STO questions

[Alferd Packer]

One fleet per character I believe. Only one of mine is actually in a fleet (or was at any rate, with how long its been since I've played who knows if I still am).

Right. You can only be one fleet at a time. But we could still hang out at intervals, do endgame content, that sort of thing. Hell, I could even leave my fleet and join for a few minutes to dump my stored fleet marks into projects, help it get off the ground. I think I have 1500 or so that I've been needing to get rid of. It's really hard to dump flarks in a big, active fleet.

[Scottish Ninja]

I think we might be well served by just making a chat channel to hang out it, much as I'd like to offer membership in my nanofleet (which I probably could turn into a quasi-official SDN fleet with minimal dissent - notable membership is me, an IRL friend, and the occasional Redditor who's having a hard time dumping flarks in Reddit Alert). I'm @theuntanker if anyone wants to hit me up for anything; I've got a few 50s of several shapes and sizes. I haven't been on as much lately, but S9 looks like it'll do a fine job dragging me back in, so I'm likely to start getting the KDF contraband dilithium train rolling again in preparation and that'll probably keep me on my Feds too.

[Lord Revan]

While it would take a lot of convincing to get me to leave my current Fleet, I'm no adverse to joining to STFs or something like that with SDN people (not PvP though), provided it can arranged before starting.

granted I need to get my PC fixed first since atm I get a BSOD if I try to play STO.

[StarSword]

Ditto. I'm quite happy with my current fleet but board meetups are fine. I'm @starswordc.

[Lord Revan]

atm I'm looking at 3 weeks min until I can get my PC back into playing condition so it seems unlikely I would be able to join anything before season 9 goes live.

[montypython]

Although my Fed character is already in a Fleet, my Romulan character (fed aligned) can join up and help in building up a Fleet if anyone's interested in that.

[Zwinmar]

if you need bodies I got a 50 fed, romulan (fed ally) and a Klink. Not that I get on much at all.

[Elheru Aran]

Oh... @Adrika (Rom/Klink), @Hesh Kaa (Klink), @Hendrake (Fed) for me. 50, 13, and 45 (46?) as of yesterday.

[Steve]

My main is Steve Parker@stgjr, but all you really need is the @stgjr bit to friend someone (And it stretches across all Cryptic games).

All of my 12 toons are in the two Spacebattles fleets at current.

[Wing Commander MAD]

I'm @madsto98725, as the account creation stuff didn't seem to like anything resembling my username here. If I'm on, it's usually evenings/weekends US EST.

A couple more questions:

1. Is it me or are Klingon ships less delineated than Federation ones? How are their roles defined? The differences between the escort, cruiser, science lines are fairly straight forward for the Feds. The Romulans seems to be all warbirds till tier 5 where they break down like the Federation and the cross faction ships look to follow the Federation breakdown. Looking at the wiki it seems that raiders are roughly analogous to the escorts, and battle cruisers are similar to cruisers. It would appear that the only real science type vessels are the Gorn ones that you have to buy. I'm really not sure about the raptors and destroyers though. They seem to be somewhere between a raider and cruiser, which would make me less inclined to use one as the ship doesn't know what it wants to be and probably suffers from jack of all trades master of none syndrome. Am I missing something fundamental?

2. To those who are more experienced what's your take on the shield types? The other pieces of equipment with variations seem to be fairly straight forward in the pros and cons. The shields seem to me to be less clear to me. I've been doing some looking online I'm getting some threads from 2012 and earlier about shield types and the general idea seems to be:
a) Covariant (high capacity) seem to be good for glass cannons as buffer during your attack runs
b) Regenerative good for endurance
c) Resilient good for science vessels due to their higher shields and weaker hulls (though I'm not really seeing how the 5% absorption has any effect
d)Standard which are balanced

I've personally tried all them and I can't see much of a difference. I've been playing with cruisers and my general focus has been on weapons energy with mostly beam weapons, the default 100W/50Sh/25E/25Aux setup, using abilities for healing shields. If I were to run a shield focused setup would the difference and thus advantages of the different types be more apparent? Also, how does a defensive focused power distribution work overall in terms of viability? From what I've seen killing enemies quicker seems to be more efficient, with the possible exception of times when there are ridiculous numbers of enemies compared to you/your team (such as the Mirror Invasion event).

3. Is there any real recommended order for doing some of the content? The episodes, at least so far up through the Romulan Mystery on the Federation side, seem to flow in an order, but what about STFs, Reputation Factions, and adventure zones? Does it make sense to complete certain ones before others from a narrative standpoint? Granted this is an MMO, but they seem to be making somewhat of an attempt at an overall narrative structure.

Now for a little rant. Would it kill them to have the Gorn captain from Arena's outfit as an option instead of having to choose crappy Klingon stuff (or at least something that looks like it was derived from it). It looks like the Orions get to have their stripper/BDSM costumes if NPC outfits are anything to go by. I'll tolerate, just barely, the fact they decided to radically change how Gorn look, despite my general loathing of artists personalizing or otherwise changing things with an established look for their own reasons, as they're still light years ahead of the shit produced for the cut portion of NuTrek or that godawful NuTrek game. It's bad enough all the Gorn ships are Zen purchases, as are most non Klingon KDF ships. It's almost as if the developers purposely make it hard to roleplay as a non ridge-headed moron. Mind you this is without having even played a KDF character, just having looked at the character creator, ship selection, and stuff I've heard second-hand.

[Lord Revan]

There's next to no non-Klingon outfits for KDF characters, there's 3 Orion female tops, 2 loincloths belt combos with 3 different cloth options and 2 tiaras and 3 or 4 shoulder pad designs, Orion males might share the shoulder pad designs but get nothing more rest of the races don't get even that.


as for ships only Klingon ships are free rest you need to get from C-store but then I don't mind that too much because I can RP with my Orion just find without it, in fact it might even enrich her character that she doesn't have access to syndicate ships.

[Elheru Aran]

The game has gotten to the point where it's all about the DPS in space. The more you can deal out, the better you'll be. Things like shield healing and engineering boosts and all that are fine, but DPS rules the roost for the most part.

STO honestly sucks pretty bad for RP if you aren't a Feddie. Play it more for blowing stuff up and the pretty ships than that.

[RogueIce]

1. Is it me or are Klingon ships less delineated than Federation ones? How are their roles defined? The differences between the escort, cruiser, science lines are fairly straight forward for the Feds. The Romulans seems to be all warbirds till tier 5 where they break down like the Federation and the cross faction ships look to follow the Federation breakdown. Looking at the wiki it seems that raiders are roughly analogous to the escorts, and battle cruisers are similar to cruisers. It would appear that the only real science type vessels are the Gorn ones that you have to buy. I'm really not sure about the raptors and destroyers though. They seem to be somewhere between a raider and cruiser, which would make me less inclined to use one as the ship doesn't know what it wants to be and probably suffers from jack of all trades master of none syndrome. Am I missing something fundamental?

KDF were originally the All PvP faction. They didn't even have storylines, you leveled purely through PvP. Since then they've added story progression and generally tried to expand them, but that beginning still affects them.

3. Is there any real recommended order for doing some of the content? The episodes, at least so far up through the Romulan Mystery on the Federation side, seem to flow in an order, but what about STFs, Reputation Factions, and adventure zones? Does it make sense to complete certain ones before others from a narrative standpoint? Granted this is an MMO, but they seem to be making somewhat of an attempt at an overall narrative structure.

The order they were released in was Omega (STFs + Rep) -> New Romulus (Rep, AdvZone) -> Nukara -> (Rep, AdvZone) -> Dyson (Rep, AdvZone)

As far as a storyline order, play up to "A Light in the Dark" and then stop there, if you want to keep "spoiler-free". As far as the Reputation missions themselves are concerned:

Omega sort of has a storyline to it with the Space and Ground zones. STO Wiki has them in order here. I honestly don't know how many people even bother with this as opposed to just running Cure and Infected Elite all the time for pure grinding purposes, but you're welcome to try.

New Romulus does have an actual storyline to it, which you'll unlock as you progress. Do this up to the Tier V cutscene, and then you're ready to play the "Sphere of Influence" mission. You can then do those various Dyson Sphere intro missions, but stop before you do "A Step Between Stars".

For Nukara, I can't find anything about story elements on STO Wiki, so I guess there are no cutscene missions? When you reach Level 50 you'll get the "Hot Lead" mission popup whenever you go to the Eta Eridani sector block, but that's literally just to show you where to go for Nukara.

The Dyson Sphere does have story cutscenes once more, however. After you complete the Tier V cutscene, you'll be ready to play "A Step Between Stars" from a story standpoint. And then you'll be all caught up until whatever they do for Season 9.

So yeah, if you want a story order to it all, there you go. Basically at endgame you go: "A Light in the Dark" -> Omega or New Romulus Rep Tier V (it doesn't really matter, IMO) -> "Sphere of Influence" -> Dyson Rep Tier V -> "A Step Between Stars"

Now, you don't have to grind out those Reputations all the way to V if you don't want to, but that's the story order they sit in. So those Reputation systems (at least for New Romulus and the Dyson Sphere) do have storyline relevance, which is pretty nice. But there's no super critical plot points you'd miss out on if you did those SOI and ASBS first, either.

Now for a little rant. Would it kill them to have the Gorn captain from Arena's outfit as an option instead of having to choose crappy Klingon stuff (or at least something that looks like it was derived from it). It looks like the Orions get to have their stripper/BDSM costumes if NPC outfits are anything to go by. I'll tolerate, just barely, the fact they decided to radically change how Gorn look, despite my general loathing of artists personalizing or otherwise changing things with an established look for their own reasons, as they're still light years ahead of the shit produced for the cut portion of NuTrek or that godawful NuTrek game. It's bad enough all the Gorn ships are Zen purchases, as are most non Klingon KDF ships. It's almost as if the developers purposely make it hard to roleplay as a non ridge-headed moron. Mind you this is without having even played a KDF character, just having looked at the character creator, ship selection, and stuff I've heard second-hand.

Well, as I said, KDF was originally envisioned as the pure PvP faction, and it shows. Despite their efforts, I don't think KDF has really been brought up to par with the Federation or even Romulans as far as story stuff goes, even if you can level 1-50 doing PvE. Unfortunately Feds get all the goodies because that's where the players are...and they're playing Fed because they're the most well developed faction, and you can guess how that cycle goes.

[Zwinmar]

I just know that when I downloaded the game a couple months ago after having been away since subscriber days my klink shop up in levels quick, like from level 12ish to in the 30's upon log in. Still don't know what all changed but I had to go do all the missions to get an upgrade to the lv2 ship I was in.

[Alferd Packer]

The only difference between Feds and KDF ships is that the KDF doesn't have a full line of science vessels in the standard tiers. The level 40 Vo'Quv is a science carrier that you can get for free, and, and they have sciency Zen ships that you can buy. Otherwise, the ships are analogous; raptors are escorts with bonus flanking damage, and battlecruisers are cruisers that can equip cannons. Birds of Prey are their own weird branch, since their BOFF seating is completely universal.

[Lord Revan]

As far as ships go my main issue is that Romulans lack a free "Assault Warbird" option for high level with D'Deridex and the big ship the flotilla consist of (I forgot the class name) being cruiser analogs, you might get a fleet Mogai or T'Varo but those costs at least 20k fleet credits and possibly those special tokens you get only from the C-Store.

[Lord Revan]

As far as ships go my main issue is that Romulans lack a free "Assault Warbird" option for high level with D'Deridex and the big ship the flotilla consist of (I forgot the class name) being cruiser analogs, you might get a fleet Mogai or T'Varo but those costs at least 20k fleet credits and possibly those special tokens you get only from the C-Store.

Ghetto EDIT: the Ha'feh class might work for the assault role I'd have to test it online which I can't atm

[Imperial Overlord]

The Ha'feh works for the escort role. The fleet ship modules can be bought at the c-store, but are also for sale on the exchange. They aren't cheap, but grinding for them is practical.

[Lord Revan]

btw is it viable to build a Romulan ship that uses only plasma weapons for PvE or is there too much plasma resistant mobs to not make that viable?

also for the Ha'feh which one would you recommend beams or cannons?

just asking cause if all goes well I should be able to take this PC to be fixed tomorrow and while I'll be offline for 2 weeks or so, I should be able to return to STO after that.

[Imperial Overlord]

btw is it viable to build a Romulan ship that uses only plasma weapons for PvE or is there too much plasma resistant mobs to not make that viable?

also for the Ha'feh which one would you recommend beams or cannons?

just asking cause if all goes well I should be able to take this PC to be fixed tomorrow and while I'll be offline for 2 weeks or so, I should be able to return to STO after that.

Plasma is perfectly viable and for escort type ships cannons and turrets is the way to go. Romulan rep is something you'll want to grind because it gives Romulan Plasma Disruptor hybrid weapons, the Hyper Plasma Torp Launcher, and the Zero Point Module.

[Alferd Packer]

Yeah, Romulan Plasma is the weapon type used by people who are looking to max out their DPS. Those crazy 30K DPS builds almost invariably require Romulan Plasma weapons, or maybe Fleet Antiprotons, among a ton of other expensive consoles, DOFFs, and BOFFs.

[White Haven]

Things can get manky with the special weapons from the assorted and sundry reps bouncing around. The conventional escort/attack warbird loadout is three prow dual heavy cannons, three aft turrets, and a prow torpedo tube. Buuut then what about the Borg cutting beam? What about all the specialized torpedo tubes? What about that experimental proton weapon? What rep-based 3-piece sets look interesting to you?

And so on, and so on. The addition of the various rep-obtainable components has upset a lot of the conventional cookie-cutter setups. It's also caused some power creep, which does need to be addressed, but there's a lot more variety in ship fitting than there was a year ago.

EDIT: Variety in non-stupid ship fitting. There was always plenty of variety, but it was largely the province of captains who wear their underwear atop their heads.

[PREDATOR490]

Plasma weapons are good for PVE mostly over the other procs due to extra damage and the cheapness of acquiring them. Get in with a good fleet and you get cheap endgame weapons and the consoles that boost plasma damage. The only issue is that Plasma sucks in PVP because most players are going to have the skill which cleanses the DOT and stack resistance against plasma.

Disruptors are also worth a look for the debuff which is decent for PVP and PVE while being group friendly in theory.

Anti-protons - If you can afford them then go for it but they can be a real pain in the ass. Especially because Cryptic ignore the exotic weapon types because their special console gimicks from the Zen Store or Rep store usually obey faction weapon defaults.


I logged into the game briefly and notice it is still a hive of Cryptic Zen Store power creep bullshit. Cryptic continue to release new ships with new features while forgetting to bring the older ships up to match I.E Galaxy-X. I notice ships that have battle modes which lets them switch their bridge officer stations ?
See... I would have added that functionality to ALL ships because it would make sense rather than have this really shitty situation of everyone being stuck at Tier 5 with Cryptic coming up with endless variations of +1.
The console shit is just beyond a joke now since you spend ages grinding for Rep garbage but most ships cannot even slot what you get without your power bars being filled with buttons and thats just your ACTUAL powers. Dont even include the endless amount of collectable toys, batteries and inventory trash you need to keep.

The logical progression to what they are pulling is to stop making Tactical / Engineering / Science variations of the same ship but make a single ship which can switch focus and go back to the ships having build in powers instead of console garbage. Oh... but then Cryptic would not need to sell a 5000 Zen pack of 3 ships with uber console set instead of a single ship for 2000.


As for the faction in-balance = That was obvious to anyone with a brain since before the game left Beta but Cryptic refused to listen. The current state of the game with the factions being able to fly non-faction ships with non-faction equipment just makes this even more silly.
The way the game is: Cryptic might as well just allow all the races to fly each other's ships, if anyone wants to bitch about how it does not make sense then feel free to justify my Federation character flying around in a Dominion Dreadnaught using Breen, Borg and Klingon crew members with Romulan Weapons and 29th Century consoles.

Not to mention the rumors of a S8472 / Undine lockbox which if Cryptic actually follow through on... words cannot express how stupid flying organic ships would be.

[Alferd Packer]

Power creep only needs be addressed by giving those top-tier players some challenging content. Right now, all endgame content can successfully be enjoyed by a player capable of 2500 DPS, which is easily achievable using cheap, readily available MKXI gear. My Sovereign pushes 12K DPS with minimal effort, my Armitage averages 11K, and my Defiant 10K. Even if they added a third difficulty tier to the existing content, that would be something.

[Elheru Aran]

So how exactly do fleets work?

I know the general idea-- join one or be recruited, earn flarks (what a nickname, do we have Rarks, Omarks, Narks too?), contribute to the fleet in some fashion and profit?

But apart from that I really have no idea. All three of my chars were recruited early on (the Fed is with Wolfpack Alpha 1, whatever that is, forget what the other two are with) but I haven't bothered to do anything fleet-ish with any of them other than walk around WA1's starbase a little bit.

So... advice? Suggestions?