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Star Trek Online or popularly known as STO is the first in a series of massively multiplayer role-playing games (MMORPGs) in the Star Trek franchise. Released in 2010, one of the important features of the game is its extensive freedom for players to customize many of the game’s features. Ships are an integral part of the game and a player can extensively customize his ship. Such customizations could be cosmetic to enhance the look of the ship, or they could be functional, increasing the stealth and lethal capabilities of the ship. The customization of the ship must necessarily be done in the shipyards. These shipyards are available to both the Federation and the Klingon Empire and are located in all major hubs. Qo’nos and the Earth Space Dock often serve as customization locations for the Klingon Empire and the Federation, respectively. Each new ship purchased by a player allows him to edit the characteristics at no cost. However, further customization will depend on changes made and may require Energy Credits or Starfleet Merit.
Among others, the customizations available for ships include Model, Design, and Naming. There are six different ship models and they have to be chosen from saucer, hull, nacelles, pylons, sub-array and mission module. However, the latter two models are restricted to Science Tier 5 only. Ship design customization includes the decals, windows, decal color, and skin color, while in name customization, the player can customize the ship name, registration number, registration prefix and registration suffix. However, the feature to change the registration prefix is currently limited to special digital editions of the game. Registration can be changed from NCC to NX and vice versa on these special editions. In addition to all these customizations, there is also the ability to customize the design of the bridge and its layout.
In addition to choosing between Escort, Cruise, Science, or other categories, the player can also customize the functionality of their ship. These include forward guns, for firing guns from the front of the ship, ship baffle plates, ship shields, the number of impulse engines, rear guns for firing from the rear of the ship, and other consoles such as engineering, science, and others. tactical consoles. . Apart from these, the player can also customize the weapons in terms of the individual type of torpedo, mine, and energy weapon. A diverse portfolio of weaponry is generally suggested and each weapon is used tactfully. For example, the extent of damage from a torpedo can vary drastically depending on the capability of the enemy ship.
Ship customization is a favorite topic for many players and there have been a lot of suggestions on how to make the customization process and interface more user friendly and efficient. Quite a few videos showing ship customization can be found on major video hosting sites and are an ideal solution for new players to learn the intricacies of ship customization. However, certain sections of the gaming community have taken the view that excessive customization leads to loss of interest in the actual game, and therefore excessive customization should be avoided.