Star Trek Online has been live for just over seven years at this point, during which time we have been adding and updating new content to play, new systems to interact with, and new mechanics to utilize. Now, we are excited to announce that one major project going on is a re-balancing of a great number of the abilities and items that players use in combat.

Given the opportunity to make such drastic changes to Star Trek Online’s experience, it was important to setup some guiding principles to ensure that the game, as much as possible, only gets better.

The goals boil down to these:

• Increase the fun – Games are about having fun, and players should not be made to feel that their fun is “wrong.”
• Player investment retains value – While things need to be adjusted, a setup that was optimized before should still be useful and effective afterwards.
• Choices should be meaningful – Anywhere the game gives you a choice, there should be no choice that you always take nor one you never take.

One of the great strengths of Star Trek Online’s combat system is how expansive it is, and the freedom it gives players to choose the combinations of items and abilities that gives them the playstyle that they want. The vast number of choices already in-game means that as we re-visit the utility and strength of various options, players will have the opportunity to re-discover a lot of abilities and items they may have cast aside, and some things that you already use should become a lot more fun and enjoyable to use.

The immediate changes being made are to ground combat, with a bigger set of space changes coming to Tribble in the near future. As a preview, some of the changes coming to ground include:

• A stealth module re-design to improve its general usefulness and unique feel. In its re-designed state, when you activate stealth module, you become cloaked; after a short duration, you can attack, gaining a damage buff while attacking from behind that lasts the duration the stealth buff would have, but ending the stealth early.
• Your captain now uses a combadge to communicate - many of the Command kit modules that used to just affect an area near you now affect your entire team, no matter how far!
• Tactical Initiative has also received a few changes - it now lasts longer, but cannot have its cooldown reduced, and only affects the caster’s kit modules. Those changes are intended to make it so that the Tactical Initiative remains valuable to use while active, but changes the amount of performance spike that non-tactical captains get due to tactical captains, and ensures that non-kit abilities designed around a long cooldown retain that balance point.
• Security Escorts should now be more useful while in combat– they now move faster to keep up with you better, and hit harder while out, but in return players are limited to one pair at a time.

This is just a short list of some of the changes being made to ground – a Tribble patch shortly will have the full list and details. Keep your eyes peeled for that patch, and a blog talking about some of the bigger changes to space balance that will be coming soon!

John “CrypticSpartan” Leavens

Associate Systems Designer

Star Trek Online