Several new updates have been posted to the Star Trek Online website as of late.  Included in the updates are a new installment of the Path to 2409 series, a brand new Kobayashi Maru, and a new Meet the Team.  Details below.

Path to 2409: 2390

Raids on civilian ships and settlements along the borders of the Klingon Empire and Gorn Hegemony rise dramatically and Starfleet identifies at least eight places near the borders where the Nausicaans are constructing bases hidden in asteroid belts or nebulae.

Starfleet Command does not consider these bases to be a major threat, but the Federation Transport Union, which represents a large number of civilian freighter captains, is demanding that Starfleet increase its patrols in the border regions and offer additional protections for civilian shipping traffic.

This puts Starfleet in a position of having to balance the need for defense with the Federation's deteriorating relationship with the Klingon Empire. More starships on the border will be seen as a hostile act by the hardliners on the Klingon High Council, and tensions are already high because of the ships that Starfleet is using to reinforce the Romulan border with the Klingon Empire.

The debate on what to do rages for much of the year, and the few Starfleet vessels that are assigned to the region are stretched thin and struggling to deal with the swift raider attacks. By the time a starship can respond to a distress signal, it is often too late to catch the Nausicaan ships.

The best-case scenario for the Federation, analysts agree, is if the Klingon and Gorn find a peaceful solution before the conflict has a chance to engulf nearby worlds. To this end, the Federation offers to mediate talks between the Gorn and the Klingons at a neutral location. Neither party is overeager to accept "human" meddling in a personal dispute and preliminary talks to hash out the details of the peace conference drag on for weeks. The process comes to an abrupt halt when Chancellor Martok announces that the Klingons will not participate unless Starfleet withdraws all of its ships from the Romulan-Klingon border.

While the campaigns against the Romulans and the Gorn are both extremely popular on Qo'noS, projections by the Klingon Defense Force show that the Empire's resources are being stretched thin by a two-front war. The KDF recommends a rapid increase in ship production, eliminating some of the blocks to non-commissioned soldiers rising to the rank of officer and possibly scaling back the Romulan war in the short term, because the disorganized, displaced Romulans are not an immediate threat. Ultimately, the Klingons decide to slow their advance into Romulan space, but they continue to garrison and defend the territory gained in the 2389 campaign. (source Star Trek Online)

Read the full article here.

Kobayashi Maru Vol. 21

You are in command of an Excelsior class vessel. Your current assignment is to render aid to a world devastated by earthquakes.

You have an away team on the surface helping rebuild and another in a cave formation trying to determine the reason for the earthquakes. Your tactical officer tells you a subspace wave is about to hit the ship. Your science officer tells you that at its strength, it will kill anything on the surface of the planet that is exposed to it, including one of the away teams. He also tells you you that you may have enough time to get the team and a few hundred people on the ground to safety by beaming them aboard the ship. However, with your shields up, you’re guaranteed to weather the wave and keep the people on the ship safe. If you lower your shields to beam anyone up, you leave yourself open to the wave.

The subspace wave has enough power to destroy your ship if the shields are down. What do you do? (source Star Trek Online)

Read the article here.

Meet the Team: Joe Blancato

What do you do on Star Trek Online?

I’m the primary online community representative for the STO. This means I spend a lot of time interacting with our customers over a variety of media, do a lot of behind-the-scenes coordinating and scheduling, and write a lot of the stuff you see on the site. I also occasionally meddle in the affairs of dragons and challenge Craig to duels during our internal play tests.

What I’m doing right now (other than answering the questions I’m asking myself): Putting together some real information to share with the world about the game. This is a pretty cool project, since I get to spend a lot of time with folks on the dev team that I don’t usually get to bug during my normal routine.

Who is your favorite Star Trek character and why?

Tough question. As I get older, my answer changes. I used to like Picard and Riker a lot when I was a kid, but now I'm more of a Spock guy. He’s a pretty interesting character. I like that he has to wrestle with his heritage to create a new identity for himself. For example, in the TOS episode “Amok Time,” he had to go through with Pon farr to respect his Vulcan obligations, but at the end when he found out Kirk was OK he got super emotional. Wow, I’m a nerd.

If you could choose to be an alien on Star Trek, which species would you want to be?

I would be a lovechild between Quark and Worf. The physics of that aside, I like both characters and think a profit-oriented Klingon would be rad. (source Star Trek Online)

Read the full article here.