IndieDB is hosting the second annual Indie of the Year competition and one of the best Star Trek indie games needs your votes!  If you feel that it deserves your vote, please head to http://www.indiedb.com/games/star-trek-excalibur and vote for Star Trek: Excalibur!

Last night, Cryptic Studios launched the most recent update for Star Trek Online:  Season 5!

The update, entitled “Call to Arms” adds a range of new missions for both the Federation and Klingon sides as well as a range of new features such as the much anticipated “Duty Officer” system.  Here is a summary of all of the new features:

• The Duty Officer System – Since the birth of the Federation and Klingon Defense Force, there have been countless unsung heroes that work in a vessel’s lower decks. No matter which department they are in, these officers have pledged their lives to their ship and fellow crewmates. For the first time ever, as their Captain, you will actively manage their activities as you delegate their assignments aboard and away from your ship.
• The Borg Advancement – For the past several months, Starfleet and the KDF have been confronting the Borg armada as they make their advance on the Alpha Quadrant. Recently, a Borg fleet was able to break through the Defari blockades in the Orellius Sector Block, land a probe on Defera Prime and begin assimilating its inhabitants. It is up to you to beam down and eliminate the threat of total annihilation of this important race.
• Klingon Gameplay Updates – Season 5: Call to Arms enhances Klingon gameplay and introduces an improved way to level up your KDF warrior. Not only will your character start out as a Commander (level 21), you will experience a compelling storyline that will allow you to move more easily through the ranks by completing episodic content. It is a glorious day for battle!
• Skills Revamp – Over the course of Season 5, the way you choose to specialize your captain will be updated. Phase One of these changes, the Space Skills Revamp, is now live and provides a clearer understanding of where to spend your Skill Points and which tree affects which innate and Bridge Officer powers.
• Missions Revamp – Season 5 also introduces a more streamlined way to play through the game’s episodic content. Captains will utilize the completely redesigned mission journal to find the latest Starfleet or KDF assignments available, including an option to transwarp instantly to the mission’s starting planet.
• Lore Missions - Along with the release of the Starfleet and Klingon Academy maps, an entirely new type of non-combat play is being introduced. Participate in daily events surrounding

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The team behind the hit Armada 2 Modification Fleet Ops, recently launched a patch project for the original Star Trek Armada game designed to solve some of the problems that this aged game experiences on newer systems.

Back in September, FleetOps leader, DocaCola, posted the following:

Armada 1 has problems running on newer systems. I was unable to run it at all so i begun debugging and fixed some of these problems. Besides bug fixing the patch has two new features for Armada 1. The first is widescreen (all resolutions) support.

The second feature allows to activate the map editor mode in a ‘live’ game (similar to Armada 2). This can be useful for debugging purposes (modding) and of course people who ever wanted to command a fleet of Enterprise Ds in their skirmish games.

The bugs fixed include:

• Game would not start on some systems with more than 2GB of memory
• Game could crash on systems with a very long PATH environment variable

You can download the Armada 1.3 patch and get installation instructions, over at the FleetOps website by clicking here

Over the last couple of weeks, Hailing Frequency has been reporting on the future of Star Trek: Infinite Space, which has recently been stalled following the layoff of over 100 employees at GameForge and an internal company re-structure.

GameForge previously indicated that Infinite Space would only have a future if a co-publisher could be found to help bring the game to completion (relativly speaking) and today, one possible contender has been revealed.

Earlier today, german gaming website OGLabs reported that BigPoint Games, most famously known for games such as Battlestar Galactica Online (BGO) are in discussions with GameForge to come on-board as a co-publisher!

According to the report, GameForge has not yet responded to the offer from BigPoint, but if the deal is succesful, it will see Infinite Space launched sometime in 2012.   The game would continue to be developed by Keen Games, with GameForge and BigPoint acting as co-publishers, however, the partnership would also likely need to be signed off on by CBS Consumer Products, who tend to be quite fussy with regard to who they give access to the Star Trek license.

This is good news for fans of the game who were worried that it may be completely dead.   Hailing Frequency will continue monitoring the situation and will publish updates as and when they become available.

The latest update from the “Star Trek: Excalibur” project has been posted and shows off several examples of how transparency effects are being used in the game:

Some Transparency: One big advantage for Excalibur’s ship framework is how well it supports transparent parts of a ship. This album describes some of the interesting uses we have found for transparency over recent months, and shows just how far it can be pushed.

You can see the full update at: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150474332529810.435249.349086809809&type=1