Should I try out Star Trek Online?

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, I've begun my shift towards a phaser-based arsenal. Not at all phasers (besides my two torpedo launchers) yet, but getting their.

The Ocampan freighter rescue mission (which you can do over and over) gives good loot.

Edit: Also, when you approach a Dyson sphere in interstellar space, it looks a lot like a Death Star.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, I've begun my shift towards a phaser-based arsenal. Not at all phasers (besides my two torpedo launchers) yet, but getting their.

Just out of curiosity, is that one bow torpedo tube and one stern tube? I used to try the 'two torpedo tubes pointing same direction' thing, but it really doesn't work because the torpedoes are on a shared cooldown and you can't fire several tubes at once like you can with beam weapons.

Which SUCKS, because it's the only way I can find at high level to really get full advantage out of the narrow windows of opportunity when an enemy ship's shields are down and the torpedoes hit with full (large) effect.

If it weren't for that, I'm pretty sure torpedo boats would be competitive with beam builds as effective warships at high levels.

Edit: Also, when you approach a Dyson sphere in interstellar space, it looks a lot like a Death Star.

It's bigger, but puffier, so yeah.

[The Romulan Republic]

Its typically one torpedo launcher forward and one aft for me.

[FaxModem1]

Well, I've begun my shift towards a phaser-based arsenal. Not at all phasers (besides my two torpedo launchers) yet, but getting their.

The Ocampan freighter rescue mission (which you can do over and over) gives good loot.

Edit: Also, when you approach a Dyson sphere in interstellar space, it looks a lot like a Death Star.

Been a while since I saved those Ocampa freighters, what do they give?

[The Romulan Republic]

It varies a bit, but I usually seem to get quite a lot, including some nice tech. Last time around I netted a Mk XII impulse engine (I'd been using Mk XI previously). I'll post a full list of the loot next time I play it.

[The Romulan Republic]

Photon mine launcher Mk XII, Console science power insulator Mk XI, Seismic Stabilizers (2), Console Engineering Injector Assembly Mk XI, Duel Phaser Beam Bank Mk XI, Shield Battery. There were at least three more things but some vanished right as I got to them (took too long, my bad).

[mr friendly guy]

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.

So are you allowed to convert real money to ST credits? And how much real money would it take to get 400 million credits.

Not that I am planning to start a new game in the next 2 months as I got stuff on my plate with real life, but maybe after that.

[The Romulan Republic]

So the Kobali harvest dead bodies to reproduce? Like the science fiction version of necromancy?

Why are they allies, again?

Also, any suggestions for dealing with Vaadwaur interdictors would be appreciated.

[FaxModem1]

Probably because Harry Kim's ex-girlfriend is one of them, and in the Delta Quadrant, allies are in short supply.

[The Romulan Republic]

Actually, their are a lot of friendly aliens in the Delta Quadrant. The Occampans (who've made great strides in being an interstellar civilization but admittedly probably aren't worth much militarily), Talaxians, and Hugh's Borg. And of course the Kobali. And maybe some others as well.

[RogueIce]

So are you allowed to convert real money to ST credits? And how much real money would it take to get 400 million credits.

Not directly, as it would be against the TOS. Though you could buy Master Keys from the C-store and sell those on the Exchange. Not sure what the going rate is, though.

[Lord Revan]

of the allies you mentioned there only the Kobali have real military presence, the Borg Co-operative is still few in numbers and obviously very busy with the Borg Collective, while we also have the Benthans plus some others we get later.

however we got the Borg Collective that while weakened is still a major threat then you got the Voth who will attack pretty much anyone on sight as well the Hirogen, the Malon aand the Kazon have their factions that are hostile to the Delta Alliance as well and that's not mentioning the major story spoiler we get for Vaadwaur in later missions.Spoiler

They're being controlled by Iconians via the bluegill parasites and Gaul the Vaadwaur leader is a willing agent of the Iconians (if a bit naive about his role in the Iconian's plan) and also the reason are such a major threat (opposed to orginal starfleet estimate) is that the Iconians gave them a major technological boost

the thing isn't really that we don't got friends within the Delta Quadrant but rather alot of the major powers are indifferent or outright hostile towards us. So the Delta Alliance can't be picky about their allies cause powers that are worth anything in the larger scheme of things and are willing to ally with the Delta Alliance are rare.

[Lord Revan]

So are you allowed to convert real money to ST credits? And how much real money would it take to get 400 million credits.

Not directly, as it would be against the TOS. Though you could buy Master Keys from the C-store and sell those on the Exchange. Not sure what the going rate is, though.

it's about 2-2.5 mil EC per key last I checked so it's not too bad, it should be noted the free-to-play accounts are limited to 10 mil EC max until they buy the EC cap increase (which gives you 10 billion EC cap).

[Simon_Jester]

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.

So are you allowed to convert real money to ST credits? And how much real money would it take to get 400 million credits.

There are real-money things you can then resell for credits. There is also a very efficient way to convert real money into 'dilithium' (yet a third currency), use the dilithium to make things or buy things that cannot normally be bought with energy credits, and resell those too.

The problem is that, well. As discussed, you can get 2 to 2.5 million energy credits for a 'key' to a lockbox. Even buying them in bulk the keys cost 112.5 Zen apiece*. To pull together the EC to buy one of those ships you're looking at selling, oh, somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-40 keys... at which point it would cost less to just directly buy the spaceship with the Zen.

[Coaan]

As we've spent the last two pages going on about, crafting is a much easier way of acquiring credits as you can start crafting antiproton beam arrays almost immediately out of the gate. At that point, you are fishing for a combination of critDx2 and pen, or critDx2 and over mods. If you can get either of those combinations, or the jackpot (critDx3) you'll make credits hand over fist.

The other upside is this does not cost you one red cent in real money. All it costs you is some time that you will be spending playing the game anyway, as r&d jobs for beams run every five minutes and just need to be reset every so often. The materials you need will also be incredibly easy to acquire, either in missions or running duty officer assignments.

I mean, you can buy a whole bunch of keys to sell to convert to energy credits, but it's a waste of zen/your money when you could just save that zen and purchase a t5-u or t6 ship.

[Soontir C'boath]

Hm, I keep getting Xindi-Terrestrial Lock Boxes, but looks like I might as well discard them.

I am not going to sift through 26 pages, but does SDN have a fleet I can join?

[Highlord Laan]

I'm running phasers on my Luna. A pair of dual beam banks up front, and a pair of arrays in the rear, backed up by Transphasic torps fore and aft. What is it that makes antiproton beams so desirable?

[Simon_Jester]

As we've spent the last two pages going on about, crafting is a much easier way of acquiring credits as you can start crafting antiproton beam arrays almost immediately out of the gate. At that point, you are fishing for a combination of critDx2 and pen, or critDx2 and over mods. If you can get either of those combinations, or the jackpot (critDx3) you'll make credits hand over fist.

The going rate for these arrays is pretty low until you upgrade them, though, which takes a modest starting investment of dilithium, plus the experimental tech upgrades that require some exotic crafting materials.

At least, the rates for such beams were low when I last looked.

So sure, you can make the most excellent beam arrays for cheap, but they're still Mark II and it's hard to sell them for very much because any idiot could do the same thing you just did for a relatively minimal inconvenience. Again, that's the last time I looked.

I'm running phasers on my Luna. A pair of dual beam banks up front, and a pair of arrays in the rear, backed up by Transphasic torps fore and aft. What is it that makes antiproton beams so desirable?

Antiproton beams have automatically enhanced critical damage over and above any [CritD] mods. Basically, I think damage type comes down to preference although antiproton is almost certainly better IF your ship is extensively modified to have a very high critical hit rate. Phasers and plasma weapons and, hell, in my opinion tetryon weapons have their charms too. Polaron and disruptor just don't do it for me.

One observation many have made is that the sustained high rate of fire from beam arrays using "Fire at Will" generally outdoes the burst damage from a torpedo over the long haul, although it only works over the long haul.

Another observation is that with your dual banks having a 90-degree arc of fire forward and your arrays having a 240-degree arc aft, then for one, there is a fifteen degree blind spot in your field of fire just off the port and starboard bows where none of your weapons bear on the target. Moreover (and more annoyingly), your forward and aft beam weapons can't all hit the same target at the same time, which means you're never shooting with MORE than two beams at any single target.

My Luna, by contrast, can routinely engage targets with five beams at once, because it uses four arrays and a kinetic cutting beam (there's a torpedo launcher in the stern, partly because I'm sentimental). So even assuming your torpedo tube is hitting as hard as a beam array in the same slot would, I'm hitting the enemy roughly 60% harder than you can.

[The Romulan Republic]

Hm, I keep getting Xindi-Terrestrial Lock Boxes, but looks like I might as well discard them.

I am not going to sift through 26 pages, but does SDN have a fleet I can join?

I seem to recall reading that their was one a long time back, before I started playing this game, but I could be mistaken. I don't think there's been any mention of one in this thread.

[Coaan]

I'm currently a part of Librium Arcana's 9th fleet and it's basically made up of SDN folk. If anyone is interested in an invite, let me know either in here or throw me a line in game. My contact handle is @Mithaw

Our holdings need a lot of work, but it pretty much guarrantees that people will have stuff to chunk in and earn fleet credit.

The going rate for these arrays is pretty low until you upgrade them, though, which takes a modest starting investment of dilithium, plus the experimental tech upgrades that require some exotic crafting materials.

At least, the rates for such beams were low when I last looked.

So sure, you can make the most excellent beam arrays for cheap, but they're still Mark II and it's hard to sell them for very much because any idiot could do the same thing you just did for a relatively minimal inconvenience. Again, that's the last time I looked.

Antiproton Beam Arrays as of ten minutes ago on the exchange
CritDx2 Over is 400k an Array.
CritDx2 Pen is 4 million.

Those are the cheapest on the market.

While I grant the first one is 'low' on the scale of buying a luxury ship from the exchange, four million for basically fuck all work is not what I would consider a 'waste of time'

It is still massively easier to farm and sell than buying keys, which require the input of real money, whereas crafting requires nothing but patience.

[Coaan]

Antiproton weapons basically get a free Crit Severity mod that grants 20% extra severity BEFORE any other mods, so if you luck out and get a CritDx4 antiproton weapon? it's basically a critDx5 weapon.

That is not possible with any other weapons system.

Also, it used to be before crafting that antiproton weaponry were obscenely rare and only the domain of either the super rich, legacy STF runners or from the first iteration of the MACO stuff before the Reputation system.

Not so relevant now, but the extra crit damage is still king in most circles.

[Simon_Jester]

Antiproton Beam Arrays as of ten minutes ago on the exchange
CritDx2 Over is 400k an Array.
CritDx2 Pen is 4 million.

Those are the cheapest on the market.

Ah. Perhaps it's just phasers that have staggeringly low demand, then. I tried a different type of beam.

It is still massively easier to farm and sell than buying keys, which require the input of real money, whereas crafting requires nothing but patience.

This is totally true. It is far more effective to spend Zen directly on things than to use Zen to buy energy credits on the exchange.

Personally I favor other methods of EC gathering that exploit various forms of arbitrage, but that's me.

[I apologize for not sharing, but I am sincerely worried that if I post them here and more than a few other people start doing them, they'll stop working, or at least work considerably less well. Coaan's advice is probably smarter on the whole anyway, since mine have a distinct "spend money to make money" aspect.]

Although, hm. I will observe that statistically, the odds of getting a CritD x2 combined with Over, Pen, or a third CritD is... I'm guessing somewhere in the neighborhood of two or three percent. So you have to make something like thirty beam arrays to get the one(s) you want for high payoff, and the R&D materials for each array are costing you a few thousand a pop at Exchange rates.

[The Romulan Republic]

I'm currently a part of Librium Arcana's 9th fleet and it's basically made up of SDN folk. If anyone is interested in an invite, let me know either in here or throw me a line in game. My contact handle is @Mithaw

Our holdings need a lot of work, but it pretty much guarrantees that people will have stuff to chunk in and earn fleet credit.

The going rate for these arrays is pretty low until you upgrade them, though, which takes a modest starting investment of dilithium, plus the experimental tech upgrades that require some exotic crafting materials.

At least, the rates for such beams were low when I last looked.

So sure, you can make the most excellent beam arrays for cheap, but they're still Mark II and it's hard to sell them for very much because any idiot could do the same thing you just did for a relatively minimal inconvenience. Again, that's the last time I looked.

Antiproton Beam Arrays as of ten minutes ago on the exchange
CritDx2 Over is 400k an Array.
CritDx2 Pen is 4 million.

Those are the cheapest on the market.

While I grant the first one is 'low' on the scale of buying a luxury ship from the exchange, four million for basically fuck all work is not what I would consider a 'waste of time'

It is still massively easier to farm and sell than buying keys, which require the input of real money, whereas crafting requires nothing but patience.

Hmm, I'm technically in a fleet right now, but I don't really get anything out of being in it so I wouldn't mind switching fleets.

As for the exchange, I've never yet used it. I suppose I should check it out.

[Coaan]

Once you have the free capital to operate (several million) it's entirely possible to make money just buying up the cheapest of something expensive then listing them for more than you paid. For the time being though, crafting or farming gamma quadrant commodities (somewhat rare after a spell of the missions that spawn them being broken) is a good earner.

Same with Contraband, though it can be difficult to get enough to sell regularly.

Re the market on weapons..

Honestly, it depends on the person. Everything but the antiproton market is saturated because they're the best damage meta. However, it's still possible to make a lot of money selling phasers on the Feddie side, or Disruptors on the Klink side because people like iconic things. They like having their Sovereigns that shoot the right colour of Zzot and not some mystical space magic that somehow doesn't react with the reality around them and tear holes in the fabric of space.

Plus, if you are like me and cannot stand the sound of anti-proton weapons then Phasers or your local equivilant is the way to go.

There's still a market for them, it's just somewhat smaller and has much less competition.

[Elheru Aran]

Lockboxes are pretty much useless as far as I'm concerned. I've tried selling them, but I typically end up just dumping them into my character bank on the off chance that I can get rid of them somehow.