[Ricwin]

https://youtu.be/pw2AIOJW1W8

Just seen this video posted earlier today, which if true, is excellent news for all of us non "Romulan Alien Tac" players. No official word from Cryptic yet, so take it with a grain of salt for now.

I normally don't do news update, but this has a pretty drastic effect on the DPS scene in Star Trek Online. Until this coming update, only Romulan captains have been able to acquire an all Romulan bridge crew with the SRO trait, well that's changing. According to Jessie Heinig, Very Rare Romulan Engineers and Science Bridge Officers with the Superior Romulan Operative trait are being added to the Fleet Embassy.

The Boff upgrade token is an interesting idea too, but certainly overshadowed by news of this possible SRO change.

[Bridger]

It was announced in yesterday's Ten Forward it is legit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/sto/comment..._weekly_83022/

[Ricwin]

It was announced in yesterday's Ten Forward it is legit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/sto/comment..._weekly_83022/

Oh awesome, thats way better news than I was expecting to come from this.
I havent caught up with Ten Forward yet, Auggiess video made it sound more like an unofficial leak than something announced.

[Bridger]

[darthnovawave]

Interesting about the math on the Jem'Hadar Vanguard captains edging out alien Rom tac toons as the DPS meta kings, at least on paper. I'm kind of wondering if that slight edge will actually translate into noticeable performance changes though. Playing around with the STO BETTER site's calculators, a lot of these differences end up being more rounding errors than huge numeric differences, so it seems like dumb luck with RNG and skill/luck with piloting probably will be more meaningful to end performance now that this playing field is becoming more level. I kind of suspect the end result of the SRO change will be more that "species/faction" really doesn't matter any more, but given the messaging that always swirled around "Alien Rom Tac or you are playing wrong" that some of the more...assertive...players tend to endorse, maybe not.

It makes me wonder if we'll also soon see better access to the Infiltrator Boffs since people were quick to call that one out on the same Ten Forward stream, and maybe longer term even a rebalancing pass on the career paths between Tac, Sci, and Eng to unwind some of the "Tac>all else" mantra. At least, that seems to be the direction Cryptic seems to be slowly heading towards with the cross-faction flying and now this change with boffs.

[Sorotia]

So Romulans lose even more of their edge? Don't have anything left but ships that are lacking and cores that suck

[darthnovawave]

So Romulans lose even more of their edge? Don't have anything left but ships that are lacking and cores that suck

We haven't had a new Romulan ship in over a year (or KDF for that matter), the Romulan starting experience is probably the most outdated stuff in the game graphically, and their ships were the first ships to lose faction exclusivity. Meanwhile Romulans featured heavily in a whole season of Picard (which conveniently also gave centuries before Reunification completed, leaving the current STO content spin viable), they were portrayed in several episodes of Discovery season 3 and 4, featured heavily in an episode of Strange New Worlds, and have been referenced in some episodes of Lower Decks as well. So far Star Trek: Prodigy is the only show that hasn't had any Romulans.

Despite this trend of continuing to be a presence in the shows, it seems like the current STO team has very little interest in Romulans. While I understand that lots of people play Fed characters so they want to cater to their fanbase, there are literally more than twice as many T6 Fed ships as KDF ships, around 3 times as many Fed as Romulan, and more than 10 times the number of Fed ships than Jem'Hadar. They also outnumber "cross-faction" ships by a factor of about 3 to 2 (of which a number are just Mirror versions or different timeline versions of Fed designs too). Despite the time the ship designers pour into making these detailed Fed ship models, there are so many now it is hard to tell one from another without inspecting players to figure out which variation of a given ship line they are flying. Making everything a Fed ship undermines the true endgame of Space Barbie, as sometimes the coolest designs might not revolve around a frisbee.

[Sorotia]

I mean I'm not asking for a fleet of new ships (though maybe a legendary Mogai/Valdore would be nice)

When Romulans launched singularity abilities were powerful, and only a handful of Klingon vessels had battle cloak. Singularity abilities have fallen behind and singularity cores are just total garbage..not only can anyone fly Romulan ships but there are so many ships with battle cloak now, heck any ship that can equip dual cannons can have battle cloak. Romulan cruisers still don't have cruiser commands so they suffer the worst...-40 power sucks no matter what you focus on