Should I try out Star Trek Online?

[mr friendly guy]

I am thinking of structuring this toon with more science and tactical powers (its a sci captain) and less engineering power, whereas my previous toon was science and more balanced between engineering and tactical. I will use battle cloak ability to escape from trouble instead of superior hull to take damage.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

The summer event is a good way to get started on earning rep as the (raised) monkeys and birds can be traded for marks. If they're consistent with previous years, today's maintenance should enable competitive marks as one of the available choices. If you have the sponsorship token/s, you can have your new toon max the various reps on half the time and marks as your first one took. And the bundle of dil ore you get when reaching T5 is nice too- the last couple of toons I did this with actually reached T5 on all the current reps at the same time. Somewhat hilariously, this resulted in about a quarter of a million ore arriving all at once and took an entire month to refine!

My first Romulan toon that I created when LoR was launched was a sci and to this day still runs Polaron weaponry. She can't quite make up her mind whether to fly the Pilot or Dreadnought warbirds though.

Certainly the T6 Dreadnought caters for such a setup with its LtCdr universal BOFF slot. The ops and sci variants also have a fixed LtCdr slot of their respective branches- the tac version actually gets stiffed in this regard (something I hadn't noticed before). In lieu of a tac LtCdr slot it gains a universal Lt, vs the universal ens. the other two get.

I'm curious to see the new Ferengi Admiralty system- the meagre prize of the Federation one meant it was always last to get any attention, the Ferengi offers dil like the Klingon one. I mostly ignore admiralty projects that only offer EC, using low-level ships to clear them.

[mr friendly guy]

I mainly use the Romulan admiralty system. Lets face it, if I need dilithium I can just pay for it. Although I will admit the Ferengi admiralty system interests me. However I find that I can get dilithium almost as fast as I refine it by selecting those DOFF quests which reward high dilithium and the admiralty quests which also award the same (I alternate between ones which give EC and dilithium).

Looks like I will be needing some dilithium to refine all the gear I am going to get my Romulan toon.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I mainly use the Romulan admiralty system. Lets face it, if I need dilithium I can just pay for it. Although I will admit the Ferengi admiralty system interests me. However I find that I can get dilithium almost as fast as I refine it by selecting those DOFF quests which reward high dilithium and the admiralty quests which also award the same (I alternate between ones which give EC and dilithium).

Looks like I will be needing some dilithium to refine all the gear I am going to get my Romulan toon.

A lot of the good stuff is only available via the rep system, the mark/dil rewards for getting to T5 are exactly equal to the cost of one item. If you're yet to choose between aligning with Fed and KDF, it's worth bearing in mind that KDF toons have many, many more opportunities for earning dilithium. Either directly from doff rewards or from contraband/prisoners- all the Feds can really do is turn over contraband transferred via the account bank.

[Lord Revan]

Honestly at end game you generally have more dil then you really need, atm my main problem with my SF engineer is the 8k refinement limit, not my dil income.

[mr friendly guy]

I have decided to ally my toon with starfleet. Eventually I will just get a pure Klingon toon. Right now it seems I have to spend loads of EC to give Doffs for my romulan toon, so she can do Doff quests which give lots of dilithium. I may as well stock up on dilithium. Its a pity you can't directly transfer dilithium between toons, well aside from converting it into Zen and then converting back to dilithium.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I have decided to ally my toon with starfleet. Eventually I will just get a pure Klingon toon. Right now it seems I have to spend loads of EC to give Doffs for my romulan toon, so she can do Doff quests which give lots of dilithium. I may as well stock up on dilithium. Its a pity you can't directly transfer dilithium between toons, well aside from converting it into Zen and then converting back to dilithium.

You can use the exchange to do it without actually converting- all you need to do it create an exchange offer selling dil at max price then cancelling immediately, your dil is moved to the exchange and accessible to all characters.

At least being aligned to the same faction as your main you can transfer DOFFs between toons through the ingame mail system. And the recruitment missions at the Starfleet/Romulan command are a decent source of officers.

[mr friendly guy]

The joys of a new toon, where I suck against overwhelming ships. Fortunately with the money from my existing toon I gave my Romulan toon Boffs subspace vortex and purchased 4 Boffs for the ship all with superior romulan operative (2% critical chance and 5% critical damage), which goes on well with the 2.5% crit the player gets and 1.5% from Romulan operative trait I have. Naturally my Boffs have the most awesome name of Blue ranger (science), Red ranger (tactical), Yellow ranger (engineering) and Pink Ranger (second science spot). Boy, I drained lots of EC for this.

[mr friendly guy]

Anyone know a good fleet looking for a Romulan toon allied to the Federation. I think I am considering keeping this toon mainly plasma, so I only need to get vulnerability locators to focus on plasma. I still need to join a fleet though.

My second toon is level 40 now, and I got the bonus ship as a veteran, with free upgrade to T5-U. Looking forward to testing out this ship with 5 Boffs all with superior romulan operative.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Anyone know a good fleet looking for a Romulan toon allied to the Federation. I think I am considering keeping this toon mainly plasma, so I only need to get vulnerability locators to focus on plasma. I still need to join a fleet though.

My second toon is level 40 now, and I got the bonus ship as a veteran, with free upgrade to T5-U. Looking forward to testing out this ship with 5 Boffs all with superior romulan operative.

I'd forgotten that gear had a level requirement, so new toons wouldn't be able to use looted purple gear right away.

As a member I recommend Maquis Alliance Elite Force, it's a fairly small but well-developed fleet that's maxed in all but the K13 holding (which is in the process of upgrading).

[houser2112]

The Reddit fleets are maxed out, and the requirements to access the fleet stores aren't bad.

[mr friendly guy]

Well the fleet for my UFP toon is maxed out. Maybe I can ask them to replace my UFP toon with the Romulan toon and put the primary toon to an affiliated secondary fleet.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Well the fleet for my UFP toon is maxed out. Maybe I can ask them to replace my UFP toon with the Romulan toon and put the primary toon to an affiliated secondary fleet.

Either that or they do some housekeeping and dump a bunch of non-contributors as one of my fleets did when they ran out of spots.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

So much for STO adding competitive marks as one of the claimable choices, sure as guns they'll make that change the moment I turn in my birds/monkeys for one of the other types

There's a new 20% off sale, instead of one specific area being discounted it's everything in the store. While I have plenty of dilithium, the exchange rate (which naturally spikes during sales) never really dropped far enough to justify converting so the only Zen I have is what I get from the stipend. Now's probably a good time to see what else is worth getting besides ships.

Season 13.5 is coming mid July, and it features none other than J.G. Hertzler reprising his role as Martok. He is to Trek what Peter Cullen is to Transformers, IMO!

[mr friendly guy]

Used the bonus to zen and discount ships to get all the T5 and T6 scitmitars and a science vessel (Rommies don't seem to have many).

[mr friendly guy]

Joining a fleet seemed easy enough. I just invited myself to join my own fleet.

[mr friendly guy]

Ok, Romulan Scimitars work nicely when used in crystaline catastrophe. You cloak and avoid the crystalline shards, drop right on top of the crystalline entity and fire away with gravity wells and cannons.

They also work well against Borg. You can't miss such a large target. They suck however at Kaboyashi Maru. Its hard to bring the cannons to bear, and in PvE with time limits, like Tholian red alert and Kaboyashi Maru, its hard to actually make a difference. Cloaking isn't that much of an advantage. It works well in a grind match like Shinzon vs Picard. You hit them hard and run away and more importantly, no time limits. By the time I locked onto a target, we would have already taken lots of damage or someone else would have killed the offending enemy ship. In PvE its like I need to create a beam boat around Scimitars for it to be useful in anything other than Crystalline catastrophe or Borg red alert.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Ok, Romulan Scimitars work nicely when used in crystaline catastrophe. You cloak and avoid the crystalline shards, drop right on top of the crystalline entity and fire away with gravity wells and cannons.

They also work well against Borg. You can't miss such a large target. They suck however at Kaboyashi Maru. Its hard to bring the cannons to bear, and in PvE with time limits, like Tholian red alert and Kaboyashi Maru, its hard to actually make a difference. Cloaking isn't that much of an advantage. It works well in a grind match like Shinzon vs Picard. You hit them hard and run away and more importantly, no time limits. By the time I locked onto a target, we would have already taken lots of damage or someone else would have killed the offending enemy ship. In PvE its like I need to create a beam boat around Scimitars for it to be useful in anything other than Crystalline catastrophe or Borg red alert.

My KDF-aligned Rom Tac did that with an all-antiproton DBB layout combined with a Crystalline Absorption Matrix and Plasmonic Leech. Needless to say it set a personal best when it came to DPS!

[EnterpriseSovereign]

GHETTO EDIT: I forgot to say I collected the last lot of tokens I need for the summer event ship so I've been claiming it for my ten characters, I suspect I'll be seeing a lot of them in the next few days as everyone flies them to get the latest mastery.

[Lord Revan]

You're bound to see the latest "ship of the week" a lot, be it from an event, C-store or other sources, it's kind of how at the start of WoW:Legion you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting at least 1 demon hunter but now there's far less of them (though they're not exactly rare).

[EnterpriseSovereign]

You're bound to see the latest "ship of the week" a lot, be it from an event, C-store or other sources, it's kind of how at the start of WoW:Legion you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting at least 1 demon hunter but now there's far less of them (though they're not exactly rare).

Speaking of Blizzard, there's the new Necromancer in Diablo 3 having just been released in the last few days after more than 6 months of hype so of course that's all people are going to play as until completely levelled. Thanks to having a decent paragon level I'm already playing on Torment and levelling fast enough that I've barely got used to one set of powers before unlocking another and changing up my build!

[mr friendly guy]

With enough points in piloting, I can get my T6 scimitar to move properly without the need for an extra consoles. So I could potentiall swap it out eventually for consoles which just boost damage. With the superior manoeuvrability I actually no longer suck fighting Tholians. I can actually turn fast enough to bring my superior cannons to bear on their ships. I sacrifice exotic damage from gravity wells in return for damage from plasma, but I can compensate by stocking up on auxiliary power batteries.

[Lord Revan]

Well I think even the NPC scimmies normally use beams, yeah I know the prototype used cannons but then Shinzon wasn't anywhere close to smart. I'm not saying a cannon cruiser can't work but you'd probably get more out of it with beams.

[mr friendly guy]

How I play is that I decloak hopefully within the firing arc of my cannons, fire and then retreat. Beam boats work well for ships which aren't going to cloak and run. At least with my style of play anyway.

[Lord Revan]

How I play is that I decloak hopefully within the firing arc of my cannons, fire and then retreat. Beam boats work well for ships which aren't going to cloak and run. At least with my style of play anyway.

nothing wrong with that, while I use smaller and faster (by default) ships for my alpha strike builds it doesn't mean that's the only way, combat cloak if you have one is great for those builds. decloak, "fire everything!" , then retreat and re-cloak, repeat until target is dead.