Should I try out Star Trek Online?

[White Haven]

It's not THAT time-consuming, but it is a lot of work. It probably says a lot about me that I've gone through this process several times myself.

[Coaan]

To put it another way, my Delta recruit has been in existance for maybe three weeks and they've already got rank 15 in beam research and more or less a full rack of good quality (not the best) beam arrays ranging from mark 11 to 14 ultra rares and epics.

It requires some time investment but it is MUCH faster than say, getting your reps to any useable point if you are not using sponsorship tokens.

The beauty of the crafting system is that you can dive right in and start crafting immediately at level 1 research skill if you're prepared to accept a lot of chaff items. All you need at that point is some bullshit white mats, a half decent duty officer and a bunch of patience. Running through the first couple of ranks of beam r&d is very possible just with setting a beam array building every time you have a free moment inbetween missions.

It will accrue quite quickly if you set it in the background and keep playing while it's cooking.

Couple of good tips for research ;-

1. Remember to set the long 20 hour jobs at the end of your play time. If you can during play, keep the smaller duration jobs ticking over. If you are constantly building beam arrays (for example), that is easily an extra thousand or two experience over the course of a couple of hours. It's a drop in the bucket at higher level but can really help get you started.

2. Open up as many of your R&D slots as soon as possible. It helps. Alot.

3. A trick that some people don't seem to realise - you can queue up to three of those 20 hour research jobs for each school, so you can have three beam research jobs running at the same time. This also helps speed up leveling your schools. With all five r&d slots, that's three jobs for one school and two for another.

[Simon_Jester]

So... basically... crafting is a bunch of bollocks that can give you a minimal edge most of the time, until you do enough of it that you can actually make a weapon with enough oomph that it's actually awesome, but by then you've spent half your life crafting? Is that basically what you're saying? At least that's how it comes off to me...

I invested like 10-20 minutes following his advice and, by sheer moronic luck, the first double [CrtD] phaser array I tried this on (which I bought on the Exchange) turned out as an Epic [Ac/Dm] [CrtD]x3 [somethingorother]. Close to the theoretically best possible beam weapon from what I'm hearing here- one noticeable step down from the optimum but only one step.

It might have taken me, statistically speaking, several more rounds of this 10-20 minute exercise to get the results I want... but much of that time would be spent in bits and pieces like "oh, I'm at a space station where I can go pick up this upgrade thing, why not do that while shopping for other stuff" or "oh, it's been five or ten minutes, check to see if my engineering crew have made the next round of trial phaser strips yet and see if they struck gold on any of them."

Of course, I already had a high level character with a wide variety of crafting materials handy and high Beams research level... but all told I can't have invested more than an few hours total in getting the materials and Beams research level. Lots more hours than that sunk into playing the character, but I'd have done that anyway.

So basically, for me this method was a booming success.

Hm. If your time is at a premium, I strongly suggest you work out some surefire scheme for making stupidly high return on investment on the Exchange and just buying the promising-looking [CrtD]x2 or x3 beam arrays you need as "seed corn" for this process.

I know of at least one ways to make 200% or so markup on the Exchange by literally buying things from a vendor, running to the nearest Exchange terminal, and selling them at the going Exchange rate. Plus at least a few craftable products that sell for waaay more than the cost of making them, when you adjust for EC-to-dilithium exchange rates. There may well be other ways to get arbitrage working in your favor that I haven't discovered.

[Figuring that the most cost-effective way to convert EC into dilithium is through contraband, and that one contraband is de facto worth 400 dilithium, the exchange rate is currently around 90 EC/dilithium. Meanwhile, as of noon or so today the dilithium-to-Zen exchange rate has skyrocketed to about 260 dilithium/Zen... so this is a really good time for people to use their dilithium on literally anything but purchasing Zen]

-Third, it's time to upgrade the beams that survived step 2. This is where you both spend and make money. A Mk II beam plus a Superior Beam Weapons Experimental Tech Upgrade (the experimental is very important) plus a blue-quality Research booster all add up to enough tech points to take the beam to Mk VII or VIII (depending on crit upgrades) with a 20% upgrade chance for EACH MARK...

I did this without the Research booster, but it worked for me anyway (dumb luck). Note that at the moment the experimental upgrades in question are selling for about half a million EC on the Exchange, give or take a bit. This is an obstacle but, as I note above, there are several ways to get absurd amounts of EC if you set your mind to it, without real difficulty.

[mr friendly guy]

So how does STO the Blood of the anciets play out. The story of an ancient race coming back trope always fascinates me.

BTW - how much would I need to pay to get a real good ship if I am too lazy to grind.

[Coaan]

70-90 mil for the older t5/t6 ships

400 for the exlusive ones like the Jem'hadar bugs and current event ships. Shesars were going for 400mil last I looked.

[Simon_Jester]

That's in energy credits, right?

[Coaan]

Yep.

There are some you can get with Lobi too, but that's a pain in the bollocks to get unless they're doing featured episode reruns.

[Highlord Laan]

The freebie ships you get every ten levels aren't bad, some of them just look like ass. Case in point, my Intrepid. It's a great ship all around with speed, agility, a solid weapon and console setup and a full array of nasty science tricks to abuse opponents. Between Gravity Well and Tachyon Beam, I no longer fear D'dreidex dreadnoughts. Downside is I loathe the way it looks, which is why I'm working towards a T5 Nova.

[Simon_Jester]

At high level (50 to 60), you start running into content balanced with the Tier 5 and 6 ships in mind, plus a lot of the old content ships get massive hit point boosts. Picture birds-of-prey and light warbirds with 40000 hitpoints, and capital ships with 150000 to 200000. At that point, when fighting solo it becomes very hard to actually put down your opponents without a hellacious good build, as long as you're restricted to the freebie ships.

Also, the ship tailor can help you make the free ships look less stupid by mixing and matching components off different variations of the design. Like the nacelle geometry from Version A but think Version A's nacelle struts look stupid and are begging to have the ship accidentally tear off its own engines at high warp? No problem, swap them out!

[Highlord Laan]

At high level (50 to 60), you start running into content balanced with the Tier 5 and 6 ships in mind, plus a lot of the old content ships get massive hit point boosts. Picture birds-of-prey and light warbirds with 40000 hitpoints, and capital ships with 150000 to 200000. At that point, when fighting solo it becomes very hard to actually put down your opponents without a hellacious good build, as long as you're restricted to the freebie ships.

Also, the ship tailor can help you make the free ships look less stupid by mixing and matching components off different variations of the design. Like the nacelle geometry from Version A but think Version A's nacelle struts look stupid and are begging to have the ship accidentally tear off its own engines at high warp? No problem, swap them out!

Thats what I do with my beloved, scrappy little Nova. I used that little T2 (C-Store version) all the way into mid T4, where it just couldn't keep up anymore, the poor thing. I used the Rhode Island hull and nacelles, Quasar pylons, and Aurora saucer. Ran a rapid-fire phaser cannon and quantum torpedo launcher up front, and a pair of phaser beam arrays in the rear. I love that little ship. Looked awesome and hit way above it's throw weight while being almost as agile as an escort and faster in a dead sprint. Tossed a MkII RCS console in later on, and it suddenly was very near as mobile as an Akira.

[Coaan]

You'll be happy to know you can get a t5 fleet variant of the Nova that brings it up to level cap specs then.

You'll need a fleet, 20,000 fleet credits stored and 1 fleet module because you already own the previous model. That will get you a tier five version of the Nova, with appropriate stats, consoles and bridge officer slots.

Once you get an upgrade token, you can up it to t5-u too for even more relevance.

[Simon_Jester]

Hm. Interesting. I should think over which of them I want to do that with.

Also, current going rate for fleet ship modules on the Exchange is about nine million EC. Using the contraband conversion rate (36000 EC turns into 400 dilithium, roughly), that's about 100 thousand dilithium... which at current rates would be equivalent to around 400 zen.

So, if you're a grinder anyway, cheaper to get them on the Exchange, and the people selling them on the Exchange are being fools unless they know a way to get them for less than 500 zen.

Then again, if you don't mind spending five dollars and want as many EC as possible for your trouble in a hurry, you could do a lot worse... and if you make it cost MORE than 9.9 million EC, then it won't be accessible to the free-to-play people that don't have gold accounts. So maybe the incentives are more complicated than I thought.

[Elheru Aran]

Well, the crafting thing seems easy enough now that you explain it. Hm. I'll see about giving it a go.

[RogueIce]

You'll need a fleet, 20,000 fleet credits stored and 1 fleet module because you already own the previous model. That will get you a tier five version of the Nova, with appropriate stats, consoles and bridge officer slots.

Owning the T2 version won't get you a discount, only if there's a T5 C-Store version. Which, sadly, there is not, because the T5 version is one of those you buy for 200,000 Fleet Credits (and is not T-5U upgradable).

So the Fleet Nova will cost 4 Fleet Modules no matter what you do.

[The Romulan Republic]

So, my latest Delta Quadrant assignment is to relocate some Talaxians. I'm guessing this is where Neelix shows up.

[Coaan]

You'll need a fleet, 20,000 fleet credits stored and 1 fleet module because you already own the previous model. That will get you a tier five version of the Nova, with appropriate stats, consoles and bridge officer slots.

Owning the T2 version won't get you a discount, only if there's a T5 C-Store version. Which, sadly, there is not, because the T5 version is one of those you buy for 200,000 Fleet Credits (and is not T-5U upgradable).

So the Fleet Nova will cost 4 Fleet Modules no matter what you do.

I must have been thinking about the cruiser hull you had to buy with Zen to get access to at tier 2. Eh. Either way, the fleet method of acquiring ships is still a pretty decent method and gets you a ship that's better than it's c-store equivilant for less zen (four modules is 2000 zen. T5 ship hulls go for 2500, usually) so it's still a saving, even if you do also have to buy the ship upgrade token.

It's entirely possible to chip away at the zen costs with dilithium though, especially with the large pile of dil that delta recruits are handed just for existing, and modules/upgrade tokens can be bought with EC as well, which again, Delta recruits are drowning in if they save and focus on leveling.

I still miss when they gave out one ship refit choice at 50. That was one of the harsher cuts of their free to play model.

[The Romulan Republic]

Oh Neelix. His reputation for being irritating is well-deserved.

But he's certainly done well for himself, what with being the leader of a colony and an ambassador to a whole quadrant.

[Coaan]

I've found the Delta cast have been pretty well done.

Even Neelix was alright.

[The Romulan Republic]

Mostly its been Tuvok thus far, though Seven had a brief appearance in mind meld form.

Neelix is getting better as time goes by.

[Coaan]

I found him a lot better than his appearances on Voyager - Maybe it was just the combination of his lines and the attrocious stories on that show.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, Voyager is hardly the pinnacle of good writing.

And the Doctor and Harry Kim showed up as well during the mind meld with Tuvok, but as illusions/enemies. I'd like to see the real ones show up in person, especially the Doctor.

[Lord Revan]

Well, Voyager is hardly the pinnacle of good writing.

And the Doctor and Harry Kim showed up as well during the mind meld with Tuvok, but as illusions/enemies. I'd like to see the real ones show up in person, especially the Doctor.

Both of them show up later, Harry Kim is handling the Kobali prime situation so you'll meet him there.

Robert Picardo also voiced the "generic" EMH-1 you get as reward.

Neelix while annoying is nowhere the "know-it-all" meddler he was in Voyager and sometimes even has insightfull and wise things to say.

[Coaan]

That was a mild spoiler I would have waited on it's not that far into the Delta Arc that he shows up

But yeah, more of the cast that made Voyager bearable are showing up - thus far, the Delta stuff has been very well done even if I have real issues with the Kobali's policy on rebirth and corpses.

[Soontir C'boath]

There'll almost certainly be one from the summer event, which should be starting in June. As for a Sovereign; if you're looking for Maximum Dakka, I wouldn't even bother with torps at all. I wish it weren't so, but in the current state of the game there are very few torpedoes worth using and even then usually only with a very specialized torpedo build. This is doubly true with full cruisers, since they can benefit from the weapon power command setting.

Bah, doesn't feel legit without torpedoes!

Anyway, so far it has been pretty enjoyable. The mix of ground/ship-board action and space battles make for an experience that is certainly not monotonous.

[RogueIce]

I still miss when they gave out one ship refit choice at 50. That was one of the harsher cuts of their free to play model.

It's still there, but as a Veteran/LTS Reward.

Neelix is getting better as time goes by.

Wait until "All That Glitters" then.

Bah, doesn't feel legit without torpedoes!

It's just not a Sovereign without Torpedo Spread 3 + Quantum Torpedoes!