Set to Beem You Up: North America on February 2, 2010 / Europe on February 5, 2010.

Star Trek Online

Become part of Star Trek®

In Star Trek Online, the Star Trek universe will appear for the first time on a truly massive scale. In this massively multiplayer online game from Cryptic Studios, players can pioneer their own destiny as Captain of a Federation starship. Or, they can become a Klingon Warlord and expand the Empire to the far reaches of the galaxy. Players will have the opportunity to visit iconic locations from the popular Star Trek fiction, reach out to unexplored star systems, and make contact with new alien species. With Episode Missions, every moment spent playing Star Trek Online will feel like a new Star Trek episode in which you are the star. Immerse yourself in the future of the Trek universe as it moves into the 25th century: a time of shifting alliances and new discoveries.

Adventure in the Final Frontier

Explore strange new worlds and seek out new life and new civilizations in a vast, expanding universe. Establish contact with new races, discover resources and uncover mysteries that will influence Star Trek's future. In 2409, Star Trek Online exists in a timeframe beyond even the latest movies, so everything you experience will be brand new, but still based on all the fiction you love.

You Are the Captain

Star Trek Online will be the first AAA MMO to feature space and ground combat at launch. Missions will take you and your friends into the depths of space, across exotic planets, and even inside starships! As the Captain of your very own ship, it's up to you to lead your crew on missions that span a number of locations. You call the shots, no matter where you are. When you're in space, you direct the action - be it in the middle of a high-tension battle, where you can maneuver in 3-D space and fire a vast array of weaponry at your enemies, or as you enter warp to explore parts of the galaxy never before documented. On the ground, you lead your away team across exciting terrain, interacting with allies and battling enemies. Every Captain commands five subordinates on the ground, all of which can be directed to act in any manner you choose. Can you lead them safely through dangerous locales?

Total Customization

Using Cryptic’s Total Customization technology, every ship you command can be customized by you, from its color to its construction. Your ship will retain a Star Trek "feel," but it will also represent your style. What’s more, anyone can create their own species in Star Trek Online, meaning you can tell your own story about how you came to be in the galaxy. Leave your mark on the Star Trek universe!

Built by Veterans with You in Mind

Star Trek Online is being developed by Cryptic Studios, creators of the massively successful City of Heroes and City of Villains. It’s built on the Cryptic Engine, a core technology that means our designers can focus less on a game’s nuts and bolts and more on creating a game that captures Star Trek’s essence, guaranteeing that both longtime fans of Star Trek and people new to the universe will feel at home.

Join us in Star Trek Online, and boldly go where no one has gone before!

How do Star Trek Online & It's Time Line

(Click the above image to see the entire timeline)

In the movie, two characters travel back in time from the year 2387. When Nero arrives in the year 2233, he disrupts the time continuum, creating an alternate reality from the point of his arrival. Star Trek (the new movie) takes place in this alternate reality. This is explained in the film in a conversation between Uhura and Spock on the bridge of the Enterprise.

Star Trek Online is set in the "prime" Star Trek reality. This is the timeline of the five television series and the first 10 movies. It is the world in which the Gorn attacked Cestus III, Kirk fought Khan in the Mutara Nebula, Picard explored the galaxy, the Federation fought the Dominion War, Voyager was stranded in the Delta Quadrant and Captain Archer and the crew of the NX-01 showed us how it all began.

Events in the movie that happened in the prime timeline (the destruction of Romulus, and the disappearance of Spock and Nero) have affected STO. You can learn more about the aftermath of these events in the Path to 2409 and in STO itself.

So how can the movie and STO be in different realities? When working on Star Trek, screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman referenced the theory of quantum mechanics, which allows for the simultaneous existence of parallel timelines and universes. Parallel universes are self-contained, separate realities that exist as a consequence of different choices and outcomes. This concept was explored in the TNG episode "Parallels," in which there were thousands of alternate timelines (and thousands of Enterprises!). It also is seen in the Mirror Universe, which is a darker take on the world of the Federation.

There are many, many stories to tell in the prime universe. The fallout of the destruction of Romulus and the upheaval that causes in the Alpha and Beta quadrants creates storytelling opportunities that we at Cryptic didn't even imagine when we first began working on STO. We're excited by the possibilities, and fans should be as well. The best is yet to come.

Player Progression

When you think of progressing in Star Trek Online, it’s best to picture an inverted triangle. You begin the game with broad skills available to you – the wide part of the triangle – and as you progress in rank, the skills you select become more specialized as the triangle narrows to a point.

There will be six ranks through which to progress at launch:

Ensign (this is the rank you play in the Tutorial – you are rapidly promoted within the first couple hours of gameplay)
Lieutenant
Lieutenant Commander
Commander
Captain
Admiral

Star Trek Online is a skill-based game, meaning the experience you receive for completing missions and finishing episodes awards you skill points, which you use to directly improve the skills available to you. There are a set number of skills available to you, depending on your rank. For instance, there’s a group of broad skills available at the Lieutenant rank; when you reach Lieutenant Commander, more refined skills become available to you.

The skills available in the early game provide blanket bonuses to the items and abilities you use, and more refined skills will provide more specific bonuses to items and abilities. Again, think of that inverted triangle.

For example, an Engineering officer has the option at lower ranks to decide between focusing on Maintenance or Modification. (He could also generalize in both, if he were to choose to do so.) Let’s say he decided to work exclusively on Modification, and maxes his Lieutenant Modification skill. When he becomes a Lieutenant Commander, new, more refined skills will become available in both the Modification and Maintenance categories. He then could switch his focus to Maintenance if he wanted, and the bonuses from his Lieutenant Modification skills would still apply for the remainder of the character’s existence. By the time the officer reaches the rank of Commander, he can choose to spend his skill points by specializing in any of three branches in his Engineering career.

All of a character’s skills influence his potency with his career abilities, as well as his equipped Kit (which grants additional abilities suited to a particular specialty of their chosen career). A character will collect several Kits as they advance in rank, allowing their role or "spec" to change by equipping the Kit that contains the abilities they currently need for the mission.

In order to advance in rank, you’ll need to spend a specific number of skill points in your currently available skills. To advance from Lieutenant to Lieutenant Commander, you’ll need to have invested a certain number of skill points before you’re offered a promotion. Were a player to invest the minimum-required skill points to reach Admiral, he’d be about half-developed in relation to a maxed character. It will take significantly longer to completely max out each available skill.

The skill sets in the game fall into two major categories: Space and Ground.

Space skills are generally broader than ground skills. They’re designed to augment your Bridge Officers’ abilities, as well as your own. Therefore, even if you’re a Tactical officer, you can take Engineering skills, which will help your Engineering Bridge Officers become more effective. This has a lot of influence on the way your ships behave. If you’re a Tactical officer flying an Escort ship, which usually doesn’t offer much in the way of Engineering bridge stations, having a lot of skill points invested in Engineering could significantly improve your Engineer’s performance, even though the ship has limited capabilities in that area.

The skill points you invest in space also determine which ships you can fly. You’ll need to have invested skill points in the Heavy Cruiser skill to be able to fly a second-tier Cruiser, for example. Certain skills also increase different items’ performance, so if you increase your Phaser Cannon skill, Phaser Cannons will be more effective in combat.

Your Bridge Officers gain experience similarly to your Captain. While their skills are far more limited than the captain’s, they advance through rank in the same manner. Once you spend enough skill points in a certain rank, Bridge Officers can be promoted to a higher rank, though they must remain at least a rank below you at all times. If your Captain is a Lieutenant Commander, his Bridge Officers can only be Ensigns or Lieutenants.

As you progress through the game, you accrue skill points to assign to your Bridge Officers. Those points enter a pool, which you can then assign to any Bridge Officer in your possession. Bridge Officers don’t need to go on specific missions with you to gain experience; this allows you more freedom to determine how you want your Officers to advance and doesn’t penalize you for wanting to draw from a larger group of Officers in your employ.

Since Bridge Officers can have unique skills, they may be more complementary to one Captain’s play style than another’s. As such, you may transfer Bridge Officers to other players in exchange for their Officers or other goods and services.

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