Engineering Report – March 11, 2010 – Star Trek Online Forums

Engineering Report – March 11, 2010 – Star Trek Online Forums

Default Engineering Report – March 11, 2010
For more information about Engineering Reports, see the “What are Engineering Reports?” thread at the top of the Forum.
__________________________________________________ __________________________________

Tribble Test Server is Live
Many updates and fixes are now available for player testing on the new Tribble Test Server. Instead of redundently listing all of the fixes in this report – please refer to the latest Tribble Release Notes for a complete run down of everything open for testing. This report will primarily focus on items not yet available for public testing.

In Testing

* Respec
* STF “The Cure”
* Mission fixes for State of Q
* iPVP Assault Map fixes
* New C-Store Items
* Fixes for “Caves of Fire”
* Renaming your @name
* Fix for players trapped in TRAPPED

Under Investigation

* Maps not zooming properly
* Loading screens freezing the client
* UI Latency
* Sol System and Earth Space Dock loading times
* Players not getting credit for completing “Infected”
* Weapon powers getting stuck and unable to fire
* Klingon Carriers
* Critical Hits
* Antiproton Procs
* Items that cannot be equipped
* Loot that cannot be picked up
* Stores not selling items that players expect to be able to buy
* Feedback Pulse
* /Stuck Command
* Option for players to turn off shield rings
* PVP scoring updates to include shield healing
* Bridge officer candidates stuck in bank

In Development

* Difficulty Slider
* Death Penalty
* Full Autofire in Space
* Memory Alpha Update
* Commodity Mission Revamp
* New Special Task Forces
* Accolade System
* Exchange Improvements
* Squad Leading (Cross Level Teaming “Sidekicking”)
* Episode Replay
* Trading Existing Bridge Officers
* Random Bridge Officer Requisition
* Dabo Minigame
* Klingon Joined Trill
* TOS/Mirror U Female Uniforms

Tribble Release Notes – March 10, 2010 – Star Trek Online Forums

Tribble Release Notes – March 10, 2010 – Star Trek Online Forums

Tribble Release Notes – March 10, 2010
Hello Captains,

Welcome to the cutting edge of Star Trek Online. Please note that the below list represents what is in the current version of the Update 1 build on Tribble and not all of what you should expect to see in Update 1. We will continue to release the remaining Update 1 features to Tribble when we feel that they have seen enough internal QA testing to warrant showing all of you.

On to the notes!

New for Tribble
General

* The C-Store is disabled on Tribble. Players will be able to view and select items but purchases will not complete.
* New Starfleet Bridge Officer Rewards: Tellarite, Rigelian, and Pakled. Tellarite officers are also offered at the personnel store.
* Klingon players are now able to access their own star clusters.

PvP

* A new PvP ground assault map is available for all factions: Shanty Town.
* Fed vs. Fed PvP (Wargames) has been opened up for many maps and game types.
* New “Random Map” queues for PvP. Select queues by game type rather than individual maps.
* Assimilation Warzone Maps are now accessible from the Otha System in the Eta Eridani Sector Block and the Qay’ghun System in the Omega Leonis Sector Block.

Captain costumes and customization

* New alien customization options
* New hairstyles
* Added the new stances, Stern and Relaxed, to the costume tailor

Ships and Customizations

* The K’Tanco class Battle Cruiser in now available for Klingons starting at Lt Commander rank.
* The specifications of the K’Tanco Battle Cruiser have been added to the Klingon Empire ship database on Qo’noS.
* New bridges and bridge variants for Klingon faction players.
* Bird of Prey config 1 may now be customized at a ship customization contact on Qo’Nos.
* Raptor config 4 may now be customized at a ship customization contact on Qo’Nos.

Missions and Locations

* Fleet actions are now level banded to make scoring fairer and more challenging for all players. Players who enter a fleet action mission will be sent to an instance with players within a specific level range and enemies on the map will be scaled appropriately. Rewards are also now scaled based on the level band of the Fleet Action you are sent to. This change also makes many Fleet Actions playable for all levels of players, although Fleet Actions still have a minimum level requirement based on the initial mission that offers you the Fleet Action.
* Fleet Action: The Big Dig – is a new Fleet Action available in Romulan Space
* Fleet Action: DS9 Under Siege – is a new Fleet Action available to Federation officers at level 29
* Klingon players may now compete in the Crystalline Entity Fleet Action in the Qutmut System in the Omega Leonis block.
* Klingon players may now compete the Big Dig Fleet Action in the Tiqchirgh System in the Omega Leonis block.
* Klingon Players may now compete in the Breaking the Planet Fleet Action in the Teroka System in the Omega Leonis block.
* A Neutral Faction Bar has opening in the Drozana System in the Klingon/Federation Neutral Zone. Players of both factions may now socialize together before they return to battle.

Audio

* Klingon ship computer notifications will be appropriate for the Klingon Faction

Powers and Skills

* Starship Captain Skills: Updated starship captain skills that only affected a single ship type. These skills now provide 25% of their stat improvement to higher tier ships of the same category (cruiser, escort, etc.) This update addresses the concern that Commander and Captain rank starship caption skills were wasted skill points once the player moved into their next tier of ship.
* New Skill – Starship Attack Vectors: Improves starship accuracy and crit chance.
* New Skill – Starship Combat Maneuvers : Improves starship attack evasion and turn rate.
* New Skill – Starship Battle Strategy : Improves starship crit severity and damage resistance.
* Ability Modifier Changes – Attack Pattern Alpha, Beta, Delta, Omega: These abilities are now modified by Starship Attack Vectors, Starship Combat Manuevers, and Starship Battle Strategy.
* Ability Modifier Changes – Fire on my Mark: This ability is now modified by Starship Attack Vectors, Starship Combat Maneuvers, and Starship Battle Strategy.
* Ability Modifier Changes – Tactical Initiative: This ability is now modified by Starship Command, Starship Combat Maneuvers, and Starship Battle Strategy.
* Ability Modifier Changes – Go Down Fighting: This ability is now modified by Starship Command, Starship Combat Maneuvers, and Starship Battle Strategy.
* Training Node Changes – Attack Pattern Beta III: This ability is now earned by learning rank 9 of Starship Combat Maneuvers for Tactical Captains.
* Training Node Changes – Attack Pattern Omega III: This ability is now earned by learning rank 9 of Starship Battle Strategy for Tactical Captains.
* Ground Stealth Changes: Updated ground stealth to be more in line with space cloak game play. Stealth Module is now a toggle power with unlimited duration, but combat actions cannot be performed while using stealth. Stealth Module is no longer perfect stealth. Its strength is variable based on its version and enemies will be able to detect you at close range. Several abilities can now be used to counter stealth. Tricorder Scan, Target Optics, and Fire on my Mark all now have a stealth debuff element. Engineering fabrications (turrets, mortars, drones) have enhanced perception that can detect an enemy using stealth at longer range. Fire on my Mark in space has also gained a stealth debuff element, making it easier to detect cloaked ships while marked.

Animation

* Players now have access to more emotes!

UI and Controls

* Your ship hull indicator now shows the ship silhouette of your current ship as well as a tooltip giving the ship type
* Chat: The Emote submenu now disappears when an emote is selected, but can be “pinned” by a button press to turn into a moveable persistent window

Release Notes – March 8, 2010 | Star Trek Online Official Site

Release Notes – March 8, 2010 | Star Trek Online Official Site

General Updates

* Fixed a crash that would sometimes occur when attempting to change your bridge option while customizing your ship.
* Stealthed Klingon ships should no longer appear on the MiniMap during PVP matches.
* Fix for a specific crash that would happen when a team attempted to enter the same instance map at roughly the same moment.
* We’ve addressed an issue where some items were getting duplicated unexpectedly.
* During the “Infected” STF – players may no longer bypass uploading the virus.
* The Tactical Cube in the first section of the “Infected” STF should be more aware of local threats.
* Some players who were teamed were not getting proper mission completion credit when another team member completed the Beytan V patrol mission and should now be able to complete their mission. If you are still unable to complete the mission – drop it and re-complete the mission to fix this.

STF: Infected Available Now | Star Trek Online Official Site

STF: Infected Available Now | Star Trek Online Official Site

Our first Special Task Force mission is now ready for you and your friends to enjoy.

In “Infected,” you’ll travel to the Sibiran system to investigate Starbase 82, a Federation space station that has ceased communicating with Starfleet. As you arrive, you’re in for a true nightmare scenario: The Borg have taken Starbase 82, and are in the process of assimilating the people aboard!

As you investigate the station, an acquaintance from your past is looking forward to greeting you in an epic encounter that will require skill, teamwork and maybe a little bit of luck to survive.
Quick “Infected” Facts

* Klingon and Federation players both have access to this Special Task Force.
* It is a daily repeatable mission.
* Mark X gear drops in the mission.
* Mission success provides Marks of Valor, which will be used in a special gear store coming in the 45-day update.
* The Federation and Klingon Empire are now tentatively working together to fight the Borg and can be on the same Deepspace encounter maps against the Borg.

Release Notes – March 4, 2010 | Star Trek Online Official Site

Release Notes – March 4, 2010 | Star Trek Online Official Site

Greetings!

The team is very excited to bring to you the first of our new Special Task Force missions (formerly referred to as “Raidisodes”). In the coming weeks you will see a wealth of updates coming to the game and we look forward to your comments and feedback as we continue to work on fixing bugs, addressing your concerns, and adding the features that you are looking for in the game. Here are the release notes for this week’s update. Enjoy!
New Features

Our first Special Task Force mission is now ready for you and your friends to enjoy.

In “Infected,” you’ll travel to the Sibiran system to investigate Starbase 82, a Federation space station that has ceased communicating with Starfleet. As you arrive, you’re in for a true nightmare scenario: The Borg have taken Starbase 82, and are in the process of assimilating the people aboard!

As you investigate the station, an acquaintance from your past is looking forward to greeting you in an epic encounter that will require skill, teamwork and maybe a little bit of luck to survive.

The “Infected” is designed and scaled for a 5 Captain away team and requires a coordinated effort to survive the challenges of the episode. No Bridge Officers are allowed on the ground portions of this mission.
Quick “Infected” Facts

* Klingon and Federation players both have access to this Special Task Force once they reach level 45.
* It is a daily repeatable mission from the time the mission is taken.
* Special Mark X gear that can be used by either faction drops in the mission.
* Mission success against bosses provides Marks of Valor, which will be valuable for a special gear store coming in the 45-day update.
* The Federation and Klingon Empire are now tentatively working together to fight the Borg and can be on the same Deepspace encounter maps against the Borg.

Level 43 Klingon faction players now have access to the Borg Sector

Klingon Faction players can talk to their remote contact to get the hand-off mission and use the new Transwarp gate near Qonos to access the Borg Staging Fleet area where the Federation had already setup shop. The Klingon Empire and Federation have a tentative cease fire agreement in place in order to deal with this new Borg threat – so players of both factions will be able to access this map.

Klingon players may also undertake repeatable Deepspace missions against the Borg. While the cease-fire doesn’t allow teaming between Federation and Klingon faction players, all players can compete on the same Deepspace maps for glory against the Borg. Note that Klingon faction players do not have access to the Star Cluster at this time.
Repeatable Mission Changes

We have reintroduced a change to help clean up your remote contact list by limiting what repeatable missions are offered to you as you level up. Repeatable missions are anything from Star Cluster exploration, to Sector Defense where you must secure sectors from wandering enemies.

Here’s how the change works. Repeatable missions will only be offered to you via Remote Contact if you are within the appropriate level range for the mission OR if you are nearby in the sector where the mission takes place. This means if you are above the suggested level range for the mission, it will not show up in Remote Contacts and will not be offered to you unless you travel back to the location where there mission takes place. The net result being that the higher in level you go, the less cluttered your Remote Contact list is. All the missions are still available, you will just need to go to the appropriate location to take them now if you are over level.

Now on to the rest of the update!
General Updates

* Fixed a bug where some players were stuck in the promotion mission with no way to remove the completed mission. Players in this state should log in and after a map move should have their mission state cleared up.
* Players can no longer swap weapons from their inventory into their weapons bag during combat. Weapon switching (between inactive and active weapon) works the same as it did before.
* Fixed error where ship ID numbers and name would get messed up in the ship tailor when customizing Federation Escort 1.
* Players are now alerted if they attempted to rename their ship to the same name as one of their other ships (all active ships owned by a player must have unique names).
* Bridge officers can now be trained up in space maps instead of only on ground maps.
* Hitting Random while customizing your ship will now properly work with the Undo button.
* You can now have up to 500 members in a fleet. The fleet roster is now broken until pages, instead of using a scrollbar. This allows it to render much more efficiently.
* Dropping missions now properly updates the mission journal to select the next mission so that you don’t have to reselect each mission to drop it.
* Addressed an issue where Fleet access controls were not working properly.
* Devices now autostack in your device tray if you have one of the devices already equipped instead of going to your inventory.
* When a Fleet Leader leaves the fleet, a new Fleet Leader is selected from the next highest ranking officer, and if a tie, the officer that has been in the Fleet the longest.
* Made some updates to improve cursor accuracy
* Buffs are now cleared when transferring between ground and space. Prior to this change users could inappropriately use kit powers to buff their ship by quickly transferring from their bridge back to space. This will also prevent Tribble buffs from being applying to your ship.
* Special unlocked promo costume pieces will now display properly in the character selection screen when you are logging in.
* Improved the logic for when teams map transfer so that they end up in the same map more reliably.
* Added an error message for Logitech LCD drivers that were causing some game clients to hang.
* Fixed several bugs that were crashing some players when they map transferred.
* Made several AI improvements for Bridge Officers on Away Teams so they stay in formation while moving through terrain.
* Fixed a bug where loot pickup would not work properly when teamed.
* Away Team Picker Improvements: When the away team picker was open and a team member had a contact window open, we now reduce the timeout from 120 seconds to 60 seconds. When the map transfer opt-in window is open and no one is talking to a contact, we reduced the timeout time from 30 seconds to 15 seconds. We no longer reset the timeout timer when a teammate selects a different bridge officer to use on the away team.
* Need or Greed now works properly with unique items.
* Rewards that were intended for each team member to receive no longer get lumped into a common reward pool which would allow some rewards intended for you to end up in the possession of other team mates.
* Players you have set to ignored may no longer send you Fleet invites.
* You are now notified if you attempt to take an item from a Fleet bank that is not allowed.

Missions

* The Borg Staging Fleet area has been updated to include Klingon contacts since they now can gain access to PVE missions in the sector once they are level 43 and have completed the appropriate hand-off mission.
* Updated the text when exiting the Ganalda Station for clarity.
* Edited some text bugs in the Battle Group Omega stores.
* Faction rules were not working as expected on some maps, and we’ve made a scrub to ensure factions engagement rules are working properly.
* The Mylasa System now displays correctly on the Area Map instead of saying Mylasa Sector.
* Federation scientists reports that a planet in the Romulan Ponor system has unexpectedly shifted axis.
* We removed the old “Warp to System” buttons from these systems: Ganalda, K7, DS9, Starbase 39, and Qonos.
* Fixed a typo in PVP assault maps to reference “security teams” and “security layers” based on location.
* The PVP area control report scoreboard now shows the correct final score values.

FX

* Added additional FX for ships getting too close to planet atmospheres.
* Added FX for flying through some planetary rings.
* Lens flare should be working on some space maps now.
* Added new FX for special Borg enemy powers.

Powers and Skills

* Fixed a typo in the Klingon Engineering Officer tree so that Field Logistics is correctly labeled as an Admiral ability instead of Captain.
* Borg Cubes are now immune to confuse powers.
* Beware the Borg. The “Infected” episode features several new Borg powers.

UI

* Bridge Officer Log: Fixed some errors that were displaying when using the log.
* Character Creation: Minor layout tweaks to class selection screen during character creation.
* Character Creation: Camera Zoom and Rotate arrows are now available in Character Creation when making your first character on the account.
* Chat: Guild chat and System Messages are no longer the same default color.
* HUD: Fixed a bug where off screen icons would draw as white blocks.
* HUD: More adjustments to the Klingon UI to use more appropriate colors.
* Inventory: Corrected some spacing errors in the ship inventory display.
* Login Screen: Login errors now display login errors on the main screen, so they don’t go away after 5 seconds.
* Login Screen: Added “My Account” and “Support” buttons to the login screen. They launch the appropriate web pages in an external browserwindow.
* Login Screen: Improved the login error message for when the Holodeck is up but locked for internal testing (usually during the release of an update).
* Login Screen: Now displays the short name for selected characters if there is no formal name as well as other layout fixes.
* Minimap: The change instance button on the minimap is now working properly.
* Options: Tooltips are no longer instantly displayed when changing options and adjusted the font effect to make it clearer which options you are changing.
* PVP Queue: Fixed a bug that caused the offered queue pane to overlap the join list and details pane.
* PVP Queue: Added Leave and Snooze buttons to the bottom right of the window instead on each row element.
* PVP Queue: The Snooze button becomes a Resume button if you are delaying an offer.
* PVP Queue: Shows join and snooze timeouts for each applicable queue in the join list.
* PVP Queue: The QueueAlert window now hides if the PvP Queue window is up.
* Ship Selection: Ship selector no longer shows “InvalidEntityName” in the selection panel after discharging a ship.
* Skills Window: Each skill block is slightly wider now.
* Status Window: Badges now have their own tab so that players can find their Badge counts easier.
* Status Window: Options to display your own name and health on your player/ship model now function properly.
* Status Window: Fixed a typo in the discharge tooltip when viewing a ship you wish to discharge.
* Status Window: Improved the ship stats that are displayed on the status window.
* Team Status:Updated colors of selected team members status windows to match reticle art.
* Team Status: Buffs/Debuffs are smaller so that they don’t overlap in team windows.

Looking for something not listed above?

Check the Engineering Reports for details on what the team is working on next!

Engineering Report – March 03, 2010 – Star Trek Online Forums

Engineering Report – March 03, 2010 – Star Trek Online Forums

Engineering Report – March 03, 2010
For more information about Engineering Reports, see the “What are Engineering Reports?” thread at the top of the Forum.
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In Testing

* Respec options
* Ground anomalies are not consistently giving the correct level resources
* PVP Queue updates
* Fleet Actions will be level banded so that players in the map are within range of each other to make scoring fairer.
* Renaming your account @name
* AI pathing and mission fixes for Cage of Fire (Bajoran Fire Caves)
* Unique items should not be allowed to be equipped multiple times on the same character.
* Klingon stores selling items for the wrong currency
* Leveling up and Promotion bugs
* Klingon skill tree review to remove reference to Fed skills
* Additional Federation and Klingon Bridges
* Klingon Star Cluster missions
* Additional Star Cluster mission types
* Klingon ship customization for T0 and T5 ships
* New Fleet Actions and Fleet Action updates for both Fed/Klingon (DS9 Invasion, Gorn Minefield, Breaking the Planet, Romulan Temple, Crystalline Entity)
* Borg Special Task Forces (For Fed and Klingon players)
* Klingon access to Borg Sector
* Multi-faction Borg Deepspace encounters (Fed+Klg players vs Borg)
* More emotes
* More Fed ship variants
* New Klingon Cruiser
* Race specific transporter FX
* Off Duty Outfits
* Updates to the ship selection rooms
* Removing the bug where missions would sometimes get stuck in partial complete progress
* Rereleasing iPVP maps
* Players getting trapped in geometry in the mission TRAPPED

Under Investigation

* Loading screens freezing the client
* Players will sometimes encounter mobs much higher than expected in Deepspace encounters
* Skill descriptions that are confusing or incorrect (on a per case basis)
* Latency when moving around inventory
* Long load times when entering Sol System or Earth Space Dock
* /Stuck command not working in all cases
* Objective griefing on the Borg Hunt PVP maps
* Klingon stores not selling expected items
* Weapon beam FX do not stop and attach to the player as they move around the map
* Admiral Zelle issues on the Divide et Impera mission
* Temple Offerings mission is not completing properly
* Updating the timers on Klingon repeatable missions
* Faction settings are not being applied properly and powers like “Seduce” can be misused
* Stealth powers allow interactions that bypass content
* Problems when applying pips to costumes

In Development

* Death Penalty Options
* Memory Alpha/Crafting
* Cross level teaming
* Multi-Faction “Neutral” social area
* Improvements to Repeatable Mission UI
* Updating player status windows to show the proper ship silhouettes
* Better notification when players are at the skillcap and skillpoints are converted to BOFF points
* More non-combat mission varieties
* Options to make missions more difficult
* More replayable mission types
* Ability to trade bridge officers
* Revamp of commodity missions

What Are Engineering Reports? – Star Trek Online Forums

What Are Engineering Reports? – Star Trek Online Forums

Default What Are Engineering Reports?
Greetings!

You may be wondering, “What is this new forum section and what are these reports?”. Here’s the answer.

Engineering Reports will be posted on a regular basis to provide insight into what the STO team is actively working to add, improve, and update in the game.

These reports will not provide status on every issue nor every request/feature you’ve asked for. It will however give you a good idea of what you can expect to see in soon to be released game updates.

It will also give you a concentrated thread to reply on where you can voice your opinions and feedback about upcoming releases.

The Engineering Report is broken down into sections.

In Testing
These issues have been addressed, and are being reviewed internally. Once approved, these items will be added to one of the next Holodeck updates. Issues in this bucket are generally less than 2 weeks away from going Live.

Under Investigation
STO Team members are looking into these issues (many times player reported) to uncover bugs or oddities that will need to be addressed. Not everything in this section turns out to be a bug, and in some cases these issues may be specific to some players and require CS resolutions. ETAs for resolution in this section vary by issue.

In Development
These are features or fixes that have been reviewed and discussed and are undergoing design time to be implemented in a future update. Issues in this section are more than 3 weeks away from going Live.

Disclaimer:
While these reports may list issues as pending or coming soon, the goal is to only push fixes Live once they have passed internal testing. If an issue is in testing and still buggy, we will continue to test the issue until fixed, even if it takes more than a few weeks.

And once again – not all issues are listed here. There are many things that have been discussed in the forums and in past updates that will not be listed. If something you care about is not in the report, it does not mean that it isn’t coming or under development. We simply can’t list *everything* that we are working on from week to week.

Please feel free to post your comments and feedback to the reports as we will be monitoring the threads for your comments.

Enjoy!

Top issues tracked by the GM team: 3-2-10 – Star Trek Online Forums

Top issues tracked by the GM team: 3-2-10 – Star Trek Online Forums

Top issues tracked by the GM team: 3-2-10
Every week, I will post an update on the issues that the GM team has been tracking during the previous week, with the current status of each issue. This list is by no means exhaustive, and it will often not include key issues already being addressed by the developers elsewhere on the forums. There will be some overlap, but our emphasis is always on how much each issue is impacting you, the players.

Here are the issues we’ve been following over the last week:

Promotion missions
Many of you have been having trouble completing your promotion missions, or running into situations which cause them to simply break and not be completable. The way the missions are designed, it’s impossible to drop promotion missions, so even if the objectives are complete they can’t be turned in. The developers have heard you and are working hard to fix this. Their fix should allow you to clear the mission without any outside intervention, and they hope to have that fix ready for testing soon.

Running the command /killme does not submit a GM ticket!
I found this last week and sort of flipped, but we have a temporary solution! Here’s the issue: If you get stuck and type /stuck, the game will nudge your character a few feet to a safe location. Most of the time, this is all you need to free yourself from getting stuck in geometry. If you type /stuck a second time, it will prompt you to type /killme, which brings up the Stuck window. This has some useful self-help buttons and a way to submit a Stuck ticket to ask for GM help.

The problem is that it doesn’t actually submit a ticket if you ask it to. I have no idea how many of you might have done this and been worried or confused becuase we didn’t answer your ticket, and that is upsetting to think about. Because of this, we’ll be disabling the command entirely for now, until we get the issue resolved. You can still see the self-help options and submit a GM Stuck ticket from the Help and Support menu on your mini-map.

Cage of Fire/Bajoran Fire Caves
Yeah, the pathing in this mission isn’t good, and that isn’t the only issu you’ve been reporting. The developers are very aware of the various challenges with this mission and have been actively reviewing/fixing each one. They expect fixes to be ready for testing soon.

Divide et Impera: Admiral Zelle becoming unresponsive
Admiral Zelle has been behaving erratically for a while. There are situations where she can become unresponsive before transforming into an Undine, as well as after her transformation. This has been escalated to the developers and is definitely on their radar.

Trapped: Debris from the wormhole can get players stuck
As funny as this may sound, getting stuck in a mission called Trapped, it’s actually a big deal, and it’s been sent to the developers. The problem is that, once stuck, our self-help utilities often don’t work to help you get unstuck in this mission. Unfortunately we don’t have an accurate picture of how you can best free yourself if this happens, since it happens rarely. I believe that /stuck should still work to nudge you out of the debris, but I’m not 100% sure. Failing that, it appears that the only workaround is to actually log out of the game for a little while while the instance resets itself, usually after 15 minutes. When you come back, you should be in the next stage of the mission, and good to go. However, we hate asking players to log out, since it’s no fun at all and ruins the flow of the game. Tune in next week to see the progress on this bug!

Scientist rank 9 does not unlock Science Team III
This actually comes down to a UI/labeling issue. Although the UI states that it’s Scientist rank 9 that unlocks the ability to train this power, it’s currently being unlocked by Doctor rank 9. The fix for this is being tested so that it can be ready soon. Until it’s in, please bear with us with the confusing labeling. Also, remember that you can only train class-specific skills to bridge officers if you are of the appropriate class. A Tactical Captain would not be able to train this to a Science bridge officer, but a Science Captain would. This has added to the confusion, and we are looking into how to communicate this more clearly.

Preemptive Strike: Behind Enemy Lines: Can’t rescue last prisoner
Our developers are aware of this issue and are working to have the fix tested and in soon.

Doomsday Device sometimes doesn’t complete when teamed
This should have been fixed last week. However, there have been a couple of scattered reports since then of players not being able to get the mission to complete, even with all objectives done, while on a team. This is distinct from any issues getting the special torpedoes, flying through the planet core, etc. If you are teamed and run into problems completing the final stage of the mission, please post about it and submit an in-game Bug Report so I can investigate.

Various missions losing progress
This is a rather sticky issue, or rather group of issues. There are several missions we’ve seen reports of that have the nasty habit of losing your progress after telling you they are done, and telling you to move on, or leave to sector space. Generally, they will revert to saying only 2 or 3 mission stages are done, or even prompting you to start over. We’re working to identify each mission where this occurrs, identify any key reproduction steps, and escalate each one to the developers to fix. Progress will be slow on getting every last one of them fixed, but so far several have been. If you have this happen to you, please try the mission again a second time. If the mission fails again but does not block your forward progression, please submit a bug report and move on. Hopefully we’ll have most of these dealt with swiftly.

State of the Game 2/25/10 | Star Trek Online Official Site

State of the Game 2/25/10 | Star Trek Online Official Site

Welcome, you noble purveyors of Federation policy and fierce warlords of the Empire! Welcome one and all!

Wait now… Let’s just take a moment to de-cloak, disarm and drop our shields, shall we? This State of the Game is of interest to you all.

So very, very much has happened over the last few weeks! It feels like every single time I began to write a new State of the Game, we’d have to quickly douse live shard fires, juggle major play tests and push critical late night patches. By the time the dousing, juggling and pushing was done, the outline of my State of the Game would be hopelessly out of date.

Given how tirelessly we’ve been working, if some ethereal, omnipotent resident from the Denorios belt hadn’t stepped in and considerately put the breaks on space-time with a bit of temporal wizardry, I might have found myself eternally rewriting this single State of the Game.

Thanks to you, oh great wormhole-y one!
Support:

We. Are. Live. And so, supporting you — yes, you, specifically — is an effort that consumes us night and day.

Ask any bedraggled MMO developer about launch and they will inevitably assure you that it never, ever gets any easier. Crunch all you like, friend, it only gets harder after the game actually ships. STO is certainly no exception. Supporting a user base as large as ours requires dedication — no, devotion! Our crew is, thankfully, more than up to the task. We are pushing the workplace warp core to maximum in an effort to better address any and every bug and issue that comes up in-game.

Our objective: Implement as many of the stability and gameplay adjustments you asked for as soon as humanoidly possible (as safe practices allow, of course). To this end, Community has put more effort into moderating the boards and CS has recently staffed up in order to get through your tickets quicker. The idea being, “we can hardly fix what we can’t see.”

We’ve also thrown a metric ton of hardware and man hours at getting the server capacity up. Our Network Operations crew has been performing admirably, to say the least. I won’t begin to count the times I’ve heard, “Sorry, Captain! I’m giving it all she’s got,” come out of their work area, only to be quickly followed by a confident, Scotty-like, “It’s done.” Beautiful. Almost makes me want to demand them to, “fly her apart, then!” I might just because I know those boys and girls will hold it together in the end, whatever I say.

Bottom line: When — if — you see Queues, they should be much shorter and stability will be much better.
Game Adjustments:

Now that the game is out and in your loving hands, we’re taking long, hard looks at everything each and every one of you is interested in seeing changed. Cruiser turn rates? Death penalties? More open auto-fire? All those topics and more are being scrutinized by the all-seeing eye of… um, us!

Some of the few things on the way:

* Respec
* Death Penalty
* Difficulty Slider
* More open auto-fire
* Replayable missions
* Improving Memory Alpha
* Fixing those Commodity missions

And there are a bunch more. We’ve heard you and are working on all these issues, but we want to make sure that they come out clean and finished. We hate rushing out features – it inevitably leads to us accidentally breaking things we didn’t have time to test. I dunno – like the Red Matter Capacitor or something…
Tribble Coming

In order to better accommodate our players during the Head Start weekend, we merged the physical machines dedicated to our Public Test Shard (Tribble) into the live Shard (Holodeck). It has since been difficult to find viable hardware to test new patches on before pushing them out to you.

Well, we’ve got more hardware now and Tribble will be up pretty soon. Problem solved.

Once Tribble’s up and running (insert whatever tribble joke you’d like to here) – we’ll be able to start releasing those core game adjustments to you guys for deeper testing and feedback.
Special Task Force: Infected

We’re in the final stages of testing the first STF (the five-man raids we internally referred to as “Raidisodes”). STF: Infected is just about ready to release.

You know, I might actually record one of our internal play sessions. The excited cries for more shielding and healing get the blood pumping. Although, once our testers reach the end room and the action really heats up… Well, it’s not exactly “family friendly” in there. Definitely going to be an exciting, thrilling mission for our players, though.

After Infected, we’ll roll out more STFs. “The Cure”, “The Khitomer Accord” and “Into the Hive” are all coming along nicely. We look forward to regularly releasing these and seeing what everyone thinks.
Update 1: Classy Marketable Name Coming Soon

The first major update is receiving a final coat of paint, too.

There’s quite a lot of genuinely cool stuff in Update 1: Classy Marketable Name Coming Soon. Expect to see it pushed to the newly revived Tribble Public Test Shard over the next couple weeks.

New Klingon ships? Oh, my yes. And they look…awesome. Re-specs are also coming, of course. All of Cryptic can’t wait to see that particular feature out the door. New PvP maps and Fleet Actions are rather nice, too.
Beyond Update 1?

Right now, we’re planning it. We haven’t set the future of STO’s content into stone because so much of it will be determined by you, but we’re laying out what we’d like to focus on for the next 6 to 12 months.

* Who are the Undine and what drives them?
* How can we better exploit the Genesis System to create even more compelling content?
* Where can we boldly go next? Where shall we take exploratory missions, as there’s so much potential there?
* Which faction should be playable next? Romulan? Cardassian? Pakled? Dominion? Horta? Okay, not so much the Pakleds.

And that’s not even the start of it! Ship interiors, more bridges, crew quarters, First Officers, Fleet advancement… You have subscribed to a service that delivers a universe unending, and we shall see that universe populated with compelling content or, by the Prophets, we will die trying.

Some people get that. Some people don’t. We’re here for those that do.

Throughout development, we guessed Star Trek Online might be polarizing. Some people don’t get it and some people simply don’t like it… But, others fall in love with their ships and captains and bridge officers. Those are the ones who can’t live without beaming down to strange, new planets and participating in lively stories.

We guessed this and still we made a conscious decision to not water things down and go “mass market”. Frankly, I think that’s perfectly OK. Because, no matter what, there will be one single thing, now and forever, that drives everything we do: you.

We have a very healthy — and healthily testy — core community that gets it. And there’s nothing we look forward to more than working together to make STO better.

Sad part is, you may not even know it. Far as I can tell, there’re no hidden cameras and mics scattered about Cryptic’s office. So, how would you know that we refer to our community almost as if it were an absent developer?

“Well, The Users think that we need to do more non-combat.”

“Guys, I’m sorry to interrupt, but The Players really want ground auto-attack back. Drop what we’re doing.”

“We already know what you think about a death penalty, Craig – but The Community really thinks it’s a good idea and their opinion is more valid than yours because they probably don’t own goats.”

It’s a little unnerving — sometimes feels like we work with a giant multi-headed feedback monster that simultaneously loves and hates us. It whips even as it hugs! It rages even as it cries! And it fumes even when it’s happy. It’s unnerving, yes, but pretty freakin’ rad, too.

What you guys post and say and do in-game and on the forums is the biggest factor we consider when making our decisions.

I am sorry if it ever appears that we’re not listening to you or trying to make the game better. Because that is pretty much all we ever do.

-Zn

Discuss this on the forums!

Release Notes – Feb 13, 2010 | Star Trek Online Official Site

Release Notes – Feb 13, 2010 | Star Trek Online Official Site

General

* Fixed a crash that was happening often on high traffic social maps like Earth Space Dock.
* Made some improvements to ease lag during peak play times. We will continue to monitor and are working on additional performance increases.
* It has been very difficult to find rare anomalies in Star Clusters. We have put in a fix to ensure that all anomalies have a better chance of being scanned and discovered. This should also help improve Memory Alpha trade.
* Lower level repeatable missions no longer show on your remote contact options unless you are in the area where they take place. For example, if you are in Cardassian space, you will no longer see Grall in your remote contacts asking you if you want to explore Delta Volanis.
* Crystalline Entity is no longer located at sector XXX, system YYY. We now tell you the proper sector block to find the Fleet Action in.
* There was a UI bug with the Science Bridge Officer power “Dampening Field I” in the skills window. Based on the skills UI, it looked like the skill had been incorrectly training into the Commander-rank slot instead of the LT commander slot. If this has happened to you, it appeared that you lost two powers. We hope to fix this when you log in so that you will see that Dampening Field I is now in your LT Commander slot, and your prior Command power is still there. As Dampening Field I was intended to be a Commander power, we are working on another version which will be the correct Commander power which will be introduced into the game in a future patch, and at that time we’ll remove the LT Commander version from the power store.
* Some players had acquired ships that were not slotting properly as ships and showing up as bridge officers instead. A fix has been put in that will fix these characters up when they log in.
* Pre-order bonus TOS Federation uniforms now come with skirt options.
* Added missing files to improve French and German translations of game text.
* The Borg were showing up in the B’Tran Star Cluster in missions they should not have had access to, which lead to un-Borg like mission text and behaviors. If you do encounter the Borg in this Star Cluster, the mission will be more appropriate.
* Auto-teaming was not working properly in some sectors. We’ve addressed this issue so that auto-teaming should now function across all sectors.
* Some players were not getting credit for defeating the Doomsday Machine in the Imaga System. This mission has been updated so that all players should have credit for completing the mission regardless of whether they closed the last mission dialog box or not.
* Two new Video Options were added in the prior patch to help deal with overheating issues: Limit Frame Rate and Reduce CPU/GPU Usage. These are available under Options | Video | Advanced | Troubleshooting.
* Frame Rate defaults are now limited to 60fps.
* Also released in the last patch, players who had purchased Pre-Order costume bonuses may now apply those bonus costumes to their bridge officers.
* Ramming Speed was updated to cap modifiers based on speed of ramming ship. We also improved the damage formula to use the smaller vessel’s HP as the base, modified by speed and size ratio between both ships involved. In general, ramming similar or smaller sized ships can be tactically beneficial, ramming larger ships becomes a self-sacrificing last resort.
* Emergency Power to Engines – When used in a specific sequence with Evasive Maneuvers, the speed modifier from this ability was improperly applied so that it was multiplied by Evasive Maneuvers. It should no longer matter which order you use these two abilities in – they will stack, but not multiply.

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