| The Bee's Knees Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: The land of rain and trees (Oregon) Gender:  Posts: 29,755 Thanks: 1,649 Thanked 5,701 Times in 2,581 Posts | Star Trek Online
Star Trek Online Preview for the PC from 1UP.com Quote: I love MMOs, but outside of watching a few seasons of The Next Generation I don't know the difference between a Constitution class vessel and a Romulan hairpiece. But an in-depth knowledge and love of Star Trek isn't necessary to enjoy Cryptic's upcoming MMO, Star Trek Online. Playing the game myself at a recent hands-on demo, I got to see just what it takes to command a Starfleet vessel.
Ship movement in space leans more towards careful, measured battle than a hectic, fast-paced dogfight. But you don't have to worry that about sitting in a motionless barge, opening fire on another ship, and waiting to see who blows up first. STO's ships are surprisingly maneuverable, and you have a wide range of weaponry, power choices, and shields to turn the tide of battle even when you're outnumbered and outgunned. Divert all of your ship's power to speed, and you'll lose some firepower, but you'll easily outpace your foes. For casual players, the game provides you with easily understandable categories like Attack and Defense to quickly route your ship's power. And as you become more familiar with the combat, you can take direct control over your ship's energy priorities via sliders.
The most important part of ship combat come from your Bridge Officers, who provide the buffs and abilities you need to succeed in combat. One of my team's science officers allowed me to use a Tachyon Beam, which lowers enemy shields. Starting a battle with that beam allowed me to easily take out a few enemy ships by bringing down their defenses, then following up with a quick Proton Torpedo. Another useful Officer perk provided a temporary boost to my shields, allowing me to stay alive even when drawing heavy fire.
But there's more to the game than just space battles; you can also beam aboard ships and down to alien planets for research and reconnaissance missions. The development team has balanced most the challenges for five players (though some battles are geared towards having 20 or 30 players together for massive space and ground skirmishes), but even when you approach a mission solo, your AI bridge officers will accompany you. I didn't have enough time to learn the intricacies of the battle system, but it's easy to jump into since your AI shipmates are fully autonomous. But I was told that if you want more control you can step in and micromanage them as much as you'd like, from telling them to just be more "aggressive" or "defensive," or even telling them to wait to use specific abilities until you give the order.
Battling on the ground, all your weapons have a primary and secondary fire, plus you can use a melee attacks to push back enemies who get a little too close. Strategy comes from both how you use your shipmates, and your weapon abilities, since some weapons can expose your enemies' weaknesses, making them vulnerable to other attacks and easier to take down. The one example I saw had some enemies pushed into a vulnerable position by an incendiary, which increased the critical hit chance when another character opened fire with a sniper rifle.
You can customize your characters with almost any body parts from characters found across the Star Trek universe, with a variety of different sliders. While I didn't get to play with any of those creation tools, I did get to see several results with some weird-looking (but still humanoid) characters. More interesting for me are the uniform options -- you can pick whatever uniform styles you'd like, from era-specific clothes (like the Next Generation body suits) to more "modern" looking suits.
Likewise, STOs ships are fully customizable. As Jeremy Parish pointed out in his preview the all-out war of the game's timeline has forced Starfleet to pull any available ships into service. That gives you free reign to build a fighter in almost any way you'd like. You can pick from assorted Nacelles, varied saucers, and even different "skins" (in case you want that original series pewter-model look). Everything from the registry number to the windows and pod doors are fully customizable.
I managed to stay alive during my mission, but I did ask about the penalties for death. Even though your bridge officers act like MMO pets, you never have to worry about losing any of them permanently in battle: save points during the instanced surface quests will let you bring back your party without losing too much progress. And in space, even if you get your ship destroyed, you can still respawn. You'll take a durability hit, but you'll be able to go back and retrieve all your equipment.
There's still a lot left unanswered about STO -- I only got to briefly visit one of the game's hub worlds (a floating space station right outside Earth's orbit), I haven't seen the interior of a command vessel, and Cryptic hasn't said much about the game's other major faction, the Klingon Defense Forces. But you can expect to hear a lot more about this exciting new franchise in the coming months, as we get closer to the game's official February 2 release date. | How many MMOs are they gonna make? This one looks kinda cool, though. Check the link for pics and a vid. |
11-11-2009, 12:55 AM 
