Simply:

Sitting in Michael’s office.
2:48 PM Apr 11th, 2007 via web

Mainly because I didn’t play enough of the beta to make it to the first tier ship selection.

So I did what any Star Trek fan would do if they were going to get a starship.  I started to obsess.

I was writing down ship names whenever I had the chance.  Would I go with one name, “Whisper?” Or a two name ship, “Silent Resolve?”  Would I go serious or funny?  For instance, “Furious Diplomat,” a name that initially sounds serious but only continues to get funnier the more I think about it.

I read forums and looked up ship name generators.

I decided I was going to go with a science vessel because I really wanted to be able to target subsystems and science vessels were the only ship that could do that without having dedicated bridge officers with “target subsystem” skills.  This way, I could take down shields for my team, or just take out the engines for a quick getaway, or just take out the weapons systems and leave them powerless.

You could say that I was kind of excited.

A couple of days of play had leveled me up to the point where I was a Lt. Grade 10.  This was the last rank before new ships were unlocked.

I looked at my XP bar, and it was very close to the end.  There was no doubt I was going to make Lt. Commander this session.  Curious, I hovered the cursor over the bar.

Seven skill points to make Lt. Commander.

Seven.

In terms of character progression, seven points is nothing.  You gain a skill point for every enemy you defeat and upwards of four or five skill points depending on the level of the enemies you’re fighting.

This was going to be easy.

If I was thinking straight, I would have entered a deep space combat scenario and just helped the Federation with their Gorn problem, but instead I opted to finish an exploration mission.  I entered the Arucanis arm and headed straight for the first anomaly the Lockheed’s sensors found.  It was just some radiation samples, not a system with a randomly generated mission.  No combat.

I headed for another one.  This time, an alien artifact.  Again, no combat, no skill points.

Finally I found a system with a mission.  It was an asteroid belt, that featured an abandoned base.  But it was truly abandoned, no Gorn, no Nausicaans, no Klingon occupying force to be found anywhere.  Instead, Starfleet requested that I beam down and check to see if the crew of the Lockheed could salvage any research from the computers on the station.  This mission would reward skill points after completion.

I only needed seven points, but I had waited this long—what was one more mission?  I brought the Lockheed up to full impulse and headed straight for the abandoned research base, ever hopeful that some Gorn would warp in and protest the Federation’s incursion into Gorn space.  But it was a long and uneventful trip, even at full impulse.  The base was on the exact opposite end of the map.

I beamed down with my away team, and found the first console.  There was no research Starfleet was interested in, but they wanted me to check the rest of the station.  It was at this point, that I started to wonder if I should just abort the mission and move on.  But it was late in the evening, and I was already in mission, so I stuck with it.

I wandered the empty corridors when the crew of the Lockheed contacted me via communicator.  Orion ships had been detected on long range sensors and were approaching the asteroid base.  Combat was imminent, I thought.  Surely, any second, I would beam back to the Lockheed and take on the Orions ship to ship.

I could taste the seven points.

But then my crew said they had everything handled and I was left scavenging holographic storage chips about the mineral makeup of the asteroid.  Before they signed off though, they did note that they detected Orion transporter signatures, so I should be careful.

I had hope yet.  It wasn’t long before we ran into an Orion away team.  I set up a shield generator and a phaser turret and told the away team to hold their ground.  While the shield generator was on, the away team’s shields were constantly being replenished.  The battle was never a question of who would win, merely a question of how long it would take my away team to come out victorious.

A few minutes later I was surprised to find that I had not, in fact, made Lt. Commander.  I thought that perhaps I had missed a notification message in the fracas.  The air was filled with phaser and distruptor beams, it’s not unlikely that I had missed something.

I checked my character profile.  I was still a Lieutenant.  Still Grade 10.  I hovered over the XP bar again.

One point stood between me and ranking to Lt. Commander.

One point.

One.

The Orion away team was a six member squad, and I had gained exactly one point for every Orion.

I sighed.  It was a long, resigned exhalation of breath.  It was the exhalation a person makes when they have decided to burn everything.  I ran the away team through the deserted halls, searching for another Orion away team.  Through room after room.  Nothing.

Finally, nearing the end of the map, Orions showed on the minimap.  I ran straight for them and engaged them in battle.  I didn’t even bother setting up a shield generator or a phaser turret.  In fact, some of my away team were still stuck in another room, their pathfinding algorithms locked in a never ending slow motion run on the doorway of the previous room.

I selected the first Orion I could target and then activated sniper shot.  My phaser bolt hit true, and then—

—My screen froze.  And I nearly yelled, save for the fact that shortly afterward, the display corrupted.  And then, I actually yelled.  It was something incoherent, something to the effect of, “gwaaugh?!”  Followed shortly by an incredulous sounding, but no more coherent, “whauh?”  My brain had blue screened.

The Star Trek Online client had crashed.

It had crashed hard.  I sat there and looked at the screen.  My palms instantly struck both sides of my forehead in utter disbelief.  I stared at the screen for at least ten seconds.  This was a betrayal.  One of the highest order.  There is a tier in Dante’s hell specifically for this.  I sat there for another ten seconds, listening to the sounds of phasers firing and computer warnings about enemy combatants being in close proximity.

Then it hit me.  I was so awestruck at the irony of the moment that I did not notice.

I hit the one key to fire my phaser bolt rifle, and I heard the telltale sound of a phaser firing.

The client was still running.

It was still running.  Even though the display had crashed, it was receiving keyboard input and acting on it.  Desperate, I hit my keybinds for “target nearest” and “all allies attack my target.”

Then I fired that phaser bolt rifle for all it was worth.  Just for good measure, every now and again, I hit the two key.

This went on for an excruciating two minutes.  Without any visual indicators, I must have selected the strongest enemy combatant, probably an Orion Matron or a fully shielded Brute.  My team had no shield generator in place and my science officer was shield damage focused—not a doctor.  With no way to regenerate shields or health, I feared a total wipe.

Then it happened.

There was a triumphant sounding noise amidst the phaser blasts.

Then words.

“Congratulations Lt. Commander.”

I immediately hit the enter key and typed in, “/quit” quickly logging me out of the server and quitting the client.  The noises of battle stopped.  It was silent. I rubbed my face with my hands.  Regardless of what time it was, I was now more than wide awake, and on top of that, I needed a glass of water.  My mouth was dry.  My hands were jittery.

My desktop never came back.  It was a hard display crash.  I had to turn off my computer.

I haven’t logged back in since.

Update: I’ve since logged in and I got my science vessel.

Captain’s log, supplemental.

Our assignment was simple, scan Gorn facilities in this remote asteroid belt to make sure that they weren’t stockpiling weapons of mass destruction of any sort.

The Gorn, of course, were having none of it, and we found ourselves on the receiving end of a volley of disruptor bursts after attempting to scan the first outpost.  Calling on my background as an engineer I rotated the shield frequencies before the impact.

The Lockheed’s shields held gracefully. Rotating the frequencies had the desired effect and managed to mitigate most of the damage to the shields.

But there were still three ships.  I ordered engineering officer Ensign Kort to reroute EPS systems to boost the shield systems while I sounded the red alert.

Shields were holding, but I could see that there was another incoming volley of disruptor fire, plus photon torpedoes.  I reinforced the fore shields and told tactical to open fire on the lead Gorn cruiser.

The Lockheed’s heavy disruptor cannons locked onto the Gorn ship and opened fire.  Their shields dropped quickly, and without shielding the disruptors quickly ate through the rest of their hull.  The Lockheed was too close, and the shockwaves from exploding cruiser shuddered through the ship.  Thankfully there were no major casualties.

We moved to three quarter impulse and engaged evasive maneuvers.  Full power to starboard shields soaked a torpedo volley as we brought the Lockheed around in an arc to end up behind the second cruiser.

My science officer Ensign Sadi jammed the targeting sensors of the third Gorn cruiser, preventing them from targeting us for some of the fight although she warned that it was but “a fleeting dream that wouldn’t last forever.”  She could have just told me nine seconds.  I forget that her previous host was a poet.  Note: I need to speak with her regarding combat expediency.

My tactical officer, Ensign Noros prepared a high yield torpedo burst to impact just as their facing shields were dropped.  Commendations for Ensign Noros for her impeccable timing.

To this day, many Starfleet officers protest the academy’s admission policies from some of the more controversial systems, such as Ferenginar, but every day, new recruits like Ensign Noros continue to prove them wrong.

One on one the last cruiser was no match for the crew of the Lockheed.  We scanned the installation and moved on, although it was not the last of the Gorn we would see that day.

Considering that she’s an ensign, it looks like Starfleet academy started offering courses in Astroasskicking.

Upon her return to the Sol System, Admiral Quinn expresses his confidence in her and in a surprise move that shocked viewers everywhere, promotes her to Lieutenant and assigns her as the permanent captain of the Lockheed.

It’s yet another Cryptic Studios product, (City of Heroes, Champions Online) and a lot of their usual design can be seen throughout Star Trek: Online.

The ship to ship combat is a lot of fun.  There is something satisfying about rerouting power to the starboard shields and coming about to give them a broadside from both phaser arrays that takes down the facing shields just in time for a high yield photon burst to strike the unshielded side of an enemy vessel.

Away team missions are your standard MMO fare, with a third person point of view and a the usual take out X number of enemies or interact with Y, then report to Starfleet.  The ground combat tends to focus on the various firearms and their abilities found in the Star Trek universe, although that may be because I didn’t roll a tactical officer.

I’m playing the beta when the servers aren’t flooded, but so far I’m having a good time.

Protip: Enemy ships explode, and can destroy your vessel.

I look at my laptop, an aluminum piece of jewelry.  It barely fits into a backpack but the AC adapter is tiny.  I can only edit photographs for a couple of hours before it complains to me about being on reserve power.

I flip open the lid and connect to my wireless network.  There’s a server, somewhere, but damned if I know where it is.

One of these days, I’m really going to have to purchase a color calibration system.  Photos may be coming out just a little over saturated.

I adjust the equalizer to classic as Freddie Mercury hits one of his upper octaves and listen carefully as the changes subtly alter the performance over the music streaming to the home theater system.  My bookmarks load, tab after tab, flickr, YouTube, Google Reader, and a host of other sites.  I am assaulted by images and video and music and text.

I open up GameFAQS and read what strangers have written about Street Fighter IV.  Then I watch some tournament play videos.  I do a couple of searches and read up on what people have said about a couple of games that I’m interested in.  I read my email in a different application.  Then I read up on what my friends had for breakfast.    I make a few comments to no one in particular, although I like to think that everyone at least listens a little bit.

I think nothing of it.

I look at my laptop, a grey plastic hinged slab.  It is the thickness of a ream of paper and about three times as heavy.  It barely fits into a backpack and the AC adapter is just as heavy.  I have to bring the AC adapter everywhere because the batteries barely hold any charge.  I think the last time I checked, I could boot the machine into Windows and bring up the file manager before it just shut off.

I’m listening to the modem dial the four digit extension into the University’s mainframe for the nth time.  It is a sound that I know very well.  A dial tone.  Four beeps.  Then a busy signal or the telltale screech of connectivity.  I don’t know how many times I’ve dialed the number, but the number of times I have booted up the laptop and not dialed into the mainframe is without question, a lower number.  I think perhaps, if I cannot connect, I’ll just visit the mainframe lab.  The mainframe itself is this big, palpable metal box, and I’ve seen it, in its cold room, its voracious appetite for tapes and paper.  The squelch of the single speaker hidden behind the keyboard announces my successful connection to the mainframe.

The sunlight shifts ever so slightly and I have to fiddle with the screen and to bring it into visibility.  There are about sixteen discrete shades of grey it can produce, and the banding between them is something I have just learned to live with.  The contrast and brightness controls are discrete sliding bars.  Each of the bars has about a half an inch of play but the potentiometers are so poor quality that there were really only three settings.

I watch as the terminal window springs to life, characters coming into existence, line by line, character by character, slow enough to see them fill in from left to right.  There’s text and more text.   I read the characters, soft bits of cohrent light creeping in amidst the darkness of the screen.

I open up the rec.games.video.arcade and read FAQS that strangers have written about the games I’m interested in.  They’re strangers, and I pretty much keep to myself.

I’m just amazed that the whole thing works.

The Dell Vostro 9 inch netbooks keep going on special, starting at $249 with a 16GB SSD.  I’d run Ubuntu of course, as it would be pretty familiar to me at this point.  Plus the 16 GB hard drive would pretty much force me to really think about which apps I’d need to run on it. I’d like to see one in the wild of course before I end up making a decision to drop that cash.

Really, not that long.  After taking the grand tour, I pretty much dove straight in to the Mission Creator.  It’s pretty cool.  Setting up a story, and setting objectives is really simple.  You can also create your own enemy groups, with minions, lieutenants, bosses, elite bosses.  You can even create NPCs and the mission contact.

I whipped up a story about “transporter buffers” going amok after a “power surge.”  This if course, occurs in the Synergy Gestalt’s base, “The Workshop.”  As a result, every member of that supergroup now has imperfect clones running around.  Additionally, the least imperfect of the clones (the first copies) got the idea to steal the transporter components and use them to create an army of clones to take over Paragon City. I think for the finale I’ll have the heroes defend a transporter while a technician reverses the polarity.

So right there, that’s a mission with a lot of fighting, bosses to fight, and components to destroy.  I created various designs of the clones, for minions, lieutenants and bosses.  I found that the clone angle was really a “cheat” since I could just reuse the character designs over and over again.  Then I could tweak various aspects, like skin tones or add goatees to make the variations of the clones.  The bosses of course, were just character designs from the characters in my Super Group on Virtue.

Which really only has four active characters in it, so that made it easy as well.

I added some flavor text, dialogue and then saved the Arc title and I was off and running testing the new mission.  It was that easy.  I think concept to execution was about 45 minutes total.  After playtesting it for a while I’ll publish it to the main servers and then people can play through it.

Overall, it was very cool seeing something I had written become a part of a video game.

But, back to the I get a follow (on twitter) from someone I don’t recognize, but don’t really think anything of it until I check out who it is.  Turns out it’s the Environmental Art Lead for Dead Space.  So he shows me a couple of things I missed and then I notice a name I think I recognize.  It’s the guy that lived in our group house for a couple of weeks, a friend of one of my roommates.

I do some additional research and well, he is the same artist that painted the triptych sitting in my bedroom, awaiting framing.  He painted them 13 years ago as a thank you for letting him stay.

And he did UI design for Dead Space.

Small world, indeed.

I spent way too much time editing the “stealth concept” article.  So, visit GiantBomb.com and be sure to listen to the podcast.

Those guys are great.