As the Vulcan's say "We live to serve."



Thank you for another guide, Blackavaar! Nice work!

And I'd also like to join in with you in singing the devs praise for these latest additions! Thanks very much for them!

I hear ya, just thought I'd give advice.

By the way, I never woulda thought to use the uniform like that, good job

Hey, thanks for the guide, I finally managed to put all my boffs in the same colours.

This has probably already been asked and answered, but what's the deal with the division colours in STO? I recognise that Tactical were assigned red probably purely for gameplay reasons, but does that mean 25th century uniforms have essentially scrapped the command red concept? I ask because if Tactical are red "officially", ie within the game's lore, my away team is going to look like crap :/

It's a bit of a gray area. If you look at Star Trek canon, you'll notice a few things:

1. In "future" episodes, the Command Red, Operations Yellow, and Science Blue is maintained. (in order chronologically: Voy: "Timeless", TNG: "All Good Things", Voy: "Endgame", DS9: "Visitor")
2. In the distant future, there is a clear separation between Command and the other branches, though the colors do seem to have been changed again. (Voy: "Relativity")

If you look at STO itself, you will notice that Command officers still tend to wear red, which doesn't mean they aren't all Tactical, but I would doubt it. (Admiral Quinn, Admiral Valoura, etc)

Historically, it's LINE officers that rise to command, which would be represented by Tactical officers. Science and Engineering officers would be STAFF officers. In modern navies, it's kind of unusual for a staff officer to rise to command rank.

On the other hand, there's LOTS of evidence that this is not true for Starfleet. In TOS era, we saw command rank officers in blue and red, indicating command officers in science and engineering/security professions. By the movies, command officers were wearing white, whatever their original profession (Spock, for example, wore white instead of the science gray). This practice of changing to the "command" colour was continued from that point (Janeway, Picard and Data all changed to red from their original colours - blue, blue and gold, respectively...).

The point here is, we have no way to know the branch of any of the Admirals in the game, as they would have switched to red when they took a command posting.

You are, of course, right, Mojo.

Except for TOS, red was always command or navigation. Security always wore operations division color - gold.
That is why most people on starships wear gold. To this day I still have a hard time understanding why Cryptic couldn't get it right. Perhaps it was easier to make three divisions instead of six (Red: Command and Navigation; Gold: Engineering and Security; Blue/Teal: Science and Medical).

Well, there were actually several departments, but three colours.

in TOS, it was:

Gold: Command Operations (helmsmen, navigators and other ship control personnel).
Blue: Sciences, including Medical
Red: Engineering, Support Operations, Security


TNG simply switched the red and the gold, the divisions remained the same. The only other change was that officers changed to red when they were given a command assignment (ie. Captain/Executive Officer), where in TOS times they kept their original branch colour.


I actually like the three colour system now.

Gold : Engineering
Blue : Sciences
Red : Tactical (including both helmsmen AND security officers)

Are you trying to say Kirk was a Operations officer before becoming Captain and that Spock would still wear his science colors if he was given command before the movies? It was my understanding that even in TOS you changed your division color to Command Gold when you were given command of a starship or otherwise promoted to Commodore or the Admiralty regardless of your original division colors, but you kept your originals while First Officers and lower, explaining Spock's Science Blue.

Even following that logic it's a bit of a gray area if you're allowed to keep your original division colors when given command or at least promoted to admiralty in any of the series. We have at least one Commodore who wore Engineering Red during TOS: http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Stone_%28Commodore%29 There's also at least one Admiral in Deep Space Nine that wore a Gold division color instead of the typical Command Red of the twenty-fourth century: http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Toddman

I've also read that Scotty, when he became Captain, still wore his Engineering division colors when in full uniform. I'm not sure where on Memory Alpha I read that though. This seems to indicate that while it is generally standard procedure for an officer to switch their division color to whatever the current Command division color is, but in rare cases an officer decides to stay in their original colors. I personally use this as an excuse for why my Engineering Captain still uses her Engineering Division color despite now being in command of a star ship. The real reason is simply so people I team up with will have a visual cue as to my role in the party, but it makes a nice little back story reason.

Kirk was definitely a tactical officer, so yes he did change from operations red to command gold.

As to Scotty, he held the rank of Captain, but as far as I know he was not actually in command of any starships. He was the Chief Engineer of the Excelsior, referred to as the "Captain of Engineering," but was not in the command division.

Lastly, I think you're confusing rank with division. Possessing the rank of Captain or Admiral does not automatically place you in the command division. A few examples:
Commodore Stocker - Operations division
Commodore Stone - Operations division
Montgomery Scott - Operations division (engineering)
Captain Krasnovsky - Science division
Vice Admiral Toddman - Operations division (security branch)

What division Kirk was from originally is debatable, but as I say, we saw officers of command rank in their native colours, even as Captains (such as those individuals you listed). That is, they made Captain and RETAINED the colour of their division. They didn't change to gold, even though they were almost all starship commanders.

But that was the ORIGINAL SERIES period. As of the movies, that policy changed. Spock, for example, wore WHITE as a Captain, not the grey a science officer would wear.

Thus, during TOS times, if Lieutenant Smith wore gold, he would still wear gold as a Captain. If he wore blue, he would still wear blue as a Captain. You would wear your division colour regardless of rank.

During TMP an later periods, Captain Smith would wear white, as that's the command division colour.


Presumably, in later eras, you would only change colours if you took a command position. That is, Scotty retained his engineering colour as a Captain because he was not a ship's Commanding Officer. You would change colour as a result of position, not as a result of rank.