I'd imagine that the idea is that instead of the player beaming down to a planet, you'd beam down as the first officer instead (since taking a flag admiral down to a warzone is a bit risky). Thus the first officer is playable, but it's not really your main charactor? Although yeah, this isn't even in the whiteboard phase, that's just how i imagine it could kind of work. I'd say this kind of system could work quite well when the level cap is increased to go hand in hand with fleet admiral gameplay.

Any hints at how long until the system is ready for braoder testing? Also any chance the marketing guys could approve any more screenshots? :-)

Oh is that what it is... lol

Orions arent exclusive to the KDF though. Not since Diplomacy was added to the game. Issylt is 300something points from rescuing an Orion girl from the clutches of... some... thing.

The former. I fully realize that the game poses some restrictions on species-specific things in that it is still set up to sport *two* factions, even in cases where individual species that are considered part of the larger group may have potential for much more.

That said, I suppose most such assignments may be explained as "available" to other player species even if they seem tailored more to one or few specific races. For example, a smuggling run or piracy may be seen as something Orion first but are perfectly "justifiable" for other KDF Captains as well (Nausicaan mercenaries, down-on-luck Klingons, etc), and it may be up to the individual player to decide if his or her character would endeavour on such paths or not.

This of course would be based on whether or not the KDF and Starfleet will sport a few different possible assignments each? Or was this what you implied when referring to player species?

I'm just assuming that the KDF will have some different options now because I've seen an "Execute" button in the Klingon UI and I doubt this would be something that'd be available to Starfleet players. Anything beyond a basic level of diversity between factions (meaning diversity based on player species) would be super-cool, but not something that could be expected. I'm very positively surprised that the system may favor specific duty officer species already! I think this may even be more important than the other way around, after all it's the duty officers that get sent on the mission, not the Captain.
If you ever do tweak the system more towards one player species or another, I think all you'd need to do was to modify the chances that certain assignments may pop up.

Oh and kudos for being so active here and answering all our inquiries. As you can see, we're all very excited about this.

And that is still a point of contention for some players... :p

Will the KDF be getting tribble genesplicing missions in any capacity?

It makes sense (at least to me) that some Kliingons (particularly scientists) could look past their utter hatred for tribbles, and might be interested in vivisecting a few of them to see what makes them tick, and to see if they can't stop the blasted things from breeding endlessly; a gene sequence they could turn off. What a glorious hero of the empire they'd be if they managed that!

Failure of the assignment could easily see the death of the doffs sent on the assignment via 'suffocation by endless tribble reproduction' (that did almost happen to Kirk :p), success could just be that they have found out a few more things about the tribble genome that giveshints as to how they have their amazing reproduction powers.

Other Klingons could be interested in splicing, for example, targ genes with tribble genes to make a Tribble Predator, that they could then seed on tribble-infested worlds to cull them, freeing themselves up to engage in glorious battle.

Personally I am more interested in the Department Heads, if I want to make my first office a Capt. I just re-roll with the same "concept". So it is good to hear the Department heads system is coming along... any chance the Duty Office and Department Heads systems will launch co-currently?

Nope, doff system first, department heads later.

Been that way for a while and as of last dev comments I do believe it is still that way.

I'm very happy enlisted and not just commissioned officers are making it into the game finally. I know you can use the chief pip on BOffs but it's just not the same.

Also, isn't specialist a title, not a rank?

As an Orion player since launch (even if Im mainly Fed), I have no problem with them being available to the Feds. The latest movie makes it officially canon that Orions do get into Starfleet.

That's an alt timeline though :p
I would have guessed she was abnormal like Worf in TNG or Nog in DS9.

This thread is now as long as piece of string..

Just wondering if at any point (cos I'd rly like to know) has anyone asked:

There's gonna be El Aurian bartender Doffs right? (very rare obviously)