Just in time for the holiday season, Cryptic Studios is preparing a new chapter in Star Trek Online, Season 3: Genesis that's surely aimed to please. It's time to start planning your missions now, because when season 3 hits in December, STO Players will be able to create their own missions using a brand new tool called The Foundry. Also on tap for Season 3 is the Holodeck. This new feature allows players to replay their favorite STO missions with new episode specific rewards. Integration of Borg technology will also be available to higher ranked players. The new tech will enhance weapons, engines, etc and give players the option to display the Borg tech on their ships.

On top of all the upcoming Season 3 additions, there are three brand new ships available in the cryptic C-Store. Check out the Season 3 and C-Store updates below.

Season 3: Genesis

Introducing: The Foundry Beta

Cryptic Studios just released another in installment in their ongoing series "Ask Cryptic". These popular monthly question and answer sessions give Star Trek Online players a chance to ask Executive Producer Dan Stahl questions about the future of the MMO. In this month's edition players inquired about fleet actions, targ mastering, and Romulans... We would love to see Vulcan's mischievous cousins make an appearance as a playable race in STO. Unfortunately though, it seems that may be a fair pace down the road, but still on the horizon. We dug through this month's questions and pulled out what we thought were the most intriguing. Check out the excerpt below.

Cryptic Studios has just released a brand new ship for all of you ship junkies out there. The Nebula class is available now in the C-store, and many of you will remember the Nebula class most notably from the battle of Wolf 359. Several Nebula Class ships were shown, and subsequently destroyed, in the battle on DS9's pilot episode "Emissary". Check out full details of the Nebula Class ship below.

Advanced Research Vessel Retrofit: Nebula Class
(1,200 Cryptic Points)

A beast with six inch fangs and a favorite of Vulcan children can now be yours in Star Trek Online. A cub version of the giant teddy bear shaped creature known as a sehlat is now available in Cryptic's C-Store for 120 cryptic points. As seen in Enterprise & The Animated Series, the sehlat's purpose in STO is unclear, but it can be a non-combat pet of both Klingon & Federation officers. The sehlat has made appearances throughout Trekdom, including hunting Captain Archer & T'pol in the Enterprise episode "The Forge" & Spock reminiscing about his pet sehlat, I-Chaya, in TOS episode "Journey to Babel". We also get to see I-Chaya in TAS episode "Yesteryear". Read more about the STO sehlat below.

Sehlat Cub
(120 Cryptic Points)

It's time once again for Executive Producer Dan Stahl to answer Star Trek Online player questions in another round of "Ask Cryptic". This time, Dan answers more questions than usual in a special extended edition. It seems the Cryptic team has wrapped it's weekly content for Season 2 and wants to get at the heart of the most common questions from the player base. A few of the questions were stand-outs for us, especially in regards to Tholians. That's right THOLIANS! Also, there's a distinct possibility that fleets will have their own bases. Interesting. Check out an excerpt from the questions below.

Q: Lilravegirl: Tholians Tholians Tholians Tholians!!! Tholians?

Dstahl: We’re very interested in the Tholians. It could be some time before you see them in game. However, here’s some concept art we submitted to CBS for our take on Tholians. We think it still needs some tweaks. What are you impressions?

Q: Kovorn: Fleet Starbases...i.e. player housing but for guilds/fleets. I've had a few people in the fleet requesting so I thought I'd ask. On the radar?

We reported back in June that Gameforge, the largest independent global provider of online games, had signed a worldwide licensing deal with CBS Studios to publish free-to-play casual browser games based on the Star Trek franchise. It looks like we're one step closer to getting our Trek gaming on in Google Chrome (yeah, that's how we roll).

DS9 will be the setting for the first browser-based free-to-play game called Star Trek: Infinite Space, with two other games in the works slated for 2011. One of the games will be a facebook exclusive, untitled as of yet, and will focus on the original series.

Gameforge has enlisted award-winning developer Keen Games to lead development on Star Trek: Infinite Space.

“Bringing Keen Games on board to develop Star Trek – Infinite Space was an easy decision to make as Keen has a strong history of producing outstanding titles,” said Ralf Adam, VP of Publishing at Gameforge. “Our production team will work closely with Keen Games to bring the vision we have for Star Trek – Infinite Space to fruition.”

Cryptic Studios just released new player purchasable items in the Star Trek Online C-store that include assimilated & Undine (species 8472) tribbles. Once only known as lovable (unless your a Klingon) pregnant eating machines, tribbles have become an invaluable resource to players during ground missions in Star Trek Online. Depending on the tribble, some provide special perks to players in-game. You can even breed certain types of tribbles in your cargo hold with varying results. Check out this handy dandy flowchart to tribble types & breeding here.

Now the Tribbles of Borg & Fluidic Space Tribble provide specialties that could help when fighting the Borg & enemies using psionics. Read their details below.

Tribbles of Borg
(120 Cryptic Points)

Star Trek Online's Season 2: Ancient Enemies update is about a month into it's launch and Cryptic Studios continues to add content to their flagship MMO. Just released is a brand new iconic Trek ship made famous by one Captain Hikaru Sulu. That's right Trek fans, the Excelsior Class is back! I guess the Excelsior was made famous in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, then throughout Next Gen, and again as the Enterprise-B in "Star Trek: Generations", but I digress. We prefer to think of it as Sulu's ship... *Fly her apart then!*

The Excelsior Class Retrofit is available now in the C-store for 1200 Cryptic Points. Check out a description below.

With the recent release of Star Trek Online: Season 2, Cryptic Studios continues to add new items to it's C-Store. If you're not familiar with the C-store, it's an online store that allows players to buy everything from new costumes to ships to pet tribbles for their STO avatars, or toons, or alts, or... whatever those crazy kids are calling them these days.