Star Trek is an amazing franchise for many reasons, but the fans are frequently overlooked as a factor and indeed are sometimes seen as having a negative impact. Star Trek fans are fiercely loyal, they like to immerse themselves in the deep "canon" which the franchise offers and they will resist any force which may take away from that experience.
Star Trek fans are also some of the most capable around, they come from all walks of life but often have a more general interest in technology. This is a big part of the reason that older games like Klingon Academy, Armada and Bridge Commander are still being played to this day - because the fans have generated new content for them.
When you get down to the heart of it this is the core issue for Excalibur, the desire to put together a game which gives Star Trek's technically capable fans the tools they need to keep the game alive for years to come. This all begins with our community Wiki.
Currently manned by five contributors/editors, the community Wiki is a place where the development team can create new articles based upon the content they are completing for the game. The editing team can then get to work adding in all the pieces of information which they find interesting and useful. For now this information serves more of a publicity purpose, giving new visitors a place to find out what is going to be in the game, but in the long term we plan to make it a core part of our game.
Imagine entering a star system only to find you are facing a huge Klingon vessel. You do an active short range sensor scan on it to gather tactical information, as you wait for the scan results to come in you hit the "information" button. A new page loads from the LCARS Library; the ship is a Negh'Var cruiser and it's a daunting opponent, but the description gives you some tips for combat. The ship is big but it is also going to be slow, if you can keep to the rear of it you should be able to avoid it's heaviest weaponry. We should also try to focus our fire on their sensor systems since they have previously been more susceptible to phaser damage.
The player is now armed not just with factual data about the ship and its subsystems, but also with a valuable education on how best to deal with this foe. This information has been contributed by the community and it doesn't have to be a static source once the game is released as it will be continuously updated with new insights, ship types and tactics as the years go on.
If you would like to check out our very young wiki, head over to Stexcalibur.com
Nicely produced wiki.
A side note, nice to gear Next Gen is coming out on blu ray, in 16:9 Full HD, they are re-cutting it from the original film. Also, all of the sounds and cg/matting effects had to be re-edited for the release. Cooool.