Fleet Gaming Report: 2022

Well, here we are. A year has passed. Congratulations, you made it!

There has been quite a few changes over the year. Competitions, awards, ribbons, a policy change or two (one of which is on the docket to edit again to better reflect reality in STO in this past year). We even finally got the gaming nights off the ground, after a few false starts, but if nothing else January is always a period of renewal for myself, so we will press on.

Unlike the fleet itself, the Gaming Office has to be not only active in driving content, but reactive to changes decided outside the fleet. In this case, we have a pretty big elephant in the room from this year: Star Trek Online slowed down content release in a really big way, and really felt like it was on life support for 2021. Of course we had no idea why but that was suddenly revealed in December when the developer of STO Cryptic Studios and its parent company Perfect World Entertainment were acquired by Embracer Group, a company that among other things has a little game publishing studio named Gearbox Entertainment.

What does this mean for the primary game we support here? The best answer we can give you is nothing for right now. Gearbox is a pretty solid developer, with the Borderlands franchise under their belts as well as the Brothers in Arms franchise and are currently in development of several solid titles, a movie and a TV series. They have already announced a commitment to Star Trek Online, Neverwinter and Champions Online due to the three games’ profitability, but the rest of the titles from PWE are now up in the air.

So what should you expect from the Gaming Office in 2022? Well we are planning on things such as:

• Continuing Among Us gaming nights. We have one tentatively scheduled for January 15th, watch out for more info from DarthCrusader on Discord about it.
• Another Cards Against Humanity game night. The date of this is a little more in flux due to scheduling issues with myself but I hope to know more in the coming weeks, most likely being a Sunday this time.
• A Fleet Colony Invasion Day in Star Trek Online. It’s a function of Star Trek Online to have this available from the Dranuur security officer, and honestly I have never tried it before. We have got a few tokens for it in the bank, so why not?
• A couple of giveaways for STO. There is stuff in the giveaways tab of the Fleet Bank that is burning holes in our pockets, so why not?
• Expansion of World of Warships into Strategic Action Ribbons.
• Would like to look at another game to officially support (we prefer free to play to give the lowest barrier of entry to players), or get STO on another platform so that people stop asking about it (if we can get a team of five onto one of the consoles).
• Something that was tossed around the senior staff was asking if there was any interest for a tabletop RPG. The Gaming Office staff currently onboard does not have any experience as a GM with this type of environment or even as a player, so a point in the right direction might be a good idea. We would be honored to facilitate and participate in a game on Discord to “learn the ropes” so to speak.

STO Fleets have also been progressing well! The Federation fleet is at Level 70, with the Tier 3 project for the Spire available. The KDF fleet is at Level 31, with Tier 1 Colony projects and a Tier 3 Starbase project available. We have plenty of room for donations, but not so much that top tier projects are out of reach, so that is great. With the Federation fleet, now the projects that we have been waiting for are now available, which means the supplies are not that far off; a lot of top tier equipment is available in Tier 3 fleet holdings, such as the Vulnerability Exploiter console, Elite Warp Cores, and purple-quality duty officers, not to mention stuff to match aesthetics like the TOS phasers.

Another small change for the Gaming Office. Instead of monthly reports (which was just me trying to commit to something, and to be honest I slacked at those at the end of the year) we are going to space these out in 2022, so that when we announce something it is a little more special. Every quarter you will see an update from us, even if there is a Campaign or FA on, just a “hey, this is where the STO fleet is, this is the stats for the World of Warships group” thing.

Good luck in 2022, all! And as always, we encourage playing apart, together.