In July 2024, Star Trek Online brought three ships from older Star Trek video games into its Heritage Starship Bundle: the Typhon and Valkyrie fighters from Star Trek: Invasion, the Premonition from Star Trek: Armada, and the Achilles from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars. The aim was to make them feel newly clear without losing the designs longtime players recognized. The Premonition allowed the most interpretation; the Typhon and Achilles had closer visual reference points.
Why Star Trek Online revisited ships from older games
The project began with a gap in the television and film release schedule. Star Trek Online art director Thomas Marrone told io9 that the team preferred to watch new episodes before adapting their material, and at the time there was nothing from the shows that needed immediate attention. He proposed using that production window to bring classic game ships into STO.
The result was the Heritage Starship Bundle, announced by Star Trek Online as three new Federation starships alongside classic equipment and other bundle items. The ships came from three distinct games, each with a different relationship to its source design.
Three ships, three kinds of adaptation
| STO ship | Source game | How the adaptation was described |
|---|---|---|
| Typhon and Valkyrie fighters | Star Trek: Invasion | The Typhon was made as a high-detail version of a design with a clear visual identity. James Swallow, who wrote Invasion and helped shape the Typhon and its crew, welcomed seeing it return. |
| Premonition | Star Trek: Armada | The original model had low polygon detail and low-resolution textures, leaving the STO team more room to add flourishes and function while keeping it recognizable and compatible with STO lore. |
| Achilles | Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars | The stated goal was to preserve its earlier appearance while adding detail. |
Marrone said Tobias Richter modeled the Typhon and Achilles, while Eric Henry tackled the Premonition design. The interview does not provide a comparative quality ranking or evidence about player reception, so the useful distinction is how much interpretive freedom the source material allowed.
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What the team tried to preserve
Marrone described the work as restoring clarity while respecting the source ships’ designs. The key test was whether each still read as the same vessel by its shape and silhouette; details visible in the old games were carried forward, while new detail filled in what older hardware could not show. As he put it: “The shapes, the silhouettes are all exactly the same, and if there are details there, we honor them and incorporate them.”
His analogy for the process was: “The analogy I use is sort of wiping the grease off the lens to bring it into focus.” That framing captures the difference between refinement and reinvention. For the Typhon and Achilles, the target was a more detailed rendering of recognizable designs. The Premonition’s early-2000s game model offered fewer visual details to preserve, so its revival involved more interpretation.
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Why the Premonition could change more
Armada was a real-time strategy game, and its Premonition model had limited polygon detail and low-resolution textures. Marrone said that gave the artists greater latitude to add visual flourishes. They still aimed for a ship that Armada players would recognize, while making the updated design feel functional and at home in Star Trek Online’s setting.
That makes the Premonition the clearest example of the bundle’s restoration-versus-reinterpretation balance: when the source model contains fewer visible specifics, artists have more room to elaborate, but recognition remains a constraint.
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James Swallow’s connection to the Typhon
Swallow’s perspective was personal as well as professional. Invasion was his first video-game project and, he recalled, the first Star Trek game for a Sony console. He said of the experience: “We broke a lot of new ground with that project, and I have a lot of love for it.” He also described himself as an occasional STO player who enjoys exploring the game world in his ship, and said seeing the Typhon sharpened and brought back to life was exciting. Those comments reflect his own connection to the game, not a measure of broader audience response.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Original release dates and what they establish
The Heritage Starship Bundle launched on PC on July 25, 2024, with PlayStation and Xbox arrival scheduled for August 22, 2024, according to the io9 interview and the official announcement. These are historical launch dates, not confirmation that the bundle is currently available.
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The project also fits a wider pattern of adapting material from beyond the screen franchise: an earlier Star Trek Online development blog describes how the Vesta line, originally designed by Mark Rademaker for the Destiny novels, was researched and represented in STO. The Heritage ships differ in origin—they came from video games—but similarly depended on translating an existing design and its context into the game.
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