MMORPG Talks Bridges...

[Fleet Admiral E. Fortin]

Naturally, the bridge serves as a control hub for the ship. UI elements from the general game will be accessible from within the bridge at logical locations. However, at least to begin, they have no plans to let people fight or actually pilot their ship from the inside. It’s far more akin to player housing than a different way to play the game.


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[Fleet Admiral E. Fortin]

The bridge is one of the most iconic locations in any Star Trek series or film. It’s where the bulk of the action takes place and an inherent part of the starship captain fantasy. A couple weeks ago, the Associated Press broke the news that Cryptic had listened to fan demands and will launch with in-game 3D bridges. Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich gave us all the details on them and the crews that will populate them during a recent trip to Cryptic HQ.

At launch, the Bridge is going to be pretty simple. Each time the player earns a new ship, they get to select from a group of prefabricated bridge areas. The team is close to launch and they didn’t want to bite off more than they could chew.
Over time, the plan is to add far more customization for players to really tailor their bridge. They also want to expand out into other iconic interior starship rooms, such as the Captain’s Quarters; an area that could theoretically house trophies and more personal achievements.



A Captain on his bridge.


“You work with the players,” Zinkievich noted. Where exactly they expand first after launch will in large part be determined both by what players tell them and what they actually do in the game. If there’s a demand, of course more interiors will be added. It’s what got them on the launch feature list in the first place, after all.
The Bridges of STO will be larger than those of the show, which Zinkievich described as a necessity of a 3D video game. The fact is, they want people to be able to bring their friends in. The limit on the exact number of characters in a bridge will be based mostly off “what looks good.” Those they showed me seemed to strike a balance between that necessary size without losing the feeling of what made Bridges cool.
Naturally, the bridge serves as a control hub for the ship. UI elements from the general game will be accessible from within the bridge at logical locations. However, at least to begin, they have no plans to let people fight or actually pilot their ship from the inside. It’s far more akin to player housing than a different way to play the game.
Aside from other players, the bridge will of course be fully be populated by the NPC crew people have earned throughout the game.
The crew members have become an integral part of every aspect of the game. In space, they provide access to special abilities that could make the difference between victory and defeat. On land, their phasers are there with you in every scenario.



Proper discipline in evidence.


The team has gone to great lengths to make them apparent to the players from day one. They won’t have full blown personalities like side-kicks in single-player RPGs like Dragon Age, but they won’t be anonymous peons either.
“Captains never hail and never scan anything,” Zinkievich pointed out. When you use the replicator, it’s your engineer who gives you feedback and whose face you see beside the console. The premise is that no matter what action you pick on board a ship, you’re likely asking someone to do it and they show you that. These little touches didn’t seem like much at first, but over a couple hours of playing the game organically (from character creation through the tutorial and first few missions) I got to know the people with me in some strange way.
Bridge Officers fall into three general categories. Like most other elements of the game, they’re either Science, Tactical or Engineering. Each officer has four ranks to progress through with access to two skills (one for space and one for the avatar) per level. Each of these skills has nine levels within it for players to work on. These skills can vary widely form crew-member to crew-member, even within a single class. Players earn merit that can be used to train up their officers.
These officers can also be customized completely by the player. Their names, faces and races can be totally transformed so that each person develops a unique group of characters to carry out their orders.



A bridge that combines a retro look with the scale necessary for a 3D game


For those who develop an attachment to that “First Mate” whose been with them since day one, they can also have their abilities modified. Each one comes with certain abilities hard coded into them, which brings a collection aspect to the game, but unlike a gun which is replaced when you get a newer one, a new officer with an ability you need can instead be used to teach that to someone you’re familiar with. This swaps out one ability in the tree of your choice.

The ships themselves determine who is active. The basic ships have three slots, one for the first rank of each officer type. More advanced ships allow people to seat higher rank officers (and thus have access to more skills) and more than one of a type.
On land, the player simply selects the complimentary crew from their collection to follow them down. At early levels, pre-fabricated generic characters come along if the character does not yet have four officers. It is entirely possible, and even plausible to have two distinct sets. For example, a player may choose to promote a Bridge Officer solely because they love his away mission skills, even if he’s totally useless or redundant in space.
Their decision, though, to stick to three officer types struck me as odd. Everyone knows the iconic characters. What about a Security Officer like Worf? A ship’s councilor like Deanna Troy? A doctor like Voyager’s EMH? A helmsman like Tom Paris or Sulu?
You can point to aspects of them within each of the three generic roles, but certainly there would be the opportunity to have larger, more defined crews?
Zinkievich said they considered this, but ultimately felt that a more compact crew was the way to go.



“We wanted to make [the roles] a little more general purpose so you develop more of an attachment to them,” he pointed out. For example, really, how often would you have to talk to the Security Officer day-to-day? He has a point, and by combining the roles, you get more familiar with the 3-5 characters you’re using on a daily basis.
Zinkievich also pointed out that by simplifying the overall roles, they’ve actually increased the customization options for players. Doing a double take there? I was at first, but he actually raised a very valid point. If everyone had to hire 15 crew, there would be defined roles and thus very limited options of what those officers could do. Helmsmen would fly the ship better, Doctors would heal better.
The broader, general categories force players to make choices. Do they want a Tactical officer that knows how to perform some evasive maneuvers, or is it better to find someone with a really nice ability to deal heavy damage? This creates some interdependencies between ships and encourages people to work together. It also lets people use their crew to essentially tailor their role to their particular role within a group or situation.
At each rank, there are dozens of possible skills an officer could have. This collection game encourages people to seek out, create or trade for the officer with the ideal configuration of eight skills for them. Even if they have not yet been promoted, those eight skills will be visible from day one to help people plan.
Bridge Officers provide players with a more iconic and complete Star Trek experience. Part of the fantasy is to be the Captain and while some out there would no doubt love to travel the galaxies in the role of Ship’s Doctor, that’s not exactly compelling gameplay for the average player. This system of NPC Bridge Officers hopes to find a comfortable middle ground between the authenticity of real players as subordinates and full fledged characters of single-player RPGs. With Cryptic’s reputation for customization, the Bridge Officers seem to be a great start. In one system, players gain a collectable item, a side-kick and the ability to tailor their character to any group or situation.
The addition of bridges only enhances the relationship between the player character and their crew and ship. It is a very limited system to start, but hopefully the seed of something much larger down the road.

[Lang S]

I just can't wait

[mbrwn2003]

cool

[Anton Mercer]

[Captain-Snow]

Im interested too see where they go with this from here. In all honesty it seems like a bit of fluff...but very cool fluff all the same. I would like there to be some utility or necessity for ship interior game play.

If there was one thing the devs would have added due to popular demand (for launch) I would have chosen fleet constructed star bases. Guess my vote was in the minority on that one. Either that or they chose the easiest of all the player demands to implement for launch.

Despite all the complaints I AM very psyched about having a bridge to chill out on.

Party on the Viking! Mead and Borscht a pleanty!

[Your Pal Charlie]

I think that a fleet star bast isn't too far of a stretch. If anything, they may implement something like that in the future. After all, in most MMOs, they lay all of the basics out first, add some various goodies, and a year or two down the line, some form of, and forgive the term, 'guild hall', or something similar comes about. I don't think we will have too long to wait though. I wouldn't imagine it would be hard to do, maybe do a warp to it so it's an instanced thing with limited access (for fleet members only that is).

[Steile]

In an MMO just about everything is fluff but this is good fluff.

[Lang S]

Again I can't wait

[Deputy Commander Turner]

Those look great.