Daron Stinnett and Star Trek Online

Daron Stinnett, executive producer of Perpetual Entertainment‘s Star Trek Online, was recently interviewed on MMORPG.com’s weekly podcast regarding the game’s progress so far. A lot was said regarding space and ground-based combat, setting, and various characters from the TV series making cameos.

Development-wise, he says that so far they’ve already managed to get the game to show worlds to fly around in and walk around in, and characters up and running around. He says that they’re spending a lot of time now working on their combat system and fine-tuning it.

Get to read more about gameplay, setting, and some geek-out rumors after the Jump!

Daron Stinnett, executive producer of Perpetual Entertainment‘s Star Trek Online, was recently interviewed on MMORPG.com’s weekly podcast regarding the game’s progress so far. A lot was said regarding space and ground-based combat, setting, and various characters from the TV series making cameos.

Development-wise, he says that so far they’ve already managed to get the game to show worlds to fly around in and walk around in, and characters up and running around. He says that they’re spending a lot of time now working on their combat system and fine-tuning it.

The Gameplay
Expect a more action-RPG orientation when it comes to ground combat. When it comes to space combat and space exploration, they’re thinking up a system that will allow you to treat a ship as if it is a mount. You can “level-up” that ship, power it up, or get a new ship as your character improves.

According to him, they’re trying to make sure that the pacing of ground and space combat is different. Ground-combat should generally have you encounter more enemies and things should move at a faster action-packed pace. Images of all that ducking, pointing, and shooting the actors did in the TV show come to mind.

Space combat should move slower, but given that you’re using large capital ships, you should be able to take a lot more damage, and at the same time deal a lot more damage. Overall they plan a 50/50 balance between space and ground gameplay.

He says that fundamentally RPGs are about building up a character, and in that theme, they’re trying to make the system a lot of fun for the average player, but still deep enough to engage the more hardcore of folks. Oh, and for you hardcore folks out there, they’ve got something called “war games” set up that will supposedly allow players to have a casual PVP match anywhere.

They’re also thinking of a better mission system for Star Trek. According to him missions that have you ‘Go out and find 10 Romulan scalps and return them for this reward won’t cut it. They need better writing and better scenarios that will allow players to succeed in ways other than just blowing/blasting something up.

The Setting
The game is set around 20-25 years after the last movie (Star Trek: Nemesis), and according to him they’ve been given artistic and thematic freedom throughout the game. They basically got license to set up the mood and create their own words, and a whole new feel.

Hopefully, they’ll stay true to the themes that were prevalent in canon. What? They’ll have you run around ignoring the prime directive?

Now, for those of you who really, really really want to play a Klingon, or a Romulan, or dare say a Borg, because of the time-line that they’ve got, they were able to set up a a faction system that will allow you to be part of different factions and still be part of the Federation.

Sorry boys and girls, you really have to be part of the Federation… if you’re not, it might throw their rank/training/mission/rewards system into a mess. Well, not really a mess, but they just wanted to use and capitalize on that aspect of the Federation.

Now for the geek-out topics.
Yes, they’ve got a list of people(actors of the characters from the shows) they plan to get involved in the game. No negotiations yet, but they’ve got a list, and some plans, so expect to see some cameos.

Yes, they’ve also heard of rumors of a new TV/Movie coming out for the Star Trek universe. They only know as much as we do, but supposedly, they’ve been told that their product (Star Trek Online) will serve as sort of a prequel to the new TV/Movie project. Here’s what he said:

to be honest, we know about as much as you do and everybody else out there does from reading news on the Internet, but sounds like for now anyway it’s planned to be a prequel, so it’ll be way hundreds of years out of our way. So that’s just all good, because that gives us the opportunity to incorporate some of the things – the potential to incorporate things from the movie without having to deal with potentially being in conflict with the story they’re coming up with.

Prequel huh? Cool.

Via STOGalaxy