STO questions

[Lord Revan]

Fleets are in essence the guilds of STO so they work more or less the same. My current Fleet is Omega Combat Division or something like that (OCD for short) and we do some STFs (mainly Borg ones) every evening (or at least did when I was still able to be online).

[PREDATOR490]

If you join a fleet you get access to special gear which can be bought with fleet credits. You earn those by doing the fleet specific missions - although you dont actually have to do them with your own fleet. You can literally queue for the missions and end up with 4 other dudes from other fleets.

I was in Taskforce Spectre on the Fed side which were the first to get their starbase fully upgraded. Sadly I got booted for not playing STO anymore. Although my Romulan character is still in their Romulan fleet. The way Cryptic have completely fucked their own game so that progression is measured in buying lockboxes for new consoles is sick.
Joining a fleet is really only for gaining access to the special gear - which can be cheap but a lot of the fleets are run by self-important assholes who will make you jump through hoops to get them. Granted, this is exactly what Cryptic wanted and encouraged so that using real money to buy better items is more viable than sucking up to the 500 member fleets who will STILL encourage you to spend real money if you want their gear any time soon.

[Steve]

Spacebattles Fleet is thankfully more laid back than that. We quietly encourage people to continue contributing to the fleet projects, and they mostly do, but I think we're big enough and active enough that a lot of people do so on their own volition without prodding.

[StarSword]

My fleet typically goes through and boots anybody who hasn't been active in a while (there's a hard membership cap), but they do send out a fleet-wide warning a day or two ahead of time.

[Elheru Aran]

Soooo...

What are the best Marks, or are they a good-for-different-stuff kind of situation?

Because I've picked up some Nukara Marks (Nukara is bloody annoying, BTW) and am semi-interested in picking up some nicer ground weapons and armour.

Also, what's the quickest way to build up EC? I've been raiding the exchange lately because I'll be arsed if I wait around for decent drops...

[Steve]

Well, you can get so much loot from the Foundry every day, so running BOA Nebula Farm is something I do.

After that, space missions, since space loot sells for more.

[StarSword]

Soooo...

What are the best Marks, or are they a good-for-different-stuff kind of situation?

Because I've picked up some Nukara Marks (Nukara is bloody annoying, BTW) and am semi-interested in picking up some nicer ground weapons and armour.

Unless you're running a specific couple of builds (like if you want to use tetryon), the only decent space gear in the Nukara rep is the Nukara Particle Converter console, which is really good for beam builds (especially ones with some offensive sci powers in them, like this dual beam/Gravity Well I build I'm developing). Other than that, you probably want to focus on Omega, Rom, and Dyson (depending on the build you want: I'm putting a Dyson space set and the assimilated console/cutting beam combo on my KDF, and romplas with Borg set and AC/CB on my Rom).

And yeah, getting Nukara marks sucks ass. I just went and ran Crystalline Entity a couple times a day when I was grinding it, enough to fill my projects.

Also, what's the quickest way to build up EC? I've been raiding the exchange lately because I'll be arsed if I wait around for decent drops...

Actually, you can get some good (not great) gear by rerunning storyline missions if you can stand the repetition. I fully equipped a Mirror Negh'Var with Mk XI blue gear (plasma-disruptor hybrid DHCs and disruptor turrets) by rerunning storyline missions a bunch of times (and some of the gear in the episode replays is worth a pretty penny on the Exchange, too). And frankly content's so easy these days that I do my Foundry mission reviews in a T4 Galaxy with Mk X blue gear.

[Vanas]

Without spoiling it, I'm liking the new feature episode. A little cutscene heavy but it's fun, wide-ranging and shit gets done.

[PREDATOR490]

The new season is full of issues and stupidity due to the massive attempt to retcon a lot of shit that has been left unnoticed since launch.

The game literally opens with the constant threat of the Undine being a major threat but only with this featured episode does it actually appear that way... only for a massive host of plot contrived bullshit.

The least of which being:
Spoiler

Voyager shows up and during the mission Tuvok specifically mentions that Voyager has one of the original Bio-torpedoes and it is used to inflict massive damage on the Undine. So... we have just learned the Federation have been sitting on a warhead that could defend against the Undine for decades without any attempt to replicate that technology ?
Players can use ships from other races, get liberated Borg officers and characters but building nanoprobe warheads somehow never came up ?

That is Grade A bullshit of the highest order.

Do not even get me started on the bullshit of every Undine knowing only how to say "Weak Shall Perish" and being turned into the same cardboard enemies they were first introduced as.

Oh but we see an Iconian... I am unimpressed.

Gameplay wise: Whoever made and tested that level needs to get sacked because NPCs literally get stuck behind walls and cannot be attacked. Kinda sucks when the only way to progress is to kill the NPCs.
Not to mention the entire chain of episodes have consistently forced the player to go alone. What the fuck do I have a crew of bridge officers and a specific ground team for if I cannot take them with me ?

Engineer captains can still call in orbital strikes from space - even though your ship is supposedly unavailable to support you
Tactical captains can still beam in redshirt security teams - even though you cannot beam your actual ground team down

Instead the game makes you go solo with their guest star of the week being Worf or Tuvok. Cause you know Starfleet would send two Admirals into a combat zone alone... right ?

As I said before, the story of STO is a load of shit simply to service Cryptic's agenda.
In this case:
Agenda A: We are selling lockbox Undine ships for the stupid people to buy so we introduce an expansion that makes the Undine look cool and get more grind crap
Agenda B: We redecorated the Federation Starbase for the third time in the game's existance... because making things look pretty totally covers the fact the game still suffers from crappy gameplay mechanics.

Incidentally, the way they ended the episode... the war between the Klingons and Federation has ended. Oh joy, it is not as if for the past two years both parties have been fighting side by side against multiple enemies so... thanks for making it official. Of course, one wonders if the war is finished then Romulan, Feds and Klingons should start to be getting each other's gear and ships.

Something I find equally hilarious because the new faction rep rewards Phaser and Disruptor sets. Apparently Cryptic forgot the Romulans are plasma users...

Like many people I have spoken to ingame, the only depths of stupidity left for Cryptic to sink too are to sell Iconian and Borg ships. We already have players flying bioships which makes no sense at all so why not fly a cube.

[RogueIce]

90% of what you just complained about is pure Gameplay and Story Segregation. Especially the bit about them not artificially restricting Tactical and Engineer Captain innate abilities, which would be rather annoying, but since IIRC none of the Science Captain abilities are like that they'd be just awesome.

As far as the mission compositions, I will note I have not yet played the new FE or the Remastered Borg missions, so I can't comment on those. But as far as the first two FEs are concerned ("Sphere of Influence" and "A Step Between Stars") they did a good job justifying your being cut-off, and I'll note that in SoI at least you had the three Flagship Captains with you alongside Worf. Sure it's silly to send Captain on away missions...but hello this is Star Trek, go complain when Kirk beamed down to a planet every week.

Bugs are annoying I will grant, and hopefully Cryptic addresses any issues soon, but they're generally pretty good about that when FEs launch.

As far as Lockboxes and Cryptic wanting to sell them...so fucking what? Seriously. They have to make money on their F2P game somehow, and quite frankly their F2P model is a lot better and less restricting than plenty of others I've seen, so if I have to put up with lockbox drops I will personally never open, that's much better to me than getting restricted colors in the tailor, reduced XP gain, no free ships beyond the starter ship, or whatever. Heck I love the fact Cryptic doesn't take away what you earned while you were a Gold member, if you go that route, so seeing lockboxes and Undine bioships is IMO a small price to pay for players not being kicked in the balls if they decide to not subscribe.

[StarSword]

Something I find equally hilarious because the new faction rep rewards Phaser and Disruptor sets. Apparently Cryptic forgot the Romulans are plasma users...

Yes, but they already have a plasma synergy set in the New Romulus reputation.

[Agent Sorchus]

So whats the easiest way to find kit modules? Not had a lot of time to play or felt like I wanted to play much recently.

[Elheru Aran]

So whats the easiest way to find kit modules? Not had a lot of time to play or felt like I wanted to play much recently.

Probably the Exchange.

Not that I use kits all that much anyway...

[Coaan]

So whats the easiest way to find kit modules? Not had a lot of time to play or felt like I wanted to play much recently.

The new and refurbished assimilation chain is a good source of a kit and a purple kit module from the assimilation mission as end reward.

It's random what kit and kit module you get, though it is at least reliable. Otherwise you are relying on drops.

[Lord Revan]

Well I got a new PC so we'll see if I can play now

[Lord Revan]

btw what do you get as a reward from the new featured episode?

[PREDATOR490]

Special Set console
Special Set Kit
Special Space Trait
Special Ground Trait

Pick One.

[Simon_Jester]

When I play the "City on the Edge of Never" mission and try to board the USS Kirk (or load that map from game boot-up), it automatically crashes at 47.08% completion. Repeatedly.

Any thoughts?

[RogueIce]

When I play the "City on the Edge of Never" mission and try to board the USS Kirk (or load that map from game boot-up), it automatically crashes at 47.08% completion. Repeatedly.

Any thoughts?

Install error or server issue with the downloads. Two options:

When next you launch the, uh, launcher, go to Options and then unclick "Enable On-Demand Patching" or whatever it says. You'll have to d/l a big chunk of data (I think it makes you restart the launcher first) but that should take care of that issue. Plus you'll probably load faster in-game now that you're not patching on every other transition.

As an alternative (or if disabling ODP doesn't help), you can Force Verify your install from the Options menu, see if there's any problems in your game files.

[Lord Revan]

The Foundry seems to be deactivated for me is that intentional or not?

[Wing Commander MAD]

I think I remember reading that there was some bug introduced with the Season 9 launch regarding the Foundry. I'm still plugging away at official storyline missions so I couldn't say. Also, PvE dailies associated with the queues, such as Klingon Scout Force, are bugged.

[RogueIce]

Patch notes have mentioned them changing the hook points or whatever they are between old ESD and new ESD. Could be something to do with that, until they can get the new ESD ported in or whatever to make it more accessible. IIRC they usually tend to close the Foundry when they do major updates like this, possibly to ensure things work right with all the changes and/or getting in new assets? I don't know, Foundry's not really my thing.

[Agent Sorchus]

Yeah a major update usually means they're going to take it down to ensure that things aren't broken, But also cause through the power of the foundry people can find out interesting things that haven't been revealed yet. Like this here spoiled wip of the summer event ship.

[Lord Revan]

hmm I wonder if the "Living Hull" trait is worth having or just a waster of my time.

[Elheru Aran]

If that's the summer event ship I think I'll pass... looks like a fucking Carnival Cruises boat...