Category: Articles

The Kobayashi Maru Event!

PC Captains of all three factions will get to face Starfleet’s most infamous test, the Kobayashi Maru, this weekend! — Star Trek Online

 

Source: The Kobayashi Maru Event! | Star Trek Online

We finally get to go where everyone has wanted to go without realizing it–into the Kobayashi Maru simulator! The nacelles-as-cargo-pods kitbash is a little odd, but I really shouldn’t complain; Cryptic’s reusing the utterly gorgeous reskin of the Reliant. Many if not all of the parts for the TNG kit bashes are available, as are some really sexy modernized parts created by Cryptic for the T6 Reliant–best nacelles EVAR! So much Space Barbie fun!

The Constitution also got long-needed TLC including the pilot version and an utterly gorgeous reskinned Enterprise Refit. The pearlescent tiled hull and those swept-back struts still make me sigh. Do I love the k’t’inga more? An impossible question! But there’s no doubting Thomas Marrone‘s love of his work and his subject:

Alas, a T6 Connie is not something I possess, but I did unlock the T2 Excalibur which can wear the Connie Refit skin so I may have to tool around in sector space with her. OK, I admit it. If you saw me in sector space with an original Connie, that was the T1 Constitution from buying the game pre-launch. I’ll still run her on one of my duty assignment alts, but now I have to decide: pilot or series nacelles?

Poor Impulse (Engine) Control: @trekonlinegame’s third expansion, Agents of Yesterday, approaches!

Star Trek Online‘s next expansion, Agents of Yesterday (AoY), goes where we’ve all gone before, into The Past. It’s 50 years since The Original Series (TOS) first aired, and STO’s paying tribute by adding a new faction and episodes squarely set in the “Wild West” period of the Star Trek universe.

Pinoeer, the new starter ship, is a TOS version somewhere between NX-01 and Reliant
Starship Porn: Pioneer, the new starter ship, combines bits of the original Connie,  NX-01, and Reliant. It’s best viewed from behind, but I’ll leave that as an in-game pleasure for you”shuttle bay” aficionados out there.

When the new episodes arrived on the test server in their current “diamond in the rough” state, I swore I’d do the tutorial and no more. That was easy at first because a bug half-way through prevented completing the tutorial. But that got fixed, so last night I thought I’d finish the tutorial, quietly put AoY back in its virtual box, and get to bed early. So of course I stayed up late and finished all the new episodes. Ugh, it’s the same kind of post-binge-eating guilt that leaves me feeling both satisfied and ashamed.

STO producer and shamelessly hard-core TOS fan Maria Rosseau talked with Trek.fm about the loving attention to detail–and sometimes lack of detail–it took to get the look and feel right [TREK NEWS AND VIEWS 103: PUTTING THE TOS IN STO]. AoY doesn’t attempt to improve on or reimagine TOS through the eyes of STO or all the Trek that followed it; that’s created some controversy in the STO community among players who can’t look beneath the veneer of TOS being a late-sixties TV program that sometimes viewed the future through groovy-colored glasses. I’ll gladly take another dose of go-go boots and space hippies and 23rd Century Gorn fashion over this year’s dreadful installment from that talentless hack. Set phasers to groovy and full speed ahead!

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