Welcome to the Star Trek Online gameplay manual! Click on each section below to learn different aspects of the gameplay.
There are three types of characters in Star Trek Online. Each class has its own strengths and will play differently than other classes.
Each class also can be broken down into three different professions in which you will be able to advance throughout your career as a Starfleet Officer or Klingon Warrior.
Survivability, support generators and controlling the paths of enemy advance with fieldworks. Engineering Officers can withstand damage by improving the performance of their own personal shields, while supporting their away team with power generators, or by bottlenecking the enemy's advance with defensive minefields. The Engineer's own combat effectiveness can be improved by modification to their firearms or support fire from fabricated turrets or drones.
Professions
Weakening or incapacitating their enemies over time, creating energy fields that damage or hinder their enemies, and healing their away team from such effects. The Science Officer has the greatest potential to quickly react to chaotic combat situations through direct enemy holds, weakening an enemy group's combat strength or resistance, or responding to enemy attack by quickly healing damage. The Science Officer's combat effectiveness is his versatility.
Professions
Combat damage, stealth recon and squad tactics. The Tactical Officer can deliver damage in the widest variety of methods, while supporting his away team by drawing off enemy threat or bolstering combat effectiveness with tactics and squad commands.
Professions
Once you have chosen your class, you can choose from a variety of different humanoid species. Each species has different advantages, things they excel at above other species, and each individual has his own advantages as well. Of course, if you prefer, you can also create your own species by selecting "Unknown Species" and creating a new one from scratch.
Once you have chosen your species, gender and advantages, you can customize the way your character looks. Once you are all done, you're asked to name your character, and the ship you are currently stationed on, and given the chance to write your characters biography. It is not necessary to write a biography for your character, or to fill in their proper name. Once you are finished in the character creator, you will take control of your character.
The number of pre-constructed species in Star Trek Online is always growing. The following is a list of the species available to you at character creation and the bonuses they receive.
Federation Species |
Klingon Species |
||
| Human | Leadership: +15% ship repair rate. Teamwork: +5% team Exploit damage. |
Klingon | Honorable: +5% damage resistance and +10% threat generation. Warrior: +15% Melee and Critical damage, +5% Energy weapon damage. |
| Andorian | Acute Senses: +20% Stealth Sight and +10% Exploit damage. | Gorn | Cold-Blooded: +25% Fire and +10% Plasma damage over time resistance. Reptilian Strength: +17.5% Melee damage and knockback. Resilient: +5% Physical and Energy resistance. |
| Bajoran | Creative: +5% damage and healing with Kits. Spiritual: +10% heals received and +10% regeneration. |
Lethean | Rapture: Psionic damage-over-time ability. Telepathic: Increases Perception, exposure duration and chance. |
| Benzite | Natural Armor: Resistant to Energy and Physical damage. Natural Immunities: Radiation and Toxic damage resistance. |
Nausicaan | Physical Strength: +10% Melee damage. Pirate: +20% Stealth and +30% Exploit damage. |
| Betazoid | Empathic: Reduces threat generation, increases team regeneration. Telepathic: Increases Perception, exposure duration and chance. |
Orion | Seductive: Resist Confuse, Placate; Reduced threat generation. |
| Bolian | Corrosive Blood: +20% Toxic resistance, deals Toxic damage when bitten. | ||
| Saurian | Circulatory Redundancies: Toxic, Fire and Plasma damage over time resistance. Acute Senses: +20% Stealth Sight and +10% Exploit damage. |
||
| Trill | Hyper Metabolism: Health regeneration; Radiation and Toxic resistance. | ||
| Vulcan | Logical: +30% Psionic, Confuse and Placate resistance. Physical Strength: +10 Melee damage. |
||
If you pre-ordered Star Trek Online, you may be eligible for in-game rewards. To claim these, create a character and log into the game. Then, click the inverted triangle button your mini-map and select "Visit the C-Store." Next, in the new window that loads, click "Special Unlocks." Your rewards will appear there. You're all set!
Star Trek Online offers both ground and space environments, and there are two distinct but similar interfaces. This section will show you how to navigate while on the ground.
The player window displays all pertinent player information, such as health, shield strength, and buffs or debuffs.
Tip: On the ground players will have a personal shield that will take damage and recharge without impacting the players overall health. Staying out of fire for a few seconds will allow you to recharge your shields more quickly.
The target window displays important information about your currently selected friendly or enemy target, such as the target’s health, shield strength, type of target and distance from the player.
Throughout your STO experience you will have a minimap that displays your location relative to other enemy and friendly NPC’s and player characters.
The mission tracker allows you to monitor your mission progress. The upper box is your open mission tracker which tracks general mission objectives for players that don't have the current mission. The green objective tracker keeps detailed track of your current objectives and missions.
On the ground, the items, weapons and skills a player can use are displayed on the utility tray.
The player is able to equip two weapons, but only one of those weapons is active at a time. The weapons tray displays the active weapon in front of the inactive weapon. Weapons can be swapped by tapping the "Z" key.
Next to the weapons loadout are numbered slots that display the powers that you have earned through skill progression, and any consumables that the player has placed in their device slot. Clicking the Data Pad icon on this tray or pressing the "P" key on your keyboard will bring up your powers window, and you can drag any power from this window to your power try to set a short cut for that power to that power tray slot. Clicking the icon below this will allow you to choose between three different expanded power tray layouts.
Mingled with your weapon powers and consumable items are the powers your selected Kit grant you. Players can equip a single kit at a time, and Iits grant the player powers based on their specialization. A tactical officer can have a stealth suit, for example, while a science officer can get a powerful heal. These kits are exclusive to the classes they are made for, and higher end kits grant multiple abilities. You can use the powers provided by these kits in this tray.
Movement on the ground is primarily handled through the Q, W, E, A, S, and D keys.
| W | Move the Player Forward | A | Turn the player Left |
| S | Move the Player Backwards | D | Turn the player Right |
| Q | Strafe Left | E | Strafe Right |
In addition, players can Sprint for a short time by holding down the Shift key, or by double tapping one of the WASD keys roll in the direction corresponding to that key. Players may also crouch or take aim with their weapon by tapping the "C" key. Tapping "C" again will return the player to their normal stance.
Tips:
While taking Aim you will do more damage with your ranged attacks but move slower. If you stop moving while aiming you will kneel, gaining a passive defense boost against incoming enemy fire, but will be more vulnerable to melee attacks, as well as a passive boost to your personal shields regeneration.
When Sprinting you gain a boost to defense, as well as a large boost in speed. However, you won't be able to use any abilities while sprinting.
When rolling you get a massive dodge resistance boost against incoming attacks, but you won't be able to attack.
In Star Trek Online, if you are attacked from the side or the rear, you are considered flanked, and will take extra damage from the attack. This work both ways, however. Surround your enemies and attack them from several different directions to do more damage to them.
On the ground, weapons can have one of two different secondary effects. Some weapons are used to expose your enemies, leaving them in a very vulnerable state. Other weapons are able to exploit an exposed opponent. If an enemy is exposed you will see a golden crosshair appear over them. When you see this indicator, attack them with an exploit attack to do massive damage, and for the chance to vaporize them, removing them from the fight immediately!
You can tell whether a weapon is set up to expose enemies or exploit exposed defenses by looking at the tool tip for that weapon.
Tip: Equip your Bridge Officers with weapons meant to expose your opponents’ weakness and yourself a weapon to exploit those weaknesses to increase the frequency your enemies are exposed and ensure plenty of vaporizations.
The away team controls allow you to issue commands to your away team so they can better serve you in combat. You can have them hold, follow, or target your target. You can also set their combat status to aggressive or defensive, or order them to set points.
 |
Attack my current target. |
 |
Stance toggle: Away Team Member will defend the player and other Away Team Members, or will pursue enemies on his own. |
 |
Sets a rally point that the away team member will go to and hold position until other orders are given. Right Click this icon to revoke the rally command and tell your Bridge Officers to follow you again. |
Tip: Your away team will always accompany you on missions, and they can be outfitted in nearly as many ways as the player. You give them weapons, armor, shields and order them to behave in specific ways. You can have your away team focus their fire on one particularly tough target, or spread them out to control a larger number of enemies. They can be strategically placed so you can pull a group of enemies into a cross fire, or they can be placed in a healing or buffing role for the rest of the group.
Issuing orders to your away team in a phaser fight can be difficult to manage with everything else going on! You can briefly pause the action by pressing the "T" key while you are on an away mission if no other players are in the map with you. While the action is paused, you can issue orders to your away team, and queue up powers for them to use. However, you only have a short amount of time to do this, and once that time is used up, it will take a little while for this ability to recharge.
The power levels UI shows how much power is going to each major system group on your ship. Having a small amount of power going to a system reduces its effectiveness, but increasing the power to a system will increase its effectiveness.
WeaponsAdding power to weapons makes all energy based weapons do more damage. |
EnginesAdding power to engines increases your top speed. The faster you are moving the harder you are to hit. |
ShieldsAdding power to shields increases the shields overall strength and the speed at which they regenerate, in and out of combat. |
AuxiliaryAdding power to auxiliary increases your turn radius, crew recovery rate and increases the damage and duration of Science-based bridge crew powers. |
Tip: Sometimes you just need a boost to a power system. Using a systems battery will provide you with an instant burst of power to the system they are designed for. If your shields are getting hammered, or you need that extra quick burst of power to your phasers, these will come in very handy.
There are three levels of complexity to the power management UI. You can choose how much of the window is visible to you by clicking the tab in the upper right corner.
Tip: It takes some time to transfer power from one system to the next. So make sure to give yourself time for power levels to change, especially when coming out of full impulse before entering combat.
The shield UI allows you to manage each of your four shield quadrants. You can transfer power between the shield sections using the arrow keys, and you can balance any remaining shield strength between all four quadrants, by clicking the "Balance Shields" button.
Your hull indicator is contained within your shield UI. The ship silhouette has a meter that will drop to indicate hull damage, as well as a straight percentage of functional hull you have remaining. When you run out of hull your ship explodes.
The crew meter is near the bottom of your shield UI. The crew has three states: active, injured and dead. Active crew members are actively working on your ship (light blue bar), injured crew members can’t help you but will be back in action soon (dark blue bar), and dead crew members are gone forever and must be replaced (black bar space). Your crew repairs your hull, your subsystems and your shields, so the more you lose the longer it takes to get everything repaired.
The throttle has a slider that can be used to increase your decrease your speed. You can also move in reverse and at full impulse. When at full impulse, your speed increases by 60 percent but you won’t be able to enter combat.
Tip: When in full impulse, you direct all available power to the engines. If you are approaching enemies, turn full impulse off before you reach weapons range to allow time for power to transfer back to your shields and weapons systems.
This is where your weapons will slot, with forward facing weapons on top and aft facing weapons on the bottom. There are also buttons that allow you to fire all beams and fire all torpedoes that can hit the currently selected target. You may also fire all beam weapons by pressing SPACE and all torpedoes and mines by pressing Ctrl+SPACE.
Tip: Each of the weapons types has strengths and weaknesses associated with it.
Ship weapons all have a firing arc based on the type of weapon they are and have an effective range based on where they are slotted.
Tip: Your forward phaser beam arrays can hit anything on a 270 degree arc on the front of the ship, and aft phaser beam arrays can hit anywhere on a 270 degree arc on the back of your ship. If you manage to face a side towards your enemy you can use both phasers and really pour on the damage.
This tray shows all of powers that your Bridge Officers grant you, as well as headshots of those officers. They are organized by type of officer: Tactical (red), Engineering (yellow) and Science (blue).
The target window in space operates the same as on the ground.
Controls in Sector Space and in System are similar to controls when on the ground:
| W | Tilt the ship's nose down | A | Turn the player left |
| S | Tilt the ship's nose up | D | Turn the ship right |
| Q | Throttle up | E | Throttle down |
Sector Space is an astrometrics view used while you are warping between points of interest in the galaxy. As you approach a system or star base, you may be prompted to enter a system if you have a mission to complete in that star system, or if your services are required in that system.
In Sector Space, you may set an autopilot course for systems of interest. To do this, press "M" to bring up your system map. Then, click "system list." Find the system or point of interest to which you'd like to travel, and double click its name. Your ship will orient itself toward your destination and prompt you to enter it once you've arrived.
No starship Captain would be caught exploring the galaxy without his trusty Bridge Crew, and you are no different. In Star Trek Online Bridge Officers work with you both on the ground, and in space. When on an away mission, if you are not accompanied by a full team of other Captains, your Bridge Officers will accompany you to provide much needed support. In space, your Bridge Officers man stations on your bridge, allowing access to special skills and powers only they can provide, such as "High Yield Torpedoes" and "Reverse Shield Polarity."
Utilizing your Bridge Officers skills both onboard your vessel and on away missions will help to ensure you and your crew’s survival in these turbulent times.
New Bridge Officers can be assigned to your crew by Starfleet as a mission reward, or they may be purchased from Earth Space Dock in the Personnel Department. Each Bridge Officer has a different set of skills, and bonuses which will aid you in your adventures throughout the galaxy. However, Starfleet only has so many new recruits available. So, if you are looking for a bridge officer of a certain species to join your crew, you may have to keep checking back to find the perfect fit for your ideal crew, or trade with a fellow Captain to fill that spot.
All Bridge Officers have two skills at each rank, one for use on away missions, and the other in space.You can change the appearance of your Bridge Officer at the tailor. Should you find a bridge officer with a special skill that you would like, you can also have that Bridge Officer Candidate train your existing Bridge Officer that skill. However, in the process your Bridge Officer will lose the ability to use the skill they previously had at that level.
Over the course of your adventures, you will collect skill points for your Bridge Officers. To apply these skill points, go to the skills tab on your Bridge Officers status window, and apply the points to the skills you would like them to become more proficient at. Once you have invested enough skill points in an Officer, you may promote them at the cost of some Starfleet Merits (Up to one level below your own rank) on the Status Tab, unlocking a new set of skills.
Players advance in Star Trek Online using Skill Points. You will receive Skill Points for completing quests, earning accolades and defeating your enemies. Players will advance through five Ranks, from Lieutenant to Admiral throughout the course of the game, and each rank contains 10 grades (i.e. Lieutenant grades 1-10, Lieutenant Commander grades 1-10).
At the top of the screen is the experience bar. The top experience bar shows how close you are to your next grade. The lower experience bar shows how close you are to your next rank. To the left of the experience bars, next to your current rank and grade, your "pips" are displayed. Mousing over the experience bar will show the requirements for your next grade, and rank, as well as the rewards for reaching those goals.
To spend skill points, open your skills window (K) select the skill you would like to invest points in, and then click the arrow on the bar to add skill points to that skill. Once you are done, hit the "Accept" button to apply those skill points. Make sure this is what you want to do before clicking "Accept," however, as this cannot be undone.
After you have spent enough skill points to reach the next rank, Starfleet will hail you and ask for you to return to Earth Space Dock for your promotion. Once you arrive, speak to Admiral Quinn to receive your promotion, and if you have the time, a special promotion Ceremony is being held for you in the Stateroom. Once you are ready, you can head to the shipyard in order to take command of your new Starship.
The Galaxy is best explored with friends by your side. Not only is it more fun, but there is also safety in numbers! To invite other players to your team, simply right click on them and select "Invite to Team." If they are not near you physically, you can also type "/invite playername@displayname" in the chat window, and hit enter. Once you have formed a team, the group leader will be asked to set the rules for the group. Open groups can be joined by anyone, players can also set group status to closed, which automatically rejects additional invite requests, or player can ask to confirm they wish potential new players on their team. Once the group is formed, you may change these options, as well as looting options in the social window (O), on the team tab.
Sometimes, finding friends to explore strange new worlds with can be difficult. To this end, Star Trek Online features an auto-team system. Turned on by default, this system checks to see if other players have recently started a mission you are starting, and if so, will automatically place you in the same instance so you can group up. If you would rather seek out new life and new civilizations alone, you may disable the auto-teaming system on the Team tab of the Social Window, or you may also set it to Prompt you before joining with other players. To access the Social Window, press "R." Then select "Team Settings," then change your Team Join Mode to something other than "Open Team."
Klingons are a proud warrior race, and their game play style reflects that. Klingon game play in Star Trek Online is heavily focused on player vs. player content, and players interested in playing a Klingon Character will need to participate in PvP in order to advance. These honorable warriors will need to take notice of you before you may join their ranks however...
Once you reach Lieutenant rank 6, you will gain the accolade "Blood of the Warrior" and will be able to create a Klingon Character and join the mighty Klingon Defense Force! To do so, simply log out and back into the game, and click the button that says "Create a New Klingon Character" at the bottom of the character select screen.
Once you have joined the KDF you will be given several missions to participate in PvP battles. To do so you can fly to the system the battle is taking place in, or you can queue for a PvP map by selecting "Queue for PvP" from the drop down menu on the mini map.
