Welcome to STO

This section covers character creation, character/ship anatomy, basic UI and systems, item equipping, and foundational terminology.

Throughout this guide, look out for items marked ALERT in red text for special cautions and italicized picture captions for related images. 

A word from your authors:

This is our definitive new player guide for Star Trek Online. We’ve each been playing for over ten years and no other Star Trek game scratches the same itch. STO has a  vast array of content from across the eras and shows of Trek, features and references characters and ships from all over the universe. It’s a love letter to all of Star Trek, and this guide is our primer to its fundamentals. When writing it, we made new characters to chart our course through those early levels so that we’d be walking through the same journey you’re about to experience. It takes a community, and we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out another amazing resource for players new and old: the STO wiki: https://stowiki.net/ which has thousands of pages on everything you’ll find in the game. It’s an invaluable resource that we use all the time. 

Throughout this guide, look out for items marked ALERT in red text for special cautions and italicized picture captions

1. Introduction

1.1 Characters & Careers

When you begin the game, you'll be asked to choose an “@” handle. This spans all characters you choose to make, and is publicly visible, so unless you want people knowing your real name, or you want to get a lot of negative attention from other players, avoid putting either your real name/ other identifying information in there or putting something spicy in your @ handle. The game will then assign you a # with 4 numbers after it, so if you entered “Paris” as your @ handle, you might end up with something like @Paris#1701 as your handle. This handle is associated with the email address you used to set up the account; your email address is NOT publicly viewable. 

Next, you’ll be asked to select a faction and select one of three careers for your character. More developed players may choose to have multiple characters spanning the various careers and factions, but for now, just choose one. All factions have some level of unique storyline, unique tutorial, and the three careers all play somewhat differently, especially on the ground. The choice of faction and career is irrevocable. 

1.1.1 Factions

• Starfleet: Choose this option to create a Starfleet character set in the year of the game's main storyline: 2409. 

• Klingon Defense Force: Choose this option to create a Klingon Defense Force (KDF) set in the year of the game's main storyline: 2409. The KDF includes other species as well, including Orions and Gorn.

• Discovery Starfleet: Choose this option to create a Starfleet character starting in the 23rd century with the aesthetics and flavor of Star Trek Discovery.

• Dominion: Choose this option to create a Jem'Hadar character starting in 2410. These characters are really intended for endgame players and do not constitute a full faction. They have an accelerated start and will end up joining with either the Federation or Klingon Defense Force

• TOS Starfleet: Choose this option to create a Starfleet character starting in the 23rd century with the aesthetics and flavor of The Original Series.

• Romulan Republic: Choose this option to create a character belonging to the breakaway Romulan Republic set in the year of the game's main storyline: 2409. 

During special recruitment events offered periodically, the game will offer incentives for creating characters belonging to specific factions. All but Discovery Starfleet have a recruitment event of some type associated with them. See Section 6.5 for more details.

Join Starfleet and explore the galaxy, or join the Klingon Defense Force and conquer it!

1.1.2 Careers

Choosing a career in Star Trek Online determines what abilities your character has. It does NOT lock you into flying a ship that matches the career and your bridge officers will provide abilities from the other careers as well. 

• Tactical is the most offensive, with virtually all ground and space abilities offensive in nature. In space, tactical captains can increase their damage and mobility through a variety of abilities, while also increasing their team’s offensive capabilities. On the ground, tactical captains have several abilities that boost their damage output (buffs), and can eventually unlock a variety of direct damage abilities (nukes). 

• Engineering is the sturdiest career, with some offensive capabilities but a strong emphasis on defense as well. In space, engineering captains have unparalleled ability to keep their ship in one piece while having access to strong power boosts. On the ground, engineering captains can leverage a variety of summons including drones, mortars, and shield generators, as well as more conventional damage increase and direct damage abilities.

• Science is somewhere between the engineer and tactical captain in the balance of offensive and defense. Science captains have both offensive and defense abilities in space, and their unique strength lies in controlling and debuffing enemies. If you are at all interested in STO’s Player-versus-Player (PvP) scene, this is likely the career for you. On the ground, science captains have the most access to healing powers, while also retaining other control and debuff abilities. 

Additionally, some missions will give you unique dialogue depending on your profession. Usually these will be just different dialogue options, and rarely will it have you do something different. However, these missions will give you the same rewards regardless of your profession; these are here for roleplay and immersion! 

Unique career dialogue examples:

1.1.3 Species and Appearance

During the captain creation phase, you choose your captain’s species and gender. The choice of species is also permanent. For gameplay purposes, the differences between species are fairly small, with some having unique abilities or dialogue options. Different species will also have different cosmetic customization options, with Alien having the most unlocked. The wiki has a detailed list, complete with all the unique perks for each species. Species with an asterisk (*) are not freely accessible. 

Starfleet:

• Human

• Vulcan

• Andorian

• Tellarite

• Bajoran

• Betazoid

• Bolian

• Ferengi

• Pakled

• Rigelian

• Saurian

• Trill

• Caitian*

• Klingon*

• Cardassian*

• Liberated Borg*

• Talaxian*

• Trill (Joined)*

• Alien

TOS Starfleet

• Human

• Vulcan

• Andorian

• Tellarite

Discovery Starfleet

• Human

• Vulcan

• Alien

Klingon Defense Force (KDF)

• Klingon (TNG)

• Klingon (DSC)

• Orion

• Lethean

• Gorn

• Nausicaan

• Ferasan*

• Cardassian*

• Liberated Borg*

• Talaxian*

• Trill (Joined)*

• Alien

Romulan Republic

• Romulan

• Reman

• Liberated Borg*

• Alien

Dominion

• Jem’Hadar

• Jem’Hadar Vanguard*

Unlike your captain’s faction, species, and career, you can freely change your captain’s appearance both in the character creation phase and later. Some uniform and species options are not free to unlock, so be careful of any with a (Z) symbol. One of STO’s greatest strengths is the amazing amount of customization and diversity available. You can create a fresh-faced Human cadet fresh out of Space Dock, or a dour Jem’Hadar; a surly, hulking Klingon, or a sultry Orion; a logical Vulcan, or even go absolutely nuts with the character creator and create mind-boggling aliens. All the possibilities are at your fingertips, so enjoy the space “Barbie.” It’s there for you to play with–dive in, and welcome to the fleet! 

There are a few limitations to be aware of: name, species, and gender may NOT be freely altered. Changing your name will cost you premium currency (Zen), as will changing gender/species. These latter two require a Captain Alteration Token and you must have selected a primary faction (Federation or KDF). You cannot change to a species not available to your faction.

1.2 Space and Ground

Is STO a spaceship game or an individual character role-playing game? The answer is both. On the ground, you (usually) play as the character you created, going on missions, fighting battles, and solving problems as an individual. Sometimes you’ll have your crew there to assist you. Ground play contains special zones called social zones, where you can interact with other players in a non-combat area for trading and equipping. 

When your character is on the ship, the representation of the player character is generally from the perspective of the entire ship. There are bridges and missions that take place on your ship, but for most of the spaceborne gameplay experience, you see and maneuver as the whole ship. You’ll need to learn how to handle yourself both on the ground and in space to truly excel at STO.

1.3 Basic Controls

The tutorial does a reasonable job of explaining how to move and interact, but if you’re less familiar with common gaming controls, here’s a refresher for keyboard users. STO has incredible customization of keys so if you don’t like it, hit Esc to open the game’s main menu->select Options->then keybinds->and change them how you like.

Key Binds Menu:

Default Ground:

• W: Move forward

• S: Move backward

• A: Turn left

• D: Turn right

• Q: Strafe left

• E: Strafe right Note: Double-tapping any directional movement (WSQE) will cause you to roll in that direction

• R: Toggle Continuous Walk forward Note: if your character is moving without input, you may have inadvertently pressed R, press it again to stop moving

• Spacebar: Jump

• Shift + WASD directions: Run

• M: Expands the minimap

• X: Aim Mode

• C: Crouch

• Z: Switch Weapon

• H: Holster Weapon

• Tab: Target next enemy

• B: Toggle shooter mode. We encourage you to NOT use this unless you’re familiar with this point of view. 

• Fire Active Weapon’s primary mode: 1

• Fire Active Weapon’s secondary mode: 2

• Fire Active Weapon’s tertiary mode: 3

• Ctrl+(WSQE): Amble

Default Space:

• W: Pitch up

• S: Pitch down

• A: Bank left (port)

• D: Bank right (starboard)

• Q: Throttle down

• E: Throttle up

• R: Toggle Maximum throttle

• Shift+R: Toggle Full Impulse

• Tab: Target next enemy

• Shift+Tab: Target previous enemy

• Spacebar: Fire all weapons

Default Both:

• F: This is typically your “press-to-interact” contextual command

• K: Opens the skills menu

• U: Opens the character/ship/gear status menu

• J: Opens your mission journal

• I: Opens the inventory menu

• V: Activates your tricorder/scanner

• M: Expand the minimap

• Esc: Deselect target; Open game menu

1.4 Basic UI

All of this was covered in the tutorial, but if you need a refresher, here it is. Certain in-game elements are common indicators to go interact with a person or item. Non-player characters (NPCs) with an interaction available have an exclamation point inside a box over their head. Walking over and pressing “F” will initiate the interaction. Non-character interactions tend to have a yellow glow. These could be a console, a hatch, a dropped tricorder, or any number of things. 

 NPCs you can talk to have an exclamation point over their heads; walk up and press F on PC to speak to them. Glowing objects can be interacted with in the same manner.

The minimap shows you where you are, where enemies are (marked by red dots), as well as friendly NPCs (white dots), and your objectives. Green dots are your Bridge Officers, pets, or teammates. Yellow dots are dead enemy targets. Objectives are generally additionally marked with yellow, green, and white circles. By default, right below the mini-map is your list of current objectives, and the compass will also point towards objectives. 

Left: Minimap with objective circle; Right: Compass heading with objective symbol

Some mission objectives require you to follow another NPC. They are usually marked with an arrow over their head and sometimes a green trail on the ground. 

Left: Arrow over objective NPC; Right: Green objective trail

Left: Specific high-priority targets are marked with this red symbol to help draw your attention; Right:  non-combat objectives use this green symbology. 

Your inventory can be accessed by pressing I. It contains all of the items currently available to your character. 

ALERT: you can’t see items held by any other characters, equipped on inactive ships, or in the bank. See Section 4.1.

Each character has a limited number of inventory slots and additional inventory slots can be purchased with premium currency (Zen). See section 4.7 for an explanation of the in-game store. 

Starting out, your inventory will seem so empty. It fills up fast. 

One of the most important ground commands is pressing SHIFT while moving to run/sprint. This will greatly reduce the amount of time spent on missions or in social zones. Note that in combat “Red Alert”, you can only sprint for a brief period before recharging, indicated by a progress bar. The bar is yellow and diminishes when you are running and turns white and increases when it’s recharging. 

Left: Tutorial pop-up on how to sprint; Right: white sprint recharge bar

1.5 Ground Combat and UI

The portrait UI at the top left by default shows your character's head, name, career symbol, shields (blue), health (green), and any buffs active on your character below the portrait/HP/shield bars.

Example Character Portrait

If you want to change your outfit, right click on your portrait and select Change Outfit, which will allow you to choose from any pre-saved or pre-loaded outfits. Not all outfits will be available on all locations. You can also choose “Info” to see more detailed information about your character, including name and biography. This works for other characters on your team or in the same location as well. 

Character Selection Menu

If you want to change your character’s name, that has to be done on the character selection screen and costs Zen (a premium currency typically bought with real money). If you want to add or change a biography, select “Edit Record” after opening the Status Window (U). You can be as concise or detailed as you want.

Example Personnel Record

The bottom UI element is called a tray. It shows your active weapons on ground and has a bar filled with all of the abilities you have there. The number of trays displayed can be set up to 10, and items on a tray is infinitely customizable (at least on PC). Control of trays will be discussed further in the next section, 1.6, for space.

Ground UI Legend

Reference taken directly from the in-game tutorial for ground combat basics.

1.6 Space Combat and UI

The UI for space has many more elements than you would find on ground. 

Basic UI Elements in Space:

1. Power Levels: These are the ships four inherent power banks, and consist of:

   1. Weapons (red) Affect how much damage energy based weapons do. Energy weapons drain weapon power while firing and return it once the firing cycle is complete.

   2. Shields (blue) Affect how well shields perform

   3. Engines (yellow) Affect how the ship maneuvers

   4. Auxiliary (purple) Affect how various combat mechanics (non-weapon damage, science powers, etc) function 

Left: Power levels can be customized by clicking one of the 4 buttons at the top UI element. Right: You can change the window type with the stacked boxes button. 

Note that a ship only has so much power available, going to a weapon power focused setting will remove power from other systems to compensate. Most starships have 200 power, with a maximum of 100 in each subsystem. Warbirds only have 140. Additionally, 

Left: Setting 1 - Nominal Values: First value is current power level, second value is the setting; Center: Setting 2 - Bar Graphs: Displays power as simple bar graphs instead of numbers; Right: Setting 3 - Custom Sliders: This is what allows you to set custom power levels. You can move the sliders with the arrows on each bar graph. 

Whatever display you feel most comfortable with, use that and then set power level priority to weapon focused (attack). This will give you the best balance between weapon damage and survivability.

Choose Attack Setting for initial power level configurations

2. Shield Facings and Hull Strength: The white outlines are your shield strength, broken into Fore, Aft, Left (Port) and Right (Starboard). Inside this is your ship's remaining hull strength. Both of these regenerate over time, however when a shield facing drops there is nothing protecting the hull on that side. You can click this element to rebalance the shields and redistribute to a side that has lost shield strength.

3. Impulse setting (Throttle): space movement consists of two modes of controls (similar to flight controls in other games), direction and speed. WASD for direction, like ground, does not have any UI elements attached to it. However throttle (speed) is given its own UI element. You can click the bar to go to a specific slider setting, or increase / decrease with Q/E 

1. 1. Full Impulse: This is a special flight mode where the ship has greatly increased speed. You can activate this by pushing the double arrow button on top or using Shift+R. While at full impulse your power levels shift to maximize engine power and drain from all other subsystems. It can only be used out of combat. 

Shield/Hull UI and Full Impulse UI elements highlighted

4. Weapons

This box shows the total weapons equipped on the ship. The icon will change depending on the weapon equipped, and if it's in the fore or aft slot. As seen there are two beams (one fore and one aft) and a torpedo. When in range and able to fire at a target in arc, the weapon icon will light up.

Right-click on a weapon to set it to auto-fire. Weapons set to auto-fire have a green border around them. Even on auto-fire, weapons may have to be commanded to fire initially, but will keep firing as long as they have a valid target. 

Green-outlined weapons are set to auto-fire. Weapons need both a valid target and to be in firing arc in order to fire. 

5. Bridge officers

Bridge Officers are the primary way to get skills and abilities for your ship. They have their own window that shows the bridge officer name, their portrait, and the set of skills they have available. These abilities can also be mapped to the Ability tray. Bridge officers will be explained in more detail later on, but for now think of these as your ship's inherent abilities.

6. Ability Tray

This is where you will find any power that your captain or ship has, either from equipment, traits, or bridge officers. You can see a full list available to you either via the powers window (default P) or by clicking the topmost button on the tray.

Top: Bridge officer icons and ability tray; Bottom: Example Available Skills to drag to tray

Not all powers available will automatically be assigned a spot on your tray, so if you are wondering where a power went it might not have shown up on the tray. Any powers available to you can be placed on the tray by dragging and dropping as needed.

If you run out of room the tray can be expanded to have additional rows (up to 10), with the other button.

This gives the option of 1-10 rows, and rotating the tray. 

By default, the first 4 rows are bound to keybinds with the first being 1-9 and zero, with the rest being modified (row 2 is ‘control’ + number, row 3 is ‘alt’ + number, row 4 is ‘shift’+ number). Finally, you can reorder the trays with the arrows on the far left. 

Using arrangement 2,3,1 (top to bottom) for example will map the top row to Ctrl+0-9, middle to Shift+0-9, and the bottom row as just 0-9.

1.7 Equipping Items

To equip an item, open the Status Menu (U). There are two ways to proceed from here. First, you can click on a slot and see what options are available for that given slot. Alternatively, if you know what an item does, you can drag it straight from inventory into the appropriate slot. You can only change your currently equipped items while out of combat. 

Left: Item equip screen with inventory shown. Right: Equip window with items available to equip

Items will drop periodically from defeated enemies. To retrieve it, move toward the item and press F to loot it. Some are full items that go in your general inventory. Others are raw resources and materials that are stored in the R&D tab of your inventory. Loot can be identified by a glowing pillar or beacon. The color of the beacon indicates its rarity. Rare items have more stats.

• White = Common

• Green = Uncommon

• Blue = Rare

• Purple = Very Rare

• Gold Box = Lockbox (see section 4.3)

There are higher rarities (Ultra Rare and Epic) but they do not drop from loot tables and must be upgraded into, which is a topic for much further down the line.

Example loot drop visible on ground

Items have different binding properties. Items that are unbound can be freely traded to other players. Items that are account-bound can be sent to other characters on your account. Items that are character-bound are exclusive to that character only.

ALERT: Be aware that the binding properties of an unbound item may change once you equip it for the first time.

1.8 Instances and Transitions

Instances: STO is a server-sided game, where each map can exist in multiple instances, as shown above the mini-map. Most instances can hold up to 20 players, but there may be more than 20 players on a given location. To change your instance, right-click on the instance number and select a new one. This is especially important when trying to meet up with friends in a given social zone: you will both need to be on the same instance of the map to see each other.

Instance-changing screen

Moving Between Ground and Space Maps: How does one get from space to ground or vice versa? Usually, via transporter. If you’re on an episode, you may get a prompt to beam up or beam down. You might leave orbit and go to warp in sector space. 

To move from space to ground you’ll need to fly close to the planet or space station until you get the prompt asking if you want to beam down/come aboard. On ground, the transporter icon serves as your instant means of returning to your ship. This cannot be done while in combat.

Left: Tutorial pop-up for transporter function; Right: Transporter icon highlighted

1.9 Social Zones and Vendors

Social Zones: STO has many areas that do not allow combat. These serve as hubs for accessing the bank, exchange, tailor, starship vendor, gear vendors, bridge officer trainers, quest givers, and many other things. They also serve as an area for players to interact, role-play, trade, and show off their fashion choices. Examples of social zones are Earth Space Dock, Starfleet Academy, Deep Space Nine, and the First City. Fleet Holdings can also serve as social zones. Social Zones exist in both ground and space, though vendors only appear on ground social zones. Note that some special events may cause certain social zones to have combat interactions with NPCs, and some abilities can still put you into Red Alert in a social zone. 

Some social zones are faction hubs, where your faction’s leader (example: Admiral Quinn for Federation characters) resides and can be interacted with to turn in and pick up missions. However, it is far more convenient to access missions from the Journal menu (J) and turn them in from the hailing option in the objectives menu.

Hailing icon from objectives menu highlighted

Upon reaching your faction hub for the first time, make sure you go to the Journal menu (J), go to the Available tab, and search for an available mission that will give you a tour of your faction’s hub. 

Vendors are NPCs that serve as hubs to buy and sell things. There are many different vendors that sell items in STO, each marked with a different symbol on the minimap. When you first start playing, vendors are a useful way to acquire gear and items that you’ll need. Endgame players rarely use the ones in common social hubs for buying things since vendor gear doesn’t scale into higher levels, but that’s a concern for later. 

• Ship Gear Vendors offer weapons, shields, gear, basic consoles, and even hangar bay fighters or shuttles for ships that have them. 

• Ship Tailors allow you to customize your ship’s appearance

• Ship Repair Officers allow restoration of injuries suffered to ships destroyed in combat. This is not a concern for players just starting out or playing at Normal difficulty. At higher difficulties, the debuffs caused by these injuries are substantial.

• Ground Gear Vendors offer personal weapons, shields, armor, and kit frames/modules for your ground character and bridge officers. 

• Personal Tailors allow you to customize your character’s appearance. 

• Security Officers are interacted with once you unlock the duty officer system and offer some specific missions.

• Commodity Brokers allow you to acquire special inventory items called commodities which are used in duty officer missions. See the Duty Officers section in section 3.4 for more information.

• Bridge Officer Trainers allow you to purchase training manuals to teach your bridge officers new abilities

• Diplomacy Contacts allow you to recruit bridge officers from other factions once you’ve sufficiently progressed your diplomacy/marauding commendation (see 3.4 Duty Officers).

Social Hubs also have terminals for interacting with the Bank and Exchange systems, both of which we will cover in section 4. 

Left: Earth Space Dock map with key interactions for Federation characters; Right: Qo'Nos First City map with key interactions for Klingon Defense Force characters

Left: Romulan flotilla map with key interactions for Romulan Republic characters; Right: Deep Space Nine map with key interactions for all characters, but especially Jem'Hadar

1.10 Sector Space

Sector Space is the vast expanse between inhabited systems. There is no combat in sector space, and traveling between systems requires warp drive. To navigate from system to system, you can press M to open the map and locate your next destination. Some content, like certain patrols, can only be accessed by moving to that system, within 1 light year of the planet, to prompt the interaction. What’s a patrol? Check out Section 2.3 for more information.

Left; Tutorial prompt for Sector Space and transiting to mission points; Right: Instructional tooltip for getting to the next system via minimap

The transwarp button will save you hours flying to/from faction hubs. 

Annotated view of sector space 

Let’s talk about what all these symbols mean. 

• The gray/white diamond or star systems are planetary systems. Some of them have interactions, some of them do not. Some are only interactable when a certain mission (potentially restricted to certain factions) are active.

• The small red symbols with yellow lines around them are Deep Space Encounters, small space skirmishes that can be entered freely and which shift and re-emerge periodically. We discuss these more in section 2.4.

• The bracket-shaped symbols are nebulae. These sometimes have missions or patrols in them and that is where Empire Defense missions take place for KDF characters (see section 2.3 for discussion of patrols).

• The square symbol with what resembles silhouettes of people standing in a row are colonization locations, tied to the duty officer system. This is covered in section 5.1.

• Almost every other symbol is either a social zone, fleet holding or the location of an open world. We discuss social zones in 1.9, Open Worlds in 3.8, and Fleets in 5.3. Starbase 24 and 234 are weird exceptions; the former does not do anything currently and the latter is a repeatable patrol. Some social zones are faction hubs, with more opportunities and services available to them, and are restricted to that faction. Deep Space Nine in the Alpha Quadrant is the exception; despite being the Dominion faction hub, it is open to everyone. However, Federation characters may not visit Qo’Nos and KDF characters may not visit Earth. 

There is a lot to explore out there, so enjoy the many destinations the game has to offer! 

To navigate to a location, press “M” to open your map, and then click on the destination you want to visit. Locations with an active mission or quest will have white or yellow rings around them, similar to objectives on the ground or normal space. 

All that’s needed is a sternly-spoken “Engage!” 

If you know the name of a system but not where it is in the map, use the system list tab at the top of the map. Enter the name of the system you want to visit and it will filter down the list to the appropriate destination. Then, double-click the name to set a course for that location.

I hear Risa is lovely this time of year. 

STO takes place in all four quadrants of the Milky Way 

1.11 Anatomy of a Ground Character 

Your character can be outfitted with a variety of weapons, devices, armor, shields, and kit modules, which can dramatically change your power level and gameplay on the ground. You’ll start out with the bare basics, a uniform, a shield, and some weapons, but you’ll eventually add on to your loadout until you’re a walking arsenal. 

• Weapons are used by your character for ground combat. There are rifles, pistols, and melee weapons of various types, along with a few others. You can equip up to two weapons at once, but only one may be active at once. 

• Personal Shields are your first line of defense against incoming damage. Shields regenerate quickly when out of combat, but allow some damage to bleed through even when active. 

• Armor reduces incoming damage based on its resistance stats and can offer other bonuses depending on the type of armor. 

• EV Suits are worn in particularly hostile environments and replace your armor when in use. 

• Devices generally offer temporary boosts to personal performance. Most of them are consumable but there are some that are re-usable. 

• Kit Frames go into the kit slot and allow your captain to wield a variety of active abilities. Kit Frames themselves provide ground stats, of which the most important is Kit Performance, which enhances the effectiveness of equipped kit modules. 

• Kit Modules are slotted once you have a kit frame equipped. Most of them are career-specific, though there are also many that are universal to all careers. You can only use kit modules that are equipped.

Starting out character "paper doll" with equipped gear and slots shown

1.12 Anatomy of a Space Ship 

There are many parts to a spaceship, which allows for infinite customization in ship builds and configurations, but it can also be very overwhelming. Thankfully, you can develop pieces at a time. Let’s start with the ship itself. 

• Weapons are how your ship fights in space. Fore weapons are fired from the front of your ship. Certain weapons, specifically dual beam banks, single cannons, dual cannons, and dual cannons, can only be equipped in the front slots. Mine launchers are exclusive to aft weapon slots. 

• Deflectors unlock certain bridge officer abilities that manipulate matter via exotic particles. 

• Impulse engines propel your ship when you are in normal space

• The Warp/Singularity Core allows your ship to travel through sector space. Most ships have Warp Cores. Romulan Ships exclusively have Singularity Cores. 

• Consoles are configurable devices that improve ship stats and/or add an activatable ability to your ship while in space. Most consoles are specific to a certain career-based slot on a ship (i.e. engineering), but some are universal. The number and type of consoles on a ship is specific to that ship and its level of upgrading. 

• Devices generally offer temporary boosts to starship performance. Most of them are consumable but there are some that are re-usable. 

• Other

  • Hangar bays are only found on some ships. They allow a starship to deploy 1 or 2 groups of smaller craft to assist them in battle. 

  • Experimental weapons are only found on escorts. They are listed below the aft weapons but fire in the forward arc. Experimental weapons are unique in that they do not benefit from firing modes like regular weapons and often have substantially different damage, firing arcs, and secondary effects. 

  • Secondary Deflectors are unique to science vessels. They provide a slot for powerful radiation-based attacks for all drain abilities. There are other kinds that do other things, but they should not be slotted.

We discuss items in the "Other" section in more depth in Section 7. 

Level 10 ship with basic gear

Bridge Officer Stations

Every starship and small craft has a number of bridge officer stations (Status screen ‘U’, stations tab). You tell your bridge officers when to use them by activating them, but it’s your bridge officers who have to learn the skills to use them. Each Icon shown here is the active ability(s) that the bridge officer will be able to use.

Example bridge officer screen

There are 3 types of bridge officer stations when you're first starting out.  

• Red: Tactical bridge officers only

• Yellow: Engineering bridge officers only

• Blue: Science bridge officers only 

These types of seats can only accept the profession-specific bridge officers that match it. For example, in the tactical seat above, I can slot “Elisa Flores” or “Kolez”, but not T’vrell or Zarva because they are Science and Engineering respectively. 

Bridge officer assignment dropdown selection

You might also come across ships with a gray seat. This is a “Universal Seat”, however don’t be fooled by its name. It just means you can slot any of the three types into that slot. Universal bridge officers can slot a Tactical, Engineering, or Science bridge officer in this slot. Note this still forces the same rules. This means that even if you slot an engineering bridge officer, you can still only train engineering powers to that officer, so it should be considered a seat that can be changed between tactical, science, and engineering based on the person in the seat. 

Example universal station assignment dropdown selection

Each Bridge officer also has its own ranks they can achieve. These are:

Ensign (Ens) One Power available

Lieutenant (Lt.) Two Powers available

Lieutenant Commander (Lt.Cmdr) Three Powers available

Commander (Cmdr) Four Powers available

However, this does not change the seat of a ship as this is inherent to the ship. Even if ranked to commander, a bridge officer is limited by the functionality of the ship and therefore seat. Think of this as your senior science officer working with only a notepad and TI-81. They are probably really good, but there's only so much they can do with that, where a really fancy modern Starfleet console gives them access to all the sensors and ship systems.

Powers are shown as inaccessible in a non-commander seat too within the UI. These are the blank slots.

If you click / select a bridge officer power (example Torpedo: High Yield), it opens the officer's available skills list

At present only one power is being shown here. Most bridge officers will only come with one ability per rank, however additional powers can be trained from “Training Manuals”, which are consumed on use. For more information regarding training bridge officers in additional powers, see section 3.5.

In general, your bridge officers are not able to be promoted above you. As such when starting you will be unable to promote your bridge officers until you can promote them to one rank under you. Therefore until you reach Lieutenant Commander, you cannot promote a bridge officer. We will explain how to do this later in section 2.7.

 1.13 MMO / STO Terminology

There is a more exhaustive list of acronyms elsewhere on our site, but if you’re first starting out, you might see some confusing acronyms and terms. Here’s a few key ones to understand as you get started:

• Character/Alt/Main/Toon refers to a playable individual character in Star Trek Online. Player accounts may have multiple characters associated with them, linked by your “@” handle, which is tied to the email used to log in to the game. For example, an account @Paris#1701 could have two characters Tom@Paris#1701 and Owen@Paris#1701. Your “main” is the one you play the most if you have multiple characters. An “alt” is a secondary character. “Toon” is just another word for a character. 

• MMO is a genre of online games. It stands for massively-multiplayer online game, of which STO is one. MMOs typically feature player groups, the ability to interact with dozens of players across the game, a virtual economy, and dozens of item and gear options and customization slots. They can also be incredibly monetized. 

• STO is Star Trek Online, an MMO set in the Star Trek universe. More precisely, it is an MMORPG, where players can interact while playing as a character from that universe. 

• Build refers to the gear loadout, skills, traits, etc. that a player character or a ship uses. 

• Boff is an abbreviation of “bridge officer,” lower-ranking officers who assist you both in space and on ground. Bridge officer abilities are crucial to a space build and . . . less so on ground. The reason for the difference is that you control when they activate abilities in space and they rather mindlessly do their own thing on the ground. Bridge officers appear with you in cutscenes and episodes and can be customized in appearance and loadout.

• Doff is an abbreviation of “duty officers,” lower-ranking members of the crew. They can be part of your build or sent on assignments. Duty Officers are not modeled characters and generally never appear as in-game models but rather as “cards,” which are stockpiled, traded, assigned, and equipped. Sending them on assignments in sometimes called “doffing.”

• Dil/Zen/EC are all resources in the game. Dil, or Dilithium, is refined Dilithium. This is used for crafting, fleet holdings and unlocks, and purchasing many items from the vendor. Dilithium is earned through playtime, generally completing missions, and can be converted to Zen. Zen is the premium currency, unlocked through cash or trading refined dilithium. Zen is used to buy things from the official in-game store, the C-store (or Z-store). EC stands for energy credits, a tradeable resource. Small amounts of EC can be used to buy and sell things from in-game vendors but its primary use is for player-to-player transactions on the Exchange. 

• Fleet refers to a group of players who have banded together into a subcommunity (typically guilds in other games). Fleets can invest resources into specific in-game holdings or structures which unlock new benefits and gear options. Fleets can be grouped together under a larger umbrella organization called an armada. 

• Chat in the context of the game refers to the in-game text chat window. When you are first starting out, it is best to ignore this. The chat window can be used to subscribe to multiple channels in-game. All members of the channel can see messages in the channel’s chat. Direct messages are also processed through the chat window, with an incoming notification sound. To send a direct message (DM), pre-append /tell prior to your message. It is best to ignore unsolicited DMs

• F2P means “free-to-play”, or someone who is not spending real currency on the game.

• “Whales” are people who spend significant amounts of real money on the game.

• RP refers to role-playing. While technically playing any character created in STO is role-playing, some players take it further and use in-game systems, especially chat, or build/fly their ships more in accordance with how a character would behave in the universe. And some people take it further still but they’re mostly confined to a single seedy space station near Klingon space. There are entire fleets and discord servers dedicated to role-play in STO.

• DPS stands for “damage-per-second,” a metric used by endgame players as one method of build evaluation. Some players participate in a competitive leaderboard to measure D . . . PS against each other with third-party tools that calculate outgoing damage-per-second and parse it. The prevailing trends that drive higher and higher DPS are sometimes called “the meta.” It is an avenue of endgame play but certainly does not have to be for you, depending on your interests. You do not need to play “the meta” to enjoy the game, unless you want to.

• PvE/PvP refers to “Player versus Environment,” where you fight NPCs that the game generates, sometimes alongside other players, and “Player versus Player,” where you fight against other players and their ships and builds. PvP is an extremely small niche within STO, where the prevailing builds are highly-refined space predators and new entrants are little more than cannon fodder. If you want to get into serious PvP, there are servers and channels that can help you do that, but it takes serious investment in time and money to even approach a level of competitiveness.

• “Space Barbie” refers to the true endgame of decorating your ship/character and customizing your attire and appearance, then acquiring more things to further refine your appearance to either impress or horrify your viewers. Or both!

• “Weapon Flavor” refers to different energy weapon damage types, for example Phaser or Disruptor. See section 3.3 for more details.

• “Buff” is an ability that increases player statistics (stats). “Debuff” is the opposite, lowering the character’s/ship’s statistics. You can also Debuff enemy targets, both ground and space, which we’ll cover later.

• “Mule” is an ability that is used solely for the purposes of triggering another effect; the ability itself is largely devalued without this secondary trigger. 

• “Cooldown” refers to the recharge time of an ability. 

• “AOE” means “area of effect,” and refers to an ability or item that can affect more than one entity at a time. AOE in this game is not strictly referring to an area or radius, it is often used for abilities that strike more than one enemy even if not in an area. Similarly, “PBAOE” refers to “Point-blank Area of Effect,” which means that the effect or ability emanates from the player character/ship that activated it. In contrast, single-target items or abilities only affect one entity or target.