[Petrarch]

Rather than make a new thread, I'll toss this in here.

Note the ship smaller than the rest in the top right hand corner. It was CasualSAB's video that drew my attention to it and like him, I suspect it'll not be there and is in that picture both as a teaser and to see if anyone noticed it.

[Bridger]

We are overdue for a new Promo Ship so it is only logical that it would be the G.

[Petrarch]

There are 2 new ships being unveiled tonight it seems. As there's going to be guests from IDW, the speculation is one of them is going to be the USS Theseus from the Star Trek comic featuring Sisko, but no clue what the other is and if it'll be C-store, new lockbox infinity etc. The buzz on Reddit points to the Theseus perhaps being the summer event ship, and the other could be the leaked T6 patrol escort, but we'll see soon enough.

EDIT: The Theseus is confirmed, it's a MW/Temporal 5/2 Destroyer and it's the Infinity ship.

[Remsus]

https://www.reddit.com/r/sto/comment..._weekly_71823/

Ten Forward weekly 7/18/23

• Stream interview with Gianna was supposed to happen right after the latest release, but because they moved to every other week, and stuff like ships kept coming up it kept being pushed back.
  
• Kael technically wasn't even supposed to be at work for this stream, but felt bad about pushing Gianna's stream back so many times.
  
• Nick originally built the Enterprise J as an environment piece before it was playable.
  
• The original plan for the recent mission was to just take the old Tholian kit and built on top of that as needed, but the more they looked at it the more they wanted to update it. Stuff like hallway kits only existed for TOS aesthetics, nothing for more current day stuff
  
• Gianna got to do a lot of sketching/concepting on what they would do for the update. Sketches cover things like what would Tholian sit on/where would they eat. Taking into account Tholians walk on all parts of the ship for everything is a floor to them, how that would factor into design. etc.(sketches shown on stream)
  
• Idea for how the Tholian door opened came from a dwarven door in Lord of the Rings not just moving to the side or up but coming apart in different directions.
  
• Tholian kit has a "smaller" room, and the larger room used at the end of the mission. Can't really make the rooms smaller due to how the Tholian kit is made. Gianna wanted to represent the triangular aspects of Tholian biology into the rooms.
  
• The rooms where NPCs spawn that players can't normally access are called monster closets like in most other companies
  
• The long line of wall lighting used in the Tholian kit came from the old Tholian textures having a similar feature, and Tholians being able to use both the "floor" and "ceiling" as walkways made putting lights on the "ceiling" not make sense. Putting them on the walls works better with both floor and ceiling being used as walkways.
  
• Scott was the one who suggested the doors players can go through have glowy bits to make them stand out from the other doors without having to put a big flashy light indicator UI element
  
• The boss of the new mission is in a monster closet that has a "Death fade plane" which make it looks like the room continues on by having it fade to black even though there's nothing back there
  
• No current plans to make Threads accounts for Cryptic games. They're waiting to see how things go before making a decision.
  
• Map took about 3-4 months to complete from concepting to finish/polishing because they were making something new and iteration takes a long time.
  
• Map was made by Gianna by herself. Her first original map done by herself, she updated several of the older patrols, and did Operation Wolf's map on her own. Also helped update Azure NEbla and The Vault TFOs.
  
• The honeycomb textures used on the floor/ceiling were taken from the V'ger map, scaled down, and new texture added.
  
• The doors only enemies can use have a simple sliding animation, whereas the doors used by players have the more complex pulling apart animation.
  
• The context of the mission is what determines how much longer/shorter it takes to build a missions, not really if they're using an existing kit or not. Even if they are using an already existing kit you may need to make new kinds of rooms etc for missions.
  
• The most difficult part of making the missions was the early design/concept phase. Gianna had a lot of crazy ideas for the mission she couldn't do due to time.
  
• Gianna uses Maya to 3d model the missions before importing into the game engine. Nick uses 3DS max, as do several other people on the team.
  
• Kael has kept pushing for the new Fed bridges to be made playable.
  
• Gianna prefers working on maps like the Tholian interior, where we really didn't see what it looked like back in the shows, and having to make up something new. Compared to working on things like Fed/KDF interiors.
  
• Gianna watched The Tholian Web and In a Mirror Darkly, Pt. I & II for inspiration when making this mission. Took a lot of screenshot of Tholians.
  
• After the Summer Event ends there is another event, and possible a Red Alert event, before the next mission drops.
  
• Flagship celebration coming to consoles in a few weeks.
  
• Playable non humanoids like Tholians is something Cryptic wants to do, but is likely impossible because they would have to develop a whole new suite of animations just for them to make them work with various powers/abilities. Tholian/non-humanoid BOFFs have the same issue. Though something like a Tholian BOFF could happen if they are only allowed to use a pre-set selection of abilities, and couldn't learn most other BOFF abilities. Cryptic has talked about it a few times, but it hasn't gotten beyond talks.
  
• Gianna has been at Cryptic since the start of 2021.
  
• The old dance instructor voice was Maria, a former producer at STO
  
• There could be more limited time vanity shields in the future. They had plans to bring back the pink vanity shield but those were tabled because reasons.
  
• Kael didn't want to answer any questions about the Maelstrom on stream. While he has talked to Jonathan about it a few times he doesn't have Jonathan's brain for it and doesn't want to say anything that would be taken as anything, a promise, denial, etc
  
• Gianna's favorite ship right now is the Mars class.
  
• Older maps(Defera/Dyson Sphere ground specifically asked by chat) will be updated if/when they need to use those assets for a newer mission.
  
• Sometimes assets can be ported from Neverwinter to STO, but its complicated. Only time Gianna knows of that happening was for the Halloween TFO.
  
• Kael doesn't know the current situation on the SAG strike and how that affects STO. According to the most recent material put out the strike shouldn't affect STO since its a video game, which the strike doesn't cover, but he doesn't know for certain.
  
• Getting the Protostar is still on the table even with Prodigy being cancelled.
  
• No word on SNW uniforms, its something Kael requests a lot.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1875566096

[darthnovawave]

Did anyone actually watch the stream? I was otherwise occupied, but listening to a discussion of content that came out over two months ago didn't seem like the most exciting discussion. Nothing against the artists or anything, but I've mostly forgotten that mission already. Between that and all the uproar in the community over the Maelstrom torp changes, I kinda feel like this Gianna might have been better off being brought in whenever they drop and talk about the next episode(s?) they release, which is probably only a few weeks away.

[Jestersmith]

Did anyone actually watch the stream? I was otherwise occupied, but listening to a discussion of content that came out over two months ago didn't seem like the most exciting discussion. Nothing against the artists or anything, but I've mostly forgotten that mission already. Between that and all the uproar in the community over the Maelstrom torp changes, I kinda feel like this Gianna might have been better off being brought in whenever they drop and talk about the next episode(s?) they release, which is probably only a few weeks away.

Nope this 2 weeks rotation on them has thrown me and i always seem to miss them

[Heyallo]

No word on SNW uniforms, its something Kael requests a lot.

I like this bit a lot lol

[MrNeal]

https://www.reddit.com/r/sto/comment...d_weekly_8123/

Ten Forward Weekly 8/1/23

Yeah, I totally forgot, my bad. The every other week thing throws me off so bad.

• Cryptic has tried multiple times to make playable Borg Cubes work, its never worked out
• Problem with the Maelstrom is that its possible to make pretty much everything perform really well in STO. Unlike building your ship to be extremely powerful, when you make one, very visually identifiable, weapon so powerful it makes the situations much more frustrating, and something of a rugpull, to see someone just melt the boss in one hit. Its "optimized for sadness" to have the game play that way, which isn't what developers want. That was combined with the QA team testing out bosses for new TFOs, only to have maelstroms just destroy the bosses instantly, made it obvious there was a problem.
• Jonathan had two different fixes in mind, the elegant simple fix, and the complex targeted fix.
• Complex targeted fix was have it do less damage against bosses in certain situations
• The simple fix was when they first made it they figured a 90s cooldown would be the extreme upper end of what players would accept, not wanting to delay gratification for too long. It turned out to likely be more of a sweet spot. when they tried the lower cooldown paradigm they found that not only did the torpedo need all that muscle to do its job, which surprised Jonathan since he thought it would be able to do much of what it was trying to do at the lower cooldown, but they also found players liked the slower play pattern. The results of this showed they needed the precision solution.
• There's never going to be a bunch of Maelstroms in the game because they're expensive on the back end. A normal torpedo has around 15 powers, the maelstrom has around 60. Though Jonathan does have ideas for a few more kinds of maelstrom torps.
• The need for Maelstrom updates is intricately linked to getting more kinds of Maelstrom weapons. Jonathan is reluctant to just put something new into the game without a chance to test it in a live environment. There is no meaningful way to replicate the live environment internally, so any new kind of weapon system he intends to make more of will have to go through a few patch cycles unless he gets really lucky on the first shot. Maelstrom seemed like it was in a good spot from the start, but people became better at optimizing it, and the issues began to filter down into the casual environment, and content designers. They would've either done something to fix the maelstrom, or done something to all the bosses in the game to work around the Maelstrom. Jonathan was pretty instant that the Maelstrom would need time to wiggle before he started making more, so if there changes land well then he can start making more.
• The Maelstrom starting off with max charges isn't really an issue with its over performance. That only really matters in the speedrun/DPS testing environment, but that isn't what they balance the game for. They don't mind or seek performance in that environment. Most encounters start off with low level enemies, so while you can use it to destroy an early wave you will need to sandbag it if you want to use it on something meatier.
• When asked about wide angle maelstrom Jonathan says he doesn't know. Says he thought about a torpedo sidewinder situation, but hes more interested in making the weapons hes already made reach a healthy situation rather than adding more.
• Also wants to proliferate already existing weapons that haven't. Calls out wide angle heavy dual beam banks, says the issue is that they use different art which makes them significantly more expensive to implement. Jonathan needs an artist to make more of those.
• Jonathan plans to look at shield viability next. Says it might be awhile, the advanced consoles took a lot out of the systems team. Lots of burning the midnight oil(does specify Cryptic does not make them crunch), says getting the implementation right, especially on the science consoles, took a lot more then they thought it would. Wants to do a bit more to the advanced consoles, feels like the science ones, especially drain, are under performing a bit.
• Wide angle dual heavy beam banks, maelstroms, spec affiliated fighters, proton weapons, and energy torpedoes, are all things Jonathan wants to proliferate more. But that's all the little stuff.
• Bigger thing is shields, but that's a bit more tricky since the only real difference between shields and hull, and why people care about hull and not shields, is that you die when your hull hits zero, and STO isn't terribly threatening. Trying to make enemies keep up with power creep on normal is impossible due to how many new toys they give players. Trying to figure out what shields can take away from enemies is difficult. Shields are intrinsically tied to difficulty, and after shields, and perhaps joined at the hip with shields, is how to give players who want more difficult content that kind of content. Jonathan not sure what that means. Maybe something after elite, maybe changes to elite. Maybe a different reward or event structure, like an elite event.
• Jonathan's current idea is a two prong attack. Prong one is the torpedo/shield interaction never really did what it was supposed to do, but how to do that without nerfing torpedo builds. 2nd prong is in the TV shows shields stop enemies from doing "bullshit" to your ship, so he can imagine a world where there is a relation between shields and control resistance where enemies have more control effects, but so long as your shields are up you don't feel it as much. These are just pie in the sky ideas, but he thinks they wouldn't upset the game environment too much, make the game feel more like the show, and promote more of a rock/paper/scissors gameplay. Energy torpedoes are an under explored space that seem like they would torpedo builds a way to deal with enhanced torpedo interaction.
• Very good chance Cryptic will create the new version of the Inquiry from PIC s3 at some point. Conversations have started.
• New infinity lockbox ship Friendship class
• Art was from Tobias Richter
• Cryptic was tempted to use designs that included making the nacelles a rail gun, and similar stuff. But those lead into directions that don't feel Star Treky/unique.
• Ship is a dedicated support ship since its been awhile since they made one, and it fits within how the Federation works with cooperation between various races, which ties into emerging real world strategy among many smaller nations banding together.
• Despite being a FDC it has 4/4 weapons because it didn't feel right to give it 5/3.
• Console was inspired a bit by the tethers we see in DSC S3.
• Ship is an ENG carrier, and not a sci carrier, because sci carriers are in a weird place. Originally the hanger pet eng console was meant to be a sci console. But when Jonathan went through the game data he found there was like 3 ships with max console slots and hanger bays, but something like 20 with max eng slots and hanger bays. Sci may have originally been intended to be the carrier spec, but ENG has all the actual minion mancer stuff/functional ships with hanger bays. Cryptic wants to support sci carriers more, but that's not an immediate thing. Might be something they do if/when they do another round of advanced consoles. Might see a sci carrier console there, which would open the door to more science carrier ships.
• Cryptic is looking into the entity cap issue, but its not something that can easily be addressed.
• Jonathan is worried about starfleet cloak proliferation. Its something the shows introduced so they can't really avoid it. Not sure that updating Klingon cloaks is the right answer. More likely Klingon players will get access to some trait to buff cloaks or something.
• AFK tech in STO is not just based off of damage dealing, its based off of doing anything.
• Not immediate, but on Jonathan's radar, to add niche damage types like cold/fire damage to spire/advanced consoles. He wants to make sure weird energy types are pretty well served before getting into that. Doesn't want to just fill these items full of junk mods people have to re-roll. Might start off doing something like a new ship item that affects both fire and cold damage and work from there, etc.
• Kael will bring up affect spam again. According to Jonathan it was on their radar, but programming got side swiped for several months on a different thing that meant that had to be put on hold.
• Very good chance a ship from another Trek game will show up, but it isn't the Ark Royal.
• Issue with the cyclone was that they were training people to help with ships, and something that was supposed to be a test rig got accidentally snuck into the live build.
• Kael will follow up on the two Fed, and one KDF, bridges that aren't player usable made available since the issues around them have been solved.
• 'Jonathan isn't interested in unlocking a bunch of carrier pets since he thinks that washes out difference between the ships. He is more willing to unlock old ship consoles since some of those are meta relevant, but they're attached to ship that can't succeed, and the rest are kind of harmless.
• Kael will ask again about the advanced/elite versions of recent TFOs being turned on/made.
• Jonathan isn't happy with the way eng powers are on captains right now, but its acute enough of an issue to not be a priority. Admits eng captain powers are a little less appealing.
• There has been some discussion about making like all Fed bridges available on all Fed ships
• Cryptic keeps poking at "squadron player ships" ideas.
• Older items will be updated if Jonathan can collect enough of them to do something like make a set bonus, or make a targeted improvement to a bunch of things. Unlikely to just go an update one off old things to be better since there's so much stuff in the game.
• Can't really just bolt on a system like give certain BOFFs roles like #1 and have it affect the game in a meaningful way.
• Jonathan went back and added auto execute functions for every ship he made where it could support it.

[darthnovawave]

I initially got kind of excited when I first saw this write-up that there was at least a nod to engineering captains needing work, but then I went back and watched the full video myself and was less optimistic. My first toon in STO was an engineer and I'm still partial to them, but their captain power set just hasn't aged well compared to the other 2 careers when it comes to space. Seems like it wouldn't take much to show it some love, but surprisingly Jonathan suggested this is something he wants to farm out to others on the team once he upskills them more. Given that these are the same people in training that managed to introduce the game-breaking bug on the Cyclone when it released, that's not encouraging. The defensive captain powers really just need to be rescaled for the most part to be brought back in line with where we are with consoles and other gear today, and the offensive powers maybe just need some + damage and/or -DDR mods added to those abilities to both buff it into alignment with where the other 2 careers are damage-wise and to actually make them useful on something other than a DEW build, since today they just buff power levels which only marginally helps EPG but is utterly meaningless to kinetic builds.

At any rate, I'll keep hoping that they surprise me with a rework on this someday, and since I run a Romulan engineer that is partial to Romulan ships, I wouldn't say no to seeing some scaling on those singularity powers to make them useful at endgame either. Bonus points if they finally let my Romulan grow a beard.

[MrNeal]

Ten Forward Weekly 9/12/23

https://www.reddit.com/r/sto/comment..._weekly_91223/

• Kael has already sent Cryptic the message that players are asking for a moopsy pet
• Mauricio is responsible for the recent quality pass on the Klingon flagship. He talked to Thomas about what he did with the Oddy remaster in terms of what fidelity, and how far, they would take the Bortasqu remaster.
• An earlier version of the remaster was considered too smooth by the art team, and they asked Mauricio make it more angular.
• The Bortasqu remaster has so many details that Mauricio had to get a different importer tool to get it into the engine.
• This new importer was developed for the new Borg stuff, which likewise had so many details they couldn't import it into the engine normally. The tool is temporary until they nail down larger changes to the engine since they are currently limited on how many vertices they can import in a single file.
• There's a small reference to Jabba the Hut's temple on the top of the Bortasqu.
• Into the Hive has been disabled on PC temporarily due to an issue caused by changes made by Nick Duguid(he admits to it on the stream)
• Part of the basis behind the Borg updates they did for this release was that they wanted it all to be able to be applied to all past Borg stuff, since the Borg assets were some of the oldest assets in the game currently. They didn't want there to be this new Borg environment in the new mission, and old Borg environment in the old missions/TFOs. This meant however Nick had to work within nearly 15 years worth of artists adding to the Borg environment kit, including different file names, skill levels, etc.
• Nick has made 1,000 pieces for this new Borg kit, which he started working on in February.
• Issues he ran into included the new Borg Alcove being made of several different pieces, while the old one was a single model. He had to combine all the pieces, export it as a single object(which is where the new importer came into play) and save it down in a combined form, and save it using the old filenames, to get it to auto propagate replace the old Borg alcove. This is where several things broke, leading to into the Hive being disabled.
• All the mirror Borg stuff was lighting and material changes, which didn't get done until the last month. Nick spent most of his time working on "Prime" Borg stuff.
• Into the Hive was the map he used to show what he wanted from the lighting and environment changes they would apply to older Borg maps, since many of them needed lighting passes.
• Mirror Borg map didn't have proper lighting for most of its development. The devs just used a big overhead light in the map too see what they were doing.
• Most people think of Borg interiors as green and black, but Nick points out they have a lot more colors then that, and he wanted to add those, as well as replicate the hot, grimy, gross looking interiors they had in Voyager. Borg Cubes are supposed to have an interior temp of nearly 100F, and he wanted it to make it feel like you want to open a window in a Borg interior.
• In the Into the Hive update they showed off on stream thy mention they didn't touch any of the geometry of the map. Its all lighting, atmosphere, skyfile, changes.
• Into the Hive, Infected Ground, the Borg section in "Mindscape" and Khitomer Ground, have all gotten some lighting/atmosphere updates. Nick hopes to do more in the future. Nick spent two days doing minor prop/lighting/skyfile changes on Infected ground.
• Scot Boyd mentions that they don't really check how things look in lighting 1.0 anymore. Saying its basically "gone". They would rather put all their effort into making their stuff look the best it can be, in the new lighting system, then spend time trying to make it work with an old lighting system which can take like a week's worth of work to light in.
• When doing lighting for the mirror Borg map they used cool white spotlights to draw the player around. Nick felt the sickly yellow color in normal Borg was their thing, so wanted this cool white to contrast the red in Mirror Borg interiors.
• Scot wanted to remove one of the old Borg consoles and replace it with something new, but Nick instead revamped it to something Scot likes. The "bubble" interface seem on the consoles comes from what was seen in Voyager.
• Some of the Borg changes will propagate to Defera if its an object used in both Interior and exterior maps. Nick hopes they will get the time to redo Borg exterior map pieces at some point, which he describes as a whole different beast than interior stuff.
• Ryan, one of the designers, is the one who pushed for all the phaser blasts and dying crewmen you can hear in the Jefferies tube section, as well as many of the other environmental designs in that section.
• Environment artists typically ask for tighter/more confined spaces, but its usually design that pushes for larger areas since they need those for fights. So having a designer propose this was something of a reversal.
• Gianna is the artist who did the Jefferies Tube section. She took the wide selection of greeble assets the game had, and some bought online, and laid them out in various ways that could be used in a variety of different spaces, in a number of different combinations, to create these panels that were combined with the Fed kit Thomas built in the last few years.
• Gianna and Scot mention there's going to be something about the door labels in the tubes section that's worth replaying to see in a future update.
• The Cardassian officer who gets pulled by the Borg in the tube section is part of something Cryptic is trying to do more of, where they create more story beats without using a cutscene, like the hologram moments in V'ger with Wesley's past.
• The grating used in the tubes section is the same kind of freezer spacer grating using in TNG onward.
• Amelia, one of the character artists, did the new Borg body costumes, while Ian did stuff with the new hand attachment prosthetics.

[MrNeal]

Ten Forward weekly 9/28/23

https://www.reddit.com/r/sto/comment..._weekly_92823/

• TFW was delayed because Keal had intermittent power outages
• Avenger and Bortasqu were chosen becuase they had a pedigree(legendary ships are either ships featured as a hero ship, or featured a lot/prominently in an episode/movie), and had a lot of variant they could bundle together. Avenger, being part of the Inquiry family, fit both of those, as did the Bortasqu
• Selection started with the Bortasqu because they hadn't done a legendary version of it and it was important to Thomas they remaster it and do a legendary version, and Cryptic was aware people were a little disappointed that there hadn't been legendary Bortasqu yet/it wasn't included in the legendary Klingon bundle.
• After picking the Bortasqu Cryptic thought about what would pair well with it, and the "recently" seen new Inquiry in Picard S3, as well as that the Bortasqu and Avenger came into STO in the same relative ballpark, and the ships lore was all about the Federation/Klingon War, made it a thematic alignment.
• Jonathan has wanted to do a big beefy Klingon ship for awhile, and the Arbiter was the first thing he ever got out of the Zen store, so he has an attachment to it and wanting to do a legendary Bort. Talks about how important energy weapon cycle is to STO, and that he had a model of a Negh'var as a kid.
• Kael has passed on the question of why there are the number of tokens there are in the bundle. He imagines its deliberate.
• Kael highlights a question, "for no reason" he says, about if the Prodigy dauntless is coming to STO any time soon.
• Thomas says there is a remaster of the Exeter variant of the Connie in progress.
• When Thomas remastered the UI for LoR he chose the color scheme he chose because that was the scheme made by Mike Okuda for the Perpetual version of STO.
• Overload linked quad canons treat beam overload like fire at will so you can slap these cannons on a beam overload build and still get mileage out of them.
• Jonathan intends for this weapon trait to eventually be available elsewhere, be it an engineer-able mod or something else
• All the old Avenger/Bort consoles have had their restrictions removed.
• Jonathan mentions he will probably re-add the Bort BoP console restriction since that doesn't really work on ships outside the Bort. Though both he and Thomas do mention they could create another version of that power for other ships that causes the BoP to warp in instead.
• Jonathan says hes made some little progress on figuring out where in the game to add things like narrow angle phaser beam arrays, or the new overload linked quad. If/when they get added they won't be limited to just phaser, and will come in all weapon types.
• Jonathan is interested in adding additional mods to advanced consoles, but fears he might "troll" some people in the process who have already re-engineered them by doing so.
• Cryptic is taking a look at cloaks in STO, who is good at it, and why, and interested in tweaking some of the older content. Jonathan has an idea to help Klingon and Romulan cloaks.
• Based on something someone asked in chat Jonathan is wondering if there is any way to expose the tags of certain powers so players have greater clarity on what constitutes things like an actual "cloak" power. Kael adds it wold make it easier for item descriptions to say "effects anything with X tag".
• Jonathan finds it a compelling argument that the Scimitar/legendary Scimitar should have an enhanced battle cloak. Hes not against adding it, but afraid of opening the can of worms and having to go back through years of ships and having to adjust who gets what cloak on a ton of ships.
• Jonathan has been considering a new singularity power that buffs/synergies with cloaks, as people have been asking for a singularity power revamp.
• Kael says he will look into tailor issues on the console in regards to backgrounds being in front of player character/ships.
• There has been internal work on more BOFF powers. The main obstacle in adding more BOFF powers is that the Boff manual system is clunky nonsense that dramatically pushes up dev time.
• Jonathan looks at threads on the forums/social media sites about what powers people want added to auto execute on console. Though there's some abilities the game simply doesn't allow them to do auto execute for.
• Unlikely they will do something like a token that allows you to make non full-spec ships into full spec-ships. Jonathan isn't admits he doesn't even know enough to provide an answer to that, and that he would have to talk to the software team, which shows how big a thing that would be.
• Jonathan asks players how they feel about a recent melee weapon rework he did to make older melee weapons behave more like newer melee weapons in that you can charge/print toward enemies from a longer distance. Asks people to post on forums/social media their experiences. Jonathan says it may not have shipped to live, hes not sure due to how patch notes are sometimes truncated.
• When asked about making the character selection screen static Kael notes that they've pretty much given up all hope on messing with the character selection screen.
• New Inquiry is called the Inquiry gamma, appeared in S3 of Picard. Thomas says it might be the only ship in STO to have the history is does. The effects house that did the effects for S2/3 of Picard was different then the one that did S1. They asked Cryptic for ships to put in the show, and among STO original ships they also included the STO version of the Inquiry. the Effects house took STO's inquiry and updated it for the S3 Inquiry, which is now being added to STO.
• Changes the effects house made include: Removed big windows on the side(still there as an element just not lit up), added an actual deflector dish(compared to the grill the original had), added more detail, changed some proportions to the hull is a bit smaller.
• All changes were done to the STO model Cryptic gave them, and they kept things like the UV layout Cryptic uses, the materials Cryptic used(though they added a lighter material). Because of this, when Cryptic got the model they went "ohh, we can just put this in the game". The STO model for the Inquiry gamma is the one used on the show. Cryptic didn't ave to rebuild it/change it or anything. They could just put it in the game.
• Cryptic did add a few little details. edited the "shelf" where the saucer met the hull to be a bit more purposeful, made the nacelles a bit fatter in the middle, and made the color lighter to fit with the general fleet colors.
• Brian(a VFX supervisor on Picard S2/3) was in the chat and gave some of the above info about what they changed. He was heavily responsible for helping get STO ships into Picard S2/3.
• Remastered Inquiry doesn't replace the skin on the Inquiry the player can call in as a power as that was meant to evoke a scene from Picard S1 which used the old look. Thomas says while the new look could be considered a retcon in the show, it can also be considered a new variant, and he doesn't want to take anything away from people who might want/use that.
• Original version of the ship was designed by John Eaves as a design for the original version of STO by Perpetual that was later dusted off by John for Picard S1.
• Cryptic alerted to NCC being backwards on Inquiry nacelle.
• Thomas tries to be strategic when making ships/redoing ship art. Legendary variants give an easy way to remaster old ships, but they have to scope the new variant a little light so they can spend the bulk of the time remastering the old ship if it needs it.
• While the Avenger isn't canon Thomas considers it very important to STO's history. It was the first Fed Battle cruiser, it was an early T5 ship in the Zen store, and was part of helping set the visual design of ships in STO going forward. So it was important to Thomas to bring it inline to modern STO visual quality, and remasters like the Odyssey.
• Odyssey and Avenger are from the same era of STO/setting the visual design for STO ships. The Oddy remaster gave Thomas a blueprint on how to remaster the Avenger/other ships from that era of the game to make them feel cohesive.
• Mauricio remastered both the Bortasqu and the Avenger. Mauricio brought a lot of surface features from the Oddy revamp and brought them into the Avenger revamp.
• When making ships Cryptic doesn't want them to feel like video game assets. The artists think about what he can add to make them feel like it was in the ILM workshop as if they made it for one of the shows/movies.
• Brian complemented the new Avenger and says "Thomas and crew spend a lot of time really thinking Federation Future and the design theory of it all"
• For the legendary Bortasqu Cryptic decided to take the Kronos One variant they did for the K't'inga class, with all the livery that made it stand out as basically being a Klingon "air force one", and apply that here like they did for the T6 Vo'devwl.
• Thomas liked the idea of that style switching ships to whatever ship the Klingon Chancellor is currently using, like how ever version of Air Force One uses the same paint scheme.
• Another reason to do this was because it gave them time to remaster the original Bortasqu. Had they done a completely new skin for the legendary they wouldn't have had time to remaster the original. It was important to Thomas that they remaster the Bortasqu given its place as the Klingon flagship since its introduction back in 2012.
• The filigree used on the Bortasqu remaster is the same used on all the other Kronos one variants.
• Thomas says they likely won't do a Kronos One variant B'rell.
• Comes with a new material based on the Vor'cha and Vo'devwl, with a slightly different green color palette to it that's based on the original Klingon type 3 material that the Bortasqu used previously.
• Jonathan comments on people wondering why it wasn't a Jugg, or something similar, and he says they try to not change the class. So its a battle cruiser because the old one was a battle cruiser.
• Ship has a very cannon friendly layout, but the seating/stats make it good as a torpedo boat, so it can do both.
• No hanger on the ship because Jonathan wasn't aware there was a lot of player feedback regarding wanting a hanger on the ship.
• Rapid fire linked disruptor canons cause rapid fire cooldown reduction when getting kills.
• Bort got 4 device slots because one of the older versions had it, and it felt like a little bit of sugar to give the ship.

[Sorotia]

They try not to change the class....except it's okay when it's a Fed ship, which they've done numerous times

[MrNeal]

Ten Forward Weekly 10/24/23

https://www.reddit.com/r/sto/comment...weekly_102423/

• Cryptic has specific data that shows them that when they ask players to play evil characters, and create character that only have evil choices, nobody wants to do that. Which is why they wont make an "evil faction" like Terrans for STO.
• Unlikely to make any new factions for STO in the foreseeable future.
• Updating older uniforms to be more in line with current ones in terms of quality/color options is a time thing, and they have to balance between updating older stuff and making newer stuff.
• When asked about the recent speculation about staff, Kael says there have been no changes to any of the teams at Cryptic, and, as we can see, he is still employed there also.
• Additionally, when asked about STO, Kael says there is nothing to suggest STO/Neverwinter/Champions is going anywhere. Kael believes STO has another 10-15 years in it.
• Keal believes there is likely a rights issue with the Protostar, which is why you can't 3D print it.
• Kael passed along the list of irreclaimable items from Zen store packs to the team, and will follow up on it.
• When asked about T6/Legendary versions of the Dysons, Kael says last time he talked to Thomas he(Thomas) had plans to make every ship to T6. So it will likely happen at some point.
• Kael asked one of the programmers about more ship zoom options for consoles. what he was told was that ship zoom options are different for every ship, so if there are ships people have trouble with(zooms to far in or out) go on the forums and make a list of them. Someone in chat mentioned a workaround where you plug a keyboard into your console and use the page down key to get more zoom out on ships.
• Vault bug fix should be hitting console soon as its already fixed on PC.
• Keal will pass along a request for the Klingon torps from the Motion Picture.
• Kael doesn't know of any immediate plans to bring any any of the new ships from Star Trek Infinity.
• Moopsy combat pet was requested by pretty much everyone. Even people who work on Neverwitner messaged Kael asking about if its possible. Kael has passed on how big of a demand it is.
• Now that they know the door is open for it its likely we will see more items from older Trek games added into STO. Kael isn't aware of anything in the works right now.
• Its possible to get ships from the Ships of the Line calendars. Kael will mention the Bonaventure to the team.
• After Halloween event ends the "The Feast" event is coming back on PC with Red Alert in between.
• Current storyline is planned to run though the 15th anniversary.
• Always a chance we will see the Picard leather jacket uniforms. Keal isn't aware of them doing it currently however.
• Its unlikely Kael will ever be able to talk about the non-Trek crossover that STO almost did, and why it fell through. Mentions something like Doctor Who would've stood out as non Trek, but that the crossover that almost happened would've fit in well. Says its a movie people say is one of the better Star Trek movies... without being a Star Trek movie.
• Unlikely Cryptic will ever make a token that lets you upgrade specialist seating to its highest possible rank(someone asked in chat)
• DSC Andorians are still being worked on in the artists free time.
• Kael hopes/is pushing for a remaster of the removed Klingon War episodes. The people who decide these things mostly want to work on new stories.
• Unlikely to get new bridges if they have to include ready rooms. that was a compromise they had to make with the new bridges. Either put them out as is, or wait for an environment artists to get free time to make new ready rooms for them which could be possibly never. When discussion was going internally about the new bridges it was Kael who argued that people would rather have the bridges, minutes the Ready Room, then not have the bridges at all.
• Weapon overrides are a sticky issue. Way back in the day Paramount said no. Kael doesn't know if that's still an issue today, but due to that initial no the game was coded in such a way that makes it difficult to switch weapon visuals. Every weapon has its effect individually coded to that weapon. So its not that the weapon is calling from an effect from a list that can be easily redirected to some other effect.
• Unlikely Cryptic will go back and revamp every old interior. It isn't as simple as just port over the new assets, would have to rebuild most of them from scratch.
• Kael isn't sure that they have anything special for DSC's final season in Jan. STO isn't matching up as much with the shows at this point.
• VFX issues have been talked about internally. Kael will bring it up again.
• Kael will pass on requests for a non tanker D5.
• Unlocking hanger pets from older ships is a case by case thing.
• Unlikely any new kind of Foundry system to be made. Kael mentions you would likely need people in the core engineering team interested in bringing it back, and he feels like they probably only remember it as being a pain to fix.
• Kael has been pushing to be able to use any bridge on any ship you own. Hes not sure if it will ever be something they do/how easy it would be to do.
• More TFOs should be getting advanced/Elite options soon. Kael has brought it up multiple times.
• Kael will mention to the team about making the available tab arcs(Lost Dominion, Cold War, Skirmish) available at chronological levels if you already have a level 65 on your account.
• Mirror Borg are likely to come back in the new episode in January.
• There's been a few attempts over the years to bring back "different option based on carrier" stuff in missions, but the team has mainly moved into everyone having the same stuff.
• Kael will ask about being able to save DOFF filter settings.
• Elachi ships in Picard S3 were taken from a list of STO alien ships Paramount asked for before the season started.
• STO is not one of the companies being striked against by SAG, so they should be in the clear.
• Cryptic would love to let players mix/match things like beam ups/warp outs. But its a big technical issue.
• Kael doesn't know the reasoning behind why they don't do advanced/elite TFOs for events, would have to ask why, and if its possible to allow them for events. He thinks it has to do with keeping it accessible to everyone, and not having to deal with different rewards for different levels, etc.
• Kael believes the chances are much higher of a playable Borg Assimilator compared to a Borg Cube.
• Kael has seen the new Christmas Sweaters and he thing they're very good.
• Ship coming up next month players are going to like. Its an older ship, and a very cool design.
• Kael/the devs would love to write move fiction blogs, but no one really has the time to do it anymore.
• One of the things the team was thinking about when designing the Harmony(new alien ship in the Guillotine TFO) is it being player usable.
• There is a certain pushback from Trek purists in the team in regards to TOS aliens. So Kael doesn't believe that will ever happen.
• Kael says there hasn't been any discussion on fleet things like expanding roster size(someone in chat asked about it) in awhile. Asks to let him know if its an issue.

[Heyallo]

Updating older uniforms to be more in line with current ones in terms of quality/color options is a time thing, and they have to balance between updating older stuff and making newer stuff.

YEY! At least they're finally thinking about/looking at it

Moopsy combat pet was requested by pretty much everyone. Even people who work on Neverwitner messaged Kael asking about if its possible. Kael has passed on how big of a demand it is.

LOL! WANT!

also, moopsy. (for those of you who haven't seen it, here's a couple videos)

[Petrarch]

They referenced 2 ships in the stream I heard, so lets engage in some idle speculation:

One was mentioned as an upcoming ship next month that players are going to like, so logic would suggest it'll be the final promo/infinity ship for 2023 as they usually put one out around this time. Given that it's popular and has been asked for, I'm hoping it's going to be this as that would open it up for claiming in next years event:

Attachment 18558

They also referenced the winter ship as being an "older ship with a very cool design" - realistically this could be anything from any source, but if we stick with canon designs and think back to the Eisenberg being given as the reward one year, the one below would fit the bill:

Attachment 18559

That's the USS Credence that appeared briefly in Discovery Season 4 and with a registry of NCC-2604, it definitely fits the old part (the cool part could be argued, but it's certainly different) and the design is very unusual. It was designed by Lee Fitzgerald who made it to have 6 nacelles & 2 saucers each with their own bridge and was intended for another episode, but it was scrapped and re-used in a different one instead.