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Earth Space Dock Update
baddmoonrizin
Member Posts: 11,049 Community Moderator
The Earth Spacedock on PC is getting a well-deserved facelift!
https://www.playstartrekonline.com/en/news/article/11572869
https://www.playstartrekonline.com/en/news/article/11572869
Star Trek Online Volunteer Community Moderator and Resident She-Wolf
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Its so shiny... Gonna have to check it out when I can.
And I'm loving the idea that we are gonna have the ships in the docking bay swap out more often again. I always loved that years ago. Made ESD feel more alive, and also allowed for showcasing one of the NEW SHINY ships.
Can we get that for Qo'noS Shipyards too eventually? Been looking at the same 3-4 ships for YEARS.
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https://x.com/trekonlinegame/status/1866889254707540291?t=BQ2RJ-rLSP4-ClYAKTUqrA&s=19
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Like ST: Picard that it was inspired by, there is some just something 'off' about the new ESD. Welcome to the Kurtzman-verse I guess.
arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1203368/pve-content-a-list-of-gamewide-polishing-pass-suggestions
According to the blog, there have been a few interior changes as well.
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These include doors by the tailor, doors by the dock windows, doors near quinns office, really here and there all over esd main deck. The doors are just missing all together and allow you to just step thru and wander past the allowed map.
Another thing missing, the memorial for Star Trek is on the Mazzine which we can no longer get to?
I undertand eliminating that deck of corridors that you really dont do anything with anyway, but can we get the mazzine back since the memorial is up there? plus its in the main esd map?
The blog about the update process was extremely interesting and all that 'background thinking' helps to sell the updates.
I look forward to the new ESD making an appearance, but hopefully the old model can still be used for other stations.
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Well done design team. Looking forward to more station and social hub overhauls.
No promises, but if we wanna see old ESD still we got those missions in Sol System. lol
Can always headcanon something.
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There is no reason all the stations in some form could not still be in orbit around Earth just because Starfleet moves their HQ operations to a new one. In fact, the new one is obviously in a lower orbit than the one in use at the moment because the current one is in synchronous orbit and the new one isn't (and the Earth looks bigger).
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I can see I made you angry... Now you know how I feel.
I'm sorry for that anger, but personally, I believe that most of the community (who aren't on the forum) will feel the same way about this reskin of ESD. So let me rephrase my previous moderator-redacted comment to be more respectful and less angry, but no less passionate.
First, a little about me personally: As a fifteen year-long player of Star Trek Online, and a launch date lifetime subscriber, I have spent a boatload of money on ships, gear, box keys and everything else in STO, and spent every day I could in this game, from the moment it launched back in the 2000s. I've played every mission, every faction, and every career path multiple times over.
I've based my own roleplays out-of-game, in my Discord and Guilded servers, on my STO ships as well. I've posted screenshots of my obtained ships in a place of pride on my Deviantart profile, written my own backstories for them, and developed my own lore around them. I even developed my own Starfleet subfaction, the Draconia Cosmo Navy, which I use in fanfiction and roleplays both in and out of game.
You could say I am an extremely proud, extremely grateful, extremely passionate superfan, and you would most definitely not be wrong. And because I am such a fan, because I am such a heavily invested party, I feel like I have the best interests of the game in mind.
But because I am so heavily invested and because I am so passionate, I also feel like I have a finger on the pulse of the community. Because of this, I feel as if I must protest these changes, and protest them most strongly.
For decades, Federation starbases looked like Earth Spacedock does now in the hearts and minds of all Star Trek fans, everywhere. For the vast majority of us, the current ESD is how a Starfleet starbase is supposed to look on the outside, regardless of the changes that happened in canon in the latest shows. We all have fond memories of ESD in the movies, games such as Starfleet Command and Bridge Commander, and canonical shows like The Next Generation, Voyager, Deep Space Nine, even Enterprise.
That intense nostalgia for the iconic design is what drove players to ask the developers to change from their original Earth Space Dock concept to one that resembled the one in canon, and that same nostalgia is not about to change just because we saw one starbase that had a different design, in a single show, for a single episode. Or even for a few episodes.
Additionally, many of us old-school fans think the new, post-2009 reboot Star Trek - such as Discovery and Picard - is garbage.
In fact, many of us who are fans of Star Trek Online - myself included - viewed Picard's changes and the on-screen statements regarding the canonized Enterprise-F to be outright disrespectful sacrilege.
It was outrageous and scandalous, a slap in the face, to treat our beloved ship the way they did. How dare they send our Enterprise, a flagship of the fandom and one made by the fandom for the fandom, for scrap instead of giving her a hallowed place of residence in the fleet museum alongside the just-as-beloved Enterprise-D?!
And so comes the question: Much as Starbase One didn't become the new Earth Space Dock when the highly-controversial Discovery came out and instead became a separate station near ESD, why should the Picard Earth Space Dock become the new Earth Space Dock for our game, a game where the vast majority of the player base believes that the current ESD exterior is how a Federation starbase like ESD should always look on the outside?
Why not follow the example of Discovery's Starbase One in the game and put the Picard Earth Space Dock in its' own system near our Earth Space Dock, keeping and updating both stations so as to not upset the long-term fans of both the game and the franchise but also supporting new ones?
We all know that this is possible, the game does follow its' own separate timeline as previous community manager Ambassador Kael stressed repeatedly. Because we do follow our own timeline, we actually can have the best of all worlds, or timelines as it may be. Not just one or the other, but all of them.
And the argument for doing this is strong, especially when highly-controversial changes like these are how Star Trek Legacy and the Section 31 television series died before seeing a single episode made: The Star Trek fanbase rejected them, just as I am confident that they will reject this reskin of the exterior of Star Trek Online's Earth Space Dock based on their shared perspective, one which I also share both as a player of STO and as a fellow Trekkie.
Therefore, if this change goes through, I feel - and fear - that Star Trek Online will be next as a majority of players leave the game. The fanbase of Online rejected Star Trek Picard, Star Trek Legacy, and Star Trek Section 31, and they will reject these changes as well just as they rejected the show they came from.
As I said earlier, a key example of this is the outrage at the fate of our Enterprise, Star Trek Online's Enterprise, and its' replacement with the Titan-A/Enterprise-G, which lead to the outright cancellation of Star Trek Legacy when the fandom rebelled. And it is the outrage at the new Picard-based Earth Space Dock that, I feel, will result in the permanent closing of Star Trek Online. And that's not a threat, but a statement of fact based on prior things that happened with the Star Trek franchise.
Now, while I again do not speak for the community in any capacity, I do have a general feel of how it seems to be looking from their perspective overall. As I said in my opening, I feel like I have a finger on the pulse of the community at large.
Because of this, I ask you to believe me when I say that a mass rejection of these changes and the resulting exodus of players - which I feel is inevitable due to these changes to a beloved station from the appearance it has held, both in the game for decades and canonically for centuries - could not have happened to a better game IMHO. It will be an extremely sad day for us all, me included, when and if the exodus happens.
Speaking for myself and only for myself, I will miss Star Trek Online when and if I leave the game; something I once thought I would never do. But that day has not yet come.
If that day does come however, on the day the game dies for me, this will be its' epitaph: "Live long and prosper, Star Trek Online. You will live on forever in my heart." For I wish this game all the best because of all the memories it gave me, and regardless of my personal feelings towards the Picard version of Earth Space Dock.
Edited to avoid spamming.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
Thank you sir.
I should also note that of the shows you listed, the Star Trek III Spacedock has only appeared in The Next Generation, Discovery and Picard. There were no episodes of Deep Space Nine that used it, Voyager chose to use the Dyson Sphere doors when Harry Kim and Tom Paris stole the prototype Yellowstone-class runabout in Non-Sequitur, and as for Enterprise, well... that show began 101 years before Discovery showed the first Spacedock under construction.
How was it sacrilege to canonise a ship that they had no obligation to use or add to the official annals of U.S.S. Enterprise history?
You may not have liked how it was used, but as the centrepiece of the Fleet Formation System that formed the Borg Armada, the Enterprise-F now holds an extremely important if unfortunate place in Federation history. It won’t even need to be mentioned to always be part of any conversation regarding those events, just like the crews of the Enterprise-D, Titan-A and all those who perished; including the entire crew of the U.S.S. Excelsior.
You appear to have omitted one important fact. Starbase One was never shown to be orbiting Earth. In fact, it was said to be 100au’s from the Sol System when Discovery found it had been captured by House D’Ghor.
In contrast, Probert Station (the second Spacedock) was shown to be the lynchpin of Earth’s orbital defence systems. It’s notable that once it had been disabled, the planetary shields dropped. If not for the heroic actions by the crew of the Enterprise-D, the annihilation of all life on Earth would have been assured.
On your point that the Spacedock from Star Trek III is how a Federation starbase is supposed to look, this really isn’t borne out in the show. First we have numerous examples of ground based starbases in The Original Series and The Next Generation. Then we have the original archetype for a facility in space, K-7. After that, we have the Orbital Office structure first seen in The Motion Picture, which is better known as Regula One in The Wrath of Khan. In this “upside down” configuration, it also played a starring role as Starbase 173 in The Measure of a Man, and Starbase 375 during the Dominion War on Deep Space Nine.
Of course, the ironic thing in all this is that aside from adding the five outboard docking bays, Probert Station really doesn’t differ enough to even warrant such a furore.
Legacy has never been anything other than an idea. As for Section 31, it was dealt the blow of a global pandemic that shut down so much of the world. By the time things started returning to normal, Michelle Yeoh had other obligations to fulfil and priorities shifted. One of those obligations was a film called Everything Everywhere All At Once; you may have heard of it.
Also, for something that’s dead, Section 31 is certainly doing a poor job of staying in its grave judging by the trailer I saw this week.
You know it’s strange, I really don’t recall seeing any of this outrage over the treatment of Enterprise-F in Picard. I do remember seeing opinions that ranged from how cool it was for it to be canonised to apathy over them using a ship that none of the characters had a connection to though. In fact, the biggest complaint I saw was that it wasn’t the Enterprise-E, since it was home to Picard and his crew for longer than the Enterprise-D was.
Suffice to say, you really don’t have a feel for how the community feels at large. What you have is a personal opinion that reads a lot like the gatekeeping rubbish that appears so often on YouTube. It only takes a healthy dose of common sense to know that all of this is really just a long winded way of trying to get what you want at the expense of everyone else.
Okay, lets put this into perspective.
The last time we saw ESD onscreen was in TNG......30 years prior to 2409. The space frame is over 100 years old, so why wouldn't they build a new version or update it in that time to accommodate larger ships docking?? Why wouldn't they build a completely new station?? It's not like they didn't have the resource or time to do it.
You have no legitimate argument to backup anything you have said and you do not get to gate-keep what happens in canon nor whether STO can follow suit or not, and no, your view most certainly does not represent the majority. I've yet to see any outrage you proclaim in-game on PC or Xbox, and yes, I too have been playing near 15 years, on every day, spent bucket loads, have fleets of my own.
Whilst STO is not canon, it does follow canon in the majority, and if it's on-screen via TV or Film, it's canon, end of.
Personally, I can't wait for it to hit Holodeck.
IIRC, originally Kael said it probably wouldn't change, so there must have been some player interest in seeing this come into the game to change their minds on this. I think this is more of a Cryptic change than a DECA-inspired change.
I just hope they've given our dearest 'Kathy' a seat.....she must be so tired of standing up