Ten Forward weekly 9/28/23

• TFW was delayed because Keal had intermittent power outages
  
• Avenger and Bortasqu were chosen becuase they had a pedigree(legendary ships are either ships featured as a hero ship, or featured a lot/prominently in an episode/movie), and had a lot of variant they could bundle together. Avenger, being part of the Inquiry family, fit both of those, as did the Bortasqu
  
• Selection started with the Bortasqu because they hadn't done a legendary version of it and it was important to Thomas they remaster it and do a legendary version, and Cryptic was aware people were a little disappointed that there hadn't been legendary Bortasqu yet/it wasn't included in the legendary Klingon bundle.
  
• After picking the Bortasqu Cryptic thought about what would pair well with it, and the "recently" seen new Inquiry in Picard S3, as well as that the Bortasqu and Avenger came into STO in the same relative ballpark, and the ships lore was all about the Federation/Klingon War, made it a thematic alignment.
  
• Jonathan has wanted to do a big beefy Klingon ship for awhile, and the Arbiter was the first thing he ever got out of the Zen store, so he has an attachment to it and wanting to do a legendary Bort. Talks about how important energy weapon cycle is to STO, and that he had a model of a Negh'var as a kid.
  
• Kael has passed on the question of why there are the number of tokens there are in the bundle. He imagines its deliberate.
  
• Kael highlights a question, "for no reason" he says, about if the Prodigy dauntless is coming to STO any time soon.
  
• Thomas says there is a remaster of the Exeter variant of the Connie in progress.
  
• When Thomas remastered the UI for LoR he chose the color scheme he chose because that was the scheme made by Mike Okuda for the Perpetual version of STO.
  
• Overload linked quad canons treat beam overload like fire at will so you can slap these cannons on a beam overload build and still get mileage out of them.
  
• Jonathan intends for this weapon trait to eventually be available elsewhere, be it an engineer-able mod or something else
  
• All the old Avenger/Bort consoles have had their restrictions removed.
  
• Jonathan mentions he will probably re-add the Bort BoP console restriction since that doesn't really work on ships outside the Bort. Though both he and Thomas do mention they could create another version of that power for other ships that causes the BoP to warp in instead.
  
• Jonathan says hes made some little progress on figuring out where in the game to add things like narrow angle phaser beam arrays, or the new overload linked quad. If/when they get added they won't be limited to just phaser, and will come in all weapon types.
  
• Jonathan is interested in adding additional mods to advanced consoles, but fears he might "troll" some people in the process who have already re-engineered them by doing so.
  
• Cryptic is taking a look at cloaks in STO, who is good at it, and why, and interested in tweaking some of the older content. Jonathan has an idea to help Klingon and Romulan cloaks.
  
• Based on something someone asked in chat Jonathan is wondering if there is any way to expose the tags of certain powers so players have greater clarity on what constitutes things like an actual "cloak" power. Kael adds it wold make it easier for item descriptions to say "effects anything with X tag".
  
• Jonathan finds it a compelling argument that the Scimitar/legendary Scimitar should have an enhanced battle cloak. Hes not against adding it, but afraid of opening the can of worms and having to go back through years of ships and having to adjust who gets what cloak on a ton of ships.
  
• Jonathan has been considering a new singularity power that buffs/synergies with cloaks, as people have been asking for a singularity power revamp.
  
• Kael says he will look into tailor issues on the console in regards to backgrounds being in front of player character/ships.
  
• There has been internal work on more BOFF powers. The main obstacle in adding more BOFF powers is that the Boff manual system is clunky nonsense that dramatically pushes up dev time.
  
• Jonathan looks at threads on the forums/social media sites about what powers people want added to auto execute on console. Though there's some abilities the game simply doesn't allow them to do auto execute for.
  
• Unlikely they will do something like a token that allows you to make non full-spec ships into full spec-ships. Jonathan isn't admits he doesn't even know enough to provide an answer to that, and that he would have to talk to the software team, which shows how big a thing that would be.
  
• Jonathan asks players how they feel about a recent melee weapon rework he did to make older melee weapons behave more like newer melee weapons in that you can charge/print toward enemies from a longer distance. Asks people to post on forums/social media their experiences. Jonathan says it may not have shipped to live, hes not sure due to how patch notes are sometimes truncated.
  
• When asked about making the character selection screen static Kael notes that they've pretty much given up all hope on messing with the character selection screen.
  
  
  
• New Inquiry is called the Inquiry gamma, appeared in S3 of Picard. Thomas says it might be the only ship in STO to have the history is does. The effects house that did the effects for S2/3 of Picard was different then the one that did S1. They asked Cryptic for ships to put in the show, and among STO original ships they also included the STO version of the Inquiry. the Effects house took STO's inquiry and updated it for the S3 Inquiry, which is now being added to STO.
  
• Changes the effects house made include: Removed big windows on the side(still there as an element just not lit up), added an actual deflector dish(compared to the grill the original had), added more detail, changed some proportions to the hull is a bit smaller.
  
• All changes were done to the STO model Cryptic gave them, and they kept things like the UV layout Cryptic uses, the materials Cryptic used(though they added a lighter material). Because of this, when Cryptic got the model they went "ohh, we can just put this in the game". The STO model for the Inquiry gamma is the one used on the show. Cryptic didn't ave to rebuild it/change it or anything. They could just put it in the game.
  
• Cryptic did add a few little details. edited the "shelf" where the saucer met the hull to be a bit more purposeful, made the nacelles a bit fatter in the middle, and made the color lighter to fit with the general fleet colors.
  
• Brian(a VFX supervisor on Picard S2/3) was in the chat and gave some of the above info about what they changed. He was heavily responsible for helping get STO ships into Picard S2/3.
  
• Remastered Inquiry doesn't replace the skin on the Inquiry the player can call in as a power as that was meant to evoke a scene from Picard S1 which used the old look. Thomas says while the new look could be considered a retcon in the show, it can also be considered a new variant, and he doesn't want to take anything away from people who might want/use that.
  
• Original version of the ship was designed by John Eaves as a design for the original version of STO by Perpetual that was later dusted off by John for Picard S1.
  
• Cryptic alerted to NCC being backwards on Inquiry nacelle.
  
  
  
• Thomas tries to be strategic when making ships/redoing ship art. Legendary variants give an easy way to remaster old ships, but they have to scope the new variant a little light so they can spend the bulk of the time remastering the old ship if it needs it.
  
• While the Avenger isn't canon Thomas considers it very important to STO's history. It was the first Fed Battle cruiser, it was an early T5 ship in the Zen store, and was part of helping set the visual design of ships in STO going forward. So it was important to Thomas to bring it inline to modern STO visual quality, and remasters like the Odyssey.
  
• Odyssey and Avenger are from the same era of STO/setting the visual design for STO ships. The Oddy remaster gave Thomas a blueprint on how to remaster the Avenger/other ships from that era of the game to make them feel cohesive.
  
• Mauricio remastered both the Bortasqu and the Avenger. Mauricio brought a lot of surface features from the Oddy revamp and brought them into the Avenger revamp.
  
• When making ships Cryptic doesn't want them to feel like video game assets. The artists think about what he can add to make them feel like it was in the ILM workshop as if they made it for one of the shows/movies.
  
• Brian complemented the new Avenger and says "Thomas and crew spend a lot of time really thinking Federation Future and the design theory of it all"
  
  
  
• For the legendary Bortasqu Cryptic decided to take the Kronos One variant they did for the K't'inga class, with all the livery that made it stand out as basically being a Klingon "air force one", and apply that here like they did for the T6 Vo'devwl.
  
• Thomas liked the idea of that style switching ships to whatever ship the Klingon Chancellor is currently using, like how every version of Air Force One uses the same paint scheme.
  
• Another reason to do this was because it gave them time to remaster the original Bortasqu. Had they done a completely new skin for the legendary they wouldn't have had time to remaster the original. It was important to Thomas that they remaster the Bortasqu given its place as the Klingon flagship since its introduction back in 2012.
  
• The filigree used on the Bortasqu remaster is the same used on all the other Kronos one variants.
  
• Thomas says they likely won't do a Kronos One variant B'rell.
  
• Comes with a new material based on the Vor'cha and Vo'devwl, with a slightly different green color palette to it that's based on the original Klingon type 3 material that the Bortasqu used previously.
  
• Jonathan comments on people wondering why it wasn't a Jugg, or something similar, and he says they try to not change the class. So its a battle cruiser because the old one was a battle cruiser.
  
• Ship has a very cannon friendly layout, but the seating/stats make it good as a torpedo boat, so it can do both.
  
• No hanger on the ship because Jonathan wasn't aware there was a lot of player feedback regarding wanting a hanger on the ship.
  
• Rapid fire linked disruptor canons cause rapid fire cooldown reduction when getting kills.
  
• Bort got 4 device slots because one of the older versions had it, and it felt like a little bit of sugar to give the ship.