Should I try out Star Trek Online?

[RogueIce]

What level are you, and what is the Mk-level and quality of your ground gear? Also what weapons are you using? And is it the Herald of M'Tara or M'Tara herself, since you mention the latest FE?

[mr friendly guy]

Yeah, its the Herald of M'Tara. I am level 60. At that time I was playing with a different Away team, but they all had MK 12 weapons (from uncommon to ultra rare), Fleet standard Mk 12 shields, while I had MK 14 weapons (including one anti Herald gun) and MK 14 Epic shield.

I had better luck the second time, using my strongest combination of Away team, everyone had MK 14 guns, almost all had MK 14 shields, and I gave myself 15 points in Commanda specialisation. In fact I was hoping to use this mission to grind extra specialisation points while the going is good.

[mr friendly guy]

Ugh. They stop giving the weekly awards for that quest, so I can't get any more free specialization points. Pity, I would have grind to get more points. So far I am maxed out in Commando, although its mainly useful for ground battles. I need command points for space, and then I can use pilot or intelligence as my secondary in space.

On another note, trying out a great away team, with several members having command powers. Its so much better. I managed to get through king of the kills foundry match only needing to respawn twice. I managed to finish off the last guy after all my team fell. And you get lots of dilithium for these arena matches.

[RogueIce]

Well I was mainly asking if you were using the TR-116Bs, as in my experience they don't do so well against the Harbingers for whatever reason. I literally had to drown them in bodies between Security Team and the Shard of Possibilities.

But then Level 60 is rather unforgiving I guess? I don't know though, my ground gear is absolute shit while I at least have always had Fleet gear and space sets on my ships since reaching FADM on my main. And haven't gone full 60 yet with any of my alts.

[mr friendly guy]

https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star- ... il/9488023

Season 11 has been announced. Lets see how we wrap up the battle with the Iconians. I am pumped. They also have a new system where your unused starships can be used to gain points for something. That's good, I got a few unused tier 5 and 6 star ships. Not sure if I need to arm them again, but by then I most probably would have decent research skills to make good beam weapons.

[mr friendly guy]

Another good Foundry is Instruments of Armageddon. Felt like a ST episode for the most part, and the good things is the puzzle consists of ST trivia.

Also grinding games by seethestar is nice for accolades and you might some decent drops. Just a nice stress reliever but nothing that sucks you in like some of the better trek Foundry stories.

[RogueIce]

Season 11 Announce Trailer

(Spoiler alert: we win the Iconian War )

[mr friendly guy]

I wonder if we won by using Annorak's ship.

Back to Foundry games, the episodes by Patcrow seems pretty neat. War with lots of killing. Its great if you're on level 60. I can rush through Klingons if I play my abilities right. First an arcwave attack with a large AoE, then follow up with my sonic pulse and just run into them, and it knocks them down. At the same time I shoot. This gives my team quite a lot of initiative before the Klingons can react. I like this tactic so much, I spent a few million on the exchange to get a MK 13 sonic pulse to upgrade things.

The author also has some nice tongue in cheek dialogue. Like how your character complains that they send you and your away team to fight an army of Klingons. The reply is along the lines of, well you can't die anyway. Respawning is a pain, but its for the greater good.

[The Romulan Republic]

You know, Risa's actually quite a pretty planet. It'd get dull pretty fast, I suppose, but I'm actually enjoying just running around and looking at the scenery.

But I want to get caught up with the main Iconian plot soon- I haven't even really faced the Iconians much yet, and now I'm reading that the war is about to be done.

Edit: Any word on who the new villains are going to be? Because there's no way they're going to make the game all about exploration with no major enemy to fight, whatever the new trailer suggests.

[RogueIce]

But I want to get caught up with the main Iconian plot soon- I haven't even really faced the Iconians much yet, and now I'm reading that the war is about to be done.

The missions aren't going anywhere, so you're not on a time limit here.

Anyway "soon" may be relative. They're announcing Season 11, sure, but that's probably only because of STLV. We could be quite a ways away from the actual launch.

Edit: Any word on who the new villains are going to be? Because there's no way they're going to make the game all about exploration with no major enemy to fight, whatever the new trailer suggests.

Information is extremely preliminary for now, so I wouldn't expect details like that until some time later.

That said, we see a fight against some Tholians in the trailer, and according to what I've read Chase Masterson is reprising her role as Mirror Leeta, so there's a possibility we'll also be facing off against the MU. Since the Tholians and MU also seem to be linked in stuff like CE and Temporal Ambassador, I'd say they're a good bet. At least initially, I don't know where they'd go long-term.

[mr friendly guy]

You know, Risa's actually quite a pretty planet. It'd get dull pretty fast, I suppose, but I'm actually enjoying just running around and looking at the scenery.

But I want to get caught up with the main Iconian plot soon- I haven't even really faced the Iconians much yet, and now I'm reading that the war is about to be done.

Edit: Any word on who the new villains are going to be? Because there's no way they're going to make the game all about exploration with no major enemy to fight, whatever the new trailer suggests.

You can fight the Iconian troops or ships in PvE matches, just search for those which award Iconian marks.

Otherwise there are only 2 episodes where you actually fight Iconians themselves. One where you release Omega particles at one but don't actually shoot it, the other where you manage to Spoiler

kill an Iconian for the first time.

[mr friendly guy]

The mirror universe has the potential to be a great foe. I know in TNG the Terran Empire had been conquered by the Cardassians and Klingon s, but by Enterprise it had been reset. With yoshi becoming Empress after they gained a 23rd century ship, giving them a century head start. Even if it took them 50 years to master the tech, they would be decades ahead.

In STO the Terran Empire is still around. Would be interesting to find out they are now the hegemony in the mirror universe and also whether they defeated the Iconians and how.

[mr friendly guy]

Poor Kolez. You have been so loyal to me since the early days, my Saurian tactical officer. You even allowed me to put you in Vaadwaar clothes to make you look badass. Now I have replaced you in my away missions with a Photonic. Sure I could train you up to double as intelligence as well as tactical like I did with the Photonic, but the photonic just has a few advantages you don't have. Namely resistant to psionics and the ability to create a photonic drone (as a trait, and doesn't take up a skill slot).

But I have still kept you on the crew.

[FaxModem1]

The mirror universe has the potential to be a great foe. I know in TNG the Terran Empire had been conquered by the Cardassians and Klingon s, but by Enterprise it had been reset. With yoshi becoming Empress after they gained a 23rd century ship, giving them a century head start. Even if it took them 50 years to master the tech, they would be decades ahead.

In STO the Terran Empire is still around. Would be interesting to find out they are now the hegemony in the mirror universe and also whether they defeated the Iconians and how.

Unless they redid the Mirror Universe missions from the Cardassian campaign, Smiley won freedom over the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance, and his son killed him and remade the Terran Empire a generation later. Shame, as I rather liked the Galactic Commonwealth from the Mirror Universe books.

[mr friendly guy]

Latest featured episode is coming out this week. The good news is it appears we can replay this for the extra bonuses, which will only be available for 3 weeks. What I am interested is the captain specialisation points. I can boost more Commander skills. Perhaps I can even create a manual and sell it on the exchange and make some EC. I keep on haemorrhaging EC because of my support for my Fleet.

[Coaan]

They have been doing the featured episode additional rewards since early season 10. Each FE is usually good for either four spec points or four tech tokens before it's added into the normal story rotation. It's just a matter of recording when you did the mission and waiting a week.

Additional reward release dates for that FE are usually good indicators.

As for season 11 coming along? I'm skeptical that cryptic will be able to actually manage anything engaging given the long standing joke that STO's "storyline" is. I'm also incredibly disappointed in the so called Iconian war.

It does not feel like a war, but rather Alien Race of the Week™ causing trouble. There are no overarching consequences to fighting in this war, no chance that the allies can actually lose or affect how the wars progress goes outside of story fiat that states the galaxy is getting it's ass kicked despite the players in every encounter straight up tearing heralds and iconians apart

With the release of season ten and the new sector map, it would have been the perfect time for them to introduce strategic consequences to player actions and to have a strategic theatre that the players and iconians could take part in and affect the galactic landscape.

For a past example of what I'm thinking, cast your minds back to Tabula rasa.

That had a constantly evolving battlefield where both players and enemy factions would constantly vie for control of maps and of the game world outside of the main storyline - it actually felt like you were at ground zero in a major war and that was without any scripted events at all. It made the overall world feel incredibly alive and every base captured would deny players services until it was retaken.

Imagine that kind of scenario in STO and the Iconian war, where the devs set up the iconian forces to spread out from Iconia and provide a constant harrasing or debilitating effect on the landscape. Players ignoring the war? Iconians could push players right back to a few 'protected' planet areas like Sol and have random attacks occur on the galactic map until they are either pushed back or simply weathered.

Where you might have extra dynamic events and missions where you need to help protect x delivering y to an active warzone in order to push back iconian influence, or simply take part in a mass battle where the players could have limited respawns and every loss would matter

It would have added a staggering amount of options for a galactic conflict and made their shiny new sector map feel alive and dynamic rather than simply a prettier, more convenient method of travel.

Instead, we were given the same canned, static drivel they've been putting out for years. It's a huge shame.

[Simon_Jester]

The big problem with doing this is that STO is kind of... stuck in a situation where their endgame content follows naturally from their early-game content, which was all laid down back in 2009 or so and revolved around the Klingon-Federation War.

As new endgame content was added (more direct conflict with the Borg and Undine, then with the Voth in Season 8 and the Vaadwaur in Season 9), this conflict occurred in different places. If you're fighting Borg, well, the Borg are invading the Alpha and Beta quadrants, but they're still mostly found on the fringes of that space. If you want to fight Voth you go to the Solanae Dyson Sphere; no one is surprised when they don't show up anywhere else. If you want to fight Vaadwaur, they're over in the Delta Quadrant- same thing.

People who don't want to fight them don't have to be fighting them; it's not compulsory.

But if the Iconians are on the rampage throughout the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, presumably they're also threatening people who aren't already engrossed in the endgame content. Or who aren't interested in the endgame content and just want to keep fighting the Borg.

[By the way... in plot terms the Borg haven't been treated like a serious threat since Season 6 or 7, and by Season 9 they're relegated to the status of a literal punching bag for the Vaadwaur to effortlessly defeat. I wonder what they think of the invading Iconians?]

So while the STO development team have introduced the idea of 'battlezones' where control of different sectors dynamically flows between the players and the AI-controlled enemy, it would be hard for them to remake the Alpha and Beta quadrants into one big battlezone as you suggest, without rewriting the game into "OK, everyone's fighting Iconians whether you like it or not."

Now, to be fair, in-game plotwise that would actually make sense; presumably the Beta Quadrant powers* would in fact be pulling the bulk of their forces out of the Solanae Dyson Sphere (the consequences of letting the Voth have it are less bad than the consequences of being conquered by Iconians). And they would be calling off attacks against the Undine (who seem to be in disarray lately anyhow, and who are only attacking the Milky Way in and around the Dyson Sphere anyway, so let the Voth worry about them). Indeed, they might even be pulling back ships against the Borg (who, based on the STF content have taken some serious body blows from Task Force Omega's efforts).

So in-story, it would make sense for everybody in Starfleet, the KDF, and the Romulan Republic fleet to be fighting Iconians and only Iconians, with at most a small 'rear guard' devoted to other things. But in-game, this is not consistent with the likely wishes of the playerbase.
_____________

The mirror universe has the potential to be a great foe. I know in TNG the Terran Empire had been conquered by the Cardassians and Klingon s, but by Enterprise it had been reset. With yoshi becoming Empress after they gained a 23rd century ship, giving them a century head start. Even if it took them 50 years to master the tech, they would be decades ahead.

Actually, I think there is supposed to be a single canonical timeline for the Mirror Universe, which starts becoming the dominant power in the Alpha and Beta quadrants only after they capture the USS Defiant from the TOS era in our universe.

As of the last of the TV episodes to feature the Mirror Universe, it was around the mid-2370s, roughly thirty-five years before the events of Star Trek: Online. That's plenty of time for the Terran revolt against Klingon-Cardassian power to build up to a level where it could become a powerful force once again.

In STO the Terran Empire is still around. Would be interesting to find out they are now the hegemony in the mirror universe and also whether they defeated the Iconians and how.

If you remember the episodes featuring the Mirror Universe, it sounds like the Klingons are resisting fiercely and are still in a position to launch major squadron-level attacks on Terran Empire shipyards in The Other Side. So while they're presumably powerful they aren't all-powerful.

In the TV series the Mirror Universe's history tends to weirdly parallel that of the Prime Universe despite massive butterfly effects, so I wouldn't be surprised if the Iconians are showing up there, too. However, it may well be that the precise events that ultimately triggered the Iconian invasion aren't happening in STO's Mirror Universe precisely on schedule.

Because, for example, the proximate trigger for the Iconian invasion seems to have been the restarting of the Iconian gateway on New Romulus, which led the Iconian race to take a lot more notice of what was happening in the Alpha Quadrant, provoking the moving-around of Dyson spheres and so on.

Since it's relatively unlikely that the Mirror-universe version of the Romulans (or Remans, or whoever) activated the same gateway on precisely the same schedule... I suspect the Iconian invasion is still a pending threat which has not yet materialized in the Mirror Universe.

[RogueIce]

They have been doing the featured episode additional rewards since early season 10. Each FE is usually good for either four spec points or four tech tokens before it's added into the normal story rotation. It's just a matter of recording when you did the mission and waiting a week.

Actually I believe the Weekly Reward resets every Thursday regardless of when you actually play the mission. So if you run it for the first time Wednesday, you'll still get the Weekly Reward on Thursday.

As for the rest of your rant - and that's really the only way I can describe it - I think Simon_Jester did a good job covering that.

I mean, honestly, MMOs have to tread a fine line here between "new content has consequences like our plotline says it does" and "old content is now inaccessible and/or more annoying for players to access"*. Like SJ said, Not everyone is going to be interested in fighting the Iconians every time they log in. People have alts, they have different interests, sometimes I just want to run those Tau Dewa patrols or maybe screw around on Nukara. What I don't want is the game basically forcing me to go fight Iconian Red Alerts or whatever...and then screwing over everybody else in the game because I - and a bunch of others - felt like doing what we were doing instead of what the devs were forcing us to do.

I'm sure there's some subset of players out there, like yourself, who enjoy that sort of thing. Plenty of other players, however, would not and would get annoyed at being 'forced' to fight the Iconians or have the game world become more inconvenient to them if they don't.

Nevermind how you'd have to essentially fragment the gameplay zones between the level 1-49 and the 50+ players because the pre-50s won't have even touched the prelude to the actual Iconian War stuff, let alone meaningfully contribute in content meant for the end-game crowd. Yeah they do a little of that now: changing Dewa III to New Romulus and then sticking a Dyson Sphere over Iconia when you play the relevant missions. But that's a far cry from what would essentially be two different galaxy maps; one where the Iconian War exists (50+ and/or when you play the missions...which are presently gated at level 60!) and one in which it does not (1-49 players at a minimum, more likely Levels 1-59 since the intro missions are restricted to 60s by now).

That's just not terribly practical. Unless they want to pull a Cataclysm and completely rewrite the entire game universe, while wiping out much of the old content (and needing to create new leveling content consistent with the Iconian War to fill the void). Have fun with that.

*I wouldn't be surprised if there were a bunch of WoW players annoyed they could no longer go fight Arthas or whatever when that content was retired, for example.

Now, to be fair, in-game plotwise that would actually make sense; presumably the Beta Quadrant powers*

Was this asterisk meant to lead somewhere?

[Coaan]

I wouldn't have minded if they'd given us some kind of battlezone on the scale of sector space where players could voluntarily accept to join that instance and they'd have the "iconian war" to deal with, while the leveling zones are left untouched.

There were plenty of options that would have resulted in not touching existing leveling zones and still allowed for an authentic feeling that you were actually stuck in the middle of a war rather than the lacklustre content we were given

As I said, it is a shame that they did not explore the idea further

[mr friendly guy]

Interesting new episode. Its a bit of a break from fighting lots of hard to crack Heralds. We get to test Annorax temporal weapon. Interesting about it is we talk about the Alliance's strategy?

1. We can't just wipe out the Iconians.

I like how this is explained. Just like how Annorax wiped out species only for the consequences to bounce back on the Krenim, the same thing occurs with that.

2. The strategy of delaying the Iconian attack.

This actually makes a lot of sense. We have seen how fast the UFP improves tech wise. Compare 29th century tech vs 24th century. Meanwhile the Iconian tech is 200 000 years old, the Elachi no doubt has made some improvement since Captain Archer's time, but as a general rule, we improve faster than them. If we delay their arrival by a few hundred years, it will be on a more equal footing.

3. The tragedy, and no, not going to spoil it.

4. Rewards.

I am adding that new science console to my ship. The ability to get 20% shields plus improve critical hit and critical severity is a must.

Looking forward to ending the Iconian war.

[Simon_Jester]

Now, to be fair, in-game plotwise that would actually make sense; presumably the Beta Quadrant powers*

Was this asterisk meant to lead somewhere?

I was going to ramble about how in the STO map, the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans are all centered in the Beta Quadrant, although the Federation has a sort of 'rear area' in the Alpha Quadrant. Thus, while it's normal to think of the canonical TOS/TNG-era Star Trek powers being 'Alpha Quadrant,' in STO it's more accurate to call them 'Beta Quadrant.'

[mr friendly guy]

After being called back to work for the second time I had set time aside to play STO, I decided to use some of the extra money and purchased some Zen. Lo behold I now have Krenim Annorax Science Dreadnought. Along with a whole bunch of players running around with these monstrosities. Which kind of makes STO much more powerful than ST at the end of Voyager despite only a few decades in time.

http://sto.gamepedia.com/Krenim_Annorax ... readnought

I have given the ship a totally original name of Tempus Fugit. Its either that or Chronal Blast, Rassilon or Gallifrey Rises.

In any event I am hoping to try it out shortly. Unfortunately I don't have much idea on how to play science ships like the Tempus Fugit. I do have 4 science, 4 tactical and 3 engineering officers I can use, so I can pretty much fill up the bridge. Some double as commanders, intelligence and pilot subspecialties.

I figured I could use this as a beam boat (since its sloooow), use its console of put up special shielding, and take the temporal shielding from my Zahl Tier 6 ship to provide extra protection. I might use one torpedo, I am thinking of either the Elachi torpedo (which when combined with bioneural pack gives disruptors an extra 8.9% damage) or just try something different, like a Vaadwaar cluster torpedo or Voth transphasic/chroniton torpedo. For devices I plan to use either a Nimbus distress call or the Delta alliance help. It comes with 2 fighters anyway, and I have photonic ships so I can definitely put up some extra ships as a last resort. The problem is I won't have drones to help me as a first resort like my current carrier.

Also plan to use one of those space reputation traits which allows you to divert auxillary to weapons.

I am just interested in what bridge officer abilities to get. I should have enough money to buy cheapo ones from sol space station and enough expertise to teach them such skills.

[Simon_Jester]

I've had a lot of good luck with Gravity Wells, the problem being that you can only create Gravity Well on targets in a 135-degree arc centered on your bow. If you're flying a huge, slow-turning dreadnought, that will limit you.

[Lord Revan]

with the Kremin timeship you might want to see what energy type the big spinal mounted beam will use.

[mr friendly guy]

I am finding that science ships with their neat tricks work nicely one on one. With the right secondary deflector, basic science abilities which weaken the ship suddenly do a lot of damage.

The problem is in quests, I am usually heavily outnumbered. I am at a disadvantage against ships that deploy drones and carrier pets. For some weird reason the AI targets the carrier pets first, even though you would think they are less of a threat and even when I click on the big ship. So for my universal spot I needed to put in an engineer instead of creating another science bridge officer.


*******************
I haven't tried gravity wells. I am using viral matrix, tachyon beam, photonic shockwave and Tyken's rift. My second science / intelligence position I am using Hazard emitters and also evade target lock. My tactical/intelligence station also fires an EMP probe. I do however have consoles which can do similar things to gravity well, one fires a singularity, the other creates a subspace rift. I haven't found them that useful, and I simply use an enhanced plasma manifold to boost the power to finish them off.

The other option I have been toying with is to sacrifice a lot of healing (which might work if I had a more nimble science ship) and just use my ensign engineering slot for engineering team I. Then use my universal (with 3 abilities) for science.
******************

So far besides one foundry ship grinder (built to test new ship builds) I have mainly played the Crystalline entity event and tried my hand against a few Dominion, Cardassian and Romulan ships.