Engineering Report - June 11, 2010

[dstahl]

For more information about Engineering Reports, see the "What are Engineering Reports?" thread at the top of the Forum.
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Greetings!

Wow! Its been a while since the last report and during that time we've released update 1.2 with the new squad leading and accolade features, made some sweeping balance changes, and yours truly became a Father for the first time. Lots of changes indeed.

The first thing you are wondering is the very thing I've been following up on this week - where is update 1.3 and what is going on with the Season 2 update? This report has the answers for those questions.

Season 1.2 spent more time in testing this time around and as such ended up shipping earlier this month instead of the end of May. There were a few things that turned up during testing that preventing some of our intended features from making that build, Episode Replay and the Caitians. Episode replay was intended to ship with squad leading so that you could go back and play older episodes with a team at any level. When we started testing this, it proved challenging to get it to work and feel right. It works well with one person, but if you have a team and they are different levels and some of them have squad leveled to the team leader, but the team leader decided to replay the episode at a lower level... it got a bit wonky. So we're still working on ways to make that better and will release it once we're happy with how its working. The Caitians fell prey once again to the fact that the character art team has a ton of work on their plate with Season 2 and the cats just weren't ready for prime time yet (but they are in internal testing so they're almost here).

So what about update 1.3? With Season 2 looming in July, and 1.2 having just shipped this month, we made the decision that the game will better served if we combine 1.3 into Season 2.0 and work to get that full update onto Tribble as soon as possible instead of trying to get 1.3 up later this month, and then Season 2 after that. Getting Season 2 onto Tribble sooner than later will give you more time to check it out and provide valuable feedback and testing of the content before it goes live in July. So that's the plan. No more 1.3 update. Instead, get 1.3 into 2.0 and get 2.0 to you ASAP. The sooner we do that, the sooner we can ship Season 2.

Now on to the latest report!

In Testing

• Veteran Rewards
• Fleet Action Level Banding Fixes
• Fed Playable Species: Caitians
• Season 2.0 (see list below)

Under Investigation

• Galaxy X Referral Reward Claim Issue
• Some Accolades not granting properly
• Away Team behavior / ignoring commands / aggro issues / selection
• Sometimes being unable to train an officer till you zone
• Inconsistencies in what Captain Skills are trainable
• Exchange search and expiration issues
• Kits with incorrect MK number
• Similar kit power stacking
• Weapons disappearing during combat
• Camera clipping through your ship hull
• Several missions not completing properly for someplayers
• Deepspace encounters do not always have safe spawn points
• Borgified planets without Borg in B'Tran
• Exploration Mission Tracker Issues
• Orbital Strike
• Motion Accelerator
• Empty PVP maps
• Sniper shot rooting players to the ground
• Minor injuries not healing after 30 mins

In Development
Season 2.0
The following features are schedule to release with 2.0, but keep in mind that there is always a chance a feature may get postponed to a later update.

• Rank up to 51 (Vice Admiral/Lieutenant General)
• - New Captain Power
• - Rank 5 Ship Reward (Special T5 Ship)
• - Mark XI Gear
• Player Ship Interiors (FED and KLG)
• - Select between 3 layouts
• - Make Consumables Mini-Game
• - Trophy Case
• - New Ship Interior Designs
• - Sliding Doors
• Anomaly Scanning Mini-Game
• - chance for additional anomalies
• Dabo MiniGame
• - Holo Leeta Dabo Girl
• - Gold Pressed Latinum Item Store
• Klingon PVE
• - 8 New Klingon Episodes
• - New Enemy Group unique to the Klingon Faction
• Weekly Episodes - Series 1
• - Weekly Story Advancement Mission
• - Scales to all levels
• - Episodes available to FED and KLG
• - New Enemy Group Faction
• Level 46-51 Sector (FED and KLG)
• - 5 New Episodes
• - New Level 53 Fleet Action
• - New Daily Fleet Actions for Level 51
• - Run STFs at Level 51
• Federation Diplomatic Corps
• - Earn FDC-XP for non-combat gameplay
• - New First Contact Missions in Exploration Sectors
• - 4 New non-combat missions
• - New Rewards at each rank
• Klingon Costume Customization Updates
• Trade Commissioned Officers
• Fleet Logos
• Fleet Action Level Banding Changes
• Global Help Chat Channel
• New Exploration Enemy Ship Designs
• New Wildlife Creatures
• Gamepad/Controller Support

Season 2.X
The following features may or may not make it into Season 2.0 and if not would be added to a later update.

• Episode Replay
• Stores that allow you to obtain "random" Bridge Officers
• Sitting in Chairs Tech
• Controller Support
• New Memory Alpha Items
• Poker MiniGame
• STF - Into the Hive
• Older Science Consoles Refit
• Daily Mission Re-Scoping

Upcoming C-Store Release
Not everything planned for the upcoming C-Store is listed below and dates are tentative

Pack 7 - June 15

• KLG Bridge Pack - Raptor
• FED Costume Pack - DS9
• FED Costume Pack - MU
• FED Costume Pack - TNG
• FED COstume Pack - TOS
• FED Costume Pack - Wrath of Khan
• FED Light Cruiser - TOS USS Enterprise
• FED NX Ship Registry Prefix
• FED Playable Fed Species: "Caitian" (crossing fingers)
• FED/KLG Playable Species: "Joined Trill"
• FED Borg Bridge Officer
• KLG Borg Bridge Officer
• KLG Pet - "Targ"
• Emote - Bloodwine
• Emote - Khan
• "Rivera" Tribble

Pack 8 - July 1

• KLG Bridge Pack - Cruiser
• Fed Playable Species: "Rigelian"

Future Packs (After Season 2 launch)

• New Off-Duty Costumes Types
• - Merc Outfits
• - Formal Wear
• New Ships
• New Species

Tribble Test Server
Many updates and fixes in the "in testing" section are available for you to check out for yourself on the Tribble Test Server. For a full list of fixes in testing - please refer to the latest Tribble Release Notes.

Keep in mind that not all things we are working on are listed above. See something you're curious about not listed? Check the Calendar first.

Otherwise respond below so we can investigate.

[Kandorous]

Awesome report. I'm looking forward to Season 2 even more now.

[ThomastheCat]

This all looks great. Sorry to hear about the mission replay difficulties, I do hope you guys can figure out a way to get it to work well.

Love that latinum will be a form of currency, and nice to see the addition of formal outfits down the road.

Also, of course, curious about the minigames.

Another thing I'm not clear on - does the XP we get from Diplomacy mission still count towards skill points in terms of how we level up our characters? It'd be a shame if we still had to do combat grind to increase in actual rank.

[personae]

Sad to see the Exclusives hitting the C-Store so soon. It makes me feel so valued as a supporter of your products. Very disappointing.

[Fractal_Eye]

Awesome! Welcome back, dstahl! I hope you're getting at least some sleep, what with the new baby and all. Congrats!

I figured you guys decided to roll 1.3 in to 2.0, and I'm cool with that. And, great googly-moogly! That's a lot of *nice* things In Development!

I can't wait for the new cap, enemy, and weekly/new episodes. The consumables and anomaly mini-games sound intriguing, along with Leeta & Dabo (and poker, of course!).

I'm also *extremely* interested in the trading Bridge Officers and Episode Replay (I hope you guys can get that in before 2.X, really; I've been looking forward to that since I reached the cap with my main, heh.)

I'm looking forward to the Klingon material, but I was hoping you guys would have more than 8 episodes. True, the new non-faction and weekly episodes add to it, as well, but I still think that numbers a bit low. I'm extremely looking forward to it, regardless, as well as the FDC and First Contact missions for the Feds.

Could you elaborate on the "Older Science Consoles Refit" a bit? Does that mean that the older, double-powered consoles will be scaled back to be in-line with current ones? I'm not really invested either way; simply curious.

Hmm, I guess the "FED Costume Pack - MU" answers the debate in the other thread about if they will come to the C-Store or not. Also, please tap Matt on the shoulder and ask if I could have some ENT uniforms in the near future, please.

All in all, tons of exciting things, and I look forward to helping test them on Tribble before they go live. Again, congratulations on your new baby, good to see you back, and thanks for the new, great Engineering Report!

o7

[dr_Drake]

Yes please!

[CrimsonSpot]

June 15th it is, thanks for letting me give you money for the remainder of the items I haven't already purchased!

[The.Grand.Nagus]

Congrats again on the kid. All in all, everything sounds good. In fact, a little too good, so no offense but for now I'll just have to say "I'll believe it when I see it"

That said, I didnt see any mention of the uber ground NPCs on advanced/elite exploration. Are you guys still investigating this or not?

[Darren_Kitlor]

Great news!

I know CaptLogan's ship revision screenshots (as well as the shots you posted before paternity leave) were very well received.

Any chance of releasing more screenshots to whet fans' appetites? (i.e. Caitian, Leeta, etc.)

[Psi'a Meese]

*crouches around the firepit and begins an obsessive chant*

The Caitians are coming...

The Caitians are coming...

The Caitians are coming...