Star Trek Online or popularly known as STO is the first in a series of massively multiplayer role-playing games (MMORPGs) in the Star Trek franchise. Released in 2010, one of the important features of the game is its wide freedom for players to customize many of the game’s features. Ships are an integral part of the game and a player can extensively customize their ship. Such customizations could be cosmetic to improve the look of the ship or they could be functional, increasing the ship’s stealth and lethal capabilities. The customization of the ship must necessarily be done in the shipyards. These shipyards are available to both the Federation and the Klingon Empire and are located in major hubs. Qo’nos and the Earth Space Dock typically serve as customization locations for the Klingon Empire and the Federation, respectively. Each new ship purchased by a player allows him to edit the characteristics at no cost. However, further customization will depend on the changes made and may require energy credits or Starfleet merit.

Among others, the customizations available for ships include Model, Design and Naming. There are six different ship models and they must be chosen between saucer, hull, gondolas, pylons, secondary matrix and mission module. However, the latter two models are restricted to Science Tier 5 only. Ship skin customization includes the decals, windows, decal color, and liner color, while in name customization, the player can customize ship name, registration number, registration prefix and registration suffix. However, the feature to change the registration prefix is ​​currently limited to special digital editions of the game. Registration can be changed from NCC to NX and vice versa in these special editions. In addition to all these customizations, there is also the possibility to customize the design of the bridge and its layout.

In addition to choosing between Escort, Cruiser, Science, or other categories, the player can also customize the functionality of their ship. These include front weapons, to fire weapons from the front of the ship, ship deflector plates, ship shields, the number of impulse engines, rear weapons to fire from the rear of the ship, and other consoles such as engineering, science, and others. tactical consoles. . In addition to these, the player can also customize the weapons in terms of the individual type of torpedo, mine, and energy weapon. A diverse portfolio of weaponry is usually suggested and each weapon is used tactfully. For example, the extent of a torpedo’s damage can vary drastically depending on the capability of the enemy ship.

Ship customization is a favorite topic for many players and there have been a lot of suggestions on how to make the customization process and interface more user-friendly and efficient. Quite a few videos showing ship customization can be found on major video hosting sites and are an ideal solution for new players to learn the intricacies of ship customization. However, it has been the opinion of certain sectors of the gaming community that excessive customization leads to loss of interest in the actual game, and therefore excessive customization should be avoided.