Finally, at long last, Deep Space Nine is here. It’s my favorite of the Trek television series. It was the first to do serials, and it did them far better than Discovery ever could. The last nine episodes of the series act like one ten-hour episode that’s extremely rewatchable.
It’s Only a Paper Moon might be my favorite Trek episode of all time, with its look at PTSD. Someone could write a whole book about In the Pale Moonlight. I’ve got to find the time this month to do a Top 10 DS9 episodes article. I could go on for a while.
Of all the Star Trek series, only Deep Space Nine could pull off a scene like this, and have it be totally earned, totally organic, and have it seem completely natural.
The writers and cast put such work into world-building, where this scene just works. Deep Space Nine put so much time into developing three-dimensional, relatable characters.
I’d love to go on gushing about DS9, and I really could, for hours, and will in all the related articles. But for here, I’ll just recommend that if you haven’t seen What We Left Behind, it’s still available for free on YouTube.
Of course, it should go without saying that getting this kind of depth into a phone-based video game is impossible. But it’s great to see my Trek in the game.
Alliance Starbases
This month’s new game feature is the Alliance Starbase. Your alliance will work together to build and upgrade your starbase. I’m going to do my best to break this down for you.
Cardassian Armadas (Cardmadas?)
Building your station will require you to use a new resource (I know, you’re shocked.) You’ll get these new resources from destroying a new type of armada, Cardassian stations. Some of these armada targets will bear a striking likeness to Deep Space Nine, or rather Cardassian Ore Processing Station Terok Nor.
Destroying these will get you starbase building material, and starbase research material. You’ll have to convert the loot you get from the armada into one or the other. All of the building materials will then be available to your admiral and commodores, much like the Territory Capture materials, for building and later upgrading your alliance’s starbase. You’ll convert these in your alliance store, like you would for regular armada chests.
These new Cardassian armadas will take traditional armada directives, and will reward some (though not as much) traditional armada credits in addition to the starbase materials. These will come in uncommon, rate, and epic varieties and they’ll start out at level 27, and max out at level 50.
The other nice feature is that these armadas will feature seven-minute timers.
You’ll find them in a whole new section of space, containing Bajor and Cardassian space, located to the west of the Borg area, to the left of the map.
Starbase modules
The starbase will have upgradeable modules that will give buffs and benefits to all the players in your alliance. There will be around a dozen modules at the start.
Starbase Research tree
You’ll also get a new research tree that will get you benefits for contributing to armadas and your alliance starbase. There are about 23 new research nodes.
Some of these research nodes are dependent on the levels of the buildings in your Alliance Starbase.
Plasma storms and your Physical Starbase
Once you’ve constructed your alliance’s starbase. You’ll place it on one of the new “Plasma Storms” that will be located around the galaxy. There you’ll mine plasma. In the future, there will be other things to mine with your starbase, but for now, it’s just a couple of types of plasma. The plasma you get will allow you to further upgrade your starbase.
Your starbase will attach to a Plasma storm the same way your station attaches to a planet. It will extract plasma from these storms the way your miners extract materials from nodes. And these plasma storms will have a set limit of material they’ll give out before they empty. You’ll then have to move your starbase to a new storm to continue extraction.
Everyone in your alliance will be able to see an indicator on the galaxy map indicating which system your starbase is currently located in.
More to Come
And this is just the first month for starbases, and new features and benefits will be added in the months to come.
It does have warehouses and vaults, like your station, and in the future, you will be able to attack another alliance’s starbase and raid these materials. But not this month.
Oh, and one more thing, there’s going to be a thing called Alliance Reputation, gained from destroying Cardassian armadas, designed to stop players from hopping from alliance to alliance to take advantage of better Alliance Starbases.
New Officers
This arc’s first batch of new officers is designed to help you defeat armadas, and specifically, the new Cardassian armadas.
We’ve got Ben Sisko, Kira Nerys, and Miles O’Brien. Sisko’s captain’s maneuver increases your critical hit chance against armadas and his officer ability increases your defensive stats. Kira in the captain’s chair will reduce the critical hit chance from Cardassian armadas each round, and her officer ability will decrease the defense of armada opponents.
O’Brien has no captain’s maneuver (obviously.) But he’ll give you a chance for double shots against armadas as an officer ability, and below decks, he’ll increase your base warp speed.
Now, in terms of acquiring these new officers, there are three spending events for you to try to unlock them. As with most, there will be a solo leaderboard and a solo milestone. The first, starting on September 9th, will be a regular unlock event, just for Sisko. The next two, which run on the following Fridays, will be cross-server events that will have full Sisko unlocks, but also give you full unlocks for Miles or Kira.
Sisko shards will be included in the elite Battle pass. Kira and Miles shards will come in the regular battle pass.
You’ll also be able to purchase full unlocks of Kira and Miles.
A New Event Series – Find the Spy
Sometimes you play a short game, and sometimes you play the long game. So over the next four months, there will be a series of varied events. You’ll get normal rewards for these events, but you’ll also get “officer’s intel briefs” that you’ll use to guess which new officer is a spy. You’ll allocate a certain number to each officer, and get rewarded in December for all of the entries for the correct officer.
Associated with this will be a mini-event store that will have cosmetic rewards.
Other Events
This month will feature a lot of trivia events about Deep Space Nine. Also, keep an eye out for a raiding event.
New Faction Recruiting Chests
I don’t know about you, but I’ve maxed out all the officers in the Faction Recruiting Chests. They’re no longer helpful in getting officers for me, just in recruiting events and for transporter patterns.
So now, for players 30 and up, there will be new faction recruiting chests. The “legacy” faction chests aren’t going away, you’re just getting new ones in addition. The tokens will be available in the faction stores. You’ll still get eight shards per chest.
Klingon
- Kang, Kras, HG Worf, Ba’el, Gowron, Martok, Kuron, Krell, Mara, Vixis, Yan’agh, Linkasa, Qa’ug and Klaa.
Romulan
- Charvanek, Sela, Decius, Mirek, L’Nar, D’Jaoki, Severus
Federation
- Marcus, TOS Kirk, TOS Spock, Pike, Harrison, Yuki, Zhou, TOS Scotty, TOS Sulu, TOS McCoy, TOS Uhura, TOS Chekov, Moreau, Leslie, Hendorff
A number of these officers are already available in other packs, but it’s nice to see Leslie and Hendoff available for something other than a monetary purchase.
There will be an “infinite milestone event” this month, that will run a few times, that will award these new recruiting tokens.
New G3 “Salvaged” Refits
This month will have three refits available. One each for the Enterprise, Augur, and D4. These will only be available for purchase. These are reminiscent of the ol’ Separatist D3. They’ll give you a bonus to your ship’s mitigation stats. They are very, very red.
There’s also a “Gold Cardassian Disruptor” beam that will increase the damage of your ship’s critical hits. It will only be available for purchase on the PC/Web store, not on your mobile app.
Lastly…
It’s in the game. It’s finally in the game.
