During your captain’s meteoric rise through the ranks, you have taken command of dozens of different starships, and facilitated the advancement of countless crewmens’ careers. As an Admiral / General / Subadmiral, the administration of large portions of the Alliance’s combined fleets has come to rest in your capable hands. The starships you have earned access to will now be waiting for your commands, ever at-the-ready to head into the unknown on your behalf.

When participating in the Admiralty System, players will be sending their Admiralty Ships on challenging assignments, in hopes of retrieving valuable assets and advancing your influence and prestige. Progress will be earned in various Campaigns, undertaken on behalf of the major political powers of the galaxy. Tours of Duty – special assignment chains that yield astounding rewards – can also be pursued via this system, for those more invested in using their stable of ships as efficiently as possible.

Admiralty Ships

The roster of Admiralty Ships at your disposal is comprised of all starship classes that you currently have access to. This includes all commissioned starships, and you will retain access to Admiralty Ships for starships that you dismiss from your active roster. It does not include starships still inside Reward Packs, or those not yet claimed.

Upon gaining access to a new Starship class, a corresponding Admiralty Ship will be automatically added to your Roster. Your Admiralty Ship Roster is limitless – every ship you have access to will be ready to use. Captains will only ever have access to a single Admiralty Ship per class of ship they have access to, but “Fleet” and “Mirror” versions of existing classes are counted as separate classes for this purpose.

Every Admiralty Ship has the following characteristics:

Tier corresponds to the level at which the Starship becomes available for use.

Rarity is defined by the method by which the ship is acquired (Dilithium, Lock Box, Event, etc.)

Stats represent the Admiralty Ship’s ability to succeed on certain Assignments, and are broken down into three entries:
ENG, SCI, TAC. The values for each Admiralty Ship are based upon their in-world capabilities, so Escorts generally have higher TAC stats than Cruisers or Science Vessels. Higher Tier ships will have higher Stat totals.

Special Abilities are modifiers that apply when the Admiralty Ship is slotted into an Assignment. If the condition of the Special Ability is met, then the Assignment requirements and/or rewards are modified accordingly. The effects of these Special Abilities can vary greatly: Some benefits trigger based on the primary stat of other slotted vessels, while others require that a ship be slotted alone. Some will improve Critical Success chances, while others reduce the required Stats of an Assignment. Special Abilities do not improve with Tier, so it’s possible a lower Tier ship may possess the perfect one for the Assignment you’re pursuing.

Maintenance must be performed on every Admiralty Ship after the completion of any Assignment, regardless of the outcome. The Tier of the Admiralty Ship determines the length of this Maintenance Period, and higher Tier ships require more time spent in Maintenance.

Campaigns

Progression in the Admiralty System is divided up into multiple groups of assignments, each with their own set of rewards and themes. Each of these headings is referred to as a Campaign.

Within each Campaign, players will progress through ten (10) Tiers, each time improving the rewards earned within that Campaign. Additional rewards, such as Titles and numeric bonuses, are also earned along the way. Every Assignment offers Campaign XP as one of its intrinsic rewards, and the first Assignment completed each day also offers a large Campaign XP bonus.

Campaigns also each have a unique Tour of Duty. These Assignment Chains take a minimum of several days to accomplish, but offer substantial rewards upon completion. Each time a Tour of Duty is completed, progress is reset, allowing players to continue earning these impressive rewards on a recurring basis.

Reaching Tier 10 in any Campaign will grant players a unique Epic-quality Admiralty Ship, thematically related to the Campaign in question.

Campaigns represent major political factions within the galaxy, with your progression representing a measure of the efforts you’ve undertaken on their behalf, as an acting Admiral. With the launch of Season 11, two Campaigns will be available immediately:

• United Federation of Planets
• Klingon Empire

While we expect all players to eventually participate in Assignments on behalf of both of these political powers, each of them specializes in a particular type of reward. This will allow players to decide for themselves what they would like to pursue as their primary reward for participating in Admiralty.

Additional Campaigns will be released in the future, allowing the system to continuously expand and offer new choices and challenges to Admirals.

Assignments

Players will enter the Admiralty system with just three (3) Assignment Slots available to them, but can expand this up to eight (8) total by progressing within their available Campaigns.

Each Campaign will offer a set of three (3) Assignments to the player, pulled from a list of several dozen possibilities. These availability lists are defined per player (not per map like with Duty Officers) and will persist through map changes, logouts, etc. Players rotate through their available Assignments either by completing the ones offered to them, or by using a Pass Token which can be acquired by participation in the Admiralty System, primarily by getting a Critical Success. Assignments that are coming up next in the player’s availability will be displayed beneath the available assignments, so that players may plan ahead and make their choices accordingly.

Standard Assignments vary in duration from as little as 15 minutes up to a maximum of 4 hours. These relatively low durations allow players to participate as much, or as little, as suits their style of play. Tour of Duty assignments always require 20 hours to complete.

Once an Assignment is chosen, the planning stage begins. Each Assignment allows for up to 3 Admiralty Ships to be slotted, though any Assignment may be started with as few as one ship present. The ships chosen for any Assignment should correspond to the requirements and challenges it presents. These come in two forms:

Stat Requirements:
Divided into ENG, SCI and TAC requirements, these are the target stats that represent a 100% chance to succeed on any given assignment. Any excess above the individual stat requirement will improve your chances of getting a Critical Success.

Events:
These additional modifiers are randomly assigned each time an Assignment becomes available. This means that each time you run a particular Assignment, the variables changes slightly, and additional care must be given when choosing which Admiralty Ships will participate. Events have many various effects, ranging from an increase in Stat Requirements, to a Maintenance penalty for ships that participate in the Assignment. However, all Events also include a positive component of some sort, such as improving chances for Critical Success or offering additional rewards if the Assignment succeeds.

Successful completion of any Admiralty Assignment offers more substantial rewards than their cousins in the Duty Officer system, and a Critical Success will magnify those rewards even further.

Accessing the System

Admiralty will be joining the existing Duty Officer and R&D System UI, as a new tab along the top of that same window.
The Overview page will be slightly restructured to allow for the new feature, and present additional information and options for administrating this additional progression system.

Access to the Admiralty System becomes available upon reaching Level 52.

Arriving Soon!

We will be rolling out the entire Admiralty System to our Tribble Test Server in the very near future! The above descriptions and details are all subject to change as a result of our testing and iteration, so we encourage all active Admirals to head over and try it out, and offer your feedback to help us further improve this exciting new feature.

To copy your character from Holodeck to Tribble, please follow this link:
http://www.arcgames.com/en/my/character/copy/sto

Our main goal with this system is to offer everyone a new style of play that makes effective use of the many starships that players have collected over their long careers, and to reward them for those investments through gameplay that offers meaningful choices, and impressive rewards. We look forward to allowing you to experience the Admiralty System first-hand, and we’re anxious to hear about your experiences.

The Admiralty System will arrive on Holodeck alongside our launch of Season 11: A New Dawn, scheduled for release next month!

Jeremy Randall
Staff Systems Designer
Star Trek Online