Yes, another flimsy excuse to post more screenshots from Star Trek Online!
The first headstart weekend has been very busy, and servers have been heavily loaded. There have been long outages of the login servers, and Cryptic have put in a server queue which may mean more time waiting around.
Other than that, my experience with the game so far has been very smooth. Once you are actually logged in, it plays well and has handled the heavy load gracefully. I’ve played a few MMOs when they first went live and at the moment, it’s as good as any of them.
I’m not really hitting the peak US timezone, though, which is probably where the heaviest usage occurs. We’ll just have to see how the game copes when it opens up to the non-headstart players too.
This is the USS Brunel in action. I was tempted with ironic Culture-esque names for my starship but in the end I decided to honour one of my all-time engineering heroes.
If only I could dress my character like Brunel. I think they share a few points of similarity though …
Separated at birth? Well, maybe not but I’m sure IKB would have liked tribbles too; they make authentically adorable cooing noises when you pet them.
I don’t think it will take too long until the entire population of STO has a tribble. You can acquire one either from a friend (thanks, Longasc) or as a drop from a mob in a ground fight, because Klingons apparently like tribbles too.
Once you have your tribble, you have to decide what to do with it. If you equip it into one of your equipment slots then you will haul it along on ground missions. This means that you can take it out from time to time for a cuddle. Tribbles like being petted, and will even give you a handy short term combat buff! But if you pet it again too quickly, it will make a disgruntled eek noise.
Or you could store it in your inventory. But be careful, if there’s any food in there then the tribbles will start multiplying and you can quickly run out of inventory space.
They come in different colours and patterns. I’m not saying that I am running a tribble breeding program BUT so far I’ve seen white, black, cream, spotted (shown in the picture) and striped. I’m currently trying to pimp them to the rest of my fleet because I’m oddly reluctant to actually destroy any to make more room.
Haggis, it’s what’s for dinner?
Space combat and ground combat are two very different games in STO, so it makes sense that they require different kit and consumables. As you’d expect, drops you get from space combat are useable for space combat, and the same applies to ground combat.
Consumables for ground combat include hypodermics which function as healing potions, and food items. Amusingly, although there are a wide variety of food items in the game that will be familiar to trek fans, they aren’t restricted to dropping from appropriate races. STO denizens are a cosmopolitan lot who like to try each other’s cultural delicacies.
Here’s a thread from the boards, listing items that people have looted from dead klingons. Hot Chocolate, Haggis, tribbles …
The haggis is notable because it’s the one sole food item in my inventory that even my tribbles would not eat.
Also my character reached the dizzying heights of rank 6, which meant I was allowed to create a Klingon side character. I went with the Orion Pirate Queen and this screenshot shows my character hanging out with some of the girls. The NPC next to me is indulging in some witch elf cosplay.
I was initially sad that I could not take to the bridge in a space bikini of my own (you can spot the player character in this shot because it is the one with clothes on), but on reflection, I need the male crewmembers to be focussing on their duties.
I plan to recruit a crew of hunky male Orions and then CONQUER THE KNOWN GALAXY!
Welcome to Spinksville! 
