Star Trek Online Q&A, Ships of the Line

Star Trek Online executive producer Craig Zinkievich has answered another handful of questions about the sci-fi MMORPG, and this time it’s for the folks over at Ten Ton Hammer.

Ten Ton Hammer: In addition to staying true to the IP, what would you say are some of the other major obstacles you’ve recently overcome in developing the game?

Craig: Ground combat.

We did a lot of fast iteration early on with space combat, to make sure it felt right, and make sure it was cool. We probably got lucky with a couple of choices we made. Pretty much anyone who’s tried it has said (wow. There’s nothing else like it. It’s amazing.) We’re really proud of that.

I think the ground combat was something that was much harder to get right, looking back at the project. It was much harder to get the ground combat to feel cool, feel fast paced, feel Star Trek, and really satisfy all of the things we need out of ground combat. At the same time, we needed to live up to the really cool space combat; making sure that when you’re on the ground, you’re not thinking (when can I get back in my spaceship?)

I would say within the last few months we’ve tuned and tweaked and got ground combat to the point where it’s good, and it’s fun, and something we want to do. When you get into the game, you’re not thinking (I want to do space combat,) but rather (I want to do some of this, and some of that, and I want to do some of that, too.)

But it’s also really going to be one of the shining parts of the game the content flow, the moving back and forth between space and ground and how our episodes our constantly going to be moving you from environment to environment. That feel alone is totally different from anything else that’s out there. We knew we really had to really make two games when we started out.

And while we’re on the subject, the official STO website brings us a list of all the ships available to the Federation and Klingons.