To provide better insight into how our AI crewbots work we put together this blog to give everyone some clarity on how exactly they work and how the Watson powered voice recognition works with them.

While Bridge Crew was designed as a Social VR game first and foremost, there are times you may be a player or two short or you may just feel like exploring space on your own for a bit. The crewbots were developed to help fill in those blanks. The game is playable and beatable with an AI crew, but they were not intended to replace human players and may not perform as well as your buddies would.

Keep in mind that with VR, performance is at an extreme premium to keep framerates high to avoid player discomfort so highly sophisticated AI that heavily affects that performance was not in the cards. The crewbots are a very effective solution that meets the goals of providing basic crew substitutes without any negative impact on framerates.



To interact with your AI crew members you can either issue commands to them directly using a contextual UI, or you can issue crew wide orders from the Captain’s chair. Most misconceptions are about how crew wide orders work as well as how having humans occupying some of the stations affects these orders.


Crew wide orders were developed to help reduce menu complexity and simplify some complex, common, behaviors. These commands will work with any combination of players and AI manning stations but in the case of humans operating stations the AI assumes that the players will handle their appropriate tasks.

“Analyze Target” for example, will cause tactical to try to scan once in range, engineer to set full power to engines, and helm to fly to the target. You could do this without the crew wide order, however you will have to drill down into each station’s command list in order to do so, and you’ll have to wait for tactical’s scan order to become valid. We execute this sequence of events commonly enough in the game to warrant a nice “macro” for the behavior. “Transport Target” works in a similar fashion. Assuming a target has been scanned, helm will fly to the target, tactical will lower shields if they are up, and engineer will begin the lock on process.

Crew wide orders can be fairly nuanced. For example, the “Cloak Hunt” order (Only available on the 1701-D) will send crew to scanners, adjust power for phasers and shields, arm torpedoes, switch them to proximity and steer the ship toward the radar blip. Once “close” the Tactical crewbot will fire. However, the “Engage Target” order will respect the ship’s current torpedo armed state. So if the captain had previously ordered “arm torpedoes” through tactical’s order panel or via red alert, “Engage Target” will fire torpedoes, if they are not armed, the order will not arm them, and we only shoot phasers.

Think of crew wide orders as a large collection of tiny individual commands whose result is chasing an enemy to fire upon, hunting cloaked ships, etc. There are many things going on in the background during one of these orders.



Now let’s talk about one of the crew orders that needs further clarity, Engineer’s repairs.

When a mission starts, the Engineer Crewbot is initialized with an “auto repair” behavior this is the most basic and default repair mode. This behavior has a few different outcomes depending on if you are on the Aegis/TOS bridge or EnterpriseD. On the Aegis/TOS bridges, if the ship has 100% subsystem health across all subsystems, the Crewbot will unassign the repair crews. If the ship has subsystem damage, auto repair waits until 40% subsystem damage before acting. This means no crews will be assigned to repair until these points are reached.

Auto repair works with a priority list. When it picks what subsystem to fix first, it will choose based on this list. Once a subsystem is repaired, it will reevaluate based on this list and reassign crew to other subsystems that are below the damage threshold.

The Auto Repair behavior can be overridden by either player interaction with the repair panel, or captain’s orders. If the captain orders a “Balanced Repair” the 40% limitation is removed and the crewbot will act based on the priority list if any system has less than 100% health. Otherwise, the behavior is the same as auto repair. Once all subsystems are healthy, we return to the auto repair behavior.

If the captain orders repairs on a specific subsystem, the crewbot will repair this system until 100%. It will then return to the auto repair behavior. The behavior is similar if a player sits at Engineering and sets repair crews. If a player modified any repair crews, the Engineer Crewbot will not run any auto repair logic. Instead, it will leave the crew where they are until those subsystems become 100% healthy. After which, we will return to the Auto Repair default behaviors.

Repair works differently for the Enterprise D. Since leaving crew at a subsystem will give a perk if it is healthy, the Ops Crewbot behavior in this instance is to leave crew at a station if assigned by order or manual player action. Additionally, the “Optimize” orders are essentially presets. This helps ensure if the captain orders a preset, the Crewbot will not reassign crew designated for the preset for repair duty. Typically, our preset orders will have one floating crew to deal with subsystem repairs that are outside the desired optimizations. If a player assigns crew at all, the crewbot will not automatically move crew around on the Enterprise D. Instead, you will have to (as captain) assign a preset to clear any previous player’s settings.


Late in our development cycle, in fact after the crewbots were developed, we got the opportunity to work together with our partners at IBM to utilize Watson to make all of this better. What Watson brings to the table is an easier, more intuitive way to operate the crewbot system. It simply takes the place of the in game UI with voice driven commands.

Here’s how it works in a diagram:


The crewbots in operation under Watson command execute the very same code as when run with the UI. So if for any reason Watson is not available the crewbots are still available with the same functionality. What that also means is that you can see what voice commands are possible by looking at what UI driven commands are available. The big advantage Watson brings to the table is a quicker more intuitive way to issue those commands.

So other than a simpler way to execute these commands, what does Watson’s vaunted cloud functionality give us? Well in addition to a very powerful and effective voice recognition service, Watson is able to interpret what you said and give its confidence level in what you are asking for. Thus, it is able to tell us what command to execute even if you do not say it exactly the “right” way. Thus, we can have “make it so” and “punch it” and “engage” and many other variations result in the same command executed. We then have enhanced this by “training” Watson with Star trek terminology so it has a better idea of what to expect and how to interpret what players say.

The result, more than 80% of the time someone presses the button and says something to Watson we end up executing a command. Now when you factor in how many times people press the button and change their mind, or say nothing or just goof off, this is a very high success rate.

So in summary, the crewbots can be given orders directly for a single station or crew wide orders can be given that affect multiple stations at once. The Watson voice recognition feature is then available to help issue those exact same orders in an easier fashion.

PLEASE NOTE: Some elements of this patch operate exclusively on the TNG DLC, which will be releasing on PC on July 24. On all PC versions, these elements will automatically be applied to the DLC.

FEATURE IMPLEMENTATION

• Implemented Watson powered voice recognition on the TNG bridge
  
• Added the ability for PSVR players to point

MISSIONS

• Fixed an issue with incorrect enemies sometimes spawning for TNG Rescue Ongoing Voyages
  
• Fixed an issue with Rescue missions with two players where the civilian ship does not always appear
  
• Corrected Borg spawning in Melgar’s Point, Elgar. This was to correct an issue where the Borg could spawn in an exclusion zone which would result in them flying through space rocks as they navigate
  
• Fixed an issue with the Borg failing to attack players in an exclusion zone
  
• Fixed an issue where the Warbird does not engage during a Defend the Suribachi mission on the TOS bridge
  
• Corrected an issue where a Rescue Ongoing Voyage could have the ship carrying survivors get destroyed before the players could reach it making it impossible to complete the mission
  
• Corrected an issue with Rescue missions on the TNG bridge where players could not find or rescue civilians off of a vessel or enemy ship
  
• Fixed an issue where an Ongoing Voyages Patrol could not complete the “turning in findings” objective
  
• Corrected research missions so you cannot complete them by impulsing away from the space station when enemies appear
  
• The USS Raleigh no longer has 4 lights following it on Defend missions
  
• Fixed a problem on Patrol/Explore Mode where warping away from final turn-in could result in a mission unable to be completed
  
• Fixed an issue where the “Destroy Enemy Forces Attacking Convoy” objective doesn’t clear if the prototype is transported before killing all hostiles
  
• Fixed an issue during a Borg Resistance mission on the TNG bridge where switching from the Captain to the OPs position could result in the transport panel blacking out
  
• Corrected 2 anomalies in Keth that had incomplete information

BUG FIXES

• Fixed an issue with enemy ships of the same class missing identifiers in their names
  
• Fixed an issue where the "Weaponized Subspace Communication Array" (EMP) visual effect could not be seen by clients
  
• Fixed an issue on the TOS bridge where manually lowering the shields could prevent them from being raised again
  
• Corrected an issue with the engineering station camera on the TOS bridge where the camera pans to Helm preventing proper use of Power Distribution
  
• Fixed an issue with loading screens not appearing for Oculus and Steam non-VR, and Steam WMR/Vive VR
  
• Removed a second, erroneous “transport from target” option under tactical crewbot orders on the TOS bridge
  
• Corrected an issue where initiating shield modulation would result in inconsistent UI behavior when the station is taken over by a second player
  
• Fixed an issue where a player could not modulate shields after they had been brought down (manually or by damage) and then brought back up
  
• Corrected an issue in engineering and Ops where repair crews in a fully repaired system would not be reassigned if a repair crew was still in a damaged system
  
• Fixed an issue where you could not select the transporter target with your left hand on the TNG bridge
  
• Made corrections to TOS bridge view screens as they could look low resolution
  
• Fixed a problem where impulsing to new locations sometimes caused enemies to not be on the host player’s Nav Map
  
• Improved a number of sound effects including adding a TNG appropriate sound to that bridge when the hull gets to 40% damage
  
• Fixed an issue where Avatar android male head type 1 appears to have an extra long forehead (cue the Mike Meyers “HUGE HEAD” comments)
  
• Corrected an issue where the female Vulcan head would appear under male Vulcan race type
  
• Fixed an issue with objective markers disappearing on the lower ¼ area of the local map
  
• Stopped the helm crewbot on the USS Aegis from spinning in place at the beginning of mission 5. He was getting dizzy
  
• Removed a purple light that would appear to the right of tactical on the TOS bridge when warping
  
• Fixed an issue where the warning indicator for damaged engines on the TOS bridge would not apply to all impulse screens
  
• Fixed an issue on the TOS bridge where different players manning the engineering station see different repair crew allocations
  
• Fixed an issue on the TNG bridge where an enemy’s cloak audio can disappear while cloaked and the visual effect can persist after decloaking.
  
• Corrected an issue where escape pods destroyed by a planet killer would not clear from the transporter bay.
  
• You will now correctly see the Borg Cube’s green lights fade out and in when it powers off and on for repairing
  
• Gave T’nar some training so that crewbot would properly reassign repair crews from systems at 100% after a player has assigned repair crews
  
• You will no longer see “He’s dead Jim” appear for dead crews at the Ops station. Scotty is back on the right ship
  
• Fixed an issue where arming torpedoes while being damaged to 59% could cause the remaining torpedo to repeat the loading sequence
  
• Fixed an issue where the shields on the TOS bridge needed to be toggled on if all power was removed from shields by the engineer
  
• Fixed an issue where System Intrusion sound effects would not be heard when activated
  
• Fixed an issue with VOIP audio only playing through the right ear during some mission outros
  
• Corrected an issue on the TOS bridge where client assigned repair crews are invisible upon returning to the engineering station
  
• Corrected an issue on the Aegis bridge where a player can get the camera stuck on the options menu if the crew bot UI is open
  
• Stopped male tactician’s feet on the TNG from constantly shaking.
  
• Corrected TOS bridge crew bot UI lag
  
• Corrected some shadowing issues with Dynamic shadows settings
  
• Made a number of additional improvements and corrections to crewbot interaction
  
• Corrected a number of audio bugs
  
• Corrected a number of UI and text issues
  
• Corrected some character clipping issues and hand positions
  
• Fixed a number of crash bugs

We've seen the questions that arose since our last Dev FAQ post and wanted to take a moment to first convey our gratitude for your feedback - after so long working in secrecy, the team is overjoyed to be able to talk about their work!

Here are some fresh questions we've seen you mention both here, in our official forums and on the Bridge Crew subreddit:

Why did I have to download a large patch even if I haven’t purchased the DLC?
The patch brings everyone up to the newest version of the game client that includes the ability to add the DLC as well as a adding a bunch of bug fixes. It’s important to get everyone on the same version to support match making across the platforms

What if I want to play with a player who doesn’t have the DLC, but I do? What if someone joins a DLC game without actually owning the DLC?
A toggle in the UI enables players who own the DLC to select whether they want to enter matchmaking with the DLC active (which will search for other players with DLC set active) or if they would prefer to play with any players (including players who do not own the DLC). This toggle will automatically be set to off if the player does not own the DLC.

How can players help the Developers find and address bugs?
We try to catch posts people make on forums, subreddits, etc but we can’t watch everywhere and some will fall through the cracks this way. The best way to bring them to our attention is to file a support ticket via https://support.ubi.com and provide as much detail as you can. Adding any links to videos you may have taken of the issue help greatly as they provide a lot more information and context to help our QA staff recreate the problem to investigate it.

Note: duplicate submissions don’t help and if anything get in the way, but if you don’t know if something has been submitted already or not by all means put in a ticket. When a ticket comes in for a bug it goes to QA staff who will check if we already have something on it, will record it (JIRA) with all the details. They will work to recreate the issue and will add information on that to the entry so the developers have concrete steps to recreate the issue and know any and all factors going into it. Then the development team gets it and tries to determine if something is wrong and what can be done about it.

Some notes on a few select things that have already been posted:

“…while playing, we entered one system where none of the Klingon ships were firing at us. It was during one of the save the Suribatchi missions. It seemed almost like an anomaly ithe system had totally disabled their ships, but this seemed like a bug”
Yes indeed, anomalies affecting enemies is intended and can have interesting consequences…

“…two exclamation points appear at the same time on the Warp map (Possibly from helm)”
This can happen during Research and Rescue missions.
- During A Research mission, after scanning enough anomalies to turn in, an exclamation point will appear at the new warp location. If the player has triggered and yet to complete the optional objective (rescuing civilians), an exclamation point will remain in the current system.
- During A Rescue mission (especially the space station version) after transporting at least 1 person aboard the ship, an exclamation point will appear at the new warp location. If the player has not yet transported all remaining survivors, an exclamation point will remain in the current system.

“…T'Nar on the Aegis and Enterprise (TOS) is still playing with power levels previously set by a player when no player engineer is in game.”
T'Nar will not change power nodes on her own. However, all crew-wide orders, and select orders to other bots, will make T'Nar reallocate power. i.e. Avoid / Evade Target for instance will cause engineer to set 5 engine, 3 shield, 2 phaser.

We are looking to put together a dev blog or post in the near future with more information on voice commands and how they work which will help to better explain interactions like this

“…You've added 'Stand Down' on the Enterprise Captain's holographic on-screen command list, but it doesn't turn off Red Alert. We haven't found that it does anything at all!?”

The stand down command is identical to the “Reduce Detection range” command found on the Aegis. To that affect this is what happens:
- Reset any impulse/warp command to off
- Power settings phaser 3, engines 4 (notably this is to ensure we don’t fly at above 4000 speed), shields 3
- Stop shooting
- Lower shields
- Disarm torpedoes

The Red Alert button remains a manual interaction for the Captain to torment/alert her crew with.

If you submitted a bug report and don't see it here, rest assured that we are recording and investigating each one! We'll have more updates in the future!

** EDITED TO ADD CORRECTED PC RELEASE DATE **

Greetings Starfleet Officers! I am very pleased to report that our developers have been so excited to see your feedback that they have asked me to convey the following responses to you here in the Steam Community Hub.

Without further ado...

When is it available?
Available on PS4 on May 22. Available on PC (Oculus and Steam) on July 24.

What is the price of the DLC?
The Next Generation DLC will be available for $14.99 in North America and €14.99 in European countries with price varying accordingly by region and currency. As a DLC product, it naturally requires the original Star Trek: Bridge Crew game

Does it support VR and non-VR gameplay?
As with the base game, it supports both VR and non-VR game play.

How will multiplayer work with the DLC? Will all players in a party need to have the DLC to play the new content?
All players in a party will need to have ownership of the DLC to be able to play the content together.

Does the DLC include IBM Watson powered voice recognition?
Support of the IBM powered voice recognition feature for Star Trek: Bridge Crew has been extended through the end of 2018. This functionality for the DLC content is being added in a patch shortly after launch of the DLC, largely to support the functionality for the 1701-D bridge including the new Operations role.

Will the new Patrol and Resistance modes be available for all three playable ships or just the Enterprise D?
You will be able to play Ongoing Voyages in Patrol or Resistance mode using all 3 playable ships (U.S.S. Aegis, original U.S.S. Enterprise and TNG U.S.S. Enterprise-D).

Is the new Operations role available on the U.S.S Aegis or original U.S.S. Enterprise bridges?
The new Operations role is only available on the bridge of the Enterprise-D.

Will the Enterprise-D bridge use the LCARS interface?
All of the bridge positions on the Enterprise-D have been implemented with the iconic LCARS interface from the TNG series (including appropriate audio).

How authentic is the implementation of the Enterprise-D?
Does it include appropriate colors and audio for phaser and torpedo fire? The development team at Red Storm has painstakingly recreated the 1701-D with the assistance of CBS to make it as authentic as possible. This has included recreating the bridge from blueprints and digital assets, use of authentic audio and of course the adaptation of the appropriate effects. All of this has been verified and approved by CBS and they have been a tremendous partner in bringing to life this experience.

Have improvements been made to the existing Ongoing Voyages?
Yes, primarily in terms of bug fixes and variety in the generation of missions.

With the TNG Romulans added as a possible enemy to face in the DLC, has the classic Romulan Bird of Prey been added for the Original Enterprise bridge to face?
Only the TNG era Romulans will be making their presence known in the trench at this time.

Is there a list of changes that are coming to the core game along with the DLC?
There will be a patch shortly before the release of the DLC. This will include a variety of fixes to the game and it will prepare it for the addition of the DLC.

Here is the change log:

• Added Support for DLC.
  
• Fixed issues with Ongoing Voyages modes to increase variety of locations used by mission generator.
  
• Fixed some issues with controller prompts displayed in Training.
  
• Changed how players switch stations on The Original Series Enterprise Bridge. Previously, some VR players would lose tracking while trying to switch, depending on their tracking setup.
  
• Fixed multiple issues with Captain’s arm/hand animations in non-VR control modes.
  
• Fixed issue with position of Captain’s clipboard for non-VR players on The Original Series Enterprise Bridge.
  
• Added Science Info (flavor text) to all ships previously lacking it.
  
• Fixed other minor bugs.

We are very excited to announce a broad compatibility patch for Star Trek: Bridge Crew that enables non-VR play as well as adding enhanced support for Windows Mixed Reality headsets.

Further, Uplay enables us to seamlessly connect players from any platform so that you will be able to join matches with both VR and non-VR players, expanding your pool of potential crewmates!

Please join us in welcoming our new non-VR Starfleet Personnel!

Learn more about this update in our new Developer Diary on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COKdCxPGNkM&feature=youtu.be

We are very excited to announce a broad compatibility patch for Star Trek: Bridge Crew that enables non-VR play as well as adding enhanced support for Windows Mixed Reality headsets.

Further, Uplay enables us to seamlessly connect players from any platform so that you will be able to join matches with both VR and non-VR players, expanding your pool of potential crewmates!

Please join us in welcoming our new non-VR Starfleet Personnel!

Learn more about this update in our new Developer Diary on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COKdCxPGNkM&feature=youtu.be

Starting today through September 5th, save 50% on Star Trek: Bridge Crew on Steam.

Starting today through September 5th, save 50% on Star Trek: Bridge Crew on Steam.

Here’s what you can expect from our latest patch:

1. Fixed Infinite Impulse / Warp during Ongoing Voyages.
2. Fixed various issues around the Invite system.
3. “Private Match” is now known as “Custom Lobby”. Feel free to invite your friends for an invite only session or invite some friends before opening it up for other players to join!
4. Matchmaking should no longer place you into inactive lobbies.
5. Various Mission Improvements.
- Usability improvements to the Impulse / Warp process.
- Improvements to scanning a fugitive ship and transporting fugitives.
6. Additional functionality has been implemented for community management purposes.
7. Minor crash & bug fixes.
8. Addressed issues with “Headset Removed” Warning on HTC Vive and Out of Bounds messaging on both HTC Vive and Oculus.

- Star Trek: Bridge Crew Team

Here’s what you can expect from our latest patch:

1. Fixed Infinite Impulse / Warp during Ongoing Voyages.
2. Fixed various issues around the Invite system.
3. “Private Match” is now known as “Custom Lobby”. Feel free to invite your friends for an invite only session or invite some friends before opening it up for other players to join!
4. Matchmaking should no longer place you into inactive lobbies.
5. Various Mission Improvements.
- Usability improvements to the Impulse / Warp process.
- Improvements to scanning a fugitive ship and transporting fugitives.
6. Additional functionality has been implemented for community management purposes.
7. Minor crash & bug fixes.
8. Addressed issues with “Headset Removed” Warning on HTC Vive and Out of Bounds messaging on both HTC Vive and Oculus.

- Star Trek: Bridge Crew Team