Should I try out Star Trek Online?

[Skywalker_T-65]

Evidently the final free reward is 3 T5 ships. The latter two listed I could care less about...but I've wanted an Excelsior since I started playing the damn game. So to say I'm overjoyed at getting one for free, even if it isn't the refit...would be an understatement.

EDIT: Actually, it should be the retrofit if it's T5, since the base one is T3. Which makes it better, of course.

[mr friendly guy]

Meh,not interested in these free T5 ships. It would just take up another slot, which I can use for better ships. So far used my lobi crystals to get the Iconian raider. Still testing its ambush gateway function, which combined with my trajector warp drive is nice, since I have two teleporting abilities. And while the bonus on exp is going on, I will reach level 5 starship mastery pretty fast.

Now if only I can get some of the other Herald ships. They seem to have similar hull points to equivalent Fed ships, but it looks like they have higher shield bonuses. Can't say they look nice, but they definitely look different and that conveys to me the sense of alienness.

[Alferd Packer]

Really? I kind of liked radiant antiprotons myself for most of my builds. It helps my Command battlecruisers tank better and its useful in some Escorts, because they don't have the hull points to survive when attacked by multiple ships. If I want to switch to more offensive builds for my Escorts, I would however use thoron infused polaron weapons, to allow a radiation proc and also to get the isokinetic cannon for that extra punch when the enemy is near death's door.

Well, tanking is well and good for normal activities, but there's no point in trying to tank in any of the Elite queues. The best defense is a good offense, because so many things can one-shot you. It's better to kill things quicker. And antiprotons are the premier DPS weapon type, so wasting one of the weapons' modifiers for a tanking proc is resoundingly 'meh.' It's actually a downgrade from an equivalent regular antiproton weapon. Its only advantage is that you can get them for dilithium, instead of 1-50 million EC on the Exchange.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Eh, they may not be as good as regular anti-proton, but if the only option is the Radiants- I don't have the time or energy to get enough EC/craft for better ones -then I'll take what I can get.

As for the Excelsior...well, while losing a tactical slot hurts somewhat, I really enjoy the good maneuverability for a cruiser. Feels a lot more agile than my Sov ever did. Seems to hit harder and tank better too, though that's probably because I also used that free upgrade token and got her up to T5-U.

The only problem is I don't have enough Engineering officers to fill up the last bridge post

[mr friendly guy]

Grinding for terran marks is tedious. Especially since most of the time I barely get enough after playing one game to get the 30 marks needed for the daily reputation boost.

[Lord Revan]

Grinding for terran marks is tedious. Especially since most of the time I barely get enough after playing one game to get the 30 marks needed for the daily reputation boost.

I think that's a bug, your first match of the day should give you 88 or so marks

[mr friendly guy]

So far into season 11.

The revived Cardassian arc episodes look nice. The New Link homeworld is much nicer.

The Terran mark set has gear designed towards torpedo boats. Which is nice as I have a torp boat I want to try out.

The quantum phase gear seems to want to promote use of phasers. They are going to make me get a Galaxy with 3 warp nacelles then the fleet version aren't they?

[Alferd Packer]

So far into season 11.

The revived Cardassian arc episodes look nice. The New Link homeworld is much nicer.

The Terran mark set has gear designed towards torpedo boats. Which is nice as I have a torp boat I want to try out.

The quantum phase gear seems to want to promote use of phasers. They are going to make me get a Galaxy with 3 warp nacelles then the fleet version aren't they?

Go for the tier VI one, the Yamato dreadnought. Got the best name, after all.

[mr friendly guy]

I am thinking of forking out zen and buying the T6 Yamato, then further zen for the fleet version after I have the acquired the starship trait. Unfortunately the starship trait is very specific for this type of ship, so I most probably do need to get it.

I can stock up enough vulnerability locators for phasers and the quantum phase weapons set give a 20% boost to phasers. It also gives some other attack which seems to do some phaser damage on top, which just makes the Yamoto perfect for this since it also has a phaser lance ability.

Might start getting this after I max out the terran reputation, then start grinding up the Yamato. Maybe they will have a discount sale then, so who knows.

[Lord Revan]

isn't the Yamato just tier 6 Galaxy-X (well one of the skins for it), atm I'm building Dil to get enough zen to buy couple of more char slots (thinking of making a proper Klingon Warrior to accompany my Orion Engineer).

[mr friendly guy]

Yeah it is. I wasn't sure whether to get one because its going to cost lots of dilithium to upgrade the phaser arrays (I am currently level 15 in beams R & D), but the fact the new quantum phase set gives bonuses including 20% phaser damage and an extra phaser beam which drains shields like a plasmonic leech makes it very tempting to get a Yamato. Since the Yamato already has a phaser lance, the damage bonuses would work nicely.

With an epic mk 14 MACO shield I can tank pretty nicely, especially with science consoles which boost shielding by 25% each.

[Scottish Ninja]

So I've been out of the loop since pretty much last year - anyone have any recommendations as to where to get started on the Iconian rep?

[mr friendly guy]

There are only a couple of ways to earn Iconian marks in sufficient amounts to get Iconian reputation, and thats in the PVE. If you need the Iconian datacore or whatever its called, you need to do the more advance PVE. Suffice to say, I didn't find the Iconian stuff that enjoyable, which is why I am upgrading my BOFFs with Delta gear (armour and shields) rather than Iconian ones even though they are superior.

The other way to get easy datacores is to do the Kobali quests daily. Just transport to the upper hillside and join some elses team and complete the last 2 quests for a measly amount of Iconian marks, but you get the Datacores (which you need for some of the gear). I personally just kept the Iconian set for my toon and let my bridge officers have the Delta set.

The Iconian makes me a goddamn tank with > 1200 hit points and > 700 shields. I also use the Iconian set gun which is an antiproton weapon. Now if you can get some of the Herald kits (which boost various weapon use, so get one that boosts antiproton) and you're got a powerful toon, even without resorting to using the kit powers.

[Lord Revan]

Iconian rep isn't too bad if you got a good Fleet my does Brotherhood of the sword as part of set ground STFs we do and since you're not spamming it, it's not too bad.

and You don't need the Datacores for advanced PvE queues just gear, I did Bro elite before I had used a single Datacore for anything.

that said the Iconian set had nice set bonus that now that it no longer blows your eardrums out when you use it, is really nice HP and damage buff.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, I've played the new Cardassian Struggle missions, and here's my opinions: They're good missions. Individually they're as good or better than what they replaced. And yet... there are not nearly enough of them.

Basically, the old Cardassian Struggle broke down into five categories:
a) Missions against the True Way and the Alpha Quadrant Dominion splinter ("Badlands," "Forging Bonds," "The Long Night," "The New Link," and "Seeds of Dissent")
b) Missions against the Undine ("Suspect," "War Games," and "Shutdown," with "Suspect" in particular being fun because it brings Section 31 into things).
c) Missions against the Mirror Universe ("Tear of the Prophets," "Crack in the Mirror," and "The Other Side.")
d) Standalone missions ("The Tribble With Klingons," "Rapier," and "Cage of Fire.")
e) Missions against the Dominion fleet left over from the wormhole closure ("Second Wave" through "Boldly they Rode")

As one can see just from the listing, there were good reasons to criticize the overall campaign as a 'season' in the overall STO content. It contained far too many things to fit gracefully into a single story arc. Moreover (and this is arguably more important) the missions are arranged in a strange order. Aside from sets (b) and (e), none of the mission sequences were actually in order. Sets (a), (c), and (d) were interleaved seemingly at random, with the result that you could almost forget why you were fighting someone or what was going on.

I could ramble a lot about what I think they should have done- I stuck that at bottom.
________________________

Now, looking at what they actually did...

1) The missions against the Dominion fleet from "Second Wave" were untouched and rightly so. Those missions might merit a slight update and retouching but they're good missions. No likely change would constitute much of an improvement, except maybe promoting Commander Achebe to an admiral so it actually makes some goddamn sense to have her shouting orders and "We must retake Deep Space Nine!" at a character who's been at least her equal in rank since like twenty story missions ago.

2) "Spoils of War" and "Jabberwocky" do some semblance of a job replacing "Badlands," "Forging Bonds," and the three Mirror Universe missions (preserving the plot element of the Orb of Possibilties somehow getting exchanged with its mirror counterpart), but there just isn't enough. At least with the Mirror Universe, though, we have the assurance that we'll be getting more Mirror content in the next few months so that the total volume of content stays more or less constant. So that's a net... I'm calling it a net gain on that front, on the assumption they do a good job with the upcoming Mirror episodes.

3) But we also lost a lot of content involving the True Way, and there was never a satisfactory resolution of the conflict against the True Way. Unless the True Way also becomes a renewed threat in the Mirror Universe arc, we've lost the resolution that we had with "The Long Night."

5) The entire Undine sub-arc, "Suspect," "War Games," "Shutdown," is... gone. This is after Cryptic cut another Undine-related mission from the Romulan Mystery mission chain. Overall I get the sense that Cryptic has been trying to more or less downplay, remove, and neutralize the Undine as a serious threat for at least the past couple of years. And I don't like that, to tell the truth. The Undine make very satisfying and credible infiltrators, they are explicitly part of the STO backstory explaining and justifying the big conflict between the Klingons and Federation in the first place.

The idea that the Undine remain essentially irrelevant to the overall plot except insofar as they feud with the Borg and poke around in the Solanae Dyson Sphere for no readily apparent reason seems... inappropriate.

So really, why cut that? I mean honestly, if they had to cut a bunch of content, why oh why couldn't they cut the stupid Nimbus III stuff? Now that is an irrelevant side-tangent that doesn't tie into any larger ongoing conflict.

---

So thinking about what SHOULD have been done with this, in my opinion...
Spoiler

As I believe I said before, I think the Cardassian Front could have been improved considerably just by rearranging the missions, and maybe dividing them into two separate arcs (call them "Cardassian Crisis" and "Dominion Domination," though I think the Klingons already have the latter as their name for the overall campaign).

For "Cardassian Crisis..." Hm.

Then, as I see it, they should have gotten the (b) set, against the Undine, entirely out of the way first. It belonged in there. Having the Undine show up a few times before the Level 50 mid-game missions, as an infiltration threat made sense. But it shouldn't interrupt the flow of things.

Although maybe it would have been best to take "Seeds of Dissent" as the first mission of the campaign, replacing "Badlands." That was the Cardassian mission with the farmers, which did NOT make any sense taking place after "The Long Night" when you've already gutted the True Way's organization and strength...

So you'd put "Seeds of Dissent" before the Undine missions as the first mission. That way, you get this image of the True Way as a bunch of rather pathetic villains- narcoterrorists with compression phasers. THEN you have the Undine missions.

"Rapier" should stay right after the Undine missions- because you're canonically back at Deep Space 9 after the events of "Shutdown" anyway, and because it introduces you to the remaining set of recurring antagonists: the Dominion." Gives you a chance to remember to get some polaron-resistant equipment for your ship, et cetera.

Then you have something recognizable as the True Way arc. The existing sequence of "Badlands," "Forging Bonds," and "The Long Night" would work there.

So your sequence would be "Seeds of Dissent"->[Undine sub-arc]->"Rapier"->[True Way arc] as one mission sequence.

Neutralizing the Alpha Quadrant Jem'Hadar (and dealing with the New Link) would then be the first few missions of the next sequence, segueing directly into the series from "Second Wave" through "Boldly They Rode."

[mr friendly guy]

They really need a way for you to default your specialization skills between space and ground.

When I play PVE I switch between different secondary skills for space (pilot) and ground (commando) respectively. Its really irritating because sometimes I forget to change until I see my Cruiser turn soooo slow. This will make you slightly more powerful in quests, where you can't change defaults, but I think if you set it such that you can only have a special ability to set ground/space defaults once you get a certain number of points in at least one specialty as a reward to players who keep on playing beyond level 60.

[mr friendly guy]

Anyone tried the new Valiant class Tier 6 ship? Even Youtube doesn't seem to have reviews of the ship yet. I don't want to fork out ZEN for it until I have a better idea how it handles.

I am interested to see whether its super quantum torp launcher (fires 6 QTs) works well with torpedo spread, or at least torp high yield. If it works well with torpedo spread then combine with kemocite laden weaponry (few hundred points of radiation damage which triggers 100% with torps, but not micro torps), the opponent is in for a world of pain. Made even worse since I combine tactical team (boost torp damage) with viral torp starship trait (disables systems with a torp on using tactical team).

This may also combine well with the new weapon set bonuses from the Terran Empire reputation system which fires an extra torp for one you fire and has faster recharge time (still waiting to get enough reputation to get the whole set).

That just leaves the question of what type of energy based weapon I should use for this ship. I am tossing up using antiproton cannons boosted with the new Herald lock box console - the super viral matrix (launches 3 viral probes with 2 minute cool down) and boosts AP damage by 25%, or use a polaron cannons with the extra isokinetic cannon ability.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, the annual Christmas event is starting up, and having missed it last year, it gave me the impetus to start playing again. Cue waiting for the typical mega...patch when you haven't played for a while...

I'll post my thoughts on the Christmas event once I've had a chance to try it out.

[Lord Revan]

Well, the annual Christmas event is starting up, and having missed it last year, it gave me the impetus to start playing again. Cue waiting for the typical mega...patch when you haven't played for a while...

I'll post my thoughts on the Christmas event once I've had a chance to try it out.

shame they don't say what the tier 6 ship you'll get is (the previous ones gave breen ships but it's not 100% certain you'll get one now)

[The Romulan Republic]

Doesn't really worry me. I've been using my Sovereign for a long time and I'm still happy with it. A new ship would be nice, but I don't really care about having the best possible ship as much as exploring the world. But that's just me.

Left Risa and did some good old fashioned Borg ass kicking to get back into things, then got surprised by a new DS9 mission. Interesting.

The game seems perhaps a little slower than before. Maybe with recent updates, its beginning to outpace my somewhat old computer.

[Lord Revan]

well it's less of a worry and more "it would be nice if..." for me to be honest, I might get the ship they offer or I might not, depends if the event activities are worth my time.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Well, the annual Christmas event is starting up, and having missed it last year, it gave me the impetus to start playing again. Cue waiting for the typical mega...patch when you haven't played for a while...

I'll post my thoughts on the Christmas event once I've had a chance to try it out.

shame they don't say what the tier 6 ship you'll get is (the previous ones gave breen ships but it's not 100% certain you'll get one now)

No sign of it so far- they'll probably launch it when they do the weekly maintenance, which usually takes place on Thursdays. They'll probably also change the event reward from the Q pics meaning you can't use any you had left over from last year, like they did with the summer event. We have a Breen frigate, a raider and a carrier (only the latter of which is T6)- a 4th Breen ship will in theory mean changing the set bonuses to account for 4 consoles.

[Scottish Ninja]

As was suspected, here comes the Breen Rezreth Dreadnought. Looks pretty cool, I can do more imagining of doing fun drain stuff.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

For once I just wish the Breen starships had some sense of symmetry, the raider and the carrier had an engine connected by 3 small pipes, and a huge sail sticking out of one side, respectively. This one at least doesn't look totally unbalanced. Given they'd fulfilled the other roles I assume the dread is the only route they could have taken.

As an aside, during the sale just gone I gathered together the Zen I'd saved up and bought the new Fed carrier. Given I had 2 bays worth of elite scorpion fighters sitting dormant it was a no-brainer. Once the quantum phase shield becomes available I'm gonna stick that baby on there with the deflector and engine and put the freshly-boosted sci abilities to the test.

[Lord Revan]

For once I just wish the Breen starships had some sense of symmetry, the raider and the carrier had an engine connected by 3 small pipes, and a huge sail sticking out of one side, respectively. This one at least doesn't look totally unbalanced. Given they'd fulfilled the other roles I assume the dread is the only route they could have taken.

I suspect they weren't allowed to deviate too much from the design asthethic of the Breen as it was established in Deep Space 9 (the series that is)