Star Trek Timelines is celebrating seven years! This makes the STT system on kellyplanet about five years old. Thank you to the thousands of Captains who have visited, signed up for MyCrew, and have contributed notes to this project.

The evolution of Star Trek Timelines on kellyplanet.com

I began playing STT in August of 2017, with basically no knowledge of how this type of game works. There were only a few hundred Crew characters back then, and my learning curve was steep. Toward the end of 2017, I began designing the framework for an application to organize Crew because I am a programmer, not a gamer. That system was published in March of 2018, deployed to kellyplanet.com for my convenience. The intention was simply for it to be used by only myself.

When this project began, the information provided in-game was scarce and nothing like it is now. The other popular apps dedicated to this game didn’t yet exist, and the detailed resources available were basically fancy spreadsheets on Google Docs. The Official Wiki was around, but is based on ancient web technology and frustrated me to no end.

I designed this system as a fan of Star Trek, not just this particular game. You’ll find features like the actors who portrayed each character and graphic content that you won’t find anywhere else. Many of the programs and features I came up with would eventually appear in the game itself, which is rather flattering I suppose.

One of the core philosophies was to make everything a link that would filter results accordingly, which is still used to this day. My CrewLogic sorting engine is a beast.

July 5, 2018 – The HOT LIST was created to show the absolute strongest Crew in all six skills, across all five Crew levels. The HOT ICON was implemented on Crew portraits so I could tell who was hot or not at a glance. At this point, all displays were done with Crew Cards, like the ones that are still used on my STT Home Page.

December 13, 2019 – About two years have gone by, and I began to notice that quite a few visitors were using my STT program. Since this was never the plan, some cosmetic upgrades were needed and functionality was made more user friendly. I was still adding new Crew by directly writing SQL in the database. Back-end programs wouldn’t be developed until 2020. The Special Crew page was created so those curious could find out how to get otherwise elusive Crew.

December 25, 2019 – The HOT LIST GAUNTLET Skill Combos program was created to show which Crew had skill proficiency combinations that would be helpful in The Gauntlet. By this time, I am creating with an audience in mind.

January 15, 2020 – It occurred to me that knowing just the absolute most powerful Crew might not be entirely helpful. The HOT LIST TOP TENS program was created to give Crew acquisition more flexibility.

I didn’t do many new things with the STT system during COVID. Most of the work that year was concentrated on interface improvements, code efficiency, and stuff that I have completely forgotten about by now. The last few months were spent working on a huge feature, which would be launched after New Years.

December 2020 – I am promoted to Fleet Admiral, partly (I imagine) due to the work I do here.

January 2, 2021 – To celebrate five years of STT, I introduced the MyCrew system. All this time I had been flagging Crew that I personally owned, so that I could easily see what was what. Now anyone could register as a Captain on kellyplanet.com and do the same. The initial version of this only utilized the MyCrew buttons, so Crew had to be added manually. This could be a pain for Captains with large crews, but it was better than nothing. This also only simply designated Crew as MyCrew or not, which again, was better than nothing.

January 14, 2021 – I began publishing EVENT BONUS CREW for each weekly event, so you could see what crew you needed to thaw out. This was integrated with the MyCrew system.

January 31, 2021 – The idea of side-by-side Crew comparisons had been on my desk for at least a year, and I finally got to writing the program. The Head 2 Head system lets you compare up to three Crew at once. This would later be upgraded with an intelligent auto-complete based on the base code used by Twitter.

I couldn’t find my notations on when I created Crew Finder Express, but considering it is based on the same technology, I would say it was introduced around the same time the Head 2 Head system was upgraded.

January 23, 2022 – The game had started putting a lot of emphasis on Collections, so I created a system to easily organize Crew into their respective groups. This was also integrated with the MyCrew system to make completing collections more obvious. I also modified the CrewLogic engine to show you which Crew are NOT in Collections.

March 2022 – The INFO ICON was added to Crew portraits opposite where the HOT ICON would be. This displayed the Crew’s name and rating information. This was needed as the majority of displays now used index images instead of Crew Cards. The traffic on kellyplanet.com had grown tremendously, and I was taking measures to make things more efficient. This is also why Pagination was introduced by March 15th, to limit the amount of Crew displayed at a time. Originally set at 100, the system now displays 50 at once.

March 13, 2022 – over a year after the launch of MyCrew, I had worked out the programming so Captains could upload their Crew directly from the game’s API. This was a huge leap, as the data also allowed skill and other statistics to be applied. This was limited to file uploads (which are better anyway), cut-and-paste text uploads were still in development.

March 19, 2022 – What a busy month. HOT LIST VOYAGES was introduced to see which Crew had the strongest Voyage skills in both combinations and individually. Integrated with MyCrew.

April 1, 2022 – BUMPED FROM THE HOT LIST was created to show when Crew who had previously been on the HOT LIST no longer make the Top 10 because of the addition of a new Crew. This program also introduced how long that Crew stayed in the Top 10. Some Crew only make it a few days, others hold their rank for years.

MAY 31, 2022 – It took 4 years and 9 months, but I finally reached Level 99 Captain (the highest you can go) on my birthday, as planned.

July 20, 2022 – The game released a new feature called Boss Battles, and I had a program for that a week later. This calculates which Crew match given traits and has been drastically improved over the next few months.

July 21, 2022 – I must have been having a slow week. Since Campaigns were introduced, a lot more Captain Avatars have become available, and I made a special page just for that.

December 17, 2022 – Nearly two years after I published the MyCrew system, I finally got around to making cut-and-paste text uploads available. I am still tweaking things to make the process as fast as possible. My initial work reduced the load times by 20%.

The formula for the KP Ratings has been adjusted over the years (which can be very similar to the Voyage Ratings, but I didn’t find this out until years later because Voyages weren’t always a thing) and I finally tweaked the math so that the highest ranked Crew would be 100, and not 87-point-something. All other Crew have a KP Rating based on the derivative of that.

December 25, 2022 – Yeah, I was working on this on Christmas Day. Since traits are such a big thing, I created a program to show you which traits only apply to a single Crew.

December 31, 2022 – I just can’t leave well enough alone, and decided to cram in one more project before 2023. The COLD List was published by midday. This shows Crew with less than five traits, not on any Top 10 Hot List, and with no unique traits.

The image I made for the anniversary features 74 Star Trek characters from the game that come from shows that span seven decades. I didn’t even have room for characters from the feature films.

Happy 2023 everyone! As new features appear in the game, I’ll probably have a program to tackle them here first.

LLAP -erickelly