Captain’s Log 87958.97

Captain’s Log, Stardate: 87958.97

Admiral Bryn Aev, Captain of the U.S.S. Nym Kae

We’ve just completed a patrol of the Arawath Sector. The crew and I are returning via transwarp conduit to Earth Spacedock to resupply before heading to the Gamma Orionis transwarp conduit near Risa. Since we’re going to be in the neighborhood, I thought it would be an excellent time to schedule shore leave for the crew. After spending months in Cardassian space dealing with Jem’Hadar, and now looking forward to months fighting the Borg, a few days on the beaches of Risa should be excellent for morale.

Out of Character…

Bryn made max level, Rear Admiral 5, in Star Trek Online on Sunday night. He still had several missions in his journal from RA1-4 and hadn’t even entered the end-game zone of Gamma Orionis. To celebrate Admirals Longasc and Tipa took Bryn to the Borg infested sector and tried to get him killed in elite-level exploration missions. They succeeded once, but Bryn and the crew of the Nym Kae did pretty well. It took a heavy attack of Undine battleships to trigger the first experience of the new death penalty. Fortunately the Nym Kae suffered only minor damage to it’s sick bay which slowed the pace at which crew men were cleared to return to duty stations.

While not a difficult accomplishment, this is another check mark on my goals for the year just like reaching the level cap in Champions Online.

Star Trek Online Season 1.1 Update

The latest big update for STO is out. There’s the announcement on the main site and the patch notes in the forums. There’s some big things that some people have been waiting for and a lot of small things that are going to be great for fixing some small nit picks I have.

The big additions: Cryptic has added a death penalty and a difficulty slider. Neither of these things were anything I was looking forward to, beyond hoping that that wouldn’t affect me. The difficulty slider has three settings: normal, advanced, and elite. On normal difficulty the game remains the same as pre-1.1, no change to missions, and no death penalty. The higher difficulties include the death penalty and offer better rewards. I am more interested in exploring and experiencing the content, than in figuring out how to beat a tough encounter, so I’ll generally stay on the normal difficulty.

They’ve also done some balancing on Feedback Pulse, Subnucleonic Beam, and Viral Matrix. Of the three, Viral Matrix is one I use often and it’s switching from a straight hold to a power that knocks weapons, engines, and auxillary offline. The trick is they go offline in a random sequence and not all at once. This seems to me like a PvP related change, and I’m not quite sure how much it’ll impact me in PvE but it’ll definitely require some changes to my tactics.

Turn rate for ships has been switched from auxiliary to engines; now auxiliary is just for deflector, probe, and sensor powers.

The rest of the notes include some great quality of play improvements:

  • Players now get info about what types of commodities are needed in nearby clusters.
  • Commodity types needed within a cluster have been reduced from 5 to 3.
  • Commodities can now be replicated on-board ship, but they’re more expensive that way.
  • Commodity tool-tips now give information about where they can be purchased.
  • Commodity missions now provide a gift in addition to the normal rewards.
  • Exchange UI now allows sorting by price or item name.
  • Items on the Exchange now expire after 1 week.
  • You can drap and drop an item from inventory to the search box to look for similar items.
  • Starships will now adjust their heading on warp-out so they don’t warp through planets.
  • Removed some of the bas spawn points in Deep Space Encounters

I’m looking forward to getting patched up tonight and seeing how the changes play.

Poz on No Prisoners, No Mercy

I listen to a lot of podcasts. One of my favorites is No Prisoners, No Mercy hosted by two nuns (not kidding), Sr. Julie and Sr. Fran. The Sisters have had a lot of good interviews with MMO developers in the past, including Bill Roper, Paul Barnett, and Richard Bartle. Their most recent is with Champions Executive Producer Shannon Posniewski, Poz on the forums.

It’s a great listen if you want to figure out how to pronounce his name and find out a little more about him, which I did enjoy. There’s also some interesting information in the interview about the Revelation expanion and the communication issues from the first part of this year. Go check it out.

No Prisoners, No Mercy #59 – Meet “The Poz”

Evolution of the Silver Hunter

Making a character in City of Heroes and Champions Online is a creative endeavor for me, if I had any talent for art at all it would very much be like creating a comic book. I don’t just throw together a random set of costume pieces, pick an available name, and charge into the game. Sometimes, a hero name will spark my imagination, sometimes it’ll be a power, but usually it’s a specific costume piece.

Silver Hunter in the Paragon Age

The City of Heroes version of Silver Hunter was inspired by the head texture you see pictured below. The name, the powers, and the back-story all came afterwards. The texture made me think of a combination of the Vision, the Martian Manhunter, and the Silver Surfer.


click on the images above for larger versions

Silver Hunter in the Champion Age

When Champions Online launched, the Silver Hunter was the first hero I made. I originally tried to duplicate my CoH costume but couldn’t find any matching textures. Instead, I focused on the concept of an alien sentient android and started over. It took a few iterations, but I’m very happy with how the CO version turned out.


click on the images above for larger versions

Back-Story from CoH to CO

You can also see that the Silver Hunter’s back-story has changed quite a bit when you compare the short description I banged out for his Hero Registration card to the full story or the summary I’ve written for his Champions bio.

click on the images above for larger versions

Meet the Silver Hunter

The Silver Hunter appeared during the recent Qularr invasion in Millennium City and has since become a well known hero, culminating in his recent induction into UNITY.

Silver did not come to Earth to be a hero. His real name is Trissan Daan, and he is an alien known as a Nayrees. Nayrees are silicon-based lifeforms, sentient androids, native to the Andromeda Galaxy. Trissan is a Warden for the Precis Alliance, which function roughly similar to a United States Marshall. Wardens handle security for Alliance officials, protection of witnesses during Adjudication, and the tracking and retrieval of escaped prisoners. This last duty was the reason Trissan was passing through Earth orbit when the Qularr launched their invasion.

Daan was hunting an escaped scientist known as Dr. Mechan. Mechan was a radical scientist convicted of Crimes against Sentience for performing illegal and torturous experiments on hundreds of non-organic sentients. He had tracked Mechan to the Sol system where the scientist was hiding on the darkside of Earth’s moon. Mechan’s ship bolted from its orbit when Daan entered normal space and was lining up for a jump when the Qularr invasion fleet appeared. The Andromedan ships were assumed to be hostile and fired on by the Qularr, severely damaging both and forcing them to attempt emergency landings on the planet.

Daan landed in Millennium City and suffered only minor injuries, but his ship was completely unsalvageable. Even temporarily stranded, Daan’s first priority was to find and capture Mechan, but he could not ignore the Earthers plight during the Qularr attack on Millennium City, so he helped with the defense. The recognition Daan received for his heroics gave him the idea of becoming the Earth hero, Silver Hunter, both as a way to draw Mechan out of hiding and as a way to develop contacts and resources to assist in hunting the escaped scientist.

Mechan was less lucky and skillful in his landing. He was severely injured in the crash, his legs and arms crushed and most of his major organs damaged. He would have died except the automated systems he had rigged to conduct experiments while he fled Precis controlled space survived mostly intact. These automations allowed Mechan to rebuild his body with synthetic parts; his pathological obsession with artificial and non-biological life culminating in his transformation into the synthetic being known as Necromechan.

Since the defeat of the Qularr invasion, the Silver Hunter and Necromechan have met and fought several times. Each time, the battles have ended with Silver frustrating Necromechan’s plans and the villain either escaped or captured. Unfortunately for Silver Hunter, Necromechan always seems capable of escaping incarceration. By Precis law, Warden Daan must either be certain that Necromechan is permanently incarcerated or get permission to take him back to the Precis prison world before he can return home, so for now the Silver Hunter will remain a hero of Earth.

Captain’s Log 87919.84

Captain’s Log, Stardate: 87919.84

Captain Bryn Aen of the U.S.S. Auryn

We’d only just completed a mission to remove some True Way terrorist who were threatening shipping lanes into DS9 and notified Captain Kurland via subspace when I received a private communication from Admiral Quinn. I’ve been promoted to Admiral. Of course this means leaving the Cardassian front to return to Earth Spacedock for the ceremony. It also means I’ll be getting a new command.

I said the same thing when leaving the Lukas behind, but the Auryn has been an excellent ship. More than that, this was the first ship with a Kae name, something which has come to mean quite a bit more to me than I expected.

Regardless of my feelings for change, we’ve set a course for Sol System, and I’ve sent messages home with the news. There are so few Kaes in Starfleet yet that any news is a big deal, so being the first Kae reach Admiral will be huge.

Captain’s Log, Supplemental

Rear Admiral Bryn Aen, Captain of the U.S.S. Nym Kae

The ceremony was quite moving, and I was happy to have friends like Rear Admiral Longasc there to congratulate me.

Our new ship is an experimental hybrid of Luna and Sol class deep-space science vessels. It has been registered as NX-981031-B, in honor of the Auryn. I’ve christened her the Nym Kae, which means Pride of Kae in my native language. To be honest, I don’t think she’s quite as beautiful as the Auryn. Admittedly, I was pretty attached to the Lukas as well, so we shall see how I feel after we get a few hundred light years on her.

The bridge crew has settled into their new stations quickly; this command change is not nearly has big as the last one was. Moving from an escort to a science vessel required senior staff changes and quite a bit of retraining both for the crew and myself. This time most everyone has the same duties, we just have a larger crew compliment and some better equipment.

We’re planning a short shakedown cruise to Wolf 359, per our tradition, before returning to the Cardassian border. Hopefully the Nym Kae will live up to her name.

Click here to go straight to the Picasa album.

Fleet Training Exercise Debriefing

The first fleet training exercises of the Federation News Service went well, once we got things figured out. The original plan was to get as many captains together and attempt a Fleet Action. Unfortunately we found that Fleet Actions are currently rank restricted, meaning that Commanders go to a different instance than Captains who are in a different instance than Admirals. This was problematic since we had three Rear Admirals, one Captain (me), and one Commander. Originally this wasn’t the case, but I know there were issues with scaling when an Admiral would spawn the initial instance, so I can understand why the instances are restricted. Plus having a rank include 10 levels means that the Fleet Actions are still fairly open. Still it meant no Fleet Action in Tostig for the FNS. Instead we headed to the Beta Ursae sector block to find a few Deep Space Encounters, these weren’t quite challenging enough, so we headed into Cardassian space to the Kora sector in Zeta Andromedae.

We also had some problems getting everyone into the same instance. Apparently the DSE’s are capped at five players, so when we entered an existing one our team was split across multiple instances. Switching instances isn’t hard, but it is a pain when you have to wait for spaces to open up in the instance where the rest of your team is. What the game should have done was spawn a new instance for us if there weren’t any that could accommodate a full team, I guess I need to go to the suggestion forum and make a post.

Once we were all in an instance together, we did have quite a bit of fun. This was the first real team experience I’ve had in STO, and it was interesting to get the hang of coordinating with other players. I have teamed up in the past, but not in situations where I needed to worry about tactics or keeping an eye on my teammate’s shield indicators.

All in all it was a good learning experience and a lot of fun, I’m looking forward to our next Fleet engagement and hopefully I’ll be a Rear Admiral, grade 1, by then.

I did take quite a few screenshots, or at least I though I was, but I’ve been having an issue where Fraps sometimes doesn’t recognize my game. I did take a few using the built-in screenshot function, which I’ve embedded below or you can look at them here.

Tipa did get a good shot of the fleet and a good write up (as always). Longasc has quite a few good shots as well (the link is the starting point for the fleet exercise).

Click here to go straight to the Picasa album.

Fleet Action Organizing

screenshot courtesy of Longasc

The members of the Federation News Service are organizing a fleet action for this weekend.

Since most of us are now somewhere between Commander and Read Admiral, Longasc was thinking it would be a good time to get everyone together for a Fleet Action since those are now scaling to player level. We have a few options, personally I would prefer a space one such as the Gorn one in Tostig system or the Klingon one in Laurentian system.

So, leave a comment with your preferred day (Fri/Sat), time, and mission. I’ll update the post as we get close to a consensus.

I’m not sure how the scaling works since I haven’t done a fleet action in a while, but I would say any ranks are welcome to join, you may die a lot though.

Turbine acquired by Warner Bros.


Relaxing after dinner, I saw this retweet from Patience that Turbine had been acquired by Warner Brothers Home Entertainment and felt my heart sink.

Turbine has been an independent studio in the MMO space ever since they bought the rights for Asheron’s Call back from Microsoft. I’ve always felt that this gave them valuable freedom in making decisions. I very much doubt that DDO would have been given as much time to succeed as it was, and I don’t believe a large company like Warner Brothers would’ve okay-ed the F2P experiment that turned DDO around.  Now Turbine will have to answer to WB for timelines and budgets.

Still, I can’t think of anything WB has done in the gaming industry lately so my initial disappointment may be totally unwarranted, but given similar situations I’ve seen, I’m not optimistic. Mythic didn’t profit from their incorporation into EA. Blizzard has recently been drawn a bit further into the management of Activision. Cryptic/Atari have had quite a few marketing and PR goofs, and I’ve often wondered how much of that was Atari’s involvement.

Lord of the Rings Online is my home MMO, the one I always come back to (well technically I never leave, being a lifetime subscriber). More than that, it’s been a treasured opportunity to play in Tolkien’s world in a way I’m not able to through the books or movies. I’ve never been worried about Turbine doing anything to screw up their game. I don’t have the same confidence in Warner Brothers.

Doom and gloom aside, this should mean that Turbine has a lot more resources and stability, and I truly hope that this acquisition works out for the best both for the Turbine staff and the LotRO/DDO/AC player communities.  It’s probable that the first effects of this acquisition won’t be felt for several months. For now, I just have to be patient, try to keep and open mind, and try to maintain an optimistic attitude. Still, I can’t ignore my gut, and as a wise man once said, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Some various news stories about the deal, for the curious:

Captain’s Log 87868.74

Captain’s Log, Stardate: 87868.74

Captain Bryn Aen of the U.S.S. Lukas

At long last, I’m being promoted to Captain. The subspace message just came in from Admiral Quinn to return to Earth Spacedock in order to take care of the formalities. I am excited about the advancement, but also a little sad about moving on.

Becoming a full Captain means I’m going to be given a new command, which also means that I’ll no longer be flying the Lukas. The Akira class heavy escort has been a real challenge for me, and it has been only recently have I gotten comfortable with the proper strategies and tactics required. She’s a beautiful ship, both fast and powerful, but more delicate than I was expecting. It was a large adjustment from the Grace, which was a Nova class science vessel, and even though I could be getting a tactical escort, I’m pretty sure that Quinn will be putting me in command of a long range science vessel. My duty record aboard the Grace was much better than it’s my time on the Lukas, there have been quite a few trips to Spacedock for repairs and refits.

Captain’s Log, Supplemental

Captain Bryn Aen of the U.S.S. Auryn

The meeting with Quinn went well. As I expected, I’ve been given command of a Discovery class long range science vessel. In recognition of my Starfleet service I was allowed to christen the ship the U.S.S. Auryn. An auryn is a bird of prey from my homeworld known for it’s intelligence, grace, and curiousness.

While I will miss the Lukas, Auryn is a gorgeous ship and the first few shakedown cruises were very smooth. It did not take me long to switch my tactics back to what I’d used aboard the Grace, and I’ve quickly become comfortable with the science vessel.

The crew has settled in well. Prya and V’lel are missing the additional tactical capabilities, but are adjusting. Imaria and T’Rasu are very happy to have expanded roles on the bridge, although Imaria did have to do some retraining. Nayl and Meelok are also pleased, apparently they’re expecting easier duties now that they won’t be constantly working on repairs. While Auryn’s shields are impressive, I’m still expecting to pick up some scratches soon.

As per our tradition, we paid our respects at the monument in Wolf 359 before returning to the Tarod sector in Iota Pavonis. Our mission there was nearly completed before I received the order to return to Sol from Quinn, so we won’t stay there long.

I’ve already received a message from Captain Kurland at Deep Space 9 requesting assistance in the Bajor sector, once we’ve finished our investigations into the current Romulan issues we’ll set course for the Beta Ursae sector block.

U.S.S. Auryn, Discovery-class long rang science vessel