Star Trek Online's Delta Quadrant, Xindi, and new uniforms

I've not reported on Star Trek Online in a while, so there are a few cool new things to look at. First up the new news is that Cryptic are doing their own Project Full Circle and taking the Online narrative to the Delta Quadrant, in their next big update, Delta Rising. The new content, due in October, will see access to the Delta Quadrant granted via a portal in a Dyson Sphere, allowing players to revisit various races from Voyager, decades after the events of the TV series.

Cryptic promise the likes of the Talaxians, Ocampa, Kazon, Malon, The Hierarchy, and Automated Personal Units will all be appearing.

There will also be the obligatory new ships, plus a certain Intrepid class vessel will be playing its part.

Voyager cast members are set to reprise their roles; Tim Russ will be returning as Tuvok again, joined by Garrat Wang, aka Harry Kim, and other, as yet unannounced, familiar voices. Cryptic announced all this at the Star Trek Las Vegas convention, and TrekMovie posted further details and images. Here's the Cryptic team talking about the expansion at the convention:



Continue after the jump for more from Star Trek Online, including the return of the Xindi, and some snazzy new uniforms.

Already playable is Season 9.5, which includes several new features, among them, the latest "lock box" which allows players to win, or via the Lobi Crystal Exchange buy, new ships, personal, gear, and abilities. This latest lock box is Xindi themed. Here's STO's explanation of what the Xinidi have been up to since the 22nd century:

Within the timeline of Star Trek Online, the Xindi species joined the United Federation of Planets long ago. Even then, they preferred to remain isolated within the Delphic Expanse. The Xindi’s tumultuous past as puppets of a powerful extra-dimensional force gives them a historical context for the type of danger the Iconian threat represents. They have not forgotten how the Sphere Builders manipulated their species, and they will not allow other species to fall prey to such deception again.

In the context of Star Trek Online, we are portraying the Xindi species as a highly intelligent and experimental species, still capable of fantastic feats of science and engineering such as those that led to the creation of their infamous “Super Weapon” in the 22nd century. By opening a Xindi Lock Box, players will find the opportunity to benefit from the experimental technology of the ingenious Xindi. Their affinity for Research and Development also goes well with the release of our newly-revamped R and D System.

Top prize from the lock box is a Xindi-Aquatic ship, the Narcine dreadnought carrier, which comes with two contingents of Mobulai frigates.

While available from the Lobi Crystal Store is the Xindi-Reptilian Contortrix escort, which can deploy a Xindi Weapon Platform (like the prototype planet destroying weapon).

Other goodies include Xindi crew-members, weapons, and uniforms. For full details have a look at Cryptic's post about the lock box, and specs of the ships.

Finally, if you don't want to dress up like a Xindi, there are a whole load of new uniforms in the game. In an effort to make Starfleet seem, well, a bit more uniform, the Cryptic team have rolled out the Odyssey uniforms to every corner of Starfleet in the game. While players can still opt to customise themselves and their crew with all manner of uniform options, every day Starfleet folk wear the stylish new take on Starfleet attire (and players can choose to as well).

Here's STO's Thomas Marrone on the influences that formed the new design (from Crytic's announcement):

Based on the 2409 Starfleet Academy uniform, the Odyssey uniform was designed to be more in line with the styling of the uniforms seen in The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager. It features clean lines and a relatively simple pattern. Gray shoulders hearken back to DS9 and Voyager while the bold stripe across the chest pays homage to the alternate future uniforms seen in TNG’s “All Good Things” and VOY’s “Endgame”. With all this in mind it was the perfect fit to give Starfleet characters in Star Trek Online a fashion update and unify the look of the Federation’s forces.

The formal variant of the uniform seems to draw more from the TOS movie era uniforms as well, and as you can see below, while the new uniforms are consistent in many ways, there are still lots of different versions:

You can get more information on each of the variations on the STO Starfleet uniform code.