of customization, then this game's for you. In STO you're not just one character: You're in control of your captain, the ship, and its crew. You'll start by choosing to fly for Starfleet or the Klingon Empire. While you'll be able to choose from a wide variety of well-known races such as Human, Vulcan, Klingon, Bajoran, Gorn, Orion, and Nausicaan, what's more exciting is that you'll be able to create your own alien species. You'll have familiar parts to choose from, like those blue Andorian antennae, but you'll also have a collection of original parts that can be used to create all sorts of new alien species. These species can be assigned custom attributes, which primarily involve passive bonuses but can include activated abilities like a Vulcan Nerve Pinch.

You can then choose for your captain to come from one of three career backgrounds: tactical, engineering, or science. Each career has unique powers that can be brought into play, both in space and planetside. You don't have to worry too much about not being able to handle the science and engineering side if you go tactical, though. Your captain is just one piece of the larger puzzle, and your trusty bridge crew play a vital role as well. As you advance in rank, you'll be assigned officers to serve under you, and they function in a manner similar to MMO pets. You control them by setting their targets, issuing them commands, and so on. The crew members have their own paper doll inventories, so you can equip them with the best gear you can find, and you'll guide their progression as they gain levels right alongside you.

Since a large portion of your game experience will take place in space, it makes sense that your ship is also customizable. While any given ship's core attributes are locked in, there's plenty of variety to be found. You can change the color scheme and otherwise customize the look of your ship, but key attributes of the ship will remain constant, so they can remain readily identifiable. You should always be able to tell the difference between a Miranda-class ship and a Galaxy-class, but there's plenty of leeway within those boundaries.

No Red Shirts Here

Star Trek Online's approach to away-team missions makes sense for a game, so you'll have to excuse it from a logical storytelling standpoint. On solo missions, the captain is always part of the away team, accompanied by four bridge officers. If you're working on a group mission with four other human players, the away team will be comprised of five captains.

Combat was a significant part of the mission I played through during my hands-on session, and the combat system proved very easy to grasp. The "pet" AI that drives the bridge crew did what I expected it to: It kept the officers following me, and they shot at enemy targets whenever we encountered hostiles. I noted that my crew always shot first, which didn't seem very Starfleet of them, but we can forgive their indiscretions in time of war.

Your abilities in hand-to-hand combat are generally tied to the weapons you use and your career powers. Pressing 1 to trigger my primary attack fired single shots form the rifle, while 2 triggered a more powerful sniper shot. Pressing 3 would swing the rifle butt, a melee-range ability that knocks back and stuns enemies. When I picked up a larger weapon later my secondary attack changed to a hail of fire that would blast anything in a frontal cone. Enemies and allies tended to just run right up to each other at times, though. That's a big departure from the typical Star Trek shootout, where you'd expect to see both sides ducking behind crates and popping out to take shots with phasers. It did pay to duck away when I could, though, as you quickly regenerate your "shields" as you do in Halo.

I came away feeling that this run-and-gun, in-your-face style of combat felt more like Starship Troopers than Star Trek. Maybe I was looking for something completely different, but Star Trek Online's approach to ground combat was very similar to what you'd find in any other MMO.

On the bright side, you can choose to specialize your captain in martial arts, which includes the classic neck chop and Kirk's two-fist strike. Score!

Engage!

While the ground-based combat felt very much like every other MMO, the space combat portion of the game garnered more of my interest. Space combat in Star Trek has its own feel that's far different from what you'd find in a setting with nimble single-man fighters. Star Trek ship battles take place between huge vessels manned by hundreds of crew. These battles are won by diverting power between the shields and the ship's vital systems, by repairing structural damage mid-combat, and by maneuvering intelligently, positioning the ship so that you can bring your weapons to bear on the enemy while protecting your own vulnerabilities.

The keyboard controls in space are easy enough to get a hang of. You can click anywhere on your throttle to set the ship's speed, which is anywhere from reverse to full impulse. Full impulse is great for quickly racing from one place to the next, but it keeps your shields from activating for a couple seconds, making it dangerous to pop in right next to enemies. You have four shield arrays, covering your front, rear, and flanks, and if they're depleted you can easily click on arrows to divert power from elsewhere to get them back up. Depending on your ship and its configuration (which is customizable) your weapons have specific firing arcs. The phaser banks on the ship I used were located at the front and sides of the ship, so it was ideal for me to fire on ships that were at a particular angle from me. Front and rear-firing photon torpedoes were good for the final blows.

If you've ever played a game that featured tactical naval combat, like Empire: Total War or Sid Meier's Pirates!, you have a general idea of what Star Trek battles are like. The main difference is that you're fighting in three-dimensional space, so instead of just giving cardinal directions to your allies when barking out commands, you may also have to add whether or not the enemy is above or below you.

The basic tactic to ship combat is to deplete enemy shields with phasers, then kill the ship with torpedoes. When possible, you'll want to "broadside" an enemy ship by positioning your ship in such a way as to bring the most phaser banks to bear, dropping its shields in the process. Once those shields are down, it's time to let those photon torpedoes fly to deal the killing blow. Tactical officers have an ability that allows you to fire a photon torpedo salvo instead of just a single shot, an ability that can mean the difference between taking an enemy down at once and having to wheel around again for a second pass.

What Will You Fly?

The career role you chose when creating a captain is as important in space as it is on the ground, but it's your ship that will largely define your role in space combat. Once you graduate out of your starting light cruiser vessel, you'll get to choose form one of the three major classes of ship: cruiser, science, and escort. Sorry, you won't be able to command a Borg Cube, though the cybernetic invaders are definitely out there.

Cruisers are the tanks of Star Trek Online, meant to be the first to engage the enemy, and to survive where a more vulnerable ship couldn't. These include the Constitution-, Cheyenne-, Galaxy-, and Sovereign-class ships.

Science vessels are your support class, the healers and buffers of the Star Trek Online universe. They include the Nova, Olympic, Intrepid, and Luna ships.

Escort ships are your fast, damage-dealing craft. These ships aren't as large as cruisers, but they can be bristling with weapons. Escort classes include Saber, Akira, Defiant, and Prometheus.

Some Things Stay the Same

In my time at the helm of a Galaxy-class cruiser I embarked on one of Star Trek Online's group-oriented fleet missions. Our Starfleet vessels were to take down a massive fleet of Gorn freighters and cruisers, hopefully eliminating them in small groups without becoming overwhelmed. We failed miserably our first time around, but in our second attempt we played slightly intelligently, focusing our fire on smaller ships before bringing our combined strength to bear on the sturdier cruisers. Coming too close to clusters of enemy ships would "pull" them over, just like how an aggro radius works in a traditional MMO, so your experience in those games will largely translate over.

Space combat was lots of fun, even for someone that was learning on the fly. It's very tactical with a deliberate, steady pace that allows you to make regular decisions without feeling like you have to mash buttons. It also happened to feel very much like Star Trek, something that was somewhat lacking in the ground-based portion of the game.

Star Trek Online is now accepting applicants to its closed beta test. While the game isn't quite finished yet, much of it looks very promising. The game smacks of authenticity and of a love for Star Trek's long television and film history. If the rest of the game can be brought up to the same level as the engaging ship-to-ship combat, then this MMO has a bright future ahead.