Should I try out Star Trek Online?

[Elheru Aran]

Well, I think I'm playing a science officer on a cruiser. Is that a bad call?

Edit: It seems to be going okay, but I haven't tried multiplayer combat yet.

This is one of the things I *really* like about STO; there is no need to actually engage the 'multiplayer' portion of the game much more than you want until you get to the max level. You can just faff about on your own until you hit 50, and then you can keep faffing about on your own as much as you like.

The primary reason to jump into the actual MMO part of the game is to collect goodies more quickly and to fight someone that's not a computer. That's about it.

[Lord Revan]

The cruisers are opmizied for engineering captains but any class can use it and to be honest it really doesn't matter unless you want to be at the top of the DPS charts all the time, I was thinking of getting the Avenger-class(a cruiser) for my feddie tac officer at one point but it would taken too long to grind the Zen needed to buy it, there's no such thing as a bad call for your ship type, you just have adjust your tactics to match the ship type. Escorts are fast and tend to have good weapon power, tac seating and console slots so they hit hard, but they tend to have poor shields and hitpoints so they can't take much damage. cruisers tend to have high hitpoints, shields and engineer seating and console slots but are slow, science ships tend to have good aux power and science seating and console slots but are between cruisers and escorts when it comes to speed and durability.

[Starglider]

Don't they have carriers now as well, presumably for players who wish they were playing Battlestar Online? I don't play STO but I'd guess they work like carriers in Star Fleet Command 2.

[Elheru Aran]

Don't they have carriers now as well, presumably for players who wish they were playing Battlestar Online? I don't play STO but I'd guess they work like carriers in Star Fleet Command 2.

There are indeed carriers, and have been for some time. However, I believe they are all pay ships (possible exceptions exist but don't ask me to name them). You start out with a number of 'pets', small fighter craft basically, which you can deploy and command to do various things (attack this target, protect carrier, etc). If you lose 'pets' in combat, they regenerate, but it takes resources away from your own supplies, so your own regeneration suffers, IIRC.

Some other ships can also deploy 'pets', not as many as with the carriers though. One example is the Enterprise-F ship (Odyssey class, I think?).

[Lord Revan]

carriers do exist, they're a special form of cruisers with 2 or more hangar bays, though there's regular cruisers (like the scimitar-line) that have 1 hangar bay and thus can launch recoverble fighters (some ships can deploy fighters via a comsuble item but can't recover those, so they can have only a limited number of fighters and they can't control them either), you can deploy 6 fighters per hangar IIRC and most carriers have 2 bays meaning a total of 12 craft deployed at once.

and Aran there's exactly 1 exception(that I know of) to carriers being paid ships and it's avaible to get only during the Winter Event and needs 10000 or so special items

[Elheru Aran]

Right, that is one thing. I don't know how common this is in MMOs but you can get a free ship fairly easily apart from grinding credits. You do have to wait around a bit, but if you want to put in the time, you can do the Summer and Winter events. Usually this consists of some jumping-through-hoops stuff like playing minigames and such to get a certain number of points (pearls, photos of Q, whatever) per day for a certain number of days (usually 25-30). Once you've completed that, you can turn them in to get a free ship which is usually fairly decent.

Other similar opportunities will pop up now and then, like the "Q's Birthday" they did for STO's anniversary last year.

I feel like this is a little different from other MMOs because ships are such a big part of STO. It's like getting a free mount (so to speak).

[Wing Commander MAD]

I haven't played since march/april last year but the Klingons had free carrier available at level 40. I seem to recall that statwise carriers were somewhere between cruisers and science ships, generally leaning a bit more toward the science ships. The Federation Atrox being the best example. The exception being the couple Premium escort carriers and the scimitar which only have one hangar instead of two to balance out the increased firepower they have. It's a shame they require such a high level to even try out though. I am curious to how they play as I have always liked "pet" builds (still haven't found a game that beats Dialblo II's skelemancer).

I have a Gorn Science toon ~lv 20-30, before I kinda got bored with the Klingon content and stopped playing. Bit of shame as I missed the free gorn science ship offered earlier in the year. Though to be fair, I did intend for him to use a carrier. Still got nice Level 40 Ambassador on my Fed Engineer.

[Lord Revan]

my KDF engineer flies a Risian Luxury Cruiser atm and it's a "free" ship from the Summer Event (aka you can get thru in-game currency) and it's decent enough tier 5 ship (well now it's tier 5-U but that's not a consern until lvl 50+) and it's decent enough if a bit silly looking to some (it looks like modern Cruise ship with warp engines on it) but personally I like it as it fits that character well (an Orion female).

and you can exchange dilithium for Zen but the exchange rate is horrendeous so it will take ages to get any meaningfull amount of Zen that way.

[The Romulan Republic]

This game has grown on me. I like some of the details like the memorials in the Starfleet Academy's grounds.

Edit: But I had an annoying issue where I got a chance to get a new ship but my new vessel doesn't show up so I'm still stuck with my initial ship.

[Lord Revan]

This game has grown on me. I like some of the details like the memorials in the Starfleet Academy's grounds.

Edit: But I had an annoying issue where I got a chance to get a new ship but my new vessel doesn't show up so I'm still stuck with my initial ship.

did you "buy" the new ship, if you so you to go to special officer to turn that new ship into your active one.

I'd help but I'm not sure we're in such timeszones that it would possible (I'm at +2 GMT)

[Elheru Aran]

This game has grown on me. I like some of the details like the memorials in the Starfleet Academy's grounds.

Edit: But I had an annoying issue where I got a chance to get a new ship but my new vessel doesn't show up so I'm still stuck with my initial ship.

After you purchase your ship at Ship Requisitions, you have to go to the 'Ship Select' guy, select your new ship and then click... damn if I can remember. 'Equip' or something like that. It's at the bottom of the select screen anyway. Tripped me up just today, too, so it's not just you What'd you go with?

[The Romulan Republic]

Constitution class (the post-refit version I think).

The ships I really want are an Intrepid class ship, a Sovereign class ship, an Akira class ship, and a D'deredex class ship.

Edit: Thanks for the information. Hopefully I can get another ship now.

[Elheru Aran]

The Akira... well, there's no accounting for taste It works fine at its level, it's just not my favorite. But honestly at that level (Commander) for Federation there are no ships I really like anyway. And in the interest of honesty? I drove a Norway-mod at that level...

You can get the Intrepid at Captain (40) and the Sov at 50 (it's under Assault Cruiser). Unfortunately I don't think there are any free ships at level 60, but you can upgrade your 50 ship to be close-ish to a Tier 6 ship. D'Deridex is a Romulan level 40 ship... and I totally understand wanting to get one for the sentimentality factor, that's why I got one too. I regretted it all the way up to level 50. YMMV. IIRC (I haven't played her in a while) my Rom rides a Ha'feh. My Fed Admiral has a Patrol Escort, modified Gryphon/Hermes cosmetically. Just got a Ki'tang BoP. I really need to train one of my Science boys in Polarize Hull, just suffered a lot from fucking Mogai tractor-beam mines finishing up the Romulan storyline...

[The Romulan Republic]

I think my character's a Lt. Commander now. So after one more promotion I can go for an Intrepid class ship.

Edit: Actually two promotions I suppose. As I recall it goes Commander and then Captain.

[Elheru Aran]

http://sto.gamepedia.com/Player_rank

That's a pretty useful page. What I did at each new level was search for a comparison on the various ships. Like I said before, almost any question you can think of has come up on the forums or the Reddit page. That's part of the reason I got a Ha'feh rather than a Ha'apax or Ha'nom-- it came out reasonably well, and I've not had reason to be disappointed with it.

[RogueIce]

You can get the Intrepid at Captain (40) and the Sov at 50 (it's under Assault Cruiser). Unfortunately I don't think there are any free ships at level 60, but you can upgrade your 50 ship to be close-ish to a Tier 6 ship. D'Deridex is a Romulan level 40 ship... and I totally understand wanting to get one for the sentimentality factor, that's why I got one too. I regretted it all the way up to level 50. YMMV. IIRC (I haven't played her in a while) my Rom rides a Ha'feh. My Fed Admiral has a Patrol Escort, modified Gryphon/Hermes cosmetically. Just got a Ki'tang BoP. I really need to train one of my Science boys in Polarize Hull, just suffered a lot from fucking Mogai tractor-beam mines finishing up the Romulan storyline...

You are consistently off by 10 levels, bro.

Captain is 30 (home of the Intrepid and D'Deridex) while the Sovereign (aka Assault Cruiser) is Level 40 (Rear Admiral). There's no free ships at Level 50 anymore, unless you have the veteran reward VA ship token from subscribing enough days and/or Lifetime.

And the free Level 40 ships can't be upgraded to T-5U. You'll need the C-Store retrofit versions, Lockbox (non-MU) or Event ships for that.

[Elheru Aran]

Whoops. Counted the ranks wrong. Oh well.

[White Haven]

You can get the Intrepid at Captain (40) and the Sov at 50 (it's under Assault Cruiser). Unfortunately I don't think there are any free ships at level 60, but you can upgrade your 50 ship to be close-ish to a Tier 6 ship. D'Deridex is a Romulan level 40 ship... and I totally understand wanting to get one for the sentimentality factor, that's why I got one too. I regretted it all the way up to level 50. YMMV. IIRC (I haven't played her in a while) my Rom rides a Ha'feh. My Fed Admiral has a Patrol Escort, modified Gryphon/Hermes cosmetically. Just got a Ki'tang BoP. I really need to train one of my Science boys in Polarize Hull, just suffered a lot from fucking Mogai tractor-beam mines finishing up the Romulan storyline...

You are consistently off by 10 levels, bro.

Captain is 30 (home of the Intrepid and D'Deridex) while the Sovereign (aka Assault Cruiser) is Level 40 (Rear Admiral). There's no free ships at Level 50 anymore, unless you have the veteran reward VA ship token from subscribing enough days and/or Lifetime.

And the free Level 40 ships can't be upgraded to T-5U. You'll need the C-Store retrofit versions, Lockbox (non-MU) or Event ships for that.

Don't forget to add Fleet ships to that list

[Elheru Aran]

Fleet aren't (exactly) free, though. Lots of grinding to get the necessary Zen if you don't want to just buy it up. I've been on STO for a pretty good while and I only have something like... 60 Zen. Mind you, I've been spending most of my Dil on the exchange, so I could've probably gotten more Zen if I focused on using the Zen conversion thing, but just isn't worth faffing around for that.

[RogueIce]

Fleet aren't (exactly) free, though. Lots of grinding to get the necessary Zen if you don't want to just buy it up. I've been on STO for a pretty good while and I only have something like... 60 Zen. Mind you, I've been spending most of my Dil on the exchange, so I could've probably gotten more Zen if I focused on using the Zen conversion thing, but just isn't worth faffing around for that.

They can be sold on the Exchange, though I have no idea how much they go for these days.

Of course you also have to be in a Fleet with the necessary shipyard level unlocked for what you want. Then you have to generate he necessary Fleet Credits, which isn't too hard to get to 20k or so, assuming your Fleet's projects don't fill like 30 seconds after they post.

Oh and your Fleet needs to give you permission to buy. But most do that after x amount of Fleet Credits generated, with x typically being less than the cost of a Fleet Ship, so once you do that you'll at least have the FC to buy one.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, having gotten frustrated with the Federation story, I went ahead and made a Romulan character. Thus far I'm rather liking the post-appocalyptic Romulans. But then I've long had a soft spot for Romulans, as you can probably tell.

I figure I'll go back to the Federation eventually, but its nice to have a change.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

What was frustrating with the Fed story?

I seem to remember way too much Klingon nonsense and gratuitous time travel being a slog to get through.

[Lord Revan]

should be noted that about level 40 or so the storylines merge (from the Dominion storyline onwards) so that the difference is really just which NPC you talk to.

Btw Rom if you've not found a good fleet, the fleet I'm in is pretty decent and it has people all over globe so you won't have to deal with a barren "guild" all that often, I can give you my in-game tag in a PM if want and I then point you to person you can talk about joining the fleet, if you're intrested of course.

[The Romulan Republic]

Thanks for the offer, but I'd like to get more experience playing the game before I join a fleet because I worry that I'd stick out as a noob right now. I'm still on my first ship, there's still stuff I'm figuring out, and I haven't tried multiplayer at all. But down the line I probably will look into joining a fleet.

[Lord Revan]

my fleet helped me quite alot when I was figuring out how to play with my andorian, it's not like WoW where most guilds are insanely newbie hostile or at least the fleet I'm in isn't. I'd recomend that you join a fleet a about lvl 40, certainly before you head into Delta Quadrant for real as you can't level from 50 to 60 By just doing the DQ story missions(they're level locked and don't always get enough xp to get to the next level) and your fleet mates can help you find the best way to grind the xp you need to get to max level.