You Can't Be Afraid of the Wind

by Mark, Staff Writer

26th September 2016

Oh boy. Starfleet has a lot of things going for it, but there are some difficulties and weirdnesses.

Like, you can run Assign Mission Specialists. Dallas and Danica Erickson are the current options, and are pretty nice, but where do you download them? Starbase One doesn't seed. Husnock Outpost? Probably Neutral Outpost.

Also, Starfleet doesn't have a great deal of ships, so going back to 2154 Earth to pick them up after you've been assaulting some missions is a bit of a time-sink.

The Warp Five Program is here to knock some Trek sense into things. With this in play, Mission Specialists can go directly to Seat Of Starfleet, so you don't need to trek down the spaceline to pick them up.

Then, any Starfleet personnel you report can relocate to your NX-class ship in the Alpha Quadrant. It's ok, leave multi-quadrant shenanigans to other affiliations. That's Enterprise or Columbia, or potentially Mirror Enterprise or I.S.S. Avenger, if you want to broaden your horizons.

You might think it a good idea to split your forces, have Columbia and Enterprise out, and choose which ship you send your people to. Alas, The Warp Five Program gets nullified if you have a second ship out.

...well, that last bit isn't entirely true, it doesn't count Shuttlepods. At present, there is only the Type 18 Shuttlepod, which isn't particularly helpful to Starfleet decks.

This card seems tailor-made to go with Federation Flagship: Recovered. Send one NX-class ship into the great black yonder, and if your opponent, or some dilemma, destroys the ship, you can replace the ship and retain the crew.

One last feature of the Program mimics a design emphasis of the other game, encouraging Starfleet to do a Space mission first. Ten points is a pretty nice incentive. If you score these points, you get to keep them if you lose the card to a second ship.

So, which space mission are you heading to first?

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