In all the Star Trek franchise there is no ship more iconic, more storied and more loved than the Enterprise. Repackaged and redesigned for a new era, the Enterprise was both a new and familiar sight when it arrived in Discovery’s season one cliffhanger and since it arrived, Star Trek Online players have been chomping at the bit to find out when they could get hold of the new ship to lead their campaign.
As someone we have trouble seeing once said, the time is now. Launching last week the all new Discovery Enterprise model was up for grabs as a premium grab in Star Trek Online. Dubbed a Miracle Worker Flight Deck Cruiser, the ship was initially supposed to launch in game earlier this year until the team pushed it back to see how the Enterprise fared on screen in Discovery’s finale.
That decision was a wise one. When up against Section 31, Discovery and the Enterprise created a makeshift fleet to protect themselves; a feature the STO team have made the prime feature in the new ship.
The Technical Stuff
Part of the new Tier 6 scaling plan, the Discovery Era Constitution (or Donnie, as it seems to have been dubbed!) can be played by any player who’s passed the tutorial. As base level it comes with bare bones console and weapons slots with it’s full powers unlocking as you get to Tier 6 level.
At full strength is has a 1.4 hull with 1.25 shield modifier, 2/3 weapons set up with four additional device slots; Comes with 3 tactica consoles, 5 engineering, 3 science and 1 universal; It’s bridge officer slots includes a Lt Commander universal, Commander Engineering and Miracle Worker; has a 9 degree per second base turn rate and 40 inertia; and among it’s own command frequency mods, will unlock a new Polarized Lattice-Optimized Tritanium Armor trait at level 5.
If you don’t know what any of that means, don’t worry too much. In short it’s sturdy with some great options to play with. You can read the full specs on the Flight Deck Cruiser announcement on Arc.
The Good
Being a flight deck cruiser the ship comes with two hanger bays equipt with attack drones. I kind of expect their damage output to be reduced eventually, but when activated as they are now the ship packs a huge punch – early tests showed them adding a significant amount of damage. Adding to that, the Reinforcement Squadrons universal console gives is another huge boost to it’s damage output.
The hanger pets are weird in that each pet is a squadron of six tactical flyers. With two hanger pays you can launch twelve in total at once, which means if you deply all of them at once you’ll end up with 72 small tactical pets fighting on your side. Which amazingly doesn’t melt your video card and looks fairly impressive as they swirl around you.
With a 5/3 weapons set up, the stock phasers that come with the build don’t look much on paper but increase in damage output depending on how many you equip. Though the visuals mirroring the Discovery Enterprise’s phaser beams are the real selling point.
Hull and shield mods, maxed out with the usual console additions, really help to make this a nice and sturdy ship. Typically whenever I test a build on base settings – even the Mighty Vengeance – I’ll push straight into an elite queue and mess something up to the point of exploding. After about twenty hours flying this one, it took quite a bit to take the ship down after packing it with some fairly middle of the road equipment.
The Bad
When Cryptic shied away from answering all the questions about the bridge, it was a foregone conclusion they wouldn’t include it. Still, we’re petty enough to list it in the negatives column! To their credit the team did point out that they didn’t see the bridge until we did, and with such a small development team it would have been a trial to squeeze in the build. Fingers crossed they add it later as they did with the Crossfield and Walker (now Discovery-era standard) sets.
Another negative is the phasers. Yes, they look good and perform well, but being a flight deck cruiser there are some restrictions – such as being unable to use dual heavy canons – and advanced versions are only available in the Dilithium Store at a hefty price. For my build I ended up using the recently released Section 31 covert phaser arrays because it fit the era and, well to be frank, I hadn’t used them yet so this seemed like the perfect chance to test them.
The Awesome
Every player is different. Some like the DPS chase. Some like collecting ships or building on one specific challenge build. For me it’s all about the aesthetic. And Gods, does this ship look good! I’ve spoken about the design in Comms on more than one occasion – including out recent issue in which we review the Eaglemoss release – but the short version is that I think it’s one of the best designed Enterprise’s in the franchise. It’s got great callbacks to the first two Constitution Models and acts as a perfect middle ground between the NX and Constitution Refit.
The developers of STO have a head start in building these ships; CBS gives them their CGI copy to model from. IT’s still a huge task for them, the base files are over 15 million polygons and the standard STO Ship is only 30. But that reference material helps build a near perfect recreation – and much like the rest of the Discovery line, it really helps us see the new design for the Enterprise in all it’s glory.
Developer Donny Versiga has done a wonderful job in that recreation, bringing a stunning amount of detail for an already great design into game, continuing to raie the already high bar set by the Discovery line so far.
It’s Companion…
….we’re obviously all about Starfleet. But for those who have a preference for the Klingon faction, Chancellor L’Rell’s unified D7 is also available for Klingon Players. While we have no hands on experience with the model, the stats for the D7 are strikingly similar and it’s the first time Discovery fans have had a chance to see the digital asset in full.
How To Get It
Here’s the tricky bit. The Miracle Worker Flight Deck Cruiser is available as an R&D Promotion. This eans that any R&D Promotion box bought from the C-Store within the promotion will give you a chance at winning the big prize. But keep in mind it is only a chance, and while Cryptic doesn’t publish their RNG stats, it’s guessed to be around 0.05%. Fortunately the ships are listed on the exchange as Discovery Flight Deck Cruiser – but due to the rarity of them prices are around 1.4-5 Billion Energy Credits. That price is certain to come down over time, however.
If the Miracle Cruiser isn’t your thing though, there’s plenty ships to choose from whether you prefer the Discovery designs, ships of TOS or the Next Gen Era – and plenty more if you want to indulge in Romulan, Klingon, Ferengi or man more designs. Star Trek Online is free to play on PC, XBox One and PS4. For More information visit StarTrekOnline.com
For a review of the Eaglemoss Model from Star Trek Discovery: Starships Issue 12, Discovery Season 2 Recap and roundup of STO content you can read more with Comms: Inclusive as part of a free SFCQ2 Membership. To find out more visit out Comms or Enlist pages