[Federation News Service]

A skilled helmsman is an unspeakably-important asset for any starship facing combat scenarios. Even the largest modern Cruiser or Dreadnought can be made to dance through the stars when its pilot truly knows the ship and her capabilities.

Following in the footsteps of exceptional pilots such as William T. Riker and Tom Paris, these daring officers are known for taking risks and catching enemies off-guard through the use of superior mobility. The tools at their disposal are geared towards enhancing and capitalizing on the high speed and maneuverability of escorts, raiders and other light starships.

Training a Pilot

After purchasing 10 abilities in the Pilot Captain Specialization, players will have the ability to create Specialization Qualifications for the Pilot Bridge Officer Specialization by accessing the Officer Training R&D School. Every Specialization Qualification will teach the assigned Bridge Officer a full suite of four new Pilot Space Abilities.

Common-quality Pilot Specialist Bridge Officers can also be obtained by visiting a Bridge Officer Candidate Store at the social hub applicable to your faction.



Pilot Abilities

Space is the only playground of a Pilot. No new Ground Abilities will be added with the roll-out of the Pilot Bridge Officer Specialization, allowing these officers to focus their efforts exclusively on combat maneuverability in zero-gravity environments.

The following section will give a brief explanation of each of the abilities offered to Pilot Specialists. Please be aware that the details are subject to change, as we continue to review and tune them based on both internal testing, and player experience and feedback gathered from the Tribble Test Server.

GROUND:

(No new abilities)

SPACE:


Attack Pattern: Lambda


Increase your Accuracy while reducing the Subsystem Power cost of your Weapons
Any foe damaged by your weapons while this is active will suffer an Accuracy and Perception debuff and has a chance of being Confused.

** This ability shares a cooldown category with other Attack Patterns, but also benefits from any ability that improves existing Attack Patterns, including the Pilot Spec ability “Attack Pattern Expertise.”




Clean Getaway

Gain a substantial speed boost, while simultaneously Placating and Slowing any foes caught in a wide cone area behind your ship.
This ability is also a total Threat Wipe when used vs. NPCs


Coolant Ignition

Eject a trail of coolant behind your ship.
This coolant remains dormant for the first half of its duration, slowing foes that come in contact with it.
After several seconds, the coolant will ignite. Once ignited, it no longer slows, but now deals heavy damage to foes caught in the area.

**This ability shares a cooldown category with Eject Warp Plasma and other similar variants.




Deploy Countermeasures

Destroys all Mines and Targetable Torpedoes within a short radius, and grants you a short duration immunity to Kinetic Damage from all sources.
Enemy starships nearby have a chance to be Confused if they are caught in the spread.


Fly Her Apart

Gradually increases speed over time, at the cost of Hull and Shields.
Upon deactivating this ability, you gain an Ambush Bonus that scales with how long Fly Her Apart remained in effect.


Form Up

Target a nearby ally and warp your ship into formation with them.
As long as you and the targeted ally remain within a short distance of one another, both gain a bonus to damage that gradually increases over time.


Hold Together

For several seconds, restore your hull over time. The effectiveness of this restoration is increased based on your current Throttle %.
If above a certain Throttle threshold, this ability will also remove Hazard debuffs periodically.


Lock Trajectory

Set your Inertia Rating to Zero, but increase your Turn Rate
Skillful use of this ability will allow a Pilot to keep even narrow-arc weapons on target, while moving alongside or even away from their foes.


Pilot Team

Increase the Accuracy and Defense of yourself or a targeted ally, while also granting temporary immunity to movement-impairing effects.

**This ability shares a cooldown category with other “Team” type abilities, but also benefits from effects that enhance existing “Team” abilities.




Reinforcements Squadron

Call in a wing of four skilled pilots in runabout-sized craft to assist you.
These vessels make use of various Pilot abilities to avoid damage and harass your foes.


Reroute Reserves to Weapons

While active, weapon activation will not drain power from your Weapons Subsystem. Instead, every shot will drain a small amount of power from your Engines Subsystem.
In addition to this, the firing cycles of your weapons will be sped up, cycling faster and recharging faster between shots.

** This ability shares a cooldown category with weapon enhancements like Beam Fire At Will, Cannon Rapid Fire and Surgical Strikes




Subspace Boom

Increase your speed and send out a shockwave from your current location that will damage nearby foes while also debuffing their speed and leaving behind a lingering hazard in the area.
Foes that wander into this lingering hazard will also have their speed decreased.








Chart of Pilot Abilities by Rank




NAME

Attack Pattern : Lambda
Deploy Countermeasures
Lock Trajectory
Pilot Team
Clean Getaway
Fly Her Apart
Hold Together
Reinforcements Squadron
Coolant Ignition
Form Up
Reroute Weapon Reserves
Subspace Boom

ENS

I
I
I
I
I

LT

II
II
II
II
I
I
I
I

LTC

III
III
III
III
II
II
II
II
I
I
I
I

CDR





III
III
III
III
II/III
II/III
II/III
II/III










Q&A

Q: What ships/seats allow the use of Pilot Officer Abilities in Space?

A: In order to utilize the Pilot Officer space abilities, you must be flying a starship that has a Hybrid Pilot Officer Bridge Officer seat. They are not usable in “Universal” Profession seats, or existing Intelligence Specialist or Command Specialist Bridge Officer seats. The line-up of starships that will have hybrid Pilot Officer seats has not yet been announced, but keep your eyes on our website for those announcements!

Q: I need more details about these abilities! These blurbs don’t explain their full functionality!


A: This Dev Blog is purposefully designed to be only a high-level review of the concept for each ability, as they are still in the midst of tuning and iteration. Specific details for each can be reviewed on the Tribble Test Server, once this feature is ready for public testing. We will endeavor to respond to feedback regarding each ability, including potential balance concerns, throughout the coming weeks leading up to the release of this feature on Holodeck.


Jeremy “BorticusCryptic” Randall
Systems Designer
Star Trek Online

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[Dark]

Some of those abilities are promising. Wish we didn't need Hybrid seating, or that they would add Hybrid seating to older ships. It'd certainly revitalize the older escorts that have the 3rd-Tac-Ensign flaw.

APL looks like a great way to maintain power levels with FAW, before you get the most costly options to stack overcap.

Also, cooldown category for Teams? Teams don't have a System Cooldown...

[Cehus]

I'm right there with you Dark. I'd be completely fine if they made all of these new ships with generic specalist seats, where you can slot a command, intel, or pilot boff.

Or, at the very least, they should slow down the rate of these specializations to MAYBE two per year, and flesh out the number of ships per specialization. The current rate is just over the top IMO.

[Daedalus]

I get the sense that there is a deliberate rush to cram as many of the new systems into the game as possible before Cryptic/PWE puts the game into maintenance mode and slowly lets it die.

But I'm a glass half-empty guy when it comes to STO.

[Code743]

Or, at the very least, they should slow down the rate of these specializations to MAYBE two per year, and flesh out the number of ships per specialization. The current rate is just over the top IMO.

Between the staff redundancies, the fact that we seem to be drawing close to conflict with the Iconians, these 'secret projects' that Cryptic are supposedly working on, and the frequency of blatant money grabs like introducing niche ships for sets of BOFF abilities (gotta pay those redundancy exit packages somehow) that you are alluding to, the circumstantial evidence is starting to mount up to suggest that the developers may not have another year.