The USS Pathfinder is a Star Trek roleplaying game, played by e-mail. Originally founded as 'Star Trek Frontier Fleet' in the year 2000, our players continue to enjoy roleplaying aboard the Pathfinder. Set in the early 25th century (a couple of decades after the events of Star Trek Nemesis), the transwarp-capable Vesta-class USS Pathfinder is the Frontier Fleet's newest vessel, continuing.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/STOPathfinder
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What happens when you give the Star Trek Online devs access to a Star Trek Tabletop RPG? Well, a pretty good look at what they'd rather be making if they weren't held up by a the constraints of a video game! Star Trek Online: Pathfinder is the Official Star Trek Online dev team's Star Trek Adventures rpg game, centered around the U.S.S. Pathfinder, the lead ship of the Pathfinder-class exploratory vessel.
The origins of the Pathfinder campaign go way back to the launch era of the game when a fan named Thomas Marrone got noticed by Cryptic Studios and sold a number of minigame concepts to the studio. One of his payments was to get an NPC in game. Then they hired him. At the time of their Delta Rising expansion, they had Thomas design an update to the Intrepid-class he named the Pathfinder and then-Lead Writer, Christine 'Kestral' Thompson made his in-game NPC the Captain of Pathfinder. Captain Marrone and the Pathfinder made a handful of appearances in the game afterwards including in the finale of the Iconian War plotline and had been a subject of some fan discussion over the next few years until the RPG show ShieldOfTomorrow came out using the Star Trek Adventures system. Community Manager Mike 'Ambassador Kael' Fatum proposed doing a one shot on stream to tie into Shield and to help crosspromote STA. Under the stewardship of Game Master Jesse Heinig, and with Thomas playing his own in-game NPC Captain, the campaign was born.
The first game, was surprisingly successful and the campaign was agreed to become a regular feature of the STO weekly livestreams, with the hopes of being a monthly campaign, which didn't quite happen due to the intense workload of launching both the Victory is Life expansion and suddenly needing to tie in and stay consistent with a new Star Trek TV series in Star Trek Discovery. They still stream when the staff isn't overworked or exhausted and are still considered some of the better content set in the STO timeframe, with a better look at the 25th Century with more focus on diplomacy and other content that works better in a non-video game format.
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You can watch the recordings of most of the STO:Pathfinder streams on the official Star Trek Online youtube page.
Is it unreasonable for me to think that it might just be a tad impractical having the entire forward section taken up by the Deflector Array? Don't get me wrong; I like the look of the T6 Long Range Science Vessel (Pathfinder Class) in Star Trek Online -- though I personally think it looks like some kind of yacht -- and I think it's a necessity having a deep space science vessel using a pseudo Midas Array for deep space mapping.
However, a large part of the forward section is missing to accommodate the array, and I've always had a problem when it comes to such things. What if there's an emergency on one half of the ship, and a person can't get to the other side because they're cut off by the Death Star Trench smack dab in the middle?
Or is it hubris to think that only a select few are capable of handling an emergency at any given moment due to the 'A-Team Syndrome' that comes from having the Bridge Officers be the main focus of the story, thus making it seem like standard Duty Officers are incapable of performing tasks that only the 'A-Team' can handle?