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.

Q: raddicalrabbit: Are there plans to extend the amount of bridge officers viewable on a player's ship either by having them located in other sections of the interior (e.g. engineering, sick bay or ten forward) or expanding the numbers avaliable on bridges?

A: We are looking to expand on the concept of a ship's crew roster as a major feature in Season 4 so stay tuned!

Q: Staran: ...does Cryptic plan on doing anything with the many storyline threads they have created?

A: We do not consider any of the storylines to be abandoned and similar to the tv series, we plan to go back and revisit species and stories over time, we just can't do them all simultaneously.

Q: Gastank: Any plans on adding more fleet actions to the random daily list, like DS9, breaking the planet, starbase 24, CE.

A: We understand the pain that is the daily content at max level as well as the trouble in how the Fleet Actions are currently level banded. We plan to address this after we get Season 3 out the door by taking a closer look at ways to get more players into all the Fleet Actions and make them a more viable daily mission option.

Q: chevenix: Could we get "endless" sectors with the exploration revamp? I mean, is it technically possible to create really huge sectors or you guys have a better idea on creating the feeling that space is endless?

A: We certainly could do this - but would it be fun? The first step we have on "revamping" exploration is to come up with a concept for what exploration gameplay should be like in STO. Once we create an area in the game that truly feels like you are exploring - then we can start to replicate that success and continue to add more locations that you have traveling into the unknown.

Q: Commodore_Stipe: Any chance of re-using old patrol mission maps for random encounters that "pop" up as you fly by. Like the distress singal one in Sirius sector. Those patrols have some awesome maps and would love to see them again but with new missions.

A: Yes and in fact you might find one in the Eta Eradani sector as early as next week!

Q: Admiral_Daedelus: With all the awesome updates lately in regards to art and environmental tech, will we see ESD, K7, DS9, Drozana and all other interiors get an update of sliding doors, enhanced civilian populations, better scaled interiors in the future?

A: This is high on our content lead's wishlist with ESD and Qo'Nos first up for an interior retrofit.

Q: chrislove: will our Klingon ever be able to have a war targ and use it in combat like NPC targ masters?

A: Our systems design team has been looking at this for a while and they would like to see some sort of Targ breeding metagame similar to Tribbles. Extending that one step further would allow what you're describing but it will require more development time to allow Targs to be controllable.

Q: booker9172: How about the TOS bridge? I know its been asked for, but ... how about it?

A: This is one of the top requested interior features and we have been looking for some art time to be able to add this (and updates for other bridges) to the game. I can see this getting done in the next several updates.

Q: sithterror: ...Romulans.

A: We are in fact discussing Romulans and how to get more of their story and faction into the game. We have always talked about the next faction we add to the game being Romulan. This would involve them having their own ships and storyline content. It is a big endeavor and as we've learned with the KDF, not something we could do in the span of a single update. So our long term plans are working on ways to start tackling this over multiple updates but I've no specific dates to give on when you'll see a Romulan playable faction.

Q: MustrumRidcully: There have been many concerns by canon people that the game risks losing verisimilitude by making Vulcan ships, NX-01 or the Excelsior refits or the Galaxy-X available in game...

A: We do discuss this topic internally and with CBS and at the end of the day our goal is to ensure that if we do put a legacy ship into the game, it is scaled appriopriately to make sense for our current era. We use the concepts of refits and retro-fits to explain why certain old ship classes would still be available for Captains. We certainly want fans to be able to fly their favorite ships in game and are always looking to find the right power balance to make sure there is a reason why they'd still be around in our timeline. This is why most of these ships are limited in terms of configuration layouts.

Check out the full list of questions here.

(source StarTrekOnline.com)