TNG Arc 5, There Are Four Dots!

READ LATER - DOWNLOAD THIS POST AS PDF >> CLICK HERE <<

First of all, there’s no Enterprise-D this month.

Give me a minute while I duck and cover from the angry mob.

However, there is a lot of interesting stuff this month. So you can put down the pitchforks and torches for now.

Event Store

I scream, you scream, we all scream for an event store!

The event store is back, and in it, you’ll be able to get all the new TNG officers from the past arcs (not Yar, but all the rest.) You’ll also be able to get projectiles, ship skins, and the usual materials and resources.

Away Teams II – Four Dots

So this is the biggest addition to the game this month. The four dots. Most officers you have are getting new “traits”. Epic officers will have three traits, rares two, and uncommons one.

These traits will be connected to the narrative of the character. These traits will be used on Away Team Assignments and will increase the critical success chance.

Unlocking and upgrading the traits will be done with (you guessed it) another new currency, Trait XP, that you’ll get from doing your daily Away Team Assignment goal, among other places.

So this Away Team Assignment is a common one, and the critical traits are “Analytical” and “Tactical.” TOS Uhura and Marla have a dot lit up because they have the trait “Analytical.” Unlocking and upgrading that trait will increase your critical chances. Note that it won’t have any bearing at all on your overall chance of success, and obviously, you need to succeed in the away team assignment in order to have any critical chance.

There will also be three new research nodes on the Away Teams tree at levels 15, 25, and 39 that will unlock new assignment slots. (You’ll notice that this requires a “Shuttle Bay Particle” to unlock, and the good news is that you’ll get this for free in a chest at some point today.)

These new slots will have rewards including faction credits, away team credits, latinum, and officer shards for Data, TOS Spock, Burnham, and the Borg Tribble. The assignments are supposed to require traits from some of your less commonly used epic officers (think Gary Mitchell) and stop you from having to use some of your regular combat officers for away teams.

We’ll see how it works in practice.

Yes, there is in fact more Away Teams stuff, there’s the Away Teams store. (Yes, there’s a new currency.)

You’ll now be able to spend those Away Teams Credits that you get from the new assignments on faction reputation and faction ship blueprints. They’re segmented by player level, but if you’re above level 20, you’ll find this very useful.

newton away team store — I know a lot of players had looked at my faction ship calculator and gasped in horror at the time it would take them to earn enough credits to build that faction ship. Well, this isn’t going to get it for you overnight, but it will be another way of getting blueprints and will help you get that ship faster.

Yar and 3 of 10

So we’ve got two new specialized officers. Yar is all about helping you defeat the yellow mission bosses, and 3 of 10 is a souped-up version of T’Pring.

Functionally, these are good officers, and while from a nerd point-of-view, it’s nice (just nice) to have Tasha Yar in the game, the borg versions of officers we already have is a bit disappointing.

I’d be much happier if they’d thrown in Doctor Pulaski, or Reg Barkley, or Ro Laren, or even Argyle. Argyle gets no love at all, and 95% of you are scrambling to Google to find out who Argyle is.

If we were looking for another epic officer for the month, how crazy would the player-base have gone for Captain Jellico?

It could have been an opportunity to throw in any of the non-Federation officers on the show. We could have had Gowron (wouldn’t you like to see those crazy eyes in the game,) Tomalak, the Duras sisters, or, how about this, if you want to throw in a Borg officer here – how about Hugh?

If you want an officer with a mining angle, you could have gone with Farallon, the lady who invented the Excomps, which would have been extremely fitting after we introduced them into the game last month.

All in all, this feels like a missed opportunity.

New Consumable Buffs

Here’s some good stuff, we’ve got five new consumable buffs. They’re each good for an hour The first four of them will increase your officer stats. A common that increases all your officer stats. And uncommons that specifically boost your attack, defense, and health. You’ll want to coordinate these with your officer abilities to get the biggest bang for your buck. Could be big in PvP events.

The last one is a rare, and it increases your max cargo. So if you’re raiding someone, you’ll activate this one, and be able to clean them out faster.

Arc Missions

This month’s missions are for players level 35+ and focus on the theft of the Enterprise-D. There are also another set of missions for players level 42+.