Slashdot Mirror


Cryptic Studios Releases New Star Trek Online Details, Trailer

Two days ago, an AP interview with Cryptic Studios' Jack Emmert provided new details about Star Trek: Online, which was lost in developmental limbo for quite some time. Today, Cryptic released a game-play trailer and a forty-minute webcast discussing the game.

38 of 272 comments (clear)

  1. For the lazy.. by kunwon1 · · Score: 5, Informative
    Details from TFA:
    • You start the game as captain of a small Klingon or Starfleet vessel
    • You can create new races
    • Big galaxy, lot's of space, away missions on planets
    • Timeline is a few generations after Nemesis
    • PVP space battles
    • No release date yet
    • More details will be unveiled on Sunday at a Trek convo in Vegas
    --
    Specialization is for insects. -Heinlein
    1. Re:For the lazy.. by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Details from TFA:

      • Big galaxy, lot's of space, away missions on planets

      How many red shirts do you get per ship?

    2. Re:For the lazy.. by Baricom · · Score: 3, Funny

      The quote at the bottom of Slashdot's page right now is especially appropriate:

      You will be dead within a year.

    3. Re:For the lazy.. by Adriax · · Score: 4, Funny

      Instead of the standard HP or hit points, health will be gauged by RS, red shirts.

      --
      I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
    4. Re:For the lazy.. by OldManAndTheC++ · · Score: 3, Funny

      You have docked with Starbase 23. Would you like to resupply? YES

      Starbase 23 has the following supplies:

      • Dilithium: 5 kilos
      • Photon torpedoes: 12
      • Anti-matter: 0.5 grams
      • Red Shirts: 87

      Please indicate the items and quantity needed...

      --
      Soylent Green is peoplicious!
  2. Marketing Pitch by Stickerboy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yes, you, too can be the Anonymous Redshirt, for only $14.99 a month!

    --
    Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
    1. Re:Marketing Pitch by BPPG · · Score: 4, Funny

      No, you start as a Captain.

      Does it really count if you're the red-shirted captain for the redshirt vessel?

      Delivering a valuable cargo of freshly laundered red shirts?

      --
      What's the value of information that you don't know?
    2. Re:Marketing Pitch by thatskinnyguy · · Score: 3, Funny

      Kirk: I'll need 4 people on the away team. Me, Spock, Bones and Ensign Ricky.

      Redshirt in the corner: Oh crap!

      --
      The game.
    3. Re:Marketing Pitch by Buran · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I've never figured out why it seems that everyone in the Navy (Starfleet) is an ensign or higher in the Trek universe; Ensign is a commissioned officer rank, not an enlisted rank.

      Yet, most of the stuff that happens on ships gets done by enlisteds, and even officers will listen to an NCO who knows their stuff.

      So, you'd think the random guy would be a private, private first class, sergeant, etc.

      But nope...

      (and I say this as a long-time Trek fan: "huh!?")

    4. Re:Marketing Pitch by GrayNimic · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There have been a handful of enlisted men in the series, but they are rare. They also seem to be in the engineering fields, as the two main examples are O'Brien (Transporter Chief in TNG, and Chief Engineer in DS9) and at least some of the Defiant's engineering crew (in one episode, O'Brien was telling Worf that the engineers he was commanding were enlisted men and hadn't been through Starfleet Academy, and therefore needed to be handled differently than the Officers he's used to dealing with). In TNG, O'Brien's rank usually came up because of the confusion it caused - he was "Chief", but because of the title of his position and not because of his rank. In DS9, it was usually referenced as why he was not participating in formal occasions - that was an officer duty.

      So it's been clear since TNG at least that enlisted personel *exist*, but are simply very rare in the show. They seem to be growing more common, slowly, as other posters have pointed out.

    5. Re:Marketing Pitch by arth1 · · Score: 4, Informative

      "Chief" is short for chief petty officer, which IS a Navy rank.

      In mariner terminology, the chief was usually the second in command on a ship, even if outranked by the pilot and mates. The captain and pilot would decide where to sail, but the chief would be in charge of how, including keeping the boat afloat, which took precedence over any orders except scuttling.
      On smaller ships, he could often double as a boatswain, being directly in charge of the seamen. Later, the title was split into Chief Mate and Chief Engineer, with the Mate being an officer, and the Engineer not. Depending on nationality, the chief engineer might still de-facto outrank all officers except the captain, despite not being an officer.

    6. Re:Marketing Pitch by cthulu_mt · · Score: 3, Informative

      Gunnery positions on the heavy bombers were enlisted men. Bombardier, navigator and pilots were officers.

      --
      Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
    7. Re:Marketing Pitch by srmalloy · · Score: 4, Informative

      In mariner terminology, the chief was usually the second in command on a ship, even if outranked by the pilot and mates. The captain and pilot would decide where to sail, but the chief would be in charge of how, including keeping the boat afloat, which took precedence over any orders except scuttling.

      It is different in civilian and military usage. In the Royal Navy, for example, the Captain was the commander of the ship, but until the development of a professional officer corps, the captain's primary skill was being able to fight his ship -- and originally was in direct command only of the Marine unit aboard the ship; the sailing master was the person who actually directed the sailing of the ship. The sailing master (shortened to master) was a warrant officer, along with the master's mates, and ate in the wardroom with the ship's officers, who were above him in the chain of command; the promotion of warrant officers was under the control of various boards and commissions, not captains, unlike the midshipmen and rates. The sailing master eventually became a commissioned office, becoming the navigation officer.

  3. The only problem in Star Trek games by FlyingSquidStudios · · Score: 5, Funny

    is that you never make an entire planet feel ashamed right after first contact for not adhering to your superior future moral code. I mean that's basically the point of Star Trek.

    1. Re:The only problem in Star Trek games by MindlessAutomata · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hmmm... Star Trek takes place in a future where mankind has embraced socialism and lives in a utopia....

      Being contacted by smug socialists shaming you because you're not one? Yes, that's certainly new, certainly unheard of.

    2. Re:The only problem in Star Trek games by NNKK · · Score: 3, Funny

      Most of whom, exactly?

    3. Re:The only problem in Star Trek games by fm6 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Please. Socialism is about distributing wealth equally. Since there's no scarcity (everybody just gets what they need from the nearest replicator) there's no wealth either. Arguably that's Communism, except that government doesn't seem to have withered away. Supposedly all our social problems have gone away because everybody's "more evolved". Except that explanation is scientifically naive: evolution requires natural selection (which we stopped doing when we invented civilization), and doesn't necessarily make individuals morally better. Often the opposite.

      I'd call it Roddenberianism, which is defined as a system that makes everybody happy, but which nobody can tell you exactly how it works.

    4. Re:The only problem in Star Trek games by Moridineas · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Supposedly all our social problems have gone away because everybody's "more evolved"

      You may laugh, but that's exactly what many of the early Russian communists thought would happen.

    5. Re:The only problem in Star Trek games by node+3 · · Score: 4, Funny

      If you think about it, it shouldn't be surprising that the people who prefer Kirk see themselves as the center of the universe.

    6. Re:The only problem in Star Trek games by AstrumPreliator · · Score: 5, Funny

      Ah yes, the original Star Trek. Where Captain Kirk would either
      A) Beat up the antagonist
      B) Have sex with the antagonist
      or C) Do both A and B

      It really went downhill after the original!

    7. Re:The only problem in Star Trek games by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      *ahem* Libertarian Socialist here.

      Socialism is about distributing wealth equally

      No, it's not. The bait-and-switch redefining of socialism was done by the Bolsheviks to seal their hold on power, and accepted by the western power elite for the same reason.
        Socialism is about people being in control of their own labor, by owning and controlling the means of production themselves.

        o If you have a set of tools and use that set yourself to make furniture which you sell, that's socialism.
        o If you hire someone else to make the furniture, and you take the money and give him back enough to live on, but not enough to buy his own tools, you have capitalism. *
        o If you have a set of tools and let your friends, neighbors, relatives, or whomever you trust borrow them to make furniture when you're not doing it, that's communism.
        o If you give your tools to the government so they can share them more fairly, that's state communism. It's also naive, since the government will quickly be occupied by people who are not going to share squat once they get their hands on everyone's stuff. (see: Soviet Russia, China, various other state "communist" nations.)

        Distributing wealth fairly (not necessarily equally) is a communist ideal.

      Supposedly all our social problems have gone away because everybody's "more evolved".

      In Star Trek's defense, they seem to postulate that psychiatry will make advances towards reliable treatment of abnormal behavior in the future. Someone who feels compelled to own more than he can possibly use is treated as normal, even desirable in modern consumerist society, but I'd say he's got a borderline hoarding disorder. There's not a lot of difference between a guy who spends every waking hour trying to find ways to increase the numbers in his bank account and the old lady who has 40 cats, IMO. (I recall a psychiatrist about ten years ago who had worked with a number of Donald Trump Fortune-500 types, who said the most striking thing about them was that they had no "inner lives," that is, they didn't go for walks in the park or kick back listening to music for an afternoon like normal people. They were utterly driven. They'd get up in the morning and immediately start making phone calls, because that was all they did.)
        If a hypothetical future psychiatry treats and cures such individuals, then a society designed to minimize their negative impact via pricing signals and other market forces becomes unnecessary. (Not that I believe it will, but it's possible.)

        * You might wonder why it works out so that the employee doesn't figure out some way to get the money to go into business for himself. It's due to the design of the unfree market -- capitalism can only function under certain unnatural economic conditions. The first thing that's done in a third world country when the WTO and World Bank come in to "modernize" their economy is to have the government rig the market in such a way as to create those conditions. This involves robbing people of self-sufficiency and driving them into desperation so they will accept a bad deal as the "best alternative available," as the sweatshop apologists love to say. Kevin Carson has some detailed analysis of this stuff over at mutualist.blogspot.com which I highly recommend.

        - mantar

    8. Re:The only problem in Star Trek games by Joebert · · Score: 4, Funny

      How about this one ?

      --
      Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
    9. Re:The only problem in Star Trek games by Stooshie · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ... another person is entitled to the proceeds of your labour ...

      No, that's capitalism. The majority of people in a capitalist society work for someone else and their efforts go into making a profit for someone else.

      --
      America, Home of the Brave. ... .and the Squaw.
    10. Re:The only problem in Star Trek games by AP31R0N · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It works because envy and greed and want are largely eliminated. The elimination of those wouldn't be communism or socialism. Such systems would be rendered obsolete. There would be little desire to (re)distribute something if everyone has it. People who want for little are generally easy going. People who have hope for something better are usually well behaved. Maybe you didn't watch enough of the show to learn how it worked.

      Socialism is not about distributing wealth equally, even on paper. Please read up on what socialism IS before you talk about socialism. Germany, often described as socialist (though all countries are socialist to one degree or another {roads, public schools, cops}), does not try to make everyone equal. They just try to make sure that the disparity between the top and bottom isn't terrible. If you're sick in Germany, you go to the doctor. In the US, that's a privilege extended to those with (certain) jobs (not all jobs include benefits). Yet, it is still possible for someone through the sweat of their brow to become wealthy. Capitalism and socialism work beautifully together. But that's not what is going on in ST.

      Communism, socialism, capitalism and so are moot when there's no point in being greedy, or there is less to "need". Why charge so much for medicine that certain people can't afford it, if there is no scarcity of medicine?

      The social problems weren't described as evolution in the biological sense, they might have referred to it cultural evolution. The federation didn't have as many internal troubles as say, the Klingons. The federation didn't have as much external problems until something on the outside pushed in.

      "But but but how did they get there?", you blubber, pretending to not understand. Time, pain and technology. Time and pain taught that version of Earth that the cause of much of their problems was want and greed. The former is mostly the result of the latter. Pain of wars and crime eventually taught them these lessons. Technology makes civilization possible. It also makes morality feasible. In an every man for themselves struggle to survive, moral decisions are a luxury. i can worry about whether is it right or wrong to kill you and take your land if i'm starving. Where people perceive that they have hope for something better, they are less likely to take stupid risks, or feel that it is ok to take from others.

      The illusion of scarcity, or the sense that 'whoever dies with the most toys wins' drives most of the misery we see in the world. If i could get a Porsche from a replicator today, and get a Ferrari tomorrow, i would care far less about 'getting ahead'. i could put my time and effort into better things. Or do things and not worry about what it pays. It's the old "what would you do if you won the lottery?". i'd paint, write, travel, develop games, teach kids computers. i wouldn't be sitting in a cube farm working on TPS reports.

      What would you do if someone came along and paid off your mortgage? Or your landlord said you could live rent free? Such an event would effectively double my income. i could take a lower paying job that would give me more satisfaction. Or i could spend that extra money to take art and language classes. i could buy lego sets and give them to kids so they could have fun and learn spacial and engineering skills.

      If you find such a world hard to swallow, imagine how today's world would look to someone from 200 years ago. Marriages are for love? Blacks aren't farm equipment? Women leading nations? Widespread literacy? Conquest of weaker nations seen as bad? Some people of that time might see those as bad things, but i think their pretty groovy, and so would the people benefiting from those social evolutions.

      --
      Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
  4. This isn't going to go well ... by Mike610544 · · Score: 5, Funny

    From what they haven't said about avoiding current MMO problems I picture it like this:

    NPC: Bring me 17 Tribble Scrotums.
    Player: Ok, here you go.
    NPC: Kill the renegade Klingon warlord.
    Player: Done.
    ... 49 levels later ...
    NPC: Invade the Borg ship and destroy it's power source.
    Player: Mission accomplished!
    NPC: uhh ... now just keep doing that again and again for increasingly diminishing rewards ....
    Player: but didn't I already ...
    NPC: SILENCE! Invade the Borg ship and ...

    --
    ... also, I can kill you with my brain.
    1. Re:This isn't going to go well ... by Adriax · · Score: 4, Funny

      PC: 50 man borg cube raid fleet starting, need 37 more!

      Fleet commander: %$#@!! Who aggroed the drone nest!?! That's Negative 50 BKP!!!

      --
      I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
    2. Re:This isn't going to go well ... by Caraig · · Score: 3, Funny

      Planet Killer train to zone!

      --
      "I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
    3. Re:This isn't going to go well ... by illumin8 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How come MMOs get labeled with this "problem" of not having infinite content. I can't remember someone complaining that they got bored with Oblivion after spending 40 hours playing. If you've played an MMO so long that you've maxed out your character (and maybe a 2nd player), and are now bored with the PVP, haven't you got enough out of it? Is that really a problem that needs, or even can, be solved? Try another game...

      The problem isn't with the players getting bored. That happens with all games. The problem is that the business model for an MMO relies on continued subscription fees in order to keep people playing. So that means the developer must stretch out a finite amount of content for an infinite amount of time. They do this by placing artificial limitations on your character and creating things like "raid lockouts" where you can only kill a certain boss once a week to have a small percentage chance of getting the gear that will make your character more powerful.

      The only reason why WoW is so successful is that they have perfected this process. First, they create a character class with all of these special powers and abilities, then, they remove all of the special abilities and put them on gear that you must acquire to unlock the full potential of your character. Then, with raid lockouts, and the fact that in any given raid there may be 3 or 4 people that need that same piece of gear, and only a 10-20% chance that it will drop in the first place, they can pretty much guarantee that the average subscription will last 1-2 years before your character is fully equipped. By that time, the expansion will be out, making all of your gear worthless, and the cycle repeats.

      Seriously, when I started calculating the number of weeks and months it would take me to repeat the same content over and over again, just to fully equip my character, that was when I got frustrated and decided to cancel my account. It's a contrived system of intentionally withholding rewards just long enough so that they can eke out a few more months of subscription revenue from you, the customer.

      --
      "When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
  5. Platforms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Emmert said "Star Trek Online" would definitely be available for Windows PC and perhaps Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.

    Translation: your choice of Microsoft, Microsoft or rootkit-installing Sony.

    I'll pass on all 3 options, thanks.

  6. Re:Space combat + fps + rpg... by jandrese · · Score: 4, Funny

    If you want Star Wars there's no need to wait, just sign up for Star Wars Galaxies today. Warning: Gameplay may change suddenly.

    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
  7. Star Control 2? by Aereus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This totally reminds me of having to fill up on crew members after losing "hit points" in a ship battle ;)

  8. Informative? by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 4, Informative
    Except that the main site clearly states that the entire movie was created with the ingame engine.

    Unless you have reason to believe they are lying the eye candy is part of the game.

    Thanks for trolling, try again.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  9. Hope they avoid the license trap by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The license trap is simple, HOW do you make an MMO game feel like the movies/book.

    To bodly go where no man has gone before? Eh, this is a MMORPG. Not only has everyone already been there, you probably have to que for the boss.

    Just how many Galaxy class starships are there going to be? How many horny vulcans and carebear klingon players are going to be running around?

    How do you make space combat feel like naval engagements rather then sluggish fighters most Star Trek games have so far chosen to emulate?

    It can be done, the original Star Trek RPG games were proper Star Trek (25th anniversary and Judgement Rites) but later games just wore Star Trek as a skin mod. But MMORPG have had a hard time with it so far.

    Star Wars Galaxies had lots of bugs to be sure but the major gripe was that it just wasn't Star Wars. For me the real killer was that Storm Troopers were insanely hard to kill while of course in the movies they die if you sneeze at them. I am also fairly sure Luke Skywalker never spend time beating up bunnies to get his knife skill up to scratch or mastered a dozen proffesions before becoming a Jedi. For that matter Han Solo wouldn't have been stopped and searched and nobody treated my noble character as a princess. Nobody ran away from my earlier Wookie either.

    Matrix Online was a dud, never played it so can't say if it was like the movies.

    Am playing Lord of the Rings Online and again, one of the things that make the game a bit of a hit and miss is that you just don't feel like one of the heroes from the book. Did Boromir constantly drop his weapon when fighting the orcs? Get knocked out every 30 seconds? Cower in fear? Fear, oh dear that was a stupid idea. You get Hope in safe areas where you don't need it but during the most tricky fights, hope is hard to come by and easily tripped. Oh yes, that makes me feel like a hero, slash half my health have me popping hope tokens on a 1hr cool down and spend most of the time cowering unable to move. Who is the hero NOW? PvP is even worse as monster players start at the highest level but a bit weaker but with killing other players gain ranks. Your average creep is now significantly more powerful then a freep. Yes, Lord of the Rings Online where the forces of darkness did not dare to move until they obtained a significant numerical advancement and sees small forces defeated by half a dozen free people has orcs/wargs/spiders that are more powerful then elves, by the truckload. Whoo!

    It is tempting to ride on an existing license but hard to live up to the expectations people have of that license. So far from watching this game and knowing the previous games the company has done I see no reason but to expect this to be one of the biggest disappointments in MMORPG history. Yes City of Heroes was a success and a nice twist on the genre BUT it is hardly a good basis for a Star Trek MMORPG.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  10. Re:Where no one has gone before?? by Rangsk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Have you not seen Star Trek: The Next Generation? Patrick Stuart's voiceover in the title credits had already changed it to "where no one has gone before" in 1987. Considering this game takes place 30 years after Star Trek: Nemesis (a Next Generation movie), it's fitting to use the Next Generation wording.

    --
    "Don't believe anything you read on the net. Except this. Well, including this, I suppose." --Douglas Adams
  11. I think he meant... by Moraelin · · Score: 3, Informative

    Well, I'm not the GP poster, but I think he meant, like many of use SW fans, a good SW game. Note the keyword there.

    Actually screw that. We just want a Star Wars game. SWG wasn't even that, when you get at the bottom of it.

    SWG from the start was not just incompetently done, but mostly a merchandising exercise. You know, like printing Darth Vader's head on a t-shirt. It doesn't really make it a better t-shirt, nor really SW equipment, it just serves to sell more copies and more expensive.

    SW was launched as little more than a SW-themed DIKU MUD with graphics and lots of empty, generic, fractal-generated terrain, but (here's the important part) without vehicles, starships or Jedi. That tells you from the start how well the dev team and Raph Koster understood either SW or their target market segment. It's been a race against time from there to figure out how to put Jedi in, for example, and went from one clusterfucked abomination to the next clusterfucked abomination as results went.

    And while the big gripe is gameplay, let's not forget that it wasn't very SW either. Their "solutions" to everyone wanting to be a Jedi was worse lore-wise than the problem. They required you to be already an accomplished and skilled adult before anyone trained you as a Jedi. Hello? That was exactly what they tried to avoid: training someone who's already used to taking all the wrong approaches, and has all the wrong reflexes.

    Duly noted, it was the only MMO which allowed a flexible character build. It gets kudos for that, and many people stayed because of that. Many still remember it fondly because of that. But was its only merit.

    And there was nothing particularly SW about that either. You could transplant the same system to a high-fantasy MMO and it would work just the same. Heck, something similar worked in Oblivion.

    The NGE just managed to make it worse, and God knows that's an accomplishment. It's akin to making a rotten corpse even less sexy.

    And again, it became an even more exercise in merchandising. Signature characters are used even more willy-nilly, in places and situations that make no sense for them, like in bad fanfic.

    (Though if it makes anyone feel better, the actual game ignores not just the official lore, but also everything that their own tutorial told you half an hour ago.)

    So, well, I think all of us SW nerds can be excused for wishing for a SW game, not for SWG.

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
  12. RED FLAG! by neokushan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Players will also be able to battle against other vessels in laser-blasting, missile-firing deep space scuffles reminiscent of "The Wrath of Khan" and the Dominion War in "Deep Space Nine."

    Yes, because those lasers and missiles were the key weapons in both of those events.
    If they don't know that phasers and torpedoes are two completely different things, I don't expect them to understand the various intricacies of the franchise.
    Oh well, a crap star trek game? At least it wont be disappointing, it's what we've come to expect.

    --
    +1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
  13. Start as captain? by suso · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Isn't it going to be a little unrealistic to have a million starships going around? Besides, what do you have to work up to? Admiral, then the game gets REALLY boring. You just sit behind a desk.

    I mean, with games like WoW, its more realistic to have hundreds of people all at the starting point of the game because they are just people and there are lots of people in the world.

    But if everyone starts with their own starship and you have a lot of people playing, its going to end up looking like that TNG episode where Worf quantum leaps several times. "Sir I'm receiving 250,000 hails". (Sorry Wil, I couldn't resist quoting you)

  14. I see this starting out like all MMORPGs by NeuroManson · · Score: 3, Funny

    You start the game with default clothing, basic black slacks and a red shirt. Then you spend half the game trying to earn a different color shirt. Just like all the others, except more desperately.

    --
    Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!