Bridge Officers (Ships)

Bridge Officers play a key role in how any ship performs. The player can assign his Officers to specific stations on a given ship. These stations can be Science, Tactical or Engineering stations, and ships of different type favor stations of a specific type, as well. Science ships focus their stations on Science, Escort ships on Tactical and Cruisers on Engineering. The more advanced the ship, the larger number of Bridge Officer stations there are (generally).

The stations, like Bridge Officers, are ranked: Ensign, Lieutenant, Lieutenant Commander and Commander. A Bridge Officer can only access his skills that correspond to the rank of the station at which he’s positioned. For instance, if an Engineering Officer is a Commander but stationed at a Lieutenant Commander’s station on a ship, he’d only have access to his Ensign, Lieutenant and Lieutenant Commander skills. With this in mind, the way a player configures his bridge can dramatically affect gameplay, even on the same ship.

Ships in Star Trek Online are as much a part of your avatar as your captain or Bridge Officers. They’re highly customizable, both cosmetically and functionally. Visiting a ship “tailor” will allow you to change the color of your ship, the nacelles, the neck and/or nacelle pylons, its saucer, its name, its registry number and so on. And since ships have paperdolls and Bridge Officer stations, the decisions you make in how you outfit the ship’s weaponry, impulse engines, shields, deflector dish and mods guarantee your gameplay experience will be unique to other players, but at the same time still feel like Star Trek.

Players are awarded ships by Starfleet as they progress in rank and invest skill points in piloting the ships they’d like to fly.

Once players reach the rank of Lieutenant Commander, they’re able to begin choosing from three separate types of ship: Science vessels, Escorts and Cruisers. These ships differ from each other in a number of ways:

• Bridge Officer station arrangement. Science vessels favor Science Officer stations, Escorts favor Tactical Officer stations and Cruisers favor Engineering Officer stations.
• Utility. Science vessels are innately able to detect cloaked ships and are specialized in subsystem targeting. Cruisers have lots of crew, repair very quickly and lots of power to distribute across their subsystems. Escorts are the gunboats of the Federation fleet; they maneuver quickly and can equip cannons.
• Size. Cruisers tend to be larger and less maneuverable than other ships. Escorts are smaller but nimble and feature a lot of firepower for their size. Science vessels typically fall in the middle.
• Weapons capabilities. Cruisers, since they’re larger ships, have more gun bays. Escort ships can outfit high-damage cannon weapons, which other ships cannot. Science vessels are less weapon-focused but offer other capabilities and bonuses such as more powerful deflector beams, tractor beams and sensors.
• Crew complement. Larger ships have larger crews, which affects hull and subsystem repair rate, as well as the effectiveness of boarding parties, the engineering team and crew-based skills your captain may have.
• Modification slots. Similar to Bridge Officer stations, the different ships have varying room for special modifications that can be added to the ship to increase its effectiveness. Similar to slotted gems in other games, mods provide small passive bonuses that affect gameplay and can be interchanged at will.

The differentiation isn’t just between the Escort/Cruiser/Science categories, but each individual configuration within those offers disparate settings for players to choose between.