Star Trek: Delta Rising - Expansion 2 - SPOILER ALERT!

[Razorwalker]

So, I watched a live stream of the announcement today followed by the Q&A with the Dev's concerning the new expansion coming out in October. Here is a summery of what was discussed:

* Level Cap Raise to 60

* Tier 6 Ships, with some being completely new designs

* New Class of Starships & Bridge Officers

* New Species to fight/ally with in the Delta Quadrent (Telaxian/Ocampa/Kazon) NOT Playable, NPC's

* Tim Russ to reprise his role as Admiral Tuvok for more Vo & Garret Wang confirmed as reprising Captain Harry Kim, Commanding the USS Rhode Island. Other Voyager cast lined up, announcements to follow

* Mk XIV Gear & Weapons Confirmed

* All new content will be entirelly in the Delta Quadrant. Feature Episodes, Missions, Duty Officer Assignments, Queues

* New advancement system: "Beyond 50 level progression system". Progression in the system even beyond level 60. Specialization skill trees to add further character customization.

* Tier 5 ships can still be played throughout level 50-60 content. Most existing tier 5 ships can be improved to gain some of the advantages of tier 6 ships. The devs specifically wanted to avoid making things obsolete. More details to come.

* Cardassians as either a playable species or as their own faction is "inevitable", but nothing on the table for Delta Rising.

* The rank increase to Fleet Admiral will not allow us to control multiple starships. It's still very much a "something Geko really wants in the game at some point" feature.

* Secondary deflectors: Still on the schedule. Had to be pushed back due to resources. They're really close to being done.

* Lots of old ships need love: Nebula, D'Kyr, Garumba, Aquarius, etc. We'll see some of those starting with Delta Rising.

* SHIP UPGRADES WILL NOT BE TIED TO CRAFTING.

* Being able to simultaneously run multiple R&D research projects in the same school was a straight-up bug. Al apologizes for the bug going out.

* At this point, it's unlikely that any 3rd-party ships will go into the game once all the canon ships have been added.

* Increasing the level cap and adding new gear helps to fight power creep because the game is rebalanced for a max of level 60.

* Open-jacket versions of the Odyssey dress uniforms make sense at some point, as do more variants of the uniform in general.

* There are plans to implement more red alerts similar to the Borg red alert. Maybe in the next year, those can be started on.

* The devs do want to eventually bring back a true exploration-type feature to the game. They need to find a smarter way to bring infinite exploration that is interesting and entertaining. Not happening in Delta Rising, though.

* Some of the 50-60 content will be held off to be released later. They have plans in place through at least the next anniversary. With a good amount of repeatable content in place, they can bring us more story content now.

* Delta Rising will be on Tribble "sooner than you think". The new code branch will hit Tribble this month, but probably no content. The expansion will be released to Tribble a little at a time.

* In wanting to improve old content, the devs do eventually want to revisit PvP. No time frame, but it will happen at some point.

* "Nothing you have will become obsolete. Ships, gear, nothing." - CaptainGeko.

* If anyone has any good ideas for the Captain's Table, let Geko know.

* There are more than 40 dev blogs coming our way about Delta Rising.

That is all I got for now, but will keep everyone up to date concerning any news/Tribble testing I do.

Keep The Phoenix Burning!
Mara Razorwalker

[Arion]

*sigh* More Voyager garbage. When the "best" (I am being generous) of that miserable excuse for a series has been present in the game for quite some time, telling us that Kazon, Ocampa, and Neelix-people are going to show up lacks anything approaching being impressive.

One does not fight power creep by increasing power levels. Mark XIV gear flies directly in the face of claims that "The devs specifically wanted to avoid making things obsolete."

Instead of fixing some of those terrible old missions (one of the best things they did to the early Fed campaign) we're gon na get more new crap that new players have to slog through everything else to see.

Yep.

This does not inspire confidence.