With the Iconian War coming to a close for Star Trek Online and preparations being made at Cryptic Studios for beginning Season 11, New Dawn, we had the opportunity to sit down and discuss things with Executive Producer Steve Ricossa.

While the Iconian War is ending, the actual Iconian story will remain available for new (and returning) players to STO as part of a Story Arc, comprising of some 80 hours of content that can be played back-to-back, rather than having to wait the five years the saga originally played out over.

For those who’d rather skip to the conclusion, Ricossa shared that this would be possible as well since you only have to play the first handoff mission in every arc which is usually a little short five minute mission.

Season 11 – The Upcoming Story

Which brings us into the opening act of Season 11, “The Mirror Universe also had an Iconian war. We don’t know if they won or they lost but either way it doesn’t mean good things for us”, Ricossa shared. “So they’re invading the Deep Space Nine region of the Badlands and we’re going to learn how the Iconian War went for them and what that means for everyone in our side of the galaxy.”

At the forefront of this Mirror Universe storyline will be Chase Masterson, reprising her role as the voice of Leeta, but this time for the Mirror version. “Mirror Leeta is going to be our headlining actor, we got a few people reprising their roles for the Iconian War finale, so a bunch of names there but for Season 11 it’s going to be Leeta and then a couple of characters from some other episodes but no-one as big as Leeta”.

As to the New Dawn story arc that will emerge, the player will be undertaking a First Contact mission on a brand new planet. Ricossa elaborated, “It’s not going to be anything from the show, but we are introducing a new planet as part of the story arc. We’re going to meet a new species, it’s been a long time since we’ve done that. So, that episode is very cool – how we discover them, and where they are at with their civilization. We have some pretty cool story missions lined up for everybody.”

The new species are bipedal humanoids, only just warp capable, and have yet to take any steps to really explore the universe around them.

If this sound idyllic compared to the recent galactic war, it will probably pay us not to become to complacent. “We kind of introduced time travel with the Iconian War. We made it a little more ubiquitous, a little more out there.” Ricossa explained, “So there’s going to be some fallout for that and so there’s going to be a little bit more time travel in these coming storylines and it’s going to lead into some larger implications of time travel”

He also teased the forthcoming appearance of a mysterious stranger, “That character is someone that you’ve seen in Star Trek before and we’re tying him to another mysterious character you’ve seen in Star Trek before. So we’re answering stories from the episodes which is what we like to do and he is the one who is going to draw the attention of something that is going to take us through that new story line.”

Plus, all is not well for the Alliance forged in the heat of war. With no common enemy to keep them united, old tensions will be set to arise.

New Feature – Admiralty System

The launch of Season 11 will see the introduction of a brand new feature – the Admiralty System.

“The Admiralty System is really exciting to us, it’s something we were really smiling over when we were designing it.”, Ricossa shared. “It gave us an opportunity to kind of look at a system like the Duty Officer System and say if we were able to make something like this from scratch over again what would we do?”

“It’s similar to the Duty Officer system in that you’re sending things to get things but the moment to moment where you’re making decisions on what ships to send is far more important because there are significantly less ships and the requirements for the mission can be fairly specific.”

“So players want to pay more attention while slotting their ships and, of course, because you’ve got to send a ship (and ships are far harder to come by than a Duty Officer for rewards) the options for rewards are significantly better than those offered by the Duty Officer system as well.”

The Admiralty System unlocks when you become an Admiral, around level 52, where you will now get the true “Admiral Experience”, by sending your old ships on assignments. While you won’t be at risk to lose any ships while they are on assignment, they will be subject to cooldown conditions to prevent sending your best ship on every run.

Of course, this may not be the wisest course of action in any event, with assignments subjected to Hazards. “We haven’t talked about this yet but there are these things called Hazards that are random, so you might do the same diplomacy mission three times – one time it’ll just be a diplomacy mission, the next time there’ll be pirates and that’ll change the requirements for the mission. Or there’s a graviton anomaly and that will also change the requirements for the mission. So maybe you want to send an Escort instead of a Cruiser or a Science ship instead of an Escort depending upon how you proceed”

Ricossa then went on to elaborate that even the same type of ship at the same tier will differ in stats, “Based on IP and ingame reasons they will have different stats even across the same tier of the same type – for example the Cruisers at Tier Four will be different from each other.”

“We wanted to make sure each ship feels unique, and each ship has it’s own stats so that way you are easily able to make a meaningful choice while you’re slotting your ships into these assignments.”

Completing assignments will contribute to a new reward track, called a Tour of Duty, that can be filled over a number of days to earn a unique reward. Each Tour of Duty gives a different reward, that can be repeated – a small number of Tours will be available at launch, “We’re shooting for more than one Tour of Duty, we have a number internally but I’d like to make sure we hit it before we quote anything but we definitely want more than one at launch. Single digits, but more than one”, Ricossa confided.

With the beginning of a brand new story arc, that even new players will be able to jump into, plus the lure of new unique rewards for existing players, it is safe to say that New Dawn will see a healthy rise in activity for Star Trek Online.