Viscous Cycle

With Season 9: A New Accord, we have seen an escalation in the war of the Alpha/Beta Quadrant races against the Undine. Much of this war plays out in the queued events created specifically for this Season, Undine Assault and Undine Infiltration, as well as in the Battlezone within the Dyson Sphere.

In Undine Assault and the Battlezone, the new Undine Planet Killer is in the spotlight. This ship is a huge threat, capable of immense destruction on a scale that Starfleet or the KDF haven’t dealt with before. With the growing threat of Planet Killers coming from Fluidic space, Admiral Tuvok has authorized a plan to assault at the shipyards that are building these Planet Killers and launching them into normal space.

This strike is referred to as Operation: Viscous Cycle. It refers to the viscous nature of Fluidic space and the cycle of growing and launching Planet Killers from their well-defended shipyards. Intelligence divisions in Starfleet, the KDF, as well as the Romulan Republic have shared information and determined how to best destroy these Planet Killers while in their growing Proto state.

When you first arrive in Fluidic Space, you will notice that there is now an ebb and flow to the currents ever present in this area. Your ship will gently rock to-and-fro, but improving your Reputation with the 8472 Counter-Command will allow you to offset some of this rocking motion and drift that your ships are subjected to.

8472 Counter-Command has a group of specialized commandos with extensive training fighting Undine and fighting in Undine structures and ships. Your ships are carrying platoons of these commandos and their commander will guide you through the raid.

Each shipyard is laid out similarly. Grown from a substance that could best be described as coral, there are three chimney-like structures surrounding a three sided maw. The Proto-Planet Killer is contained within this maw, and you and your strike team are tasked with taking three of these out before you return to normal space.

Opening the maw is accomplished by beaming over your counter-commandos to the chimney structure where they will fight their way to a point where they can open the maw and expose the Proto-Planet Killer. You’ll see Transport icons over the chimneys reminding you that you will need to beam them in from those locations. There is a small chance that a maw cannot be opened via the counter-commandos. If this happens, there will be a weak point within the chimney itself for your team to destroy.

There are three shipyards to deal with, and each is slightly different. Observant Captains will be able to understand how to best tackle each shipyard, as they all require different take on the basic strategy to defeat.

These shipyards are well defended. Scattered around the shipyards are dormant Undine ships that are also being grown here. They will launch in order to protect their Planet Killers until they can reach full maturity. However, there are clusters of egg-like structures near the shipyards as well. These are Undine larvae, the most basic forms of their ships. If the strike teams are exceptionally quick at destroying the Proto-Planet Killers at a shipyard, these larvae will sense the threat and burst from their eggs in an attempt to flee the area. The strike team is encouraged to use powers like Fire at Will and Cannon Spread to destroy as many of these larvae as they can before they have a chance of growing into larger, more threatening, ships.

During your daring raid, certain optional objectives will appear. It’s up to you and your team if you decide that completing these objectives is worth the time and effort, but doing so will increase your final score and earn you more Undine or Fleet marks as your reward.

This vicious cycle will repeat itself as new Planet Killers are grown and need to be destroyed before they can threaten the worlds in normal space. Captains from Starfleet, the KDF, and the Romulan Republic are encouraged to queue up, form their strike teams and start taking the fight to the Undine.

We look forward to seeing you in-game!

Matt “STODecker” Miller

Content Designer

Star Trek Online



Season 9 Dev News Blog Index