Good evening Star Trek Fleet Command players. I’m on vacation for a few days with the family, but I thought I needed to take a few minutes to scribble down some thoughts on yesterday’s announcement that the game will soon include the prime universe. We’re going to see characters from Star Trek Original Series, Next Generation, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise; as well as Star Trek: Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds, and more.
This Needed to Happen
If the game was going to progress, it needed to add the prime universe. There just aren’t enough characters, ships, or stories from three movies to keep the game fresh long term. Other than Krall and Kalara, we’ve seen just about everyone.
They could have added more brand new original characters; and original ships, but that’s not why people play the game.
There are plenty of other space adventure games out there that have original ships. The game’s primary competition is coming from games just like this.
People play this game because of the Star Trek connection.
I, for one, am much more excited about the possibility of putting Worf or Martok on a ship as opposed to Goon. I’m sure as anything more excited about writing a profile of Data than Tiza. It’s just more fun for me to get in a reference to either Brent Spiner on Night Court or singing standards in Ol’ Yellow Eyes is Back.
Balance
I think a lot of concern that players have is balance. Where are these new ships going to fit in? The timeline works where any new ships from Discovery would balance about right with what we have now (though how the spore drive would work will be interesting.)
But what about the 24th Century ships? Do they go up high in G4? Do the Enterprise-D and Voyager go to a level where the average player can’t get them for at least a year?
What about the 22nd Century ships of Enterprise? What strength should the NX-01 Enterprise have? Should it be on about the level of the Franklin?
I’m hoping their will be a good mix for both the free-to-play and the whales.
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Officer Overload?
How the new characters will be integrated into the game. What order will they be released in? How many will we really get?
Also, are we going to get character overload? Right now we’ve got 100 officers.
Let’s say we get six or seven per series, that’s another 40+ officers. And that’s just the regulars, and most of them are Federation. But game balance won’t let you add just Fed officers, you’ll need a mix. Seems like we’re on the road to 200 officers. And don’t get me wrong, I’m excited about just about all of them (sorry, Neelix) but this will make finding officers more difficult.
A big influx is going to make getting officer loadouts feature more vital than ever. We’re going to need a better system of managing them on screen.
Maybe a method for hiding unused officers, or adding favorites – and maybe a retirement function similar to the scrapyard.
“Sorry, Shev, thanks for your service, but we’ve decided to go in another direction. Here’s you’re gold watch.”
Imagine getting officer badges in return for retiring a maxed officer. Just a thought.
This is going to be quite a challenge for Scopely. Let’s hope they can pull it off in a fun way, that satisfies both Trekkies and gamers.
Quick Prime Universe Thoughts
While a lot of the locations from the newly acquired prime universe properties that are already in the game, there are still a good number that aren’t. (I’m thinking I’ll need to do a post on the geography of the game right now, where all the system names come from.)
Deep Space Nine will need Bajor, Cardassia, and the Gamma Quadrant. Voyager will need the Delta Quadrant. Can you imagine an arc where all players are stranded in the Delta Quadrant, without access to their base, or their biggest ships?
Will Picard’s “Captain’s Maneuver” be … THE Picard Maneuver? Can Riker’s involve swinging his leg over a chair? Please.
More than any other faction the Romulans needed this. The Kelvin timeline offered no Romulans at all, but The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine have some good ones.
The Best of Trek
I’m also hoping that this addition will be an introduction for younger players to some of the great characters and stories from classic television Trek. The JJ Abrams movies are what they are: big, fun, fast, and cinematic. It would be nice to introduce players to some of the slower, deeper more thoughtful character studies of the television series.
Here are a just a couple of my favorites.
And now, they can be in the game.