Star Trek Online is free

[White Haven]

Beam: Fire At Will is your friend, your mentor, and your god. Bow down before it and worship its point-defency goodness.

Also, it is very, very pretty when you are in the middle of the entire Goddamned Klingon Empire.

[Nephtys]

Hrm. One confusing thing about the game is a lot of Bridge Officer skills. Some seem utterly vital, and some seem really situational.

High-Yield Torpedos, Tactical Team, and Science Team seem like abilities I'd want on every ship possible, no matter what the class.

Others that are useful are Reverse Shield Polarity, Polarize Hull and Hazard Emitters.

Not sure what else though. Like Frequency Modulation seems kinda whatever, as are the 'Divert Power to System' skills. I also don't know how effective half the science powers are. Which I probably should figure out before getting my Intrepid tomorrow.

[Scottish Ninja]

Emergency Power to Shields is dead useful, Weapons can be too particularly if you're fond of Beam Overload and you've doubled up on it. I don't use it myself but I've got Power to Engines which is great for helping to get out of a sticky situation while keeping your shields up, especially when Evasive Maneuvers is on cooldown.

[White Haven]

Auxiliary to the Structural Integrity Field is a really nice ability. Instant hull heal that has a very short cooldown, doesn't put Engineering Team on cooldown, and gives a resist buff as well. As an added bonus, AtSIF III is a Commander ability, so you can have that and Engineering Team III or Emergency Power to Shields III on a cruiser in a single bridge officer.

[Nephtys]

What about science 'attack' abilities? Jamming is pretty sweet when facing one nasty opponent and you need breathing room, but not sure how useful Tachyon Beam, Shield Drain, Tyken's Rift and Gravity well are. Stealth and the cloak effects seem alright in PVP, but mostly useless PVE.

[White Haven]

Gravwell is great for situations where you need to keep a group of ships in an area, several STF situations where it's incredibly useful. Beyond that, it can produce hilarious cook-off effects if you can blow a large ship's warp core while everything's stuck together in a ball of metal.

[TheFeniX]

Hrm. One confusing thing about the game is a lot of Bridge Officer skills. Some seem utterly vital, and some seem really situational.

High-Yield Torpedos, Tactical Team, and Science Team seem like abilities I'd want on every ship possible, no matter what the class.

Others that are useful are Reverse Shield Polarity, Polarize Hull and Hazard Emitters.

Not sure what else though. Like Frequency Modulation seems kinda whatever, as are the 'Divert Power to System' skills. I also don't know how effective half the science powers are. Which I probably should figure out before getting my Intrepid tomorrow.

When I quit, healing abilities were a must in any kind of PvP situation and were extremely useful in many PvE scenarios. Everything you listed, even last I logged in a few weeks ago, are pretty powerful abilities.

Reverse Shield Polarity makes alpha strike from uncloaking Klink ships useless unless they are running beams and target your shields (they never did when I played). When I ran a cruiser, the only Offensive ability (outside of tac slots) I used was Directed Energy Modulation in the Tier 4 slot as all other engineering abilities at that tier were worthless in most situations. My Cruiser was decked out with pretty much every ability you listed as well as with Engineering Team. Said cruiser was indestructible in 1-2 vs 1. 3 vs 1 things got interesting. Here's an old Wegame video I made during this time. This was even before I had perfected my build. Also, Wegame sucks, but it's what I had back then. When I hit BG, people in the warzones would just leave me alone because they knew Thog and her Space Canoe would wreck their shit. Before the big patch (can't even remember when and what got hit), 5 vs 1 would almost always end with me getting at least 11 kills because feds would respawn and rush back in, only to die again. I had numerous videos of this, but it was about the time WeGame got full of itself and did everything they could to force subscriptions. Without knowing it, all the videos got recorded at like 320x240 resolution because I wasn't a premium member. You couldn't even make out what was happening 90% of the time.

Anyway, since many of these abilities can be dropped on allies, you extend their survivability immensely.

[Atia]

Well today I learned a valuable lesson. Do not put a tribble in your bank if you have ketracel white there that you were planning on saving. Apparently tribbles eat space cocaine and poop out Gamma Quadrant tribbles.

[Stofsk]

I had to discard a whole bunch of tribbles who were taking up valuable real estate in my inventory. They were all crappy tier 1 quality types though.

[phred]

The deflector and console abilities are what irritate me. '12% to auxiliary shield flow generators' and 10 other similar things.
Also, the 'bob has been awarded a Galor class cruiser' message is getting old.

I had to discard a whole bunch of tribbles who were taking up valuable real estate in my inventory. They were all crappy tier 1 quality types though.

I think everybody does this when they get their first one. I logged out after my first tribble showed up, and when I came back the next day, I had a full inventory.

[charlemagne]

Yeah, the whole tribble mechanic is pretty fun. Also, get a Klingon bridge officer and give him a tribble

I'm 50 by now and questing through the Borg and Breen episodes, and boy does quality decline after the DS9 episode. But the Odyssey class is fun, I'm running a standard 6 beam/2 torp setup with only pretty crappy weapons and consoles since I just left everything in my Sovereign when I switched ships, but it still just melts anything and can blast through any mission yet with all power to weapons. "Beam - Fire at Will" is wicked fun. The universal bridge officer slot is great, I put a tactical officer there for normal missions and an engineer when I need more heals.

[wautd]

Should be getting my Klingon guy at level 30 today, which means free ship. I already have a cruiser with my FED character so I'll continue with a fast attack ship (either the next Bird of Prey or a Raptor, havn't decided yet. Any recommendations?

PS. is there somewhere an overview between the different kinds of beam weapons? What are the (dis)advantages of phasers vs tetryon etc...

[charlemagne]

http://www.stowiki.org/Damage_types

The different beam damage types have different bonuses (and I can imagine different npc types having different resistances, too, don't know if that's the case though.)

[White Haven]

Phasers have the hilarious 'golden BB' effect, when you get lucky and that Borg Tactical Cube's shields turn the fuck off for a couple seconds. Polaron are kinda eh in practice, look cooler on paper than they really are (tested personally). Tetryon - shieldfucker supreme. Disruptors, eh, decent enough, minor resistance debuff, non-stacking. Plasma's sorta neat because the DoT it leaves behind is shield-piercing, but ends up overshadowed by Antiprotons, because that inherent critical damage bonus just overmatches it. AP weapons, however, aren't available until Rear Admiral or Klink equivalent.

[KlavoHunter]

Should be getting my Klingon guy at level 30 today, which means free ship. I already have a cruiser with my FED character so I'll continue with a fast attack ship (either the next Bird of Prey or a Raptor, havn't decided yet. Any recommendations?

PS. is there somewhere an overview between the different kinds of beam weapons? What are the (dis)advantages of phasers vs tetryon etc...

Take a Bird of Prey, for the love of Kahless. I took a Pach Raptor, thinking its extra forward weapons slot would be good. No, Battle Cloak is just too important, and the loss of maneuverability is huge, when your entire strategy is based around getting into your enemy's weak arc and punishing it.

If you want to survive enemy fire and deal out lots in return, may as well go all the way and get a Battlecruiser.

[TheFeniX]

Should be getting my Klingon guy at level 30 today, which means free ship. I already have a cruiser with my FED character so I'll continue with a fast attack ship (either the next Bird of Prey or a Raptor, havn't decided yet. Any recommendations?

PS. is there somewhere an overview between the different kinds of beam weapons? What are the (dis)advantages of phasers vs tetryon etc...

Take a Bird of Prey, for the love of Kahless. I took a Pach Raptor, thinking its extra forward weapons slot would be good. No, Battle Cloak is just too important, and the loss of maneuverability is huge, when your entire strategy is based around getting into your enemy's weak arc and punishing it.

If you want to survive enemy fire and deal out lots in return, may as well go all the way and get a Battlecruiser.

Raptors are good if you have backup with the heals/mitigation. That said, their alpha strike capabilities far exceed the BoP and, if built right, will run roughshod over 1-2 ships. BoPs were easy pickings against competent players and ended up being more an annoyance than anything.

In PvE, Raptors are pretty damn good if you can keep yourself from trying to take down swarms of mobs.

As for the differences in beams....

[wautd]

^ Thanks for that link

I went for a Raptor and don't regret it. It's packing a serious punch and flies like a charm

[DarkSilver]

Hit level 20 on my Tactical Officer tonight....means I get a bright shiney new ship. I've fallen in pure love with the Cruiser style of "I can take a beating, while dishing it out" which means I get to chose from the Constellation variant ships now...except...well...Akira! I'm to much in love with the canon Akira's "blow them up with Torpedos" mindset to not want one.....but then again, I'll probably drop the C-points for the Excelsior..

damn it..decisions...decisions...do I want 3 tactical, or three engineer slots....

[charlemagne]

That's why I really like the Odyssey class and her universal BOFF slot right now. Gives me the flexibility to just switch out a tactical for an engineer when I need more tank than gank.

Also, I find making dilithium not that bothersome after all. Two or three days in a row I just did whatever appealed to me of the daily quests and made more than the refinable limit of 8000 dilithium every day. I like just cruising around the quadrants looking for nice DOFF assignments and exploring a couple star clusters while being queued for arena matches.

[Atia]

Yeah I find making dilithium stupidly I can in one hour do the investigate officers report thing and do a couple of short missions at wolf 359, then do the two dallies for exploring B'tran cluster then the Traelus satellite mission, and that little lore test at Star Fleet Academy all in around a hour on a good day and make the 8k dilithium limit. I"m swimming in the stuff now. I've been thinking of selling some of it and buying a nice Tactical Escort Retrofit or the one with the multi-vector assault mode but I haven't yet. I've wanted to level a Klingon character so that I can can do a couple of there's too since they give an obscene amount of dilithium from missions but the color scheme playing the Klingon makes my eyes want to fall out.

[Nephtys]

How on earth do you make 8000+ Dilitihum a day? Running 'Evaluate Field Reports' only gives about 1600, and 'Satelite Repair' from Drake only gives 480. The Starfleet Trivia Quiz only gives 480. Your duty officers grant 125 for a crit success only.

Not sure what else gives that much dilithium. Borg Invasion?

[Atia]

Derps your right I'm not making anywhere near that from the dailies but between those, Aiding the defari(Brain farted and forgot about the defair ones I tend to do cause they tend to be short and quick) 1440, Emancipation and Rescue Captives give 480 each. Explore B'tran using both To Boldly go and the chart the b'tran one 2400 in total too. My mistake, I guess I lost track of how much I get form the missions between those and the STFs i like to do a couple of times a night. Still either way I hit the refinement cap stupidly easy. Guess I just sorta stopped paying attention to where all the dillithium is coming from lol.

[charlemagne]

There's also the quick borg invasion thingy in the Kerrat System (Eti Eridani), you can make another 1440 dilithium and even stay afk while doing so because you just have to be present, not do anything yourself. Then there's a couple "do 3 arenas" and "do 3 capture & hold" missions that give 1440 each, too.

http://www.stowiki.org/Dilithium <= List of all available daily missions, as you can see getting over 8000 a day really isn't a problem if you don't mind doing the same stuff over and over. But since there's a whole lot of PVP missions in there it really doesn't have to get boring. You don't even have to win arenas, just do 3 of them.

There's also the "turn over contraband" DOFF assignment, granted it's not always there and you need 3 contraband from other DOFF assignments, but that assignment gives 2000 dilithium and might well kick you over the 8000 threshold even if you're not really grinding the stuff.

The one thing I really try to do every day is the B'Tran cluster couple since I'm working the DOFF assignment chain there, I hear there's a purple duty officer waiting at the end.

[Spoonist]

Got a couple of those cardassian gold boxes. But it says in the FAQ that one can't trade them away like you can with the ordinary ones flooding everywhere.
Is there a way to circumvent that? Like can you share them in a fleet or mail them or something?
Since I'm F2P and I'm not grinding lithium to trade for C's so I can buy keys - that's not happening. But it would feel like a waste just to discard them when other players want them.

[charlemagne]

Well, if it's bound, it's bound to your character and you cannot trade it in any way.

I'd just hold on to them, you'll get some dilithium either way grinding or not, so you probably can open them some day.