TREKCORE > GAMING > STARFLEET COMMAND ORION PIRATES > Development Diary

Courtesy of GameSpy.com, these are Taldren's four Diary entries for Orion Pirates.

Star Trek: Starfleet Command - Orion Pirates Diary 1
Lead designer and producer Joshua Morris talks about getting ready for E3 and creating ships.
By - Joshus Morris

GameSpy has been nice enough to include and place for me to ramble for the next month or so. I will try to keep it entertaining as possible and maybe even share some good info on SFC: Orion Pirates.

We are gearing up for E3 this week and next, to make OP look great for the show. There is a lot to do. We are dropping in new ship models every couple days and I think they are looking great. I'll include some screenshots with this update.

New ships come in two flavors. We have some more pirate ships; these are the new dreadnought model, the light cruiser, and destroyer model. This rounds out the normal pirate ships.

The Majority of models take form in "advanced era" designs. Like X ships from SFB These ships are lean, mean, fighting machines. The current BPV for an advanced Cruiser is 250 but I think that number is going to climb. Scott Bruno pointed out that my original designs were based on Cruiser hulls and might be better if they used battle cruisers as a base. I think this will make the ship much more dangerous. The Advanced Destroyers will be based on the War destroyers to follow suit.

There are a lot of new weapons in Orion Pirates as well. I will try to get you some screens of those in action as well. We have contained the new weapons to the advanced era so people that have grown accustomed to ships in the other eras wont have to learn new tactics.

Well that's it for now, Ill let you take a look at the screens and let you see what I'm talking about. I am looking forward to releasing Orion pirates; I think it has given us a little creative freedom, which players will benefit from.

Star Trek: Starfleet Command - Orion Pirates Diary 2
Producer Josh Morris drops us a quick post-E³ diary discussing the current status of Orion Pirates.
By - Joshus Morris

Well, we are back from E³, the largest meeting of the video game industry under one roof. It was a good show and Orion Pirates was well received. The game is looking good and new ship models are being dropped in all the time.

I would like to point out a few things since I last updated this diary. The Dynaverse II is now up and running! This has allowed SFC2 users to finally play the game online in a galaxy wide context. People are having a lot of fun and I recommend people try it. The Dynaverse will also be available in Orion Pirates so now would be a good time to practice even more carnage.

Unfortunately Erik Bethke, our CEO, promised that the Dynaverse would be up a week before or he would eat dirt. This led to the famous dirt-eating spectacle, "The Dirt Files."

I will leave you this week with some new in game shots. I'll be back next time with more information.

Star Trek: Starfleet Command - Orion Pirates Diary 3
Close to shipping, Orion Pirates' Producer Josh Morris fills us in on the status of the game.
By - Joshus Morris

First off today is my 5^th Wedding Anniversary. I know it is also D-Day, My wife let me pick the date, so I chose a date I wouldn't forget being a WWII fan. Happy Anniversary Hon!

Okay, now onto something you might care about. Orion Pirates is getting close to shipping! We have all the sounds, voices, and art in the game. Right now we are focusing on bug fixes, balancing, and installer issues.

All of the advanced era ships are in the game, but I would also like to note that we are adding another 100 or so regular ships types using the existing models. Many new escort classes have been added to strengthen the fleets that needed them.

We finished scripting the bonus CD missions based the original series episode, A Piece of the Action. I designed these missions to allow players to go back to the planet and discover what happened with the 1920's gangsters.

Overall the project hasn't been too stressful. We are getting pretty good at making Starfleet Command. I wanted to add that Starfleet Command: Orion Pirates is a standalone game at an expansion price. This means you do not need SFC2 to play the game, and it includes everything from Starfleet Command 2 except for the single-player campaign missions. This makes Orion Pirates a tremendous value.

I also wanted to share something fun about the SFC community. Taldren has fostered a forum on our message boards that has allowed fans to create fictional stories about Starfleet Command and Star Trek. I highly recommend checking it out. It's well over 5000 posts already!

I was so overwhelmed by the forum that I chose to write a story based on one of the new Cartels from Orion Pirates. The Story is about Alex Wyldfire, leader of his cartel.

Anyway that's it for this time, I will leave you with some screenshots…

Star Trek: Starfleet Command - Orion Pirates Diary 4
Ecstatic about going GOLD, Orion Pirates Producer and Lead Designer Joshua Morris delivers us the last diary in the series.
By - Joshus Morris

As you may have heard we have gone GOLD!

It took a couple of all nighters, and a lot of caffeine, but it is done!

We are pleased with the product we have produced and eager to let you all dig into it. There are over 2000 ship types in the game and 20+ new models and plenty of new missions to keep you entertained.

We are now preparing to retrograde SFC2 to include some of the Dynaverse II improvements. The major improvement will be moving to GameSpy for our chat and verification service. This should improve performance greatly. Beyond that we are working on an unannounced title and are already deep into pre-production.

I hope you all enjoy Orion Pirates and I look forward to seeing you in the GameSpy lobbies. I hope to have an online release party soon on GameSpy and maybe I get a chance to play some of you.

I want to thank GameSpy for hosting this Dev Diary.

I will now leave you with some in-game shots of the final version of Orion Pirates.