Should I try out Star Trek Online?

[mr friendly guy]

So far got the T5 battleship for free. Upgraded and might try working on it later.

I am going to try and get the Lukari science ship as I collect science ships.

It will be a slow grind on the Lukari rep, but playing against Tzenki ships is at least fun, although they are tough ships to kill.

Lets see what the Braydon set does. Each expansion I usually find something which I can use to boost my science powers up, so here is hoping.

[bilateralrope]

(Including some actually accurate-looking versions of Korra and Asami from Legend of Korra. Seriously, I was shocked how close I managed to get them to look.)

Any chance of showing us some screenshots ?

[mr friendly guy]

Seems like there are some nice items to purchase from K-13 station. My fleet has pretty much upgraded to the maximum. Purchased some consoles and the superior traits from what I normally have. Superior beam is generally useful since I use beam boats mainly, superior astrophysicist is great for those using exotic damage and superior technie also helps.

They also have android bridge officers. Not sure about getting one. I already use an artificial hologram as my tactical officer, not sure if a second artificial ground crew would be useful. I pretty much usually go with either 2 tactical & 2 engineers or 2 tactical + 1 science (with control powers) + 1 engineer, so I already got an extra bridge officer I use for ground.

[Steve]

(Including some actually accurate-looking versions of Korra and Asami from Legend of Korra. Seriously, I was shocked how close I managed to get them to look.)

Any chance of showing us some screenshots ?

I made the last one thanks to finding out that I'd once made a second account with a gmail I'd made for my Dad (if he had to put down e-mail addresses for something). So I rolled a new version of Korra on it, leveled her to 10, and with two instances of the game running made a couple screenshots on Risa. Cross-dimensional vacations, anyone?

[Lord Revan]

I kind of makes me sad that I don't have way to show off my character(s), my current main came out less freaky looking then I orginally feared (except in cases where the lightning systems makes it seem like "reflective" eyes glow). Been thinking of changing her species to have the style of eyes the Lukari (or Thrawn in Rebels) have rather the the reflective.

[mr friendly guy]

Anyone knows what difference between the new fleet phasers at the K-13 station and other fleet phasers? It says there is a 1 second recharge, which doesn't help me as I don't know how long it takes to recharge with standard phasers.

[mr friendly guy]

The piezo electric focusser from the Lukari rep seems good for a fast ship which uses polarons, since it not only boost movements and polaron, as a universal console it doesn't need to go into a tactical slot. This will be a plus for my fast polar ships (I have two). However, otherwise, the other sets don't seem so useful for my predominantly science base ships.

[Lord Revan]

You can always check if there's sci set that boosts polaron and IIRC the Kobali set is tied to polaron energy type so if you want to build a tanky ship that's also fast you might pick and choose Kobali and Lukari set items.

From what I've gathered the full Lukari set boosts Polaron, Aux power, exotic damage and engine power.

[RogueIce]

Anyone knows what difference between the new fleet phasers at the K-13 station and other fleet phasers? It says there is a 1 second recharge, which doesn't help me as I don't know how long it takes to recharge with standard phasers.

They're blue and make TOS sounds. That's it.

[mr friendly guy]

You can always check if there's sci set that boosts polaron and IIRC the Kobali set is tied to polaron energy type so if you want to build a tanky ship that's also fast you might pick and choose Kobali and Lukari set items.

From what I've gathered the full Lukari set boosts Polaron, Aux power, exotic damage and engine power.

Really? From what I gather the Lukari boosts drainboat, so I guess that helps with polaron since they drain anyway. They do have aux boost, but I suspect I have better boosters, and it doesn't say they directly affect exotic damage aside from increasing auxiliary power.

The kobali set looks like it helps with tanking, without direct polaron boost.

The Lukari set might be good with the new T6 explorers, since they could be structured around drain boats, since they have a console which emits tachyons for shield drainage.

[mr friendly guy]

Anyone knows what difference between the new fleet phasers at the K-13 station and other fleet phasers? It says there is a 1 second recharge, which doesn't help me as I don't know how long it takes to recharge with standard phasers.

They're blue and make TOS sounds. That's it.

Cool. Not getting it then. Otherwise K-13 has quite a few good stuff such as superior traits, but they cost an arm and a leg, so I have held off buying traits that I don't usually use, like enhanced projectiles. Might get it later though.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Well last Thursday's update was designed such that the release of the week 3 signs and portents reward coincided with unlocking the Lukari ship which provided the 4th item for the set. As two of my newest toons are sci and don't yet have dedicated gear they're first in line

My main Rom is also a Sci and because she already uses polaron gear I've assigned her to work through the Lukari rep set with a view to her sponsoring my remaining toons once she gets to tier 5, as well as unlocking the polaron damage console. Meanwhile my remaining toons are saving up Lukari marks so that upon receiving sponsorship they can race through for half the marks. As there are 9 of them it'll cost my Rom 900 marks, the lion's share of that will come from the reward for reaching tier 5, with the rest being supplied by getting the daily bonus.

The devs were being stingy by not including the T6 Vesta in the current sale. They'd discontinued this practice but as this would have applied to the mega pack I can see why they'd do this. I used the opportunity to buy the last two cross-faction packs at the discounted price, but as I have little interest in the Vesta it's highly unlikely I would have bought the pack anyway. So unless it comes with either an awesome console or trait I'll save my Zen

[mr friendly guy]

Why do people join PvE and then abandon it so that I am the only one left? Fuck these guys.

[Lord Revan]

Why do people join PvE and then abandon it so that I am the only one left? Fuck these guys.

Bad pug I guess, some people just want the easy rewards, in fact it was refressing for me when the WoW (PTR) pug broke not because the encounter was too hard but rather because it was bugged in such a way that it was essentially impossible to complete (the boss was ignoring an important mechanic). I have no respect for the guys who leave the moment things get hard but at same brag about their accomplishments (and it's pretty much always so) that they got because rest of the team carried them thru.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

There's a leaver penalty for those who disappear before it ends, they can't enter any other PvEs for an hour. I've been cycling all my toons through the Borg Red Alert to save up Lukari Marks- not only do they complete really quickly but the experience rewards from popping cubes means advancing starship mastery quickly.

I tried modelling one of my character outfits after Melinda May- the costume was easy to approximate but her face looked nothing like Ming-Na Wen's

[Lord Revan]

the facial options are quite limited with there being 4 or 5 base options in total (and about 6 "age" options IIRC), you see certain faces on NPCs a lot during normal gameplay (for humans that is, the "alien race/species has more options but most of those are really out there).

[PREDATOR490]

Came back to this game and am further disgusted by the state Cryptic have taken it in. Any attempts to create an immersive Star Trek experience are gone.
I come back to the game, load into space around Sol and see myself sitting next to the ships from the Rebooted Trek - What the fuck is this shit ?

It is a really sad state of affairs when it is a rare sight to jump into a mission and have my team mates actually flying ships that would even belong to their faction. Now, the game has literally started putting in ships from different eras ranging from TOS all the way to the future time war and now from different universes.

Players are literally jumping into Enterprise era in one mission while in another they are fighting alongside the Enterprise-J.
Apparently, any intelligent thinking was thrown out the window about how silly it is to turn players into Doctor Who

The direction of the episodes and ultimately the effort to justify are blatantly transparent in their motives. Cryptic need more shit to sell and they have no issue screwing any sense the game has to sell their shit.

Gameplay - Still broken and disgustingly unbalanced.
Ground combat is awful and always was to the point the ground queues are nearly hopeless to get a group for

Space combat - Power Creep in this game has went completely off the rails, AGAIN. 7 years and Cryptic KEEP adding their OP equipment and within a year they end up doing a "balance fix"
I.E Nerf all the stuff so they can sell the next generation of OP equipment

It has literally got to the point where I go into one of their 'advanced crystal entity' events and the thing is getting absolutely decimated so fast the mechanics of the fight are breaking.

Now they intend to do a "balance sweep" - If it is anything like the last ones, more things will be broken than fixed unless it directly costs them money.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

How long have you been away? In some ways it's inevitable that a game that's been around 7 years is going to build up a large variety of different ships- certainly when I look around any of the major systems I see ships of every shape and size. That not everybody is flying the same class must mean that Cryptic are at least doing something right.

I think the most egregious example is here:

Link

That's right, a fucking NX Class that's instantly superior to all other escorts save for the pilot ones. Another example: the D4X, a ship that instantly rendered all other raiders obsolete.

Checking out the Wiki it's not surprising that players are flying ships that you wouldn't expect them to, the list of available cross-faction vessels is a long one. The day they make lockbox vessels an account-wide unlock is the day I buy one off the exchange. Right now the Manasa looks pretty good.

[Lord Revan]

Atm the only non-25th centrury ship that is used by the characters I normally play is the temporal sci ship (the big one that is not the Wells) and even there it makes a degree of sense for her to be using that seeing as she's a temporal agent. My Engineer uses a GCS (T6) and my Tactical Klingon character uses a free T5 ship.

I suppose part of the reason I keep the "normal" ships is that I play mostly for fun and I'm not hell bent at being at top of the DPS meter as I said in my sort of fleet chat (it's actually a custom chat for members of the fleet/armada and friends) that I'm happy if I do 10k in a space run (I actually did more then 10k in the run in question but that's besides the point).

[bilateralrope]

I'm happy if I do 10k in a space run (I actually did more then 10k in the run in question but that's besides the point).

How are you tracking how much you did in a run ?

[Lord Revan]

I'm happy if I do 10k in a space run (I actually did more then 10k in the run in question but that's besides the point).

How are you tracking how much you did in a run ?

Via fleetmates (aka they told me, though in this case they said only 'over 10k' so I could have done 10 001 DPS for all I know), there's a way to read the logs from an encounter but I'm not 100% sure how that works so I can't tell you more.

That said your DPS doesn't always give the whole truth as you can have massive DPS but in a wrong place say if you spent whole encounter chasing enemy ships in "gravity kills" you might end up with high DPS but still your contribution to the group would be minimal.

[mr friendly guy]

How long have you been away? In some ways it's inevitable that a game that's been around 7 years is going to build up a large variety of different ships- certainly when I look around any of the major systems I see ships of every shape and size. That not everybody is flying the same class must mean that Cryptic are at least doing something right.

I think the most egregious example is here:

Link

That's right, a fucking NX Class that's instantly superior to all other escorts save for the pilot ones.

Jesus. The Lukari gear can boost my polaron powers on some of my pilot escorts by around 52%, and the enhanced traits from k-13 boost my cannon and projectiles. With the NX class trait I can boost my cannon attacks by using fire at will to boost it 50%. Its like we buy these ships just for the trait, since I already have 3 pilot escorts.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

How long have you been away? In some ways it's inevitable that a game that's been around 7 years is going to build up a large variety of different ships- certainly when I look around any of the major systems I see ships of every shape and size. That not everybody is flying the same class must mean that Cryptic are at least doing something right.

I think the most egregious example is here:

Link

That's right, a fucking NX Class that's instantly superior to all other escorts save for the pilot ones.

Jesus. The Lukari gear can boost my polaron powers on some of my pilot escorts by around 52%, and the enhanced traits from k-13 boost my cannon and projectiles. With the NX class trait I can boost my cannon attacks by using fire at will to boost it 50%. Its like we buy these ships just for the trait, since I already have 3 pilot escorts.

Combine that with Withering Barrage and/or Supremacy and what you get is a scary combination.

I will admit, most of the ships I've bought recently have been entirely for the trait. Only once I've mastered all of them will I then be able to train my boffs and select traits for max effect. Hopefully.

[mr friendly guy]

I already have withering barrage, but it won't directly combine with the preferential targeting the NX refit provides. I would have to also adjust my escort, so it has a canon scatter volley instead ( I have kemocite laden weapons as a trait). However supremacy might be useful. Have to look into getting this Astika.

[mr friendly guy]

Had a quick look at escorts and raiders, both fed and cross faction, and so far there isn't another trait which works well with cannon rapid fire besides the two already mentioned, aside from potentiality. So nothing that really helps my pilot escorts, and the Supremacy trait will only give + 2 to energy, so at best 4% more damage.