ATS has had its up's and down's like any MUSH would, it has seen its players dwindle over the years as less people become interested in Trek based theme games while also just people not having the time to play. Awhile back, there was a stagnation amoung staff which I can't argue against but in 2015, all save for the Admin Dane were replaced with Orlene and Adriel(Me) with the addition of a new Wizard, Zenithar.

With the new team ATS was upgraded to PennMUSH version 1.8.6. The previously closed Romulan Star Empire was reopened as the New Romulan Republic and systems were upgraded and new ones implemented.

Yes, there is a lot of coded systems when it comes to Space travel, combat and even trade. ATS is the home of Aspace, the space system which is used by a lot of Trek based MUSH's BUT there are MANY How-To guides made by players on the games wiki page specifically designed to help players learn those systems.

There are new plots being developed and have been implemented since the staff shake-up and we have many more plans to bring more plots out for the playerbase.

Yes there are unique specific races/factions, as I seen in an old comment about the Unity and the Tyrixx, they have a very developed and intriguing storyline to them which was introduced years ago and are rarely ever seen. The only time players will see these races are in the event of a tinyplot and NOT, as I seen mentioned before, to take away from the players. At least not now.

The focus of the staff is to help the player base of the game, improve upon the coded systems on the game and the most important, the development of storyline/tinyplots for players to have something to bring themselves together to RP around. I cannot comment on how the administration was before 2015 but I can say that now, with the current admin team, are main concern is the roleplay of others while maintaining the integrity of the games IC history and quality.