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* DiabolusExMachina: Halfway through "Home" [[spoiler: a haggard-looking Weyoun shows up out of nowhere and vaporizes Bashir's Hur'q cure samples, right before he was about to administer them to the core of the Hur'q command ship.]]
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*** Completing player-made missions grants a lot of experience points, too and there are a lot of them. They tend to be quite creative and vary radically, too. Like TV episodes.
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** The Federation-Klingon War is almost completely forgotten after the "Klingon War" and "Warzone" arcs, and every time the two sides meet after that they're engaged in TeethClenchedTeamwork. Cryptic finally resolved it in "Surface Tension", with mixed results.Some players were irritated about the mission glossing over the Klingons' war crimes committed in the name of expansionism and blaming the whole thing on the Undine. Other Klingon players felt the Federation made a far more worthy adversary, or at least unique one, than all the others they fought.
** The Gorn rebellions mentioned in the background literature barely receive lip service in-game.
** The Gorn rebellions mentioned in the background literature barely receive lip service in-game.
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** The Federation-Klingon War is almost completely forgotten after the "Klingon War" and "Warzone" arcs, and every time the two sides meet after that they're engaged in TeethClenchedTeamwork. Cryptic finally resolved it in "Surface Tension", with mixed results.Some players were irritated about the mission glossing over the Klingons' war crimes committed in the name of expansionism and blaming the whole thing on the Undine. Other Klingon players felt the Federation made a far more worthy adversary, or at least unique one, than all the others they fought.
fought. This says much about Klingon player mentality.
** The Gorn rebellions mentioned in the background literature barely receive lip service in-game. Mostly because it is basically irrelevant in the game and no one particularly cares. Its only influence on the game is that the Gorn are playable.
** The Gorn rebellions mentioned in the background literature barely receive lip service in-game. Mostly because it is basically irrelevant in the game and no one particularly cares. Its only influence on the game is that the Gorn are playable.
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*** Most likely, Cryptic figured that most players would realize on their own that after the defeat of the Tal Shiar, the Tal Shiar were...defeated. So, there wouldn't be a need to explicitly tell players that. Apparently, they were wrong; the players really did need to be told that yes, shooting up the bad guys and blowing them up does cause them to lose their power and control. Because they're dead.
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*** Well, in the Starfleet prologue you do kinda go ''waaaaay'' beyond your authority and pull a Kirk in the middle of a Borg invasion. I suspect the brass was '''not''' amused by that but they are definitely amused by this.
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*** See? Free stuff! All you have to do is kill a bunch of people and take their shiny bits for yourself.
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** The blurring makes sense in Star Trek anyway and adds a great deal of depth to the game. It really forces you and your fellows (especially when teamed up) to genuinely ''think'' instead of sticking to rote tank/spank/pray classes, though the trinity is perfectly serviceable, it is more like a sliding scale than written in stone.
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* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: During the invasion of Klingon space by [[TheLegionsOfHell the Fek'lhri]], nobody is quite sure whether they're up against demons or artificial constructs. [[spoiler:It may be a bit of both.]]
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* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: During the invasion of Klingon space by [[TheLegionsOfHell the Fek'lhri]], nobody is quite sure whether they're up against demons or artificial constructs. [[spoiler:It may be a bit of both.[[spoiler:"Victory Is Life" confirms that the Fek'Ihri are artificial constructs created by the Dominion, based on old Klingon mythology.]]
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* HeKnowsTooMuch: At the end of "Tenebris Torquent", [[spoiler:The Female Changeling orders her Jem'Hadar to execute the player character and their team (as well as Garak, Odo, and Dr. Bashir) so they can't reveal her role in the creation of the Hur'q to the Dominion or the Alliance. Until a mutant Hur'q shows up and interrupts them.]]
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* LetNoCrisisGoToWaste: The Dominion, true to their PragmaticVillainy roots. In [[spoiler: "Victory Is Life" we learn that after turning the ancient Hur'q into mindless monsters and accidentally unleashing them on the Galaxy, the Dominion used special lure devices to draw the swarm to worlds of their choosing, worlds that they wanted to add to the Dominion. The Founders would offer the targets a choice: join the Dominion and be saved by the Jem'Hadar, or refuse and watch their world and everyone on it be eaten alive by the swarm. It worked for millennia, until the Hur'q swarms became too large and too powerful for the Jem'Hadar to contain.]]
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* HordeOfAlienLocusts: The Hur'Q.
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* HordeOfAlienLocusts: The Hur'Q.[[spoiler:The Hur'q. Swarms of insect-like ships that ZergRush you in space battles? Check. Ground troops that look and act like giant beetles and praying-mantises? Check. Eats anyone and everything in their path? Double-check.]]
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** In ''Victory is Life'', we learn that [[spoiler: the Dominion created both the Fek'Ihri and the Hur'Q as predecessors to the Jem'Hadar.]]
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** In ''Victory is Life'', we learn that [[spoiler: the Dominion created both the Fek'Ihri and the Hur'Q Hur'q as predecessors to the Jem'Hadar.]]
** On top of that, in "Tenebris Torquent" we learn that [[spoiler:Tzenthethi Admiral Tzen-Tarrak, the one who started their genocidal campaign against Hur'g-infested worlds, was actually the Female Changeling in disguise, trying to wipe them out so the Dominion wouldn't have to.]]
** On top of that, in "Tenebris Torquent" we learn that [[spoiler:Tzenthethi Admiral Tzen-Tarrak, the one who started their genocidal campaign against Hur'g-infested worlds, was actually the Female Changeling in disguise, trying to wipe them out so the Dominion wouldn't have to.]]
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* IdiotBall: In the episode "Quark's Lucky Seven", Quark will insist on rigging up the player's ship with a second-hand cloaking device he got from his cousin Gaela, even if he's on a Klingon or Romulan ship that comes with a top-of-the-line cloak as ''standard equipment''.
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** In ''Victory is Life'', we learn that [[spoiler: the Dominion created both the Fek'Ihri and the Hur'Q as predecessors to the Jem'Hadar.]]
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* ExtremeOmnivore: The Hur'q, driven mad by the absence of their normal food source, devour literally ''anything'' they can get their claws on, ranging from organic material, to ship hulls, and raw minerals.
--> '''Elim Garak:''' "Unlike most burrowing creatures, the Hur'q ''ate'' their way through the ground."
--> '''Elim Garak:''' "Unlike most burrowing creatures, the Hur'q ''ate'' their way through the ground."
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* AntiPoopSocking: There are increased raid rewards for reputation marks that are put on a 24 hour cooldown once earned each day.
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* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: Each playable faction has it's own color scheme (carried over from the TV series and movies), which extends to the colors on the walls, lighting, map sections, etc. The Federation is blue/white, Klingons are red, Romulans are green, and the Original Series Federation is yellow.
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* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: Each playable faction has it's own color scheme (carried over from the TV series and movies), which extends to the colors on the walls, lighting, map sections, etc. The Federation is blue/white, Klingons are red, Romulans are green, and the Original Series Federation is yellow. The playable Jem'Hadar (or officially, the Dominion, despite the only other race in it being a vareint) is purple.
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Updating the Fantastic Ship Prefix entry to include the Klingons, the Cardassian Union, and the Dominion.
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** The Klingons use, depending on era, either IKV[[note]]'''I'''mperial '''K'''lingon '''V'''essel[[/note]], for the 23rd Century, or IKS[[note]]'''I'''mperial '''K'''lingon '''S'''hip[[/note]], for the 25th.
**With the latest expansion, named Cardassian Union ships, like Garak's ship, the ''Tain'', use CUV for a prefix. This likely stands for Cardassian Union Vessel.
**Also from ''Victory is Life'', comes the Dominion ship prefix, DV. Likely stands for Dominion Vessel.
**With the latest expansion, named Cardassian Union ships, like Garak's ship, the ''Tain'', use CUV for a prefix. This likely stands for Cardassian Union Vessel.
**Also from ''Victory is Life'', comes the Dominion ship prefix, DV. Likely stands for Dominion Vessel.
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** Once [[spoiler: Noye's Temporal Liberation Front]] is dismantled, the Tzenkethi return to the galactic scene, led by Admiral Tzen-Tarrak and the Tzenkethi Autarch in a ruthless, genocidal crusade wiping all life from dozens of worlds, many of them inhabited. [[spoiler: It turns out they are trying to weaken the Hur'q before they return, but end up fighting a counter-productive war when they refuse to ''explain'' this and commit several unnecessary atrocities in the process.]]
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** Once [[spoiler: Noye's Temporal Liberation Front]] is dismantled, the Tzenkethi return to the galactic scene, scene in 'New Frontiers', led by Admiral Tzen-Tarrak and the Tzenkethi Autarch in a ruthless, genocidal crusade wiping all life from dozens of worlds, many of them inhabited. [[spoiler: It turns out they are trying to weaken the Hur'q before they return, but end up fighting a counter-productive war when they refuse to ''explain'' this and commit several unnecessary atrocities in the process.]]
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** The true BigBad of the game, though, is [[spoiler:the ancient, lost civilisation of the Iconians, who once ruled the galaxy with an iron fist and feel like coming back for another go]]. They are TheManBehindTheMan for just about ''everything'' in the first 10 seasons of the game, including [[spoiler:the Hobus supernova, Hakeev's atrocities in Romulan space, the mysterious goings-on in the Tau Dewa sector, the Undine invasion, and maybe even the Klingon Empire's mysterious run-in with the Fek'lhri]].
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** The true BigBad of the game, though, is [[spoiler:the ancient, lost civilisation of the Iconians, who once ruled the galaxy with an iron fist and feel like coming back for another go]]. They are TheManBehindTheMan for just about ''everything'' in the first 10 seasons of the game, including [[spoiler:the Hobus supernova, Hakeev's atrocities in Romulan space, the mysterious goings-on in the Tau Dewa sector, the Undine invasion, and maybe invasion. They may even have had some involvement with the Klingon Empire's mysterious run-in with the Fek'lhri]].Fek'lhri (the Fek'Ihri themselves have another source, but when they show up in the Klingon arc they possess portal technology related to Iconian technology, which is ''not'' something their origin would explain)]].
** After [[spoiler: the Iconians]] are dealt with, [[spoiler: Noye, a rogue Krenim]] becomes the leading threat of 'Future Proof' (he also shows up in the earlier 'Yesterday's War' mini-arc, although due to the involvement of time-travel for him it happens after the Iconian War despite happening before it for you).
** Once [[spoiler: Noye's Temporal Liberation Front]] is dismantled, the Tzenkethi return to the galactic scene, led by Admiral Tzen-Tarrak and the Tzenkethi Autarch in a ruthless, genocidal crusade wiping all life from dozens of worlds, many of them inhabited. [[spoiler: It turns out they are trying to weaken the Hur'q before they return, but end up fighting a counter-productive war when they refuse to ''explain'' this and commit several unnecessary atrocities in the process.]]
** The [[spoiler: Female Founder]] turns out to be not only the BigBad of 'Gamma Quadrant', but responsible for some of the threats of earlier seasons. [[spoiler: She isn't actually ''controlling'' the Hur'q anymore, but she used to, is directly and willfully responsible for them turning into a galactic threat, and is actively impeding the struggle against the Hur'q when it threatens to reveal her involvement, up to trying to kill Odo and revealing she's done so to several other Founders before. She was ''also'' responsible for creating the Fek'Ihri as a predecessor to the Jem'Hadar, although they went renegade, and was impersonating Tzen-Tarrak.]]
** After [[spoiler: the Iconians]] are dealt with, [[spoiler: Noye, a rogue Krenim]] becomes the leading threat of 'Future Proof' (he also shows up in the earlier 'Yesterday's War' mini-arc, although due to the involvement of time-travel for him it happens after the Iconian War despite happening before it for you).
** Once [[spoiler: Noye's Temporal Liberation Front]] is dismantled, the Tzenkethi return to the galactic scene, led by Admiral Tzen-Tarrak and the Tzenkethi Autarch in a ruthless, genocidal crusade wiping all life from dozens of worlds, many of them inhabited. [[spoiler: It turns out they are trying to weaken the Hur'q before they return, but end up fighting a counter-productive war when they refuse to ''explain'' this and commit several unnecessary atrocities in the process.]]
** The [[spoiler: Female Founder]] turns out to be not only the BigBad of 'Gamma Quadrant', but responsible for some of the threats of earlier seasons. [[spoiler: She isn't actually ''controlling'' the Hur'q anymore, but she used to, is directly and willfully responsible for them turning into a galactic threat, and is actively impeding the struggle against the Hur'q when it threatens to reveal her involvement, up to trying to kill Odo and revealing she's done so to several other Founders before. She was ''also'' responsible for creating the Fek'Ihri as a predecessor to the Jem'Hadar, although they went renegade, and was impersonating Tzen-Tarrak.]]
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* DoingInTheWizard: KDF-side, your science officer suggests after the fact that the battle in [[spoiler:Gre'thor]] may have been AllJustADream and that the [[spoiler:Fek'Ihri]] were created by biotech, possibly by the Hur'q. [[AbortedArc Nothing ever comes of this...]] [[spoiler: until ''Victory is Life'', which reveals the Fek'Ihri are a renegade Dominion creation ''based on'' the Hur'q.]]
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* DoingInTheWizard: KDF-side, your science officer suggests after the fact that the battle in [[spoiler:Gre'thor]] may have been AllJustADream and that the [[spoiler:Fek'Ihri]] were created by biotech, possibly by the Hur'q. [[AbortedArc Nothing ever comes of this...]] [[spoiler: until ''Victory is Life'', which reveals the Fek'Ihri are a renegade Dominion creation ''based on'' the Hur'q.]]
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* DoingInTheWizard: KDF-side, your science officer suggests after the fact that the battle in [[spoiler:Gre'thor]] may have been AllJustADream and that the [[spoiler:Fek'Ihri]] were created by biotech, possibly by the Hur'q. [[AbortedArc Nothing ever comes of this.]]
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* DoingInTheWizard: KDF-side, your science officer suggests after the fact that the battle in [[spoiler:Gre'thor]] may have been AllJustADream and that the [[spoiler:Fek'Ihri]] were created by biotech, possibly by the Hur'q. [[AbortedArc Nothing ever comes of this.this...]] [[spoiler: until ''Victory is Life'', which reveals the Fek'Ihri are a renegade Dominion creation ''based on'' the Hur'q.]]
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* TheLegionsOfHell: The Fek'lhri are a ''space-faring'' version of this. They are malicious souls of the damned. Spirits sent to Gre'thor, the Klingon version of Hell. The Klingons have a story arc where you and your crew are sent down to Gre'thor itself, where you must find why and how the Fek'Ihri reappeared. Along your travels you will fight, among other demons, the physical personifications of Treachery, Cowardice, and Dishonor, then finally Molor and Fek'Ihr, something like the Klingon versions of Asmodeus and the Devil. [[spoiler:Possibly subverted: Your science officer suggests after the fact that the battle in Gre'thor may have been AllJustADream and that the Fek'Ihri were created by biotech, possibly by the Hur'q. [[AbortedArc Nothing ever comes of this.]]]]
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* TheLegionsOfHell: The Fek'lhri are a ''space-faring'' version of this. They are malicious souls of the damned. Spirits sent to Gre'thor, the Klingon version of Hell. The Klingons have a story arc where you and your crew are sent down to Gre'thor itself, where you must find why and how the Fek'Ihri reappeared. Along your travels you will fight, among other demons, the physical personifications of Treachery, Cowardice, and Dishonor, then finally Molor and Fek'Ihr, something like the Klingon versions of Asmodeus and the Devil. [[spoiler:Possibly subverted: Your science officer suggests after the fact that the battle in Gre'thor may have been AllJustADream and that the Fek'Ihri were created by biotech, possibly by the Hur'q. [[AbortedArc Nothing ever comes of this.]]]]this...]] until ''Victory is Life'', which reveals the Fek'Ihri are renegade Dominion creations inspired by Klingon myths and ''based on'' the Hur'q.]]
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** On the KDF end of things, the Fek'Ihri arc ends with a SequelHook ({{technobabble}} to the effect that they may not have been genuine demons from hell) that is left to dangle.
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** On the KDF end of things, the Fek'Ihri arc ends with a SequelHook ({{technobabble}} to the effect that they may not have been genuine demons from hell) that is left to dangle.dangle [[spoiler:until ''Victory is Life'']].
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** Played straight in its relation to the Franchise/StarTrekNovelverse. The backstory borrows some details and plots from the novelverse[[labelnote:e.g.]]Riker and Troi had kids, Picard and Crusher married and had kids, the Romulans had a civil war in the 2380s, Ezri Dax commanded the USS ''Aventine'', and Data's still alive and took over as captain of the ''Ent''-E.[[/labelnote]], but discards others[[labelnote:e.g.]]The original Deep Space 9 still guards the wormhole, the two Romulan factions merged back together just in time for [[Film/StarTrek Hobus]], nobody's ever heard of the Typhon Pact, and the Borg stayed away from the Alpha Quadrant until 2409.[[/labelnote]], including the ''Literature/StarTrekVoyagerRelaunch'', ''Literature/StarTrekDestiny'', and ''Literature/StarTrekTyphonPact'' in their entirety.
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** Played straight in its relation to the Franchise/StarTrekNovelverse. The backstory borrows some details and plots from the novelverse[[labelnote:e.g.]]Riker and Troi had kids, Picard and Crusher married and had kids, the Romulans had a civil war in the 2380s, Ezri Dax commanded the USS ''Aventine'', and Data's still alive and Data (his mind restored in B4's body) took over as captain of the ''Ent''-E.[[/labelnote]], but discards others[[labelnote:e.g.]]The original Deep Space 9 still guards the wormhole, the two Romulan factions merged back together just in time for [[Film/StarTrek Hobus]], nobody's ever heard of the Typhon Pact, the bluegills aren't augmented Trill symbiotes, and the Borg stayed away from the Alpha Quadrant until 2409.[[/labelnote]], including the ''Literature/StarTrekVoyagerRelaunch'', ''Literature/StarTrekDestiny'', and ''Literature/StarTrekTyphonPact'' in their entirety.
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Removed based on clean-up thread
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** Of course, you can earn all the Dilithium Ore you want, but it must be refined before you can spend it, and you can only refine [[{{Cap}} 8000 per day]]. At current rates[[note]]200 dilithium to 1 Zen; March 31, 2015[[/note]], that translates to roughly 40 Zen per day. Most items cost 400 Zen or more. [[MagnificentBastard Cryptic Studios know what they're doing.]] Granted, it's 8000 ''per character'', and even free players that refuse to invest a cent into the game get three character slots. Still, you can't transfer unrefined dilithium between characters, so that means you have to spend the time to earn 8000 dilithium ''per character'' if you want to reach the full cap.
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** Of course, you can earn all the Dilithium Ore you want, but it must be refined before you can spend it, and you can only refine [[{{Cap}} 8000 per day]]. At current rates[[note]]200 dilithium to 1 Zen; March 31, 2015[[/note]], that translates to roughly 40 Zen per day. Most items cost 400 Zen or more. [[MagnificentBastard Cryptic Studios know what they're doing.]] doing. Granted, it's 8000 ''per character'', and even free players that refuse to invest a cent into the game get three character slots. Still, you can't transfer unrefined dilithium between characters, so that means you have to spend the time to earn 8000 dilithium ''per character'' if you want to reach the full cap.
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*** Not only that, there is a Duty Officer mission that would allow you to dispose of Tribble Carcasses (the remains of a tribble after a Cannibal Tribble eats it). Players have been known to transfer carcasses via bank slots to KDF characters as only the KDF has access to this mission. Cryptic obviously was aware of the implications as they wrote in a possibility that the Duty Officer mission will fail with the Duty Officer tossed into the brig for ''breeding tribble carcasses for profit''.
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** The Iconians and their Gateway technology, introduced in the Next Generation episode [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E11Contagion "Contagion"]] as an extinct precursor race[[spoiler: end up being the main force behind the events of the game's storyline, with the Iconians themselves being the BigBad and ManBehindTheMan for most of the events post-Star Trek Nemesis. Their servitor races include the Elachi (The unnamed alien raiders from the Enterprise episode [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS01E12SilentEnemy "Silent Enemy"]], the Solanae (the Solanagen-based aliens from the TNG episode [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E5Schisms "Schisms"]]), the Vaadwaur (from the Voyager episode [[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS6E7DragonsTeeth "Dragon's Teeth"]]), and even the [[PuppeteerParasite neural parasites]] from [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E24Conspiracy "Conspiracy"]]. The Tal Shiar also ally with the Iconians, tying the Legacy of Romulus arc into the larger Iconian conflict.]]
** The Future Proof and Yesterday's War episodes also [[spoiler:tie together the Temporal Cold War and the Xindi story arcs from Series/StarTrekEnterprise via time travel, and the player is present at several key events like General Vosk's escape to the alternate-1930s from [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS04E01StormFront "Storm Front"]] and the Battle of Procyon V from [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS03E18AzatiPrime "Azati Prime"]].]] The player's allies during these events include [[spoiler: Temporal Agent Daniels, a 29th Century Starfleet Timeship crew, and Scotty and Chekov from The Original Series.]]
** It turns out the entire Temporal Cold War was triggered by the [[spoiler: events of [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS3E19CaptainsHoliday "Captain's Holiday"]]. Kal Dano, creator of the Tox Uthat, is a 31st century time traveler and the dead time pod pilot from the Enterprise episode [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS02E016FutureTense "Future Tense"]]. The player is the one helping Kal evade the Tholians and Vorgons trying to steal his device, but is too late to stop the Tholians from using it to destroy the Na'Kuhl star, triggering their StartOfDarkness. The player eventually buries it on Risa in the 22nd century where Captain Picard will eventually dig it up.]]
** The Future Proof and Yesterday's War episodes also [[spoiler:tie together the Temporal Cold War and the Xindi story arcs from Series/StarTrekEnterprise via time travel, and the player is present at several key events like General Vosk's escape to the alternate-1930s from [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS04E01StormFront "Storm Front"]] and the Battle of Procyon V from [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS03E18AzatiPrime "Azati Prime"]].]] The player's allies during these events include [[spoiler: Temporal Agent Daniels, a 29th Century Starfleet Timeship crew, and Scotty and Chekov from The Original Series.]]
** It turns out the entire Temporal Cold War was triggered by the [[spoiler: events of [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS3E19CaptainsHoliday "Captain's Holiday"]]. Kal Dano, creator of the Tox Uthat, is a 31st century time traveler and the dead time pod pilot from the Enterprise episode [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS02E016FutureTense "Future Tense"]]. The player is the one helping Kal evade the Tholians and Vorgons trying to steal his device, but is too late to stop the Tholians from using it to destroy the Na'Kuhl star, triggering their StartOfDarkness. The player eventually buries it on Risa in the 22nd century where Captain Picard will eventually dig it up.]]
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** The Iconians and their Gateway technology, technology were introduced in the Next Generation episode [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E11Contagion "Contagion"]] as an extinct precursor race[[spoiler: race.[[spoiler: They end up being the main force behind the events of the game's storyline, with the Iconians themselves being the BigBad and ManBehindTheMan for most of the major galactic events post-Star Trek Nemesis. Their servitor races include the Elachi (The unnamed alien raiders from the Enterprise episode [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS01E12SilentEnemy "Silent Enemy"]], the Solanae (the Solanagen-based aliens from the TNG episode [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E5Schisms "Schisms"]]), the Vaadwaur (from the Voyager episode [[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS6E7DragonsTeeth "Dragon's Teeth"]]), and even the [[PuppeteerParasite neural parasites]] from [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E24Conspiracy "Conspiracy"]]. The Tal Shiar are also ally allied with the Iconians, tying the destruction of Romulus from [[Film/StarTrek Star Trek]] and the Legacy of Romulus arc storyline into the larger Iconian conflict.]]
** The Future Proof and Yesterday's War episodes also [[spoiler:tie together the Temporal Cold War and the Xindi story arcs from Series/StarTrekEnterprise via time travel, and the player is present at several key events like General Vosk's escape to the alternate-1930s from [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS04E01StormFront "Storm Front"]] and the Battle of Procyon V from [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS03E18AzatiPrime "Azati Prime"]].]] The player's allies during these events include [[spoiler: Temporal Agent Daniels, a 29thCentury century Starfleet Timeship crew, and Scotty and Chekov from The Original Series.]]
** It turns out the entire Temporal Cold War was triggered by the [[spoiler: events of [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS3E19CaptainsHoliday "Captain's Holiday"]]. Kal Dano, creator of the Tox Uthat, is a31st 26th century time traveler and the dead time pod pilot from the Enterprise episode [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS02E016FutureTense "Future Tense"]]. The player character is the one helping Kal evade the Tholians and Vorgons trying to steal his device, but is they are too late to stop the Tholians from using it to destroy the Na'Kuhl star, triggering their StartOfDarkness. The player eventually recovers the Tox Uthat and buries it on Risa in the 22nd century where Captain Picard will eventually dig it up.up in 2366.]]
** The Future Proof and Yesterday's War episodes also [[spoiler:tie together the Temporal Cold War and the Xindi story arcs from Series/StarTrekEnterprise via time travel, and the player is present at several key events like General Vosk's escape to the alternate-1930s from [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS04E01StormFront "Storm Front"]] and the Battle of Procyon V from [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS03E18AzatiPrime "Azati Prime"]].]] The player's allies during these events include [[spoiler: Temporal Agent Daniels, a 29th
** It turns out the entire Temporal Cold War was triggered by the [[spoiler: events of [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS3E19CaptainsHoliday "Captain's Holiday"]]. Kal Dano, creator of the Tox Uthat, is a
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*** Appears yet ''again'' in the mission "Scylla and Charybdis," during [[spoiler:a Tzenkethi (then Hur'q) attack that severely damages Deep Space 9.]]
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* ImmunityAttrition: Borg drones will adapt to incoming energy weapons fire after a few hits, but this only reduces incoming damage from that energy type. Even if you don't refrequence your weapons with a cheaply replicateable item, you can still Cherry Tap the drone to death.
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** The Dyson ships, introduced during the 4th year anniversary event are this. The purchasable ships take this even further: each faction has access to the same variation (based on career path) of the ship.
** Since of Delta Rising, new ships based on new specializations (Command, Pilot, Miracle Worker) are this. Like the Dyson ships previously, each faction has access to the same variation (based on career path) of the ship, right down to the consoles used. The T6 Multi Mission Explorers also apply.
** Since of Delta Rising, new ships based on new specializations (Command, Pilot, Miracle Worker) are this. Like the Dyson ships previously, each faction has access to the same variation (based on career path) of the ship, right down to the consoles used. The T6 Multi Mission Explorers also apply.
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** The Dyson ships, introduced during the 4th year anniversary event are this. The purchasable ships take this even further: each faction has access to the same variation (based on career path) of the ship.
ship. This is justified as all three factions were working on the same technology developed after the discovery of the Solonae Dyson Sphere. Slightly averted as the Federation version has no cloaking ability.
** Since of Delta Rising, new ships based on new specializations (Command, Pilot, Miracle Worker) are this. Like the Dyson ships previously, each faction has access to the same variation (based on career path) of the ship, right down to the consoles used. The T6 Multi Mission Explorers also apply. Also slightly averted as the Federation version has no cloaking ability.
** Since of Delta Rising, new ships based on new specializations (Command, Pilot, Miracle Worker) are this. Like the Dyson ships previously, each faction has access to the same variation (based on career path) of the ship, right down to the consoles used. The T6 Multi Mission Explorers also apply. Also slightly averted as the Federation version has no cloaking ability.
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* MovesetClone: The Starfleet ''Avenger''-class and Klingon ''Mogh''-class battlecruisers have the same bridge officer layout, virtually identical stats, and very similar unique consoles that act as RecursiveAmmo weapons. Their primary difference is that the ''Mogh'' has a built-in cloaking device, whereas the ''Avenger'' has to use the cloak console add-on. {{Justified|Trope}} as the ''Avenger'' having been based off of stolen plans for Klingon battlecruisers, and the ''Mogh'' being based in turn on the ''Avenger''.
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* MovesetClone: MovesetClone:
** The Starfleet ''Avenger''-class and Klingon ''Mogh''-class battlecruisers have the same bridge officer layout, virtually identical stats, and very similar unique consoles that act as RecursiveAmmo weapons. Their primary difference is that the ''Mogh'' has a built-in cloaking device, whereas the ''Avenger'' has to use the cloak console add-on. {{Justified|Trope}} as the ''Avenger'' having been based off of stolen plans for Klingon battlecruisers, and the ''Mogh'' being based in turn on the''Avenger''.''Avenger''.
** The Dyson ships, introduced during the 4th year anniversary event are this. The purchasable ships take this even further: each faction has access to the same variation (based on career path) of the ship.
** Since of Delta Rising, new ships based on new specializations (Command, Pilot, Miracle Worker) are this. Like the Dyson ships previously, each faction has access to the same variation (based on career path) of the ship, right down to the consoles used. The T6 Multi Mission Explorers also apply.
** The Starfleet ''Avenger''-class and Klingon ''Mogh''-class battlecruisers have the same bridge officer layout, virtually identical stats, and very similar unique consoles that act as RecursiveAmmo weapons. Their primary difference is that the ''Mogh'' has a built-in cloaking device, whereas the ''Avenger'' has to use the cloak console add-on. {{Justified|Trope}} as the ''Avenger'' having been based off of stolen plans for Klingon battlecruisers, and the ''Mogh'' being based in turn on the
** The Dyson ships, introduced during the 4th year anniversary event are this. The purchasable ships take this even further: each faction has access to the same variation (based on career path) of the ship.
** Since of Delta Rising, new ships based on new specializations (Command, Pilot, Miracle Worker) are this. Like the Dyson ships previously, each faction has access to the same variation (based on career path) of the ship, right down to the consoles used. The T6 Multi Mission Explorers also apply.
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** Averted with the introduction of the Admiralty System: You still solve problems personally with your ship and crew, but now you also send out various other ships under your command to solve smaller problems that don't need your personal attention.
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** Averted Sidestepped with the introduction of the Admiralty System: You still solve problems personally with your ship and crew, but now you can also send out various other ships under your command to solve smaller problems that don't need your personal attention.
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** Averted with the introduction of the Admiralty System: You still solve problems personally with your ship and crew, but now you also send out various other ships under your command to solve smaller problems that don't need your personal attention.
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** The Armitage Heavy Escort comes with a console that targets 8 enemies around you with 6 photon torpedoes. That is about 48 torpedoes. Combine this with the highest version of the above "Torpedo Spread" ability, and you are now looking at up to 129 torpedoes that will absolutely shred a group of enemies in front of you if their shields are weakened.
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Back to [[VideoGame/StarTrekOnline the main page]].
[[StarTrekOnline/TropesNToZ Tropes N-Z]]
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:Tropes A-C]]
* TwoDSpace: While there are three dimensions, the up-down is severely restricted in scope and way smaller than the others. There also is a defined "up" in space, meaning instead of moving freely in all three, you may only move two dimensional with a little height difference. This does not have to be all bad though, since it eases orientation for players.
** The main problem is that the ships are limited in how much they can pitch up or down (to about 75 degrees relative to the plane of the ecliptic) and are unable to execute any kind of rolling maneuvers other than banking during turns. This is likely to prevent players from getting horribly confused and turned around, but it also does make "vertical" attacks difficult to pull off; this unfortunately makes [[LightningBruiser escorts]], with their narrower firing arcs, a bit harder to use than they probably should be.
* AbnormalAmmo: The winter events held by Q from 2012 onward have introduced a whole line of ground weapons that use ''snow'' as ammunition for the [[SnowballFight snowball fights]] held therein.
* AbortedArc: Cryptic has a bad habit of leaving plot threads to just dangle unresolved.
** The Federation-Klingon War is almost completely forgotten after the "Klingon War" and "Warzone" arcs, and every time the two sides meet after that they're engaged in TeethClenchedTeamwork. Cryptic finally resolved it in "Surface Tension", with mixed results.Some players were irritated about the mission glossing over the Klingons' war crimes committed in the name of expansionism and blaming the whole thing on the Undine. Other Klingon players felt the Federation made a far more worthy adversary, or at least unique one, than all the others they fought.
** The Gorn rebellions mentioned in the background literature barely receive lip service in-game.
** The Romulan Star Empire remnant under Sela is forgotten completely after "Cutting the Cord". Later unaborted in ''Delta Rising'', although through WordOfGod exposition. [[spoiler:During the in-fighting after Sela's kidnapping and the Tal Shiar's defeat on New Romulus, the RSE basically lost all political clout and was no longer recognized by any of the other powers of the Quadrant as more and more of their forces defected to the Republic. As of 2410, the Treaty of Algeron has been dissolved (ending Starfleet's ban on Cloaking Technology) and what remains of the Star Empire is a handful of hold out colonies. In ''Delta Rising'' a number of Romulan Intelligence Officers are Tal Shiar defectors who saw the writing on the wall and said ScrewThisImOuttaHere.]][[invoked]]
** The True Way really get no resolution in the Cardassian arc (yes, you captured two of their leaders, but come on, they're a terrorist organization). This gets tied off with the revamped and condensed Cardassian arc, [[spoiler:since you make peace with the New Link which is in control of the True Way]].
** On the KDF end of things, the Fek'Ihri arc ends with a SequelHook ({{technobabble}} to the effect that they may not have been genuine demons from hell) that is left to dangle.
* AbusivePrecursors: [[spoiler: Remember how Picard thought that the Iconians had a bad rep due to their frightening teleportation technology? Thanks to season 7 and the revelations about the Dewans, ''he was wrong. [[ManipulativeBastard Very.]] [[DarkIsEvil Very.]] [[DespotismJustifiesTheMeans Wrong.]]]]
** [[spoiler: As of Season 10, he may not have been as far off the mark as we thought. [[UnreliableExpositor According to the Iconians themselves]] [[DayInTheLimelight in a short story told from the Iconian POV]], they were a peaceful people who tried to help uplift the younger ones... who repaid them with bombing their civilization so thoroughly. Turns out if that happens, you become very VERY pissed off.]] One might be inclined to reject this as self-serving memory [[spoiler: though a Preserver at Lae'nas had already mentioned the Iconians were different, 'brighter' before the first war, albeit his phrasing is ambiguous.]]
--> [[spoiler: '''T'Ket:''' "And they repaid our generosity with destruction! The Whole was shattered. Our world lost. And I will have payment for every drop of blood that has been spilled."]]
** [[spoiler: Even more justified (not in the trope sense but the colloquial meaning) in season 11's final episode in which the player gets to visit pre invasion Iconia 200,000 years ago. Turns out the Iconians weren't as bad as their reputation, but later changed due to the events. Some are willing to get back to a peaceful life - others less so.]]
* AceCustom: Your spaceship. Payload, paintjob, engines, shields, the works. The Federation ships have the largest collection of them, though.
* ActuallyFourMooks: Sensor contacts, and selections, overlap at long range. Though you can probably see visually there's more than one ship, or that if there was a single ship the size of that selection box you ought to be able to see it!
* AdamSmithHatesYourGuts:
** I have to spend twenty credits to get a drink out of the replicator? What, did my crew bring a bag lunch and never use them? For that matter, I have to pay Starfleet to have better guns mounted on my ship?
** Trade goods vary in price at different locations, but always sell for a price slightly lower than the cheapest price you can buy them for, so you can't make trade runs across the galaxy with a full load of them, only buy them for missions and research.
** Also averted in two ways. 1: You don't have to pay a penny to get the stock weapons, shields, etc that come standard on your ship (like the phasers and photon torpedoes that the Enterprise always had; we never saw them trade up for better weapons!). 2: You will get so many loot drops throughout the game that you can sell, so that you will eventually be rolling in Energy Credits (the ingame currency) anyway and can afford the awesome upgrades.
* AnAdventurerIsYou: Initially played straight with the three main classes of ships: Escorts are best at dealing a lot of damage fast, cruisers are best at soaking up punishment, science vessels are best at healing, buffing and debuffing. The lines start to blur a little at higher levels and with some C-store ships like the ''Nebula'' and ''Excelsior'', and there's definitely wiggle room, but by and large each class has its strengths along the lines of the MMO Holy Trinity.
** Blurs earlier than that. The cruiser, with its high hull rating can be a tank, but with engineering crew can also heal itself and a friendly's shields, making it a buffer too. The science vessel, with its strong shields can be a magic tank, and debuffer with good science personnel. The tactical vessel is a good combo of the blade-master and backstabber with good tactical officers, although an escort with the right skills and load-out is just as much capable of taking damage and dishing it out as well. The real difference between vessel types is not determined by their base stats, but the number of bridge crew and console slots for a particular field and ''their'' abilities, which like almost everything else, can be infinitely customized.
** Further blurred by your captain's career. Since captains can fly any of the ship their abilities and traits are added on top of the ships abilities shifting them towards more damage (Tactical Captains), more survivability (Engineer captains) or more debuffing (Science captains).
* AirGuitar: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wMEcxqX2ws One of the emotes.]]
* AirstrikeImpossible: "Delta Flight" has a small squadron of pilot escorts, a command battlecruiser, and the PlayerCharacter fly through an AsteroidThicket to destroy a Solanae space station. Tom Paris makes a number of ''Series/MissionImpossible'' and ''Franchise/StarWars'' quotes to cap it off.
* AlienNonInterferenceClause: The Prime Directive is still in full effect here, both the normal and the Temporal variant.
* AllegedlyFreeGame: Averted. See BribingYourWayToVictory below. You can get the best ships and things in the game without ever having to spend a penny. You just have to spend more time to earn it.
* AllThereInTheManual:
** The game's backstory is written out in the "Path to 2409" item device, which tells what happened between the events of ''Film/StarTrek'' and the game. More information is also written in ''Star Trek Magazine'' such as [[spoiler:that Data and the ''Enterprise''-E returned to Earth, the E decommissioned and Data retiring to become a teacher.]]
** A recurring fan complaint around Season 10's Iconian War. The fighting is ''supposedly'' brutal and galaxy-spanning, with the Alliance at best only winning Pyrrhic victories. Unfortunately outside of five featured episodes and a couple raids, the war seems to be taking place entirely in Cryptic's blog.
* AllYourPowersCombined: There are numerous devices, both ground and space, that grants you amazing bonuses when they are connected together on one person. A handful, such as those on the Odyssey-class, Bortasqu'-class and Scimitar-class, can only be used on that certain class, but many others can be used with any.
* AlphaStrike: This is pretty much the escort's specialty; blitzing a target with massed torpedo and cannon fire to (hopefully) decimate the target before it has a chance to retaliate. Even more so for ships that can cloak, since decloaking grants a brief boost to your attack power. The Romulans are even more specialized here, with better cloaks than the Klingons and two of their unique boff traits ("Romulan Operative" and "Subterfuge") dedicated to improving [[FanNickname "decloak alphas"]].
* AlternateContinuity:
** ''Averted'', in fact; this is the original Star Trek universe, the one in which ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' et al. happened. Vulcan is fine, while Romulus is a shattered husk of the world it once was.
** Played straight in its relation to the Franchise/StarTrekNovelverse. The backstory borrows some details and plots from the novelverse[[labelnote:e.g.]]Riker and Troi had kids, Picard and Crusher married and had kids, the Romulans had a civil war in the 2380s, Ezri Dax commanded the USS ''Aventine'', and Data's still alive and took over as captain of the ''Ent''-E.[[/labelnote]], but discards others[[labelnote:e.g.]]The original Deep Space 9 still guards the wormhole, the two Romulan factions merged back together just in time for [[Film/StarTrek Hobus]], nobody's ever heard of the Typhon Pact, and the Borg stayed away from the Alpha Quadrant until 2409.[[/labelnote]], including the ''Literature/StarTrekVoyagerRelaunch'', ''Literature/StarTrekDestiny'', and ''Literature/StarTrekTyphonPact'' in their entirety.
* AlternateUniverse: The TieInNovel ''Literature/TheNeedsOfTheMany'' has a former Temporal Investigations agent remember events from the game, the Franchise/StarTrekNovelVerse, and the [[Film/StarTrek J.J. Abrams movie]], suggesting that any and all continuities can intersect whenever the heck they feel like it. This actually happens in the Temporal Cold War StoryArc in season 12, with episodes involving the Kelvin Timeline and ships from it becoming available in the Lobi store.
* AlwaysABiggerFish: The Iconians are fond of this one. Just as you're in a fight for your life with [[spoiler: Empress Sela]], an Iconian ship [[spoiler: shows up, snags her ship and sucks her through a Gateway.]]
** It should say something that after everything we went through with the Dominion in Deep Space Nine that for the Dominion's official policy revealed by Eraun in an optional conversation is "Take what you want Mr. Iconian Sir." ''What the hell are the Iconians doing that made the '''DOMINION''' curl up and act like a nerd being picked on by the captain of the football team!?'' But funnily enough, "Sphere of Influence" reveals the Iconians have the same opinion of the Dominion.
* AmazingTechnicolorPopulation: Given the game's practically infinite character customization options, it's not uncommon to see player-characters with practically any skin and hair color you can possibly imagine, from the dull and mundane to shades that will burn your eyes from clear across the room.
* {{Ambadassador}}: S'taass, the Gorn ambassador for the Klingon Empire during the "Second Wave" mission. [[spoiler:When [=DS9=] is boarded by the Dominion his first reaction is to leap over the table and tear a Jem'Hadar apart with his claws! His second reaction is taking up the hobby of running up to Jem'Hadar and pummeling them to death with his bare hands and biting their throats out!]] Appropriate, considering his [[Creator/CharlieAdler voice actor]] has been a [[WesternAnimation/SwatKats vigilante fighter jock who flies a custom jet]] and [[Franchise/GIJoe competent versions of Cobra Commander]].
** The Player Characters can become this as well, thanks to a Diplomacy XP system capped by gaining the official status and title of Ambassador, [[AndYourRewardIsClothes complete with spiffy Dress Uniform]].
** Worf in Sphere of Influence.
* AncientAstronauts: [[spoiler: At the end of the Breen arc, a planet is found with thousands of living Preservers in stasis, with many choosing to awaken and explore the Galaxy created by the various species in the Trek verse whose worlds they seeded billions of years ago.]]
** During the mission to Draconis III in "Echoes of Light" you discover [[spoiler: an alien temple with the Starfleet logo prominently displayed, and several murals depicting [=TOS-era=] uniformed figures. You later learn they were time-displaced survivors of a Federation starbase.]]
* AndIMustScream: Getting assimilated by the Borg in ground missions will result in a temporary version of this, as the player will no longer be in control of their character, who will proceed to engage any nearby allies just like another drone until they're finally put out of their misery.
** Gaius Selan gets hit with this in "Uneasy Allies", where Sela reprograms his Borg implants and forces him to help her escape Republic captivity. It's made clear that he was conscious the whole time, and unable to control his actions at all.
* AndYourRewardIsClothes: The Vice Admiral overcoat and Ambassador dress uniform awarded to Federation players for reaching those ranks.
** Romulan players receive shoulder pads in lieu of pips that eventually gain a cape that becomes more elaborate with rank.
* AntiAir: During the mission 'Cutting the Cord', the player can use their personal weapons to shoot down a Romulan Scorpion fighter craft.
** Also the case in 'Sphere of Influence', 'A Step Between Stars', and the ground portion of the Solanae Dyson Sphere where the player shoots down airborne swarmer drones.
* AntiGrinding:
** You can kill enemies again and again to level up, but you earn a lot more experience points doing the missions assigned to you.
** The Dyson Joint Command reputation system was an attempt at this compared to the other rep systems; it worked so well that the devs decided to overhaul the Romulan, Omega, and Nukara rep systems to match it in Season 9.
* AntiRageQuitting: Multiplayer raids (called Special Task Forces, or "[=STFs=]" for short) feature a quitting penalty that bans people who leave early from queuing for another STF for two hours. This is not applied to private queues and switches off after fifteen minutes in the scenario, just in case people are quitting because the scenario has become genuinely unwinnable.
* ApocalypticLog: Several of the random exploration missions on dead worlds or empty stations. Examples include [[AxCrazy mind control experiments]] GoneHorriblyWrong, [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace teleportation experiments]] GoneHorriblyWrong, and other such things [[OverlyLongGag Gone Horribly Wrong.]]
** The 15th installment of "Tales of the War" consists of a letter from a doomed colony world annihilated by the Heralds.
* AprilFools: April 2017 saw the introduction of the "Artisanal Sonification System", which when enabled replaced the game's normal sound effects with people comically imitating, or even speaking, them.
* ArbitraryMaximumRange: In space combat, 10 kilometers. Some ships can cross that distance in a handful of seconds. Some turret satellites and the fleet starbase in the PVE missions involving it can engage targets slightly beyond this range however.
* ArbitraryMinimumRange: The Starfleet ''Avenger''-class battlecruiser's unique console, the Variable Auto-Targeting Armament, cannot be fired if the ''Avenger'' is within 2 kilometers of its target. Same with the Romulan Hyper-Plasma Torpedo available through the reputation system. In both cases there's a good reason: they're AreaOfEffect weapons, and in the case of VATA, the further from your target you fire it, the more [[RecursiveAmmo submunitions]] it will have time to fire. Similar reasoning prevents the player from using the ability "Call Emergency Artillery" when too close to the target.
* ArcNumber: 47 has always been an in-joke in Trek productions. STO turns it into this with a subtle and easily missed WhamLine in the Romulan Faction mission "Sleepers." [[spoiler: Species 0047 is the Borg Designation for the Iconians]]. There's also the main deck on Earth Spacedock (deck 47), the Borg's Unimatrix 0047 command ships, and the default registry for the Federation's NPC Galaxy-X dreadnought is NCC-170147.
* ArcWelding: Many of the game's storylines manage to tie together plot elements from across Star Trek Canon;
** The Iconians and their Gateway technology, introduced in the Next Generation episode [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E11Contagion "Contagion"]] as an extinct precursor race[[spoiler: end up being the main force behind the events of the game's storyline, with the Iconians themselves being the BigBad and ManBehindTheMan for most of the events post-Star Trek Nemesis. Their servitor races include the Elachi (The unnamed alien raiders from the Enterprise episode [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS01E12SilentEnemy "Silent Enemy"]], the Solanae (the Solanagen-based aliens from the TNG episode [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E5Schisms "Schisms"]]), the Vaadwaur (from the Voyager episode [[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS6E7DragonsTeeth "Dragon's Teeth"]]), and even the [[PuppeteerParasite neural parasites]] from [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E24Conspiracy "Conspiracy"]]. The Tal Shiar also ally with the Iconians, tying the Legacy of Romulus arc into the larger Iconian conflict.]]
** The Future Proof and Yesterday's War episodes also [[spoiler:tie together the Temporal Cold War and the Xindi story arcs from Series/StarTrekEnterprise via time travel, and the player is present at several key events like General Vosk's escape to the alternate-1930s from [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS04E01StormFront "Storm Front"]] and the Battle of Procyon V from [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS03E18AzatiPrime "Azati Prime"]].]] The player's allies during these events include [[spoiler: Temporal Agent Daniels, a 29th Century Starfleet Timeship crew, and Scotty and Chekov from The Original Series.]]
** It turns out the entire Temporal Cold War was triggered by the [[spoiler: events of [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS3E19CaptainsHoliday "Captain's Holiday"]]. Kal Dano, creator of the Tox Uthat, is a 31st century time traveler and the dead time pod pilot from the Enterprise episode [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS02E016FutureTense "Future Tense"]]. The player is the one helping Kal evade the Tholians and Vorgons trying to steal his device, but is too late to stop the Tholians from using it to destroy the Na'Kuhl star, triggering their StartOfDarkness. The player eventually buries it on Risa in the 22nd century where Captain Picard will eventually dig it up.]]
* ArchaicWeaponForAnAdvancedAge:
** The game continues the Klingon trend of charging right in with a bat'leth instead of staying back and shooting, and adds a couple lesser-known types of edged weapons (Vulcan lirpa, Tsunkatse falchions and Nausicaan Tegolar swords). Given a justification this time: basically everyone has a personal deflector shield that works fine against ranged weapons, but 80% of melee damage, whether from a sword, PistolWhipping, or Kirk-fu, goes straight through to the target's HP. This is especially useful against the Borg, who will adapt over time to energy weapons and force you to re-frequence, but against certain types of drones also leaves you open to a OneHitKill by assimilation.
** In the shuttle {{PVP}} added in the Season 8.5 update, the [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries TOS]]-era Type F shuttle is considered one of the top competitors, regularly beating players flying ''Peregrine''-class attack fighters or runabouts from ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine''. This is roughly the equivalent of a UsefulNotes/WorldWarI biplane shooting down an F-22.
** Justified with the Xindi lockbox ships added in Season 9.5. Though they look physically identical to the ships from ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' 250 years earlier, [[AllThereInTheManual Cryptic's blog]] says that the Xindi continually updated them to keep up with newer classes. No such justification is given for the equally old ''T'varo''-class light warbird, whose T5 version is surprisingly deadly for a 250-year-old design.
** A Kirk-era Type 2 Phaser packs more of a punch than a standard 25th Century Type 2 Phaser (and ''scales'' with the player's level), even though the 25th Century phaser is ''supposed'' to be ''two centuries'' more advanced.
%%*** Justified in FlavorText where it is explained that the older phaser models were more crude and dangerous, in return for a higher damage output. The focus seems to have shifted away from damage to stunning. Sadly we don't get to see the latter in gameplay. StarSword's note: Commenting out justifying edit while I fact-check it; will combine into preceding line if true.
** A replica of Zefram Cochrane's shotgun exemplifies both ShotgunsAreJustBetter and KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter. It packs a hell of a punch, dealing shield-bypassing kinetic damage with the potential to inflict BlownAcrossTheRoom. All this from a weapon design that was likely an older model when Cochrane was using it almost three hundred and fifty years prior.
** In season 11's Admiralty system, the NX-class from ENT has better stats than several 23rd and 24th century starter ships.
*** Justified in that its a replica: 25th century toys in a 22nd-century-looking box
* ArmCannon: A standard feature for tactical and higher Borg drones, as well as some classes of Undine troops. Players can also acquire one from the Species 8472 reputation system.
* ArmorAndMagicDontMix: A starship variant of this in space combat, with the "wizard" class being the science vessel family of ships (essentially anything with a Commander Science bridge officer slot). Typically a science vessel mounts fewer weapons (usually 3 forward, 3 aft) and has a weaker hull than a cruiser or escort, though they often have better DeflectorShields. One of the better examples is the ''Nova''-class, capable of tremendous {{Technobabble}} but with little staying power in a slugging match. It gets played with considerably, though, since the game typically lumps carriers in with science vessels, and [[GlassCannon escorts]] often have even weaker hull and shield values than science vessels, at least in theory (equipment and captain class can make a big performance difference for any ship).
* ArtifactTitle: [=STFs=]. A FunWithAcronyms title meaning "Special Task Force", they were meant to describe the Borg PVE missions and were never used again. However, it's totally not uncommon to see players refer to ''any'' PVE mission as an STF.
* ArtificialAtmosphericActions:
-->'''Starfleet NPC:''' [[MemeticBadass Is that (Rank and Player Name), captain of the (Ship Name)?]]
** If a custom title is used, that replaces the Rank when people speak to you. This can lead to some strange results, however.
-->'''Starfleet NPC:''' Good day, Moist (Player Name).
* ArtificialStupidity: The Borg seem to ignore any mini-ships you send at them, like the Scorpion Fighters. All you have to do is run outside of combat range while they slowly but surely deal hull damage and eventually destroy them.
* ArtEvolution: Many characters have been modified over the years. Of major note is Empress Sela and Ambassador Worf, both of whom were modified to resemble the actual characters once their actors (Denise Crosby and Michael Dorn, respectively) gave their permission to use their likenesses.
* ArtisticLicenseAstronomy:
** You'll be hard pressed to find any area of space outside of Earth that isn't engulfed by millions of miles of stellar gasses, dusts, and nebulae painting the backdrop, and AsteroidThicket is in full effect here. Later maps are much better about this. Mainly because a lot of people complained. A good example is the revamped ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' exterior which ditched the nebula for black space, with a hint of the purple Denorios Belt that was sometimes seen in the series and a lens flare sun representing the Bajoran star.
** The name of the "close flyby of the DysonSphere's sun" map in "A Step Between Stars" is "Brown Dwarf". A [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf brown dwarf]] is a star that failed to ignite ''at all''.
** Distances in sector space are way off. For example, Wolf 359 is a real star, located 7.8 light-years from Sol. In-game it's more like three, which is closer than Proxima Centauri should be.
* ArtisticLicenseMilitary:
** Using rank as a synonym for CharacterLevel (from Lieutenant at level 5 to ''Fleet Admiral'' at level 60) results in a lot of OutrankingYourJob and means the player is frequently taking orders from people they outrank by several grades, as well as resulting in a ludicrous ''Fanfic/MarissaPicard''-like situation where you apparently went from junior officer to 5-star in ''eighteen months''. It also inconveniences the developers in the event they ever want to raise the level cap again: the increase in rank cap to fleet admiral resulted in jokes that the next expansion would make you President of the Federation.
** Miral Paris is a Starfleet security officer, which according to the game's conventions means she should be wearing a red uniform: red is for security and tactical personnel, as well as commanding officers and admirals. For some reason they have her in yellow, which is for operations and engineering specialties (though it included security personnel in the ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' timeframe, which was when her mother served as an engineering officer; this is possibly a misplaced use of GenerationXerox). Season 10 makes the same error in the opposite direction by putting Sarish Minna, Deep Space 9's operations officer, in a red security/tactical uniform. Possibly the devs confused the term "operations officer" with the post of "''strategic'' operations officer" held by Worf in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' (for which he wore a red uniform).
* AsLongAsItSoundsForeign: With {{Con Lang}}s, no less.
** The game borrowed bits of the worldbuilding done by Creator/DianeDuane for her ''Literature/{{Rihannsu}}'' novel series for the Romulan Republic in the ''Legacy of Romulus'' expansion. Unfortunately, [[http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=884961 Rihan language geeks have noted]] that "''Mol'Rihan''", the in-game Romulan translation of "New Romulus", is grammatically incorrect: they just slapped "mol'" ("new", but it's supposed to be a ''suffix'') onto ch'Rihan (Romulus in Romulan, literally "[homeworld] of the Declared"). Among the more more accurate translations would be "''ch'Rihan'mol''". They also frequently try to use Romulan words for {{Meaningful Name}}s, only to misuse or misspell them (e.g. getting the 'a' and the 'e' backwards when they tried to use "laehval" ["shadow"] for Sela's flagship IRW ''Leahval''), and forgetting that Duaneian Romulans don't name ships or people after abstract ideas (RRW ''Lleiset'', meaning "freedom").
** Their ''tlhIngan Hol'' is equally bad. A particularly common mistake is forgetting that Romanized Klingonese is capitalization-sensitive (i.e. 'q' and 'Q' represent different sounds). For example, there's a ship in the backstory named the IKS ''Quv''. They were presumably going for ''quv'' (personal honor) rather than ''Quv'' (spatial coordinates).
* AscendedExtra: Many one-shot characters and alien species from the TV series are major players in the game's storyline.
* AscendedFanon: [[invoked]] More accurately, Ascended Licensed-But-Non-Canon Material. The game follows the movie and television canon to the letter. Cryptic does, however, have the option of incorporating "soft canon" like the novels however they please, so they've gone ahead and thrown in a few things like the ''Luna''-class from ''Literature/StarTrekTitan'' and [[Literature/StarTrekNewFrontier Captain Mackenzie Calhoun]], and stated that the ''Titan'' novels will be part of the game's backstory as Riker's first command (except for the ''Destiny'' series where [[spoiler:the Borg Collective gets finally destroyed]]). There isn't yet a comprehensive list of what has or hasn't been put in from soft canon, however.
** The ''Vesta''-class starships added in Season 7 are a direct reference to the ''Destiny'' novels.
*** Ezri Dax's command of the U.S.S. ''Aventine'' is also mentioned by Commander Matthias in the 2014 revamp of "First Contact Day".
** The harness-like designs and special combat functions of many of the away team "kits" (not to mention the [[{{BFG}} big screwoff disruptor-miniguns]] and the like) suggest that ''VideoGame/StarTrekEliteForce'' may well be continuity with STO as well.
** The mention of the Literature/StarfleetCorpsOfEngineers and of the ''U.S.S. [=DaVinci=]'' in a couple of non-story mission suggest that some elements of the S.C.E. novels may be canon now, as well.
** That whole business about Andorians having four genders is almost completely taken from the books.
** The ''Literature/{{Rihannsu}}'' novels, which fleshed out the Romulan culture, seem to have been incorporated completely, as well, with Romulan missions making multiple references to what was depicted therein.
** Some of the ''Literature/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineRelaunch'' novels are canon, too; certainly the book about Garak (written by Andrew J Robinson no less), as the past religion of Cardassia is in the game. However, it seems the entire series hasn't been incorporated whole-cloth, as The Sisko doesn't seem to have returned yet, among other things. They may be saving ''that'' one for an in-game event.
** [[Literature/StarTrekTitan Admiral]] [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Leonard James]] [[Franchise/StarTrekNovelVerse Akaar]] used to show up in one mission during the [[spoiler: Romulan]] arc. Said mission was one of the casualties when the arc was revamped, however, and there is no indication it or Admiral Akaar will reappear in some other form.
*** He still shows up in the cross-faction meeting place for lifetime subscribers, the Anenigma Nebula, which is itself functions just like the "Captains' Table" from that set of novels.
** Elements of the epic Creator/DianeDuane [[http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Spock%27s_World novel]] ''Literature/SpocksWorld'' show up in a Diplomacy mission on Vulcan.
** The Romulan farming colony on Virinat is from the Franchise/StarTrekNovelVerse.
* AscendedMeme: During the two-year anniversary event, you could ask Q Junior where Captain Sulu was.[[labelnote:explanation]]MemeticMutation from the constant requests from new players how to find him, due to poor wording of the mission directions.[[/labelnote]] He would complain about [[DiscreditedMeme your use of an ancient meme]].
** During the fifth anniversary event, Q Junior would occasionally comment in a pop-up while in the Deep Space 9 space map, "Is Kurland here?"[[labelnote:explanation]]MemeticMutation from [=DS9=] CO James Kurland's voiced lines in "Boldly They Rode".[[/labelnote]]
*** Again referenced in the final mission of the Iconian War arc, when he gets into trouble: "Kurland here... (static)" [[spoiler:You get to save him.]]
* AsteroidMiners: Players can now strap on their EVA suit and mine for in-game currency on, yep, an asteroid.
* AsteroidThicket: Usually as a planet's rings or a debris field. At least in the early missions, though, [[NarmCharm it's just a bunch of rocks floating in the middle of nowhere, for no reason whatsoever.]] Worse, the thickets tend to exist just around the mission area. Meaning that if you're not surrounded by asteroids you're likely far from where you should be. Less of a problem with later missions.
* ATeamFiring: Dual pistols, miniguns, and assault rifles have a spray-and-pray special ability which, fittingly, has a chance to cause Expose. The primary fire is actually very accurate.
** Also the case with the Cannon: Scatter Volley ability which modifies your ship's cannons and turrets to fire a huge burst in the general direction of the primary target; it's good for firing on a group of enemies, but even then not all of the shots will hit a target.
** Players will occasionally have instances where they will miss their target repeatedly in space combat due either to low accuracy skill modifiers, bad luck in the game engine's random [=hit/miss=] generator, or a combination thereof. Tends to happen most often with small, fast-moving targets such as fighters & shuttles.
* AttackItsWeakPoint:
** {{Invoked|Trope}}, as basic offensive tactics are to batter down one shield facing with energy weapons and then finish with torpedoes to the exposed hull, though this blurs considerably in the metagame.
** The battle against the Doomsday Device requires you to launch Hargh'Peng torpedoes right down its throat. By the way, [[OhCrap that's also where it shoots back from]].
** Also the case with the Borg transwarp gates in the Infected & Khitomer space [=STF=]'s; the gate cannot be damaged until the nanite generators and transformers (in that order, mind you) on either side of it are destroyed. Or until you are very good and know what to do.
** Attacks to the sides or from behind in ground combat deal additional "flanking" damage in addition to the normal damage inflicted (applies to both players and [=NPC=]'s, so beware).
** Some of the passive abilities unlocked at tier 3 of the intelligence officer specialization make attacks from the enemy's rear even more devastating, and allow for flanking damage in space combat (which originally could be done only by 'raider'-type ships like the Klingon Bird of Prey and Breen Plesh Brek) regardless of what kind of ship the player is flying.
* AttackOfThe50FootWhatever: The Voth ground forces includes a massive, Tyrannosaurus-like dinosaur as one of the bosses. God help anyone foolish enough to attempt to take it on alone.
** The 2012 winter event added a giant snowman as the boss for the snowman attacks that took place there (although that is possible to solo).
* AttackPatternAlpha: Alpha and its variants appear as buff skills that provide an edge in battle.
* AttentionDeficitOohShiny: Ten of Ten, a Liberated-Borg Caitian duty officer who is obtained through a critical success from the Support B'Tran Cluster Colonization Efforts assignment.
-->''"My time in the Collective honed me. I am more focused on ... hey, that light is blinking!"''
** The fact that Ten of Ten is a ''[[CatGirl Caitian]]'' makes it even funnier to anyone who's ever driven a cat insane with a laser pointer.
* AwesomeAnachronisticApparel: Who says you can't wear a Tux in the 25th Century? This also extends to anyone who wears the various older uniforms of Starfleet.
** Played with with the introduction of ''future'' uniforms. Obviously anachronistic, presumably awesome in your eyes if you decide to use them -- and exactly the opposite of old-fashioned.
** Partially averted as of late, with the standardization of the Odyssey uniform; you can still wear whatever you want, but now all crew, new officers, and {{NPC}}s will wear the same uniforms rather than some combination of the old Sierra/Antares uniforms.
* AwesomeYetImpractical: Antiproton Weaponry. The strongest energy weaponry type in the game, it comes with a natural [=[CrtlD]=] tag, meaning it gives 20% extra Critical Damage. However, for the longest time, AP weaponry were only purchasable through the Dilithium store or in Fleet Stores, meaning both were prohibitively expensive[[note]]The Dilithium store sold them for about 20,000 Dil while the Advanced Type in Fleet Stores were 20,000 Fleet Marks and 8,000 Dil, but Fleet Stores had a limit on how many items were available to be purchased[[/note]] to obtain. It wasn't until the Feature Episode "Sphere of Influence" when AP weaponry became widely available, even if its modifier was [Acc]x2
** Later on, Antiproton weapons became the go-to kind though, since their raw damage is unmatched and acquisition became less of an issue.
** Tricobalt torpedoes. They're the strongest of the Torpedo types, cause an AOE damage to those around it and can disable ships and push them. However, they have an ungodly reload time (30 seconds) compared to the other types (6-10 seconds) and can be targeted and destroyed, which is very bad for PVP. The only way to mitigate this problem is if you have [=DOFF=]s who have a chance to knock down your Torpedo's cooldown timer.
** The 2x EXP bonuses the game sometimes gives out. It warps you too fast through the game and if you've just started, then you've missed out on a lot. This is especially painful with the KDF and Romulans as, unlike the Federation, they have to reach a certain ''mission'' to obtain their new ship and by that time, they'd hit Level ''20''
** Most Hybrid/Special space weaponry. With the exception of Dominion Polaron, Plasma/Disruptor, Piercing Tetryon, Caustic Plasma[[note]]All mission-based weaponry[[/note]], Protonic Polaron, Romulan Plasma, and Refracting Tetryon[[note]]All Reputation-based weaponry[[/note]], they're all Lockbox-obtainable weapons. However, the box set they come in never specifies what you're gonna get, thus it's a gamble to even check and it's very possible that you'd end up with a ground weapon instead. As well, good luck trying to get them on the Exchange, as they're usually a good 5-6 million each.
* TheBadGuyWins: The Iconian War. [[spoiler:The PlayerCharacter retrieves an Iconian MacGuffin via TimeTravel and gives it to the Iconians, who just up and leave. The Alliance ''calls'' it a victory, but really it's at best an incomplete ceasefire: not only do the Iconians refuse to do anything about the billions of innocent people they murdered or made homeless, they don't even bother to keep their AxCrazy sister T'Ket from continuing the war on her own.]]
** DownplayedTrope: The Alliance ''does'' achieve their stated goal at the outset of the war, [[spoiler: and the Iconians don't -- but this is only because the Alliance's goal was 'survive as peoples without surrendering to Iconian servitude' while the Iconians wanted servitude or extermination prior to getting the MacGuffin, so the Alliance victory is something of a technicality to the billions of victims.]]
* BadassCape: One of the clothing options for veteran and Honor Guard KDF players, as well as Romulan players upon reaching the [[FourStarBadass Admiralty]] ranks.
* BadassCrew: Whoo, boy, this trope is there in spades. Depending on your starting faction, you're either the survivors of Klingon attacks (plus Borg attacks for the 25th Century Starfleet faction), a group of KDF members who go off for glory or survivors of Tal Shiar attacks. As you play the game, your list of who can join you grows as characters from both sides of the alignment spectrum joins you!
* BadassLongcoat: By the time you reach Level 50 (the level cap prior to Delta Rising), you are very badass indeed. And what is your reward for all this badassery? A knee-length Vice Admiral's overcoat.
** With the Uniform updates of Season 9.5, the VA overcoat is outdated. But there are three special longcoats 200 day and lifetime subs gets - the Odyssey Long Jacket, the Bortasqu' Long Jacket and the Romulan Admiral's coat.
** The senior Vaadwaur ground troops (Tech Officers and Overseers) rock these as well.
* BadassLongRobe: The content update "Common Ground" added off duty outfits for the players to wear, including a selection of robes.
** NPC [[EliteMooks Klingon Captains & Dahar Masters]] will also sport these.
** Fleet embassies that have reached a certain level can unlock these for members.
* BadPresent / BadFuture: Just as the episode it is a sequel to, technically ''Temporal Ambassador'' is the present from the perspective of your character, but in all other respects fits Bad Future better -- up to and including being the result of someone from the past ending up in the future.
* BaldOfAwesome: One of the customization options for your character is to lose the hair and make like Picard or Sisko.
* BaldOfEvil:
** Obisek plays this early on in the Romulan storyline.
** Hakeev plays it even straighter throughout the entire storyline.
** Also male Orions when the player is fighting against them.
* BaitAndSwitchBoss: Inverted in the [[DummiedOut now-deleted]] mission "State of Q", when [[PhysicalGod Q Junior]] tosses you into battle against [[OhCrap three Borg Cubes]]... and then when they're just outside your weapons range [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Mlk0dgLlc#t=1m57s he decides to go easy on you and handwaves two of the Cubes out of existence.]]
* BalkanizeMe: The {{Backstory}} of how the Romulan Star Empire breaks up and unites repeatedly, [[JustForFun/SurprisinglySimilarStories strikingly resembles]] what happened to [[Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse a certain other franchise's]] [[TheEmpire Empire]]. The first part is borrowed from the Franchise/StarTrekNovelVerse post-''Nemesis'', where Senator Tal'aura and Commander Donatra had a falling out and Donatra led part of the military to form the Imperial Romulan State. In the game backstory, the RSE and IRS eventually merged back together ... just in time for Hobus to cut the heart out of the Empire and fragment it beyond belief. Nowadays a large chunk of what's left of the Empire is a military dictatorship under Empress Sela, with the [[StateSec Tal Shiar]] practically a state unto itself, while several breakaway colonies and the Reman Resistance have united under Proconsul D'Tan (Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration: "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E7Unification1 Unification]]" two-parter) to form the Romulan Republic (the player Romulan faction), with Federation and Klingon backing. By the endgame WordOfGod and implications in-game indicates the situation has more-or-less flipped, but is no less balkanized -- [[spoiler: Sela's Empire has been reduced to a few holdout colonies not even able to scrape up a fleet equivalent to that the Republic began with, the Tal Shiar ''is'' a state of their own but has suffered severe losses and desertion after Hakeev's death, the debacle on New Romulus and the conflict with Imperial loyalists, while the Republic (with the Reman Resistance integrated into it) has grown to encompass much of the former Romulan Star Empire.]]
* BareYourMidriff: One of the premium uniforms is the TOS Mirror Universe Terran uniform. There's also the various {{Stripperiffic}} outfits worn by Orion women in the game (both players and NPC's) that leave next to nothing to the imagination.
** Mirror Universe versions of modern outfits have been added to the Lobi store (yet another in-game currency), and all of them feature this (on female characters, at least).
* BayonetYa: The Klingon Honor Guard disruptor rifles have a wicked-looking blade affixed to them under the barrel. Couple this with the rifle striking melee attack, and you have a nasty surprise for anyone foolish enough to get up close with someone wielding these.
* BeamSpam: Beam: Fire at Will is the most literal interpretation given that it ends up with your phasers blasting away at anything in sight, but really, any broadside from a beam-laden high-level cruiser qualifies. If we count cannons, Cannon: Scatter Volley is about as spammy as they come.
* BeardOfEvil: Appropriately, this seems omnipresent in the Mirror Universe Terran Empire. At least for the men.
** Also applies to most male Klingons when the player fights against them.
* BecauseYouWereNiceToMe: This is ultimately the one thing that [[spoiler:brings the Iconian War to an end. When the player goes back in time and aids the Iconians in escaping the destruction of their homeworld and then returns to the present with an Iconian artifact, L'Miren realizes who the player is and what they did for the Iconians and calls the war to an end.]]
* BeehiveBarrier:
** Your away team members can set one up for you to take cover behind. And then you've got ones ''[[UpToEleven on a planetary scale.]]''
** The Engineer gets one automatically around Lieutenant Commander 5 (level 15), bonus points because this uses the same graphic as the Power Armor Block ability in ''VideoGame/ChampionsOnline''.
* BettingMiniGame: With the release of Season 2, Dabo is now been introduced in which you can earn Gold Pressed Latinum.
* {{BFG}}: ''Many of them''. Your away team will likely be decked out with these after about three or four hours of gameplay.
* {{BFS}}: The Klingon Bat'leth sword, which can be used by both playable factions. They are also carried by ''[[DemonicSpiders Klingon Swordmasters]]'', and it would be wise to take them down before they can get close enough to use it.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: The Federation has gone to war. Enough said. Also ''might'' apply for the peaceful hunter-gatherer Aelasans (before their mission was cut) - see the SuperweaponSurprise entry below.
* BifurcatedWeapon:
** The Admiral level variant of the ''Galaxy''-class [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKNsvO5HieY#t=1m25s can separate into the Saucer and battle sections]], just like in ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration''. And then there's the multi-vector attack mode ''Prometheus''-class, which can [[SerialEscalation split into three separate ships.]]
** Among the Tactical, Operations, and Science variety Odyssey Class ships, the Operations can do a saucer separation, and Tactical can launch an escort from the back. Sadly, while you can use both consoles on one ship, you can't use both abilities at the same time (splitting into three sections).
** The Haakona Advanced Warbird available to the Romulan faction can split into two separate vessels. The ship's description mentions that this was developed from technology recovered from the U.S.S. ''Prometheus'' that the Romulans attempted to steal in ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''.
** The playable version of the Elachi Sheshar Dreadnought can pull this off as well; detaching the lower half which then functions as a separate vessel.
* BigBad: STO actually has narrative arcs throughout its main-line story content that feature major antagonists and foils for your crew.
** On the 'Klingon Front', [[spoiler:"Ambassador"/General B'vat, who will do just about ''[[OmnicidalManiac anything]]'' to keep the Fed/KDF war going so that Klingons don't turn on one another.]]
** 'Spectres', the Devidian arc, has their leader, the Shrouded Phantasm, who is responsible for their nefarious plans on Drozana Station.
** Colonel Hakeev of the Tal Shiar is the main antagonist of the 'Cloaked Intentions' story arc covering the struggle between the Romulans and Remans, as well as of the ''entire storyline'' for Romulan players, in which [[spoiler:it's revealed that as [[TheMole an Iconian agent]], he's the true source of basically all the evil that's befallen their civilisation]].
** 'The Fek'lhri Return', in which TheLegionsOfHell invade Klingon space, turns out to be the under the orders of, surprise surprise, [[{{Satan}} Fek'lhr]]. Maybe -- the Fek'lhri actually ''invading'' Klingon space keep referring Molor's (a legendary tyrant, and another of the bosses you defeat along the way to Fek'lhr) destiny to rule over the Empire and the galaxy, and [[spoiler: sensor readings during your counter-invasion of Gre'thor imply the Fek'lhri might have been artificial proxies of some other power]]
** In the 'Cardassian Struggle', the antagonists behind most[[note]]Mirror Terrans have a mini-arc of their own, and the Undine make an appearance in the Federation version of Cardassian Struggle. There's also Loriss and Kar'ukan, the enemy leaders during the final few missions, who operate entirely separate from the others due to having been shifted forward in time along with an enormous Dominion armada from the height of the Dominion War.[[/note]] of the the various goings-on in Cardassian space turn out to be [[spoiler:a BigBadDuumvirate of two rogue Dominion operatives, First Lamat'Ukan of the Jem'Hadar and Laas the Changeling, with Gul Madred, leader of the True Way serving as their front man]].
** 'The 2800' are led by First Kar'ukan, a very stubborn time-displaced Jem'Hadar who hasn't heard of ([[spoiler:and isn't much interested in]]) the peace between his people and the Alpha Quadrant. Along with him is his Vorta, Loriss, [[spoiler: but he stops listening to her when she gets convinced the peace is real.]]
** 'Cold War' features Thot Trel, a Breen warlord determined to rip apart the Orellius sector in search of its buried treasures.
** The Borg [[spoiler:and the Undine (Species 8472)]] serve as big foes during their arcs, and make brief appearances earlier in the game to set up the threat for later.
** The true BigBad of the game, though, is [[spoiler:the ancient, lost civilisation of the Iconians, who once ruled the galaxy with an iron fist and feel like coming back for another go]]. They are TheManBehindTheMan for just about ''everything'' in the first 10 seasons of the game, including [[spoiler:the Hobus supernova, Hakeev's atrocities in Romulan space, the mysterious goings-on in the Tau Dewa sector, the Undine invasion, and maybe even the Klingon Empire's mysterious run-in with the Fek'lhri]].
* BigDamnHeroes:
** ''You'' as a player get a whole bunch of these moments. This is also the entire purpose of the Fleet Support ability, which lets you call in another Federation ship once your hull integrity drops below 50%.
** You're also on the ''receiving'' end of one of these in an early mission: [[spoiler:You find out that the ambassador you've been escorting really is an Undine/8472 infiltrator, and he's beamed back to his ship... a Tethys-class dreadnought that you cannot possibly hope to fight under any circumstances. You can only hope to survive by shooting down the plasma torpedos it spews at you... and then help arrives in the form of the USS ''Kirk'', leading a flotilla of warships which open up an incredible can of whoopass on the dreadnought.]]
** The [[spoiler: U.S.S. Enterprise-F]] coming to the rescue in Boldly They Rode.
** [[spoiler: '''Sela and the Dominion''' of all people show up to defend the K.I.S. ''Annorax'' ]]in "Midnight".
** The climax of the Season 13.5 episode "Brushfire" has Worf and Lady Sirella pulling this, arriving with a fleet of Klingon warships to reinforce the player when they find themselves outmatched by a massed fleet of House Torg loyalists, Tzenkethi, and Son'a.
* BigDumbObject: The Voth Fortress Ship. [[UnnecessarilyLargeVessel 134km long]]. Easily killable [[AnticlimaxBoss by five players.]]
* BigNo: Happens twice; first when the player escapes from Hakeev on Nopada Prime, then again when [[spoiler: Undine!Cooper gets "repurposed"]] at the climax of "Mindgames".
* BlamingTheRailroadedPlayerCharacter: In the [[DummiedOut now-deleted]] and much-hated mission "Divide et Impera", the player leads an attack on what is said to be a Romulan weapons lab, but quickly turns out to be a medical research facility. Unfortunately, despite it rapidly becoming apparent that you're slaughtering helpless researchers, you're unable to stop until you reach the base commander, who gives you a WhatTheHellHero speech, calling you out for "Federation hypocrisy". (According to the devs this was meant to be MyGreatestFailure for the Starfleet PC and lead into a three-mission StoryArc, but [[TroubledProduction the arc was never finished due to Cryptic's rush to finish]]. The [[LevelEditor Foundry]] community eventually stepped in and wrote a couple of sequels, including [[Recap/StarTrekOnlineFoundryDivideUtRegnes "Divide ut Regnes"]].)
* BilingualBonus: The Breen capital ships in the Orellius Sector Block (Snosk, Desna, and Istapp) are respectively named for the Swedish word for "snowshoe"[[note]]Named ''for'', note, not actually ''meaning'' snowshoe. That'd be Snoesko.[[/note]], the old Slavic word for "right hand", and the Swedish word for "icicle".
* BloodKnight: B'vat, far beyond even the standards of other Klingons. He is obsessed with keeping the new Fed/KDF war going in perpetuity, because he fears that without a great enemy to fight then the Empire will turn on itself and rip itself to shreds in civil war, just to slake the Klingon thirst for warfare... [[DumbassHasAPoint just like it, uh, did happen]] in TNG and ''Klingon Academy''. He's willing to slaughter ''billions'', revive terrible weapons [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and kidnap Miral Paris]] to make sure the Fed is willing to fight the Empire as long as possible.
** He's so far gone that [[spoiler:when you meet his past self during a TimeTravel mission, he asks you to give his future self an honorable death.]]
** Amusingly enough, this character (almost to a T) duplicates one from ANOTHER videogame franchise - these are exactly the motivation AND the actions of [[spoiler:Admiral Tolwyn from the ''VideoGame/WingCommander'' franchise, as shown in ''Wing Commander IV'']].
* BoardingParty: Besides multiple in-story examples where you're boarding enemies or they're boarding you or friendlies, the "Boarding Party" Engineering skill allows you to launch crewmen in shuttles to board enemy ships and applies a debuff for every shuttle that makes it through their point defense.
* BondVillainStupidity: Played perfectly straight by [[spoiler:Hakeev]], right down to the EvilGloating, after cornering you in a cutscene in the "Cloaked Intentions" feature episode series. [[spoiler:He spends ''just'' long enough gloating that your ship is able to arrive and beam you out right as his men try to execute you by firing squad. The BigNo this gets from him is worth a laugh.]]
* BoringButPractical: If you're looking to create a ship build for the first time once you hit level cap, nothing says basic like picking up common (white) Mk XI gear. The Exchange usually sells these for much less than their normal value, meaning you can set up a ship build for under 200,000 EC if you play your cards right.
** The Mirror Universe ships are also this. While they tend to just have a different [=BOFF=] and Console layout than their normal counterpart and don't come with any neat equipment save for a different ship skin, they are insanely cheap (going for as low as 95k EC) and, especially with the recent releases for the Federation, makes obtaining certain ships easier. This also goes for the Mirror Universe ships' replacement, the Kazon Raider. Even if you're one of those guys who think the same way as the Borg and think they're all just junk.
** In the same vein, the normal Tier V freebie ships you get. They're not as flashy as the C-Store, Lockbox or Lobi ships, but in a pinch, they'll pull you through.
** A Science Bridge Officer's Tractor Beam ability. Doesn't launch a MacrossMissileMassacre of torpedo's. Doesn't power up your beam array weapons or allow BeamSpam, doesn't grant your Heavy Cannons MoreDakka. All it does, is severely slow the speed and turn rate of a nearby targeted enemy ship and do a little bit of Kinetic type damage. Which allows the Tractor beam user to unleash a devastating barrage of firepower on an area of the enemy's ship with weak shields and/or exposed hull. The Borg Cube NPC enemies, in particular love showing new players just how deadly a Tractor Beam can combo with other weapons.
** Beam Arrays. In terms of firepower of the various ship weapon types, Beam Arrays sit on the low side of damage output. But next to Turrets, they have the second highest field of fire arc, fire 4 times per use, can take advantage of a large number of BOFF abilities, are good at taking down shields, and fairly easy on the Weapon system power loads. The fact that the Mid to End Game Cruisers, typically mount no less than at least 4 of them (2 Fore, 2 Aft), turns them into BeamSpam shooting terrors in a broadside fight.
* BossArenaIdiocy: Apparently whoever designed the arena in "Coliseum" thought it would be a good idea to include panels ''in'' the arena that would allow the combatants to gain control of the security turret guns over it.
* BottomlessMagazines:
** The Zefram Cochrane shotgun from the 2014 Mirror Invasion event has an unlimited supply of 12 gauge shells and never needs reloading.
** On a larger scale, ships in space combat never run out of torpedoes, mines, or other projectile weapons.
* BraggingRightsReward: Having Epic Level MK XIV everything. Many players will tell you that you're good with MK XII gear, but some will absolutely demand that you have to have the best of the best.
* BrainwashedAndCrazy: [[spoiler: Praetor Taris seems to be this. She's pretty much unflinchingly loyal to her "dread masters", and for a Romulan that is ''weird''.]]
* BribingYourWayToVictory: A whole bunch of things, both gameplay-affecting and cosmetic, can only be obtained using "Zen", which must first be purchased by someone on Perfect World Entertainment's website. Having said that, they can then be sold again in exchange for Dilithium, which any player can get a fair amount of every day. So, while ''someone'' has to spend real money eventually, it doesn't have to be you.
** Of course, you can earn all the Dilithium Ore you want, but it must be refined before you can spend it, and you can only refine [[{{Cap}} 8000 per day]]. At current rates[[note]]200 dilithium to 1 Zen; March 31, 2015[[/note]], that translates to roughly 40 Zen per day. Most items cost 400 Zen or more. [[MagnificentBastard Cryptic Studios know what they're doing.]] Granted, it's 8000 ''per character'', and even free players that refuse to invest a cent into the game get three character slots. Still, you can't transfer unrefined dilithium between characters, so that means you have to spend the time to earn 8000 dilithium ''per character'' if you want to reach the full cap.
*** More subtly, many things one can spend money on encourage spending money on ''other'' things. Want a screen-accurate Scimitar? You need to buy all three versions for the gear that lets you have the original's resilient shields and the ability to raise them and fire your weapons while cloaked. The Thalaron weapon is the set bonus for having all that gear equipped on one ship.
** There are also certain ships, non-combat pets, uniforms, and other items that are exclusive to 'veteran' players who purchased paid subscriptions.
* TheBridge: Players can choose from several different bridge layouts for their ships.
* BridgeBunnies: ''Customizable'' Bunnies, no less. Yes, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paLanXn6m94 if you're a male captain you can have an all-female bridge crew.]] [[MrFanservice Yes, if you're a female captain you can have an all-male bridge crew with flattering shirts.]] They also serve as the cornerstone of your away teams, especially if playing solo or in a small group. You can have up to ''fifty-four'' of them under your command, as well (though that involves buying additional bridge officer slots). [[http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp/?date=2010-02-05 Illustrated quite well in this El Goonish Shive strip.]]
** It has to be added that the artist's impression about bridge officer customization was wrong here - she would be perfectly able to do that.
* BreakOutTheMuseumPiece:
** The TOS ''Constitution''-class starships, complete with blue phasers, as well as the Constitution Class Refit skin for the Tier 2 cruiser. The ''Miranda''-class are also still going, while a refit ''Excelsior''-class can be bought and was actually considered one of the top Starfleet DPS cruisers at the time. The NX-class would seem to be this, being over 250 years old at this point, but is actually a ''replica'' with modern systems (apparently the Corps of Engineers got bored or something).
** As of the game's Third Year Anniversary event, the ''Ambassador''-class - the same class as the ill-fated ''Enterprise''-C - is also available, both as a mid-tier cruiser and as a retrofitted end-game cruiser, where it serves as a [[JackofAllStats Jack of All Stats]] in-between the damage oriented Starfleet cruisers and the tanking oriented Stafleet Cruisers. Not quite an elder statesman to the same extent as the ''Miranda'' or ''Excelsior'', but still pushing a century old.
** The Romulan side in ''Legacy of Romulus'' plays this far more literally - your starting vessel is the ancient TOS-era ''T'liss''-class warbird your hometown's mayor used to command, and you and Khev take it as it's your only real ticket out of Dodge. Veril comments later that she's ''amazed'' it hasn't fallen apart around your ears before she came along, and straight-up calls your singularity core an antique.
* BreatherEpisode: "Cold Comfort" in the Breen series. The episode features no combat whatsoever, and only several dialog puzzles.
* BusCrash: In episode "Cardassian Struggle", mission "Badlands", you meet Joshua Riker, the son of Thomas Riker, William Riker's accidental clone who was last heard from when he surrendered to the Cardassians in ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine DS9]]'': "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS03E09Defiant Defiant]]". After the Dominion War resulted in the collapse of the Cardassian Union and the barely averted extinction of the species, the prison camp where he was held was abandoned by the government, and the prisoners turned it into a settlement under Tom Riker's leadership. Tom died of heart failure after rescuing his wife when she fell into a ravine.
* ButThouMust: Happens in several missions, but one particularly egregious example happens early on to KDF players. While pursuing a spy, a group of Federation ships is lured in by a false distress signal and accuses the player of attacking the ships that sent the distress. The player has the option of either insulting and attacking them, or explaining that it was a trick. The Federation captain actually listens, performs a scan, and then confirms that the player is telling the truth, apologizes, and offers to withdraw. However, the only option the player has at that point is to claim they've been dishonored and attack anyway, meaning there's no real diplomatic option.
* BuzzingTheDeck: Episode "Cardassian Struggle", mission "Rapier". After exiting the Bajoran wormhole you can buzz Ops on Deep Space 9. This grants an accolade titled [[Film/TopGun "That's a Negative Ghost Rider, The Pattern Is Full"]].
* CallAHitPointASmeerp: You don't often see a Starfleet captain looting destroyed ships and tacking their disruptors and engine arrays onto their own ship. Of course, in the game you can equip all kinds of weapons you pick up as random drops. Janeway did it a few times.
* CallBack: The future of the Trek verse depicted here is a close, but not quite version of the BadFuture from the Next Gen Finale, ''All Good Things''. However, it appears Picard did slightly alter that future: its still bleak but [[BittersweetEnding it has alot more hope in it.]]
* CanonDiscontinuity: While Cryptic does have the option of incorporating any "soft canon" such as other games or novels as they see fit (see AscendedFanon above), they've also outright discarded certain soft canon events, such as the entirety of the ''Literature/StarTrekDestiny'' novel trilogy and its immediate successors.
** The ''Literature/StarTrekVoyagerRelaunch'' novels are a good example, as only ''some'' of them are in the bin. A character who was KilledOffForReal there ([[spoiler:Janeway]]) is alive and well here. Having said that, another plot point introduced there ([[spoiler:that Miral Paris is the ''Kuvah'magh'', TheChosenOne for the Klingon people]]) is ''also'' alive and well here. But Project Full Circle, the return by a task force led by ''Voyager'' to the Delta Quadrant, was thrown out altogether, with nobody going to the Delta Quadrant until ''Delta Rising'' and the political landscape depicted being very different.
** The wholesale discarding of ''Destiny'' likely stems from the fact that the initial plot outlines and whatnot for ''STO'' were being drawn up in 2008, and the Cryptic team wasn't included in the discussions of how everything would go down - never mind the fact that a lot of non-novel readers would be constantly asking "when are the Borg going to appear?"
* TheCavalry:
** In "Devil's Choice" the Klingons and Federation both send fleets to help defend New Romulus against an Elachi invasion.
** In the ultimate battle for Deep Space 9 in "Boldly They Rode", despite preparing for the battle, the forces to recover Deep Space 9 ''still'' find themselves being pushed back. That is until Captain Shon [[spoiler: of the Odyssey Class U.S.S. Enterprise-F]] arrives to help turn the tide of the battle.
** In "Revelations" the player and the Turei are being pressed hard by the [[spoiler:Vaadwaur]]. [[spoiler:Then two Voth mechs, allies of the Turei, drop in and start in on the Vaadwaur as heavy armor support. The Turei return the favor along with ''Voyager'' in "All that Glitters".]]
** If [[spoiler: the Kazon]] are called in early enough in "Takedown", another smaller group of them show up later to reinforce you due to disliking the way [[spoiler: Maje Sessen]] had arranged for the official [[spoiler: Kazon]] contribution to [[CavalryBetrayal secretly be on the other side]].
** As things look bleak during the Battle of Earth in the Iconian War, [[spoiler: Sela]] shows up with [[spoiler: a Dominion fleet. Turns out she ''did'' get the Dominion to send aid after all!]].
* CavalryBetrayal: "Takedown" includes a multi-stage space battle where you call in one group of allies at a time. [[spoiler: The Kazon]] join up with the Vaadwaur instead when called in. It doesn't really work out for them, since Captain Kim observes he never really trusted them to begin with, and had worked with Admiral Tuvok on a contingency in case something like this happened ([[spoiler:calling in a group of Hirogen who would be more than happy to hunt Kazon and Vaadwaur for a while]]).
* CaptainErsatz:
** If you look around, you will find a lot of custom species characters of non-Trek alien species, recreated to varying degrees of accuracy.
** The Ferasans are essentially this of the Kzinti from ''Literature/KnownSpace'', who were unable to be used for [[ScrewedByTheLawyers copyright reasons]]. Their previous appearance in ''Trek'' happened with permission of Creator/LarryNiven.
** The new ''Avenger''-class battlecruiser is clearly one of the U.S.S. ''Vengeance'' from ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness'' and the Borg Modified Romulan Lockbox ships are this of the ''Narada'' from ''Film/StarTrek'' (in fact, the storyline ship the Borg Modified Romulan Lockbox ships are based on was originally identified as Narada-class -- presumably the fact that technically the ''Narada'' is from the Prime Timeline gave them some leeway). As of the 2016 expansion ''Agents of Yesterday,'' the Kelvin Timeline ''Constitution'' and ''Dreadnought'' classes are available from Kelvin Timeline lockboxes.
* CasualInterstellarTravel: More so than the rest of ''Franchise/StarTrek'', necessarily due to it being an MMO played in real-time.
* CatFolk: The Caitians and the Ferasans.
* Catch22Dilemma: A major meta-problem with the game concerning Klingon and Romulan players: these players want their own unique ships, especially science-themed, something the Federation has plenty of. However, according to an infographic, nearly 3/4ths of the player base plays Federation, so there's no need to make unique ships when there's such a low amount of players in the other two factions, which players don't mess with ''because'' there aren't many ships and they want more.
* ChainsawGripBFG: Blast assault and assault minigun ground weapons.
* TheChainsOfCommanding: The Duty Officer System. Nearly every assignment has a risk to your crew. This means that ''yes'', they can come back on death's door, and ''yes'', they ''can'' actually die (though only if they're of "common" rarity). With this knowledge, do you send your crewmates on a risky recon mission? Do you send your medical staff to fight an outbreak of a deadly plague?
* ChainLightning: A few ship weapons and abilities act this way; the Isometric Charge being the most literal one as it fires a ball of electricity that jumps from one target to the next (so long as there's several enemies in close proximity of each other), doing progressively more damage with each hit. The Refracting Tetryon weapons and active ability from the Nukara reputation also work in a similar fashion.
* CharacterCustomization: Just in case we haven't hammered it home yet: '''[[SerialEscalation Mother. Of. God.]]'''
** While STO comes with an amazing variety of options to customize a character's head and allows for pretty alien looking body proportions, the options for clothing and non-humanoid body parts are far behind those of VideoGame/ChampionsOnline's. This is especially noticable on the Klingon side, where many costume pieces are only available to specific races. [[MyRulesAreNotYourRules Of course, [=NPC=]s get no such limitations at all.]]
** The Klingons also got the short straw for ship customization, with only two designs per ship instead of the Federation's usual three, and even then it took quite a long time before any of them even got a second appearance or allowed you to customize different parts of the ship such as the hull and nacelles.
** Certain Bridge Officers you gain through different means avert this. The Breen, Jem'Hadar and Reman [=BOFFs=] you gain from their Featured Episodes, the Borg you gain from the STF "Khitomer in Stasis", the Romulan Borg and Photonic Tactical Officer you buy with Lobi and [[spoiler:the Voth you rescue at the end of the Dyson Sphere Reputation Line]] cannot be modified in any way.
** The ultimate in this trope? The Photonic Engineering Bridge Officer you get for completing all missions as a Delta Recruit. Virtually every possible design can be used on this BOFF outside of changing their gender or faction.
* TheChosenOne: Turns out [[spoiler:the player character is "The Other", the one who saved the Iconians in their darkest hour.]]
* CivilWar: According to blogs released by the developers leading up to Season 7, it appears the Romulans are falling into this in an attempt to fill the power vacuum left by [[spoiler: Empress Sela's disappearance]] since the mission "Cutting the Cord". As [[AllThereInTheManual 'The Path to 2409']] makes clear, it wouldn't be the first time in recent decades. Or the fifth. Or the sixth. Once Legacy of Romulus was released, it turned out that it had been slightly misleading -- the Romulans already ''were'' falling into this before the spoilered event, with the Romulan Republic (supported by the Federation and the Klingon Empire) on one side and the Tal Shiar and Sela's Star Empire on the other. If anything the spoilered event cut the civil war short, as [[spoiler: Sela's disappearance and Hakeev's death in the same incident]] caused the Star Empire side to disintegrate with the Republic already there to fill the power vacuum.
* Cliffhanger: [[spoiler:The mission "A Step Between Stars" end with this, as we see Koren, Shon and Kaol walking away from each other after the rediscovery of the Jenolan Dyson Sphere.]]
* CloseEnoughTimeline: [[spoiler:"Butterfly" ends with one. History plays out much as it did, but a civilization (heavily implied to be the ancestors of the [[Series/StarTrekEnterprise Sphere Builders]]) that should have survived to 2410 was assimilated by the Borg twenty years earlier while experimenting with Solanae technology. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero This results in the Borg becoming a lot more powerful than we knew them before]].]]
* ClownCar:
** The Klingon Vo'Quv carriers, Fek'Ihri Kar'Fi battle carriers, Orion battleships, Corsair flight deck cruisers, Federation/Caitian Atrox Carriers and the cross-faction Obelisk Carrier can all carry an almost ridiculous number of fighters, and have no qualms about spitting out squadron upon squadron to take you out. Hell, the Vo'Quv, Kar'Fi, Sarr Theln, and Jem'Hadar Dreadnought Carrier can each carry ''frigates''.
** With the Obelisk and its "swarmers", this is even invoked, as the Obelisk is meant to fight by spewing endless numbers of drone fighters at you until you're overwhelmed.
** In an even more painful example the standard "crew deck corridor" for most ships is 180 meters long. Even on ships that only have a 150m saucer section (fleet science vessel retrofit).
* ColdBloodedTorture:
** [[spoiler: The experiments done to Captain Shon and the Romulan who went with him in "Sphere of Influence", inflicted by the solanogen-based race seen in TNG. Shon had his ''left arm and both antennae ripped off, then reattached, as well as being injected with various other painful substances. The Romulan had his entire blood volume replaced with some sort of polymer''... luckily you managed to save Shon.]]
** The Tal Shiar is also fond of using prisoners as guinea pigs for testing salvaged Borg technology, as the Romulan Republic player witnesses in "Mind Game" and the Federation player ''almost'' witnesses in "Desperate Measures" (the Federation player arrive between batches, and promptly destroys the Tal Shiar contingent and rescues the remaining prisoners, while [[spoiler:the Romulan PC has been {{Brainwashed}} and is forced to actually take part]]).
* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: Each playable faction has it's own color scheme (carried over from the TV series and movies), which extends to the colors on the walls, lighting, map sections, etc. The Federation is blue/white, Klingons are red, Romulans are green, and the Original Series Federation is yellow.
* ColorCodedItemTiers: The game uses white for common, green for uncommon, blue for rare, purple for very rare, light purple for ultra rare (reserved for Fleet gear or upgraded items), and gold for Epic (mostly upgraded items and a few mission rewards). For equipment, each tier adds an additional "mod" that grants a bonus like increased critical chance or a bonus to a character skill.
* CombatMedic: The Federation employs NPC's seen on ground missions that are specifically called this; they have higher health and shields than normal medics, and stronger abilities as well, making them an even [[ShootTheMedicFirst higher-priority target]] when you find yourself fighting against them.
** The Romulans and Voth have their own versions as well.
* CombatTentacles:
** The Aehallh worms found in the Colliseum aren't ''exactly'' tentacles, but they're pretty close.
** Changelings like to choke your character by the throat and toss you around like a ragdoll by this method.
* ComicallyMissingThePoint: The Ferengi ambassador in "Surface Tension" is more interested in his proposal to turn the Jenolan Dyson Sphere into "a resort to rival Risa" than on the ''actual'' purpose of the conference, which is to formalize an alliance to deal with the clear and present danger of the Undine stepping up their war effort against the Beta Quadrant nations.
* CompanyTown: The player can be sent to a planet with a Romulan mining town, completely controlled by a Ferengi and a mining company.
* CompetitiveBalance: The idea between the three classes and ship types. Players can customize themselves to extend beyond the original class they chose through skill point distribution.
* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: The D'deridex Warbirds used by the Romulans and Remans can fire several heavy plasma torpedoes in a row at you. Player ships are only capable of shooting one of these at a time.
** Averted in Season 7 with the introduction of the Romulan Hyper Plasma Torpedo launcher obtainable from the Romulan reputation system.
* ConflictBall: To people who haven't gotten deep into the STO universe and plotlines (and maybe even to some who have), the whole Federation-Klingon conflict can easily seem to be a contrived reason to have StuffBlowingUp.
* ContinuityNod / CallBack: The game is positively dripping with them to the point they could warrant their own page.
** The Wolf 359 System. Especially with the Federation memorial in the middle (when you get close you start to hear the comm traffic from the battle).
** [[Series/StarTrekVoyager Naomi Wildman]] is the commander of Deep Space K-7. Icheb appears as a mission giver, too.
** [[Series/StarTrekVoyager Miral Paris]] is a plot-centric character whose storyline first introduces you to [[spoiler: the Guardian of Forever and the MirrorUniverse.]]
** Akira Sulu is the Great-Grandson of Mr. Sulu.
** [[Series/StarTrekVoyager Admiral Janeway.]]
** Among the ships you will hear about will be USS ''Kirk,'' USS ''[=McCoy=],'' USS ''Montgomery Scott,'' USS ''Archer'' and USS ''Tucker,'' among others.
** Sela is the Romulan Empress. Not too many people mind any of this, and it's all quite well-explained.
** The Galaxy-Class bridge set alone has plenty. The side consoles from ''[[Film/StarTrekGenerations Generations]]'', the modified tactical console from the [[FutureBadass future Enterprise-D]] in "All Good Things", and a large transparent console panel behind the tactical station ''very'' similar to the one seen in the ''TNG'' seventh season episode "Parallels".
** One of the engineers over at Memory Alpha before its removal from the game was ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Kirayoshi O'Brien.]]''
** One of the Starfleet contacts at K-7 is [[Literature/StarTrekNewFrontier Mackenzie Calhoun]].
** Deep in Cardassian space, you will encounter Joshua Riker, the son of a transporter-created clone of old Will Riker.
** [[spoiler: And then, who should show up from the mirror universe? Captain James ''O'Brien''. Aboard the [[MeaningfulName ISS ''Molly.'']]]]
** Expect to encounter any and ''all'' types of food that are ever shown or mentioned throughout any of the series, including ''Chateau Picard'' wine. They even have Prune Juice, repeatedly [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration mentioned]] and [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine referenced]] as Worf's drink of choice.
** The entrance to the [[spoiler: Preserver archive]] resembles the Asteroid Deflector from the [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries TOS episode "The Paradise Syndrome"]]
** "The 2800" story arc is not only a continuity nod but also a ''continuation of a story arc from one of the series''. [[spoiler: A Dominion fleet suddenly emerges from the wormhole, attacking (and taking over) Deep Space 9, and still thinking the Dominion war is still going on despite checking a calendar since then.]] Starfleet is baffled by where they came from. [[spoiler: It's the same fleet that the Prophets had seemingly willed out of existence when Captain Sisko and the ''Defiant'' single-handedly headed into the wormhole to confront. Turns out they just kicked the Jemmies 35 years into the future.]]
** Gul Madred from the TNG episode "Chain of Command I & II" is the leader of the Cardassian side of the True Way Alliance. Pity, though, that player captains never get the chance to debate with him whether there are four lights or five...
** Admiral Chakotay was promoted to the head of Starfleet Intelligence in 2406, and thanks to Voyager's encounters with the Undine, he was able to convince Starfleet to start "expecting" them to be among personnel, and start developing technology to help detect Undine Infiltrators.
** Much like the 2800 story arc, the 3rd Year Anniversary mission is a direct continuation of a series episode, this time from TNG and the episode being Yesterday's Enterprise.
** Many of the Exploration Missions were directly these before their removal and possible revamp, involving the Gorgons, the burial remains of the dead alien race from "Masks", and various other stuff (though it tends to play out Kirk-style).
** The mission "Sphere of Influence", introduced in the lead-up to the launch of season 8, could be considered a giant collection of callbacks; the commander of the Romulans' new flagship is the daughter of Alidar Jarok from the ''TNG'' episode "The Defector", the player sees a couple of planets from episodes of ''Deep Space Nine'' and ''Voyager'', and the aliens encountered in the mission are the same ones that abducted and experimented on the crew of the ''Enterprise''-D in the ''TNG'' episode "Schisms". And of course the entire mission follows up on the ''TNG'' episode ''Contagion'' and the ''[=DS9=]'' episode ''To the Death'' with Iconian gateways.
** A possible result of getting a critical success on a Temporal Trade assignment (which you can only access with one-use items potentially found in an opened Temporal Lock Box) is to get a very rare (human-looking) duty officer named Isis. [[Recap/StarTrekS2E26AssignmentEarth Her quote is 'Meow', and her species is marked down as Alien (which STO uses as a general term for anyone that doesn't have a specific species assigned)]].
** The Dyson Sphere seen in TNG's "Relics" makes an appearance in "A Step Between Stars" and "Surface Tension", and becomes the Delta Alliance's main base of operations in the Delta Quadrant.
** Almost all of the content released with Delta Rising is a reference to ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'', with a couple of references to ''TNG'' added in as well (the 'neural parasites' from "Conspiracy" and Hugh, the liberated Borg drone from "I Borg" and "Descent").
** Two of the ships on the new Earth Spacedock picket fleet are the [[VideoGame/StarTrekBridgeCommander U.S.S. Sovereign and the U.S.S. Geronimo.]]
** The commander of the U.S.S. Kirk is an Andorian named Captain [[Recap/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeriesS1E2Yesteryear Thelin]].
* ConvectionSchmonvection: An early mission in the old Romulan story arc placed you on a planet that had active volcanic activity on the surface (along with local plant life that thrived in the lava). You could walk all over it and it wouldn't hurt you.
* ConvergingStreamWeapon: Just as seen in ''Voyager'', the Undine's original method of destroying a planet or other large target [[spoiler: such as a Borg Unimatrix Command Ship in "Fluid Dynamics"]] is to have several ships arrange themselves in formation and all divert energy to a ship in the middle which then fires a huge beam at the target, annihilating it in one shot. The Undine Planet Killers seen in "Surface Tension" and onward use this as well, but it's not as impressive as the multi-ship formation.
* CooldownManipulation:
** The tactical captain ability "Tactical Initiative" halves the remaining cooldown on any tactical bridge officer ([[FanNickname "boff"]]) powers. [[invoked]]
** The science captain ability "Subnucleonic Beam" increases the target's boff power cooldowns, in addition to [[StatusBuffDispel wiping out active buffs]]. Intelligence boffs can use a variant of this power with an AreaOfEffect. [[invoked]]
** Certain duty officers ([[FanNickname "doffs"]]) have the ability to reduce cooldowns. The popular [[FanNickname "aux2batt build"]] uses three Technician doffs to reduce all currently active cooldowns to the global minimum each time Auxiliary Power to the Emergency Battery is triggered, effectively doubling the rate at which you can trigger boff powers. [[invoked]]
* CoolShades: Several different styles of shades have been added in the annual summer events, as well as part of the intelligence operative costume sets introduced in Delta Rising.
* CoolStarship: Many ships from across Trek canon have made their way into the game (Including an old-fashioned Constitution-Class and Miranda Class as starting vessels), and a few have been made especially for it, such as the mighty [[http://www.startrekonline.com/ships/odyssey Odyssey]] and [[http://www.startrekonline.com/node/2842 Bortas]] end-game ships.
* CostumePorn: Whilst Cryptic's dedication to character customisation meant there was always a small element of this, the game dived right in with Legacy of Romulus and the elaborate Romulan outfits.
* CPRCleanPrettyReliable / WorstAid: This was the original way to revive a downed character. It has since been replaced with a quick tricorder scan.
* CrapsackOnlyByComparison: Things have gone downhill compared to the era the shows took place in, but it's still a much better world to live in than say, the settings of VideoGame/DeadSpace or VideoGame/MassEffect3. There are still awful ''places'' in the setting which are full-on crapsack, though, such as Nimbus III.
** CrapsackWorld: Nimbus III. It was bad in Film/StarTrekVTheFinalFrontier. But the Federation pulled out a hundred years ago in game ([[ShownTheirWork and in the Expanded Universe]]). Now its home to nothing but raiders, pirates, slavery, prostitution and nightclubs.
* CreatureBreedingMechanic: There's tribble breeding, done by either leaving the tribble in inventory with particular foods, or by duty officer assignments found in your ship interior. The former creates a new tribble, the latter transforms your old one. Different tribbles grant different buffs: for example feeding a tribble ketracel-white will produce a tribble that buffs your damage against Jem'Hadar.
* CripplingOverspecialization: The Federation's Dreadnought Cruiser and the recent Dyson Science Destroyers force a certain energy type (phasers and proton, respectively) that either force you to work a weapon build around it or ignore it completely. The Tactical Escort Refit and the Multi-Mission Explorer ships do the same, but their gimmick weapons can be removed, thus you're not bound to it.
* CriticalExistenceFailure: Ships suffer damage and systems can be affected, but until you suffer a warp-core breach (read: death), there's no downward spiral of failing systems, like the shows.
** Zig-zagged; as your health drops scorch marks will appear, followed by your engines going haywire and multiple decks showing hull breaches and fires.
* CrystalSpiresAndTogas: The Deferi come pretty close.
* CustomUniform: The developers were able to {{Handwave}} the glaring flaw about Starfleet's uniform code by stating in one of the LoadingScreen notes that Starfleet relaxed their uniform codes to help its officers feel a little more comfortable, just as long as they still wore their primary color associated with their position. The last part happens pretty much only by playerbase preference and is regularly violated. After season 9, it's only player characters; everybody else wears Odyssey uniforms.
* CutsceneIncompetence: The Iconians' main superpower seems to be ''inducing'' this, starting with one of them gating straight into the Klingon High Council chambers on Qo'noS, vaporizing the entire High Council apart from the Chancellor, and ''not one single person present'' even took a shot at him. Ditto the Iconian in "Blood of Ancients" who turns up and monologues for a little while [[spoiler:then kills a Preserver in passing]], again, all while the PC was standing two feet away.
* CutscenePowerToTheMax: A problem with the ships here is that many of them are portrayed as significantly weaker than they are in the TV series, leading to many a player being annoyed that their favorite ship is quite pathetic than they were shown on TV, a big offender being the ''Galaxy''-class (prior to the release of the ''Andromeda''-class) as players felt it was an insult to the ''Enterprise''-D.
* CuttingTheKnot: The "Azure Nebula Rescue" raid provides a game mechanics example in a scenario where Tholian warships are guarding captured Romulan ships. The most obvious solution followed by most players is to destroy the Tholians before releasing the Romulans. But the way the objectives are coded[[note]]you're scored based on how many ships you rescue, not how many Tholians you kill[[/note]] and the Tholians positioned means that it's perfectly possible, if somewhat difficult, to sneak up from the far side of the asteroid and release the pointy-ears without ever even aggro'ing the Tholians. Another solution is to have one player DrawAggro while the other releases the ship. Slight downside in that you don't get the XP granted by killing the Tholians.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Tropes D-G]]
* DarkestHour: The situation at the end of "A Step Between Stars": [[spoiler:With the rediscovery of the Jenolan Dyson Sphere thanks to the actions of the Undine, the alliance between the Federation, Klingons and Romulans are on shaky ground, due to the fact that all three want the Jenolan Sphere - The Federation because they had found it first over 40 years ago, the Romulans because it's connected to the Solenae Dyson Sphere and the Klingons because they want a super weapon, too! It doesn't help that Koren and Shon are HotBlooded JerkAss people.]]
** The last episode of the Iconian War arc, appropriately named "Midnight" is even darker. [[spoiler: The Alpha Quadrant Alliance has all but lost the war with the Iconians, and Earth is under siege by a ''massive'' Herald fleet. Traveling back in time to kill the Iconians 200 000 years ago is the only possible chance for victory.]]
* DarkhorseVictory: The Romulan Republic might just be the greatest example of this trope. The Romulans spent 20 years trying to rebuild the old Star Empire and never really suceeded (Sela being closest and only through ruling with an iron fist and murdering her own kind via the Tal Shiar & Hakeev). Over the course of a single year three groups of people: D'Tan and his aides, Obisek and his Reman Rebels, and the Romulan Player Character and their crew unite the Romulans under a new banner and make them the second largest superpower in the Quadrant (edging out the Klingons!). All thanks to a Reunificationist, the sacrifice of one of his aides, a Reman soldier and his rebel militia, and a rag tag warbird crew led by a '''''farmer!'''''
* DeathFromAbove:
** The various mortar weapons that can be erected by Engineering players & NPC's during ground missions.
** The swarmer drones in the ground portion of the Solanae Dyson Sphere never miss a chance to take pot shots at players from overhead.
** The accolade you get in "Cutting the Cord" by marking targets for OrbitalBombardment is literally called "Death from Above".
* DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist: If a player is killed or has their ship destroyed (possibly killing them), they can simply respawn with their ship shiny and new...minus a few RedShirts. And the dead redshirts will be restored after a short period of time. Presumably Starfleet ships are crewed by Tribbles. Mitigated somewhat by the addition of the difficulty slider, which adds a death penalty at higher levels in the form of injuries, which can be removed at starbases or with items. Elite-ranked raids always have injuries turned on.
* DeathWorld: Nukara Prime, a Y class "Demon" planet with a surface temperature of 500 degrees Kelvin, a corrosive sulphuric atmosphere, and rivers of acid. Players are REQUIRED to wear environmental suits if they don't want to be immediately engulfed in flames and die a gruesome death by bursting into ashes.
* DecliningPromotion: An odd variant: despite the fact that you become a Vice Admiral/Lt. General at level 50, you're ''still'' in command of a single ship where most would be on the sidelines commanding whole ''fleets'' of ships.
* DefeatEqualsExplosion: Par for the course with space combat. The initial explosion of a ship can damage you, but a few seconds later the warp core blows up for a second explosion. For ground combat, while most enemies who die from an "exposed" attack get vaporized, Tholians can actually self destruct, causing damage to anything around it. Mechanical devices, such as the various turrets and whatnot also explode when they're destroyed.
* DefeatMeansPlayable: The special reward for defeating the Breen during the Deferi story arc? A Breen bridge officer. Repeated with the Romulan/Reman missions, though technically it's [[spoiler:the Romulans]] you're defeating and [[spoiler:a Reman bridge officer]] joining you. It's also repeated in the Jem'Hadar missions.
* DefectorFromDecadence: The entire Reman Rebellion is this to what's left of the paranoid Romulan Government. And You in the Legacy of Romulus.
* DemotedToExtra: The Cardassians in, ironically, the revamped "Cardassian Struggle" arc. Whereas previously the True Way had a StoryArc all to themselves, in the redone version they're little more than a sideshow to a plot involving leftover Dominion forces in the Alpha Quadrant, and something to do with the MirrorUniverse that leads into a couple Season 11 [=STFs=].
* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] by Y'Dren in the mission "The Dragon's Deceit":
--> '''Y'Dren''': "Alpha Quadrant tech has too many redundancies; you've got backups for your backups, and none of it matters because emergency power always fails in an emergency!"
* DesignItYourselfEquipment: The player's ship.
* DetachmentCombat: Several ships can turn parts of themselves into separate, independent craft, increasing their firepower and distracting the enemy. The Galaxy-class can detach its saucer, the Bortasqu' can deploy a heavily-armed escort ship, [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs and the Advanced Odyssey can either detach its saucer or deploy a heavily-armed escort ship]]. The Prometheus-class escort takes the prize, though - true to [[Series/StarTrekVoyager the series]], it can split itself into ''three'' equally-powerful ships, and you can choose which one you want to command the formation from.
* DevelopersForesight: Cryptic's been tossing in various things towards certain classes, races, ships and the like in certain stages.
** With the Season 6 update, all enemies started using more level appropriate skills to add a little more challenge. Enemies can now use the same skills that players use.
** Leave tribbles in your inventory and some food? Well when you log back in the food is going to be gone and more tribbles will be there. This is used by player to get better tribbles. There is one exception, however: ''Polygeminus grex canibalis'' does not eat food in your inventory. They eat other tribbles in your inventory.
* DidNotThinkThisThrough: The entire plot of "Butterfly": [[spoiler:It's decided that the best thing to do is to prevent Romulus' destruction by stopping the U.S.S. ''Yamato'' from discovering Iconia. At best, you got the Borg nipping at Romulus' heels. However, D'Tan was still working on a free Romulan world, so it was okay! No one ever thought the Borg ''would'' take over Romulus.]]
* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: The Fek'lhri arc basically involves carving your way through TheLegionsOfHell, confronting Klingon Satan, and sticking a bat'leth through his face. [[spoiler:Although your science officer suggests it was a technological simulation of some kind and that the Hur'q were involved.]]
* DifficultButAwesome: The handful of larger ships that can mount cannons, like smaller and faster-turning escorts. Trying to keep cannons on a target with a cruiser's turn rate would be completely impractical, and requires unorthodox tactics:
** The Galaxy-X dreadnaught has a cloaking device; a skilled player can use this to sneak up on an unsuspecting ship, de-cloak as close as possible and unload on the target before it has a chance to move out of range. The ship's unique phaser spinal lance does huge damage in a single shot (if it hits; the accuracy is pathetic), and fires twice when triggered; it's more than enough to ensure the first volley is fatal against another player ship in [=PvP=] if weapons are fired in the right order, fast enough so the target can't pop any defensive buffs. When the ship is already in combat and can't cloak right away, Tractor and Repulser beams can be used to keep the target in front and a Subspace Jump Console can be used to teleport the Galaxy-X directly behind a target, facing it.
** The Klingon Bortasqu' comes with a Subspace Snare Console that takes a different approach than the Subspace Jump Console; it teleports the ''target'' in front of the ship.
** The T5 ''D'deridex''-class gets a lot of flak for its (apparent) low turning despite being able to mount dual cannons. This isn't helped by the Romulans' sharply limited ship selection, which results in the free T4 ''D'deridex'' coming right after the much zippier ''Mogai''-class. But the Romulan battle cloak common to all warbirds allows it to turn much faster while cloaked, and having access to lieutenant commander boff powers in all three disciplines is all but unheard-of.
* DiscOneFinalBoss: B'vat, Hakeev and Kar'ukan.
* DisneyVillainDeath: [[spoiler:Taris]] in "Uneasy Allies".
* DivertingPower: Ships have 200 points of power to distribute between weapons, shields, engines, and auxiliary systems. Most ships grant bonus power to one or more systems, and player skills or ship equipment can also increase the amount of power available.
* DoABarrelRoll: The "Rock and Roll" pilot skill introduced in ''Delta Rising'' allows the player's ship to avoid all damage for a few seconds. And, unlike ''VideoGame/StarFox'', this is an ''actual'' Barrel Roll.
* DoNotRunWithAGun: Firing weapons (or taking fire, for that matter) in space missions will drop your ship from full impulse to a slower maneuvering speed. Full impulse will also divert some power from the other subsystems to the engines as well.
* DoingInTheWizard: KDF-side, your science officer suggests after the fact that the battle in [[spoiler:Gre'thor]] may have been AllJustADream and that the [[spoiler:Fek'Ihri]] were created by biotech, possibly by the Hur'q. [[AbortedArc Nothing ever comes of this.]]
* DoomedHometown: The Romulan player's home colony of Virinat.
* DownerEnding: Several of the Iconian War missions seem to be trying to one-up each other in a bid to get this title; "Blood of Ancients" has the Iconians wiping the floor with the alliance and [[spoiler: exterminating the [[AncientAliens Preservers]],]] and then "House Pegh" has an Iconian [[spoiler: killing Emperor Kahless]] and sending the player running with their tail between their legs.
* DramaticSpaceDrifting
* DramaticallyMissingThePoint: In the mission "The Doomsday Weapon", the Klingon Captain muses as to why K'Valk betrayed her. In the very next breath, she proclaims that he ''did'' try to explain but, because of Klingon honor, she blew him off because he was a traitor.
* TheDreaded: The Elachi for most of the Romulan storyline. Later, the [[spoiler:Iconians]] for everyone.
* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler: K'Valk in the Doomsday Machine due to his part in helping the machine being activated. See Heroic Sacrifice below.]]
* DropPod: Episode "The Delta Quadrant", mission "Revelations". The Vaadwaur used them to invade the Turei homeworld, enabling them to punch through the orbital defense grid and sabotage it from below. They also appear in several other instances where the player faces Vaadwaur ground forces, and are equipped with built-in transporters, allowing them to rapidly reinforce positions once the initial force has gotten a foothold.
* DudeWheresMyRespect:
** The game ties CharacterLevel to your player character's military rank in Starfleet, the Klingon Defense Force, or the Romulan Republican Force. This is tolerable up to level 39 (Captain or equivalent and below), but after that, not only are you an admiral running around in a ship, but by the time you hit the level cap at 60 (Fleet Admiral), you actually ''outrank'' almost every mission giver in the entire game, even Fleet Admiral Quinn, and Admiral Kererek, and have probably seen more combat in the last year than some of them have in their entire careers. Lower ranks still love to order you around like you're a totally green ensign and in some cases force you to personally complete tasks more suited to junior enlisted personnel. On the face of it, the season 8.5 featured episode "A Step Between Stars", where literally nobody in the entire mission ''except'' the PlayerCharacter ranks higher than Rear Admiral Lower-Half, can seem particularly silly about it.\\
\\
Interestingly, though, ''A Step Between Stars'' manages to [[ZigZaggingTrope zig-zag this]]. Your initial orders come from Joint Command, and while it is headed by a Subcommander (because the Romulan Republic is still small and is low on high ranking officers but are still the only neutral party between the FED-KDF War and this new alliance), he is in command of the Task Force which DOES make him your superior officer despite being of inferior rank, simply because he is the CO (although that doesn't explain why they couldn't have just promoted him). The next time someone ignores your advice is when Tuvok offers to let you shutdown the station (and open an Iconian Gateway at the same time). If the player tells Tuvok no, he'll do it anyway - which is actually still OK, because Tuvok's orders are to shutdown the station at any cost. ''Orders that didn't come from you.'' He was only giving you the option because you're of senior rank and have had more experience with this technology. And the last time someone subverts an order from you is if you ''provoke the captain of your opposing faction (or allied faction for Romulans) into a fire fight.'' As a Starfleet Admiral, you just proposed opening fire on the Klingons as the war was winding down, which could easily lead to your court martial. As a Klingon General, he's not just telling you to calm down but also Shon as well before things lead to the war going hot again. And as a Romulan Admiral, ''you're threatening your own government's diplomatic status by instigating both the Klingons and Starfleet into a war that could have the Romulans in the crossfire.'' Beyond that, your orders are followed (i.e. telling Tuvok what to do with Cooper, what defense strategy to take, telling Tuvok to the communicator while you get the Voth explosives), it's when you act like an InsaneAdmiral that the [[WhatTheHellHero [=NPC=]s tell you eat shit]].
** [[AvertedTrope Averted]] again in "Surface Tension". The player's admiralty rank becomes a minor plot point, with the player taking command of the task force.
** It goes the other way, too (may not be if you play missions out of order) in "Sphere of Influence", where the player bosses the heads of fleet of the Federation and the KDF around.
*** Bonus points for the final discussion where the three powers decide how to continue with the new gateway. Represented by Admiral Shon (Federation), Ambassador Worf and General Koren (KDF) as well as some random Scientist who happened to beam in (A'dranna from the Romulan Republic). And yes, the latter speaks up as if the others were her peers.
** And averted by Captain Harry Kim in ''Delta Rising'', who makes a point of giving the PC the respect due his superior officer.
* DumpStat:
** For a long time, ground combat skills were a DumpStat because most players didn't want to waste valuable skillpoints on it when space combat was considered to be much more fun and the primary appeal of the game. This was changed, making it mandatory to invest 20% of one's skillpoints into ground skills, but mercifully added 20% more total skillpoints to allow for this without ruining the builds that veteran players had created.
** Now the DumpStat is engineering skills. They make a ship harder to kill, but not enough to survive against the highest difficulty enemies, such as the eight Borg tactical cubes found in the Hive raid. For just about every other player vs npc battle, skillpoints in damage resistance aren't even needed. The focus for the top players now is on inflicting maximum damage with weapons and science skills. Only two engineering skills out of a possible ten are still useful to throw points into: the ones that increase speed and maneuverability, and the energy output of the ship's warp core.
* DysonSphere: Season 8 introduces one as a new zone for starships to fly around inside and explore. A related Republic Intelligence debriefing also mentions the Jenolan Dyson Sphere of TNG fame, noting its disappearance as one of the oddities that started happening after you [[spoiler: unlocked the entire Iconian gateway network]]...
** [[spoiler:GhostShip: The Dyson Joint Rep Tier 1 and Tier 2 completion cutscenes reveal two things about the Dyson Sphere: that this was made by the Iconians as a means to get away and, mysteriously, it was left abandoned.]]
*** Later on, there's a dispute between the three superpowers over possession of the Jenolan Dyson Sphere and that [[spoiler:there's a ''third'' one. And it's armed to the teeth with Iconian ships.]]
* EarlyBirdCameo: Because the 3rd Year Anniversary mission, "Temporal Ambassador", was placed at the end of the Klingon War storyline, new players, especially in the Federation, get to meet Obisek, Slamek, Rugan Skyl, and T'nae before their storylines take place.
* EarnedStripes:
** Reaching the rank of rear admiral, lower half as a Starfleet PlayerCharacter unlocks a waistcoat in your uniform selection.
** The [[http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Starfleet_uniform_(2410s) official version of the Odyssey style]] puts admirals in a longer version of the uniform jacket that does not get tucked into the pants, and gives them metallic braid at the cuffs and around the divisional color bar. They also wear a belt buckle of the Federation's starfield-and-laurels insignia. Meanwhile starship and station commanders wear a version of the officer service uniform that has white shoulders, whereas ordinary officers get dark grey. Another color combination denotes enlisted personnel.
** The Klingon Defense Force denotes ranks with progressively more elaborate baldrics. The Romulan Republic uses pauldrons and capes of increasing complexity.
* EarthShatteringKaboom:
** The Planet Killer (yes, ''[[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries that]]'' Planet Killer) does this to Imaga's moon in a cutscene to give the player an idea just what kind of power they're up against.
** Galorndon Core falls victim to another Doomsday Machine in "The Core of the Matter."
** The Dewans apparently did this to themselves when they hooked an Iconian gateway up to a geothermal power system and tried to activate it, wiping themselves out and leaving Dewa III (or New Romulus as it would later be known) uninhabitable for centuries.
** The Undine do this to Kessek IV in "A Gathering Darkness" after the planet has been entirely assimilated by the Borg. They also intend to do this to [[spoiler: Qo'noS]] in "Surface Tension" and several other worlds in the Alpha and Beta quadrants in the "Undine Assault" [=PVE=] mission.
* EarthShatteringPoster: The logo for Season 13 depicts a habitable planet ([[spoiler:New Kentar's moon]]) getting wiped out by a [[WorldWreckingWave protomatter bomb]].
* EasterEgg:
** Before its discontinuation, in the late Borg front mission "State of Q", players could find one of these in the form of the USS ''Enterprise''-D, seen through one of the hull breaches on the USS ''Saratoga''. Also counted as a bit of an anachronism, as the ''Enterprise'' didn't make it to the [[http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wolf_359 Battle of Wolf 359]] until after the ''Saratoga'' and the rest of the fleet had been destroyed.
** In the Foundry editor, a huge number of the premade NPC costumes have funny captions, apparently because whomever originally cataloged them got bored and started making shit up to keep life interesting. The full list is [[http://sto.gamepedia.com/Guide:_The_Foundry/NPC_Contacts here]], but here's a few samples:
---> '''Breen Lieutenant Male 01:''' Don't tell the Breen, but this is just a lonely guy who wears the suit to blend in.\\
'''Cardassian Commander Male 03:''' His mother named him [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Kira]], after her favorite historical figure. [[WhoNamesTheirKidDude The merciless teasing]] inspired his military career.\\
'''Elachi Lieutenant Scanner 01:''' [[ShoutOut EXTERMINATE.]] [[Series/DoctorWho EXTERMINATE.]]
* ElitesAreMoreGlamorous: The Omega Force, a joint Federation/Klingon task force developed to take on the threat of the Borg, generally gives this impression.
** Starfleet and the Klingons have this as well in the form of MACO and the Honor Guard, respectively. Both come with fancy armor, weapons, and ship equipment that makes their 'normal' counterparts look pathetic by comparison.
* EliteZombie: The Borg have this in the form of the Elite Tactical Drone; larger than a normal drone with tons of health as well as an ArmCannon that drains the players' personal shields and does major damage. They can also deliver a backhand capable of knocking down your entire away team.
* EmergencyTraineeBattleDeployment: The Federation player backstory is this, as the player's CanonSue with their plucky band of cadets manage to take out numerous Klingons and Borg in their outdated Miranda-class starship before everyone gets a battlefield promotion.
* EnemyCivilWar: Halfway through the Delta Quadrant story arc the [[spoiler:Vaadwaur split into two warring factions; the main force led by Gaul and his parasite-infested commanders, and a rebel faction led by Captain Eldex.]]
* EpicFail: The [=DOFF=] Assignments have a chance to be failed, especially if you're using Common [=DOFFs=]. What reaches this trope is that some missions actually give you a 100% chance at success (such as delivering captured contraband) and you ''still'' fail at it (as, despite a 100% success rate is displayed, that is usually rounded and there's still a minuscule chance of failure).
* EverybodysDeadDave: As you escape from the [[spoiler: Iconian Command Sphere in "Broken Circle", you fly through a massive ship graveyard of the combined Federation, Romulan, and Klingon strike fleets, a fleet of hundreds of ships. You pick up a handful of escape pods...and no one else.]]
* EverythingIsTryingToKillYou: Lampshaded. Upon encountering some hostile ice spiders in a cave during the [[spoiler: Reman Uprising]] arc (not too long after fighting off hostile jackals), one of your officers loudly questions why every new species you encounter always wants to kill you.
* EverythingsSquishierWithCephalopods: The Nanovs roaming the Atlai on New Romulus are basically super-cute bright purple amphibious octopi.
* EvilIsDeathlyCold: The Breen, complete with HumanPopsicle [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzuUFomZVCI grenades and lasers.]]
* EvilCounterpart: The Mirror Universe ships. They look the same, however they have things that are vastly different, usually by rearranging [=BOFF=] slots and Console slots. Prior to that, the Federation's ships were pretty much "swap skins".
* EvilOnlyHasToWinOnce: At endgame there are special task force missions players can do repeatedly for rewards. There are three levels of difficulty for them and they all have optional objectives to complete which grant better rewards. With the Delta Rising expansion, failure to complete even one optional objective on the middle and highest difficulty level automatically failed the mission, though after various complaints optional objectives are once again, well, optional.
* EvilSoundsDeep: The voice of the Collective in Borg space missions, coupled with a bit of VoiceOfTheLegion (naturally).
* EvilVersusEvil:
** The main reason that the Federation and Klingon Empire haven't been all turned into cyberzombies or wiped from creation is that, even decades after the events of ''Voyager'', the Borg and Undine still hate hate '''''hate''''' each other and gleefully rip one another apart at every opportunity (there's even one instance during a mission where the Borg abruptly break off from fighting the player to go after Undine and will totally ignore the player's ship unless fired on). The Federation and Klingons still ally against the Borg despite having a war on in other sectors.
** Also, Empress Sela and Praetor Taris. The former has a ''few'' less atrocities to her name, but they're both still pretty unpleasant.
* EvolvingWeapon:
** Mark Infinity equipment improves in effectiveness as the PlayerCharacter levels up.
** The ''Delta Rising'' expansion introduced Tier 5-Upgraded and Tier 6 starships, which have a Starship Mastery feature which enables the PlayerCharacter to grind skill points to unlock stat boosts on that ship, as well as [[SkillScoresAndPerks a perk]] in T6 ships which is usable on any ship.
* {{Expy}}:
** The ''Vesper'' for the ''Excelsior'' Class, and the ''Excalibur'' as a 25th century equivalent to the ''Constitution'' class. Both the original ship classes can also be bought.
** Frankly, most of the ship variants count. Each Tier contains: 1) a ship from the TV series, and 2) two more ships that ''look'' different but are basically cosmetic redesigns. This allows the mix-and-match customization, since the warp nacelles, engineering hull, etc are all in the same position, but the cosmetic redesigns themselves are of variable aesthetic quality. The Exploration Cruiser (''Galaxy'' pattern) is a particularly bad offender.
** The Unimatrix 0047 Command Ships are easily this towards V'Ger of ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'', particularly with the metallic guitar riff when it warps in and its OneHitKill plasma torpedo.
* ExpansionPack: ''Legacy of Romulus'', which launched in late May 2013. Included the long-awaited Romulan playable faction as well as huge changes to the rest of the game. This was followed by the ''Delta Rising'' expansion in October 2014. In practice they worked just as the previous Season updates (that is, a free and (if you want to play the game) obligatory update to the game that comes with a number of additions to the microtransaction store). It was just a much, ''much'' larger update than any of the previous Seasons, including a new tier of ships and the first and only so far level cap increase, which is why they took to calling it an expansion pack instead.
* ExplodingBarrels: Players can find these on the promenade of [=DS9=] in the mission "Boldly They Rode", and can use them to take out some of the Jem'Hadar without having to engage in protracted firefights.
* ExplosiveInstrumentation: This ''is'' Star Trek. How else do you duty officers get hurt realigning a sensor array or some of the other tasks that have the possibility of injury?
* ExplosiveBreeder[=/=]ExtremeOmnivore: Tribbles. Once per hour, a tribble in your inventory or equipped will eat one food item and produce another type of tribble. There's a huge breeding tree with dozens of varieties, and they can even eat things like ketracel white, which is normally toxic to anyone who isn't a Jem'Hadar.
** Although what they eat can be dependent on the breed -- one particular breed, for instance, refuses food items and other consumables, instead favouring ''other tribbles''.
* ExtraEyes:
** All the wildlife on New Romulus have six eyes, presumably due to mutation caused by long-term exposure to the radiation on the planet's surface.
** The Iconians (and their personal guard, the Herald) have this trait as well.
* FaceHeelTurn: Expository text in the loading screens reveal [[spoiler: that Worf had severed all ties to the Federation after they declined assisting the Klingons in fighting the Undine/Species 8472.]] [[spoiler:Of course, given that he was worried about Starfleet Command and the Federal Parliament being shot through with Undine infiltrators and was rebuffed after being told it couldn't happen, exactly who ended up the face and who ended up the heel [[GreyAndGreyMorality is a matter of perspective]].]]
* FacePalm: One of the emotes you can do is a Picard face palm.
* FalseFlagOperation: [[spoiler: The Undine's attack on the Alpha and Beta Quadrant is because of ''someone'' using Iconian tech to mimic Starfleet spaceships and attack Fluidic Space]].
** The player is involved in one of these as well; capturing a Vaadwaur ship and sending it to attack the Benthans and Hazari in order to make them see the value of working together against a common enemy.
* [[FallingIntoTheCockpit Falling Into The Captain's Chair]]: This is more or less how the Fed side of the game starts out. Your ship is ambushed and boarded, and while you are helping repel the intruders, the senior staff gets killed, and you, a lowly Ensign, now have to take command of an entire starship... [[OhCrap against the Klingons]] [[FromBadToWorse and the Borg.]] The fact you actually ''win'' is why command makes your command position permanent.
** Given a BIT more justification in the expanded bio.
* FailureIsTheOnlyOption: In "Blood of the Ancients", you could be sporting Mk XIV Epic gear, you're not killing that Dreadnought.
* FakeDefector: [[spoiler: In the mission "Under the Cover of Night", T'Par is actually a member of Section 31, and capturing her is just part of a ruse to feed the Romulans false information.]]
* FakeLongevity:
** The un-remastered Cardassian story arc. Untouched since game launch, almost every mission in it is a MarathonLevel with LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading between space and ground maps multiple times per mission, and usually involves a MassMonsterSlaughterSidequest full of GoddamnBats. And then there are missions with the simple goal to interact with a few objects, except there are usually hordes of RespawningEnemies you have to chew through, and you are forced into BackTracking through them most times. All the loot including the mission rewards are little better than VendorTrash. Word has it though that the Cardassian missions will be overhauled with the release of Season 11 in October 2015.
** Most of the original storyline missions were like this, but have since been remastered and streamlines to be quicker, more interesting and fun to play.
* FanDisservice: The scantily-clad, hideously ugly Fek'lhri Ravagers.
* {{Fanservice}}:
** Orion Females play this straight, especially the Player Character ones. This also applies to female toons with the Enterprise-Era and TOS-Era Mirror Uniforms.
** Special note to Nimbus III's Orion Hideout and Titty Bar, Shangdu. There is fanservice for ANYONE in this nightclub with scantily clad dancers everwhere. This is notable because it's not just the standard hot chick schtick and features as the three main ones a Trill Female in a bikini, a [[UsefulNotes/FurryFandom Caitian Female]] in a [[ZettaiRyouiki tank top and go-go boots]], and a Human ''[[GayOption male]]'' in a speedo. The equality of it was actually praised on the forums - especially when you consider that the primary person watching the male dancer is also male, and has atmospheric lines like, "I think I'm in love".
* FantasticGhetto: If you aren't a Klingon noble or a KDF officer, First City isn't that great of a place to live. During a "tour the city" optional mission you find that the southwest side of town is a dingy slum packed full of non-Klingons who came to Qo'noS looking for work and weren't successful.
* FantasticShipPrefix: In addition to canon prefixes, the game adds a few new ones.
** Romulan Republic ships use the prefix RRW, apparently for Romulan Republic Warbird. Romulan Empire ships have IRW, presumably for "Imperial Romulan Warbird."
** Gaul's flagship in Delta Rising is identified as the VSW ''Vozroz''. VSW most likely stands for Vaadwaur Supremacy Warship.
* FasterThanLightTravel: Par for the course. [[VideoGame/EveOnline Thankfully, there is no such thing]] [[NothingIsScarier as a Warp Queue]].
** However, [[GameplayAndStorySegregation due to the way FTL travel is actually played]], it's entirely possible to get in a 20 ship pileup in interstellar space...
* FantasticRacism:
** The Octanti hate all Borg. Even if they're Liberated, Borg are Borg. However, a number of Octanti start to reconsider this, especially when they save their skins [[spoiler:and the brother of an Octanti ambassador returns to him.]]
** One of the Krenim hates all Alpha and Beta Quadrant races, referring to them as "The Voyagers", even if they weren't part of ''Voyager''. In fact, it gets so bad that Seven of Nine quits the team working on [[spoiler:the Temporal Warship]] because he refuses to listen to any of their concerns.
* FantasyConflictCounterpart: A fantasy ''postwar'' counterpart in the Cardassians, whose treaty with the Federation following the Dominion War reduced their military to a defensive organization of considerably smaller size, rather like what happened to Japan after World War II. The rest of the picture looks like post-invasion Iraq, with many former Cardassian Guard officers joining the True Way, a reactionary terrorist organization.
* FightingYourFriend: Some of the missions (such as the Starbase 234 patrol mission for Fed players) has the player engaging in 'wargames' against their allies to hone their combat skills. This is also the main premise of the same-faction (Fed vs Fed, KDF vs KDF) PvP missions, where players square off against others from their own faction.
* FiveRoundsRapid: Happens to a Romulan security team facing a [[ImplacableMan Vaadwaur Overseer]] on the bridge of the ''Lleiset'' in the mission "Capture the Flag"; the redshirts open up on him with multiple disruptors (which are all hitting him dead-center, by the way) only for their target to [[TheSlowWalk stroll right up to them]] and decimate them all with just his fists.
* FixedForwardFacingWeapon:
** The various flavors of dual cannons as well as the phaser spinal lance on the Galaxy-X dreadnought have a very narrow firing arc straight ahead of the ship. Dual beam banks and (most) forward-mounted torpedo launchers also count to a lesser degree, as they can only engage targets within a 90-degree cone off the bow. Normal cannons and the Assault Cruiser Refit's Wide-Angle Quantum Torpedo Launcher as well to an even more lesser degree, as they turn a full 180 degrees
** Also the thalaron weapon used by the Scimitar dreadnoughts.
** A recent update added new Escorts to the game with a "Heavy Weapon" slot, which contains a special fixed forward facing weapon. Other escorts will get this unique slot in a future update.
* {{Flanderization}}: One of the few things we learned about the Breen in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' is that they wear refrigeration suits because they prefer cold temperatures. The game takes this UpToEleven by making everything about them relate somehow to cold: they use cryonic grenades, encase their prisoners in ice, and somehow scatter snow across the corridors of enemy ships they're boarding. And then there's the IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming of their story missions, all of which have something to do with cold.
* FluffyTamer: The player can become this, with numerous species of animals that can be domesticated and kept as pets, some of which can even be used in combat.
* FlunkyBoss: Just about every elite level boss ship you have to kill (and some battleship-level mobs) will have a squadron of escort ships or fighters buzzing around it.
** Some high-ranking ground enemies will have the ability to summon low-level grunts as backup.
* ForeignCussWord:
** In "Ragnarok," Pavel Chekov cuts loose with "Bozhe moi!" ("My God!")
** Players of all factions will hear plenty of well-known Klingon epithets over the course of the game, such as "petaQ", "taHqeq", "veQ", "baktag" and so on.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: During the debriefing following the completion of 'Cutting the Cord', Temek and T'nae each tell the KDF & Fed players that "the return of the Iconians could change everything". Cue 'Surface Tension' and 'Uneasy Allies'...
* ForWantOfANail: The events of "Butterfly" show four different scenarios:
** The first scenario, made by removing certain stars to allow a rogue planet cause a natural disaster on Iconia, the three major powers would end up being weakened by conflicts to allow the Dominion to take over.
** The second scenario, made by preventing the ''Voyager'' from discovering the Vaadwaur, would have the Iconians recruit the Hierarchy instead, shattering the Delta Alliance.
** The third scenario, made by preventing the U.S.S. ''Yamato'' from discovering Iconia, brought back Romulus and was about to lead to the creation of the Romulan Republic, even with the Borg nipping at their heels. [[spoiler:They choose this one, only to find out, ''whoops'', the Borg have ''assimilated'' Romulus.]]
* ForgottenPhlebotinum:
** "House Pegh" has the eponymous Klingon [[InformedAttribute black-ops team]] in possession of a wide-area cloaking device capable of hiding ships in formation with the equipped vessel from Iconian sensors. [[SarcasmMode Surely this is a brilliant technological advance that will change the course of the war!]] Nope, never mentioned again, which amazingly is one of the ''lesser'' reasons the mission is considered an IdiotPlot. However, we learn soon enough that being able to hide half or two-thirds of the Alliance fleet would not make much of a difference in the war.
** In "Time and Tide", Noye steals the Krenim temporal weapon ship from the TimePolice and naturally tries to cause TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt in succeeding missions. Said TimePolice are remarkably clueless about the possibility of simply time-traveling themselves to before the weapon was stolen in the first place and disabling it entirely[[note]]this ''would'' be explainable by another piece of phlebotinum, temporal shielding, which would keep the Krenim ship unaffected by temporal interventions... ''except'' that by the rules established earlier that would mean that the moment the temporal weapon ship's shields were knocked down it would integrate with the established timeline and be disabled[[/note]].
* FourStarBadass: The current maximum rank a player can achieve is Fleet Admiral (Federation & Romulan Republic, allowing them to become ''[[UpToEleven five]]''-star badasses) and General (KDF)[[note]]the final KDF promotion is Dahar Master, but that technically is a title rather than a rank[[/note]]. Per ''Delta Rising'', there are ''eighteen months'' between the low-ranked game start and flag rank. The Romulan PC at least has the minor justification that the Romulan Republic is new and [[ClosestThingWeGot short on manpower]], but the Federation PC (in the post-season 8 tutorial) starts as a fourth-year cadet on his/her senior midshipman cruise and is given a battlefield commission as a lieutenant.
* FragileSpeedster:
** On paper, the Escort class ships are supposed to be this: Quick and deadly, but light on defense. Player customization and skill determines if that is true or not.
** The fighters, runabouts, and shuttlecraft can also also be considered this; small, agile craft good for quick hit and run attacks, but will be slaughtered wholesale by battleships and cruisers that get a clear shot on them.
* FriendlyEnemy: What basically the Klingon-Federation War devolves to due to outside factors. While they start their conflict beating each other up, they end up having a conference about how to defeat the Borg on Bajor despite being actively at war with one another. Omega Force and the Honor Guard were already teaming up against them. This ends up involving the KDF player and the portion of the Klingon military controlled by the ambassador in the war against the Dominion Remnants. The Klingons also cooperate with the Federation Temporal Security Agency from the 29th century. Really, by the time the war officially comes to an end, it's obvious both sides have bigger problems to deal with.
* FriendlyFireproof: Other players and friendly NPC's won't be harmed by a stray phaser beam or torpedo during combat.
** Subverted with some of the confuse abilities, which reverses the victim's friend or foe ID systems and renders them vulnerable to attacks from allies.
* FromNobodyToNightmare: The Tuterians used to be a relatively obscure and peaceful Delta Quadrant species. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Thanks to the the Alliance]], they've since become the omnicidal [[spoiler:Sphere Builders]].
** The Romulan PC goes from being a simple farmer on the backwater world of Virinat to a Romulan Republic Fleet Admiral who discovers and founds the New Romulus colony, takes down the Tal Shiar, and saves the galaxy several times.
* FungusHumongous: Some ground maps have this in effect to varying degrees, the most notable example being Imaga in "The Doomsday Device".
* FunnyBackgroundEvent: In the 20-man FM event ''Starbase Fleet Defense'' the freighters you escort for a full minute make rediculous but easily missed comments ranging from SpaceIsAnOcean to discussing about their romantic encounters with the comm channel over.
* FutureMeScaresMe: [[spoiler: Past-B'Vat, complete with TOS Klingon style smooth forehead, is terrified at what he will become in the future, and helps the player in taking down his future self]]
* GameplayAndStorySegregation: Of a sort. The Duty Officer (''Doff'') system represents your junior officers, and every ship is supposed to have their crew number's worth of Doffs. However, you start at 100 for free, up to a max of 500. However... some ships crew numbers don't fit with this, like the Defiant with a crew of ''50''. Very few ships have Doff numbers close to their crew numbers, while others are unrealistically packed. Also, since quite a lot of their missions require them to go someplace halfway across the quadrant, the number of runabouts or other small craft needed is somewhat excessive.
** The New Romulus story introduced in Season 7 has what one can call Story And Story Segregation: continuity-wise it explicitly takes place after and relies on events in the Romulan arc in the Federation story (for instance, [[spoiler: the disappearance of Sela is the reason for the civil war that is the reason for the New Romulus exodus, while the Tal Shiar's actions are influenced by the loss of Hakeev]]), but there's no restriction on doing the New Romulus missions before even ''beginning'' the Romulan arc.
*** This is made worse with the addition of the Klingon storyline. While the Romulan early-game storyline starts a couple of weeks before the Federation early-game and chronicles how New Romulus is created, the Klingon storyline takes place after ''both'' storylines and yet you're ''still'' there dealing with the Tal Shiar long after they were dealt with!
** More Story and Story Segregation in the Third Anniversary mission, "Temporal Ambassador". Given that the mission guest-stars Tholians and [[spoiler: 29th Century Starfleet timeships]], the mission ''should'' be set somewhere near the Endgame and post-Endgame content. However, the level restriction for "Temporal Ambassador" is level 6 - Lieutenant rank, a far cry from Endgame. When the mission was shuffled into the post-early-game missions, it's at Level 20 and yet you're still dealing with things that you won't deal with for another 30 levels.
** This is the problem with the Iconian War as a whole. Despite the game and the [[AllThereInTheManual story blogs]] stating that the Iconians are kicking our collective butts, players are genuinely confused and have outright mentioned on the message boards "Why are we losing when I'm kicking their butts?!" not realizing that various PVE missions and the like are only considered ''once''. This has spurred calls for making the war so much more expansive.
* GatlingGood / MoreDakka: One of the options for either yourself or your crew while on foot is essentially the energy-weapon version of a Squad Automatic Weapon. Having one of these around is rather handy. [[VideoGame/StarTrekEliteForce Not the first time we've seen 'em, either.]]
* GeneralFailure: Captain Kagran in the Iconian War missions. Of the first five missions of the Iconian arc released, three of those involve trying to hit the Iconians really hard. [[spoiler:By this point, at least 2/3rds of the unified fleet are dead as well as Emperor Kahless.]] Conversely, a mission involving Tom Paris is able to deal a painful blow to the Iconians and a mission with Nog [[spoiler:has them rediscovering the Krenim.]]
** He does, however, drop the idiot ball in the last episode and redeems himself in the eyes of the majority of the playerbase.
* GenocideDilemma: "Butterfly" and "Midnight" deal with the idea of trying to eradicate the Iconians to stop the war. [[spoiler:Using the Krenim Timeship was automatically tossed out as it would cause too much change in the timestream. When the player character, Kagran and Sela travel to the past and Iconia's fall, Kagran has second thoughts over the entire thing and when Sela attempts to follow through, she comes to realize that, ''whoops'', she's the reason Romulus and Remus are now asteroid fields.]]
* GetBackHereBoss: All of the bosses with voice actors do this in their featured episode series. They appear, taunt the player and run away and can't be killed until the very end for story reasons.
** This works for bosses of factions that care about self-preservation, but turns into a total OutOfCharacterMoment whenever a Klingon boss runs away, because they're a warrior culture who never retreat and put [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy fighting until they win or die honorably]] above all other concerns.
** An even worse example occurs with a boss who runs away after disobeying the orders of a leader his race worships as a god. Kar'ukan is a Jem'Hadar, a clone warrior species who are literally engineered to obey and worship changelings as gods without question and always fight, and never ever run away (there ''are'' canonical examples of Jem'Hadar going rogue, but even they kept up the warrior 'fight to the end' attitude).
* GettingCrapPastTheRadar:
** One of the Duty Officer assignments is 'Retrieve DNA Sample from Romulan Senator', which is easier to accomplish if the officers you assign to it have the 'Seductive' and 'Unscrupulous' traits. Oh ''my''.
** Given their racial trait "Seductive", the lines on unique [[GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe Orion female]] doffs' cards often contain {{Double Entendre}}s. The entertainers are more explicit:
---> '''Janzea:''' (entertainer) Sit back and relax. Let me do the work.\\
'''Zudania:''' (entertainer) I'm sure we can find some way to pass the time, Ambassador.\\
'''Losuna:''' (biologist) All relationships can be reduced to simple biology.\\
'''N'Ziddea:''' (tractor beam officer) Once I lock onto a target, there's no way for him to escape.\\
'''Zumouri:''' (entertainer) The key to attraction is surprise. Do something unexpected.
*** There's even some subversions:
--->'''Jinnea:''' (research lab scientist) I'm not interested in "off-duty research". [[YoureNotMyType At least not with you.]]\\
'''Senandi:''' (doctor) If you want bedside manner, visit the pleasure district.\\
'''Unozu:''' (entertainer) I'm a performer. If you want that kind of entertainment, find it yourself.
** Thanks to how a race uses naming conventions, [=DOFF=]s can be given unintentionally hilarious names. Included on this group is a Gorn named "Shit", a Reman named "Slut", an aliengen named "Ugly"...
* GladiatorGames: [[spoiler: Prominently featured in the Cloaked Intentions episode series.]]
** [[spoiler: In one mission on Nimbus III, Hassan throws you and your party into one.]]
* GlassCannon: The Escort.
* GodSaveUsFromTheQueen: As of season 7, the Borg Queen. That arc quickly got streamlined though, so you won't find her anymore during the main storyline, only in PvE queues.
** Empress Sela as well, to a minor extent.
* GodzillaThreshold: [[spoiler:After the player character strikes down M'Tara, K'Tet decides that it's time for the galaxy to drown in blood. This forces everyone's hand to use the Time Weapon.]]
* GoneHorriblyWrong: [[spoiler:The above mentioned Threshold? The big plan was to prevent the U.S.S. ''Yamato'' from finding Iconia. This leads to the ''Borg'' taking over Romulus instead.]]
* GrapplingHookPistol: Players will have access to these in ''Delta Rising''; they will allow players to zipline, rappel, or simply horizontally traverse from one area to another. This is only useable in certain hotspots, though, so not the general feature players anticipated.
* GrenadeLauncher: The pulsewave assault rifle available as part of the Klingon Honor Guard and Adapted MACO ground sets have one of these built in. Engineering players can also erect automated grenade-launching turrets.
* GrievousHarmWithABody: One of the weapons the player can get is a severed Borg arm cannon, which makes for a form of HoistByHisOwnPetard since it's most often used against other Borg.
* GuileHero: You get the chance to be this on occasion, especially during the [[TimeTravel Drozana Station]] missions.
* GunsAkimbo: Klingon Swordmasters and other types of enemies often use twin disruptor pistols, but the PlayerCharacter and their officers can too.
* GoodOldFisticuffs: Just because you ''have'' a [[RayGun Phaser]], doesn't mean you ''always have to use it''. Far from being an EmergencyWeapon, some enemies just go down faster if the player simply ''holsters their weapon and hands them their ass''. Having the Leg Sweep ability for crowd control makes this even more useful. See also {{BFS}}.
* GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe: The Orion Vixens, complete with confuse-inducing Seduce skill. They're also a popular choice amongst the RP community.
* GuideDangIt: While not as heavy as most [=MMOs=], [=STO=] does have a handful of prizes that people wouldn't know how to obtain.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Tropes H-M]]
* HandWave: Story-wise, the Tutorial shows that your character is merely an ensign who's ''very first assignment'' out of the academy takes them to the Vega Colony, where the Borg very specifically kill off all the commanding officers on your ship while you transported over to the U.S.S. Khitomer to help them get their ship back up and running. This technically placed you as the highest ranking officer in the chain of command, and Admiral Quinn decides that you have earned the right to remain as captain of your vessel due to the dire situation all around the Alpha Quadrant, and they need every last ship they can use in service. Players are actually given the choice to skip the Tutorial if they want. If they do, they start the game in Starfleet Academy, and have to go see the Commandant of the academy for graduation. He decides that your academics are so admirably remarkable that he recommends you for a command assignment. That's it. He tells you to go grab some supplies from a nearby locker, select a first officer, and get to work.
** This has been cleaned up a lot in the new tutorial, introduced in Season 8. The new tutorial has you [[spoiler: on your first assignment as a freshly graduated cadet from the Academy acting as First Officer. After the Captain is killed in a Klingon ambush, you receive a field promotion to Lieutenant from another Starfleet Captain. You then get caught up in the initial stages of the Borg invasion. Your actions in evacuating the survivors of the Vega Colony prompt Admiral Quinn to make the promotion official.]]
** Undine ships are normally piloted by a single Undine with a strong psychic connection to their vessel. Since no other species can replicate this, captured Undine ships require a traditional crew, thus allowing game mechanics involving crew to function the same as with other ships.
* HardLight: The player encounters several walkways made of this in Facility 4028. The various forcefields seen in different missions, as well as the [[DeflectorShields shields]] used by player-characters and ships could also count.
** The various holograms can also fall into this category.
* HealthDamageAsymmetry: The absolute maximum hitpoints a player ship can have is roughly in the 60k range, however boss ships on elite difficulty have hundreds of thousands to millions of hitpoints. In a subversion, these boss ships often have OneHitKill weapons that have to be avoided rather than tanked. Player ships can do some serious damage too, but nothing that can solo kill a boss in one or two hits.
* HeelFaceTurn: [[spoiler: The Remans, and particularly Obisek, who starts off stealing thalaron weapons and siccing fighters on you.]]
* HeinzHybrid: Kal Dano from "Sunrise". Like Temporal Agent Daniels from ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'', he's a 31st century man with ''very'' mixed ancestry (your science officer identifies Vulcan, human, and Lukari DNA in his genome).
* HellBentForLeather: Even in the 25th century, the typical Klingon military uniform still looks like something you'd expect to see members of {{Music/KISS}} wearing.
* HeroicSacrifice:
** [[spoiler: K'Valk does a suicide run into the core of the Doomsday Machine to at least try to disable it. And he does it while singing the Klingon War Song.]]
** [[spoiler: Admiral D'Vak nearly does one too; sacrificing his ship to draw fire from insanely powerful Borg weapons. [[SuicidalGotcha He survives, though]].]]
** [[spoiler: Guroth]], the weapons expert of Delta Flight, does this in "Broken Circle", flying his ship head-on into the Iconian flagship and causing enough damage that it's forced to leave the front lines and the Alliance & the player are able send over boarding parties.
** [[spoiler: Temer]] sacrifices himself on the final mission of the Romulan introduction to save the attendees of the conference and single-handedly improve the standing of the republic.
* HeWhoMustNotBeSeen: Aennik Okeg, the Federation President during the time of the game, was never once seen on-screen and only mentioned in some of the backstory material (we get a glimpse of him in [[http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9782073-star-trek-online%3A-in-the-purview-of-diplomats an in-universe blog]]). He seems content to leave off-world diplomatic matters to the player, Admiral Quinn, or the Federation Diplomatic Corps in general. Finally broken with Season 11.5 and the "Temporal Front" storyline mission.
** The Iconians were this for the most part, up until "Surface Tension".
* HistoricalRapSheet: For a purely fictional example, the player discovers partway through the Starfleet "Romulan Mystery" and Romulan "In Shadows" arcs that the Tal Shiar faction led by Hakeev and Taris [[spoiler:triggered the Hobus supernova and the destruction of Romulus]].
* HistoryRepeats: The Klingons make the exact same mistake in the lead-up to the Federation-Klingon War that they made in the lead-up to the Dominion War. They unilaterally invade the Gorn, insisting that the Gorn have been infiltrated by shapeshifters (unlike with the Cardassians, the Gorn actually ''have'' been), and then when the Federation doesn't believe them, instead of trying to back up their claims they withdraw from the Khitomer Accords. And just like with the Dominion, this resulted in a Federation-Klingon War that only weakened the quadrant for the inevitable bigger fish. Once again, the Klingons' HonorBeforeReason tendencies play right into the hands of a ManipulativeBastard adversary.
** In-game, ''this exact scenario'' repeats itself ''again'' on a small scale in the mission "Diplomatic Orders". A Klingon cruiser commander gets information that a Federation diplomat is really an Undine. Does he submit his findings to the Federation? No! He leads a deep-strike into Federation territory to kill the ambassador himself, and instead of coming out firing, he sacrifices the element of surprise to high-handedly demand that the Federation PC hand over the ambassador. The Fed PC reacts surprisingly calmly to this: instead of just blasting the idiot out of space on sight (remember, the Feds and KDF have now been at war for four years and the Klingon is asking a Starfleet officer on an EscortMission to ''hand over his charge to an enemy combatant''), he asks to see the Klingon's evidence, and the Klingon instead takes umbrage and attacks, and because he's up against a {{Plot Armor}}ed PlayerCharacter he dies completely pointlessly and Starfleet makes the kill against the Undine. [[Film/TopGun Klingon Defense Force regrets to inform you that your sons are dead because they were stupid.]]
* HitAndRunTactics: Ships with Battle Cloak can pull this off, go in, fight, and quickly cloak while in Red Alert and GTFO. The Enhanced Battle Cloak-equipped ships can go even further and torpedo away while hidden.
* HoistByHisOwnPetard: The game has this in spades, as there's countless examples of players being able to acquire other factions' weapons, ships, even people and turning them against their original owners. Some missions even have players sabotaging enemy defense systems to attack the enemy on the player's behalf.
* {{Homage}}: Kal Dano from "Sunrise" is based on a character of the same name from the ''Literature/StarTrekDepartmentOfTemporalInvestigations'' novels (probably ''meant'' to be the same guy, but [[SeriesContinuityError if so he's a different species and from a different century]]), but he's really just an excuse to make ''Series/DoctorWho'' references. He has a PintSizedPowerhouse timeship that's BiggerOnTheInside, and said interior consists of a circular room around a glowy central core. And he turns up to solve a TimeTravel-related problem with more TimeTravel and {{Technobabble}}.
* HonorBeforeReason:
** The Klingons, repeatedly, to IdiotBall levels. Would qualify as a DeconstructedTrope were it not for the fact the game takes their side every time.
*** In the backstory they react to Federation condemnation of their unilateral invasion of the Gorn Hegemony by breaking off diplomatic relations and beginning attacks on Federation colonies. [[HistoryRepeats Just like they did before the Dominion War]].
*** In the mission "Diplomatic Orders", a Klingon cruiser commander gets information that a Federation diplomat is really an Undine. Does he submit his findings to the Federation? No! He leads a deep-strike into Federation territory to kill the ambassador himself, and instead of coming out firing, he sacrifices the element of surprise to high-handedly demand that the Federation PC hand over the ambassador. The Fed PC reacts surprisingly calmly to this: instead of just blasting the idiot out of space on sight (remember, the Feds and KDF have now '''been at war for four years'' and the Klingon is asking a Starfleet officer on an EscortMission to ''hand over his escortee to an enemy combatant''), he asks to see the Klingon's evidence. The Klingon instead takes umbrage at this supposed insult to his honor and attacks, and because he's up against a {{Plot Armor}}ed PlayerCharacter he dies completely pointlessly and Starfleet makes the kill against the Undine.
*** Then there's "House Pegh". Emperor Kahless breaks away from a covert infiltration mission that is going surprisingly well because he sees an Iconian on a security camera and wants to challenge it to honorable combat. T'Ket at first ignores the idiot, then basically toys with Kahless for a while until [[spoiler:B'Eler {{technobabble}}s away T'Ket's NighInvulnerability. Instead of pressing his unearned advantage home, Kahless cuts off T'Ket's arm then starts monologuing about honor, giving T'Ket time to recover and vape Kahless.]] To hear Captain Kagran and Cryptic's blog tell it, the game views this as a HeroicSacrifice; [[IdiotPlot the players had a much different opinion]].
** In "The 2800", Jem'Hadar First Kar'ukan is so determined to regain the honor he lost by failing to pass through the Bajoran wormhole, he disobeys multiple direct orders to stand down from the female Changeling, whom like all Jem'Hadar he otherwise regards as a deity.
* HoldYourHippogriffs: "Down the [=ChuSwI'=] Hole". Note that [=ChuSwI'=] are from the Franchise/StarTrekNovelVerse.
* HolographicTerminal: Starfleet absolutely loves this trope; first seen on Memory Alpha and the bridge of the ''Enterprise''-F, it was later added to Federation fleet starbases and the revamped Earth Spacedock in Season 9. The Klingons and Romulans have this as well, but not nearly as much.
* HumansAreLeaders: The only race with the Leadership skill, which increases subsystem repair and hull regeneration. An entire crew of purple quality Human bridge officers lead by a Human captain will have a very fast regeneration rate and recover from subsystem attacks that temporarily knock them out such as Target Subsystem: Engines.
* HumansAreWhite: Early on this was true, but the game's humans and near-humans began to be diversified considerably starting roughly at ''Legacy of Romulus''.
* HumiliationConga: [[spoiler:Hakeev]] gets put through one once his plans start falling apart.
* HumongousMecha:
** The Voth have some rather formidable mechs that they employ in ground combat which can be rather difficult to defeat without a concerted effort from a team of players and supporting bridge officers.
** Also the Elachi walkers used in their invasions of various colony worlds in the Romulan Republic story missions and the Rhi Atmosphere PVE, which are a rather blatant shout-out to the Martian tripods from ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds''.
* HurricaneOfPuns:
** ''[[CrowningMomentOfFunny The Tribble With Klingons]]'', Which gives us such gems as: [[spoiler: Whack-A-Tribble, Tribble Savior, Tribble Topia, etc.]] Be warned, this has undergone ''rapid'' MemeticMutation in the player base.
** The KDF has a lot of this. One of the Klingon PlayerVersusEnvironment missions is called [[IncrediblyLamePun "Sulfur My Wrath."]] Players collectively groaned upon seeing it.
** The introductions given to each group of opponents in Hassan's fighting pit on Nimbus III are pretty bad as well.
** Mentioning the word 'Gorn' in zone chat is just begging for a veritable flood of puns based on the word.
* HyperactiveMetabolism: we will have this trope in the future.
* IAmNotLeftHanded: It's easy to play this up with certain ships as they tend to have consoles that many players tend to consider useless and try to dump in order to raise their DPS.
* IHaveAFamily:
** The Republic prisoner on Hakeev's ship says this as [[spoiler: the brainwashed player]] is about to [[MalevolentMutilation forcibly install Borg implants into them]] without anesthesia. It doesn't do them any good.
** Va'kel Shon uses this as his excuse for not helping Romulan and [=KDF=] players get past the Tholian guard in "Temporal Ambassador".
* IJustWantToBeNormal: Poor Miral Paris. She hates the fact that she is considered the Klingon Messiah. She just wants to be the head of security on the U.S.S. Kirk. [[spoiler: Even worse is that the Guardian of Forever confirms the fact that she is the Kuvah'magh.]]
* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: All five missions of the "Breen Invasion" episode include the word "cold" in the title, referring to the planet Breen being [[SingleBiomePlanet very, very wintry]].
* ImplacableMan: If you don't have a frequency remodulator device, Borg drones can easily become this once they adapt to your weapons. The only way to stop them then is to engage them in melee combat, where you risk possibly being assimilated.
** The player-character and their crew can come off as this as well; taking everything the universe can throw at them and coming back for more.
* ImprobableWeaponUser: The Gorn equivalent of the [[DemonicSpiders Klingon Swordmaster]] likes to grab a chunk of the ground and throw it at you. Yes, even on a space ship/space station.
** Orbital Strike for Engineer captains. It doesn't matter where you are--on the surface, underground, on another Federation starship, ''even back in time.''
* InGameNovel: ''[[http://sto.gamepedia.com/Accolade/Lore The Path to 2409]]'', a 29-volume text which tells the major historical events between the end of ''Film/StarTrekNemesis'' in 2379 and the game's beginning in 2409.
* InSpaceEveryoneCanSeeYourFace: While most of the environmental suits and helmet-bearing elite armor sets in the game avert this, it's played straight with D'Tan and a Romulan scientist accompanying him in the cutscene at the end of the last Romulan reputation mission.
* InsurmountableWaistHeightFence: There is one very prominent example on the Starfleet Academy map. Your character is not able to access the waterfront, even though there's only a literal waist-heigth fence in your way - one that you could jump over under normal circumstances. Many other maps (including player-created Foundry stories) use noticable [[InvisibleWall Invisible Walls]]. Those are most prominent around the edges of maps, where your character suddenly can't go any further for no apparent reason, although in some maps (e.g. some of the Borg ones), there are energy fields acting as these.
* [[InfinityMinusOneSword Infinity -1 Ship]]: The Breen and Risan ships. Both have the console numbering of the Fleet ships, are free to Upgrade to T5-U (if applicable), only requires a time investment (usually no more than 10 minutes tops) a day to get what you need to unlock them and once you unlock one, all you need is just a day's run through your other characters to get the rest.
* InfinityMinusOneSword: Many C-Store ships that come with special weapons usually bear the "Infinity" symbol and come with special modifiers that other weapons don't. What makes them Minus One Swords is that they only really scale up to about Mk XI.
* [[InfinityPlusOneSword Infinity +1 Ship]]: The Fleet, Lockbox and Lobi ships. All three are top of the line ships: high hull strength, high shield modifier, usually a superior Bridge Officer layout and their upgrades makes them even stronger. However, getting Fleet ships means being ''in'' a Fleet and getting to the Level required to unlock that certain ship. Lockbox and Lobi ships are even worse as they require an insane amount of money, either real life cash or EC.
* InterchangeableAntimatterKey: The game features periodically changing "Lock Boxes" containing random items that need to be unlocked using a "Master Key," which costs 125 Zen (or 1125 Zen for a pack of 10 keys) and is consumed in the process. The lock boxes themselves drop frequently enough that, unless you use real money or sell/discard the boxes, you're likely to have ''way'' more of them than keys.
* InterfaceScrew:
** Some missions will require you to hide your ship inside a nebula. Inside these nebulae, static interference will obstruct your entire view of everything on the screen save for the UI itself. Your map will also be obstructed by static as well.
** Getting assimilated by the Borg during ground missions will also implement a fisheye lens-type effect on the camera that lasts until your character is defeated.
** Being critically low on health in ground combat will cause the screen to grey out.
** Having your ship boarded by an enemy in space combat will cause the edges of the screen to flash red until the effects of the boarding parties have expired or been neutralized.
** In "The Long Night" part of the Empok Nor map has an effect where friendlies sporadically appear as hostile (red) and hostiles as friendly (blue), causing friendly fire situations until you [[JustifiedTrope activate a series of consoles to pump a hallucinogenic gas out of the atmosphere]].
* InterfaceSpoiler:
** In a mission where you've secretly been in a Holo-Deck the entire time, your away mission's map shows a yellow grid pattern.
** An early Romulan mission involves checking three systems -- Dewa, Gamma Eridon and Galorndon Core -- to see which is the most suitable for colonization to become 'New Romulus'. Thing is, Dewa's name on the sector map was once Dewa III/''New Romulus''. This was later updated so that the sector name lacks the reference to New Romulus until some time ''after'' said mission.
* AnInteriorDesignerIsYou: Sort of; you get to choose what kind of bridge your ship has, and you can now [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5CZZ3M2pbk&hd=1 run around your ship's interior]]. Cryptic has stated outright that they want to expand greatly upon this and eventually give you full control of your ship's interior and possibly even a starbase for player-made fleets.
** You also get to design the ''exterior'' of your ship from several options for each major ship section, natch. It took them a while to add Klingon options, however.
** Starbases have finally been added, which allow for ''very'' limited customization of both exteriors and interiors.
** Also, the Foundary allows for the creation of custom missions, as well as custom mission maps, including indoor, outdoor and outer space mission arenas.
* ISOStandardHumanSpaceship: The ''Avenger''-class battlecruiser is an ISO Standard riff on the usual Starfleet "flying spoon" design, a blocky, beefy, compact cruiser.
* ItemCrafting:
** The system has gone through several iterations and is slated for updates including [[Series/StarTrekVoyager craftable Delta Flyers.]]
** Craftable Delta Flyers have now been removed and are only available through the C-Store.
** This is the only place to obtain the Aegis Space Gear for your ship. Thankfully, it's sellable on the Exchange for those who don't want to work for it.
* ItsQuietTooQuiet: Invoked in the "The Vault", as the player is exploring the inside of the [[ThatsNoMoon massive space station]].
--> '''Tactical Officer:''' "Quiet in this area - too quiet."
* JackOfAllTrades: A few starships tend to lean towards this pattern. This is easily shown with Lobi-bought Tal Shiar Adapted Battle Cruiser and the Jem'Hadar Dreadnought Carrier, as both are heavily armored and shielded ships who can utilize systems that can weaken an opponent in some way while dishing out punishment while losing out on certain things that would make them a GameBreaker
* JackOfAllStats: The Fleet Support Cruiser Retrofit. Not as strong as the Fleet Exploration Cruiser Retrofit, not as powerful as the Fleet Assault Cruiser Refit, not as maneuverable as the Fleet Advanced Heavy Cruiser, but will get you through things in a pinch. In fact, many players opted to keep this instead of going to the equally laid out Guardian Cruiser.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: While rescuing a Federation ship from a Borg sphere, Q, for seemingly no reason than his own amusement, will get involved and start resetting time, forcing you to rescue the ship against increasingly desperate odds. [[spoiler: However, after the third go, he'll then send you and your away team back in time to the battle of Wolf 359, on board the Saratoga, where he reveals the Iconians have opened a small rift, letting a handful of Borg on board, where they will proceed to kill or assimilate Ben Sisko, and throw the entire future into chaos, unless you stop them. After clearing the ship, Q will admit he's moderately impressed, and will helpfully stop time, giving you a chance to get ready for the boss fight (which you ''will'' need).]] He can be an epic jerk about it, but Q seems to be looking out for the human race, and at least giving them a fighting chance against the Iconians' more cosmic level shenanigans.
* JustFollowingOrders: {{Subverted}} in "Cold Comfort". Tran, a captured Breen CombatMedic, was ordered on an attack against a Deferi civilian freighter [[spoiler:to gather intelligence about the Preserver Archive that Thot Trel is trying to find]]. He followed his orders, but tells the PlayerCharacter that he regrets doing so because attacking civilians is dishonorable.
* JustOneSecondOutOfSync: In the mission "Time in a Bottle", the player character and Captain Nog investigate a Krenim artifact. [[spoiler: They discover a Krenim outpost that managed to evade the Vaadwaur's genocide by hiding half a second away out of the "regular" timestream. They also have plans for a great Timeship but need Alliance aid to build it.]]
* KarmaHoudini: The universe has an unfortunate number of these in the main storyline.
** J'mpok gets this as he is responsible for the Klingon Empire's FaceHeelTurn and has committed numerous war crimes like forced relocations as well as conquering the Gorn race. Ultimately, the Federation has to ally with him to keep the Iconians off their back. A DownplayedTrope example as events strip him of most political allies as well as get his best friends killed.
** The Female Changeling gets one after avoiding this in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine.'' After spending thirty years in prison for murdering over 800 million Cardassians and God knows how many other people, she's allowed back into the Dominion in exchange for stopping the Jem'Hadar remnant's invasion. It's also clear she's learned ''nothing'' from the experience.
** Actually {{Subverted}} despite first appearances with the Iconians. [[spoiler: The Iconians look like they get away with massive destruction of the galaxy but they ended up with the same situation as Sela. It turns out their actions caused all of the pain and distress which drove them to all that murder in the first place.]]
* KickTheDog: [[spoiler:Gaul]] does this by [[spoiler:shooting a Talaxian cook]]. In fact he had a complex plan to make certain there would be that dog to kick, that the player would be there to see the kick and that it would be the most senseless kick manageable in the whole Quadrant. When it fails to cause the right reaction from [[spoiler: Neelix]], he proceeds to stomp on the whole litter just to drive home that he is Evil.
* KillAndReplace: Standard M.O. of Undine infiltrators. On three separate occasions in-game they've replaced members of Starfleet or the Federation diplomatic corps, and in one case a Klingon commander, and the Gorn Hegemony leadership in the backstory was infested with them. The infiltration problem was discovered when they tried it on Ja'rod, son of Torg, but [[UnderestimatingBadassery underestimated his badassery]].
* KillItWithFire: Some weapons, particularly plasma-based weapons, will often set targets ablaze when they hit an enemy. Applies to both ground and ship-based versions.
** The 'four spectres' the player fights in Gre'thor and Fek'Ihr himself will also use this trope to devastating effect. Get caught in the area of one of their flame attacks and you can pretty much kiss your ass goodbye.
** The fighting pit in Hassan's Shangdu hideout on Nimbus III features trapdoors that drop anyone (player or NPC) unlucky enough to tread on them into flames which are immediate death.
* KilledMidSentence:
** [[spoiler: Thot Trel During the Breen arc.]]
-->[[spoiler: '''Thot Trel''': "...But... I'm... Thot... Tr..."]]
** Also happens to a Vaadwaur {{Mook}} in "Capture the Flag"
--> '''Vaadwaur soldier''': "Your ship is do--" *incinerated by plasma*
** Clauda, the Tuterian researcher assisting with the Krenim weapon in "Butterfly", gets this as well when saying farewell to her husband
--> '''Clauda''': "I lov-" *gets erased from time*
* KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter: Played with. Torpedoes are far and away the most damaging weapons in your starship's arsenal, but they kind of suck against shields--even if you just have a sliver left, that's enough to negate most of the damage. That's where [[EnergyWeapons phasers and disruptors]] come in, and the Command specialization features a number of traits to boost torpedoes. On the ground, meanwhile, melee weapons have the advantage of ignoring shields and Borg adaptation, guaranteeing a steady damage output if you're willing to risk your skin up close. The TR-116 rifle is a good example of this. While it's only a Mk I level weapon, it can penetrate shields and be shot around corners thanks to that mini-transporter. It can be killer in PVP if used right and very effective against the Borg. The only issue is that they were only available via pre-order from Target and [[ScrewedByTheLawyers the contract has prevented them from making it in-game via rep system or drop.]] That all changed when the transporterless TR-116B became available in the crafting system.
* KlingonPromotion: Not only does the game implement this in the [=KDF=] tutorial missions as the main way a lowly Warrior gains command of an entire starship, but fleets (the in-game "guilds") can also implement a non-violent version of this when leaders have been negligent in their duties; if the fleet leader has been inactive for a set period of time (usually several months), junior members can usurp control of the fleet from them.
* KlingonScientistsGetNoRespect:
** So much so that the Klingons don't actually have dedicated Science Vessels. Instead, they have Birds-Of-Prey, small, ultra-manoeuverable ships that have universal Bridge Officer slots which can be assigned any type rather than being limited to one. Then again, their Carriers have similar capabilities to Science Vessels (less weapons, increased shields, extra Science stations, Auxiliary Power bonus...).
** In-game the chief engineer of the Klingon flagship complains that the engineers do all the work and the warriors take all the credit.
** Demonstrated in "House Pegh". [[spoiler:Kahless is given all the credit for wounding the Iconian T'Ket (right before T'Ket [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice ran him through]]), even though he wasn't even able to ''dent'' it until science officer B'Eler technobabbled away its NighInvulnerability.]]
* KnightOfCerebus: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlZzP61VDZY "So you are the heroes of the Milky Way. You have come further than we expected, but still you chase our shadows. We give you a single warning. Do not attract our attention again."]] Although the playerbase complained about the CutsceneIncompetence of roughly everyone else present, all of whom were armed, in not vaporizing the Iconian on the spot while she was monologuing.
* KnockBack: There are tons of different weapons and attacks that deal this out, both on the ground and even in space. Hell, some types of personal shields your Captain and away team members can wear have the ability to deal this out to anyone attacking them. Romulan warbirds even do this to other ships hit by the PlanarShockwave of their singularity cores exploding when they're defeated.
* LadyNotAppearingInThisGame:
** Some of the promo art features a [[http://images-cdn.perfectworld.com/www/pictures/1353959785786.jpg young female Vulcan]] wearing a Starfleet-styled CustomUniformOfSexy with plentiful cleavage. She's been dubbed T'Its and variations thereof [[FanNickname by the fanbase]][[note]]Canonically, most Vulcan feminine names are "T'[something]"[[/note]]. On the other hand, when the ExpansionPack ''Legacy of Romulus'' was dropped, another Romulan showed up in the promo wallpapers, dubbed "So'Hott" by the players. According to WordOfGod this is meant to be Commander Tiaru Jarok, the captain of the Romulan Republic flagship RRW ''Lleiset'' (the Romulan counterpart to the ''Enterprise''). She becomes a {{Recurrer}} starting with the Season 8 teaser mission "Sphere of Influence" but wasn't in the game until that mission was released.
** Promo art for the second expansion ''Delta Rising'' played this straight again. [[http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/startrek/images/4/49/Delta_Rising_3_caps.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150118000517 This wallpaper]] features a hot female Romulan in a SpyCatsuit, a hot blonde Liberated Borg Starfleet officer in tactical greys, [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers and a big, burly Klingon with a bat'leth]]. Though the Romulan at least bears some resemblance to Commander Mena, the Romulan mission giver for much of ''DR'''s storyline.
* LampshadeHanging: You get an accolade for scanning an anomaly inside the Bajoran wormhole. Its title? "Isn't This All One Big Anomaly?"
* LargeAndInCharge:
** The more important the Breen, the bigger they are. [[{{Mooks}} H'ren]] are a bit shorter than humans, senior officers are OneHeadTaller, and [[BigBad Thot Trel]] is an absolute colossus.
** Exaggerated further with the Fek'lhri, who range from the wast-high Hordelings to the Slave Masters, who are twice your height... and the Horde's senior leadership are even bigger than that.
** The Gorn seem to be fond of this as well; low-level grunts look like anemic midgets compared to their superiors. One could be forgiven for mistaking a high-level Gorn officer for a ''T. rex'' or Franchise/{{Godzilla}}.
** Kar'ukan, the leader of the Jem'Hadar near the end of the Dominion storyline, is twice as big as the other Jem'Hadar under his command.
** The Tholians employ this to some degree as well, most noticeably when wearing environmental suits; Ensigns are roughly human-sized, whereas the Captains are almost twice as big!
** You, as the player can play this straight or even invert it, especially in the case of the "Alien" subclass. It's not unusual to see players running around 3 or 4 feet tall.
** Also applies to NPC starships too; you have dinky little frigates at one end, then massive, hulking dreadnoughts at the other which are considered to be capitol ships and/or flagships for their respective factions.
* LargeHam:
** Colonel Hakeev of the Tal Shiar. To such a degree that [[{{Narm}} he can be hard to take entirely seriously]]. For instance at Khitomer: "I don't care if you have a hundred Klingon ships. You will NOT stop me." And then there is his BigNo at the end of the Coliseum episode. Coming at the end of a rather hammy monologue as it does. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhzDY9r8VvE]] TropesAreNotBad, though, as his hamminess is about the only thing adding some levity to what is otherwise [[DarkerAndEdgier a VERY grimdark storyline]] compared to the other two factions'.
** Noye. After his [[spoiler: FaceHeelTurn and vendetta against the player character, he brings the hamminess up to eleven]]. Like Hakeev, [[spoiler: Supervillain!]]Noye serves as some necessary comic relief.
* LaserBlade: Yes, in ''Franchise/StarTrek''. There are Nanopulse Lirpas and Bat'leths (which is by the way based in an ACTUAL canon technobabble) which give off the glow full time. The one that is kinda controversial is the new Tholian Energy Sword which harnesses energy shot at it's wielder and converts it into an energy blade that reflects incoming fire like a lightsaber. the controversy comes from the fact it's so blatant about it and being an AssPull of tech. It's still moderately popular simply because of the trope though.
* TheLegionsOfHell: The Fek'lhri are a ''space-faring'' version of this. They are malicious souls of the damned. Spirits sent to Gre'thor, the Klingon version of Hell. The Klingons have a story arc where you and your crew are sent down to Gre'thor itself, where you must find why and how the Fek'Ihri reappeared. Along your travels you will fight, among other demons, the physical personifications of Treachery, Cowardice, and Dishonor, then finally Molor and Fek'Ihr, something like the Klingon versions of Asmodeus and the Devil. [[spoiler:Possibly subverted: Your science officer suggests after the fact that the battle in Gre'thor may have been AllJustADream and that the Fek'Ihri were created by biotech, possibly by the Hur'q. [[AbortedArc Nothing ever comes of this.]]]]
* LetsGetDangerous: When [[spoiler:an Iconian shows up at the end of ''Surface Tension'' and casually kills the Klingon High Council, Admiral Quinn points out that they are the reason they should stop this pointless war and work together. Which formally ends the Federation/Klingon War.]]
* LetsYouAndHimFight: In episode "Allies", mission "Memory Lane", the Tal Shiar leak false information to try and get the Romulan PC and an RRF captain allied with the opposite faction to take each other out. This fails, but not before the Romulan PC kills several of the other captain's squads.
* LevelEditor: The "Foundry" content creation toolset. Even in its initial "beta"-ish release state (as Cryptic calls it), it's quite robust and will only get moreso, and will likely allow STO to carve out a very solid niche for itself. Missions by top authors are often favorably compared to canon TV episodes. See Recap.StarTrekOnline for work pages on some of the missions.
* LevelScaling: In order to maintain some of the challenge, all instances that the player enters into will feature enemies that scale up to your level. This also helps please the fanbase by maintaining that the Klingons, the Orion Syndicate, the Gorn, and all the other races you engage in the low level story arcs are still a viable threat against you at level 50[[note]]and that while an assault cruiser (e.g. Sovereign class) is still clearly significantly more powerful than a light cruiser (e.g. Centaur class), it is not by several orders of magnitude as happens when comparing two players with a 40-level difference[[/note]]. Public areas like space conflicts still scale the enemies to their appropriate levels, making it very easy to destroy entire Klingon armadas with only a few phaser shots to drop the shields and a torpedo to finish off the ship.
* LightningBruiser: The Escort class ships. Once you learn and train your tactical officers with the Cannon Rapid Fire ability, you will tear almost any ship's shields to shreds faster than they have time to turn around and start fighting back. Add torpedoes into that mix and they'll be dead in seconds. Defense can be easily enhanced through shielding and skill distribution into science or engineering skills.
* LizardFolk: The Gorn, Saurians and Voth.
* LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading:
** One of the few nearly-universal complaints about the game is that due to the way sector space, solar systems and human-scale stuff is divided, you have to transition between loading screens a ''lot''. Admittedly, because of the way they go from environment to environment in the ''shows'' so quickly, there wasn't all that much of a way of escaping scene changes, but on older machines or lower-quality connections the load times can hurt.
** With the release of Season 10, sector space was revamped from seventeen separate regions into three major quadrants which are enormous to cross, but cut down massively on loading screens.
* LockedRoomMystery: In "What Lies Beneath," the party hears a cry for help coming from the intercom outside a locked room. After breaking in, they find the body of someone who'd just been shot with a phaser, with no sign of the shooter. [[spoiler: It was done by a malfunctioning maintenance hologram and its mobile emitter probably just flew through an air duct or something.]]
* LoopholeAbuse: Following the outcry of "too much grinding" for new ships in the fourth anniversary event, Cryptic introduced a system that allowed players to obtain the ships for alts at a significantly lower cost after unlocking it. Took a year and some change for Cryptic to realize these players were now just grinding for the ships ''now'' and waiting until next year so they didn't have to do the grinding then. They were much faster in stopping players from doing that with dilithium and marks, though, either way, players got angry because they felt Cryptic was being angry.
* LowerDeckEpisode: Played with. You are, of course, TheCaptain, so it wouldn't make sense for you to be deeply involved in one of these. However, the game does offer "[[RedshirtArmy Duty Officers]]," who are semi-randomly generate and whom you can ''send'' on Lower Deck Missions, bringing back small amounts of EXP, EC, dilithium and "Commendation Experience," a second set of levels which give you some new abilities. What's interesting is that [[FanNickname Doffs]] themselves are SeriousBusiness. The cheapest Bridge Officers ("[[FanNickname Boff]]"), the {{NPC}}s that form your [[FiveManBand away team]], start at like 100 EC at the exchange. The cheapest Duty Officers start at ''30K''.
** This is a direct result of free-market economy, plus Starbase maintenance silliness on the part of Cryptic. ''Why'' do Starbase development projects require so many "Common" quality Duty Officers? Why are [[FanNickname Doffs]] spent like provisions or industrial energy cells? Whatever the reason, the fact that every player owned fleet is constantly hungry for [[FanNickname Doffs]] is what drives the Exchange price so far up. [[FanNickname Boffs]] have no such demand, and thus are much cheaper.
* {{Machinima}}: The ''"The Veil Of Space"'' trailers.
* MacrossMissileMassacre:
** The "High Yield Torpedo" abilities allow a single launcher to fire 2, 3, or 4 torpedoes at a single target, but the prize goes to the "Torpedo Spread" ability that fires 3 (reduced damage) torpedoes each at up to 3 targets (9 total) at lowest level moving up to a theoretical maximum of 9 torpedoes each at up to 9 targets (that's up to '''81''' total) from a single launcher at the top end.
** The Borg command ship from the sector invasion events love to use Torpedo Spread on the players. For a ship of it's size, from the player's perspective, it looks like you're getting hit point blank with buckshot from a shotgun. Say goodbye to your shields and 90% of your hull from the initial impact.
** Plasma Torpedoes launchers only fire one torpedo at High Yield (it gets modified into a slower, destructible, but ''much'' more damaging torpedo instead), but the Romulan Hyper-Plasma Torpedo fires three High Yield torpedoes ''as the default mode''. Torpedo Spread doesn't have quite the impact it does on other torpedoes (it goes from 2 torpedoes per three targets to 2 torpedoes per 5 targets), but on the other hand, 10 torpedoes ''is'' pretty impressive for a single attack by a single ship.
** The Breen Transphasic Torpedoes have this in spades. The normal ones fire two or three at once, with a normal shot, but when the Torpedo Spread ability is used in tandem with it, it is a real massacre. And then there's the Transphasic CLUSTER Torpedo launcher, this baby fires a single slow torpedo. When that torpedo gets close enough to its target; it instantly splits into TEN mines. What's more those mines don't have the delay that the normal ones have. The only thing that ballences this weapon is its 60 second recharge time, and the fact that the torpedo is all but useless if it hits strong sheilds. However, if these babies hit a target with a downed facing shield; well, the target will fall way below 25% in health even if it was at 100% before the torpedo blew it all to heck.
** The new Tactical Pilot Ships have one. For bonus points, it's actually micro missiles instead of torpedoes. Feast your eyes: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSwM4NzCxe4#t=275]]
* TheMainCharactersDoEverything: Captain Shon of the Federation, Captain Koren of the Klingon Empire, and Commander Jarok of the Romulan Republic tend to assist the player characters far more than any other characters, possibly excluding the TV series' alumni of course.
* TheManBehindTheMan: [[spoiler:The Iconians, architects of '''all''' the strife sweeping the galaxy. All it took was one Iconian Portal to literally walk into Fluidic Space and mess around with the Undine, a race who simply wants to be ''left alone'', enough times to get them to do all the rest of the work.]]
** On a smaller scale, this trope applies to the Romulan Empire. While Empress Sela does in her own right hold a great deal of authority and power, [[spoiler: The Tal Shiar have always had their own agenda and goals of operation. They work under their own masters, and don't recognize Sela as the true ruler of the empire.]]
* ManipulativeBastard: This is the [[spoiler: Iconians']] [[PlanetOfHats Hat.]] They're responsible for starting ''everything'' that has happened in the first 10 seasons.
* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: During the invasion of Klingon space by [[TheLegionsOfHell the Fek'lhri]], nobody is quite sure whether they're up against demons or artificial constructs. [[spoiler:It may be a bit of both.]]
* MeaningfulName: The R.R.W. ''Lleiset'', to anyone who knows Rhihannsu. ''[[spoiler: Romulan Republic Warbird Freedom]].''
* MediumAwareness: During "The State of Q", Q himself will speak through the yellow text message pop up on screen that says "Intense, isn't it?" These yellow messages are typically reserved for system notices such as when you receive a reward for completing quests, goals, duty officer assignments, and such.
* MegatonPunch[=/=]TouchOfDeath: It's possible (though very rare) to ''disintegrate'' enemy [=NPC=]s or other players with [[GoodOldFisticuffs hand-to-hand]] criticals.
* MeleeATrois:
** More like Melee a Dodécaèdre. The galaxy at the beginning of the game is a huge mess of big wars, small wars, and {{Enemy Mine}}s. The Feds are at war with the Klingons and in border fights with the Breen, the Romulan Star Empire, the Tholians, and the True Way. The Klingons are fighting the Feds and RSE, and have a covert ops war going against the Undine. Meanwhile the Feds and KDF are also ''allied'' in support of the Romulan Republic, which is fighting Sela's RSE and a [[BalkanizeMe splinter state]] ruled by the Tal Shiar.
** The mission "Skirmish" opens up with a three-way fight between Starfleet, the KDF, and the True Way. [[spoiler:The PC discovers later that the Devidians are also involved and attacking the True Way.]]
** Upon arrival at the [[spoiler: Preserver]] outpost world, the player finds several Breen and Jem'Hadar ships fighting for control of whatever's on the surface. The player's crewmates encourage them to attack while both are distracted.
** On a macro scale, the conflict between the Voth, the Alpha Quadrant powers, and the Borg, shown in Dyson Reputation cutscenes and spoken of in the dev blogs. The Voth are fighting the Borg in their home space, as is the Alpha Quadrant, but the Voth are fighting the Alpha Quadrant for control of the Dyson spheres.
** "A Step Between Stars" is initially just between the Voth and the Dyson alliance. [[spoiler:Then the Undine blast their way into the Jenolan Dyson sphere and wipe out what's left of the Voth fleet before engaging the Dyson alliance.]]
** In ''Delta Rising'''s "Borg Disconnected" STF, what starts as an effort to rescue Borg drones liberated after "Hive: Onslaught" from re-assimilation turns into a Mêlée à ''Quatre'' between the players and Borg Cooperative, the Borg Collective, the Undine, and the Voth.
* MemeticBadass: In universe. The player fully achieves this status, complete with random Starfleet [=NPC=]s fawning over the player's character... ''as early as the first moment you arrive at Earth spacedock.'' [[JustifiedTrope Justified]], in that...oh hell, just ''read this page from top to bottom''. Don't even ''bother'' looking behind the spoilers.
* {{Metagame}}: Like many games, it has this. This goes double for the Special Task Force PVE missions. The game's PowerCreep shot this to hell until ''Delta Rising'' arrived, forcing this back and angering players, who failed these missions because they couldn't just faceroll and blow everything up instantly.
* MightyGlacier:
** One way to play the cruiser allows significant toughness (though less than the all-out defense build) while maintaining a pretty dangerous offense. You're still slow and won't turn for anything, but when you shoot (especially broadside) - the enemy WILL feel it.
%%** The various Carriers. With the exception of the Heavy Escort Carrier, Kar'Fi Battle Carrier and the Ar'Kif Retrofit, Carriers are massive battleships with incredibly high HP and shield levels and able to host a plethora of ships (the Vo'quv and the Jem'Hadar Dreadnought take exceptional mention as they're the only ships that launch actual ''ships'', not shuttles)
* MiniMecha: Voth "exosuits", higher-level creatures that act as mini-bosses in Season 8's Ground Battlezone, and are about three times the height of the average player character. They're stylized like fat dinosaurs and have {{Arm Cannon}}s, mortars, and a barrier field that shoves players backwards.
* MildlyMilitary:
** As ever for Starfleet. In fact, you can customize the uniform on your captain and on each bridge officer - while they'll still be Starfleet uniforms, they don't even have to ''match''. With TOS, TNG, ''Deep Space Nine'', the various films, and even ''mirror universe'' uniforms available, they don't even have to have the "new" look.
** Averted with regards to the M.A.C.O. marines, who are definitely NOT MildlyMilitary. The player gets away with the multiple uniforms at higher levels despite being one because they're primarily Starfleet with a dual commission. The STO tie-in novel ''Literature/TheNeedsOfTheMany'' actually shows what being a M.A.C.O. is like and they sounds like any marine you've met in real life. Their uniform doesn't change much, it's based on what Mark equipment your using and how good you are.
* MilitaryBrat: [=NPC=]s in Starfleet include the children, grandchildren, or other descendants of Hikaru Sulu, Mira Romaine, Miles O'Brian, Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres, and Samantha Wildman. (The latter two were born aboard ''Voyager'' during that series' run.) Civilian descendants include those of Harry Mudd and Cyrano Jones.
* MoleInCharge:
** Undine seem to be good at this, given how the ''entire Klingon Empire'' is at war with the Federation because of them. [[spoiler:"Diplomatic Orders"]] has you escorting someone who turns out to be an Undine imposter.
* MookMaker:
** [[GoddamnedBats Klingon Targ Handlers]] will spawn an endless legion of creatures to attack you until you take them down. On the other side of the neutral zone, Tactical Player Captains can summon a two man team of NPC redshirts from their ship to fight for them every two minutes. [[RedshirtArmy But if you combine that with the Tactical Initiative skill]], [[ZergRush which instantly recharges all of your abilities...]]
** Carriers are this mechanically, since the only {{cap}} on how many fighters you or the AI can launch is on how many birds you can have in the air at any given time.
* MoreDakka: Whereas Cruisers are more into BeamSpam, Escorts' ability to equip considerable numbers of rapid-firing cannons puts them into this trope instead. Especially since most cannon-related abilities involve increasing their rate of fire ''even further''. The current king of dakka is the Federation's Andorian-designed ''Kumari''-class escort, a pure GlassCannon with an AlphaStrike that looks like something out of a BulletHell game.
** Guroth, the weapons expert of Delta Flight, practically worships this trope, as he explains when he meets the player;
--> '''Guroth''': "Most weapons on ships are too puny; I make them strong. Have you ever considered what would happen if you loaded ''five'' quantum torpedoes into one casing? You have to reinforce the tubes, but the result is most satisfying!"
* MovesetClone: The Starfleet ''Avenger''-class and Klingon ''Mogh''-class battlecruisers have the same bridge officer layout, virtually identical stats, and very similar unique consoles that act as RecursiveAmmo weapons. Their primary difference is that the ''Mogh'' has a built-in cloaking device, whereas the ''Avenger'' has to use the cloak console add-on. {{Justified|Trope}} as the ''Avenger'' having been based off of stolen plans for Klingon battlecruisers, and the ''Mogh'' being based in turn on the ''Avenger''.
* MultiArmedAndDangerous: The Tzenkethi feature two sets of arms; one huge pair that would make Franchise/TheIncredibleHulk jealous, and a smaller pair used for more precise interactions.
* MundaneUtility: One duty officer mission has you sabotage a provisions stockpile of the KDF. Do you destroy the food or poison it? Nope you just beam over about three tribbles and let them do it for you.
* MyGreatestSecondChance: In the Klingon mission "Afterlife", you'll find First Officer Doran, who was slain in the Klingon Tutorial Mission. You find out that her death was a one way ticket to Gre'thor, Klingon Hell. Your player convinces her to team up with her husband and give her a clean slate so she can go to Sto-vo-kor, Klingon Heaven or more Valhalla.
* MyNameIsNotDurwood: A fairly common misspelling of "Ferasan" is "Ferasian". This may be due to their CaptainErsatz status which causes players to not care about them as much.
* MythologyGag: When the Romulan PC [[spoiler:is captured and subjected to Tal Shiar {{brainwashing}}]], they can acquire a pair of accolades ("There Are Four Lights" and "There Are Five Lights", depending on [[spoiler:whether they fully resist or fully comply with the brainwashing]]) inspired by the TwoPlusTortureMakesFive scene between Picard and Gul Madred in Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration: "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E10ChainOfCommand "Chain of Command, Part II]]".
[[/folder]]
[[StarTrekOnline/TropesNToZ Tropes N-Z]]
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:Tropes A-C]]
* TwoDSpace: While there are three dimensions, the up-down is severely restricted in scope and way smaller than the others. There also is a defined "up" in space, meaning instead of moving freely in all three, you may only move two dimensional with a little height difference. This does not have to be all bad though, since it eases orientation for players.
** The main problem is that the ships are limited in how much they can pitch up or down (to about 75 degrees relative to the plane of the ecliptic) and are unable to execute any kind of rolling maneuvers other than banking during turns. This is likely to prevent players from getting horribly confused and turned around, but it also does make "vertical" attacks difficult to pull off; this unfortunately makes [[LightningBruiser escorts]], with their narrower firing arcs, a bit harder to use than they probably should be.
* AbnormalAmmo: The winter events held by Q from 2012 onward have introduced a whole line of ground weapons that use ''snow'' as ammunition for the [[SnowballFight snowball fights]] held therein.
* AbortedArc: Cryptic has a bad habit of leaving plot threads to just dangle unresolved.
** The Federation-Klingon War is almost completely forgotten after the "Klingon War" and "Warzone" arcs, and every time the two sides meet after that they're engaged in TeethClenchedTeamwork. Cryptic finally resolved it in "Surface Tension", with mixed results.Some players were irritated about the mission glossing over the Klingons' war crimes committed in the name of expansionism and blaming the whole thing on the Undine. Other Klingon players felt the Federation made a far more worthy adversary, or at least unique one, than all the others they fought.
** The Gorn rebellions mentioned in the background literature barely receive lip service in-game.
** The Romulan Star Empire remnant under Sela is forgotten completely after "Cutting the Cord". Later unaborted in ''Delta Rising'', although through WordOfGod exposition. [[spoiler:During the in-fighting after Sela's kidnapping and the Tal Shiar's defeat on New Romulus, the RSE basically lost all political clout and was no longer recognized by any of the other powers of the Quadrant as more and more of their forces defected to the Republic. As of 2410, the Treaty of Algeron has been dissolved (ending Starfleet's ban on Cloaking Technology) and what remains of the Star Empire is a handful of hold out colonies. In ''Delta Rising'' a number of Romulan Intelligence Officers are Tal Shiar defectors who saw the writing on the wall and said ScrewThisImOuttaHere.]][[invoked]]
** The True Way really get no resolution in the Cardassian arc (yes, you captured two of their leaders, but come on, they're a terrorist organization). This gets tied off with the revamped and condensed Cardassian arc, [[spoiler:since you make peace with the New Link which is in control of the True Way]].
** On the KDF end of things, the Fek'Ihri arc ends with a SequelHook ({{technobabble}} to the effect that they may not have been genuine demons from hell) that is left to dangle.
* AbusivePrecursors: [[spoiler: Remember how Picard thought that the Iconians had a bad rep due to their frightening teleportation technology? Thanks to season 7 and the revelations about the Dewans, ''he was wrong. [[ManipulativeBastard Very.]] [[DarkIsEvil Very.]] [[DespotismJustifiesTheMeans Wrong.]]]]
** [[spoiler: As of Season 10, he may not have been as far off the mark as we thought. [[UnreliableExpositor According to the Iconians themselves]] [[DayInTheLimelight in a short story told from the Iconian POV]], they were a peaceful people who tried to help uplift the younger ones... who repaid them with bombing their civilization so thoroughly. Turns out if that happens, you become very VERY pissed off.]] One might be inclined to reject this as self-serving memory [[spoiler: though a Preserver at Lae'nas had already mentioned the Iconians were different, 'brighter' before the first war, albeit his phrasing is ambiguous.]]
--> [[spoiler: '''T'Ket:''' "And they repaid our generosity with destruction! The Whole was shattered. Our world lost. And I will have payment for every drop of blood that has been spilled."]]
** [[spoiler: Even more justified (not in the trope sense but the colloquial meaning) in season 11's final episode in which the player gets to visit pre invasion Iconia 200,000 years ago. Turns out the Iconians weren't as bad as their reputation, but later changed due to the events. Some are willing to get back to a peaceful life - others less so.]]
* AceCustom: Your spaceship. Payload, paintjob, engines, shields, the works. The Federation ships have the largest collection of them, though.
* ActuallyFourMooks: Sensor contacts, and selections, overlap at long range. Though you can probably see visually there's more than one ship, or that if there was a single ship the size of that selection box you ought to be able to see it!
* AdamSmithHatesYourGuts:
** I have to spend twenty credits to get a drink out of the replicator? What, did my crew bring a bag lunch and never use them? For that matter, I have to pay Starfleet to have better guns mounted on my ship?
** Trade goods vary in price at different locations, but always sell for a price slightly lower than the cheapest price you can buy them for, so you can't make trade runs across the galaxy with a full load of them, only buy them for missions and research.
** Also averted in two ways. 1: You don't have to pay a penny to get the stock weapons, shields, etc that come standard on your ship (like the phasers and photon torpedoes that the Enterprise always had; we never saw them trade up for better weapons!). 2: You will get so many loot drops throughout the game that you can sell, so that you will eventually be rolling in Energy Credits (the ingame currency) anyway and can afford the awesome upgrades.
* AnAdventurerIsYou: Initially played straight with the three main classes of ships: Escorts are best at dealing a lot of damage fast, cruisers are best at soaking up punishment, science vessels are best at healing, buffing and debuffing. The lines start to blur a little at higher levels and with some C-store ships like the ''Nebula'' and ''Excelsior'', and there's definitely wiggle room, but by and large each class has its strengths along the lines of the MMO Holy Trinity.
** Blurs earlier than that. The cruiser, with its high hull rating can be a tank, but with engineering crew can also heal itself and a friendly's shields, making it a buffer too. The science vessel, with its strong shields can be a magic tank, and debuffer with good science personnel. The tactical vessel is a good combo of the blade-master and backstabber with good tactical officers, although an escort with the right skills and load-out is just as much capable of taking damage and dishing it out as well. The real difference between vessel types is not determined by their base stats, but the number of bridge crew and console slots for a particular field and ''their'' abilities, which like almost everything else, can be infinitely customized.
** Further blurred by your captain's career. Since captains can fly any of the ship their abilities and traits are added on top of the ships abilities shifting them towards more damage (Tactical Captains), more survivability (Engineer captains) or more debuffing (Science captains).
* AirGuitar: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wMEcxqX2ws One of the emotes.]]
* AirstrikeImpossible: "Delta Flight" has a small squadron of pilot escorts, a command battlecruiser, and the PlayerCharacter fly through an AsteroidThicket to destroy a Solanae space station. Tom Paris makes a number of ''Series/MissionImpossible'' and ''Franchise/StarWars'' quotes to cap it off.
* AlienNonInterferenceClause: The Prime Directive is still in full effect here, both the normal and the Temporal variant.
* AllegedlyFreeGame: Averted. See BribingYourWayToVictory below. You can get the best ships and things in the game without ever having to spend a penny. You just have to spend more time to earn it.
* AllThereInTheManual:
** The game's backstory is written out in the "Path to 2409" item device, which tells what happened between the events of ''Film/StarTrek'' and the game. More information is also written in ''Star Trek Magazine'' such as [[spoiler:that Data and the ''Enterprise''-E returned to Earth, the E decommissioned and Data retiring to become a teacher.]]
** A recurring fan complaint around Season 10's Iconian War. The fighting is ''supposedly'' brutal and galaxy-spanning, with the Alliance at best only winning Pyrrhic victories. Unfortunately outside of five featured episodes and a couple raids, the war seems to be taking place entirely in Cryptic's blog.
* AllYourPowersCombined: There are numerous devices, both ground and space, that grants you amazing bonuses when they are connected together on one person. A handful, such as those on the Odyssey-class, Bortasqu'-class and Scimitar-class, can only be used on that certain class, but many others can be used with any.
* AlphaStrike: This is pretty much the escort's specialty; blitzing a target with massed torpedo and cannon fire to (hopefully) decimate the target before it has a chance to retaliate. Even more so for ships that can cloak, since decloaking grants a brief boost to your attack power. The Romulans are even more specialized here, with better cloaks than the Klingons and two of their unique boff traits ("Romulan Operative" and "Subterfuge") dedicated to improving [[FanNickname "decloak alphas"]].
* AlternateContinuity:
** ''Averted'', in fact; this is the original Star Trek universe, the one in which ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' et al. happened. Vulcan is fine, while Romulus is a shattered husk of the world it once was.
** Played straight in its relation to the Franchise/StarTrekNovelverse. The backstory borrows some details and plots from the novelverse[[labelnote:e.g.]]Riker and Troi had kids, Picard and Crusher married and had kids, the Romulans had a civil war in the 2380s, Ezri Dax commanded the USS ''Aventine'', and Data's still alive and took over as captain of the ''Ent''-E.[[/labelnote]], but discards others[[labelnote:e.g.]]The original Deep Space 9 still guards the wormhole, the two Romulan factions merged back together just in time for [[Film/StarTrek Hobus]], nobody's ever heard of the Typhon Pact, and the Borg stayed away from the Alpha Quadrant until 2409.[[/labelnote]], including the ''Literature/StarTrekVoyagerRelaunch'', ''Literature/StarTrekDestiny'', and ''Literature/StarTrekTyphonPact'' in their entirety.
* AlternateUniverse: The TieInNovel ''Literature/TheNeedsOfTheMany'' has a former Temporal Investigations agent remember events from the game, the Franchise/StarTrekNovelVerse, and the [[Film/StarTrek J.J. Abrams movie]], suggesting that any and all continuities can intersect whenever the heck they feel like it. This actually happens in the Temporal Cold War StoryArc in season 12, with episodes involving the Kelvin Timeline and ships from it becoming available in the Lobi store.
* AlwaysABiggerFish: The Iconians are fond of this one. Just as you're in a fight for your life with [[spoiler: Empress Sela]], an Iconian ship [[spoiler: shows up, snags her ship and sucks her through a Gateway.]]
** It should say something that after everything we went through with the Dominion in Deep Space Nine that for the Dominion's official policy revealed by Eraun in an optional conversation is "Take what you want Mr. Iconian Sir." ''What the hell are the Iconians doing that made the '''DOMINION''' curl up and act like a nerd being picked on by the captain of the football team!?'' But funnily enough, "Sphere of Influence" reveals the Iconians have the same opinion of the Dominion.
* AmazingTechnicolorPopulation: Given the game's practically infinite character customization options, it's not uncommon to see player-characters with practically any skin and hair color you can possibly imagine, from the dull and mundane to shades that will burn your eyes from clear across the room.
* {{Ambadassador}}: S'taass, the Gorn ambassador for the Klingon Empire during the "Second Wave" mission. [[spoiler:When [=DS9=] is boarded by the Dominion his first reaction is to leap over the table and tear a Jem'Hadar apart with his claws! His second reaction is taking up the hobby of running up to Jem'Hadar and pummeling them to death with his bare hands and biting their throats out!]] Appropriate, considering his [[Creator/CharlieAdler voice actor]] has been a [[WesternAnimation/SwatKats vigilante fighter jock who flies a custom jet]] and [[Franchise/GIJoe competent versions of Cobra Commander]].
** The Player Characters can become this as well, thanks to a Diplomacy XP system capped by gaining the official status and title of Ambassador, [[AndYourRewardIsClothes complete with spiffy Dress Uniform]].
** Worf in Sphere of Influence.
* AncientAstronauts: [[spoiler: At the end of the Breen arc, a planet is found with thousands of living Preservers in stasis, with many choosing to awaken and explore the Galaxy created by the various species in the Trek verse whose worlds they seeded billions of years ago.]]
** During the mission to Draconis III in "Echoes of Light" you discover [[spoiler: an alien temple with the Starfleet logo prominently displayed, and several murals depicting [=TOS-era=] uniformed figures. You later learn they were time-displaced survivors of a Federation starbase.]]
* AndIMustScream: Getting assimilated by the Borg in ground missions will result in a temporary version of this, as the player will no longer be in control of their character, who will proceed to engage any nearby allies just like another drone until they're finally put out of their misery.
** Gaius Selan gets hit with this in "Uneasy Allies", where Sela reprograms his Borg implants and forces him to help her escape Republic captivity. It's made clear that he was conscious the whole time, and unable to control his actions at all.
* AndYourRewardIsClothes: The Vice Admiral overcoat and Ambassador dress uniform awarded to Federation players for reaching those ranks.
** Romulan players receive shoulder pads in lieu of pips that eventually gain a cape that becomes more elaborate with rank.
* AntiAir: During the mission 'Cutting the Cord', the player can use their personal weapons to shoot down a Romulan Scorpion fighter craft.
** Also the case in 'Sphere of Influence', 'A Step Between Stars', and the ground portion of the Solanae Dyson Sphere where the player shoots down airborne swarmer drones.
* AntiGrinding:
** You can kill enemies again and again to level up, but you earn a lot more experience points doing the missions assigned to you.
** The Dyson Joint Command reputation system was an attempt at this compared to the other rep systems; it worked so well that the devs decided to overhaul the Romulan, Omega, and Nukara rep systems to match it in Season 9.
* AntiRageQuitting: Multiplayer raids (called Special Task Forces, or "[=STFs=]" for short) feature a quitting penalty that bans people who leave early from queuing for another STF for two hours. This is not applied to private queues and switches off after fifteen minutes in the scenario, just in case people are quitting because the scenario has become genuinely unwinnable.
* ApocalypticLog: Several of the random exploration missions on dead worlds or empty stations. Examples include [[AxCrazy mind control experiments]] GoneHorriblyWrong, [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace teleportation experiments]] GoneHorriblyWrong, and other such things [[OverlyLongGag Gone Horribly Wrong.]]
** The 15th installment of "Tales of the War" consists of a letter from a doomed colony world annihilated by the Heralds.
* AprilFools: April 2017 saw the introduction of the "Artisanal Sonification System", which when enabled replaced the game's normal sound effects with people comically imitating, or even speaking, them.
* ArbitraryMaximumRange: In space combat, 10 kilometers. Some ships can cross that distance in a handful of seconds. Some turret satellites and the fleet starbase in the PVE missions involving it can engage targets slightly beyond this range however.
* ArbitraryMinimumRange: The Starfleet ''Avenger''-class battlecruiser's unique console, the Variable Auto-Targeting Armament, cannot be fired if the ''Avenger'' is within 2 kilometers of its target. Same with the Romulan Hyper-Plasma Torpedo available through the reputation system. In both cases there's a good reason: they're AreaOfEffect weapons, and in the case of VATA, the further from your target you fire it, the more [[RecursiveAmmo submunitions]] it will have time to fire. Similar reasoning prevents the player from using the ability "Call Emergency Artillery" when too close to the target.
* ArcNumber: 47 has always been an in-joke in Trek productions. STO turns it into this with a subtle and easily missed WhamLine in the Romulan Faction mission "Sleepers." [[spoiler: Species 0047 is the Borg Designation for the Iconians]]. There's also the main deck on Earth Spacedock (deck 47), the Borg's Unimatrix 0047 command ships, and the default registry for the Federation's NPC Galaxy-X dreadnought is NCC-170147.
* ArcWelding: Many of the game's storylines manage to tie together plot elements from across Star Trek Canon;
** The Iconians and their Gateway technology, introduced in the Next Generation episode [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS2E11Contagion "Contagion"]] as an extinct precursor race[[spoiler: end up being the main force behind the events of the game's storyline, with the Iconians themselves being the BigBad and ManBehindTheMan for most of the events post-Star Trek Nemesis. Their servitor races include the Elachi (The unnamed alien raiders from the Enterprise episode [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS01E12SilentEnemy "Silent Enemy"]], the Solanae (the Solanagen-based aliens from the TNG episode [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E5Schisms "Schisms"]]), the Vaadwaur (from the Voyager episode [[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS6E7DragonsTeeth "Dragon's Teeth"]]), and even the [[PuppeteerParasite neural parasites]] from [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS1E24Conspiracy "Conspiracy"]]. The Tal Shiar also ally with the Iconians, tying the Legacy of Romulus arc into the larger Iconian conflict.]]
** The Future Proof and Yesterday's War episodes also [[spoiler:tie together the Temporal Cold War and the Xindi story arcs from Series/StarTrekEnterprise via time travel, and the player is present at several key events like General Vosk's escape to the alternate-1930s from [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS04E01StormFront "Storm Front"]] and the Battle of Procyon V from [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS03E18AzatiPrime "Azati Prime"]].]] The player's allies during these events include [[spoiler: Temporal Agent Daniels, a 29th Century Starfleet Timeship crew, and Scotty and Chekov from The Original Series.]]
** It turns out the entire Temporal Cold War was triggered by the [[spoiler: events of [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS3E19CaptainsHoliday "Captain's Holiday"]]. Kal Dano, creator of the Tox Uthat, is a 31st century time traveler and the dead time pod pilot from the Enterprise episode [[Recap/StarTrekEnterpriseS02E016FutureTense "Future Tense"]]. The player is the one helping Kal evade the Tholians and Vorgons trying to steal his device, but is too late to stop the Tholians from using it to destroy the Na'Kuhl star, triggering their StartOfDarkness. The player eventually buries it on Risa in the 22nd century where Captain Picard will eventually dig it up.]]
* ArchaicWeaponForAnAdvancedAge:
** The game continues the Klingon trend of charging right in with a bat'leth instead of staying back and shooting, and adds a couple lesser-known types of edged weapons (Vulcan lirpa, Tsunkatse falchions and Nausicaan Tegolar swords). Given a justification this time: basically everyone has a personal deflector shield that works fine against ranged weapons, but 80% of melee damage, whether from a sword, PistolWhipping, or Kirk-fu, goes straight through to the target's HP. This is especially useful against the Borg, who will adapt over time to energy weapons and force you to re-frequence, but against certain types of drones also leaves you open to a OneHitKill by assimilation.
** In the shuttle {{PVP}} added in the Season 8.5 update, the [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries TOS]]-era Type F shuttle is considered one of the top competitors, regularly beating players flying ''Peregrine''-class attack fighters or runabouts from ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine''. This is roughly the equivalent of a UsefulNotes/WorldWarI biplane shooting down an F-22.
** Justified with the Xindi lockbox ships added in Season 9.5. Though they look physically identical to the ships from ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' 250 years earlier, [[AllThereInTheManual Cryptic's blog]] says that the Xindi continually updated them to keep up with newer classes. No such justification is given for the equally old ''T'varo''-class light warbird, whose T5 version is surprisingly deadly for a 250-year-old design.
** A Kirk-era Type 2 Phaser packs more of a punch than a standard 25th Century Type 2 Phaser (and ''scales'' with the player's level), even though the 25th Century phaser is ''supposed'' to be ''two centuries'' more advanced.
%%*** Justified in FlavorText where it is explained that the older phaser models were more crude and dangerous, in return for a higher damage output. The focus seems to have shifted away from damage to stunning. Sadly we don't get to see the latter in gameplay. StarSword's note: Commenting out justifying edit while I fact-check it; will combine into preceding line if true.
** A replica of Zefram Cochrane's shotgun exemplifies both ShotgunsAreJustBetter and KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter. It packs a hell of a punch, dealing shield-bypassing kinetic damage with the potential to inflict BlownAcrossTheRoom. All this from a weapon design that was likely an older model when Cochrane was using it almost three hundred and fifty years prior.
** In season 11's Admiralty system, the NX-class from ENT has better stats than several 23rd and 24th century starter ships.
*** Justified in that its a replica: 25th century toys in a 22nd-century-looking box
* ArmCannon: A standard feature for tactical and higher Borg drones, as well as some classes of Undine troops. Players can also acquire one from the Species 8472 reputation system.
* ArmorAndMagicDontMix: A starship variant of this in space combat, with the "wizard" class being the science vessel family of ships (essentially anything with a Commander Science bridge officer slot). Typically a science vessel mounts fewer weapons (usually 3 forward, 3 aft) and has a weaker hull than a cruiser or escort, though they often have better DeflectorShields. One of the better examples is the ''Nova''-class, capable of tremendous {{Technobabble}} but with little staying power in a slugging match. It gets played with considerably, though, since the game typically lumps carriers in with science vessels, and [[GlassCannon escorts]] often have even weaker hull and shield values than science vessels, at least in theory (equipment and captain class can make a big performance difference for any ship).
* ArtifactTitle: [=STFs=]. A FunWithAcronyms title meaning "Special Task Force", they were meant to describe the Borg PVE missions and were never used again. However, it's totally not uncommon to see players refer to ''any'' PVE mission as an STF.
* ArtificialAtmosphericActions:
-->'''Starfleet NPC:''' [[MemeticBadass Is that (Rank and Player Name), captain of the (Ship Name)?]]
** If a custom title is used, that replaces the Rank when people speak to you. This can lead to some strange results, however.
-->'''Starfleet NPC:''' Good day, Moist (Player Name).
* ArtificialStupidity: The Borg seem to ignore any mini-ships you send at them, like the Scorpion Fighters. All you have to do is run outside of combat range while they slowly but surely deal hull damage and eventually destroy them.
* ArtEvolution: Many characters have been modified over the years. Of major note is Empress Sela and Ambassador Worf, both of whom were modified to resemble the actual characters once their actors (Denise Crosby and Michael Dorn, respectively) gave their permission to use their likenesses.
* ArtisticLicenseAstronomy:
** You'll be hard pressed to find any area of space outside of Earth that isn't engulfed by millions of miles of stellar gasses, dusts, and nebulae painting the backdrop, and AsteroidThicket is in full effect here. Later maps are much better about this. Mainly because a lot of people complained. A good example is the revamped ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' exterior which ditched the nebula for black space, with a hint of the purple Denorios Belt that was sometimes seen in the series and a lens flare sun representing the Bajoran star.
** The name of the "close flyby of the DysonSphere's sun" map in "A Step Between Stars" is "Brown Dwarf". A [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf brown dwarf]] is a star that failed to ignite ''at all''.
** Distances in sector space are way off. For example, Wolf 359 is a real star, located 7.8 light-years from Sol. In-game it's more like three, which is closer than Proxima Centauri should be.
* ArtisticLicenseMilitary:
** Using rank as a synonym for CharacterLevel (from Lieutenant at level 5 to ''Fleet Admiral'' at level 60) results in a lot of OutrankingYourJob and means the player is frequently taking orders from people they outrank by several grades, as well as resulting in a ludicrous ''Fanfic/MarissaPicard''-like situation where you apparently went from junior officer to 5-star in ''eighteen months''. It also inconveniences the developers in the event they ever want to raise the level cap again: the increase in rank cap to fleet admiral resulted in jokes that the next expansion would make you President of the Federation.
** Miral Paris is a Starfleet security officer, which according to the game's conventions means she should be wearing a red uniform: red is for security and tactical personnel, as well as commanding officers and admirals. For some reason they have her in yellow, which is for operations and engineering specialties (though it included security personnel in the ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' timeframe, which was when her mother served as an engineering officer; this is possibly a misplaced use of GenerationXerox). Season 10 makes the same error in the opposite direction by putting Sarish Minna, Deep Space 9's operations officer, in a red security/tactical uniform. Possibly the devs confused the term "operations officer" with the post of "''strategic'' operations officer" held by Worf in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' (for which he wore a red uniform).
* AsLongAsItSoundsForeign: With {{Con Lang}}s, no less.
** The game borrowed bits of the worldbuilding done by Creator/DianeDuane for her ''Literature/{{Rihannsu}}'' novel series for the Romulan Republic in the ''Legacy of Romulus'' expansion. Unfortunately, [[http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=884961 Rihan language geeks have noted]] that "''Mol'Rihan''", the in-game Romulan translation of "New Romulus", is grammatically incorrect: they just slapped "mol'" ("new", but it's supposed to be a ''suffix'') onto ch'Rihan (Romulus in Romulan, literally "[homeworld] of the Declared"). Among the more more accurate translations would be "''ch'Rihan'mol''". They also frequently try to use Romulan words for {{Meaningful Name}}s, only to misuse or misspell them (e.g. getting the 'a' and the 'e' backwards when they tried to use "laehval" ["shadow"] for Sela's flagship IRW ''Leahval''), and forgetting that Duaneian Romulans don't name ships or people after abstract ideas (RRW ''Lleiset'', meaning "freedom").
** Their ''tlhIngan Hol'' is equally bad. A particularly common mistake is forgetting that Romanized Klingonese is capitalization-sensitive (i.e. 'q' and 'Q' represent different sounds). For example, there's a ship in the backstory named the IKS ''Quv''. They were presumably going for ''quv'' (personal honor) rather than ''Quv'' (spatial coordinates).
* AscendedExtra: Many one-shot characters and alien species from the TV series are major players in the game's storyline.
* AscendedFanon: [[invoked]] More accurately, Ascended Licensed-But-Non-Canon Material. The game follows the movie and television canon to the letter. Cryptic does, however, have the option of incorporating "soft canon" like the novels however they please, so they've gone ahead and thrown in a few things like the ''Luna''-class from ''Literature/StarTrekTitan'' and [[Literature/StarTrekNewFrontier Captain Mackenzie Calhoun]], and stated that the ''Titan'' novels will be part of the game's backstory as Riker's first command (except for the ''Destiny'' series where [[spoiler:the Borg Collective gets finally destroyed]]). There isn't yet a comprehensive list of what has or hasn't been put in from soft canon, however.
** The ''Vesta''-class starships added in Season 7 are a direct reference to the ''Destiny'' novels.
*** Ezri Dax's command of the U.S.S. ''Aventine'' is also mentioned by Commander Matthias in the 2014 revamp of "First Contact Day".
** The harness-like designs and special combat functions of many of the away team "kits" (not to mention the [[{{BFG}} big screwoff disruptor-miniguns]] and the like) suggest that ''VideoGame/StarTrekEliteForce'' may well be continuity with STO as well.
** The mention of the Literature/StarfleetCorpsOfEngineers and of the ''U.S.S. [=DaVinci=]'' in a couple of non-story mission suggest that some elements of the S.C.E. novels may be canon now, as well.
** That whole business about Andorians having four genders is almost completely taken from the books.
** The ''Literature/{{Rihannsu}}'' novels, which fleshed out the Romulan culture, seem to have been incorporated completely, as well, with Romulan missions making multiple references to what was depicted therein.
** Some of the ''Literature/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineRelaunch'' novels are canon, too; certainly the book about Garak (written by Andrew J Robinson no less), as the past religion of Cardassia is in the game. However, it seems the entire series hasn't been incorporated whole-cloth, as The Sisko doesn't seem to have returned yet, among other things. They may be saving ''that'' one for an in-game event.
** [[Literature/StarTrekTitan Admiral]] [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Leonard James]] [[Franchise/StarTrekNovelVerse Akaar]] used to show up in one mission during the [[spoiler: Romulan]] arc. Said mission was one of the casualties when the arc was revamped, however, and there is no indication it or Admiral Akaar will reappear in some other form.
*** He still shows up in the cross-faction meeting place for lifetime subscribers, the Anenigma Nebula, which is itself functions just like the "Captains' Table" from that set of novels.
** Elements of the epic Creator/DianeDuane [[http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Spock%27s_World novel]] ''Literature/SpocksWorld'' show up in a Diplomacy mission on Vulcan.
** The Romulan farming colony on Virinat is from the Franchise/StarTrekNovelVerse.
* AscendedMeme: During the two-year anniversary event, you could ask Q Junior where Captain Sulu was.[[labelnote:explanation]]MemeticMutation from the constant requests from new players how to find him, due to poor wording of the mission directions.[[/labelnote]] He would complain about [[DiscreditedMeme your use of an ancient meme]].
** During the fifth anniversary event, Q Junior would occasionally comment in a pop-up while in the Deep Space 9 space map, "Is Kurland here?"[[labelnote:explanation]]MemeticMutation from [=DS9=] CO James Kurland's voiced lines in "Boldly They Rode".[[/labelnote]]
*** Again referenced in the final mission of the Iconian War arc, when he gets into trouble: "Kurland here... (static)" [[spoiler:You get to save him.]]
* AsteroidMiners: Players can now strap on their EVA suit and mine for in-game currency on, yep, an asteroid.
* AsteroidThicket: Usually as a planet's rings or a debris field. At least in the early missions, though, [[NarmCharm it's just a bunch of rocks floating in the middle of nowhere, for no reason whatsoever.]] Worse, the thickets tend to exist just around the mission area. Meaning that if you're not surrounded by asteroids you're likely far from where you should be. Less of a problem with later missions.
* ATeamFiring: Dual pistols, miniguns, and assault rifles have a spray-and-pray special ability which, fittingly, has a chance to cause Expose. The primary fire is actually very accurate.
** Also the case with the Cannon: Scatter Volley ability which modifies your ship's cannons and turrets to fire a huge burst in the general direction of the primary target; it's good for firing on a group of enemies, but even then not all of the shots will hit a target.
** Players will occasionally have instances where they will miss their target repeatedly in space combat due either to low accuracy skill modifiers, bad luck in the game engine's random [=hit/miss=] generator, or a combination thereof. Tends to happen most often with small, fast-moving targets such as fighters & shuttles.
* AttackItsWeakPoint:
** {{Invoked|Trope}}, as basic offensive tactics are to batter down one shield facing with energy weapons and then finish with torpedoes to the exposed hull, though this blurs considerably in the metagame.
** The battle against the Doomsday Device requires you to launch Hargh'Peng torpedoes right down its throat. By the way, [[OhCrap that's also where it shoots back from]].
** Also the case with the Borg transwarp gates in the Infected & Khitomer space [=STF=]'s; the gate cannot be damaged until the nanite generators and transformers (in that order, mind you) on either side of it are destroyed. Or until you are very good and know what to do.
** Attacks to the sides or from behind in ground combat deal additional "flanking" damage in addition to the normal damage inflicted (applies to both players and [=NPC=]'s, so beware).
** Some of the passive abilities unlocked at tier 3 of the intelligence officer specialization make attacks from the enemy's rear even more devastating, and allow for flanking damage in space combat (which originally could be done only by 'raider'-type ships like the Klingon Bird of Prey and Breen Plesh Brek) regardless of what kind of ship the player is flying.
* AttackOfThe50FootWhatever: The Voth ground forces includes a massive, Tyrannosaurus-like dinosaur as one of the bosses. God help anyone foolish enough to attempt to take it on alone.
** The 2012 winter event added a giant snowman as the boss for the snowman attacks that took place there (although that is possible to solo).
* AttackPatternAlpha: Alpha and its variants appear as buff skills that provide an edge in battle.
* AttentionDeficitOohShiny: Ten of Ten, a Liberated-Borg Caitian duty officer who is obtained through a critical success from the Support B'Tran Cluster Colonization Efforts assignment.
-->''"My time in the Collective honed me. I am more focused on ... hey, that light is blinking!"''
** The fact that Ten of Ten is a ''[[CatGirl Caitian]]'' makes it even funnier to anyone who's ever driven a cat insane with a laser pointer.
* AwesomeAnachronisticApparel: Who says you can't wear a Tux in the 25th Century? This also extends to anyone who wears the various older uniforms of Starfleet.
** Played with with the introduction of ''future'' uniforms. Obviously anachronistic, presumably awesome in your eyes if you decide to use them -- and exactly the opposite of old-fashioned.
** Partially averted as of late, with the standardization of the Odyssey uniform; you can still wear whatever you want, but now all crew, new officers, and {{NPC}}s will wear the same uniforms rather than some combination of the old Sierra/Antares uniforms.
* AwesomeYetImpractical: Antiproton Weaponry. The strongest energy weaponry type in the game, it comes with a natural [=[CrtlD]=] tag, meaning it gives 20% extra Critical Damage. However, for the longest time, AP weaponry were only purchasable through the Dilithium store or in Fleet Stores, meaning both were prohibitively expensive[[note]]The Dilithium store sold them for about 20,000 Dil while the Advanced Type in Fleet Stores were 20,000 Fleet Marks and 8,000 Dil, but Fleet Stores had a limit on how many items were available to be purchased[[/note]] to obtain. It wasn't until the Feature Episode "Sphere of Influence" when AP weaponry became widely available, even if its modifier was [Acc]x2
** Later on, Antiproton weapons became the go-to kind though, since their raw damage is unmatched and acquisition became less of an issue.
** Tricobalt torpedoes. They're the strongest of the Torpedo types, cause an AOE damage to those around it and can disable ships and push them. However, they have an ungodly reload time (30 seconds) compared to the other types (6-10 seconds) and can be targeted and destroyed, which is very bad for PVP. The only way to mitigate this problem is if you have [=DOFF=]s who have a chance to knock down your Torpedo's cooldown timer.
** The 2x EXP bonuses the game sometimes gives out. It warps you too fast through the game and if you've just started, then you've missed out on a lot. This is especially painful with the KDF and Romulans as, unlike the Federation, they have to reach a certain ''mission'' to obtain their new ship and by that time, they'd hit Level ''20''
** Most Hybrid/Special space weaponry. With the exception of Dominion Polaron, Plasma/Disruptor, Piercing Tetryon, Caustic Plasma[[note]]All mission-based weaponry[[/note]], Protonic Polaron, Romulan Plasma, and Refracting Tetryon[[note]]All Reputation-based weaponry[[/note]], they're all Lockbox-obtainable weapons. However, the box set they come in never specifies what you're gonna get, thus it's a gamble to even check and it's very possible that you'd end up with a ground weapon instead. As well, good luck trying to get them on the Exchange, as they're usually a good 5-6 million each.
* TheBadGuyWins: The Iconian War. [[spoiler:The PlayerCharacter retrieves an Iconian MacGuffin via TimeTravel and gives it to the Iconians, who just up and leave. The Alliance ''calls'' it a victory, but really it's at best an incomplete ceasefire: not only do the Iconians refuse to do anything about the billions of innocent people they murdered or made homeless, they don't even bother to keep their AxCrazy sister T'Ket from continuing the war on her own.]]
** DownplayedTrope: The Alliance ''does'' achieve their stated goal at the outset of the war, [[spoiler: and the Iconians don't -- but this is only because the Alliance's goal was 'survive as peoples without surrendering to Iconian servitude' while the Iconians wanted servitude or extermination prior to getting the MacGuffin, so the Alliance victory is something of a technicality to the billions of victims.]]
* BadassCape: One of the clothing options for veteran and Honor Guard KDF players, as well as Romulan players upon reaching the [[FourStarBadass Admiralty]] ranks.
* BadassCrew: Whoo, boy, this trope is there in spades. Depending on your starting faction, you're either the survivors of Klingon attacks (plus Borg attacks for the 25th Century Starfleet faction), a group of KDF members who go off for glory or survivors of Tal Shiar attacks. As you play the game, your list of who can join you grows as characters from both sides of the alignment spectrum joins you!
* BadassLongcoat: By the time you reach Level 50 (the level cap prior to Delta Rising), you are very badass indeed. And what is your reward for all this badassery? A knee-length Vice Admiral's overcoat.
** With the Uniform updates of Season 9.5, the VA overcoat is outdated. But there are three special longcoats 200 day and lifetime subs gets - the Odyssey Long Jacket, the Bortasqu' Long Jacket and the Romulan Admiral's coat.
** The senior Vaadwaur ground troops (Tech Officers and Overseers) rock these as well.
* BadassLongRobe: The content update "Common Ground" added off duty outfits for the players to wear, including a selection of robes.
** NPC [[EliteMooks Klingon Captains & Dahar Masters]] will also sport these.
** Fleet embassies that have reached a certain level can unlock these for members.
* BadPresent / BadFuture: Just as the episode it is a sequel to, technically ''Temporal Ambassador'' is the present from the perspective of your character, but in all other respects fits Bad Future better -- up to and including being the result of someone from the past ending up in the future.
* BaldOfAwesome: One of the customization options for your character is to lose the hair and make like Picard or Sisko.
* BaldOfEvil:
** Obisek plays this early on in the Romulan storyline.
** Hakeev plays it even straighter throughout the entire storyline.
** Also male Orions when the player is fighting against them.
* BaitAndSwitchBoss: Inverted in the [[DummiedOut now-deleted]] mission "State of Q", when [[PhysicalGod Q Junior]] tosses you into battle against [[OhCrap three Borg Cubes]]... and then when they're just outside your weapons range [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Mlk0dgLlc#t=1m57s he decides to go easy on you and handwaves two of the Cubes out of existence.]]
* BalkanizeMe: The {{Backstory}} of how the Romulan Star Empire breaks up and unites repeatedly, [[JustForFun/SurprisinglySimilarStories strikingly resembles]] what happened to [[Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse a certain other franchise's]] [[TheEmpire Empire]]. The first part is borrowed from the Franchise/StarTrekNovelVerse post-''Nemesis'', where Senator Tal'aura and Commander Donatra had a falling out and Donatra led part of the military to form the Imperial Romulan State. In the game backstory, the RSE and IRS eventually merged back together ... just in time for Hobus to cut the heart out of the Empire and fragment it beyond belief. Nowadays a large chunk of what's left of the Empire is a military dictatorship under Empress Sela, with the [[StateSec Tal Shiar]] practically a state unto itself, while several breakaway colonies and the Reman Resistance have united under Proconsul D'Tan (Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration: "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E7Unification1 Unification]]" two-parter) to form the Romulan Republic (the player Romulan faction), with Federation and Klingon backing. By the endgame WordOfGod and implications in-game indicates the situation has more-or-less flipped, but is no less balkanized -- [[spoiler: Sela's Empire has been reduced to a few holdout colonies not even able to scrape up a fleet equivalent to that the Republic began with, the Tal Shiar ''is'' a state of their own but has suffered severe losses and desertion after Hakeev's death, the debacle on New Romulus and the conflict with Imperial loyalists, while the Republic (with the Reman Resistance integrated into it) has grown to encompass much of the former Romulan Star Empire.]]
* BareYourMidriff: One of the premium uniforms is the TOS Mirror Universe Terran uniform. There's also the various {{Stripperiffic}} outfits worn by Orion women in the game (both players and NPC's) that leave next to nothing to the imagination.
** Mirror Universe versions of modern outfits have been added to the Lobi store (yet another in-game currency), and all of them feature this (on female characters, at least).
* BayonetYa: The Klingon Honor Guard disruptor rifles have a wicked-looking blade affixed to them under the barrel. Couple this with the rifle striking melee attack, and you have a nasty surprise for anyone foolish enough to get up close with someone wielding these.
* BeamSpam: Beam: Fire at Will is the most literal interpretation given that it ends up with your phasers blasting away at anything in sight, but really, any broadside from a beam-laden high-level cruiser qualifies. If we count cannons, Cannon: Scatter Volley is about as spammy as they come.
* BeardOfEvil: Appropriately, this seems omnipresent in the Mirror Universe Terran Empire. At least for the men.
** Also applies to most male Klingons when the player fights against them.
* BecauseYouWereNiceToMe: This is ultimately the one thing that [[spoiler:brings the Iconian War to an end. When the player goes back in time and aids the Iconians in escaping the destruction of their homeworld and then returns to the present with an Iconian artifact, L'Miren realizes who the player is and what they did for the Iconians and calls the war to an end.]]
* BeehiveBarrier:
** Your away team members can set one up for you to take cover behind. And then you've got ones ''[[UpToEleven on a planetary scale.]]''
** The Engineer gets one automatically around Lieutenant Commander 5 (level 15), bonus points because this uses the same graphic as the Power Armor Block ability in ''VideoGame/ChampionsOnline''.
* BettingMiniGame: With the release of Season 2, Dabo is now been introduced in which you can earn Gold Pressed Latinum.
* {{BFG}}: ''Many of them''. Your away team will likely be decked out with these after about three or four hours of gameplay.
* {{BFS}}: The Klingon Bat'leth sword, which can be used by both playable factions. They are also carried by ''[[DemonicSpiders Klingon Swordmasters]]'', and it would be wise to take them down before they can get close enough to use it.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: The Federation has gone to war. Enough said. Also ''might'' apply for the peaceful hunter-gatherer Aelasans (before their mission was cut) - see the SuperweaponSurprise entry below.
* BifurcatedWeapon:
** The Admiral level variant of the ''Galaxy''-class [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKNsvO5HieY#t=1m25s can separate into the Saucer and battle sections]], just like in ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration''. And then there's the multi-vector attack mode ''Prometheus''-class, which can [[SerialEscalation split into three separate ships.]]
** Among the Tactical, Operations, and Science variety Odyssey Class ships, the Operations can do a saucer separation, and Tactical can launch an escort from the back. Sadly, while you can use both consoles on one ship, you can't use both abilities at the same time (splitting into three sections).
** The Haakona Advanced Warbird available to the Romulan faction can split into two separate vessels. The ship's description mentions that this was developed from technology recovered from the U.S.S. ''Prometheus'' that the Romulans attempted to steal in ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''.
** The playable version of the Elachi Sheshar Dreadnought can pull this off as well; detaching the lower half which then functions as a separate vessel.
* BigBad: STO actually has narrative arcs throughout its main-line story content that feature major antagonists and foils for your crew.
** On the 'Klingon Front', [[spoiler:"Ambassador"/General B'vat, who will do just about ''[[OmnicidalManiac anything]]'' to keep the Fed/KDF war going so that Klingons don't turn on one another.]]
** 'Spectres', the Devidian arc, has their leader, the Shrouded Phantasm, who is responsible for their nefarious plans on Drozana Station.
** Colonel Hakeev of the Tal Shiar is the main antagonist of the 'Cloaked Intentions' story arc covering the struggle between the Romulans and Remans, as well as of the ''entire storyline'' for Romulan players, in which [[spoiler:it's revealed that as [[TheMole an Iconian agent]], he's the true source of basically all the evil that's befallen their civilisation]].
** 'The Fek'lhri Return', in which TheLegionsOfHell invade Klingon space, turns out to be the under the orders of, surprise surprise, [[{{Satan}} Fek'lhr]]. Maybe -- the Fek'lhri actually ''invading'' Klingon space keep referring Molor's (a legendary tyrant, and another of the bosses you defeat along the way to Fek'lhr) destiny to rule over the Empire and the galaxy, and [[spoiler: sensor readings during your counter-invasion of Gre'thor imply the Fek'lhri might have been artificial proxies of some other power]]
** In the 'Cardassian Struggle', the antagonists behind most[[note]]Mirror Terrans have a mini-arc of their own, and the Undine make an appearance in the Federation version of Cardassian Struggle. There's also Loriss and Kar'ukan, the enemy leaders during the final few missions, who operate entirely separate from the others due to having been shifted forward in time along with an enormous Dominion armada from the height of the Dominion War.[[/note]] of the the various goings-on in Cardassian space turn out to be [[spoiler:a BigBadDuumvirate of two rogue Dominion operatives, First Lamat'Ukan of the Jem'Hadar and Laas the Changeling, with Gul Madred, leader of the True Way serving as their front man]].
** 'The 2800' are led by First Kar'ukan, a very stubborn time-displaced Jem'Hadar who hasn't heard of ([[spoiler:and isn't much interested in]]) the peace between his people and the Alpha Quadrant. Along with him is his Vorta, Loriss, [[spoiler: but he stops listening to her when she gets convinced the peace is real.]]
** 'Cold War' features Thot Trel, a Breen warlord determined to rip apart the Orellius sector in search of its buried treasures.
** The Borg [[spoiler:and the Undine (Species 8472)]] serve as big foes during their arcs, and make brief appearances earlier in the game to set up the threat for later.
** The true BigBad of the game, though, is [[spoiler:the ancient, lost civilisation of the Iconians, who once ruled the galaxy with an iron fist and feel like coming back for another go]]. They are TheManBehindTheMan for just about ''everything'' in the first 10 seasons of the game, including [[spoiler:the Hobus supernova, Hakeev's atrocities in Romulan space, the mysterious goings-on in the Tau Dewa sector, the Undine invasion, and maybe even the Klingon Empire's mysterious run-in with the Fek'lhri]].
* BigDamnHeroes:
** ''You'' as a player get a whole bunch of these moments. This is also the entire purpose of the Fleet Support ability, which lets you call in another Federation ship once your hull integrity drops below 50%.
** You're also on the ''receiving'' end of one of these in an early mission: [[spoiler:You find out that the ambassador you've been escorting really is an Undine/8472 infiltrator, and he's beamed back to his ship... a Tethys-class dreadnought that you cannot possibly hope to fight under any circumstances. You can only hope to survive by shooting down the plasma torpedos it spews at you... and then help arrives in the form of the USS ''Kirk'', leading a flotilla of warships which open up an incredible can of whoopass on the dreadnought.]]
** The [[spoiler: U.S.S. Enterprise-F]] coming to the rescue in Boldly They Rode.
** [[spoiler: '''Sela and the Dominion''' of all people show up to defend the K.I.S. ''Annorax'' ]]in "Midnight".
** The climax of the Season 13.5 episode "Brushfire" has Worf and Lady Sirella pulling this, arriving with a fleet of Klingon warships to reinforce the player when they find themselves outmatched by a massed fleet of House Torg loyalists, Tzenkethi, and Son'a.
* BigDumbObject: The Voth Fortress Ship. [[UnnecessarilyLargeVessel 134km long]]. Easily killable [[AnticlimaxBoss by five players.]]
* BigNo: Happens twice; first when the player escapes from Hakeev on Nopada Prime, then again when [[spoiler: Undine!Cooper gets "repurposed"]] at the climax of "Mindgames".
* BlamingTheRailroadedPlayerCharacter: In the [[DummiedOut now-deleted]] and much-hated mission "Divide et Impera", the player leads an attack on what is said to be a Romulan weapons lab, but quickly turns out to be a medical research facility. Unfortunately, despite it rapidly becoming apparent that you're slaughtering helpless researchers, you're unable to stop until you reach the base commander, who gives you a WhatTheHellHero speech, calling you out for "Federation hypocrisy". (According to the devs this was meant to be MyGreatestFailure for the Starfleet PC and lead into a three-mission StoryArc, but [[TroubledProduction the arc was never finished due to Cryptic's rush to finish]]. The [[LevelEditor Foundry]] community eventually stepped in and wrote a couple of sequels, including [[Recap/StarTrekOnlineFoundryDivideUtRegnes "Divide ut Regnes"]].)
* BilingualBonus: The Breen capital ships in the Orellius Sector Block (Snosk, Desna, and Istapp) are respectively named for the Swedish word for "snowshoe"[[note]]Named ''for'', note, not actually ''meaning'' snowshoe. That'd be Snoesko.[[/note]], the old Slavic word for "right hand", and the Swedish word for "icicle".
* BloodKnight: B'vat, far beyond even the standards of other Klingons. He is obsessed with keeping the new Fed/KDF war going in perpetuity, because he fears that without a great enemy to fight then the Empire will turn on itself and rip itself to shreds in civil war, just to slake the Klingon thirst for warfare... [[DumbassHasAPoint just like it, uh, did happen]] in TNG and ''Klingon Academy''. He's willing to slaughter ''billions'', revive terrible weapons [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and kidnap Miral Paris]] to make sure the Fed is willing to fight the Empire as long as possible.
** He's so far gone that [[spoiler:when you meet his past self during a TimeTravel mission, he asks you to give his future self an honorable death.]]
** Amusingly enough, this character (almost to a T) duplicates one from ANOTHER videogame franchise - these are exactly the motivation AND the actions of [[spoiler:Admiral Tolwyn from the ''VideoGame/WingCommander'' franchise, as shown in ''Wing Commander IV'']].
* BoardingParty: Besides multiple in-story examples where you're boarding enemies or they're boarding you or friendlies, the "Boarding Party" Engineering skill allows you to launch crewmen in shuttles to board enemy ships and applies a debuff for every shuttle that makes it through their point defense.
* BondVillainStupidity: Played perfectly straight by [[spoiler:Hakeev]], right down to the EvilGloating, after cornering you in a cutscene in the "Cloaked Intentions" feature episode series. [[spoiler:He spends ''just'' long enough gloating that your ship is able to arrive and beam you out right as his men try to execute you by firing squad. The BigNo this gets from him is worth a laugh.]]
* BoringButPractical: If you're looking to create a ship build for the first time once you hit level cap, nothing says basic like picking up common (white) Mk XI gear. The Exchange usually sells these for much less than their normal value, meaning you can set up a ship build for under 200,000 EC if you play your cards right.
** The Mirror Universe ships are also this. While they tend to just have a different [=BOFF=] and Console layout than their normal counterpart and don't come with any neat equipment save for a different ship skin, they are insanely cheap (going for as low as 95k EC) and, especially with the recent releases for the Federation, makes obtaining certain ships easier. This also goes for the Mirror Universe ships' replacement, the Kazon Raider. Even if you're one of those guys who think the same way as the Borg and think they're all just junk.
** In the same vein, the normal Tier V freebie ships you get. They're not as flashy as the C-Store, Lockbox or Lobi ships, but in a pinch, they'll pull you through.
** A Science Bridge Officer's Tractor Beam ability. Doesn't launch a MacrossMissileMassacre of torpedo's. Doesn't power up your beam array weapons or allow BeamSpam, doesn't grant your Heavy Cannons MoreDakka. All it does, is severely slow the speed and turn rate of a nearby targeted enemy ship and do a little bit of Kinetic type damage. Which allows the Tractor beam user to unleash a devastating barrage of firepower on an area of the enemy's ship with weak shields and/or exposed hull. The Borg Cube NPC enemies, in particular love showing new players just how deadly a Tractor Beam can combo with other weapons.
** Beam Arrays. In terms of firepower of the various ship weapon types, Beam Arrays sit on the low side of damage output. But next to Turrets, they have the second highest field of fire arc, fire 4 times per use, can take advantage of a large number of BOFF abilities, are good at taking down shields, and fairly easy on the Weapon system power loads. The fact that the Mid to End Game Cruisers, typically mount no less than at least 4 of them (2 Fore, 2 Aft), turns them into BeamSpam shooting terrors in a broadside fight.
* BossArenaIdiocy: Apparently whoever designed the arena in "Coliseum" thought it would be a good idea to include panels ''in'' the arena that would allow the combatants to gain control of the security turret guns over it.
* BottomlessMagazines:
** The Zefram Cochrane shotgun from the 2014 Mirror Invasion event has an unlimited supply of 12 gauge shells and never needs reloading.
** On a larger scale, ships in space combat never run out of torpedoes, mines, or other projectile weapons.
* BraggingRightsReward: Having Epic Level MK XIV everything. Many players will tell you that you're good with MK XII gear, but some will absolutely demand that you have to have the best of the best.
* BrainwashedAndCrazy: [[spoiler: Praetor Taris seems to be this. She's pretty much unflinchingly loyal to her "dread masters", and for a Romulan that is ''weird''.]]
* BribingYourWayToVictory: A whole bunch of things, both gameplay-affecting and cosmetic, can only be obtained using "Zen", which must first be purchased by someone on Perfect World Entertainment's website. Having said that, they can then be sold again in exchange for Dilithium, which any player can get a fair amount of every day. So, while ''someone'' has to spend real money eventually, it doesn't have to be you.
** Of course, you can earn all the Dilithium Ore you want, but it must be refined before you can spend it, and you can only refine [[{{Cap}} 8000 per day]]. At current rates[[note]]200 dilithium to 1 Zen; March 31, 2015[[/note]], that translates to roughly 40 Zen per day. Most items cost 400 Zen or more. [[MagnificentBastard Cryptic Studios know what they're doing.]] Granted, it's 8000 ''per character'', and even free players that refuse to invest a cent into the game get three character slots. Still, you can't transfer unrefined dilithium between characters, so that means you have to spend the time to earn 8000 dilithium ''per character'' if you want to reach the full cap.
*** More subtly, many things one can spend money on encourage spending money on ''other'' things. Want a screen-accurate Scimitar? You need to buy all three versions for the gear that lets you have the original's resilient shields and the ability to raise them and fire your weapons while cloaked. The Thalaron weapon is the set bonus for having all that gear equipped on one ship.
** There are also certain ships, non-combat pets, uniforms, and other items that are exclusive to 'veteran' players who purchased paid subscriptions.
* TheBridge: Players can choose from several different bridge layouts for their ships.
* BridgeBunnies: ''Customizable'' Bunnies, no less. Yes, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paLanXn6m94 if you're a male captain you can have an all-female bridge crew.]] [[MrFanservice Yes, if you're a female captain you can have an all-male bridge crew with flattering shirts.]] They also serve as the cornerstone of your away teams, especially if playing solo or in a small group. You can have up to ''fifty-four'' of them under your command, as well (though that involves buying additional bridge officer slots). [[http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp/?date=2010-02-05 Illustrated quite well in this El Goonish Shive strip.]]
** It has to be added that the artist's impression about bridge officer customization was wrong here - she would be perfectly able to do that.
* BreakOutTheMuseumPiece:
** The TOS ''Constitution''-class starships, complete with blue phasers, as well as the Constitution Class Refit skin for the Tier 2 cruiser. The ''Miranda''-class are also still going, while a refit ''Excelsior''-class can be bought and was actually considered one of the top Starfleet DPS cruisers at the time. The NX-class would seem to be this, being over 250 years old at this point, but is actually a ''replica'' with modern systems (apparently the Corps of Engineers got bored or something).
** As of the game's Third Year Anniversary event, the ''Ambassador''-class - the same class as the ill-fated ''Enterprise''-C - is also available, both as a mid-tier cruiser and as a retrofitted end-game cruiser, where it serves as a [[JackofAllStats Jack of All Stats]] in-between the damage oriented Starfleet cruisers and the tanking oriented Stafleet Cruisers. Not quite an elder statesman to the same extent as the ''Miranda'' or ''Excelsior'', but still pushing a century old.
** The Romulan side in ''Legacy of Romulus'' plays this far more literally - your starting vessel is the ancient TOS-era ''T'liss''-class warbird your hometown's mayor used to command, and you and Khev take it as it's your only real ticket out of Dodge. Veril comments later that she's ''amazed'' it hasn't fallen apart around your ears before she came along, and straight-up calls your singularity core an antique.
* BreatherEpisode: "Cold Comfort" in the Breen series. The episode features no combat whatsoever, and only several dialog puzzles.
* BusCrash: In episode "Cardassian Struggle", mission "Badlands", you meet Joshua Riker, the son of Thomas Riker, William Riker's accidental clone who was last heard from when he surrendered to the Cardassians in ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine DS9]]'': "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS03E09Defiant Defiant]]". After the Dominion War resulted in the collapse of the Cardassian Union and the barely averted extinction of the species, the prison camp where he was held was abandoned by the government, and the prisoners turned it into a settlement under Tom Riker's leadership. Tom died of heart failure after rescuing his wife when she fell into a ravine.
* ButThouMust: Happens in several missions, but one particularly egregious example happens early on to KDF players. While pursuing a spy, a group of Federation ships is lured in by a false distress signal and accuses the player of attacking the ships that sent the distress. The player has the option of either insulting and attacking them, or explaining that it was a trick. The Federation captain actually listens, performs a scan, and then confirms that the player is telling the truth, apologizes, and offers to withdraw. However, the only option the player has at that point is to claim they've been dishonored and attack anyway, meaning there's no real diplomatic option.
* BuzzingTheDeck: Episode "Cardassian Struggle", mission "Rapier". After exiting the Bajoran wormhole you can buzz Ops on Deep Space 9. This grants an accolade titled [[Film/TopGun "That's a Negative Ghost Rider, The Pattern Is Full"]].
* CallAHitPointASmeerp: You don't often see a Starfleet captain looting destroyed ships and tacking their disruptors and engine arrays onto their own ship. Of course, in the game you can equip all kinds of weapons you pick up as random drops. Janeway did it a few times.
* CallBack: The future of the Trek verse depicted here is a close, but not quite version of the BadFuture from the Next Gen Finale, ''All Good Things''. However, it appears Picard did slightly alter that future: its still bleak but [[BittersweetEnding it has alot more hope in it.]]
* CanonDiscontinuity: While Cryptic does have the option of incorporating any "soft canon" such as other games or novels as they see fit (see AscendedFanon above), they've also outright discarded certain soft canon events, such as the entirety of the ''Literature/StarTrekDestiny'' novel trilogy and its immediate successors.
** The ''Literature/StarTrekVoyagerRelaunch'' novels are a good example, as only ''some'' of them are in the bin. A character who was KilledOffForReal there ([[spoiler:Janeway]]) is alive and well here. Having said that, another plot point introduced there ([[spoiler:that Miral Paris is the ''Kuvah'magh'', TheChosenOne for the Klingon people]]) is ''also'' alive and well here. But Project Full Circle, the return by a task force led by ''Voyager'' to the Delta Quadrant, was thrown out altogether, with nobody going to the Delta Quadrant until ''Delta Rising'' and the political landscape depicted being very different.
** The wholesale discarding of ''Destiny'' likely stems from the fact that the initial plot outlines and whatnot for ''STO'' were being drawn up in 2008, and the Cryptic team wasn't included in the discussions of how everything would go down - never mind the fact that a lot of non-novel readers would be constantly asking "when are the Borg going to appear?"
* TheCavalry:
** In "Devil's Choice" the Klingons and Federation both send fleets to help defend New Romulus against an Elachi invasion.
** In the ultimate battle for Deep Space 9 in "Boldly They Rode", despite preparing for the battle, the forces to recover Deep Space 9 ''still'' find themselves being pushed back. That is until Captain Shon [[spoiler: of the Odyssey Class U.S.S. Enterprise-F]] arrives to help turn the tide of the battle.
** In "Revelations" the player and the Turei are being pressed hard by the [[spoiler:Vaadwaur]]. [[spoiler:Then two Voth mechs, allies of the Turei, drop in and start in on the Vaadwaur as heavy armor support. The Turei return the favor along with ''Voyager'' in "All that Glitters".]]
** If [[spoiler: the Kazon]] are called in early enough in "Takedown", another smaller group of them show up later to reinforce you due to disliking the way [[spoiler: Maje Sessen]] had arranged for the official [[spoiler: Kazon]] contribution to [[CavalryBetrayal secretly be on the other side]].
** As things look bleak during the Battle of Earth in the Iconian War, [[spoiler: Sela]] shows up with [[spoiler: a Dominion fleet. Turns out she ''did'' get the Dominion to send aid after all!]].
* CavalryBetrayal: "Takedown" includes a multi-stage space battle where you call in one group of allies at a time. [[spoiler: The Kazon]] join up with the Vaadwaur instead when called in. It doesn't really work out for them, since Captain Kim observes he never really trusted them to begin with, and had worked with Admiral Tuvok on a contingency in case something like this happened ([[spoiler:calling in a group of Hirogen who would be more than happy to hunt Kazon and Vaadwaur for a while]]).
* CaptainErsatz:
** If you look around, you will find a lot of custom species characters of non-Trek alien species, recreated to varying degrees of accuracy.
** The Ferasans are essentially this of the Kzinti from ''Literature/KnownSpace'', who were unable to be used for [[ScrewedByTheLawyers copyright reasons]]. Their previous appearance in ''Trek'' happened with permission of Creator/LarryNiven.
** The new ''Avenger''-class battlecruiser is clearly one of the U.S.S. ''Vengeance'' from ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness'' and the Borg Modified Romulan Lockbox ships are this of the ''Narada'' from ''Film/StarTrek'' (in fact, the storyline ship the Borg Modified Romulan Lockbox ships are based on was originally identified as Narada-class -- presumably the fact that technically the ''Narada'' is from the Prime Timeline gave them some leeway). As of the 2016 expansion ''Agents of Yesterday,'' the Kelvin Timeline ''Constitution'' and ''Dreadnought'' classes are available from Kelvin Timeline lockboxes.
* CasualInterstellarTravel: More so than the rest of ''Franchise/StarTrek'', necessarily due to it being an MMO played in real-time.
* CatFolk: The Caitians and the Ferasans.
* Catch22Dilemma: A major meta-problem with the game concerning Klingon and Romulan players: these players want their own unique ships, especially science-themed, something the Federation has plenty of. However, according to an infographic, nearly 3/4ths of the player base plays Federation, so there's no need to make unique ships when there's such a low amount of players in the other two factions, which players don't mess with ''because'' there aren't many ships and they want more.
* ChainsawGripBFG: Blast assault and assault minigun ground weapons.
* TheChainsOfCommanding: The Duty Officer System. Nearly every assignment has a risk to your crew. This means that ''yes'', they can come back on death's door, and ''yes'', they ''can'' actually die (though only if they're of "common" rarity). With this knowledge, do you send your crewmates on a risky recon mission? Do you send your medical staff to fight an outbreak of a deadly plague?
* ChainLightning: A few ship weapons and abilities act this way; the Isometric Charge being the most literal one as it fires a ball of electricity that jumps from one target to the next (so long as there's several enemies in close proximity of each other), doing progressively more damage with each hit. The Refracting Tetryon weapons and active ability from the Nukara reputation also work in a similar fashion.
* CharacterCustomization: Just in case we haven't hammered it home yet: '''[[SerialEscalation Mother. Of. God.]]'''
** While STO comes with an amazing variety of options to customize a character's head and allows for pretty alien looking body proportions, the options for clothing and non-humanoid body parts are far behind those of VideoGame/ChampionsOnline's. This is especially noticable on the Klingon side, where many costume pieces are only available to specific races. [[MyRulesAreNotYourRules Of course, [=NPC=]s get no such limitations at all.]]
** The Klingons also got the short straw for ship customization, with only two designs per ship instead of the Federation's usual three, and even then it took quite a long time before any of them even got a second appearance or allowed you to customize different parts of the ship such as the hull and nacelles.
** Certain Bridge Officers you gain through different means avert this. The Breen, Jem'Hadar and Reman [=BOFFs=] you gain from their Featured Episodes, the Borg you gain from the STF "Khitomer in Stasis", the Romulan Borg and Photonic Tactical Officer you buy with Lobi and [[spoiler:the Voth you rescue at the end of the Dyson Sphere Reputation Line]] cannot be modified in any way.
** The ultimate in this trope? The Photonic Engineering Bridge Officer you get for completing all missions as a Delta Recruit. Virtually every possible design can be used on this BOFF outside of changing their gender or faction.
* TheChosenOne: Turns out [[spoiler:the player character is "The Other", the one who saved the Iconians in their darkest hour.]]
* CivilWar: According to blogs released by the developers leading up to Season 7, it appears the Romulans are falling into this in an attempt to fill the power vacuum left by [[spoiler: Empress Sela's disappearance]] since the mission "Cutting the Cord". As [[AllThereInTheManual 'The Path to 2409']] makes clear, it wouldn't be the first time in recent decades. Or the fifth. Or the sixth. Once Legacy of Romulus was released, it turned out that it had been slightly misleading -- the Romulans already ''were'' falling into this before the spoilered event, with the Romulan Republic (supported by the Federation and the Klingon Empire) on one side and the Tal Shiar and Sela's Star Empire on the other. If anything the spoilered event cut the civil war short, as [[spoiler: Sela's disappearance and Hakeev's death in the same incident]] caused the Star Empire side to disintegrate with the Republic already there to fill the power vacuum.
* Cliffhanger: [[spoiler:The mission "A Step Between Stars" end with this, as we see Koren, Shon and Kaol walking away from each other after the rediscovery of the Jenolan Dyson Sphere.]]
* CloseEnoughTimeline: [[spoiler:"Butterfly" ends with one. History plays out much as it did, but a civilization (heavily implied to be the ancestors of the [[Series/StarTrekEnterprise Sphere Builders]]) that should have survived to 2410 was assimilated by the Borg twenty years earlier while experimenting with Solanae technology. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero This results in the Borg becoming a lot more powerful than we knew them before]].]]
* ClownCar:
** The Klingon Vo'Quv carriers, Fek'Ihri Kar'Fi battle carriers, Orion battleships, Corsair flight deck cruisers, Federation/Caitian Atrox Carriers and the cross-faction Obelisk Carrier can all carry an almost ridiculous number of fighters, and have no qualms about spitting out squadron upon squadron to take you out. Hell, the Vo'Quv, Kar'Fi, Sarr Theln, and Jem'Hadar Dreadnought Carrier can each carry ''frigates''.
** With the Obelisk and its "swarmers", this is even invoked, as the Obelisk is meant to fight by spewing endless numbers of drone fighters at you until you're overwhelmed.
** In an even more painful example the standard "crew deck corridor" for most ships is 180 meters long. Even on ships that only have a 150m saucer section (fleet science vessel retrofit).
* ColdBloodedTorture:
** [[spoiler: The experiments done to Captain Shon and the Romulan who went with him in "Sphere of Influence", inflicted by the solanogen-based race seen in TNG. Shon had his ''left arm and both antennae ripped off, then reattached, as well as being injected with various other painful substances. The Romulan had his entire blood volume replaced with some sort of polymer''... luckily you managed to save Shon.]]
** The Tal Shiar is also fond of using prisoners as guinea pigs for testing salvaged Borg technology, as the Romulan Republic player witnesses in "Mind Game" and the Federation player ''almost'' witnesses in "Desperate Measures" (the Federation player arrive between batches, and promptly destroys the Tal Shiar contingent and rescues the remaining prisoners, while [[spoiler:the Romulan PC has been {{Brainwashed}} and is forced to actually take part]]).
* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: Each playable faction has it's own color scheme (carried over from the TV series and movies), which extends to the colors on the walls, lighting, map sections, etc. The Federation is blue/white, Klingons are red, Romulans are green, and the Original Series Federation is yellow.
* ColorCodedItemTiers: The game uses white for common, green for uncommon, blue for rare, purple for very rare, light purple for ultra rare (reserved for Fleet gear or upgraded items), and gold for Epic (mostly upgraded items and a few mission rewards). For equipment, each tier adds an additional "mod" that grants a bonus like increased critical chance or a bonus to a character skill.
* CombatMedic: The Federation employs NPC's seen on ground missions that are specifically called this; they have higher health and shields than normal medics, and stronger abilities as well, making them an even [[ShootTheMedicFirst higher-priority target]] when you find yourself fighting against them.
** The Romulans and Voth have their own versions as well.
* CombatTentacles:
** The Aehallh worms found in the Colliseum aren't ''exactly'' tentacles, but they're pretty close.
** Changelings like to choke your character by the throat and toss you around like a ragdoll by this method.
* ComicallyMissingThePoint: The Ferengi ambassador in "Surface Tension" is more interested in his proposal to turn the Jenolan Dyson Sphere into "a resort to rival Risa" than on the ''actual'' purpose of the conference, which is to formalize an alliance to deal with the clear and present danger of the Undine stepping up their war effort against the Beta Quadrant nations.
* CompanyTown: The player can be sent to a planet with a Romulan mining town, completely controlled by a Ferengi and a mining company.
* CompetitiveBalance: The idea between the three classes and ship types. Players can customize themselves to extend beyond the original class they chose through skill point distribution.
* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: The D'deridex Warbirds used by the Romulans and Remans can fire several heavy plasma torpedoes in a row at you. Player ships are only capable of shooting one of these at a time.
** Averted in Season 7 with the introduction of the Romulan Hyper Plasma Torpedo launcher obtainable from the Romulan reputation system.
* ConflictBall: To people who haven't gotten deep into the STO universe and plotlines (and maybe even to some who have), the whole Federation-Klingon conflict can easily seem to be a contrived reason to have StuffBlowingUp.
* ContinuityNod / CallBack: The game is positively dripping with them to the point they could warrant their own page.
** The Wolf 359 System. Especially with the Federation memorial in the middle (when you get close you start to hear the comm traffic from the battle).
** [[Series/StarTrekVoyager Naomi Wildman]] is the commander of Deep Space K-7. Icheb appears as a mission giver, too.
** [[Series/StarTrekVoyager Miral Paris]] is a plot-centric character whose storyline first introduces you to [[spoiler: the Guardian of Forever and the MirrorUniverse.]]
** Akira Sulu is the Great-Grandson of Mr. Sulu.
** [[Series/StarTrekVoyager Admiral Janeway.]]
** Among the ships you will hear about will be USS ''Kirk,'' USS ''[=McCoy=],'' USS ''Montgomery Scott,'' USS ''Archer'' and USS ''Tucker,'' among others.
** Sela is the Romulan Empress. Not too many people mind any of this, and it's all quite well-explained.
** The Galaxy-Class bridge set alone has plenty. The side consoles from ''[[Film/StarTrekGenerations Generations]]'', the modified tactical console from the [[FutureBadass future Enterprise-D]] in "All Good Things", and a large transparent console panel behind the tactical station ''very'' similar to the one seen in the ''TNG'' seventh season episode "Parallels".
** One of the engineers over at Memory Alpha before its removal from the game was ''[[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Kirayoshi O'Brien.]]''
** One of the Starfleet contacts at K-7 is [[Literature/StarTrekNewFrontier Mackenzie Calhoun]].
** Deep in Cardassian space, you will encounter Joshua Riker, the son of a transporter-created clone of old Will Riker.
** [[spoiler: And then, who should show up from the mirror universe? Captain James ''O'Brien''. Aboard the [[MeaningfulName ISS ''Molly.'']]]]
** Expect to encounter any and ''all'' types of food that are ever shown or mentioned throughout any of the series, including ''Chateau Picard'' wine. They even have Prune Juice, repeatedly [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration mentioned]] and [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine referenced]] as Worf's drink of choice.
** The entrance to the [[spoiler: Preserver archive]] resembles the Asteroid Deflector from the [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries TOS episode "The Paradise Syndrome"]]
** "The 2800" story arc is not only a continuity nod but also a ''continuation of a story arc from one of the series''. [[spoiler: A Dominion fleet suddenly emerges from the wormhole, attacking (and taking over) Deep Space 9, and still thinking the Dominion war is still going on despite checking a calendar since then.]] Starfleet is baffled by where they came from. [[spoiler: It's the same fleet that the Prophets had seemingly willed out of existence when Captain Sisko and the ''Defiant'' single-handedly headed into the wormhole to confront. Turns out they just kicked the Jemmies 35 years into the future.]]
** Gul Madred from the TNG episode "Chain of Command I & II" is the leader of the Cardassian side of the True Way Alliance. Pity, though, that player captains never get the chance to debate with him whether there are four lights or five...
** Admiral Chakotay was promoted to the head of Starfleet Intelligence in 2406, and thanks to Voyager's encounters with the Undine, he was able to convince Starfleet to start "expecting" them to be among personnel, and start developing technology to help detect Undine Infiltrators.
** Much like the 2800 story arc, the 3rd Year Anniversary mission is a direct continuation of a series episode, this time from TNG and the episode being Yesterday's Enterprise.
** Many of the Exploration Missions were directly these before their removal and possible revamp, involving the Gorgons, the burial remains of the dead alien race from "Masks", and various other stuff (though it tends to play out Kirk-style).
** The mission "Sphere of Influence", introduced in the lead-up to the launch of season 8, could be considered a giant collection of callbacks; the commander of the Romulans' new flagship is the daughter of Alidar Jarok from the ''TNG'' episode "The Defector", the player sees a couple of planets from episodes of ''Deep Space Nine'' and ''Voyager'', and the aliens encountered in the mission are the same ones that abducted and experimented on the crew of the ''Enterprise''-D in the ''TNG'' episode "Schisms". And of course the entire mission follows up on the ''TNG'' episode ''Contagion'' and the ''[=DS9=]'' episode ''To the Death'' with Iconian gateways.
** A possible result of getting a critical success on a Temporal Trade assignment (which you can only access with one-use items potentially found in an opened Temporal Lock Box) is to get a very rare (human-looking) duty officer named Isis. [[Recap/StarTrekS2E26AssignmentEarth Her quote is 'Meow', and her species is marked down as Alien (which STO uses as a general term for anyone that doesn't have a specific species assigned)]].
** The Dyson Sphere seen in TNG's "Relics" makes an appearance in "A Step Between Stars" and "Surface Tension", and becomes the Delta Alliance's main base of operations in the Delta Quadrant.
** Almost all of the content released with Delta Rising is a reference to ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'', with a couple of references to ''TNG'' added in as well (the 'neural parasites' from "Conspiracy" and Hugh, the liberated Borg drone from "I Borg" and "Descent").
** Two of the ships on the new Earth Spacedock picket fleet are the [[VideoGame/StarTrekBridgeCommander U.S.S. Sovereign and the U.S.S. Geronimo.]]
** The commander of the U.S.S. Kirk is an Andorian named Captain [[Recap/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeriesS1E2Yesteryear Thelin]].
* ConvectionSchmonvection: An early mission in the old Romulan story arc placed you on a planet that had active volcanic activity on the surface (along with local plant life that thrived in the lava). You could walk all over it and it wouldn't hurt you.
* ConvergingStreamWeapon: Just as seen in ''Voyager'', the Undine's original method of destroying a planet or other large target [[spoiler: such as a Borg Unimatrix Command Ship in "Fluid Dynamics"]] is to have several ships arrange themselves in formation and all divert energy to a ship in the middle which then fires a huge beam at the target, annihilating it in one shot. The Undine Planet Killers seen in "Surface Tension" and onward use this as well, but it's not as impressive as the multi-ship formation.
* CooldownManipulation:
** The tactical captain ability "Tactical Initiative" halves the remaining cooldown on any tactical bridge officer ([[FanNickname "boff"]]) powers. [[invoked]]
** The science captain ability "Subnucleonic Beam" increases the target's boff power cooldowns, in addition to [[StatusBuffDispel wiping out active buffs]]. Intelligence boffs can use a variant of this power with an AreaOfEffect. [[invoked]]
** Certain duty officers ([[FanNickname "doffs"]]) have the ability to reduce cooldowns. The popular [[FanNickname "aux2batt build"]] uses three Technician doffs to reduce all currently active cooldowns to the global minimum each time Auxiliary Power to the Emergency Battery is triggered, effectively doubling the rate at which you can trigger boff powers. [[invoked]]
* CoolShades: Several different styles of shades have been added in the annual summer events, as well as part of the intelligence operative costume sets introduced in Delta Rising.
* CoolStarship: Many ships from across Trek canon have made their way into the game (Including an old-fashioned Constitution-Class and Miranda Class as starting vessels), and a few have been made especially for it, such as the mighty [[http://www.startrekonline.com/ships/odyssey Odyssey]] and [[http://www.startrekonline.com/node/2842 Bortas]] end-game ships.
* CostumePorn: Whilst Cryptic's dedication to character customisation meant there was always a small element of this, the game dived right in with Legacy of Romulus and the elaborate Romulan outfits.
* CPRCleanPrettyReliable / WorstAid: This was the original way to revive a downed character. It has since been replaced with a quick tricorder scan.
* CrapsackOnlyByComparison: Things have gone downhill compared to the era the shows took place in, but it's still a much better world to live in than say, the settings of VideoGame/DeadSpace or VideoGame/MassEffect3. There are still awful ''places'' in the setting which are full-on crapsack, though, such as Nimbus III.
** CrapsackWorld: Nimbus III. It was bad in Film/StarTrekVTheFinalFrontier. But the Federation pulled out a hundred years ago in game ([[ShownTheirWork and in the Expanded Universe]]). Now its home to nothing but raiders, pirates, slavery, prostitution and nightclubs.
* CreatureBreedingMechanic: There's tribble breeding, done by either leaving the tribble in inventory with particular foods, or by duty officer assignments found in your ship interior. The former creates a new tribble, the latter transforms your old one. Different tribbles grant different buffs: for example feeding a tribble ketracel-white will produce a tribble that buffs your damage against Jem'Hadar.
* CripplingOverspecialization: The Federation's Dreadnought Cruiser and the recent Dyson Science Destroyers force a certain energy type (phasers and proton, respectively) that either force you to work a weapon build around it or ignore it completely. The Tactical Escort Refit and the Multi-Mission Explorer ships do the same, but their gimmick weapons can be removed, thus you're not bound to it.
* CriticalExistenceFailure: Ships suffer damage and systems can be affected, but until you suffer a warp-core breach (read: death), there's no downward spiral of failing systems, like the shows.
** Zig-zagged; as your health drops scorch marks will appear, followed by your engines going haywire and multiple decks showing hull breaches and fires.
* CrystalSpiresAndTogas: The Deferi come pretty close.
* CustomUniform: The developers were able to {{Handwave}} the glaring flaw about Starfleet's uniform code by stating in one of the LoadingScreen notes that Starfleet relaxed their uniform codes to help its officers feel a little more comfortable, just as long as they still wore their primary color associated with their position. The last part happens pretty much only by playerbase preference and is regularly violated. After season 9, it's only player characters; everybody else wears Odyssey uniforms.
* CutsceneIncompetence: The Iconians' main superpower seems to be ''inducing'' this, starting with one of them gating straight into the Klingon High Council chambers on Qo'noS, vaporizing the entire High Council apart from the Chancellor, and ''not one single person present'' even took a shot at him. Ditto the Iconian in "Blood of Ancients" who turns up and monologues for a little while [[spoiler:then kills a Preserver in passing]], again, all while the PC was standing two feet away.
* CutscenePowerToTheMax: A problem with the ships here is that many of them are portrayed as significantly weaker than they are in the TV series, leading to many a player being annoyed that their favorite ship is quite pathetic than they were shown on TV, a big offender being the ''Galaxy''-class (prior to the release of the ''Andromeda''-class) as players felt it was an insult to the ''Enterprise''-D.
* CuttingTheKnot: The "Azure Nebula Rescue" raid provides a game mechanics example in a scenario where Tholian warships are guarding captured Romulan ships. The most obvious solution followed by most players is to destroy the Tholians before releasing the Romulans. But the way the objectives are coded[[note]]you're scored based on how many ships you rescue, not how many Tholians you kill[[/note]] and the Tholians positioned means that it's perfectly possible, if somewhat difficult, to sneak up from the far side of the asteroid and release the pointy-ears without ever even aggro'ing the Tholians. Another solution is to have one player DrawAggro while the other releases the ship. Slight downside in that you don't get the XP granted by killing the Tholians.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Tropes D-G]]
* DarkestHour: The situation at the end of "A Step Between Stars": [[spoiler:With the rediscovery of the Jenolan Dyson Sphere thanks to the actions of the Undine, the alliance between the Federation, Klingons and Romulans are on shaky ground, due to the fact that all three want the Jenolan Sphere - The Federation because they had found it first over 40 years ago, the Romulans because it's connected to the Solenae Dyson Sphere and the Klingons because they want a super weapon, too! It doesn't help that Koren and Shon are HotBlooded JerkAss people.]]
** The last episode of the Iconian War arc, appropriately named "Midnight" is even darker. [[spoiler: The Alpha Quadrant Alliance has all but lost the war with the Iconians, and Earth is under siege by a ''massive'' Herald fleet. Traveling back in time to kill the Iconians 200 000 years ago is the only possible chance for victory.]]
* DarkhorseVictory: The Romulan Republic might just be the greatest example of this trope. The Romulans spent 20 years trying to rebuild the old Star Empire and never really suceeded (Sela being closest and only through ruling with an iron fist and murdering her own kind via the Tal Shiar & Hakeev). Over the course of a single year three groups of people: D'Tan and his aides, Obisek and his Reman Rebels, and the Romulan Player Character and their crew unite the Romulans under a new banner and make them the second largest superpower in the Quadrant (edging out the Klingons!). All thanks to a Reunificationist, the sacrifice of one of his aides, a Reman soldier and his rebel militia, and a rag tag warbird crew led by a '''''farmer!'''''
* DeathFromAbove:
** The various mortar weapons that can be erected by Engineering players & NPC's during ground missions.
** The swarmer drones in the ground portion of the Solanae Dyson Sphere never miss a chance to take pot shots at players from overhead.
** The accolade you get in "Cutting the Cord" by marking targets for OrbitalBombardment is literally called "Death from Above".
* DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist: If a player is killed or has their ship destroyed (possibly killing them), they can simply respawn with their ship shiny and new...minus a few RedShirts. And the dead redshirts will be restored after a short period of time. Presumably Starfleet ships are crewed by Tribbles. Mitigated somewhat by the addition of the difficulty slider, which adds a death penalty at higher levels in the form of injuries, which can be removed at starbases or with items. Elite-ranked raids always have injuries turned on.
* DeathWorld: Nukara Prime, a Y class "Demon" planet with a surface temperature of 500 degrees Kelvin, a corrosive sulphuric atmosphere, and rivers of acid. Players are REQUIRED to wear environmental suits if they don't want to be immediately engulfed in flames and die a gruesome death by bursting into ashes.
* DecliningPromotion: An odd variant: despite the fact that you become a Vice Admiral/Lt. General at level 50, you're ''still'' in command of a single ship where most would be on the sidelines commanding whole ''fleets'' of ships.
* DefeatEqualsExplosion: Par for the course with space combat. The initial explosion of a ship can damage you, but a few seconds later the warp core blows up for a second explosion. For ground combat, while most enemies who die from an "exposed" attack get vaporized, Tholians can actually self destruct, causing damage to anything around it. Mechanical devices, such as the various turrets and whatnot also explode when they're destroyed.
* DefeatMeansPlayable: The special reward for defeating the Breen during the Deferi story arc? A Breen bridge officer. Repeated with the Romulan/Reman missions, though technically it's [[spoiler:the Romulans]] you're defeating and [[spoiler:a Reman bridge officer]] joining you. It's also repeated in the Jem'Hadar missions.
* DefectorFromDecadence: The entire Reman Rebellion is this to what's left of the paranoid Romulan Government. And You in the Legacy of Romulus.
* DemotedToExtra: The Cardassians in, ironically, the revamped "Cardassian Struggle" arc. Whereas previously the True Way had a StoryArc all to themselves, in the redone version they're little more than a sideshow to a plot involving leftover Dominion forces in the Alpha Quadrant, and something to do with the MirrorUniverse that leads into a couple Season 11 [=STFs=].
* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] by Y'Dren in the mission "The Dragon's Deceit":
--> '''Y'Dren''': "Alpha Quadrant tech has too many redundancies; you've got backups for your backups, and none of it matters because emergency power always fails in an emergency!"
* DesignItYourselfEquipment: The player's ship.
* DetachmentCombat: Several ships can turn parts of themselves into separate, independent craft, increasing their firepower and distracting the enemy. The Galaxy-class can detach its saucer, the Bortasqu' can deploy a heavily-armed escort ship, [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs and the Advanced Odyssey can either detach its saucer or deploy a heavily-armed escort ship]]. The Prometheus-class escort takes the prize, though - true to [[Series/StarTrekVoyager the series]], it can split itself into ''three'' equally-powerful ships, and you can choose which one you want to command the formation from.
* DevelopersForesight: Cryptic's been tossing in various things towards certain classes, races, ships and the like in certain stages.
** With the Season 6 update, all enemies started using more level appropriate skills to add a little more challenge. Enemies can now use the same skills that players use.
** Leave tribbles in your inventory and some food? Well when you log back in the food is going to be gone and more tribbles will be there. This is used by player to get better tribbles. There is one exception, however: ''Polygeminus grex canibalis'' does not eat food in your inventory. They eat other tribbles in your inventory.
* DidNotThinkThisThrough: The entire plot of "Butterfly": [[spoiler:It's decided that the best thing to do is to prevent Romulus' destruction by stopping the U.S.S. ''Yamato'' from discovering Iconia. At best, you got the Borg nipping at Romulus' heels. However, D'Tan was still working on a free Romulan world, so it was okay! No one ever thought the Borg ''would'' take over Romulus.]]
* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: The Fek'lhri arc basically involves carving your way through TheLegionsOfHell, confronting Klingon Satan, and sticking a bat'leth through his face. [[spoiler:Although your science officer suggests it was a technological simulation of some kind and that the Hur'q were involved.]]
* DifficultButAwesome: The handful of larger ships that can mount cannons, like smaller and faster-turning escorts. Trying to keep cannons on a target with a cruiser's turn rate would be completely impractical, and requires unorthodox tactics:
** The Galaxy-X dreadnaught has a cloaking device; a skilled player can use this to sneak up on an unsuspecting ship, de-cloak as close as possible and unload on the target before it has a chance to move out of range. The ship's unique phaser spinal lance does huge damage in a single shot (if it hits; the accuracy is pathetic), and fires twice when triggered; it's more than enough to ensure the first volley is fatal against another player ship in [=PvP=] if weapons are fired in the right order, fast enough so the target can't pop any defensive buffs. When the ship is already in combat and can't cloak right away, Tractor and Repulser beams can be used to keep the target in front and a Subspace Jump Console can be used to teleport the Galaxy-X directly behind a target, facing it.
** The Klingon Bortasqu' comes with a Subspace Snare Console that takes a different approach than the Subspace Jump Console; it teleports the ''target'' in front of the ship.
** The T5 ''D'deridex''-class gets a lot of flak for its (apparent) low turning despite being able to mount dual cannons. This isn't helped by the Romulans' sharply limited ship selection, which results in the free T4 ''D'deridex'' coming right after the much zippier ''Mogai''-class. But the Romulan battle cloak common to all warbirds allows it to turn much faster while cloaked, and having access to lieutenant commander boff powers in all three disciplines is all but unheard-of.
* DiscOneFinalBoss: B'vat, Hakeev and Kar'ukan.
* DisneyVillainDeath: [[spoiler:Taris]] in "Uneasy Allies".
* DivertingPower: Ships have 200 points of power to distribute between weapons, shields, engines, and auxiliary systems. Most ships grant bonus power to one or more systems, and player skills or ship equipment can also increase the amount of power available.
* DoABarrelRoll: The "Rock and Roll" pilot skill introduced in ''Delta Rising'' allows the player's ship to avoid all damage for a few seconds. And, unlike ''VideoGame/StarFox'', this is an ''actual'' Barrel Roll.
* DoNotRunWithAGun: Firing weapons (or taking fire, for that matter) in space missions will drop your ship from full impulse to a slower maneuvering speed. Full impulse will also divert some power from the other subsystems to the engines as well.
* DoingInTheWizard: KDF-side, your science officer suggests after the fact that the battle in [[spoiler:Gre'thor]] may have been AllJustADream and that the [[spoiler:Fek'Ihri]] were created by biotech, possibly by the Hur'q. [[AbortedArc Nothing ever comes of this.]]
* DoomedHometown: The Romulan player's home colony of Virinat.
* DownerEnding: Several of the Iconian War missions seem to be trying to one-up each other in a bid to get this title; "Blood of Ancients" has the Iconians wiping the floor with the alliance and [[spoiler: exterminating the [[AncientAliens Preservers]],]] and then "House Pegh" has an Iconian [[spoiler: killing Emperor Kahless]] and sending the player running with their tail between their legs.
* DramaticSpaceDrifting
* DramaticallyMissingThePoint: In the mission "The Doomsday Weapon", the Klingon Captain muses as to why K'Valk betrayed her. In the very next breath, she proclaims that he ''did'' try to explain but, because of Klingon honor, she blew him off because he was a traitor.
* TheDreaded: The Elachi for most of the Romulan storyline. Later, the [[spoiler:Iconians]] for everyone.
* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler: K'Valk in the Doomsday Machine due to his part in helping the machine being activated. See Heroic Sacrifice below.]]
* DropPod: Episode "The Delta Quadrant", mission "Revelations". The Vaadwaur used them to invade the Turei homeworld, enabling them to punch through the orbital defense grid and sabotage it from below. They also appear in several other instances where the player faces Vaadwaur ground forces, and are equipped with built-in transporters, allowing them to rapidly reinforce positions once the initial force has gotten a foothold.
* DudeWheresMyRespect:
** The game ties CharacterLevel to your player character's military rank in Starfleet, the Klingon Defense Force, or the Romulan Republican Force. This is tolerable up to level 39 (Captain or equivalent and below), but after that, not only are you an admiral running around in a ship, but by the time you hit the level cap at 60 (Fleet Admiral), you actually ''outrank'' almost every mission giver in the entire game, even Fleet Admiral Quinn, and Admiral Kererek, and have probably seen more combat in the last year than some of them have in their entire careers. Lower ranks still love to order you around like you're a totally green ensign and in some cases force you to personally complete tasks more suited to junior enlisted personnel. On the face of it, the season 8.5 featured episode "A Step Between Stars", where literally nobody in the entire mission ''except'' the PlayerCharacter ranks higher than Rear Admiral Lower-Half, can seem particularly silly about it.\\
\\
Interestingly, though, ''A Step Between Stars'' manages to [[ZigZaggingTrope zig-zag this]]. Your initial orders come from Joint Command, and while it is headed by a Subcommander (because the Romulan Republic is still small and is low on high ranking officers but are still the only neutral party between the FED-KDF War and this new alliance), he is in command of the Task Force which DOES make him your superior officer despite being of inferior rank, simply because he is the CO (although that doesn't explain why they couldn't have just promoted him). The next time someone ignores your advice is when Tuvok offers to let you shutdown the station (and open an Iconian Gateway at the same time). If the player tells Tuvok no, he'll do it anyway - which is actually still OK, because Tuvok's orders are to shutdown the station at any cost. ''Orders that didn't come from you.'' He was only giving you the option because you're of senior rank and have had more experience with this technology. And the last time someone subverts an order from you is if you ''provoke the captain of your opposing faction (or allied faction for Romulans) into a fire fight.'' As a Starfleet Admiral, you just proposed opening fire on the Klingons as the war was winding down, which could easily lead to your court martial. As a Klingon General, he's not just telling you to calm down but also Shon as well before things lead to the war going hot again. And as a Romulan Admiral, ''you're threatening your own government's diplomatic status by instigating both the Klingons and Starfleet into a war that could have the Romulans in the crossfire.'' Beyond that, your orders are followed (i.e. telling Tuvok what to do with Cooper, what defense strategy to take, telling Tuvok to the communicator while you get the Voth explosives), it's when you act like an InsaneAdmiral that the [[WhatTheHellHero [=NPC=]s tell you eat shit]].
** [[AvertedTrope Averted]] again in "Surface Tension". The player's admiralty rank becomes a minor plot point, with the player taking command of the task force.
** It goes the other way, too (may not be if you play missions out of order) in "Sphere of Influence", where the player bosses the heads of fleet of the Federation and the KDF around.
*** Bonus points for the final discussion where the three powers decide how to continue with the new gateway. Represented by Admiral Shon (Federation), Ambassador Worf and General Koren (KDF) as well as some random Scientist who happened to beam in (A'dranna from the Romulan Republic). And yes, the latter speaks up as if the others were her peers.
** And averted by Captain Harry Kim in ''Delta Rising'', who makes a point of giving the PC the respect due his superior officer.
* DumpStat:
** For a long time, ground combat skills were a DumpStat because most players didn't want to waste valuable skillpoints on it when space combat was considered to be much more fun and the primary appeal of the game. This was changed, making it mandatory to invest 20% of one's skillpoints into ground skills, but mercifully added 20% more total skillpoints to allow for this without ruining the builds that veteran players had created.
** Now the DumpStat is engineering skills. They make a ship harder to kill, but not enough to survive against the highest difficulty enemies, such as the eight Borg tactical cubes found in the Hive raid. For just about every other player vs npc battle, skillpoints in damage resistance aren't even needed. The focus for the top players now is on inflicting maximum damage with weapons and science skills. Only two engineering skills out of a possible ten are still useful to throw points into: the ones that increase speed and maneuverability, and the energy output of the ship's warp core.
* DysonSphere: Season 8 introduces one as a new zone for starships to fly around inside and explore. A related Republic Intelligence debriefing also mentions the Jenolan Dyson Sphere of TNG fame, noting its disappearance as one of the oddities that started happening after you [[spoiler: unlocked the entire Iconian gateway network]]...
** [[spoiler:GhostShip: The Dyson Joint Rep Tier 1 and Tier 2 completion cutscenes reveal two things about the Dyson Sphere: that this was made by the Iconians as a means to get away and, mysteriously, it was left abandoned.]]
*** Later on, there's a dispute between the three superpowers over possession of the Jenolan Dyson Sphere and that [[spoiler:there's a ''third'' one. And it's armed to the teeth with Iconian ships.]]
* EarlyBirdCameo: Because the 3rd Year Anniversary mission, "Temporal Ambassador", was placed at the end of the Klingon War storyline, new players, especially in the Federation, get to meet Obisek, Slamek, Rugan Skyl, and T'nae before their storylines take place.
* EarnedStripes:
** Reaching the rank of rear admiral, lower half as a Starfleet PlayerCharacter unlocks a waistcoat in your uniform selection.
** The [[http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Starfleet_uniform_(2410s) official version of the Odyssey style]] puts admirals in a longer version of the uniform jacket that does not get tucked into the pants, and gives them metallic braid at the cuffs and around the divisional color bar. They also wear a belt buckle of the Federation's starfield-and-laurels insignia. Meanwhile starship and station commanders wear a version of the officer service uniform that has white shoulders, whereas ordinary officers get dark grey. Another color combination denotes enlisted personnel.
** The Klingon Defense Force denotes ranks with progressively more elaborate baldrics. The Romulan Republic uses pauldrons and capes of increasing complexity.
* EarthShatteringKaboom:
** The Planet Killer (yes, ''[[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries that]]'' Planet Killer) does this to Imaga's moon in a cutscene to give the player an idea just what kind of power they're up against.
** Galorndon Core falls victim to another Doomsday Machine in "The Core of the Matter."
** The Dewans apparently did this to themselves when they hooked an Iconian gateway up to a geothermal power system and tried to activate it, wiping themselves out and leaving Dewa III (or New Romulus as it would later be known) uninhabitable for centuries.
** The Undine do this to Kessek IV in "A Gathering Darkness" after the planet has been entirely assimilated by the Borg. They also intend to do this to [[spoiler: Qo'noS]] in "Surface Tension" and several other worlds in the Alpha and Beta quadrants in the "Undine Assault" [=PVE=] mission.
* EarthShatteringPoster: The logo for Season 13 depicts a habitable planet ([[spoiler:New Kentar's moon]]) getting wiped out by a [[WorldWreckingWave protomatter bomb]].
* EasterEgg:
** Before its discontinuation, in the late Borg front mission "State of Q", players could find one of these in the form of the USS ''Enterprise''-D, seen through one of the hull breaches on the USS ''Saratoga''. Also counted as a bit of an anachronism, as the ''Enterprise'' didn't make it to the [[http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wolf_359 Battle of Wolf 359]] until after the ''Saratoga'' and the rest of the fleet had been destroyed.
** In the Foundry editor, a huge number of the premade NPC costumes have funny captions, apparently because whomever originally cataloged them got bored and started making shit up to keep life interesting. The full list is [[http://sto.gamepedia.com/Guide:_The_Foundry/NPC_Contacts here]], but here's a few samples:
---> '''Breen Lieutenant Male 01:''' Don't tell the Breen, but this is just a lonely guy who wears the suit to blend in.\\
'''Cardassian Commander Male 03:''' His mother named him [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine Kira]], after her favorite historical figure. [[WhoNamesTheirKidDude The merciless teasing]] inspired his military career.\\
'''Elachi Lieutenant Scanner 01:''' [[ShoutOut EXTERMINATE.]] [[Series/DoctorWho EXTERMINATE.]]
* ElitesAreMoreGlamorous: The Omega Force, a joint Federation/Klingon task force developed to take on the threat of the Borg, generally gives this impression.
** Starfleet and the Klingons have this as well in the form of MACO and the Honor Guard, respectively. Both come with fancy armor, weapons, and ship equipment that makes their 'normal' counterparts look pathetic by comparison.
* EliteZombie: The Borg have this in the form of the Elite Tactical Drone; larger than a normal drone with tons of health as well as an ArmCannon that drains the players' personal shields and does major damage. They can also deliver a backhand capable of knocking down your entire away team.
* EmergencyTraineeBattleDeployment: The Federation player backstory is this, as the player's CanonSue with their plucky band of cadets manage to take out numerous Klingons and Borg in their outdated Miranda-class starship before everyone gets a battlefield promotion.
* EnemyCivilWar: Halfway through the Delta Quadrant story arc the [[spoiler:Vaadwaur split into two warring factions; the main force led by Gaul and his parasite-infested commanders, and a rebel faction led by Captain Eldex.]]
* EpicFail: The [=DOFF=] Assignments have a chance to be failed, especially if you're using Common [=DOFFs=]. What reaches this trope is that some missions actually give you a 100% chance at success (such as delivering captured contraband) and you ''still'' fail at it (as, despite a 100% success rate is displayed, that is usually rounded and there's still a minuscule chance of failure).
* EverybodysDeadDave: As you escape from the [[spoiler: Iconian Command Sphere in "Broken Circle", you fly through a massive ship graveyard of the combined Federation, Romulan, and Klingon strike fleets, a fleet of hundreds of ships. You pick up a handful of escape pods...and no one else.]]
* EverythingIsTryingToKillYou: Lampshaded. Upon encountering some hostile ice spiders in a cave during the [[spoiler: Reman Uprising]] arc (not too long after fighting off hostile jackals), one of your officers loudly questions why every new species you encounter always wants to kill you.
* EverythingsSquishierWithCephalopods: The Nanovs roaming the Atlai on New Romulus are basically super-cute bright purple amphibious octopi.
* EvilIsDeathlyCold: The Breen, complete with HumanPopsicle [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzuUFomZVCI grenades and lasers.]]
* EvilCounterpart: The Mirror Universe ships. They look the same, however they have things that are vastly different, usually by rearranging [=BOFF=] slots and Console slots. Prior to that, the Federation's ships were pretty much "swap skins".
* EvilOnlyHasToWinOnce: At endgame there are special task force missions players can do repeatedly for rewards. There are three levels of difficulty for them and they all have optional objectives to complete which grant better rewards. With the Delta Rising expansion, failure to complete even one optional objective on the middle and highest difficulty level automatically failed the mission, though after various complaints optional objectives are once again, well, optional.
* EvilSoundsDeep: The voice of the Collective in Borg space missions, coupled with a bit of VoiceOfTheLegion (naturally).
* EvilVersusEvil:
** The main reason that the Federation and Klingon Empire haven't been all turned into cyberzombies or wiped from creation is that, even decades after the events of ''Voyager'', the Borg and Undine still hate hate '''''hate''''' each other and gleefully rip one another apart at every opportunity (there's even one instance during a mission where the Borg abruptly break off from fighting the player to go after Undine and will totally ignore the player's ship unless fired on). The Federation and Klingons still ally against the Borg despite having a war on in other sectors.
** Also, Empress Sela and Praetor Taris. The former has a ''few'' less atrocities to her name, but they're both still pretty unpleasant.
* EvolvingWeapon:
** Mark Infinity equipment improves in effectiveness as the PlayerCharacter levels up.
** The ''Delta Rising'' expansion introduced Tier 5-Upgraded and Tier 6 starships, which have a Starship Mastery feature which enables the PlayerCharacter to grind skill points to unlock stat boosts on that ship, as well as [[SkillScoresAndPerks a perk]] in T6 ships which is usable on any ship.
* {{Expy}}:
** The ''Vesper'' for the ''Excelsior'' Class, and the ''Excalibur'' as a 25th century equivalent to the ''Constitution'' class. Both the original ship classes can also be bought.
** Frankly, most of the ship variants count. Each Tier contains: 1) a ship from the TV series, and 2) two more ships that ''look'' different but are basically cosmetic redesigns. This allows the mix-and-match customization, since the warp nacelles, engineering hull, etc are all in the same position, but the cosmetic redesigns themselves are of variable aesthetic quality. The Exploration Cruiser (''Galaxy'' pattern) is a particularly bad offender.
** The Unimatrix 0047 Command Ships are easily this towards V'Ger of ''Film/StarTrekTheMotionPicture'', particularly with the metallic guitar riff when it warps in and its OneHitKill plasma torpedo.
* ExpansionPack: ''Legacy of Romulus'', which launched in late May 2013. Included the long-awaited Romulan playable faction as well as huge changes to the rest of the game. This was followed by the ''Delta Rising'' expansion in October 2014. In practice they worked just as the previous Season updates (that is, a free and (if you want to play the game) obligatory update to the game that comes with a number of additions to the microtransaction store). It was just a much, ''much'' larger update than any of the previous Seasons, including a new tier of ships and the first and only so far level cap increase, which is why they took to calling it an expansion pack instead.
* ExplodingBarrels: Players can find these on the promenade of [=DS9=] in the mission "Boldly They Rode", and can use them to take out some of the Jem'Hadar without having to engage in protracted firefights.
* ExplosiveInstrumentation: This ''is'' Star Trek. How else do you duty officers get hurt realigning a sensor array or some of the other tasks that have the possibility of injury?
* ExplosiveBreeder[=/=]ExtremeOmnivore: Tribbles. Once per hour, a tribble in your inventory or equipped will eat one food item and produce another type of tribble. There's a huge breeding tree with dozens of varieties, and they can even eat things like ketracel white, which is normally toxic to anyone who isn't a Jem'Hadar.
** Although what they eat can be dependent on the breed -- one particular breed, for instance, refuses food items and other consumables, instead favouring ''other tribbles''.
* ExtraEyes:
** All the wildlife on New Romulus have six eyes, presumably due to mutation caused by long-term exposure to the radiation on the planet's surface.
** The Iconians (and their personal guard, the Herald) have this trait as well.
* FaceHeelTurn: Expository text in the loading screens reveal [[spoiler: that Worf had severed all ties to the Federation after they declined assisting the Klingons in fighting the Undine/Species 8472.]] [[spoiler:Of course, given that he was worried about Starfleet Command and the Federal Parliament being shot through with Undine infiltrators and was rebuffed after being told it couldn't happen, exactly who ended up the face and who ended up the heel [[GreyAndGreyMorality is a matter of perspective]].]]
* FacePalm: One of the emotes you can do is a Picard face palm.
* FalseFlagOperation: [[spoiler: The Undine's attack on the Alpha and Beta Quadrant is because of ''someone'' using Iconian tech to mimic Starfleet spaceships and attack Fluidic Space]].
** The player is involved in one of these as well; capturing a Vaadwaur ship and sending it to attack the Benthans and Hazari in order to make them see the value of working together against a common enemy.
* [[FallingIntoTheCockpit Falling Into The Captain's Chair]]: This is more or less how the Fed side of the game starts out. Your ship is ambushed and boarded, and while you are helping repel the intruders, the senior staff gets killed, and you, a lowly Ensign, now have to take command of an entire starship... [[OhCrap against the Klingons]] [[FromBadToWorse and the Borg.]] The fact you actually ''win'' is why command makes your command position permanent.
** Given a BIT more justification in the expanded bio.
* FailureIsTheOnlyOption: In "Blood of the Ancients", you could be sporting Mk XIV Epic gear, you're not killing that Dreadnought.
* FakeDefector: [[spoiler: In the mission "Under the Cover of Night", T'Par is actually a member of Section 31, and capturing her is just part of a ruse to feed the Romulans false information.]]
* FakeLongevity:
** The un-remastered Cardassian story arc. Untouched since game launch, almost every mission in it is a MarathonLevel with LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading between space and ground maps multiple times per mission, and usually involves a MassMonsterSlaughterSidequest full of GoddamnBats. And then there are missions with the simple goal to interact with a few objects, except there are usually hordes of RespawningEnemies you have to chew through, and you are forced into BackTracking through them most times. All the loot including the mission rewards are little better than VendorTrash. Word has it though that the Cardassian missions will be overhauled with the release of Season 11 in October 2015.
** Most of the original storyline missions were like this, but have since been remastered and streamlines to be quicker, more interesting and fun to play.
* FanDisservice: The scantily-clad, hideously ugly Fek'lhri Ravagers.
* {{Fanservice}}:
** Orion Females play this straight, especially the Player Character ones. This also applies to female toons with the Enterprise-Era and TOS-Era Mirror Uniforms.
** Special note to Nimbus III's Orion Hideout and Titty Bar, Shangdu. There is fanservice for ANYONE in this nightclub with scantily clad dancers everwhere. This is notable because it's not just the standard hot chick schtick and features as the three main ones a Trill Female in a bikini, a [[UsefulNotes/FurryFandom Caitian Female]] in a [[ZettaiRyouiki tank top and go-go boots]], and a Human ''[[GayOption male]]'' in a speedo. The equality of it was actually praised on the forums - especially when you consider that the primary person watching the male dancer is also male, and has atmospheric lines like, "I think I'm in love".
* FantasticGhetto: If you aren't a Klingon noble or a KDF officer, First City isn't that great of a place to live. During a "tour the city" optional mission you find that the southwest side of town is a dingy slum packed full of non-Klingons who came to Qo'noS looking for work and weren't successful.
* FantasticShipPrefix: In addition to canon prefixes, the game adds a few new ones.
** Romulan Republic ships use the prefix RRW, apparently for Romulan Republic Warbird. Romulan Empire ships have IRW, presumably for "Imperial Romulan Warbird."
** Gaul's flagship in Delta Rising is identified as the VSW ''Vozroz''. VSW most likely stands for Vaadwaur Supremacy Warship.
* FasterThanLightTravel: Par for the course. [[VideoGame/EveOnline Thankfully, there is no such thing]] [[NothingIsScarier as a Warp Queue]].
** However, [[GameplayAndStorySegregation due to the way FTL travel is actually played]], it's entirely possible to get in a 20 ship pileup in interstellar space...
* FantasticRacism:
** The Octanti hate all Borg. Even if they're Liberated, Borg are Borg. However, a number of Octanti start to reconsider this, especially when they save their skins [[spoiler:and the brother of an Octanti ambassador returns to him.]]
** One of the Krenim hates all Alpha and Beta Quadrant races, referring to them as "The Voyagers", even if they weren't part of ''Voyager''. In fact, it gets so bad that Seven of Nine quits the team working on [[spoiler:the Temporal Warship]] because he refuses to listen to any of their concerns.
* FantasyConflictCounterpart: A fantasy ''postwar'' counterpart in the Cardassians, whose treaty with the Federation following the Dominion War reduced their military to a defensive organization of considerably smaller size, rather like what happened to Japan after World War II. The rest of the picture looks like post-invasion Iraq, with many former Cardassian Guard officers joining the True Way, a reactionary terrorist organization.
* FightingYourFriend: Some of the missions (such as the Starbase 234 patrol mission for Fed players) has the player engaging in 'wargames' against their allies to hone their combat skills. This is also the main premise of the same-faction (Fed vs Fed, KDF vs KDF) PvP missions, where players square off against others from their own faction.
* FiveRoundsRapid: Happens to a Romulan security team facing a [[ImplacableMan Vaadwaur Overseer]] on the bridge of the ''Lleiset'' in the mission "Capture the Flag"; the redshirts open up on him with multiple disruptors (which are all hitting him dead-center, by the way) only for their target to [[TheSlowWalk stroll right up to them]] and decimate them all with just his fists.
* FixedForwardFacingWeapon:
** The various flavors of dual cannons as well as the phaser spinal lance on the Galaxy-X dreadnought have a very narrow firing arc straight ahead of the ship. Dual beam banks and (most) forward-mounted torpedo launchers also count to a lesser degree, as they can only engage targets within a 90-degree cone off the bow. Normal cannons and the Assault Cruiser Refit's Wide-Angle Quantum Torpedo Launcher as well to an even more lesser degree, as they turn a full 180 degrees
** Also the thalaron weapon used by the Scimitar dreadnoughts.
** A recent update added new Escorts to the game with a "Heavy Weapon" slot, which contains a special fixed forward facing weapon. Other escorts will get this unique slot in a future update.
* {{Flanderization}}: One of the few things we learned about the Breen in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' is that they wear refrigeration suits because they prefer cold temperatures. The game takes this UpToEleven by making everything about them relate somehow to cold: they use cryonic grenades, encase their prisoners in ice, and somehow scatter snow across the corridors of enemy ships they're boarding. And then there's the IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming of their story missions, all of which have something to do with cold.
* FluffyTamer: The player can become this, with numerous species of animals that can be domesticated and kept as pets, some of which can even be used in combat.
* FlunkyBoss: Just about every elite level boss ship you have to kill (and some battleship-level mobs) will have a squadron of escort ships or fighters buzzing around it.
** Some high-ranking ground enemies will have the ability to summon low-level grunts as backup.
* ForeignCussWord:
** In "Ragnarok," Pavel Chekov cuts loose with "Bozhe moi!" ("My God!")
** Players of all factions will hear plenty of well-known Klingon epithets over the course of the game, such as "petaQ", "taHqeq", "veQ", "baktag" and so on.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: During the debriefing following the completion of 'Cutting the Cord', Temek and T'nae each tell the KDF & Fed players that "the return of the Iconians could change everything". Cue 'Surface Tension' and 'Uneasy Allies'...
* ForWantOfANail: The events of "Butterfly" show four different scenarios:
** The first scenario, made by removing certain stars to allow a rogue planet cause a natural disaster on Iconia, the three major powers would end up being weakened by conflicts to allow the Dominion to take over.
** The second scenario, made by preventing the ''Voyager'' from discovering the Vaadwaur, would have the Iconians recruit the Hierarchy instead, shattering the Delta Alliance.
** The third scenario, made by preventing the U.S.S. ''Yamato'' from discovering Iconia, brought back Romulus and was about to lead to the creation of the Romulan Republic, even with the Borg nipping at their heels. [[spoiler:They choose this one, only to find out, ''whoops'', the Borg have ''assimilated'' Romulus.]]
* ForgottenPhlebotinum:
** "House Pegh" has the eponymous Klingon [[InformedAttribute black-ops team]] in possession of a wide-area cloaking device capable of hiding ships in formation with the equipped vessel from Iconian sensors. [[SarcasmMode Surely this is a brilliant technological advance that will change the course of the war!]] Nope, never mentioned again, which amazingly is one of the ''lesser'' reasons the mission is considered an IdiotPlot. However, we learn soon enough that being able to hide half or two-thirds of the Alliance fleet would not make much of a difference in the war.
** In "Time and Tide", Noye steals the Krenim temporal weapon ship from the TimePolice and naturally tries to cause TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt in succeeding missions. Said TimePolice are remarkably clueless about the possibility of simply time-traveling themselves to before the weapon was stolen in the first place and disabling it entirely[[note]]this ''would'' be explainable by another piece of phlebotinum, temporal shielding, which would keep the Krenim ship unaffected by temporal interventions... ''except'' that by the rules established earlier that would mean that the moment the temporal weapon ship's shields were knocked down it would integrate with the established timeline and be disabled[[/note]].
* FourStarBadass: The current maximum rank a player can achieve is Fleet Admiral (Federation & Romulan Republic, allowing them to become ''[[UpToEleven five]]''-star badasses) and General (KDF)[[note]]the final KDF promotion is Dahar Master, but that technically is a title rather than a rank[[/note]]. Per ''Delta Rising'', there are ''eighteen months'' between the low-ranked game start and flag rank. The Romulan PC at least has the minor justification that the Romulan Republic is new and [[ClosestThingWeGot short on manpower]], but the Federation PC (in the post-season 8 tutorial) starts as a fourth-year cadet on his/her senior midshipman cruise and is given a battlefield commission as a lieutenant.
* FragileSpeedster:
** On paper, the Escort class ships are supposed to be this: Quick and deadly, but light on defense. Player customization and skill determines if that is true or not.
** The fighters, runabouts, and shuttlecraft can also also be considered this; small, agile craft good for quick hit and run attacks, but will be slaughtered wholesale by battleships and cruisers that get a clear shot on them.
* FriendlyEnemy: What basically the Klingon-Federation War devolves to due to outside factors. While they start their conflict beating each other up, they end up having a conference about how to defeat the Borg on Bajor despite being actively at war with one another. Omega Force and the Honor Guard were already teaming up against them. This ends up involving the KDF player and the portion of the Klingon military controlled by the ambassador in the war against the Dominion Remnants. The Klingons also cooperate with the Federation Temporal Security Agency from the 29th century. Really, by the time the war officially comes to an end, it's obvious both sides have bigger problems to deal with.
* FriendlyFireproof: Other players and friendly NPC's won't be harmed by a stray phaser beam or torpedo during combat.
** Subverted with some of the confuse abilities, which reverses the victim's friend or foe ID systems and renders them vulnerable to attacks from allies.
* FromNobodyToNightmare: The Tuterians used to be a relatively obscure and peaceful Delta Quadrant species. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Thanks to the the Alliance]], they've since become the omnicidal [[spoiler:Sphere Builders]].
** The Romulan PC goes from being a simple farmer on the backwater world of Virinat to a Romulan Republic Fleet Admiral who discovers and founds the New Romulus colony, takes down the Tal Shiar, and saves the galaxy several times.
* FungusHumongous: Some ground maps have this in effect to varying degrees, the most notable example being Imaga in "The Doomsday Device".
* FunnyBackgroundEvent: In the 20-man FM event ''Starbase Fleet Defense'' the freighters you escort for a full minute make rediculous but easily missed comments ranging from SpaceIsAnOcean to discussing about their romantic encounters with the comm channel over.
* FutureMeScaresMe: [[spoiler: Past-B'Vat, complete with TOS Klingon style smooth forehead, is terrified at what he will become in the future, and helps the player in taking down his future self]]
* GameplayAndStorySegregation: Of a sort. The Duty Officer (''Doff'') system represents your junior officers, and every ship is supposed to have their crew number's worth of Doffs. However, you start at 100 for free, up to a max of 500. However... some ships crew numbers don't fit with this, like the Defiant with a crew of ''50''. Very few ships have Doff numbers close to their crew numbers, while others are unrealistically packed. Also, since quite a lot of their missions require them to go someplace halfway across the quadrant, the number of runabouts or other small craft needed is somewhat excessive.
** The New Romulus story introduced in Season 7 has what one can call Story And Story Segregation: continuity-wise it explicitly takes place after and relies on events in the Romulan arc in the Federation story (for instance, [[spoiler: the disappearance of Sela is the reason for the civil war that is the reason for the New Romulus exodus, while the Tal Shiar's actions are influenced by the loss of Hakeev]]), but there's no restriction on doing the New Romulus missions before even ''beginning'' the Romulan arc.
*** This is made worse with the addition of the Klingon storyline. While the Romulan early-game storyline starts a couple of weeks before the Federation early-game and chronicles how New Romulus is created, the Klingon storyline takes place after ''both'' storylines and yet you're ''still'' there dealing with the Tal Shiar long after they were dealt with!
** More Story and Story Segregation in the Third Anniversary mission, "Temporal Ambassador". Given that the mission guest-stars Tholians and [[spoiler: 29th Century Starfleet timeships]], the mission ''should'' be set somewhere near the Endgame and post-Endgame content. However, the level restriction for "Temporal Ambassador" is level 6 - Lieutenant rank, a far cry from Endgame. When the mission was shuffled into the post-early-game missions, it's at Level 20 and yet you're still dealing with things that you won't deal with for another 30 levels.
** This is the problem with the Iconian War as a whole. Despite the game and the [[AllThereInTheManual story blogs]] stating that the Iconians are kicking our collective butts, players are genuinely confused and have outright mentioned on the message boards "Why are we losing when I'm kicking their butts?!" not realizing that various PVE missions and the like are only considered ''once''. This has spurred calls for making the war so much more expansive.
* GatlingGood / MoreDakka: One of the options for either yourself or your crew while on foot is essentially the energy-weapon version of a Squad Automatic Weapon. Having one of these around is rather handy. [[VideoGame/StarTrekEliteForce Not the first time we've seen 'em, either.]]
* GeneralFailure: Captain Kagran in the Iconian War missions. Of the first five missions of the Iconian arc released, three of those involve trying to hit the Iconians really hard. [[spoiler:By this point, at least 2/3rds of the unified fleet are dead as well as Emperor Kahless.]] Conversely, a mission involving Tom Paris is able to deal a painful blow to the Iconians and a mission with Nog [[spoiler:has them rediscovering the Krenim.]]
** He does, however, drop the idiot ball in the last episode and redeems himself in the eyes of the majority of the playerbase.
* GenocideDilemma: "Butterfly" and "Midnight" deal with the idea of trying to eradicate the Iconians to stop the war. [[spoiler:Using the Krenim Timeship was automatically tossed out as it would cause too much change in the timestream. When the player character, Kagran and Sela travel to the past and Iconia's fall, Kagran has second thoughts over the entire thing and when Sela attempts to follow through, she comes to realize that, ''whoops'', she's the reason Romulus and Remus are now asteroid fields.]]
* GetBackHereBoss: All of the bosses with voice actors do this in their featured episode series. They appear, taunt the player and run away and can't be killed until the very end for story reasons.
** This works for bosses of factions that care about self-preservation, but turns into a total OutOfCharacterMoment whenever a Klingon boss runs away, because they're a warrior culture who never retreat and put [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy fighting until they win or die honorably]] above all other concerns.
** An even worse example occurs with a boss who runs away after disobeying the orders of a leader his race worships as a god. Kar'ukan is a Jem'Hadar, a clone warrior species who are literally engineered to obey and worship changelings as gods without question and always fight, and never ever run away (there ''are'' canonical examples of Jem'Hadar going rogue, but even they kept up the warrior 'fight to the end' attitude).
* GettingCrapPastTheRadar:
** One of the Duty Officer assignments is 'Retrieve DNA Sample from Romulan Senator', which is easier to accomplish if the officers you assign to it have the 'Seductive' and 'Unscrupulous' traits. Oh ''my''.
** Given their racial trait "Seductive", the lines on unique [[GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe Orion female]] doffs' cards often contain {{Double Entendre}}s. The entertainers are more explicit:
---> '''Janzea:''' (entertainer) Sit back and relax. Let me do the work.\\
'''Zudania:''' (entertainer) I'm sure we can find some way to pass the time, Ambassador.\\
'''Losuna:''' (biologist) All relationships can be reduced to simple biology.\\
'''N'Ziddea:''' (tractor beam officer) Once I lock onto a target, there's no way for him to escape.\\
'''Zumouri:''' (entertainer) The key to attraction is surprise. Do something unexpected.
*** There's even some subversions:
--->'''Jinnea:''' (research lab scientist) I'm not interested in "off-duty research". [[YoureNotMyType At least not with you.]]\\
'''Senandi:''' (doctor) If you want bedside manner, visit the pleasure district.\\
'''Unozu:''' (entertainer) I'm a performer. If you want that kind of entertainment, find it yourself.
** Thanks to how a race uses naming conventions, [=DOFF=]s can be given unintentionally hilarious names. Included on this group is a Gorn named "Shit", a Reman named "Slut", an aliengen named "Ugly"...
* GladiatorGames: [[spoiler: Prominently featured in the Cloaked Intentions episode series.]]
** [[spoiler: In one mission on Nimbus III, Hassan throws you and your party into one.]]
* GlassCannon: The Escort.
* GodSaveUsFromTheQueen: As of season 7, the Borg Queen. That arc quickly got streamlined though, so you won't find her anymore during the main storyline, only in PvE queues.
** Empress Sela as well, to a minor extent.
* GodzillaThreshold: [[spoiler:After the player character strikes down M'Tara, K'Tet decides that it's time for the galaxy to drown in blood. This forces everyone's hand to use the Time Weapon.]]
* GoneHorriblyWrong: [[spoiler:The above mentioned Threshold? The big plan was to prevent the U.S.S. ''Yamato'' from finding Iconia. This leads to the ''Borg'' taking over Romulus instead.]]
* GrapplingHookPistol: Players will have access to these in ''Delta Rising''; they will allow players to zipline, rappel, or simply horizontally traverse from one area to another. This is only useable in certain hotspots, though, so not the general feature players anticipated.
* GrenadeLauncher: The pulsewave assault rifle available as part of the Klingon Honor Guard and Adapted MACO ground sets have one of these built in. Engineering players can also erect automated grenade-launching turrets.
* GrievousHarmWithABody: One of the weapons the player can get is a severed Borg arm cannon, which makes for a form of HoistByHisOwnPetard since it's most often used against other Borg.
* GuileHero: You get the chance to be this on occasion, especially during the [[TimeTravel Drozana Station]] missions.
* GunsAkimbo: Klingon Swordmasters and other types of enemies often use twin disruptor pistols, but the PlayerCharacter and their officers can too.
* GoodOldFisticuffs: Just because you ''have'' a [[RayGun Phaser]], doesn't mean you ''always have to use it''. Far from being an EmergencyWeapon, some enemies just go down faster if the player simply ''holsters their weapon and hands them their ass''. Having the Leg Sweep ability for crowd control makes this even more useful. See also {{BFS}}.
* GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe: The Orion Vixens, complete with confuse-inducing Seduce skill. They're also a popular choice amongst the RP community.
* GuideDangIt: While not as heavy as most [=MMOs=], [=STO=] does have a handful of prizes that people wouldn't know how to obtain.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Tropes H-M]]
* HandWave: Story-wise, the Tutorial shows that your character is merely an ensign who's ''very first assignment'' out of the academy takes them to the Vega Colony, where the Borg very specifically kill off all the commanding officers on your ship while you transported over to the U.S.S. Khitomer to help them get their ship back up and running. This technically placed you as the highest ranking officer in the chain of command, and Admiral Quinn decides that you have earned the right to remain as captain of your vessel due to the dire situation all around the Alpha Quadrant, and they need every last ship they can use in service. Players are actually given the choice to skip the Tutorial if they want. If they do, they start the game in Starfleet Academy, and have to go see the Commandant of the academy for graduation. He decides that your academics are so admirably remarkable that he recommends you for a command assignment. That's it. He tells you to go grab some supplies from a nearby locker, select a first officer, and get to work.
** This has been cleaned up a lot in the new tutorial, introduced in Season 8. The new tutorial has you [[spoiler: on your first assignment as a freshly graduated cadet from the Academy acting as First Officer. After the Captain is killed in a Klingon ambush, you receive a field promotion to Lieutenant from another Starfleet Captain. You then get caught up in the initial stages of the Borg invasion. Your actions in evacuating the survivors of the Vega Colony prompt Admiral Quinn to make the promotion official.]]
** Undine ships are normally piloted by a single Undine with a strong psychic connection to their vessel. Since no other species can replicate this, captured Undine ships require a traditional crew, thus allowing game mechanics involving crew to function the same as with other ships.
* HardLight: The player encounters several walkways made of this in Facility 4028. The various forcefields seen in different missions, as well as the [[DeflectorShields shields]] used by player-characters and ships could also count.
** The various holograms can also fall into this category.
* HealthDamageAsymmetry: The absolute maximum hitpoints a player ship can have is roughly in the 60k range, however boss ships on elite difficulty have hundreds of thousands to millions of hitpoints. In a subversion, these boss ships often have OneHitKill weapons that have to be avoided rather than tanked. Player ships can do some serious damage too, but nothing that can solo kill a boss in one or two hits.
* HeelFaceTurn: [[spoiler: The Remans, and particularly Obisek, who starts off stealing thalaron weapons and siccing fighters on you.]]
* HeinzHybrid: Kal Dano from "Sunrise". Like Temporal Agent Daniels from ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'', he's a 31st century man with ''very'' mixed ancestry (your science officer identifies Vulcan, human, and Lukari DNA in his genome).
* HellBentForLeather: Even in the 25th century, the typical Klingon military uniform still looks like something you'd expect to see members of {{Music/KISS}} wearing.
* HeroicSacrifice:
** [[spoiler: K'Valk does a suicide run into the core of the Doomsday Machine to at least try to disable it. And he does it while singing the Klingon War Song.]]
** [[spoiler: Admiral D'Vak nearly does one too; sacrificing his ship to draw fire from insanely powerful Borg weapons. [[SuicidalGotcha He survives, though]].]]
** [[spoiler: Guroth]], the weapons expert of Delta Flight, does this in "Broken Circle", flying his ship head-on into the Iconian flagship and causing enough damage that it's forced to leave the front lines and the Alliance & the player are able send over boarding parties.
** [[spoiler: Temer]] sacrifices himself on the final mission of the Romulan introduction to save the attendees of the conference and single-handedly improve the standing of the republic.
* HeWhoMustNotBeSeen: Aennik Okeg, the Federation President during the time of the game, was never once seen on-screen and only mentioned in some of the backstory material (we get a glimpse of him in [[http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9782073-star-trek-online%3A-in-the-purview-of-diplomats an in-universe blog]]). He seems content to leave off-world diplomatic matters to the player, Admiral Quinn, or the Federation Diplomatic Corps in general. Finally broken with Season 11.5 and the "Temporal Front" storyline mission.
** The Iconians were this for the most part, up until "Surface Tension".
* HistoricalRapSheet: For a purely fictional example, the player discovers partway through the Starfleet "Romulan Mystery" and Romulan "In Shadows" arcs that the Tal Shiar faction led by Hakeev and Taris [[spoiler:triggered the Hobus supernova and the destruction of Romulus]].
* HistoryRepeats: The Klingons make the exact same mistake in the lead-up to the Federation-Klingon War that they made in the lead-up to the Dominion War. They unilaterally invade the Gorn, insisting that the Gorn have been infiltrated by shapeshifters (unlike with the Cardassians, the Gorn actually ''have'' been), and then when the Federation doesn't believe them, instead of trying to back up their claims they withdraw from the Khitomer Accords. And just like with the Dominion, this resulted in a Federation-Klingon War that only weakened the quadrant for the inevitable bigger fish. Once again, the Klingons' HonorBeforeReason tendencies play right into the hands of a ManipulativeBastard adversary.
** In-game, ''this exact scenario'' repeats itself ''again'' on a small scale in the mission "Diplomatic Orders". A Klingon cruiser commander gets information that a Federation diplomat is really an Undine. Does he submit his findings to the Federation? No! He leads a deep-strike into Federation territory to kill the ambassador himself, and instead of coming out firing, he sacrifices the element of surprise to high-handedly demand that the Federation PC hand over the ambassador. The Fed PC reacts surprisingly calmly to this: instead of just blasting the idiot out of space on sight (remember, the Feds and KDF have now been at war for four years and the Klingon is asking a Starfleet officer on an EscortMission to ''hand over his charge to an enemy combatant''), he asks to see the Klingon's evidence, and the Klingon instead takes umbrage and attacks, and because he's up against a {{Plot Armor}}ed PlayerCharacter he dies completely pointlessly and Starfleet makes the kill against the Undine. [[Film/TopGun Klingon Defense Force regrets to inform you that your sons are dead because they were stupid.]]
* HitAndRunTactics: Ships with Battle Cloak can pull this off, go in, fight, and quickly cloak while in Red Alert and GTFO. The Enhanced Battle Cloak-equipped ships can go even further and torpedo away while hidden.
* HoistByHisOwnPetard: The game has this in spades, as there's countless examples of players being able to acquire other factions' weapons, ships, even people and turning them against their original owners. Some missions even have players sabotaging enemy defense systems to attack the enemy on the player's behalf.
* {{Homage}}: Kal Dano from "Sunrise" is based on a character of the same name from the ''Literature/StarTrekDepartmentOfTemporalInvestigations'' novels (probably ''meant'' to be the same guy, but [[SeriesContinuityError if so he's a different species and from a different century]]), but he's really just an excuse to make ''Series/DoctorWho'' references. He has a PintSizedPowerhouse timeship that's BiggerOnTheInside, and said interior consists of a circular room around a glowy central core. And he turns up to solve a TimeTravel-related problem with more TimeTravel and {{Technobabble}}.
* HonorBeforeReason:
** The Klingons, repeatedly, to IdiotBall levels. Would qualify as a DeconstructedTrope were it not for the fact the game takes their side every time.
*** In the backstory they react to Federation condemnation of their unilateral invasion of the Gorn Hegemony by breaking off diplomatic relations and beginning attacks on Federation colonies. [[HistoryRepeats Just like they did before the Dominion War]].
*** In the mission "Diplomatic Orders", a Klingon cruiser commander gets information that a Federation diplomat is really an Undine. Does he submit his findings to the Federation? No! He leads a deep-strike into Federation territory to kill the ambassador himself, and instead of coming out firing, he sacrifices the element of surprise to high-handedly demand that the Federation PC hand over the ambassador. The Fed PC reacts surprisingly calmly to this: instead of just blasting the idiot out of space on sight (remember, the Feds and KDF have now '''been at war for four years'' and the Klingon is asking a Starfleet officer on an EscortMission to ''hand over his escortee to an enemy combatant''), he asks to see the Klingon's evidence. The Klingon instead takes umbrage at this supposed insult to his honor and attacks, and because he's up against a {{Plot Armor}}ed PlayerCharacter he dies completely pointlessly and Starfleet makes the kill against the Undine.
*** Then there's "House Pegh". Emperor Kahless breaks away from a covert infiltration mission that is going surprisingly well because he sees an Iconian on a security camera and wants to challenge it to honorable combat. T'Ket at first ignores the idiot, then basically toys with Kahless for a while until [[spoiler:B'Eler {{technobabble}}s away T'Ket's NighInvulnerability. Instead of pressing his unearned advantage home, Kahless cuts off T'Ket's arm then starts monologuing about honor, giving T'Ket time to recover and vape Kahless.]] To hear Captain Kagran and Cryptic's blog tell it, the game views this as a HeroicSacrifice; [[IdiotPlot the players had a much different opinion]].
** In "The 2800", Jem'Hadar First Kar'ukan is so determined to regain the honor he lost by failing to pass through the Bajoran wormhole, he disobeys multiple direct orders to stand down from the female Changeling, whom like all Jem'Hadar he otherwise regards as a deity.
* HoldYourHippogriffs: "Down the [=ChuSwI'=] Hole". Note that [=ChuSwI'=] are from the Franchise/StarTrekNovelVerse.
* HolographicTerminal: Starfleet absolutely loves this trope; first seen on Memory Alpha and the bridge of the ''Enterprise''-F, it was later added to Federation fleet starbases and the revamped Earth Spacedock in Season 9. The Klingons and Romulans have this as well, but not nearly as much.
* HumansAreLeaders: The only race with the Leadership skill, which increases subsystem repair and hull regeneration. An entire crew of purple quality Human bridge officers lead by a Human captain will have a very fast regeneration rate and recover from subsystem attacks that temporarily knock them out such as Target Subsystem: Engines.
* HumansAreWhite: Early on this was true, but the game's humans and near-humans began to be diversified considerably starting roughly at ''Legacy of Romulus''.
* HumiliationConga: [[spoiler:Hakeev]] gets put through one once his plans start falling apart.
* HumongousMecha:
** The Voth have some rather formidable mechs that they employ in ground combat which can be rather difficult to defeat without a concerted effort from a team of players and supporting bridge officers.
** Also the Elachi walkers used in their invasions of various colony worlds in the Romulan Republic story missions and the Rhi Atmosphere PVE, which are a rather blatant shout-out to the Martian tripods from ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds''.
* HurricaneOfPuns:
** ''[[CrowningMomentOfFunny The Tribble With Klingons]]'', Which gives us such gems as: [[spoiler: Whack-A-Tribble, Tribble Savior, Tribble Topia, etc.]] Be warned, this has undergone ''rapid'' MemeticMutation in the player base.
** The KDF has a lot of this. One of the Klingon PlayerVersusEnvironment missions is called [[IncrediblyLamePun "Sulfur My Wrath."]] Players collectively groaned upon seeing it.
** The introductions given to each group of opponents in Hassan's fighting pit on Nimbus III are pretty bad as well.
** Mentioning the word 'Gorn' in zone chat is just begging for a veritable flood of puns based on the word.
* HyperactiveMetabolism: we will have this trope in the future.
* IAmNotLeftHanded: It's easy to play this up with certain ships as they tend to have consoles that many players tend to consider useless and try to dump in order to raise their DPS.
* IHaveAFamily:
** The Republic prisoner on Hakeev's ship says this as [[spoiler: the brainwashed player]] is about to [[MalevolentMutilation forcibly install Borg implants into them]] without anesthesia. It doesn't do them any good.
** Va'kel Shon uses this as his excuse for not helping Romulan and [=KDF=] players get past the Tholian guard in "Temporal Ambassador".
* IJustWantToBeNormal: Poor Miral Paris. She hates the fact that she is considered the Klingon Messiah. She just wants to be the head of security on the U.S.S. Kirk. [[spoiler: Even worse is that the Guardian of Forever confirms the fact that she is the Kuvah'magh.]]
* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: All five missions of the "Breen Invasion" episode include the word "cold" in the title, referring to the planet Breen being [[SingleBiomePlanet very, very wintry]].
* ImplacableMan: If you don't have a frequency remodulator device, Borg drones can easily become this once they adapt to your weapons. The only way to stop them then is to engage them in melee combat, where you risk possibly being assimilated.
** The player-character and their crew can come off as this as well; taking everything the universe can throw at them and coming back for more.
* ImprobableWeaponUser: The Gorn equivalent of the [[DemonicSpiders Klingon Swordmaster]] likes to grab a chunk of the ground and throw it at you. Yes, even on a space ship/space station.
** Orbital Strike for Engineer captains. It doesn't matter where you are--on the surface, underground, on another Federation starship, ''even back in time.''
* InGameNovel: ''[[http://sto.gamepedia.com/Accolade/Lore The Path to 2409]]'', a 29-volume text which tells the major historical events between the end of ''Film/StarTrekNemesis'' in 2379 and the game's beginning in 2409.
* InSpaceEveryoneCanSeeYourFace: While most of the environmental suits and helmet-bearing elite armor sets in the game avert this, it's played straight with D'Tan and a Romulan scientist accompanying him in the cutscene at the end of the last Romulan reputation mission.
* InsurmountableWaistHeightFence: There is one very prominent example on the Starfleet Academy map. Your character is not able to access the waterfront, even though there's only a literal waist-heigth fence in your way - one that you could jump over under normal circumstances. Many other maps (including player-created Foundry stories) use noticable [[InvisibleWall Invisible Walls]]. Those are most prominent around the edges of maps, where your character suddenly can't go any further for no apparent reason, although in some maps (e.g. some of the Borg ones), there are energy fields acting as these.
* [[InfinityMinusOneSword Infinity -1 Ship]]: The Breen and Risan ships. Both have the console numbering of the Fleet ships, are free to Upgrade to T5-U (if applicable), only requires a time investment (usually no more than 10 minutes tops) a day to get what you need to unlock them and once you unlock one, all you need is just a day's run through your other characters to get the rest.
* InfinityMinusOneSword: Many C-Store ships that come with special weapons usually bear the "Infinity" symbol and come with special modifiers that other weapons don't. What makes them Minus One Swords is that they only really scale up to about Mk XI.
* [[InfinityPlusOneSword Infinity +1 Ship]]: The Fleet, Lockbox and Lobi ships. All three are top of the line ships: high hull strength, high shield modifier, usually a superior Bridge Officer layout and their upgrades makes them even stronger. However, getting Fleet ships means being ''in'' a Fleet and getting to the Level required to unlock that certain ship. Lockbox and Lobi ships are even worse as they require an insane amount of money, either real life cash or EC.
* InterchangeableAntimatterKey: The game features periodically changing "Lock Boxes" containing random items that need to be unlocked using a "Master Key," which costs 125 Zen (or 1125 Zen for a pack of 10 keys) and is consumed in the process. The lock boxes themselves drop frequently enough that, unless you use real money or sell/discard the boxes, you're likely to have ''way'' more of them than keys.
* InterfaceScrew:
** Some missions will require you to hide your ship inside a nebula. Inside these nebulae, static interference will obstruct your entire view of everything on the screen save for the UI itself. Your map will also be obstructed by static as well.
** Getting assimilated by the Borg during ground missions will also implement a fisheye lens-type effect on the camera that lasts until your character is defeated.
** Being critically low on health in ground combat will cause the screen to grey out.
** Having your ship boarded by an enemy in space combat will cause the edges of the screen to flash red until the effects of the boarding parties have expired or been neutralized.
** In "The Long Night" part of the Empok Nor map has an effect where friendlies sporadically appear as hostile (red) and hostiles as friendly (blue), causing friendly fire situations until you [[JustifiedTrope activate a series of consoles to pump a hallucinogenic gas out of the atmosphere]].
* InterfaceSpoiler:
** In a mission where you've secretly been in a Holo-Deck the entire time, your away mission's map shows a yellow grid pattern.
** An early Romulan mission involves checking three systems -- Dewa, Gamma Eridon and Galorndon Core -- to see which is the most suitable for colonization to become 'New Romulus'. Thing is, Dewa's name on the sector map was once Dewa III/''New Romulus''. This was later updated so that the sector name lacks the reference to New Romulus until some time ''after'' said mission.
* AnInteriorDesignerIsYou: Sort of; you get to choose what kind of bridge your ship has, and you can now [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5CZZ3M2pbk&hd=1 run around your ship's interior]]. Cryptic has stated outright that they want to expand greatly upon this and eventually give you full control of your ship's interior and possibly even a starbase for player-made fleets.
** You also get to design the ''exterior'' of your ship from several options for each major ship section, natch. It took them a while to add Klingon options, however.
** Starbases have finally been added, which allow for ''very'' limited customization of both exteriors and interiors.
** Also, the Foundary allows for the creation of custom missions, as well as custom mission maps, including indoor, outdoor and outer space mission arenas.
* ISOStandardHumanSpaceship: The ''Avenger''-class battlecruiser is an ISO Standard riff on the usual Starfleet "flying spoon" design, a blocky, beefy, compact cruiser.
* ItemCrafting:
** The system has gone through several iterations and is slated for updates including [[Series/StarTrekVoyager craftable Delta Flyers.]]
** Craftable Delta Flyers have now been removed and are only available through the C-Store.
** This is the only place to obtain the Aegis Space Gear for your ship. Thankfully, it's sellable on the Exchange for those who don't want to work for it.
* ItsQuietTooQuiet: Invoked in the "The Vault", as the player is exploring the inside of the [[ThatsNoMoon massive space station]].
--> '''Tactical Officer:''' "Quiet in this area - too quiet."
* JackOfAllTrades: A few starships tend to lean towards this pattern. This is easily shown with Lobi-bought Tal Shiar Adapted Battle Cruiser and the Jem'Hadar Dreadnought Carrier, as both are heavily armored and shielded ships who can utilize systems that can weaken an opponent in some way while dishing out punishment while losing out on certain things that would make them a GameBreaker
* JackOfAllStats: The Fleet Support Cruiser Retrofit. Not as strong as the Fleet Exploration Cruiser Retrofit, not as powerful as the Fleet Assault Cruiser Refit, not as maneuverable as the Fleet Advanced Heavy Cruiser, but will get you through things in a pinch. In fact, many players opted to keep this instead of going to the equally laid out Guardian Cruiser.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: While rescuing a Federation ship from a Borg sphere, Q, for seemingly no reason than his own amusement, will get involved and start resetting time, forcing you to rescue the ship against increasingly desperate odds. [[spoiler: However, after the third go, he'll then send you and your away team back in time to the battle of Wolf 359, on board the Saratoga, where he reveals the Iconians have opened a small rift, letting a handful of Borg on board, where they will proceed to kill or assimilate Ben Sisko, and throw the entire future into chaos, unless you stop them. After clearing the ship, Q will admit he's moderately impressed, and will helpfully stop time, giving you a chance to get ready for the boss fight (which you ''will'' need).]] He can be an epic jerk about it, but Q seems to be looking out for the human race, and at least giving them a fighting chance against the Iconians' more cosmic level shenanigans.
* JustFollowingOrders: {{Subverted}} in "Cold Comfort". Tran, a captured Breen CombatMedic, was ordered on an attack against a Deferi civilian freighter [[spoiler:to gather intelligence about the Preserver Archive that Thot Trel is trying to find]]. He followed his orders, but tells the PlayerCharacter that he regrets doing so because attacking civilians is dishonorable.
* JustOneSecondOutOfSync: In the mission "Time in a Bottle", the player character and Captain Nog investigate a Krenim artifact. [[spoiler: They discover a Krenim outpost that managed to evade the Vaadwaur's genocide by hiding half a second away out of the "regular" timestream. They also have plans for a great Timeship but need Alliance aid to build it.]]
* KarmaHoudini: The universe has an unfortunate number of these in the main storyline.
** J'mpok gets this as he is responsible for the Klingon Empire's FaceHeelTurn and has committed numerous war crimes like forced relocations as well as conquering the Gorn race. Ultimately, the Federation has to ally with him to keep the Iconians off their back. A DownplayedTrope example as events strip him of most political allies as well as get his best friends killed.
** The Female Changeling gets one after avoiding this in ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine.'' After spending thirty years in prison for murdering over 800 million Cardassians and God knows how many other people, she's allowed back into the Dominion in exchange for stopping the Jem'Hadar remnant's invasion. It's also clear she's learned ''nothing'' from the experience.
** Actually {{Subverted}} despite first appearances with the Iconians. [[spoiler: The Iconians look like they get away with massive destruction of the galaxy but they ended up with the same situation as Sela. It turns out their actions caused all of the pain and distress which drove them to all that murder in the first place.]]
* KickTheDog: [[spoiler:Gaul]] does this by [[spoiler:shooting a Talaxian cook]]. In fact he had a complex plan to make certain there would be that dog to kick, that the player would be there to see the kick and that it would be the most senseless kick manageable in the whole Quadrant. When it fails to cause the right reaction from [[spoiler: Neelix]], he proceeds to stomp on the whole litter just to drive home that he is Evil.
* KillAndReplace: Standard M.O. of Undine infiltrators. On three separate occasions in-game they've replaced members of Starfleet or the Federation diplomatic corps, and in one case a Klingon commander, and the Gorn Hegemony leadership in the backstory was infested with them. The infiltration problem was discovered when they tried it on Ja'rod, son of Torg, but [[UnderestimatingBadassery underestimated his badassery]].
* KillItWithFire: Some weapons, particularly plasma-based weapons, will often set targets ablaze when they hit an enemy. Applies to both ground and ship-based versions.
** The 'four spectres' the player fights in Gre'thor and Fek'Ihr himself will also use this trope to devastating effect. Get caught in the area of one of their flame attacks and you can pretty much kiss your ass goodbye.
** The fighting pit in Hassan's Shangdu hideout on Nimbus III features trapdoors that drop anyone (player or NPC) unlucky enough to tread on them into flames which are immediate death.
* KilledMidSentence:
** [[spoiler: Thot Trel During the Breen arc.]]
-->[[spoiler: '''Thot Trel''': "...But... I'm... Thot... Tr..."]]
** Also happens to a Vaadwaur {{Mook}} in "Capture the Flag"
--> '''Vaadwaur soldier''': "Your ship is do--" *incinerated by plasma*
** Clauda, the Tuterian researcher assisting with the Krenim weapon in "Butterfly", gets this as well when saying farewell to her husband
--> '''Clauda''': "I lov-" *gets erased from time*
* KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter: Played with. Torpedoes are far and away the most damaging weapons in your starship's arsenal, but they kind of suck against shields--even if you just have a sliver left, that's enough to negate most of the damage. That's where [[EnergyWeapons phasers and disruptors]] come in, and the Command specialization features a number of traits to boost torpedoes. On the ground, meanwhile, melee weapons have the advantage of ignoring shields and Borg adaptation, guaranteeing a steady damage output if you're willing to risk your skin up close. The TR-116 rifle is a good example of this. While it's only a Mk I level weapon, it can penetrate shields and be shot around corners thanks to that mini-transporter. It can be killer in PVP if used right and very effective against the Borg. The only issue is that they were only available via pre-order from Target and [[ScrewedByTheLawyers the contract has prevented them from making it in-game via rep system or drop.]] That all changed when the transporterless TR-116B became available in the crafting system.
* KlingonPromotion: Not only does the game implement this in the [=KDF=] tutorial missions as the main way a lowly Warrior gains command of an entire starship, but fleets (the in-game "guilds") can also implement a non-violent version of this when leaders have been negligent in their duties; if the fleet leader has been inactive for a set period of time (usually several months), junior members can usurp control of the fleet from them.
* KlingonScientistsGetNoRespect:
** So much so that the Klingons don't actually have dedicated Science Vessels. Instead, they have Birds-Of-Prey, small, ultra-manoeuverable ships that have universal Bridge Officer slots which can be assigned any type rather than being limited to one. Then again, their Carriers have similar capabilities to Science Vessels (less weapons, increased shields, extra Science stations, Auxiliary Power bonus...).
** In-game the chief engineer of the Klingon flagship complains that the engineers do all the work and the warriors take all the credit.
** Demonstrated in "House Pegh". [[spoiler:Kahless is given all the credit for wounding the Iconian T'Ket (right before T'Ket [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice ran him through]]), even though he wasn't even able to ''dent'' it until science officer B'Eler technobabbled away its NighInvulnerability.]]
* KnightOfCerebus: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlZzP61VDZY "So you are the heroes of the Milky Way. You have come further than we expected, but still you chase our shadows. We give you a single warning. Do not attract our attention again."]] Although the playerbase complained about the CutsceneIncompetence of roughly everyone else present, all of whom were armed, in not vaporizing the Iconian on the spot while she was monologuing.
* KnockBack: There are tons of different weapons and attacks that deal this out, both on the ground and even in space. Hell, some types of personal shields your Captain and away team members can wear have the ability to deal this out to anyone attacking them. Romulan warbirds even do this to other ships hit by the PlanarShockwave of their singularity cores exploding when they're defeated.
* LadyNotAppearingInThisGame:
** Some of the promo art features a [[http://images-cdn.perfectworld.com/www/pictures/1353959785786.jpg young female Vulcan]] wearing a Starfleet-styled CustomUniformOfSexy with plentiful cleavage. She's been dubbed T'Its and variations thereof [[FanNickname by the fanbase]][[note]]Canonically, most Vulcan feminine names are "T'[something]"[[/note]]. On the other hand, when the ExpansionPack ''Legacy of Romulus'' was dropped, another Romulan showed up in the promo wallpapers, dubbed "So'Hott" by the players. According to WordOfGod this is meant to be Commander Tiaru Jarok, the captain of the Romulan Republic flagship RRW ''Lleiset'' (the Romulan counterpart to the ''Enterprise''). She becomes a {{Recurrer}} starting with the Season 8 teaser mission "Sphere of Influence" but wasn't in the game until that mission was released.
** Promo art for the second expansion ''Delta Rising'' played this straight again. [[http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/startrek/images/4/49/Delta_Rising_3_caps.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150118000517 This wallpaper]] features a hot female Romulan in a SpyCatsuit, a hot blonde Liberated Borg Starfleet officer in tactical greys, [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers and a big, burly Klingon with a bat'leth]]. Though the Romulan at least bears some resemblance to Commander Mena, the Romulan mission giver for much of ''DR'''s storyline.
* LampshadeHanging: You get an accolade for scanning an anomaly inside the Bajoran wormhole. Its title? "Isn't This All One Big Anomaly?"
* LargeAndInCharge:
** The more important the Breen, the bigger they are. [[{{Mooks}} H'ren]] are a bit shorter than humans, senior officers are OneHeadTaller, and [[BigBad Thot Trel]] is an absolute colossus.
** Exaggerated further with the Fek'lhri, who range from the wast-high Hordelings to the Slave Masters, who are twice your height... and the Horde's senior leadership are even bigger than that.
** The Gorn seem to be fond of this as well; low-level grunts look like anemic midgets compared to their superiors. One could be forgiven for mistaking a high-level Gorn officer for a ''T. rex'' or Franchise/{{Godzilla}}.
** Kar'ukan, the leader of the Jem'Hadar near the end of the Dominion storyline, is twice as big as the other Jem'Hadar under his command.
** The Tholians employ this to some degree as well, most noticeably when wearing environmental suits; Ensigns are roughly human-sized, whereas the Captains are almost twice as big!
** You, as the player can play this straight or even invert it, especially in the case of the "Alien" subclass. It's not unusual to see players running around 3 or 4 feet tall.
** Also applies to NPC starships too; you have dinky little frigates at one end, then massive, hulking dreadnoughts at the other which are considered to be capitol ships and/or flagships for their respective factions.
* LargeHam:
** Colonel Hakeev of the Tal Shiar. To such a degree that [[{{Narm}} he can be hard to take entirely seriously]]. For instance at Khitomer: "I don't care if you have a hundred Klingon ships. You will NOT stop me." And then there is his BigNo at the end of the Coliseum episode. Coming at the end of a rather hammy monologue as it does. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhzDY9r8VvE]] TropesAreNotBad, though, as his hamminess is about the only thing adding some levity to what is otherwise [[DarkerAndEdgier a VERY grimdark storyline]] compared to the other two factions'.
** Noye. After his [[spoiler: FaceHeelTurn and vendetta against the player character, he brings the hamminess up to eleven]]. Like Hakeev, [[spoiler: Supervillain!]]Noye serves as some necessary comic relief.
* LaserBlade: Yes, in ''Franchise/StarTrek''. There are Nanopulse Lirpas and Bat'leths (which is by the way based in an ACTUAL canon technobabble) which give off the glow full time. The one that is kinda controversial is the new Tholian Energy Sword which harnesses energy shot at it's wielder and converts it into an energy blade that reflects incoming fire like a lightsaber. the controversy comes from the fact it's so blatant about it and being an AssPull of tech. It's still moderately popular simply because of the trope though.
* TheLegionsOfHell: The Fek'lhri are a ''space-faring'' version of this. They are malicious souls of the damned. Spirits sent to Gre'thor, the Klingon version of Hell. The Klingons have a story arc where you and your crew are sent down to Gre'thor itself, where you must find why and how the Fek'Ihri reappeared. Along your travels you will fight, among other demons, the physical personifications of Treachery, Cowardice, and Dishonor, then finally Molor and Fek'Ihr, something like the Klingon versions of Asmodeus and the Devil. [[spoiler:Possibly subverted: Your science officer suggests after the fact that the battle in Gre'thor may have been AllJustADream and that the Fek'Ihri were created by biotech, possibly by the Hur'q. [[AbortedArc Nothing ever comes of this.]]]]
* LetsGetDangerous: When [[spoiler:an Iconian shows up at the end of ''Surface Tension'' and casually kills the Klingon High Council, Admiral Quinn points out that they are the reason they should stop this pointless war and work together. Which formally ends the Federation/Klingon War.]]
* LetsYouAndHimFight: In episode "Allies", mission "Memory Lane", the Tal Shiar leak false information to try and get the Romulan PC and an RRF captain allied with the opposite faction to take each other out. This fails, but not before the Romulan PC kills several of the other captain's squads.
* LevelEditor: The "Foundry" content creation toolset. Even in its initial "beta"-ish release state (as Cryptic calls it), it's quite robust and will only get moreso, and will likely allow STO to carve out a very solid niche for itself. Missions by top authors are often favorably compared to canon TV episodes. See Recap.StarTrekOnline for work pages on some of the missions.
* LevelScaling: In order to maintain some of the challenge, all instances that the player enters into will feature enemies that scale up to your level. This also helps please the fanbase by maintaining that the Klingons, the Orion Syndicate, the Gorn, and all the other races you engage in the low level story arcs are still a viable threat against you at level 50[[note]]and that while an assault cruiser (e.g. Sovereign class) is still clearly significantly more powerful than a light cruiser (e.g. Centaur class), it is not by several orders of magnitude as happens when comparing two players with a 40-level difference[[/note]]. Public areas like space conflicts still scale the enemies to their appropriate levels, making it very easy to destroy entire Klingon armadas with only a few phaser shots to drop the shields and a torpedo to finish off the ship.
* LightningBruiser: The Escort class ships. Once you learn and train your tactical officers with the Cannon Rapid Fire ability, you will tear almost any ship's shields to shreds faster than they have time to turn around and start fighting back. Add torpedoes into that mix and they'll be dead in seconds. Defense can be easily enhanced through shielding and skill distribution into science or engineering skills.
* LizardFolk: The Gorn, Saurians and Voth.
* LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading:
** One of the few nearly-universal complaints about the game is that due to the way sector space, solar systems and human-scale stuff is divided, you have to transition between loading screens a ''lot''. Admittedly, because of the way they go from environment to environment in the ''shows'' so quickly, there wasn't all that much of a way of escaping scene changes, but on older machines or lower-quality connections the load times can hurt.
** With the release of Season 10, sector space was revamped from seventeen separate regions into three major quadrants which are enormous to cross, but cut down massively on loading screens.
* LockedRoomMystery: In "What Lies Beneath," the party hears a cry for help coming from the intercom outside a locked room. After breaking in, they find the body of someone who'd just been shot with a phaser, with no sign of the shooter. [[spoiler: It was done by a malfunctioning maintenance hologram and its mobile emitter probably just flew through an air duct or something.]]
* LoopholeAbuse: Following the outcry of "too much grinding" for new ships in the fourth anniversary event, Cryptic introduced a system that allowed players to obtain the ships for alts at a significantly lower cost after unlocking it. Took a year and some change for Cryptic to realize these players were now just grinding for the ships ''now'' and waiting until next year so they didn't have to do the grinding then. They were much faster in stopping players from doing that with dilithium and marks, though, either way, players got angry because they felt Cryptic was being angry.
* LowerDeckEpisode: Played with. You are, of course, TheCaptain, so it wouldn't make sense for you to be deeply involved in one of these. However, the game does offer "[[RedshirtArmy Duty Officers]]," who are semi-randomly generate and whom you can ''send'' on Lower Deck Missions, bringing back small amounts of EXP, EC, dilithium and "Commendation Experience," a second set of levels which give you some new abilities. What's interesting is that [[FanNickname Doffs]] themselves are SeriousBusiness. The cheapest Bridge Officers ("[[FanNickname Boff]]"), the {{NPC}}s that form your [[FiveManBand away team]], start at like 100 EC at the exchange. The cheapest Duty Officers start at ''30K''.
** This is a direct result of free-market economy, plus Starbase maintenance silliness on the part of Cryptic. ''Why'' do Starbase development projects require so many "Common" quality Duty Officers? Why are [[FanNickname Doffs]] spent like provisions or industrial energy cells? Whatever the reason, the fact that every player owned fleet is constantly hungry for [[FanNickname Doffs]] is what drives the Exchange price so far up. [[FanNickname Boffs]] have no such demand, and thus are much cheaper.
* {{Machinima}}: The ''"The Veil Of Space"'' trailers.
* MacrossMissileMassacre:
** The "High Yield Torpedo" abilities allow a single launcher to fire 2, 3, or 4 torpedoes at a single target, but the prize goes to the "Torpedo Spread" ability that fires 3 (reduced damage) torpedoes each at up to 3 targets (9 total) at lowest level moving up to a theoretical maximum of 9 torpedoes each at up to 9 targets (that's up to '''81''' total) from a single launcher at the top end.
** The Borg command ship from the sector invasion events love to use Torpedo Spread on the players. For a ship of it's size, from the player's perspective, it looks like you're getting hit point blank with buckshot from a shotgun. Say goodbye to your shields and 90% of your hull from the initial impact.
** Plasma Torpedoes launchers only fire one torpedo at High Yield (it gets modified into a slower, destructible, but ''much'' more damaging torpedo instead), but the Romulan Hyper-Plasma Torpedo fires three High Yield torpedoes ''as the default mode''. Torpedo Spread doesn't have quite the impact it does on other torpedoes (it goes from 2 torpedoes per three targets to 2 torpedoes per 5 targets), but on the other hand, 10 torpedoes ''is'' pretty impressive for a single attack by a single ship.
** The Breen Transphasic Torpedoes have this in spades. The normal ones fire two or three at once, with a normal shot, but when the Torpedo Spread ability is used in tandem with it, it is a real massacre. And then there's the Transphasic CLUSTER Torpedo launcher, this baby fires a single slow torpedo. When that torpedo gets close enough to its target; it instantly splits into TEN mines. What's more those mines don't have the delay that the normal ones have. The only thing that ballences this weapon is its 60 second recharge time, and the fact that the torpedo is all but useless if it hits strong sheilds. However, if these babies hit a target with a downed facing shield; well, the target will fall way below 25% in health even if it was at 100% before the torpedo blew it all to heck.
** The new Tactical Pilot Ships have one. For bonus points, it's actually micro missiles instead of torpedoes. Feast your eyes: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSwM4NzCxe4#t=275]]
* TheMainCharactersDoEverything: Captain Shon of the Federation, Captain Koren of the Klingon Empire, and Commander Jarok of the Romulan Republic tend to assist the player characters far more than any other characters, possibly excluding the TV series' alumni of course.
* TheManBehindTheMan: [[spoiler:The Iconians, architects of '''all''' the strife sweeping the galaxy. All it took was one Iconian Portal to literally walk into Fluidic Space and mess around with the Undine, a race who simply wants to be ''left alone'', enough times to get them to do all the rest of the work.]]
** On a smaller scale, this trope applies to the Romulan Empire. While Empress Sela does in her own right hold a great deal of authority and power, [[spoiler: The Tal Shiar have always had their own agenda and goals of operation. They work under their own masters, and don't recognize Sela as the true ruler of the empire.]]
* ManipulativeBastard: This is the [[spoiler: Iconians']] [[PlanetOfHats Hat.]] They're responsible for starting ''everything'' that has happened in the first 10 seasons.
* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: During the invasion of Klingon space by [[TheLegionsOfHell the Fek'lhri]], nobody is quite sure whether they're up against demons or artificial constructs. [[spoiler:It may be a bit of both.]]
* MeaningfulName: The R.R.W. ''Lleiset'', to anyone who knows Rhihannsu. ''[[spoiler: Romulan Republic Warbird Freedom]].''
* MediumAwareness: During "The State of Q", Q himself will speak through the yellow text message pop up on screen that says "Intense, isn't it?" These yellow messages are typically reserved for system notices such as when you receive a reward for completing quests, goals, duty officer assignments, and such.
* MegatonPunch[=/=]TouchOfDeath: It's possible (though very rare) to ''disintegrate'' enemy [=NPC=]s or other players with [[GoodOldFisticuffs hand-to-hand]] criticals.
* MeleeATrois:
** More like Melee a Dodécaèdre. The galaxy at the beginning of the game is a huge mess of big wars, small wars, and {{Enemy Mine}}s. The Feds are at war with the Klingons and in border fights with the Breen, the Romulan Star Empire, the Tholians, and the True Way. The Klingons are fighting the Feds and RSE, and have a covert ops war going against the Undine. Meanwhile the Feds and KDF are also ''allied'' in support of the Romulan Republic, which is fighting Sela's RSE and a [[BalkanizeMe splinter state]] ruled by the Tal Shiar.
** The mission "Skirmish" opens up with a three-way fight between Starfleet, the KDF, and the True Way. [[spoiler:The PC discovers later that the Devidians are also involved and attacking the True Way.]]
** Upon arrival at the [[spoiler: Preserver]] outpost world, the player finds several Breen and Jem'Hadar ships fighting for control of whatever's on the surface. The player's crewmates encourage them to attack while both are distracted.
** On a macro scale, the conflict between the Voth, the Alpha Quadrant powers, and the Borg, shown in Dyson Reputation cutscenes and spoken of in the dev blogs. The Voth are fighting the Borg in their home space, as is the Alpha Quadrant, but the Voth are fighting the Alpha Quadrant for control of the Dyson spheres.
** "A Step Between Stars" is initially just between the Voth and the Dyson alliance. [[spoiler:Then the Undine blast their way into the Jenolan Dyson sphere and wipe out what's left of the Voth fleet before engaging the Dyson alliance.]]
** In ''Delta Rising'''s "Borg Disconnected" STF, what starts as an effort to rescue Borg drones liberated after "Hive: Onslaught" from re-assimilation turns into a Mêlée à ''Quatre'' between the players and Borg Cooperative, the Borg Collective, the Undine, and the Voth.
* MemeticBadass: In universe. The player fully achieves this status, complete with random Starfleet [=NPC=]s fawning over the player's character... ''as early as the first moment you arrive at Earth spacedock.'' [[JustifiedTrope Justified]], in that...oh hell, just ''read this page from top to bottom''. Don't even ''bother'' looking behind the spoilers.
* {{Metagame}}: Like many games, it has this. This goes double for the Special Task Force PVE missions. The game's PowerCreep shot this to hell until ''Delta Rising'' arrived, forcing this back and angering players, who failed these missions because they couldn't just faceroll and blow everything up instantly.
* MightyGlacier:
** One way to play the cruiser allows significant toughness (though less than the all-out defense build) while maintaining a pretty dangerous offense. You're still slow and won't turn for anything, but when you shoot (especially broadside) - the enemy WILL feel it.
%%** The various Carriers. With the exception of the Heavy Escort Carrier, Kar'Fi Battle Carrier and the Ar'Kif Retrofit, Carriers are massive battleships with incredibly high HP and shield levels and able to host a plethora of ships (the Vo'quv and the Jem'Hadar Dreadnought take exceptional mention as they're the only ships that launch actual ''ships'', not shuttles)
* MiniMecha: Voth "exosuits", higher-level creatures that act as mini-bosses in Season 8's Ground Battlezone, and are about three times the height of the average player character. They're stylized like fat dinosaurs and have {{Arm Cannon}}s, mortars, and a barrier field that shoves players backwards.
* MildlyMilitary:
** As ever for Starfleet. In fact, you can customize the uniform on your captain and on each bridge officer - while they'll still be Starfleet uniforms, they don't even have to ''match''. With TOS, TNG, ''Deep Space Nine'', the various films, and even ''mirror universe'' uniforms available, they don't even have to have the "new" look.
** Averted with regards to the M.A.C.O. marines, who are definitely NOT MildlyMilitary. The player gets away with the multiple uniforms at higher levels despite being one because they're primarily Starfleet with a dual commission. The STO tie-in novel ''Literature/TheNeedsOfTheMany'' actually shows what being a M.A.C.O. is like and they sounds like any marine you've met in real life. Their uniform doesn't change much, it's based on what Mark equipment your using and how good you are.
* MilitaryBrat: [=NPC=]s in Starfleet include the children, grandchildren, or other descendants of Hikaru Sulu, Mira Romaine, Miles O'Brian, Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres, and Samantha Wildman. (The latter two were born aboard ''Voyager'' during that series' run.) Civilian descendants include those of Harry Mudd and Cyrano Jones.
* MoleInCharge:
** Undine seem to be good at this, given how the ''entire Klingon Empire'' is at war with the Federation because of them. [[spoiler:"Diplomatic Orders"]] has you escorting someone who turns out to be an Undine imposter.
* MookMaker:
** [[GoddamnedBats Klingon Targ Handlers]] will spawn an endless legion of creatures to attack you until you take them down. On the other side of the neutral zone, Tactical Player Captains can summon a two man team of NPC redshirts from their ship to fight for them every two minutes. [[RedshirtArmy But if you combine that with the Tactical Initiative skill]], [[ZergRush which instantly recharges all of your abilities...]]
** Carriers are this mechanically, since the only {{cap}} on how many fighters you or the AI can launch is on how many birds you can have in the air at any given time.
* MoreDakka: Whereas Cruisers are more into BeamSpam, Escorts' ability to equip considerable numbers of rapid-firing cannons puts them into this trope instead. Especially since most cannon-related abilities involve increasing their rate of fire ''even further''. The current king of dakka is the Federation's Andorian-designed ''Kumari''-class escort, a pure GlassCannon with an AlphaStrike that looks like something out of a BulletHell game.
** Guroth, the weapons expert of Delta Flight, practically worships this trope, as he explains when he meets the player;
--> '''Guroth''': "Most weapons on ships are too puny; I make them strong. Have you ever considered what would happen if you loaded ''five'' quantum torpedoes into one casing? You have to reinforce the tubes, but the result is most satisfying!"
* MovesetClone: The Starfleet ''Avenger''-class and Klingon ''Mogh''-class battlecruisers have the same bridge officer layout, virtually identical stats, and very similar unique consoles that act as RecursiveAmmo weapons. Their primary difference is that the ''Mogh'' has a built-in cloaking device, whereas the ''Avenger'' has to use the cloak console add-on. {{Justified|Trope}} as the ''Avenger'' having been based off of stolen plans for Klingon battlecruisers, and the ''Mogh'' being based in turn on the ''Avenger''.
* MultiArmedAndDangerous: The Tzenkethi feature two sets of arms; one huge pair that would make Franchise/TheIncredibleHulk jealous, and a smaller pair used for more precise interactions.
* MundaneUtility: One duty officer mission has you sabotage a provisions stockpile of the KDF. Do you destroy the food or poison it? Nope you just beam over about three tribbles and let them do it for you.
* MyGreatestSecondChance: In the Klingon mission "Afterlife", you'll find First Officer Doran, who was slain in the Klingon Tutorial Mission. You find out that her death was a one way ticket to Gre'thor, Klingon Hell. Your player convinces her to team up with her husband and give her a clean slate so she can go to Sto-vo-kor, Klingon Heaven or more Valhalla.
* MyNameIsNotDurwood: A fairly common misspelling of "Ferasan" is "Ferasian". This may be due to their CaptainErsatz status which causes players to not care about them as much.
* MythologyGag: When the Romulan PC [[spoiler:is captured and subjected to Tal Shiar {{brainwashing}}]], they can acquire a pair of accolades ("There Are Four Lights" and "There Are Five Lights", depending on [[spoiler:whether they fully resist or fully comply with the brainwashing]]) inspired by the TwoPlusTortureMakesFive scene between Picard and Gul Madred in Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration: "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E10ChainOfCommand "Chain of Command, Part II]]".
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