Engineering reports/20100915

=September 15, 2010= Greetings!

It's time for another Engineering Report! Lots of stuff to review this time around. The Breen Featured Episodes are going strong (although we're surprised that only half of you have played them yet!). The next features series is well in development and is expected to offer some really cool new mission moments. New space combat tweaks are being tested on the internal shard, and the team has started development on a new targeting mode that promises to bring a new way to experience ground combat in STO.

Our recent meetings with CBS also turned up some interesting discussions and several of the features we had hoped to deliver are being rescoped and evaluated due to some concerns. This primarily impacts the Enterprise J and the Kzinti. I'm updating the report to reflect this and want to remind everyone that there is a lot of fluidity to making an MMO and in order to react to issues that get brought up we often have to shift things around. Luckily we always have a ton of new updates in the works so there will always be something new to talk about.

One of the questions I've been seeing recently is the discussion about how the "Season" releases are impacted or work in conjunction with the Featured Episodes. Seasons are our way of sectioning off the large code features we want to work on without impacting the current game. So when I think of the release of Season 3, I think of big large broad stroke features such as User Generated Content Tools, Sector Space redesign, Ground Combat Changes, and other features that cannot be done in smaller updates. So when I talk about Seasons in the future, I'm thinking less about new mission content, and more about big feature updates.

When it comes to content updates, we are not tied to specific code changes being made in the game and can continue to release new updates on a regular basis. So for the immediate future, all of the new mission content being added to the game will primarily be done through the Featured Episode updates. We expect to be adding content on a regular basis this way as it allows us the flexibility to work at a faster pace than being tied to the release of a big seasonal update. So in a nutshell, expect constant content updates to have happen regularly throughout the season and big feature updates to happen the day the season starts.

Hope that clears up some questions about Seasons and future mission content.

Now on to the report!

(note that there aren't a lot of changes from last report as we're on track to deliver - but I'll continue to update each report even if only a few things change)

In Testing

 * Breen Featured Series Episodes
 * Fixes for Breen Accolades
 * Featured Series 2 Episodes
 * New Reward Items for Featured Episodes
 * Nebula Class ship
 * New Patrol Missions
 * Space Combat Balance Updates
 * Additional performance fixes for Star Clusters
 * New Gorn and Nausicaan ships

Under Investigation

 * Camera issues with the Ship Customization UI
 * Mission issues with Private Queue Space Arena maps
 * Team Matching for PVP queues
 * Phaser Rifle Overload secondary misfiring FX
 * PVP Goal scores not adjusting when maps are changed
 * Star Cluster locations names not being displayed properly
 * Reports of in game mail not being sent out properly

In Development

 * Adding an ignore invite feature to queues
 * Allowing ability to right click invite players to a PVP challenge
 * Ship loot items options that visually alter the look of your ship
 * Changing challenge chat to not look like local chat
 * Improving game performance and eliminating game crashes
 * Adding a listing fee for the exchange
 * First Officer System
 * Converting First Officer to Playable Captain
 * Upcoming Content for Featured Series 2
 * - New Episodes for Fed and Klingon factions
 * - Updated Enemy faction
 * - New Daily Missions
 * - More Diplomatic missions
 * - New Accolades
 * More Loot
 * - New Weekly Series Rewards
 * - Episode Specific Rewards
 * - More Memory Alpha Crafting Items
 * Redesign for the Remote Contact System
 * - Improve the way you get missions
 * - Provide daily rewards for doing specific missions
 * - Allow players to rate and search for missions by metadata
 * Redesign for Sector Space
 * - Larger Sectors
 * - Less UI / UI you can Toggle
 * - Contextual Menus for Systems
 * User Generated Content Tools (beta)
 * More Minigames
 * More Ships including
 * - Vor'cha Refit
 * - B'Rel BOP
 * - Gorn Ship
 * - Orion Ship
 * - Nausicaan Ship
 * - Vulcan Ship
 * - TOS Enterprise Refit
 * - Andorian Ship
 * - Enterprise NX
 * More Costume Options
 * - ST: The Motion Picture Uniform
 * - More Borg parts for AlienGen
 * - TNG: All Good Things Uniform
 * - PC Gamer Cover - Open Jacket Uniform
 * - T'Pol Jumpsuit
 * - More Skirt options
 * - New Gorn customization options
 * - Counselor Troi Uniform
 * - 7 of 9 Jumpsuit
 * 200 Day Veteran Reward for Klingon Characters
 * 300 Day Veteran Rewards
 * Missions features planetary wildlife creatures

In Design Discussions

 * Redesign for Exploration Sectors
 * Additional Bridge Officer and Player Species
 * - Aenar
 * - Talaxian
 * - Android
 * - Hologram
 * Crafting for Klingons
 * Allowing Episodes to be Replayed
 * Revamping VO for contacts
 * VO for Episode Intros
 * Improved Hair Tech
 * Sitting in Chairs
 * Episode Replay

On Hold/Pending Issues

 * STF: The Hive
 * Enterprise J
 * Kzinti

Upcoming C-Store Releases

 * Nebula T5 - Requires Rear Admiral rank
 * 7 of 9/T'Pol Jumpsuit Costume Pack
 * Enterprise Uniform Costume Pack