Should I try out Star Trek Online?

[mr friendly guy]

Anyone know how much of the torpedoe's kinetic damage are stopped by shields. I am throwing up between using neutronic torpedo which has like 11,400 kinetic damage and 1400 radiation damage, vs krenim chroniton which does 7400 kinetic damage (with 100% shield penetration), 50% chance of slowing enemy ships down and also allows my chronometric boost of 30.9% exotic damage to go for 30 seconds instead of 15.

[bilateralrope]

I would probably replace EP to Engines with Auxiliary to Structural Integrity Field for an additional hull heal. If you still want the boost to engines, Auxiliary to Inertial Dampers will also boost the engines while giving you some resists, and won't share a cooldown with the other Emergency Power to X abilities.

List showing what skill goes in what slot. Note that we are talking about the first slot

The abilities that go in the first slot are:

Emergency Power to Auxiliary (would it help ?)
Emergency Power to Weapons (already have it on the other engineering BOFF)
Emergency Power to Engines
Emergency Power to Shields (already have it on the other engineering BOFF)
Engineering Team (already have it on the other engineering BOFF)
Structural Integrity Collapse (a kinetic debuff doesn't seem useful when my DPS is from beams)
Endothermic Inhibitor Beam (135° arc, I run broadsides, so I'll have some difficulty being able to target it)

If you're suggesting an ability that goes in a different slot, I'd like suggestions for all three slots on that BOFF.

[mr friendly guy]

Looking at STO builds, it seems there are a lot of items I would like which I am never going to get because Cryptic retires them. For example in the winter events there is the Kobali Samsar ship which has an extra console I would like to get the set bonuses. There is also the krenim chroniton torpedo which came with a krenim ship. Fortunately I had started the bonus for the 2016 event and just never got around to completing it as I was playing Neverwinter at that time. With lock box keys, open a few boxes and lobi crystals, I could buy enough vouchers to allow me to get the torp and the ship. Otherwise there seems to be a lot of items which aren't there anymore which would be real useful, like the temporal negotiator, red matter capacitor etc.

Edit - just to be fair, there are a lot of items I don't really want either, like the Ferengi ships or some of the Breenships. This isn't pokemon and I don't need to collect them all.

[bilateralrope]

Just picked up a Science/Intelligence BOFF with a space trait. The intelligence skills won't be any use in space as the slot is for a science BOFF, but what about on the ground as the 4th member of the away team ?

[mr friendly guy]

I personally never use intelligence ability on the ground as I find engineering and tactical sufficient for most situations. At least once your away team has good gear.

[bilateralrope]

After finishing the delta quadrant episodes, I went back to Kobali prime to do the second act there. Comments:
- One species with limited number who want to revive their members who are in stasis. The other species are undead who will wait for the stasis pods to fail then revive the body as one of them. We side with the undead because they got there first.
- One of those species can have a peaceful future with the rest of the galaxy. The other is dependant on a finite supply of bodies for reproduction and are going to be a problem when that runs out.
- While on Kobali prime you keep being asked if you want to change your away team. Then the game ignores your selection and leaves you with the same two BOFFs.
- Two more deaths because I finished a fight, then got ambushed by a group spawning right on top of me.
- Gather stuff from dead Vaadwaur. But only from ones that have been dead for a while, not from freshly killed bodies.
- While on the mission with the Harry Kim duplicate, I'm very disappointed that nobody responded to his demand to be returned to Voyager with an offer to take him to Earth.

One last act to go then I can leave that planet for good.

[Simon_Jester]

In fairness to the Kobali, the supply of dead bodies in the entire galaxy is not likely to run out any time soon. And the Vaadwaur aren't just a species with a limited number who want to revive their members in stasis, they're actively trying to take over the galaxy and doing a frighteningly good job of it.

If it were possible to broker peace between the Vaadwaur and everyone else by offering to let them revive the stasis pods that would be a good idea. But until peace is declared, it's just profoundly pointless to even try to make a deal like that, because all it will do is give the Vaadwaur more soldiers.

It'd be interesting to know if the Vaadwaur give up after the Iconians are defeated... there really hasn't been much of anything on the Delta Quadrant's affairs after the events of "Midnight," has there?

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Yeah. The problem with having three or four "emergency power to __" abilities is that they share a cooldown, so you can only use one at a time.

Just to muddy the waters further, there are DOFFs that you can set as space active that have a chance to improve ship power when one of those abilities are used.

The emergency power I use most is the one for shields. If I have a couple eng BOFF slots free I slot "emer to aux" and "aux to emer. battery", since aux only comes into play when using science abilities.

I have yet to really look into either the new captain or BOFF specialisations, e.g. command or temporal so I have no idea which are worth using and when. Thanks to the cmd battlecruisers I now have an excuse to do just that.

Although antiproton is easily the go-to energy type, the way things have worked out I've ended up with at least one toon with each space energy type. So when a new set comes out that happens to boost one in particular, that toon is always first in line to get it. It makes each one unique to play as

The way it would appear, the Kobali are using those Vaadwaur that died when their stasis pods gave up the ghost to expand their numbers. As I recall the Vaadwaur started working on a bio-agent to prevent members of their race from being turned, yet somehow the Kobali saw it as a threat to their entire existence. If it actually killed members of the Kobali race or was planned on being deployed to other worlds I could understand, from what I could tell the Vaadwaur were merely inoculating themselves.

It's pretty cool how much content was created based on a couple of episodes (Ashes to Ashes and Dragon's Teeth), though this was taken to ridiculous levels with the Benthans from Vis à Vis, since none of their race was seen on screen.

[bilateralrope]

One more thing about Kobali Prime, specifically the maze:
- Why would anyone build a maze like that with their servers ?
- Fuck invisible walls. If this were a tabletop RPG, the PCs would be running along the top of the maze after the first stairs.

In fairness to the Kobali, the supply of dead bodies in the entire galaxy is not likely to run out any time soon. And the Vaadwaur aren't just a species with a limited number who want to revive their members in stasis, they're actively trying to take over the galaxy and doing a frighteningly good job of it.

If it were possible to broker peace between the Vaadwaur and everyone else by offering to let them revive the stasis pods that would be a good idea. But until peace is declared, it's just profoundly pointless to even try to make a deal like that, because all it will do is give the Vaadwaur more soldiers.

It'd be interesting to know if the Vaadwaur give up after the Iconians are defeated... there really hasn't been much of anything on the Delta Quadrant's affairs after the events of "Midnight," has there?

True. But if getting hold of bodies was easy, I doubt the Kobali would have settled on a planet just because it has a large stockpile of bodies.

The way it would appear, the Kobali are using those Vaadwaur that died when their stasis pods gave up the ghost to expand their numbers. As I recall the Vaadwaur started working on a bio-agent to prevent members of their race from being turned, yet somehow the Kobali saw it as a threat to their entire existence. If it actually killed members of the Kobali race or was planned on being deployed to other worlds I could understand, from what I could tell the Vaadwaur were merely inoculating themselves.

There were two things involved. A chemical agent and a virus. The chemical prevented Kobali being raised, which worried them because ending a species reproduction is a good way to wipe the species out. So that got the Kobali panicking.

Then they discovered the virus that would kill living Kobali.

But I can't blame the Vaadwaur for either things. From their point of view, the Kobali are holding members of their species prisoner until they die because they want the corpses.

Yeah. The problem with having three or four "emergency power to __" abilities is that they share a cooldown, so you can only use one at a time.

Well, there are two cooldowns. The one for the power you trigger, and a shorter cooldown for related powers of about half the time. So I can alternate between two of them.

[Simon_Jester]

The way it would appear, the Kobali are using those Vaadwaur that died when their stasis pods gave up the ghost to expand their numbers. As I recall the Vaadwaur started working on a bio-agent to prevent members of their race from being turned, yet somehow the Kobali saw it as a threat to their entire existence. If it actually killed members of the Kobali race or was planned on being deployed to other worlds I could understand, from what I could tell the Vaadwaur were merely inoculating themselves.

From the Kobali point of view, the problem there is that the Kobali have no way of replenishing their numbers if they fall in battle against inoculated Vaadwaur. While there aren't a LOT of Vaadwaur, there seem to be enough to wear down the Kobali by attrition if they never get a chance to turn more bodies into new Kobali.

As to why they see this as a threat... Well, the Vaadwaur didn't stop there. They then went on to develop chemical weapons that would kill Kobali almost instantly, and it is very much possible that they took advantage of their earlier anti-Kobali-ification vaccine research to do that.

As noted, the Kobali have good reason to view it as a threat when a hostile alien race does research into how to neutralize their biology and means of reproduction.

True. But if getting hold of bodies was easy, I doubt the Kobali would have settled on a planet just because it has a large stockpile of bodies.

That's true, but it's a solvable problem. If the Kobali work reasonably diligently, I'm sure they can find species willing to sell dead bodies to them, for instance. It might not be as convenient as camping out over a massive stasis facility and taking advantage of the (making up numbers) ten thousand Vaadwaur every year who die when the stasis tubes wear out, but it's a solvable problem.

The Kobali can't continue to exist without others dying, but they can continue to exist without actively killing anyone else, at least so long as the galaxy doesn't adopt medical immortality or evolve into energy beings or anything.

There were two things involved. A chemical agent and a virus. The chemical prevented Kobali being raised, which worried them because ending a species reproduction is a good way to wipe the species out. So that got the Kobali panicking.

Then they discovered the virus that would kill living Kobali.

But I can't blame the Vaadwaur for either things. From their point of view, the Kobali are holding members of their species prisoner until they die because they want the corpses.

If the Vaadwaur were reasonable about this the correct response would have been to attempt negotiations, but it's pretty clear that Gaul would not have bothered to negotiate in good faith, given what a bizarre and crazy move he pulled off during the 'negotiations' at the Talaxian space station.

By launching a military attack, the Vaadwaur make it more likely that outside allies will back the Kobali, and less likely that the Kobali will be willing to make a deal.

[Lord Revan]

I'm pretty sure Gaul's personal feeling about the matter wouldn't even matter since like Hakeev he was in the end a puppet of the Iconians so regardless of Gaul's personal feeling it's likely that Iconians wouldn't have allowed him to try solve things peacefully, even if he had wanted to do so.

[bilateralrope]

After finishing Kobali Prime:
- More deaths due to enemies spawning too fast for my team to kill them. Because an active warzone means sending down less people than usual.
- Harry Kim called out the Federation NPC who kept citing the Prime Directive. After he did so, the problem was swiftly solved. That improves my thoughts of the narrative.
- Why was everything in the warzone open to the sky ?
- Had nobody except for my engineer heard of air/orbital support ?

That's true, but it's a solvable problem. If the Kobali work reasonably diligently, I'm sure they can find species willing to sell dead bodies to them, for instance.

I agree. Start profit obsessed species like Ferengi or The Hierarchy.

If the Vaadwaur were reasonable about this the correct response would have been to attempt negotiations, but it's pretty clear that Gaul would not have bothered to negotiate in good faith, given what a bizarre and crazy move he pulled off during the 'negotiations' at the Talaxian space station.

Are we sure he didn't have a parasite in him ?

All we have is the Doctors word that a scan from orbit cleared him. But if those things could be picked up that easily, they should have been far easier to expose than they were.

[RogueIce]

If you're suggesting an ability that goes in a different slot, I'd like suggestions for all three slots on that BOFF.

Alternative 1
Engineering officer 1:Emergency Power to Weapons I, Auxiliary to Structural I, Engineering Team III, Directed Energy Modulation III
Engineering officer 2: Emergency power to Shields I, Reverse Shield Polarity I, Eject Warp Plasma I

Alternative 2
Engineering officer 1:Emergency Power to Weapons I, Emergency Power to Shields II, Engineering Team III, Directed Energy Modulation III
Engineering officer 2: Emergency Power to Engines I, Auxiliary to Structural I, Reverse Shield Polarity II

Alt2 is probably better overall, because Warp Plasma is only useful if they fly into it, and you can't really guarantee that. In any event, this makes you more survivable which, if you don't have a T5U or T6 ship will be increasingly important as you continue to level.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Eject Warp Plasma is positively lethal versus small fighters- generally, the smaller the ship the greater an impact it has. Nothing more fun than turning an enemy swarm into a turkey shoot!

[Simon_Jester]

I'm pretty sure Gaul's personal feeling about the matter wouldn't even matter since like Hakeev he was in the end a puppet of the Iconians so regardless of Gaul's personal feeling it's likely that Iconians wouldn't have allowed him to try solve things peacefully, even if he had wanted to do so.

The Iconians might well have let Gaul negotiate peacefully with the Kobali, given that this would potentially result in a larger Vaadwaur military force, and free up large numbers of Vaadwaur troops (and presumably ships though there seems to be almost no naval action around Kobali Prime).

Remember, the Iconians' signature tactic in the runup to the Iconian War was 'divide and rule.' In addition to being vehicles for allowing the Iconians to wreak revenge on the Romulans, the Tal Shiar and Elachi were intended to cause chaos and disunity, among the Romulans in particular. Tal Shiar actions seem to have been intended to disrupt the Klingon Empire as well (what with the whole House of Torg plot in the KDF mission chain). And there is a real possibility that the Iconians were behind the Fek'ihri, either directly or by proxy.

Oddly the Iconians don't seem to have done much to specifically disrupt the Federation, though the Federation seems to have been hardest-hit by Undine infiltration, and we know the Iconians are the ones who provoked the Undine into acting aggressively against the Alpha Quadrant in the first place. Come to think of it, the Undine are (along with the Klingons being jerkfaces) responsible for the Fed-Klingon War that is going on at the start of the series, anyway... so yeah. Still more divide and rule, though Species 8472 isn't really a very controllable proxy for Iconian interests.

In any event, the bare fact that the Iconians didn't use a bluegill to mind-control Gaul suggests that they value his independent intellect and judgment enough that they're willing to let him make specific tactical decisions to lead his people. He's a servant, but he's not a slave, in other words. So if Gaul wanted to strengthen the Vaadwaur by negotiating peacefully with the Kobali, I think the Iconians might let him. After all, the Kobali are fairly small potatoes in the Delta Quadrant's political calculus, and whose world only turns out to be important because the Vaadwaur want to own it. Saving time and energy to take down the big heavy hitters of the Delta Quadrant sounds like a good investment.

[bilateralrope]

Basic Leveling Build (Engineer):
<snip>
Consoles:
<snip>
Sci - Field Generator.
<snip>
Shields: capacity is king.

Is increasing my shield HP really the best idea for a durable ship ?

My experience with various video games tells me that for sustained tanking I want my healing to be greater than incoming DPS unless I'm facing enemies with very bursty damage and I've yet to see enemies with that much burst. Increasing HP doesn't affect incoming DPS or healing, so it doesn't help with a sustained tank.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, one thing you need is to be tough enough that the enemy can't take you out with one shot. With things like Vaadwaur artillery attacks and that spinal mount weapon the Na'kuhl use, this takes a bit of effort.

After finishing Kobali Prime:
- More deaths due to enemies spawning too fast for my team to kill them. Because an active warzone means sending down less people than usual.
- Harry Kim called out the Federation NPC who kept citing the Prime Directive. After he did so, the problem was swiftly solved. That improves my thoughts of the narrative.
- Why was everything in the warzone open to the sky ?
- Had nobody except for my engineer heard of air/orbital support ?

Yes, frankly, that was an issue. I like to imagine that the situation in orbit over Kobali Prime is so chaotic that nobody has reliable orbital support. Also there's the possibility of theater shielding, which might be strong enough that it would require heavy firepower to penetrate. In which case using orbital fire risks collateral damage. And since both sides have big armies in close proximity to each other, and allies in space who can interfere with a concentrated attempt to burn down a shield, that has costs. You expose your own ships by hammering on shields, and there's a lot of risk of collateral damage either frying your own troops (neither the Vaadwaur nor the Kobali have LOTS of troops to spare), and for that matter risk of destroying the temple full of stasis tubes they're both fighting over.

If the Vaadwaur were reasonable about this the correct response would have been to attempt negotiations, but it's pretty clear that Gaul would not have bothered to negotiate in good faith, given what a bizarre and crazy move he pulled off during the 'negotiations' at the Talaxian space station.

Are we sure he didn't have a parasite in him ?

All we have is the Doctors word that a scan from orbit cleared him. But if those things could be picked up that easily, they should have been far easier to expose than they were.

You also shot his body dead and no parasite came out. And he doesn't have the massive, superhuman physical strength (yes, he has ridiculous boss-level hit points, but he can't punch for hundreds of points of damage the way the bluegill-parasitized Vaadwaur can).

The preponderance of evidence is that he wasn't bluegilled, though it's at least possible.

[bilateralrope]

Well, one thing you need is to be tough enough that the enemy can't take you out with one shot. With things like Vaadwaur artillery attacks and that spinal mount weapon the Na'kuhl use, this takes a bit of effort.

I'm guessing that the Vaadwaur artillery attack is when they spam a volume of space with blue symbols. I'm usually able to get out of range of that barrage without having to change course at all, with minimum power to engines. Reverse Shield Polarity takes care of the few times when I can't escape. If that's on cooldown, I'll probably lose my shields and take some hull damage, which miracle worker takes care of. So not really a problem.

As for the Na'kuhl, we shall see.

[Simon_Jester]

The way I figure it, a good tank needs respectable toughness (in the form of shields, hull, and damage reduction, or some combination of the above), AND good healing. Very strong shields can make it so that the enemy can't even hurt your hull most of the time, so that is one of several approaches to tanking.

[Lord Revan]

with the Na'kuhl when they "split" shoot the disruption ASAP as the main ship will be immune to damage until you kill it (the disruption that is) and both ships can hurt you. That's for cruiser level or higher ships though, the frigate is just a shitter version of the romulan T'varo/T'liss with a hard hitting frontal cone weapon with a long "charge up" time.

[mr friendly guy]

I find the Na'kuhl raider quite useful. Its mainly the flexibility in its BOFFs, allows me to play 2 science, and combine with isometric charge, it does shit loads of damage.

[Lord Revan]

I find the Na'kuhl raider quite useful. Its mainly the flexibility in its BOFFs, allows me to play 2 science, and combine with isometric charge, it does shit loads of damage.

I'm talking about the NPC version the Na'kulh frigate enemies are essentially a shitter version of the romulan ones if you can avoid the rather obvious conal attack they got, it's not meant to critize the playble version of the ship.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I'm now in the process of powering my two newest toons through the rep system. Because they all finish at the same time it results in a huge flood of dil ore at the very end, last time I did this it took weeks for my toon to process!

Also the AP beams I'm issuing to my Temporal Agent character are 90% of the way to being fully upgraded, the bottleneck is the number of salvaged tech and universal tech upgrades I can obtain.

[mr friendly guy]

Just picked up a Science/Intelligence BOFF with a space trait. The intelligence skills won't be any use in space as the slot is for a science BOFF, but what about on the ground as the 4th member of the away team ?

If your ground combat is problematic, you might want to invest in kits for your character.

I had another look at my away team, and it seems my tactical photonic BOFF also specialises in intelligence and has been using the tripwire drone at commander level. Now this is a nice ability as it sends a ?bolas which sweeps and knocks over enemy combatants allowing you to get a free hit in. If you use pulsewave weapons, its two free hits as the pulsewave knocks them down, leaving them vulnerable to more fire.

************************************************************************************************************
On another note, playing with my 31st century raider. It has battle cloak? Jesus, I didn't even realise it was built in. A federation ship with battle cloak built in. Wow. But then I also got all 3 Na'kuhl ships so I am not short on battlecloaks for a Fed toon.

But I love these ships which allows me to play gravity well, subspace vortex, destabilizing resonance beam and some temporal powers as well as consoles to play with spatial anomalies. Even though not a dedicated science ship so its power is less than the damage a science ship can do, its ability to manoeuvre so its easy for me to bring cannons to bear just makes it real fun to play with.

[mr friendly guy]

Ok,advise for science builds.

I have generally been playing around with science ships which utilise the combination of gravity well (control), subspace vortex (neither control nor drain) and destabilizing resonance beam (drain). The newer science ships which allow temporal operative bridge abilities just allows very control like abilities which enhance gravity well builds like this one. For example chronometric inversion field isn't strictly a control ability since it doesn't pull ships towards it, but it does slow ships as well as do damage, thus using it with another anomaly power like gravity well or subspace vortex works well and complements it. Combine with consoles like casual anchor or temporal distortions its possible to build a real good ship around gravity well.

Now I am interested in trying a drain boat. Utilising things like Tyken rift's drain ability. The problem as I see it, is that you have to kind of drain all of the shields down in a short span of time to be useful. Because as I understand it, all shields have 5-10% bleed through depending on the shield. So if that 5-10% is enough to kill what's left of the ship's hit points, it doesn't really matter whether the shield is at low or at full power. It would only matter if the shield is so low that the first torpedo knocks it out then subsequent torpedoes finish it.

Now you might ask so what? Well with the gravity well build, because exotic damage for the most part ignores shields (this goes for science spatial anomalies and the temporal operative spatial anomalies), it renders shields largely irrelevant which kind of defeats the main purpose of a drain boat. In effect they are left with so few hit points, a few blasts does the trick and it doesn't really matter whether the shield is at 100% or 25%. The thing is even if I ignore gravity well and build around Tyken's rift, subspace vortex will do a shit load of damage due to the exotic particle ability and ignores shields. I could of course tone down the exotic particle damage and then go with flow capacitors to build up the drain and then fire say neutronic torpedoes (my most powerful non targetable projectile) but it strikes me that I would be toning down the most powerful abilities of the skill (ie the exotic damage built around the particle generator skill) in favour of flow capacitors purely for "thematic" reasons rather than because its a powerful ship in its own right. Any thoughts?