You Can Finally Be Nude in Star Trek Online Again

Warning! Censored images of naked people in this article. Turn back if you’re at work!

The nude mod for Star Trek Online can trace its roots all the way back to 2012, when it was originally made by a GVZ user who went by the names meehee and thefunkyone, before his mods went offline due to the home forum shutting down. Lucky for us, somebody shared the file with budding modder Password42, who updated it for the (then) current game. He maintained it until February 2016, when changes to Star Trek Online’s underlying programming made it inherently unstable. Then it went offline, never to be heard of again…until now. Clamman5 and ‘The ZTS’ have rebirthed the long-dead mod from its ashes, rebranding it “The Nudist Generation” and releasing it to the public just this month. So if you do install this mod, take pride in the knowledge that you are joining a long and rich history of space-faring exhibitionists.

Now, before you go installing it, I must warn you that you might not be stripping your officers for free. At the moment, the nude mod only removes certain articles of clothing, and there are no free-to-own shirts among the eligible wardrobe for Federation characters (Didn’t test all the other factions, but I know at least Klingon-affiliated Orions can go full nude), meaning that you’ll have to buy a premium shirt with Zen or just settle for going bottomless. The in-game currency Dilithium (or extracurricular Arc Quests) can be converted into Zen if you’re down for a grind, or you can just shell out ten bucks and afford the TOS Mirror shirt, the cheapest option in the store (and one that helpfully becomes unlocked for all Federation characters on that account). Far as I could tell the nude mod does not work in the “TOS Starfleet” era, as it makes all female bodies invisible. Installation of the nude mod is quite easy via the included installer in this thread, though I recommend against ticking the boxes for any jiggle settings (beyond maybe the lowest) because the physics looks hilariously bad.

Star Trek Online itself is a free-to-play game, so there’s no reason not to give it a try if it looks interesting, but you’ve got to give it some time to start getting good. If you find yourself quickly hating the game, as I did, I urge you to reserve any judgement until you’ve slogged past the tutorial quest, which (at least for Federation characters) was some of the least fun I’ve ever had in a video game. Special mention to the bug that spawned enemies in unreachable locations and repeatedly teleported me away from them to the far side of the map. But after the tutorial the game unlocks all functions of your ship, the admiral starts emailing you quests and everything gets a lot better. The first place you’ll get to visit is Earth Spacedock, make sure to talk to Ghemik Talur, who can change your wardrobe and the appearance of your bridge officers, and Elsa Mora who can help you enlist new bridge officers. I was very pleased with how extensively you can customize and rename the officers under your command, they really feel like your own personal crew made just the way you like them.

I was less enthused with the overall writing for your character. Perhaps I’m asking a bit too much of an MMO, but there was almost no element of the Star Trek diplomacy and problem-solving that defined every television series. Every single quest mostly involves just traveling somewhere, be it in a spaceship or on foot, and killing everything that gets in your way. In one quest, you’re escorting a Vulcan ambassador to a peace conference, and three Klingon Birds-of-Prey appear and demand you hand the ambassador over because they have evidence that he’s actually an alien spy deceiving everyone. Your character has no choice but to destroy all three Klingon ships and continue onto the conference, even as every fiber of my being was protesting that I would never in a million years respond to that event the way the game forced me to.

But that aside, the game hits the Star Trek aesthetic very well, and at least mechanically it succeeds in making you feel like a Starfleet captain. The nude mod does everything it advertises, though I would have appreciated at least one free shirt getting the nude treatment and I hope they mod one of those in as time goes on. Until July 20th there’s also an ongoing STO summer event where players can visit the fabled vacation planet Risa, participate in hoverboard races and soak up the sun on glorious beaches. There’ll never be a better time to leave your day clothes on the ship and work on your full-body tan!