A letter to the Star Trek Online community — September 2026
If you ever theorycrafted a build for your ship or your bridge officers, there's a good chance skillplanner.stoacademy.com was part of that process at some point. For a long time it was one of the tools the community quietly leaned on — bookmarked in a lot of browsers, linked in a lot of fleet Discords.
It wasn't sudden — we posted that STO Academy would be shutting down, and later followed up with a proper goodbye once it actually happened. Running a site like this takes time, and a build planner especially: Star Trek Online never stops shipping new ships, gear, and abilities, and keeping the catalog current was its own job on top of everything else running the site took. That balance got harder to keep, and "closed" turned into a much longer hiatus than we expected, skill planner included. If you'd been hoping we'd reopen sooner, we don't blame you.
We're back
We didn't want to just patch the old site back together, so we rebuilt it from the ground up. STO Academy is back, and its planning tool has been rebranded as the STO Academy Build Planner. The build editor itself — ships, equipment, bridge officers, duty officers, traits, skills — is the same territory the old skill planner already covered, so that part isn't the news.
What's actually new is how it stays current. For the first time, the community can propose new content directly instead of it all falling on one person to keep updated every time Cryptic ships a patch. That's the real fix for the thing that made the old site hard to sustain in the first place.
Available right now
The full build editor: Space and Ground skill trees, the Specialization tree, ship selection and equipment, Bridge Officers, Away Team, Duty Officers, and Personal/Starship/Reputation traits — no account needed
Save a build to a file on your device and load it back in any time — free, no sign-up wall
Create an account for cloud save slots that sync across devices, with a permanent shareable link for every build
Browse — and refit (fork) — builds other players have made public
Request feedback on your own build, or leave real written feedback on someone else's — not just a stat check
A Combat Log tab on every build — upload a Star Trek Online combat log to record your actual DPS/HPS performance, verified server-side and downloadable so anyone viewing the build can check the numbers themselves
A standalone Combat Log Reader — no account or saved build needed, just drop a log to see your DPS/HPS, peak DPS, a DPS-over-time chart, and ability/target/hit-type breakdowns right on the spot
A DPS leaderboard for that reader — pick the TFO and difficulty your run was from and submit it to compare against the General board or that TFO's own, and a Manage Your Logs page to see everything you've shared or submitted
Public build search and player profiles
Achievement badges for the things you actually do in the app
A Fleet section — a public directory and profile page for every fleet, plus a private member area with a roster leaderboard, stats, announcements, and join requests
A community-driven content catalog — anyone can propose new equipment, traits, abilities, ships, or even equipment modifiers, reviewed and approved by the community itself before it goes live
That community-catalog part is the actual headline here, not a side feature. Keeping the catalog current while also running the rest of the site was the hardest part of the old skill planner to sustain. Splitting that in two — we maintain the code and keep the lights on, the community drives what's actually in the catalog — is what should keep this one current for the long haul.
What's next
None of this is fully scoped yet, but it's on our radar and we wanted you to know it's coming:
Themed community build contests — automatic winner/runner-up ranking, once proper leaderboard tracking is in place
We'd like your help getting it right
We're building this back up in the open, and this whole project works better with your input. Found a bug? Have an idea? Think we got a skill point cost or a modifier wrong? Tell us — we read everything, and feedback from the community that relied on the original skill planner is exactly what this one needs to be built right.
Welcome back. Let's build something good together. — The STO Academy Team