Commanders, 

Star Trek Fleet Command has celebrated its 4th Anniversary! As we fly into 2023, it’s time to review the passing year and share some of our roadmap plans for what lies ahead.

In 2022 we released four new arcs, featuring both new and classic IPs:

• Rules of Acquisition (Ferengi) arc that introduced:
  • D’Vor Feesha ship
  • Treasury building
  • Cross Server Leaderboards
• Lower Decks arc that added:
  • U.S.S. Cerritos ship
  • “Below Deck Officers” 
• Strange New Worlds arc with:
  • Infinite Incursions 
  • Mantis ship
  • Galaxy Tree Expansion
• Deep Space Nine arc (concluding in December) that added: 
  • Alliance Starbase 
  • U.S.S. Defiant 
  • Automated Defenses 
  • Armory building 
  • Espionage spy event!

Overall, it was a busy year, and we look ahead for an even bigger one in 2023!

To that end, it’s time to share some more details on what we have been working on and what can be expected to arrive in your quadrant next year!

As always, details are subject to change, as may the order and timing of their eventual release, but we hope you’ll be excited by this current roadmap:

Fleet Commanders

During the last few years, you probably noticed how much your fleet of ships has grown. Your officers need additional support in commanding this large fleet of ships. In response to this need, a new role is being created: Fleet Commanders.

Fleet Commanders give you a new way to enhance your station and fleet. Here, the most impactful and iconic characters from the Star Trek universe take center stage. They will bring additional power and strategy to all of your fleet while commanding it from the safety of your station.

The first Fleet Commanders chosen to unleash on the galaxy will include Captain Spock, Admiral Kirk, and … a very special assimilated officer!

Expect the feature and the first batch of Fleet Commanders to arrive at the beginning of 2023.
**Mockup – work in progress

Hailing Frequencies

Galaxy chat is a great place to communicate with your fellow Commanders but have you ever wished you could hail some of those ships you meet in the vast galaxy?

The Hailing Frequencies feature that will arrive early next year will include special animated emotes that you can use from your ships to communicate with other commanders in your vicinity.

You can probably guess some of the obvious ideas we plan to introduce near launch :facepalm:

**Mockup – work in progress

Game Lag/Performance

An issue this year has been the game performance/lag, especially during events like Infinite Incursions and competitive Territory Captures.

Improving lag and performance is a major focus for our team, and something we have constantly been working to improve. We don’t want to introduce awesome new content and features every month if the gameplay experience for our players is suboptimal.

To give you all some context, lag and performance in general are not simple things we can fix in an instant. They are complex and involve many different code paths on both the client (game app) and back-end servers.

We wanted to share with you some of the improvements our dedicated engineering team has been working on and where those changes are in the pipeline (see image below).

As you can see, we recently released several improvements like the revised battle engine and alliance contributions changes that had significant performance impacts plus daily reset scaling improvements that helped with the event refreshes at 9am PT.

More improvements are planned for 2023, and we hope you will start feeling a positive change in performance in the next few months.

Game Grind/Loops

Another topic we have been hearing from you (and especially our longer time players) is the amount of loops/grind that a Commander needs to do daily.

We recognize that over the years, we have added a lot for dedicated commanders to do on a daily basis. Many ships, features, options, resources, and factions await you each day. These new gameplay features have also increased the time needed to complete daily hostiles and armadas kills. To that end, a big priority for us in 2023 is to help reduce this grind, especially for older content. This will also allow us to provide new fun and engaging content throughout the year!

Expect to see some initial ways to address this in the first half of 2023 and beyond.

Rite of Ascension (name might change)

‘etlh QorghHa’lu’chugh ragh ‘etlh nIvqu’ ‘ej jejHa’choH’
(Even the best blade will rust and grow dull unless it is cared for) – Klingon Proverb

In mid 2023, we plan to unleash a new challenge: the Rite of Ascension. This will involve testing the strength of your fleet against increasingly difficult enemy attacks.

Commanders will be presented with a series of progressively tougher challenges which they can complete in order to earn rewards. Push as far as you can to show your fellow commanders just how powerful you are.

Can you prove that you have the heart of a warrior? Will you be victorious? Assert your dominance in the galaxy. Qapla’!

Artifacts (name might change)

“Open your mind to the past, art, history, philosophy… and all this may mean something” – Jean-Luc Picard

We are looking to add new ways for players to augment their bases so they have more tactical choices. Commanders will have new ways to optimize the ways they explore and battle across the galaxy. Archaeological Artifacts will become available to seek out and use on stations, ships and officers in many different ways.

This feature is still early in development and may go through radical changes but we think it could be an interesting one to explore (pun intended) 🙂

2023 IP/Shows

Lastly, the arcs we have planned for next year include some fan favorite shows and movies from the Star Trek catalog, plus some new more recent ones which we are sure all fans would enjoy.

We can’t share a lot of details quite yet, but the one small hint we have for the first arc in 2023 will bring back an old geometrically-obsessed enemy you faced before 😀