Making Star Trek Online into a Star Trek Adventures resource

As my players already know, I'm setting my STA campaign in the STO universe, in the year 2411. The goings-on in the online game are really only backdrop. My players will be exploring a previously unexplored section of the galaxy that is removed from the political situation of the three major powers.

That's not to say that STO doesn't have things to provide for my game. One of my players was kind enough to hand me a "Technobabble generator" last session and it got me thinking. STO has a whole slew of technobabble stuff lurking within the game that we can use to add further atmosphere.

So, I'm going to provide links to the appropriate wiki pages.

Rare minerals, particles, and the like

"Science officer, can you identify that green-glowing gas please?"

"Captain, there's a large deposit of ______ on this asteroid."

"We'll need to absorb some of the ___________ particles from that cloud to fuel the reaction, Captain."

Need a rare sci-fi material to fill in the blank on sentences like these. Look no further than this chart of odd materials used in the STO crafting system.

Engineering Components

"Sorry, sir, but the _________'s shot. It'll need replaced."

"I'm just completing repairs on the _________ now. We'll be up and running in no time."

Engineers, need a better name for the thingamajig you're fixing on the ship? Again, STO comes through with this list of equipment components from the crafting system.

Major Starship Components

"Sir, we can't fire the phasers without a functioning _________."

"I've jury rigged a new _______________. The impulse engines should be back online in moments."

Consider this the step up from Engineering Components. These are the pieces of the ship that make it function and are themselves made up of the above mentioned Engineering Components. These items are more large scale. In STO, they generally appear as consoles and provide various buffs for the starship during play. In STA, I would imagine these machines are pretty universal on starships and are simply part and parcel of how you construct a star-faring vessel.

Engineering consoles are the devices that regulate the power systems of the ship.

Tactical Consoles are devices that support and control the ship's weapon systems.

Science consoles are devices that allow the sensors, shields, medical facilities, laboratories, and the like to operate.

Energy Weapon Types (Space)

A starship laying out the serious pain of an anti-proton volley.

STA is limited to three energy weapons: phasers, disruptors, and polaron. STO has weapons that utilize three others: anti-proton, tetryon, and plasma.

• Anti-proton weapons just plain hit harder. Add +2 to damage after all other calculations are made.
• Tetyron weapons shred shields. For every effect rolled, increase the damage by 1 as long as the damaged vessel still has shields (like vicious 1, but it doesn't do additional hull damage to the ship, only the shields.)
• Plasma weapons inflict a damage-over-time effect. This weapon has the persistent quality.

Energy Weapon Types (Ground)

Vulcan officer with a plasma"mini-gun" assault weapon

As above, only shields aren't as big a deal on this scale of play. The only "shield" available is the Personal Body Shield which gives resistance instead of a Shield value. As a result, Tetyron ground weapons are given Piercing 1.

However, in addition to the new energy types, there is also a new category of weapon in STO. In addition to pistols and rifles, there is also the assault weapon. These are the machine guns and shotguns of the Star Trek universe and I suspect only exist because of the turmoil of the Iconian Wars.

Each assault weapon has the Area, Cumbersome, and Deadly qualities, but otherwise functions as a rifle of the appropriate type.

Torpedo Weapon Types (Space)

Again, STA limits itself (for the moment anyway) to three torpedo types: photon, quantum, and plasma while STO includes three others: transphasic, chroniton, and tricobalt.

I haven't put a lot of thought into how to implement these in STA, in part because there's a big difference between how STO portrays these weapons and how Star Trek canon does in the shows.

Transphasic torpedoes can kill Borg cubes in one shot. I'm not sure how I can implement something that powerful in game. In STO, they're not quite that deadly, but they have higher shield penetration than other torp types.

Chroniton torpedoes bypass shields because of their temporal flux. In STO, they also produce a slowing effect on ships struck by them. Not sure how I'd do that in STA.

Tricobalt torpedoes are basically space nukes and suffer from the same problem as Transphasics. Way too powerful to be easily implemented.

So, I'm not sure what I'm doing with these yet. Consider this a work in progress.