Star Trek Timelines talk:Community portal/Archive 1

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This an archive of the community portal discussions from the beginning up until May 26th, 2016 that have been resolved. Please do not edit this page.

If you have an issue you'd like to discuss, please post it on the Star Trek Timelines talk:Community portal page.

Wiki= discussion =

Welcome! This page can be used to discuss the Star Trek Timelines Wiki. Please remember to sign and date your post by using four tildes (~~~~).

Greetings from Disruptor Beam! Thank you for your enthusiasm and work on this wiki so far, looks great! Please get in touch with me any time if you have questions or need our support. ~Khatie, Community Director August 19, 2015 (khatie [at] disruptorbeam [dot] com). 

Khatie (talk) 11:37, 19 August 2015 (MDT)

Mission pages

Obviously it's early days to have standard templates in place, but is there a certain format that the mission pages should be following? I've added a couple little bits to the pages as I've played through a couple missions, but was wondering if it would also be useful to keep track of which bonus traits people have tried for the various mission legs so that we can nail down which of the traits attract bonuses for each leg. -- Azkar (talk) 17:31, 20 January 2016 (MST)

I've been working off site on a possible template / format for mission pages that would include the bonus traits like you suggested. I'll respond here once I've got it set up with a link. --Deafgeek (talk) 13:59, 21 January 2016 (MST)
I realy like this structure http://startrektimelineswiki.com/wiki/The_Mad_Vedek , because it's short and clear. Skill Tests, Bonus and Traits are the same in all difficulty levels imo (Maybe different in further episodes, but I don't think so). No need to type a wot with numbers in it.Just my 2 cents ;) --Not Sure (talk) 16:52, 25 January 2016 (MST)
This is my suggestion for mission pages. It's a bit longer, but includes most useful information. Chroniton costs, skill / structure requirements, bonus traits, rare reward locations, rewards etc. Any thoughts? -- ST Logo.png MilkN2Sugars (My talk page) 11:24, 26 January 2016 (MST)
Looks awesome and clear to me. I would suggest to delete the "Suggested Traits" line, cause the traits are already in the "Bonus Traits" column. The "Mission Rewards" are the ones you get when you repeat the mission, this should be displayed more clearly. Too bad, I never noted down the first time reward, I should do this in the future. Is there some space to put in the + number for a matching trait?--Not Sure (talk) 05:04, 27 January 2016 (MST)
Thanks for the feedback! Once we've figured out where all the traits go we can remove it from the top. Really good point about the mission rewards, I didn't consider that. It's the credits, crew xp and captain xp that's higher when you first complete a mission isn't it? Good idea with adding the trait bonus, should definitely do that. -- ST Logo.png MilkN2Sugars (My talk page) 05:55, 27 January 2016 (MST)
Right made a couple of updates. Anything else need changing? -- ST Logo.png MilkN2Sugars (My talk page) 06:14, 27 January 2016 (MST)
Looks good. Only the Captain XP are higher for the first completion. Crew XP and Credits are always the same amout. --Not Sure (talk) 07:41, 29 January 2016 (MST)
Great, thank you. -- ST Logo.png MilkN2Sugars (My talk page) 07:55, 29 January 2016 (MST)

Info Box needs explaining

The Template InfoBox is underused at the moment. When I went to find out how to use this template for missions I wasn't able to work out how to add information to it. I only know basic 'hacks' to use mediawiki software and would use "Row 1 Title=XYZ" however this isn't true. Perhaps a <noinclude> needs to be placed on the template to demonistrate it's usage. GayKiwi (talk) 10:30, 21 January 2016 (MST)

Appologies for the lack of documentation. It is a generic InfoBox that can be used like:
{{InfoBox
 |Box title = 
 |Image file = 
 |Image size = 
 |Row 1 title =
 |Row 1 info = 
 |Row 2 title =  
 |Row 2 info = 
 |Row 3 title = 
 |Row 3 info = 
 |Row 4 title = 
 |Row 4 info =  
 |Row 5 title = 
 |Row 5 info = 
 |Row 6 title = 
 |Row 6 info =  
 |Row 7 title = 
 |Row 7 info = 
 |Row 8 title = 
 |Row 8 info =
 |Row 9 title = 
 |Row 9 info = 
 |Row 10 title = 
 |Row 10 info =  
 |Row 11 title = 
 |Row 11 info = '
 |Row 12 title = 
 |Row 12 info =
 |Row 13 title = 
 |Row 13 info = 
 |Row 14 title = 
 |Row 14 info =      
 }}

Hopefully we can start getting some more specialised templates made now the game has been released. -- ST Logo.png MilkN2Sugars (My talk page) 08:43, 22 January 2016 (MST)


Items Pages

Hi all, I figured I'd dedicate myself to building pages for the individual items. My first page was Astrometric Chart, so feel free to check it out, just basic text right now but I'm trying to figure out what format would be best for it. Should be good for cross-referencing. Ineedscissors61 (talk) 14:23, 22 January 2016 (MST)

I've added a few item pages, and linked them with The Wrong Crowd. I also took The Wrong Crowd and organized the data into a few tables try out finding a good format to make everything a bit more readable. Let me know some input if you could. Ineedscissors61 (talk) 16:29, 22 January 2016 (MST)
Can you show how the items pages are created, since that is a great item to have for the rewards for the various missions. Thanks!

tomvilfroy (talk) 20:39, 23 January 2016 (MST)

I just copy/pasted the info box shown above. It's pretty simple for showing basic information.Ineedscissors61 (talk) 16:22, 24 January 2016 (MST)

So, I made the Page for Clothing Pattern, just to get the first impression how it looks like when all Rarity is displayed. I'm not sure if the structure with all boxes in 1 category looks fine, but I lack of ideas here (and it's my first work on a wiki also; I try and error most of the time^^; i.E. we could arrange these boxes from left to right for better oversight, but I don't know how). We should add the following information: Drop via Scan? Yes/No and when yes, where? Drop from Time Portal? Yes/No, and when yes which one (Common/Rare); I think this is calculated through rarity. Just my first thoughts on this.... --Not Sure (talk) 08:55, 30 January 2016 (MST)

Hey, thanks for putting that page together. I agree the information would look better more condensed. Do we think it would be best to create pages for each rarity, or a single page for each item including the information for each rarity? -- ST Logo.png MilkN2Sugars (My talk page) 18:06, 31 January 2016 (MST)
The Item pages so far seem to have one page for each rarity. If we proceed with this format, then I'd suggest making each rarity in a seperate section (ex: ==RarityTitle==). That way, we can still link to a specific item rarity by using a [[page#subsection]] link. TheCutestOfBorg (talk) 00:17, 8 February 2016 (MST)
Adding to this with some items is the complexity that characters seem to need items from their own time - and this information is only available in the icon for the item, not its name or description. So you'll have different designs of combadges available, for instance, as well as the rarity of them to consider. --Samentarchy (talk) 18:58, 31 January 2016 (MST)
Would it be better to have sections on the same page (Combadge#TOS, Combadge#TNG, Combadge#DS9, etc.) or have a different page for each type (Combadge_TOS, Combadge_TNG, etc.) even though they display with the same name? I'm leaning toward putting them all on one page if we can come up with a more compact format, but I could see it going either way. I'm also wondering if we want to use tables instead of info boxes so they aren't stacked on the right side of an empty page. That might also make it easier to come up with a more compact format and give us more space for text.--Shogo Yahagi (talk) 15:18, 12 February 2016 (MST)


I've created a Category:Items page which we can use to create an alphabetical listing of all item pages on the Star Trek Timelines Wiki - please add it to the bottom of items pages! --Samentarchy (talk) 21:13, 22 February 2016 (MST)

I am wondering if we should have Sub-Category for items, such as like: Clothing (Civilian, Engineering, Science, Command, Diplomacy, Uniform, Etc) , Tricorders, Personalized items (Wesley's Tricorder, Named Holo-programs), PADDs, Hand Weapons, Texts, Medical Equipment, Communication Equipment, Food, Badges/Emblems, and probably a few others. Eeb3 (talk) 08:46, 2 March 2016 (MST)
I don't see why not, but we don't really get much out of it. There is no in-game difference between a PADD and a uniform, so it's just for our convenience. I think we should differentiate between Equipment and Components, however. --Dhrekr (talk) 09:44, 2 March 2016 (MST)
Not so much becuase of an in-game difference but more for similar-looking items, to be more centralized, instead of each page having different lists of 'similar looking items' --Eeb3 (talk) 12:58, 2 March 2016 (MST)
Like a navigation box for all the items that look the same, so that it's easy to update when a new one is discovered? --Samentarchy (talk) 15:47, 5 March 2016 (MST)
I think so, though would we have one navigation box for all the items (and have sub-sections) or each same/similar-item would be given its own navigation box? Eeb3 (talk) 15:27, 6 March 2016 (MST)
I don't think it's feasible to have a navigation box for all the items - we've already got nearly 200 item articles, and lots of red link 'holes' dedicated to items. I was thinking a book navigation template for all those red books, a jar navigation template for those jars, etc. --Samentarchy (talk) 17:08, 6 March 2016 (MST)


Just one note, guys: EPIC IS FOUR STARS. Many tables currently have "Super-Rare" and "Epic" as last two rarities, but actually in the game "Super-Rare" and "Epic" are synonimous. ;-)

Changing subject, we really should decide on a common template for items, since it's getting messy. We seem to agree on Crafting Tables, which is good. So, please compare Wesley's Tricorder and Positronic Brain (which I made). I want to explain my changes so that you can consider them. (1) Drop locations: only the object itself, not its components. The reason: drop locations change all the time. If DB tomorrow changes the drop location of Database, do we really want to hunt for all the Crafting Tables that contain the Database? Do we want half the Item Category to become obsolete every time DB changes something? I say only the page of the Database should have its drop location. If it's a crafted object it has no drop location unless it's dropped by as Rare Reward. (2) Nested crafting recipes: not very informative and quite confusing. I think we should show the cumulative cost: I need 32 Database for an Epic Positronic Brain. Simple. How many Clothing Patterns do I need for that Tricorder? Ehhh... (3) Nested costs: again the same thing. I think it's better to just say the step cost and the total cost. By the way, the step cost is always the same: 300 500 1250 4000 10000 (4) Removing the columns we don't need. Positronic Brain has no Basic version. Why keep an empty column?

So, let me know what you think about all of this ;-) --Dhrekr (talk) 09:44, 2 March 2016 (MST)

I really like what you did with the Positronic Brain. It's a lot cleaner. If drop locations do change, then, yeah, they ought to only be on those base items. --Siguard (talk) 10:58, 2 March 2016 (MST)
The reason why I've put Super-Rare/Epic instead of Super-Rare/Legendary, was right before beta had finished, I had saw an item somewhere, (don't remember what/where it was at this point) and it said Epic and it had a different color outline compared to the Super Rare items I saw previously. And since live, aside from a character, have not seen a 5-star item to look at to see if that had changed. (Plus other games I've played had Super Rare separate from Epic, and Epic/Legendary be the similar/highest rank, hence my basis).
And in response to the #'s:
(1) That could be changed/adjusted at this point I guess, just figured put the info there and have it, and not 'need' it later, then 'needing' it and not able to get to that information (Cause already crafted the item).
(2) Perhaps, but a few of the items have needed the same items at different levels in varying amounts, Positronic Brain appears to be a relatively 'simple' single chain of items with higher quality items needed, compared to Wesley's Tricorder which has items with different depth/quality of items with varying amounts, which while somewhat simple to still math together, can get complex with more steps.
(3) While the individual 'steps' are of the same prices, the order of steps aren't in order sometimes, (sometimes you double up on steps, step backwards, or skip price steps for different parts) Which Wesley's Tricorder shows somewhat.
(4) Perhaps can be done in time, but since we are still building the tables and can't exactly peek under the hood to see the breadth of quality of the items that are available, to cut out unfilled boxes might be a bit hasty at this time without confirmation somehow. Since there are items that can be retrieved in-game such as for a Basic and Uncommon item, but you will still have to craft the Common and Rare + items. Or perhaps can't craft a quality item until later into the game, or with a different quality character. --Eeb3 (talk) 12:58, 2 March 2016 (MST)
I was unaware of that peculiarity of the Beta. Let's find an in-game 5* item and see what it says...
(1) I see your point, but only as an intermediate solution. I still think that having only one page to modify instead of an un-trackable amount of them is logistically better.
(2) Yes and no. Wesley's Sweater requires 20 Clothing Patterns, 6 Wrenches and one Tricorder. Do we need to know that you have to combine 4 Clothing Patterns and 1 Wrench to build an intermediate component? Saying 20 Clothing Patterns and 6 Wrenches and one Tricorder is much cleaner, and the recepy for Wesley's Sweater can be put in the page of Wesley's Sweater.
(3) Yes. The total cost of Wesley's Sweater is 2500 credits, which can be written in the page of Wesley's Sweater. Cost on Common Welsley's Tricorder is 4250, which can be written in the first column. The total cost of the the Uncommon version is 4250 + 6500 = 10750. The question is: to a player, what number is useful? Being remembered that Basic items cost 300 credits, or being told whether they can actually build the object of not? I think that the useful number is the total.
(4) It's not urgent, but adding back columns is super-easy. --Dhrekr (talk) 06:54, 3 March 2016 (MST)

Crew Pages

Hi all, I've put a bunch of work into a Crew template, specifically Comm Officer Uhura and Mirror Empress Sato. Would love to get some feedback. For example, right now Ship Ability is at the bottom, but I'm thinking it should be part of the Info Box at the top (since it's not a complicated like Leveling and Equipment Tables).Jhport12 (talk) 23:51, 4 February 2016 (MST)

Hi. I personally think that tracking the skills as a function of level is an absurd task and a huge amount of work. You are also neglecting to do it as a function of stars: a lv 20 1/5* Empress Sato has different stats than a lv 20 5/5* Empress Sato. So you need five tables and five times more numbers.
I would personally not see the point of tracking that level-by-level. I think that tracking it every ten levels might be enough. Lv 1, level 10, level 20, level 30. Do you really need to know what 2/5* Empress Sato's skill is at level 7? I don't.
My other remark is that I feel we should include farming tips, as I did for Security Chief Tuvok. Lots of people have no idea where to go and farm for things, and while this is two clicks away on the wiki, an easy-to-find suggestion is always welcome. --Dhrekr (talk) 04:36, 5 February 2016 (MST)
Hello! I mentioned this over at Talk:Crew but I'm also interested in hashing out a good Crew template. I made Fencing Sulu by assembling parts from other Crew pages. I'm new to this, so please feel free to make suggestions/edits.
1. I agree that noting Skills for each level seems a bit unnecessary/excessive. Just levels 1/10/20/etc. seems sufficient.
2. As for the Star (☆) differences, I'm undecided. Having up to 5 separate tables (1 for each star) is certainly the most thorough but perhaps a bit bulky. If each Star upgrade adds a set number/percentage to a Crew skill, then would a separate table just for Stars work? (Fencing Sulu). The con is that it would require users to do a little math to get the exact totals passed 1-Star. (Edit: Disregard, I came to my senses ^_^. Though determining static Star bonuses would still help us fill out Skill tables...)
3. Farming tips are very helpful, but I think details on where to find items should really be placed on each items wiki page. That way, it only has to be entered once on the item page, and not several times across multiple Crew pages. Drop locations have changed with updates and monthly-rewards, so consolidation makes it easier to update. The Items template is in development, but it looks like there will be a single page with subsections for each item rank (Basic/Common/Rare/etc.). If you note the drop locations on an item page, then hopefully it will be implemented into the future Item Template.
TheCutestOfBorg (My talk page) 11:16, 6 February 2016 (UTC−7)
Is "ship ability" the same thing as the skills given when a character crews the battle station? --Samentarchy (talk) 13:39, 8 February 2016 (MST)
"Ship Ability" refers to the named special ability that is activated by clicking a character icon in Ship Battles. These abilities can either boost Attack, Accuracy, or evasion. The skills (Accuracy, Evasion, Crit Bonus, Crit Chance) are the "Passive Ship Bonuses" (also known in-game as "Passive Ship Stat Bonuses" if you click the "i" symbol on the crew screen, or "Equipment Bonuses" on the Ship Combat screen). The ships page mentions ship combat, but the wiki is still in need of a good Ship Battles page. TheCutestOfBorg (talk) 18:01, 8 February 2016 (MST)
Sorry, I didn't see the link to this discussion before I set up Template:Crew_Member. I did look at a lot of crew member pages when setting it up, including Fencing Sulu and Mirror Empress Sato, and I think it's in pretty good shape. It looks like the same suggestions are being made in both places. I was wondering if the Ship Ability change with level, or if it is only affected by boosting your star rating? If it doesn't change with level, it should be removed from the skills table and the Ship Ability table should be updated to include that info. There's some discussion of the template on Talk:Crew.Shogo Yahagi (talk) 15:02, 12 February 2016 (MST)
Ship ability is static across all levels and is only dependent on the crew's rarity + (fusion level - 1). I feel this should be taken out since it's redundant. (Locutus of Borg (talk) 23:12, 17 February 2016 (MST))

Generic Crew Pages Problem

Several crew pages have been created with completely generic proto-templates and have no information for readers. Bashir, Julian Bashir, Captain Sisko, Changeling Founder, Commander Troi, Crell Moset, Feezal Phlox, Glinn Damar, General Martok, Judge Q, Klingon Quark, Lt Commander Jadzia Dax and Lt Commander La Forge all need non-generic information adding. --Samentarchy (talk) 14:09, 15 February 2016 (MST)

I have found 2 templates that are being used for the crew pages, Template:Crew Member and Character Template. My personal favorite is Character Template, even if the name implies different. I think that page is a good start for a solid crew member template. I modified crew pages using the template a little (see Command Wrap Kirk) to make the page a bit more clean. Xar (talk) 13:22, 18 February 2016 (MST)

Crew Member pages vs. Character pages

We have a problem with differentiating between crew members (a specific variant of a character, e.g., Lt Commander Data) and characters (e.g., Data) listed in Template:CrewNav. In some cases, we have crew members that have the same name as the character (like Seven of Nine and Wesley Crusher). In fact, someone has already created a redirect between two different crew member names: Ensign Crusher redirects to Wesley Crusher, making it impossible to have crew member pages for both crew members.

Because we don't know whether DB is going to release new crew members in future updates that have the same name as existing character pages, I propose that when a crew member has the same name as a character page, the crew member page should have "_(crew_member)" appended to the name so we can have both a character page and a crew member name. It's really easy to change the link label so that the differentiating part of the name doesn't clutter up lists.

This is already a problem and it's only going to get worse as DB adds more crew members in future updates.Shogo Yahagi (talk) 15:02, 12 February 2016 (MST)

It's not impossible to undo the redirection of Ensign Crusher to Wesley Crusher. Click on Ensign Crusher and then look for the small text near the top that says "(Redirected from Ensign Crusher)". Click again on Ensign Crusher in that text and you will be sent to a 'no redirect' version of Ensign Crusher that you can edit to turn into a real article. I hope this helps. --Samentarchy (talk) 00:11, 13 February 2016 (MST)
Thanks. I've replaced the redirect as you suggested. When I first glanced at the documentation about redirects, it looked like it was something that should be done by a sysop, but in this case, I think it's OK. --Shogo Yahagi (talk) 12:39, 13 February 2016 (MST)
You're welcome! No, it's not sysop-only to turn a redirect into an article - and as you've noted, since the redirect was created, it's become the done thing for each variant of a character to have their own article. Generally, things that are sysop-only will actually be restricted to sysops on the account settings level. --Samentarchy (talk) 15:23, 13 February 2016 (MST)

Consensus on templates/page display

Hey, been reading this discussion page, as it was the closest I could find to an Editor FAQ.

Is there any chance we could agree on templates for missions and items and crew and put that on a page for people who are thinking of being editors? A style guide.

Even for little things such as ... I've seen stats displayed as 45 + (1 - 2) and 45 +(1-2) and 45 + (1-2), the big things like templates and little things like that.

I just wish there were a place I could go for an answer on how I'm meant to display a thing, rather than going by the majority of pages I remember reading and hoping that is the agreed upon/preferred way.

I know there is a lot of agreement above me, but it's hidden in discussion. I think it would benefit everyone, including myself and new, potential editors, if there were an obviously displayed page that covered all of these topics. If there is one, I have completely missed it.

Edit: While the game is still changing, and changes will need to be made to accommodate things (e.g. new rewards), I feel we can at least have an obvious place to put the latest agreed-upon style choices.

Luke (talk) 09:40, 4 March 2016 (MST)

  • I completely second this. We do need to decide.
    We should benefit from having (1) a formally complete order and notation for the Crew pages. How do we write the proficiency? Do the Equipment come before or after the Skill progression? (2) a unified version of the Item pages. Some are archaic, and some -- even created recently, such as the Database -- seem to be made by people utterly unaware of the previous work.
    The question is, how do we decide? Are we a democracy? Do we conduct a poll? Or should we rely on MilkN2Sugars to take a stance and we follow the creator of the wiki? --Dhrekr (talk) 03:32, 5 March 2016 (MST)
    • I would suggest making the Style Guide/Editor's Guide page, and putting polls on this kind of thing on there. Then, after a short period of voting, the page could be revamped to reflect all of that. The hard part here is probably pulling together all of the different ways of doing things into one page. I'll message MilkN2Sugars to weigh in, anyway. Luke (talk) 04:41, 5 March 2016 (MST)

The need for functionality over aesthetics in this early stage of the wiki

So there are some conflicting styles on the wiki currently. Most notably how we format/display item/crew rarity. Some users use special character stars, some use text, some use images via template, some use a combination. Ultimately, we need uniformity. But more importantly since atm pretty much NO item pages are 100% completed, and with the game having well over a thousand items, with each item having many locations - which are changing frequently due to server updates, we really can't realistically expect to have to fully documented item pages completed for every item any time soon. As such we need to focus on the sites functionality first and foremost. One of the major uses for the site, which works automatically without additional work, is the search function. This can be ultra useful in determining places to get an item as the game itself is VERY bad at this (limiting it to 3 total locs, which are often the hardest/worst spots)
Currently you can type the name of any item in, and hit enter - for the items we actually made pages for, you'll actually get very little in most cases. Maybe 1 or 2 locations which some editor probably copied from the in-game obtain screen - information already known, essentially completely worthless to the viewer. However if we instead have no item page, or wait a moment and press "pages containing". We get some very useful results, essentially every single mission up to E5 has all of it's items listed, and as such we get a very accurate picture of all the spots it can drop.
The problem with this is the search results are very messy, due to our inconsistency. If we wanted to find an item in Uncommon rarity, we can use ctrl+f and type in uncommon to quickly highly relevant entries. But with some users using stars and not words, that functionality is completely broken. You can't easily work around it either, because typing in ** will not highlight anything useful, because we don't use **, we use special characters not on keyboards like ★. Or in the case of the Jellos Template:Stars we would have no recourse at all, because it uses images, not characters at all. So please type out the full rarity in plain text, and really every throughout the wiki. For aesthetics we could use both. And for even better aesthetics in searching we could use a template to use both text and speical characters perhaps. So searches would instead look something like Pollyalloy {{Rarity|Uncommon}} on the search page, but have both text and stars on the mission page. --Axer (talk) 22:33, 26 March 2016 (CDT)

If we could go with a hybrid combined format, I propose Uncommon Pollyalloy★★. The only reasonable position for the stars is immediately after the item name, and by putting them there without a space and without any wiki code it may even be possible to search for the item at its exact rarity. By putting text rarity first it is easy to use a browser search to search the wiki search results. If we put it after then the stars get in the way. If we place the stars after the text rarity then it would look weird, not flow well when reading, and have negative effects on various search techniques.
Also, if we use only stars then searching for Basic items is a tedious chore of weeding out non-Basic items, since basic is 0 stars. We could invent a notation for that, perhaps using a symbol like degrees°, but that seems excessive and unclear.
It makes sense also to minimize wiki code, especially since our search results don't parse code; [[Pollyalloy|Uncommon Pollyalloy★★]] which parses as Uncommon Pollyalloy★★ is sufficient and leaves the entire string uninterrupted when not parsed. Links to rarity explanations aren't necessary at every item listing and can exist on the item's own page instead.
Additionally, having both helps train and reinforce users with canonical mapping of stars to text rarity. Although it is clearly defined in the game it is easy for some people to totally not notice.
I strongly believe that my proposed hybrid format is the most functional and convenient for the most people, and its only real cost is suboptimal word wrap in tables. If there is a decent consensus then I would be willing to take on the project entirely by myself although help would be appreciated.
See also this forum discussion.
--Theholycow (talk) 09:33, 28 March 2016 (CDT)
Wait a second, Axer, you said, "So searches would instead look something like Pollyalloy {{Rarity|Uncommon}} on the search page" I just ran a test and yes, this would work. So why don't we do this with the {{Stars|#}}? It totally work. I edited the "With Friends Like These" mission reward [[Database]] <font color="gold">★</font> to [[Database]] {{Stars|1}} and ran a search for "[[Database]] {{Stars|1}}" and the mission was the top search result. So then, if your main issue is that it's hard you search using the ★'s (which I will agree, its a pain in the ass to have to copy and paste all the time), then why don't we go through and just use the Stars template?
I don't think using a combination of the words and stars, Uncommon Pollyalloy★★ is a viable option. The whole point of the ★'s is to reduce how much room the item name takes up, and yeah, it makes it look prettier. :)
PS, I am working hard to create crafting tables for all of the major items (the ones we all need to farm for constantly), and even items that aren't so common, and I'll assure you, I'm using the "What links here" tool to find all of the missions where we can get those rewards. --Siguard (talk) 12:28, 28 March 2016 (CDT)
Interesting discussion, thanks everyone. My suggestion would be to add an extra field to the rarity template for the full item name and rarity. I've made a quick example here. The item name is set not to display, so in the page itself only the stars are shown like this Common Some stuff. This has the advantages of keeping item names short (useful since we have lots of big tables) and being aesthetically pleasing. However, since the wiki search looks at wikitext what it sees is {{MilkRarity|3|Rare Made Up Item}}. This keeps the search functionality. For example, a search for "Rare Made Up Item" and "Commom Made Up Item" should bring up my user page and user talk page respectively. No need to type in special characters or the template name, which I think will be confusing. It's a bit of extra work but seems to retain the best of both worlds. -- ST Logo.png MilkN2Sugars (My talk page) 16:28, 28 March 2016 (CDT)
It totally works. Even if the code says [[Casting]] {{MilkRarity|1|Common}} and you search for "Casting Common", it's the first search result. If we're all agreed with this, I can put a pause on making item pages and start the, very long, process of changing all of the ★'s to Common Common's during my kid's Spring Break (He's several years off from having a margarita made in his mouth at Senior Tadpoles, so I'm home all day ;) ) --Siguard (talk) 18:12, 28 March 2016 (CDT)
Great. This reason I suggested including the full name and rarity was to keep the string uninterrupted. So for Rare Made Up Item {{MilkRarity|3|Rare Made Up Item}} the string is "Rare Made Up Item", but for Rare Made Up Item {{Rarity|Rare}} it's "Rare Made Up Item {{Rarity|Rare". However from Axer's text below it seems this works well enough with the search results and is also less work. Lets just make sure we're all decided upon a course of action then we can start making changes. I'm sure if we work together we can get it done fairly quickly. Hmmm, well you can get your child to bring you margaritas whilst you're editing the wiki! -- ST Logo.png MilkN2Sugars (My talk page) 04:52, 29 March 2016 (CDT)

I've went ahead and coded up [[Template:Rarity]]. It's a fair bit prettier and more advanced then milk's basic test, and uses purely text and hexcode colors rather then images so should be very lightweight on the servers performance. I think we have a general consensus here that using a template makes the most sense, so I'd suggest goign ahead and start implementing it. I already have here The_Wrong_Crowd so you can get an idea of how it looks like atm. But feel free to change up the colors of style of it, thats the beauty of using a template like this, whatever the consensus ends up being on the stylization of it, a small update will fix all pages at once, and search results won't be impacted.
I'mt not completely against Holycow's idea, but it would require a more advanced template, and also integrated the item name into the template transclusion code, would thus be far more work to update in the future if we changed out mind, so I'd rather not code that up.
I also imagine some of you may like just stars and others like the colored text. I've included both and my vote is to keep both, but we can easily change it later if the consensus decides on just the stars, so it's safe to start implementing it now as is.
We could merge/overwrite Jellos stars template, as it's a few less characters to type when implementing, but I feel that rarity makes the most sense overall, and we will may use for different spots on the wiki for his larger image-based star template, like perhaps on ship and crew pages. --Axer (talk) 01:12, 29 March 2016 (CDT)

Also here is a sample search result to see that it works nicely: [clicky]
The inclusion of the Category:Missions line was milks idea.. We are trying to make the searchs more userfriendly, so I suggested we install SphinxSearch - a media wiki exntesion that allows namespace based searchs, and that would let us easily filter out the crew members from results.. But aparently we are limited on how far we can customize the wiki with the current hosting, so we may have to instead just alter the skin to include a link to a tweaked default search. --Axer (talk) 01:15, 29 March 2016 (CDT)
Looks good to me. I'm happy with using just stars or text and stars. Does anyone have any issues with using this template? Like Axer said it can be changed easily after we start using it. -- ST Logo.png MilkN2Sugars (My talk page) 04:52, 29 March 2016 (CDT)
Edit - Sorry for dragging this discussion on even longer, but Holycow's idea isn't that much work. I've adapted your template here with an example here. If we decide later we only want stars we remove the first switch statement, if we decide we only want text we remove the second switch statement, and if we decide we want both text and stars after the item name like your example we move the first switch statement down. Since both the item name and the rarity is included in the wikitext it should be ok when searching. I know that some people were against using both stars and text since it takes up more space, but seeing it in action in The Wrong Crowd page I think it looks fine and is probably the clearest option. -- ST Logo.png MilkN2Sugars (My talk page) 05:53, 29 March 2016 (CDT)
You guys are chattier and more productive here than I expected. I should have kept up more often instead of just checking in now after my last post. Great job continuing to flesh this out!
Milk, your proposed hybrid combined format looks funny with text and stars adjacent to each other but otherwise it does provide a fully functional search result and usable visual distinctiveness on regular pages. In searches it fails to provide stars for people who are more efficient with stars. However, it does keep the content/code much cleaner. I am mildly concerned that [searching for a specific rarity isn't great] but it fully provides the necessary improvement of a standardized format; anything more is mere tweaking for minor improvements in efficiency and visual appeal.
Axer, great job finding a proper star to use instead of a graphic.
Siguard, great work on the coloring. I wanted to propose coloring like that but I'm new to wikicode and couldn't figure out how to do it or even confirm that it is possible. I'm glad you thought of it; I should have said it even thought it seemed impossible. How is it done?
For Rare, would it make sense to use a blue with more contrast against the light grey of Basic/Common? That periwinkle isn't as deep as the blue in the game and is hard to distinguish. I would also propose breaking with canon to provide different colors for Basic and Common, using bright white for Common. --Theholycow (talk) 08:12, 29 March 2016 (CDT)
Hah this is definitely a more in-depth discussion than I was expecting, but good points have been raised by all. "Milk, your proposed hybrid combined format looks funny with text and stars adjacent to each other" - In the slight tweak to Axer's template I proposed here the order is Rarity Item Name Stars, but this can be easily changed if we change our minds in the future. The search results still won't be 100% perfect, but I think with most of the solutions here they would be better than what we have now and good enough to serve until the item pages are complete. -- ST Logo.png MilkN2Sugars (My talk page) 09:14, 29 March 2016 (CDT)
Looks great, don't know how I missed that before. We could save a few characters of wrap-inducing width by eliminating the parentheses and space so it's Rare Cup of Tea★★★, but that's not particularly necessary. I wonder if we should mess with font size too, maybe we could reduce font size for the stars (and maybe text rarity) leaving item name full-sized. I have to find a good howto for wiki editing somewhere, I can't even figure out how you made that test template or how to make my own... --Theholycow (talk) 09:54, 29 March 2016 (CDT)
Hmmm, I actually think it looks a bit nicer without the parenthesis, and like you said it saves some space too. -- ST Logo.png MilkN2Sugars (My talk page) 10:10, 29 March 2016 (CDT)
I think searching by rarity will be a bit of a moot point, since once all the items and where they can be found are added would be 1 item/page, instead of 1 item rarity/page, kinda making it a bit redundant to need to search by rarity. And if applied to a crew page/item page, I could see it causing a lot of text wrapping/multi-lining starting to occur, even for big screens. (since some items names are quite long. Such as the named Text/Holoprograms, Multidimensional Transport Device, etc) Eeb3 (talk) 11:55, 29 March 2016 (CDT)
I personally don't like both the text and stars. I seems a little redundant. As long as we have the rarity text in the wiki code, that rarity will be searchable (as far as my understanding of wiki search algorithms go). Saying that, I do like using a template to display the item rarity, because, like Axer said, it can be changed across the board super easily. If we do go with both texts ans stars, I'd agree with The Holy Cow and probably go with a moderate blue for the Rare items, something like #4b4bc8 (Rare) ...or maybe a light blue (#6464ff Rare) It's hard to make it pop with the background. White for the Common would be good too. --Siguard (talk) 12:46, 29 March 2016 (CDT)
Eeb3, this ended up being a long perfectionistic (not that I mind) discussion about a minor stopgap measure for an urgent problem. I don't know how long it will take to finish all item pages but I can tell you that we (or even I) can fix mission listings for items very quickly. If that gets done then we will have an excellent resource for finding items; as it stands, finding items is hit-or-miss. Finding and acquiring items is pretty much the core activity of the game so it's important to improve on it ASAP. --Theholycow (talk) 13:01, 29 March 2016 (CDT)
Right I've put together Template:Item. This is basically Axer's [[Template:Rarity]] but with the option to include the rarity text before the item name, if we wish. I suggest we start making use of this template. Whilst doing this, we can hold a short vote to decide whether to use text, stars, or both, and if needed what colours. Basically start using the template now to get some standardization, and make the small "perfectionist" tweaks later. -- ST Logo.png MilkN2Sugars (My talk page) 13:31, 29 March 2016 (CDT)
I'll totally get started on using the template. I'm kind of excited about it (that's my OCD nerdyness showing). As for the short vote, I don't want to sound like a broken holoprogram ...err, broken record, but I'd vote for only having the stars. Searching for the text would still work but everything would look less cluttered with only stars. Also, I want to thank everybody for all their hard work with all this and the wiki itself. THANKS!!--Siguard (talk) 21:07, 29 March 2016 (CDT)
Bazinga! This has turned into quite the discussion! Personally, I'm not liking both text and stars, but it's not my final say. Maybe I can help with the tweaking of the HTML or CSS code. So, originally, the way my stars template was supposed to work was somewhat in the fashion you are all attempting to use the new one... yet the search engine wouldn't parse the brackets correctly, so I figured it's a wiki thing and wouldn't work. Glad to see it does work and we're just hashing out the details. As far as items pages, over 100 have been created in the last 3 days between Eeb3, Siguard, and myself! We are at around 280 items. I'm working on the Components as I can to get those out of the way since they are the biggest PITA with putting in all the mission locations. Also, I've devised a way of making icons for all rarities without the numbers using layered templates in Photoshop. I only need the Basic version of the icon (with or without numbers) and any other rarity without numbers (if you have 1 in your inventory, it doesn't have a number). If you can use .PSD files, I can email them or post them here somewhere. -- Preceeding unsigned comment was made by Captain Jello on March 29th.

Looks good milk. I've made a small edit to auto link the item name, no reason not too - Make the "whats links here" tool a lot more useful having em all linked. It messed up the few pages that had it already implemented but ill clean those up. (If you already used the template, just drop the brackets from now on, saves a few keystrokes). Edit: Never mind Siguard is already on top of it, beating me to the punch. great work Siguard. --Axer (talk) 22:25, 29 March 2016 (CDT)

Heh, yeah, I was editing and like, "Why are these brackets still here?" There is something else that needs to be fixed with the template though. On the mission pages, in the reward tables, everything is being double spaced. I'm not quite sure what the issue is. I'm thinking there's something in the template code making it want to start a new line if it doesn't follow a character? Check out His Own Man to see what I'm talking about. --Siguard (talk) 23:19, 29 March 2016 (CDT)
Fixed. There remains the small issue of the table not resizing properly to fit the full width, but I don't think thats difficult to solve, i'm just not great with tables, some reading here would probably help solve it. --Axer (talk) 01:27, 30 March 2016 (CDT)
Axer, you beat me to it by 5 minutes. I found the includeonly that needed to be put in and when I went to submit, it said the page had already been edited! I did find the fix to the resizing table issue. It still had to do with the item template. I had to move the line between the two switches up after the first close switch, otherwise it would add a paragraph tag. Also, you removed the div style clear:both from the page code. While it does leave some blank space, it is necessary for A) mobile web viewing; B) wider tables such as away missions that will get scrunched even more than space battle tables. Space battles have narrow info in the 4 columns so it doesn't look bad if you remove the div style (it's the mission text at the bottom of the space battle table that widens it so much). The div style was added to every mission, crew, and ship page to purposely shift the first table down past the infobox. What is needed is more Bio info or general info/other text to fill the space. --Jello (talk) 03:10, 30 March 2016 (CDT)
I have to say that I am really not liking the rarity Item Name stars format, particularly having the rarity first. After fixing the spacing issue in the table for His Own Man, I kept looking at the Standard Reward Items and it just doesn't look good at all. I understand functionality over aesthetics, but it should at least be easily readable if we have to spell out all of that info. I setup Template:Item2 to put the rarity wording at the end. We can use 'Item2' template to test a design, and if agreed upon, put it into effect in the 'Item' template. While decisions are made, the 'Item' template can continue to be implemented and as stated, changes can be made on the fly later through the template. --Jello (talk) 04:11, 30 March 2016 (CDT)
Yea I don't like the look of holycows hybrid style idea either. Yours looks better. The game itself doesn't display it like that anywhere, so doesn't make sense. The game essentially you see colors+stars in the icon, followed by the text rarity. Though yours is really just the same as my original design, just reversed, as it no longer has to encapsulate the item name. And I don't care either way the ordering of it. I guess it really doesn't matter if we encapsulate it into the template or not though, so yea i'd say go ahead and merge your changes into Template:Item. --Axer (talk) 04:36, 30 March 2016 (CDT)
Also re: Mobile view. Milk mentioned there are tags to do separate edits for mobile only, so you should look those up before messing up the desktop display of pages in the name of mobile. The just look really terrible when the first thing you see is 90% blank space and a useless toc because your cleared the page and forced the toc in an awkward position. Wikis automatically include the TOC in a nice spot when the page gets long enough to warrant one, so its never necessary to put it in manually, unless you want it somewhere other then the beginning of the page. I didn't notice the tables change when I removed the clears, and if they do, thats an easy fix anyways. --Axer (talk) 04:45, 30 March 2016 (CDT)

Status of the Wiki?

MilkN2Sugars... for the last 2 weeks, the wiki has had many problems being online, from 404 errors, to server unavailable, to no response at all. Response times were extremely slow as well - up to 30 seconds to respond to a click. No one knew if you were still around, if the host was being paid, if there were host server issues, etc. I went ahead and setup http://stt.wikia.com as a backup, and as this wiki was available, I would copy the code and put it on the new one. Many of us assumed this wiki would be dead soon.

As of yesterday, March 20th, the server seems to be responding better and available more often. I saw you posted something on your user page here. Glad to know you're still around, and maybe the problems with the server have been fixed. Many people like this wiki with it's no-ads and full screen viewing, even though it lacks some newer wiki features like WYSIWIG editing and new template style support. Can you please comment either here or on Disruptor Beam forums in the sticky wiki thread http://www.disruptorbeam.com/forums/stt/viewthread/15031 about the status and whether you're going to keep this wiki up or not?

Thank You, --Capt Jello

He replied to this on the official forums. You can view that [here]. Essentially he moved the site to a new host is commited to keeping it up, so the future of this wiki seems secure. --Axer (talk) 22:13, 26 March 2016 (CDT)

Admin Info --> 31/03/2016 at 8 a. m. (CET) STT-Wiki-Server was down for a few minutes - Error 500 --John Flame (talk) 02:54, 31 March 2016 (CDT)

First Pass through Missions

I've completed a first pass through the missions and done the following:

  • Verified the rewards in my game, including numbers
  • Converted the items to the item template if not already
  • Standardized the formatting (ie superrare at the top, then rare, uncommon, common, basic, schematics)
  • Fixed broken links and typos
  • Resolved ambiguities in Databases, Combadges, Phaser Type 2 and 3, Hypospray, Uniforms
  • Added a link to the mission template to take you directly to the rewards

I've done my best to be thorough and accurate, but it all starts to blur together after some time. I don't want this to seem like I'm the only one making changes. There's a lot of people doing good work.

The missions I was NOT able to verify are:

Dfehling (talk) 17:43, 4 April 2016 (CDT)

Great work Dfehling, the Mission pages are looking really good. I'll take a look at the ones you're not able to verify to see if there's anything to add. -- ST Logo.png MilkN2Sugars (My talk page) 03:39, 7 April 2016 (CDT)
I took care of (E1M14 - By Hook Or By Crook) and (E2M19 - A New Recruit)
Jruff (talk) 10:15, 7 April 2016 (CDT)
Excellent work Dfehling. I know what you mean about it all blurring together. I have spent so much time on this wiki over the last month, sometimes I can't even believe it! Jello (talk) 14:29, 7 April 2016 (CDT)

How to take decent screenshots?

How do you take decent screenshots of your Star Trek Timelines game? Any tips, hints? --Samentarchy (talk) 21:38, 5 April 2016 (CDT)

I take screenshots from AndyOS, Screen Res set to 1280x800 @160 dpi. (Otherwise last I've known, any other resolutions I tried produced VERY blurry pictures) Also with the help of a free version of FastStone Capture. Eeb3 (talk) 22:58, 5 April 2016 (CDT)
Thanks for this. Did you get FastStone Capture from this page: http://www.faststone.org/FSCaptureDetail.htm ? --Samentarchy (talk) 00:28, 6 April 2016 (CDT)
No, I had gotten FastStone v5.3 (Last free version they made) from an archival of old app versions.
Yeah I use Andy too, with ShareX to simplify taking screenshots. -- ST Logo.png MilkN2Sugars (My talk page) 03:20, 7 April 2016 (CDT)
Faststone is excellent, probably my favorite. Lightscreen is great too, and is free/open source software. There's even a PortableApps version of it. --Theholycow (talk) 08:55, 7 April 2016 (CDT)

News RSS of Star Trek Timelines

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&gl=au&tbm=nws&authuser=0&q=StarTrekTimelines&output=rss%7Ccharset=UTF-8%7Cshort%7Cdate%7Cmax=7 - here is a link to a Google News RSS feed for Star Trek Timelines. While it isn't perfect (including some Star Trek Beyond results), I'd like to see it incorporated in the wiki, as a source for external reviews and behind the scenes interviews of Star Trek Timelines - maybe on a Star Trek Timelines in the Press page, headlined by Writer Jake Sisko? --Samentarchy (talk) 22:17, 5 April 2016 (CDT)

I'll take a look into this, it's relatively simple to display RSS feeds in MediaWiki as far as I'm aware. This was previously done manually on our Dev Diary Page, with links to Star Trek Timelines articles with summaries, transcripts etc. It has not been updated since the game was released however since other things took priority. -- ST Logo.png MilkN2Sugars (My talk page) 03:43, 7 April 2016 (CDT)
Done. :) Google News seems to include markup in the article descriptions, so I've had to set it as Title, Link, Date and Author only. -- ST Logo.png MilkN2Sugars (My talk page) 16:00, 7 April 2016 (CDT)
Thanks, it looks fantastic! Where can we link to it more prominently, so that people will find it when browsing the wiki? Now if only Disruptor Beam had a similar RSS feed for their blog... --Samentarchy (talk) 17:28, 7 April 2016 (CDT)

Wiki Outreach?

Memory Alpha and Memory Beta both have articles on Star Trek Timelines, as does Wikipedia. While I doubt that an external link to the Star Trek Timelines Wiki would be appreciated on Wikipedia, it might be acceptable on Memory Alpha and Beta as supplementary material. Does anyone have a Wikia account that they would be willing to use to add a link to the Star Trek Timelines Wiki on those pages? --Samentarchy (talk) 21:47, 17 April 2016 (CDT)

2 versions of 'they came from the holodeck'

There are two different articles for the recent 'they came from the holodeck' event:

and

Each page has good points, and I would like to see them properly merged, with a redirect from one to the other, as Copying within Wikipedia recommends for appropriate attribution.

What was the actual name of the event - with the caps on From and The, or without? --Samentarchy (talk) 22:32, 19 April 2016 (CDT)

Looks like it is lower case "from the":
Event They Came from the Holodeck.png
Jruff (talk) 09:17, 28 April 2016 (CDT)
I combined the info from both pages and redirected the all caps page. Jello (talk) 16:30, 1 May 2016 (CDT)

Passive Ship Stat Bonuses

I think that a character's Passive Bonuses (in-game: Passive Ship Stat Bonuses) should be moved out of the Skills section, to the Ship Ability section.

  • The Passive Bonuses are the same it looks like, across all Star Levels.
  • Only 1-table needed, not 1 for each star level of a character.
  • May allow the Away Team Skills tables to be condensed.

Also, then perhaps the section "Skill" could be renamed to "Away Team Skill" at this point?
I have made an example of what I mean at: Example. Though it still needs some refinement.
Eeb3 (talk) 23:52, 27 April 2016 (CDT)

Top Crew

Id like to suggest making a new page on the wiki (perhaps linked from the crew page) that has a full list of all crew in Star Trek Timelines with their level 100, fully fused and equipped, stats. I'd also like to suggest a possible format for the list seen on my User Discussion page. The way i have it formatted on my user page allows people to sort it by the best crew by skill (it sorts using the average stats of a crew member). I would volunteer to make the page if it would be helpful. (It would be a multi-day project) --Admiral Titan (talk) 04:07, 11 May 2016 (CDT)

This functionality is already offered in the single skill pages, such as here: Science. Personally I think it's enough, but I'm not against a new, more comprehensive page. --Dhrekr (talk) 05:36, 11 May 2016 (CDT)


Converting tables to new standards

Hello everyone. I have been working at a small Python script that converts the old wiki-tables into the new wiki-tables. I should now be able to process crew pages in less than one minute, so I'll get started soon. However, my script isn't clever enough to revise the equipment and the starship battle abilities - I won't be updating those tables. If I really want to challenge myself with some coding I could write the conversion table for items, I guess. Let me know if you find some mistake! --Dhrekr (talk) 12:58, 12 May 2016 (CDT)

Captain XP/leveling system information?

How come there is no page discussing the leveling system of your captain? Articles list how much Captain XP you can get from missions, but I am unable to find a page listing the following:

  • which rewards you receive when advancing a level
  • which game features are unlocked at which level
  • and probably an estimate (as you cannot view your exact amount) of the XP requirements per level

If there really is none at the moment, I'll start one - but judging from the level of detail and amount of information already in this extensive wiki, it's strange that it's missing. --Crunch (talk) 05:48, 14 May 2016 (CDT)

It is one of those "on my to-do" lists! I have many of the Captain Level screenshots from 1-32 (missing a few, but have been able to screenshot most of them) so you can see what you get for each level. Credits, chrons, chron max cap, and earlier levels that unlock other features (I just saw you need to be CL8 to participate in the events). Crunch, if you want I can upload the screenshots so you can work on a starter page. Jello (talk) 07:02, 14 May 2016 (CDT)
Sounds like a plan! :o) --Crunch (talk) 06:14, 15 May 2016 (CDT)

For reference, the page is here now: Captain's Profile --Crunch (talk) 17:18, 23 May 2016 (CDT)

Collapsible Tables

Can i suggest that there be a vote on the main page about using collapsible tables all over the wiki. At least In my opinion it makes everything much harder to use. (i have also seen a thread or two on the official forums about people not happy with it). --Admiral Titan (talk) 02:52, 26 May 2016 (CDT)

People complained about them being "Collapsed" already, not that they could be collapsible is how I read the threads. Cause for some pages, Missions, and Faction Mission, for instance. There is a lot of scrolling you have to do, if your trying to look at different parts of the page; with sections that can be collapsed, less scrolling needed, or if you want to compare two different sections, you can minimize the areas in between. (And with them being collapsed 1 person noticed that the "Titles" of a section weren't the same and corrected that.) Eeb3 (talk) 03:21, 26 May 2016 (CDT)
The main reason I feel its a bad thing is because it makes it much harder to use (cmd+f or ctrl+f) to find a specific bit if info on the page. Just need to be careful that its only being used on pages that it is really needed on (and not overused). --Admiral Titan (talk) 03:34, 26 May 2016 (CDT)
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