The newest Ask Cryptic segment for Star Trek Online has broken from the Q&A format to focus on one specific topic at a time. Future Ask Cryptic posts will continue to follow this format, and players will be able to ask questions regarding each topic in the official forums. The most recent segment gives on overview on ground combat, and users have been busy asking a ton of questions in this thread.

According to the overview, players will beam down to a planet with an away team comprised of five members. You'll control their actions by setting their modes, such as aggressive and defensive. Each captain can equip a kit that grants up to four special abilities, such as force fields and holographic soliders. The catch is that "kit use is restricted by your profession and rank." Check out the full post on ground combat after the jump.

It’s time for another edition of Ask Cryptic! Previously, Ask Cryptics were general Q&As without much focus, but as we move forward, we’d like to make our interactions with the community more comprehensive and targeted. So this time, we’re focusing on one particular part of the game, ground combat, and asking you to put a bunch of great questions to us.

Here is a basic overview on ground combat.

Players beam down to a planet with a five-member Away Team. If you have less than four other player captains with you, the remaining members of the away team are made up of your Bridge Officers. But if you only have two other captains on your team, two Bridge Officers from the pool of the three player captains’ Officers can be selected and beamed down with the team.

You control your officers’ actions, and have several different modes to employ. Some of those modes include: Aggressive, meaning they’ll pursue and engage enemies; Defensive, meaning they’ll wait for your orders to attack enemies; and Target Your Target, meaning you can command your officers to focus fire on your chosen adversary.

Each captain can equip a Kit. Kits work like a special inventory slot, and grant up to four special abilities to your character beyond what your normal skills provide. These abilities range from heals to force fields, stasis fields, holographic soldiers, turrets and lots of different buffs and debuffs. There are nine different Kit Categories, three for each profession (Science, Tactical and Engineer), but hundreds of different ability combinations. However, Kit use is restricted by your profession and rank – a tactical officer can’t equip an engineering Kit. Skills improve your use of your Kits. If you want to be the best physician in Starfleet, you’ll need to be a Science officer with medical skills and an advanced medical Kit.

The more advanced you become in certain skills, the more abilities become available to you. As you continue to advance in hand-to-hand combat, for instance, you’ll be able to use more damaging strikes and maneuvers. If you’re more of a fan of phasers or bat’leths, characters can equip two different weapons at a time and switch between them, on the fly, during combat.

But it’s not all about offense. Captains and Bridge Officers have personal shields, which offer some protection against attacks but are diminished as they take damage. However, if you take cover for a brief period of time your shields will recharge quickly, providing an additional tactical element to the ground game.

Please submit your questions in this post’s comment thread. We look forward to your questions!