Review: Star Trek Online

Boldly going where no halfling has gone before

Games, the final frontier
These are the voyages of one gamer, Geoff
His continuing mission:
To explore new virtual worlds
To seek out new dice, and new online civilizations
To boldly go where he has not been before

This week I’ve been exploring Perfect World’s MMO Star Trek Online, based on the ever-popular Star Trek fictional universe created by Gene Roddenberry.

It is a newer game, first released as a monthly subscription game in 2010, re-released in the F2p/freemium model in 2012. According to Wikipedia (and I have no idea how they know this) the game has 3.2 million players.

So that is interesting and all, but … how does it play?

First, we should note that there are no halflings in Star Trek Online.

None.

There are Ferengi and Tellarites. Both about half as tall as the other races, but not in the gracefully dexterous manner of the halfling, more in a strangely lumbering manner that does not at all appeal to me. Playing a Ferengi could be kind of funny, especially if one is role-playing. But I will not be role-playing, I will be soloing this and treating it mainly as a single-player game.

So no halfling. Instead, in this universe Mawry Haversack, the Original Halfling Commano is a Vulcan, with a nicely Vulcan name (Maw’Ri) but otherwise still as commando-like as she can be.

Maw’Ri, captain of the USS Commando

There is a lot to this game. A LOT. Crafting. Time sinks. Many many planets. Much more than I am going to attempt to talk about in this one quick article.

Character Creation

There are only three “classes”, Engineer, a Scientist, or Commander. There may be additional or differing classes if you are Romulan or Klingon but I did not try. It doesn’t matter a lot, the game is skill-based and the majority of the skills are available to any class.

Later in the game, I encounter a situation where only a Scientist could perform an action. It was not a required action; it did not affect the success of the mission. I’ve only encountered one of these so far. Frankly, in all the time that I was playing, I did not find any real reason why one class might be better than another. I suspect that experts could point out some min/maxing reason to choose one over the other but I cannot see it; in the end, Maw’Ri chose Scientist simply because she likes the blue tunics.*

* Since we are now living in a post-GamerGate world, I should point out that the female characters have adjustable bust sizes (from large to really ultra large) while there is no equivalent codpiece adjustor for men.

But wait, there’s more

Unlike other games, in this game you have a ship too. Yes, you are granted a ship almost immediately upon starting. This ship is basically an additional character; so much so that they also come in three “classes”: cruiser, escort, or science vessel. It is tempting to explain the three different ship classes as being tank, DPS, and support, and that simple viewpoint actually seems to hold up pretty well.

Like any other character, each class is better at some things than others. And needs to be equipped. And in this case, manned. Your crew brings specific advantages to your ship, and picking and choosing the most useful advantages makes a big difference pretty quickly into the game.

During the introductory quests (I mean “missions”. Missions! They are not “quests”. Except yes, they are), it doesn’t really matter how your ship character is built. But that changes in a hurry.

You get new ships every so often as you are promoted, so you can try out a new class or continue to refine your mastery over your existing ship class.

My reading indicated that Science Vessels get extra debuffs and lockdowns and have way more buttons to press. That sounded more commando-like than the other two, and that is how Maw’Ri ended up in charge of the USS Commando, a Horizon-class Science Vessel.

Space Combat

The biggest and most important aspect of the game, at least insofar as I have found to-date, is space combat.

And wow, they did an awesome job with it. It reminds me of a game called Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. This is a good thing, Nexus was the most beautiful and most elegant tactical space combat simulator I’d ever encountered. Even ten years later, the screenshots from it are astounding.

STO space combat has every bit of that. Completely active, you combat other ships by piloting your craft to present your most advantageous angles to the enemy while trying to stay on their least advantageous angle. Batter down the opponent shields with beam weapons and then shatter its hull with torpedoes and mines.

Nothing is automated, every move is due to your keystroke, every weapon firing event too. It is not easy. Some buttoneering skill is required!

Another feature that STO shares with Nexus is the progression. You get better. You run into something so badass you have no hope of defeating it. You obtain a new weapon/tactic/ability. You use said weapon/tactic/ability to defeat said badass.

Which is another way of saying that your ship levels up too. It really does feel like your ship is another character. Maw’Ri and her USS Commando, taking on all comers, together.

Ground Combat

You will also be asked to form an away team and do some ground exploration. There are two modes, RPG and FPS. I like the RPG mode, it even comes with a pause so you can issue micromanaging orders to each member of your away team: shades of Baldur’s Gate!

Some missions are mainly ground, some are mainly space, but most are mixed. The ground fights do not have the same elegant feel as the space combat. There is a lot of walking around. Very linear, you do not feel like there is any room for creativity or innovation. Just walk. Shoot. Walk some more. Figure out how to walk your character up to some glowing thing in such a way that it activates. Shoot again. Select something from a dialog. Walk some more.

The combats get tougher, and I quickly grew to appreciate the ability to pause and micromanage.

But still, after the amazing space combat, the ground combat and the walking/jumping/running animations felt clumsy and old-school.

Death

In both types of combats, death has no sting. You re-spawn, fully healed and with your ship fully raised and healed too (or your away team officers, if in ground combat). Meanwhile the enemy remains damaged to whatever extent you managed before dying.

This may be a factor of playing on Normal. There are two harder modes, and when attempting them you can receive injuries that require special treatments (and so can your ship). Death may be more …. deathy? I don’t know.

Other Things

There is a lot to do, even when you are not on a mission. You have a small cloud of Bridge Officers to acquire and develop and post to positions on your ship and on your away team. You have a much larger pool of “Duty Officers” which can be sent on numerous small mini-missions in an attempt to earn you tiny amounts of currency (and even more Duty Officers). There is crafting. And crafting materials, which are found throughout the universe but have to be “scanned” and then “mined”.

There are giant places to run around and talk to everyone and everything. Earth Space Dock. Star Fleet Academy. The planet Vulcan. Everything you’ve ever seen in a Star Trek movie or TV episode. You can read the memorial to George and Gracie, the two Humpback whales brought from the past in Star Trek IV and replanted in San Francisco Bay. You can play Dabo in Quark’s bar off the Promenade in Deep Space Nine. So much Star Trek.

More than just the perfect fidelity to the source material, Star Trek Online is a big, big game. There is an entire universe – hundreds of different systems – and it seems like entering any of them triggers a mission of some sort.

About the only MMO staple that I did not see represented in some fashion was housing. Maybe I missed it, but it doesn’t seem to have any. On the other hand, the one MMO staple that I generally do not care about is … Housing! So there’s that.

Downsides


  • Ground combat is something I endure rather than something I enjoy
  • There are so many options and so many things to do and no clear, concise manual or tutorial for many of them. For instance, after scouring the web and asking in the chat channel, I still don’t know how to get more Duty Officers. I did get some more, but I don’t know how or why, nor do I know how to do it again
  • Limited character creation choices, and no meaningful difference between the choices that do exist
  • It feels like a single-player game. I never needed nor wanted to play with anyone else

Upsides


  • A lot of people are playing this game. It feels alive and populated and full
  • Very faithful rendition of Star Trek. The most rabid Trekkie will be satisfied
  • Space combat is a thing of beauty

Overall

I like it. A lot. According to my Gamer Girl, I’ve been obsessed with it for the last several days. But it strikes me as very similar to the obsession I had with Star Wars The Old Republic: I had to play it until I capped a character. The single-player experience was amazing. But once I’d capped a character, that was pretty much it. I’d seen the story, I’d experienced the universe, I was done.

Too early to tell, but it surely does seem like SWTOR all over again.