Should I try out Star Trek Online?

[Lord Revan]

Having just gotten into ST Discovery (almost done season 1) it's quite strange playing missions with characters I've just seen on screen. And it helps make sense of the new content too!

Actually I found that recent episodes fleshed out Landry's character quite nicely and explained why she had chip in her shoulder towards Burnhan in season 1. I won't spoil the mission if you've not played it yet but I'll say in the end you'll most likely feel sorry for Landry even if you hated her before.

The one who got herself mauled to death by the tardigrade? She was just Too Dumb To Live.

Yeah that's the one but granted she wasn't exactly the nicest person even before that.

[mr friendly guy]

Cryptic helped with the server lag problem I had. Unfortunately it comes back again and I am not going to turn my modem off for half an hour each time I go on the computer on the off chance I decide to play STO. Sometimes the server works beautifully, sometimes it just sucks.

On the plus side, even when it sucks I can still do the Discovery TFO. Just stay there, press fire randomly and eventually a Klingon ship comes in which I destroy. Thus STO still considers that I contributed to the TFO and I still get the points.

[Lord Revan]

Speaking on Discovery, I don't know if I should find the wailing about AoD funny or just sad, I mean you're allowed to dislike Discovery but going as far as constant declare and in the process insult those who do like DIscovery everytime anything related to Discovery is mentioned.

[mr friendly guy]

Just did the latest Discovery episodes. Emotion episodes, but since I never watched Discovery, it doesn't have the same emotional attachment that the Delta quadrant and DS9 expansions had for me.

I wonder how Cryptic are going to explain why Discovery era Klingons look different from modern day ones? I would go with Mike Wong's explanation of why TOS Klingons look different from TNG ones (before Enterprise explained it away). Basically these Klingons were different ethnic groups.

[Lord Revan]

Just did the latest Discovery episodes. Emotion episodes, but since I never watched Discovery, it doesn't have the same emotional attachment that the Delta quadrant and DS9 expansions had for me.

I wonder how Cryptic are going to explain why Discovery era Klingons look different from modern day ones? I would go with Mike Wong's explanation of why TOS Klingons look different from TNG ones (before Enterprise explained it away). Basically these Klingons were different ethnic groups.

I think they won't explain it at all, essentially it's how it is in the shows and if you want further info you should look there.

[mr friendly guy]

Have upgraded my fourth toon's equipment to mark 15 epic, at least for ship equipment. Am thinking of flying some Jem Hadar ships, however I have no interest in playing a Jemmie toon at the moment. I would rather have my UFP toons fly the Dominion ships. Now does the Gamma vanguard pack automatically allow my non Jemmie toons to fly dominion ships? I know you need to get it to level 6 mastery before other toons can fly them, but I have heard that its automatically gives the ship level 6 mastery. Of course its expensive as hell, 13000 Zen, but it might be worth it. I don't want to grind the ships to get level 6 mastery if my UFP toons can fly them right off.

Did you not want to wait for the weekend? According to the in-game calendar, this Thursday to Monday is a (long-overdue) item upgrade weekend where tech points are doubled. Since it's been several Phoenix events between upgrade weekends, players have been saving up the Phoenix & Omega tokens in preparation.

I got the pack not long after the expansion launched, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that, yes upon getting level 6 on the Dominion character unlocks the ships account-wide. The bad news is that no, the mastery isn't account wide- I just unpacked the carrier for my Fed toon as she already has some rep store hangar pets and the ship was definitely not levelled.

However, the Gamma Vanguard pack does also include a number of Cardassian ships that are available account-wide right off the bat. I've only recently managed to get the masteries on these for the majority of my characters, a lot of them are only now working on the Fek'Ihri S'torr

Speaking of Zen, the Phoenix event enabled me to buy a shitload of it thanks to selling some when the price was higher. I think that has to be a personal record! But a dozen active toons will do that. My Discovery one got up to T6 in all reps just yesterday and has half a million dilithium ore to crunch through. With the upgrade weekend I have to decide whether to commit her to disruptor or antiproton weaponry.

Next major release is going to bring yet another set of marks- if they're feeling generous they'll make the new marks available as a choice when trading in the stuff from summer, though they didn't bother last year, breaking the tradition of adding the newest towards the end of the event.

Could I potentially create a generic Jem'hadar, buy all the Vanguard ships for less than the Gamma quadrant pack, and then level up those ships until level 6, then let all my players get hold of those ships. Don't really want Cardassian ships per se. The only other advantage of the Vanguard is perhaps I also get to play a Cardassian toon.

[mr friendly guy]

Ok, so I decided to use the extra bonus on zen, got tons of it, then purchased all 4 Vanguard ships for 20% off. Its just going to be a while to grind up the ships to level 6 mastery so my UFP toons can access them. Especially since after I did the tutorial I jumped right to the Argala sector in the Delta quadrant to grind and my Jemmie toon isn't so powerful. Oh well, at least I have another helper in the family of toons, maybe my Jemmie might earn a bit of dilithium and some EC to be useful. Meet Dalek'hadar, a totally not derivative name. Standing at over 2 metres tall, but since all my ground grew are tall he doesn't look too different. He commands all 4 Vanguard ships, funnily enough with names like Gold Dalek, Blue Dalek, Red Dalek and White Dalek.

[mr friendly guy]

What? You need 53000 experience to go from level 5 mastery to level 6 master of a Jem'hadar vanguard ship? That's going to take a lot of grinding. I might just play the DQ deep space encounter (as it can be repeated rapidly), but its most probably going to take a lot of effort before my UFP toons can access the Jem'hadar vanguard carrier.

Its a shame because I can see lots of potential for this with my toons using this. The carrier allows 6 ships ( 2 hangar bays and 2 vanguard ships), plus it can detach to form another one. Combined with a science toon having 4 photonic fleet and that's a lot. Now I tend to use the Klingon device which summons four ships and also use the Hur'q homing device for more summoned allies. Two of my toons have great abilities which boost hangar pets. Moreover if you get one of the other Jem'hadar ships on exchange, its starship mastery allows you to summon another attack craft on using a team ability, so I am going to have a build that churns out lots of allies.

[mr friendly guy]

Made a few changes to my toons. Take my Romulan sci toon. I switched out her defensive console for the boronite console, which grants among other things EPG, but also makes my weapons create subspace vortex which follow ships and attacks them.
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Console_-_Uni ... d_Weaponry
With my high EPG, these subspace vortexes does a decent amount of damage. It reminds me of the Son'a weapons, but this procs more easier, but has a long recharge time.

My Rommie sci toon utilises Subspace vortex, tykens rift (with massive amount of damage from the secondary deflector doing radiation damage, + drain infection of 1000+ per second doesn't hurt either on top of the usual EPG damage), gravimetric torp and some temporal operative anomalies as well. Add in the anti time anomaly she does a world of pain. I also have gravity well and tachyon beams do lots of damage due to the secondary deflector, so I can use it against a big ship while I save the anomalies for several ships.

-----------------------
Next toon that gets attention is my UFP tactical toon. She has the tzenkethi carrier with 6 tactical consoles and tetryon boost of > 300%. Unfortunately the ship isn't very agile, even though I boosted the impulse engines to ultra rare to boost turn rate. However I figured out a way around this.

Simply don't move the ship forward, and just rotate it on its axis and use cannons and dual beam tetryons on enemy ships. Just keep still and track enemy ships. Normally I wouldn't be agile enough to bring cannons to bear which is why I made it originally a beam boat. Now I used one of those reputation cannons which give an extra 2% damage on account of me being tier 6 in that rep.

Supplement with gravity well I and suck them in one location. and fire away. With tetryon torps and kemocite laden weapons I do a whole lot of damage to multiple ships. The next way to boost this ship is to use DOFFs which boost gravity well and also get gravity well feats, which boost the length and decrease recharge time. Such as the trait associated with the Andorian chimesh pilot ship.

https://sto.gamepedia.com/Andorian_Chimesh_Pilot_Escort
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Specializatio ... _Scientist

I am not sure when I will get enough TFOs to get the free T6 ship, but with the crystalline catastrophe event coming up, I am sure I will make inroads into it. Then get the ship. I know I have enough zen to purchase it, but I am thinking of trying to get the free T6 ships with TFOs.
-----------------------------------------------------
My first and fourth toons are getting attention. Both are now playing with the Dominion carrier and loaded up with polaron goodness. They are both using different torps just to see how different configurations run. Since my first toon is a science toon, he has summon photonic fleet and can bring 4 fleets. With the 2 vanguard fighters the carrier has, the 2 hangar bays, and the ability to split into a more agile craft + a support craft, he can summon a lot of ships. I supplement devices with the klingon beacon (4 ships) and the hur'q summoner for swarm tactics.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Flash sale on ship bundles- 30% off for 24 hours. I actually bought all the bundles already, thanks to buying Zen cheap and selling when it's expensive. I did also buy a 20 key ring bundle while discounted, I just have to decide which toon to expend the keys with since some of the loot is character bind on equip, some not. Also a double experience weekend so I can get some masteries sorted out.

[mr friendly guy]

Bit the bullet and decided to get 1000 zen. With that added on I got the andorian T6 pilots with 30% discount. Mainly I want the tactical one for its starship trait to boost gravity wells for my tactical toon. She lines them up with gravity well and blasts away with all that tetryon goodness. Since the ship ain't that agile, being a tzenkethi carrier I just rotate it on its axis without moving forward. The trait would also be useful for my science primary toon since he utilises gravity wells.

However some of the other gear with the Andorian pilot ships looks to have potential hence why I decided to get them. The gateway trap in particular, since it disables ships subsystems for a few seconds. Can you imagine firing a torp at full spread on unshielded ships. There is potential there.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Bit the bullet and decided to get 1000 zen. With that added on I got the andorian T6 pilots with 30% discount. Mainly I want the tactical one for its starship trait to boost gravity wells for my tactical toon. She lines them up with gravity well and blasts away with all that tetryon goodness. Since the ship ain't that agile, being a tzenkethi carrier I just rotate it on its axis without moving forward. The trait would also be useful for my science primary toon since he utilises gravity wells.

However some of the other gear with the Andorian pilot ships looks to have potential hence why I decided to get them. The gateway trap in particular, since it disables ships subsystems for a few seconds. Can you imagine firing a torp at full spread on unshielded ships. There is potential there.

Especially if you bunch them up with gravity well and use the full spread of Romulan Hyper Plasma Torps. Perhaps when I finish getting the masteries I can look at optimising my builds, with the double XP I'm cycling among 11 of my toons running Argala.

The crystalline event isn't quite as awesome as it first appears. The only discovery marks you can earn from it is from the multiple choice pack you get from turning in the 14 items, you don't get any as an option upon completing.

[FaxModem1]

I saw a cloaked Jupiter Carrier over Nimbus, I'm rather curious how they did it, and wondering if such a thing is worth the cost, considering my flagship is a Jupiter Carrier.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I saw a cloaked Jupiter Carrier over Nimbus, I'm rather curious how they did it, and wondering if such a thing is worth the cost, considering my flagship is a Jupiter Carrier.

The only way that's possible is if they have the Voth Phase Decoy, the Jupiter isn't in the list of cloakable Federation Starships.

The double XP event enabled me to claim the mastery of the Fek'Ihri S'torr Warship across my account, the T'Pau is up next. As a Science Vessel, most of my toons won't use it beyond getting to Tier 5.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

The Dil:Zen exchange rate has rocketed from 340:1 to almost 390:1, and the latest promotion hasn't even started yet.

Link.

Certainly if you have some spare Zen, now might be a good time to sell. Because players are always clamouring for a chance to get the constitution-class, there's going to be both huge demand and pushback from players given the odds of actually getting what they want.

[mr friendly guy]

Trying out the chimesh Andorian pilot ship for my tactical toon. It handles great especially the colours I have chosen for my weapons.

Basically I am building an antiproton build for this. Herald cannons which I will reengineer to give a greater chance for critical hits and AP torp. I keep the hyperalliance cannon for experimental weapon slot. Also using omega kinetic cutting beam and ancient 360 degree beam array for the 10% AP damage bonus with the warp core. I use 5 vulnerability locators, the Voth cloak for 20% AP bonus, the viral console for 25% AP goodness, the crystaline matrix for 19% AP bonus, plasmonic leech, the gateway trap console and science console boosting EPG, shields etc.

Using gravity well, but mainly tactical based powers. So 261% AP boost, and of course once I level up mastery I get another 10% energy weapon damage and extra critical chance. I boost my crit chance with vulnerability locators, but I also selected a competitive rep deflector for bonus to weapon specialisation, which should net me just under 2% critical chance. For my tactical toon I have focussed on BOFFS which decrease recharge time, ie krenim BOFFs rather than using ones with pirate to boost crit chance some more. From my endeavour skills, I should have a 1% crit chance boost.

So it fires blue (Herald weapons), red (standard AP array, AP torp), green (hyperalliance canon) for multicoloured goodness. I could use a matter conversion cannon and get a purple blast as well just for kicks.

[mr friendly guy]

Now that I have 5 toons, my dilithium farming has improved. Now 1.3 million dilithium to save up for the next phoenix prize.

It occurs to me since Jemmies start at level 60, I could create 1-2 more toons, have them join the UFP and then gain all those UFP ships for my admiralty quests and farm EC and dilithium very early on. Eventually when I decide to create more toons, (thinking of creating a Klingon toon eventually), I could just transfer the EC and dilithium and then delete the character.

[mr friendly guy]

Bit the bullet and decided to get 1000 zen. With that added on I got the andorian T6 pilots with 30% discount. Mainly I want the tactical one for its starship trait to boost gravity wells for my tactical toon. She lines them up with gravity well and blasts away with all that tetryon goodness. Since the ship ain't that agile, being a tzenkethi carrier I just rotate it on its axis without moving forward. The trait would also be useful for my science primary toon since he utilises gravity wells.

However some of the other gear with the Andorian pilot ships looks to have potential hence why I decided to get them. The gateway trap in particular, since it disables ships subsystems for a few seconds. Can you imagine firing a torp at full spread on unshielded ships. There is potential there.

Especially if you bunch them up with gravity well and use the full spread of Romulan Hyper Plasma Torps. Perhaps when I finish getting the masteries I can look at optimising my builds, with the double XP I'm cycling among 11 of my toons running Argala.

The crystalline event isn't quite as awesome as it first appears. The only discovery marks you can earn from it is from the multiple choice pack you get from turning in the 14 items, you don't get any as an option upon completing.

I decided to do just that. Gateway trap + gravity well. use the Romulan hyper plasma torps and the beam array and get an extra 10% plasma. Using the piezo electric focuser and the plasma cannon for 39.4% + 15% (set bonus) plasma damage. Combined with na'khul plasma for another 20% plasma damage. Then use 5 x vulnerability locator for 39.4% plasma bonus each. Then I use 2 of the synergistic set and I get like 33% plasma damage and 19% directed energy damage. Basically plasma bonus with other bonuses from reaching level 6 in the reputation leads to 330 to 340% bonus to plasma.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Now that I have 5 toons, my dilithium farming has improved. Now 1.3 million dilithium to save up for the next phoenix prize.

It occurs to me since Jemmies start at level 60, I could create 1-2 more toons, have them join the UFP and then gain all those UFP ships for my admiralty quests and farm EC and dilithium very early on. Eventually when I decide to create more toons, (thinking of creating a Klingon toon eventually), I could just transfer the EC and dilithium and then delete the character.

Thanks to my OS getting corrupted I lost several days worth of dil farming- at least the LTM enables up to 5 days worth of refining when offline, which does however mean that most of my toons' dil ore reserves are depleted. It also means that I'm just one mission short of the 3,000 tokens needed for a free T6 ship- which would have had to have been a future ship since I already have all the T6 ones in the store anyway.

I recommend creating a Klingon or Klingon-aligned toon sooner rather than later, they have many more opportunities for farming dilithium than Fed ones. Marauding assignments can bring in a lot of contraband and prisoners, the latter of which can be offloaded in bulk for 100-125 ore each instead of the pittance Fed ones get. For KDF toons, Assault Squad Officers are like gold dust since you need one for each military offensive mission you have active. It also gives you access to the plasmonic leech for a one-time purchase of the ship that carries it .

Summer event is starting soon, I'm going to be pissed if they fail to add Discovery marks as a choice when trading in the monkeys and birds (not to mention endeavour rewards), at the moment the only way of obtaining them is via TFOs. Because the one toon I have set to get T5 in discovery is almost there (would have made it already were it not for the aforementioned corruption), I'm going to be needing those marks on all my toons in sort order.

BTW, if you have a Romulan toon there's another source of plasma damage, courtesy of the Enhanced Plasma Infusion set. I would have used it on my own toons, except they use either Polaron or Antiproton weapons.

I assume you're using a Na'kuhl starship, because the Plasma Discharge Array can only be equipped on one- did you go with the raider or the battlecruiser?

[mr friendly guy]

I assume you're using a Na'kuhl starship, because the Plasma Discharge Array can only be equipped on one- did you go with the raider or the battlecruiser?

There are two Plasma discharge arrays, one for the Na'khul ship and another for any other ship, but that only gives 20% boost to plasma. I am using that one, equipping it on an Andorian pilot ship. I am finding gateway trap isn't quite as useful as I hoped. The next option is to slip it out and replace it with one of the sensor modifications set, and change a cannon for one of those weapons from the set. This gives a boost of 25% plasma. I can afford the lobi to buy the set, but I am thinking of waiting for the next lobi sale. Frankly I ran out of phoenix price upgrades, so am in no rush.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I assume you're using a Na'kuhl starship, because the Plasma Discharge Array can only be equipped on one- did you go with the raider or the battlecruiser?

There are two Plasma discharge arrays, one for the Na'khul ship and another for any other ship, but that only gives 20% boost to plasma. I am using that one, equipping it on an Andorian pilot ship. I am finding gateway trap isn't quite as useful as I hoped. The next option is to slip it out and replace it with one of the sensor modifications set, and change a cannon for one of those weapons from the set. This gives a boost of 25% plasma. I can afford the lobi to buy the set, but I am thinking of waiting for the next lobi sale. Frankly I ran out of phoenix price upgrades, so am in no rush.

If you have all the consoles in the Allied Dogfighters Set, you can (temporarily) boost phaser/plasma/disruptor damage even further. I hated flying the lethean pilot escorts on my Klingon toons because they were so unbelievably ugly.

Did you mean the [urlhttps://sto.gamepedia.com/Console_-_Universal_-_Plasma_Wave]Plasma Wave[/url]? I noticed the Na'kuhl set offers an additional 15% plasma damage as a set bonus, though none of the ships can fully exploit it- the raider doesn't have enough forward weapons and the battlecruiser only has 3 tac consoles.

Thinking about it I could possibly convert one of my Romulan toons to plasma, though that would be expensive- I have a full set of both plasma beams and cannons so whichever my main toon doesn't use I can send across. I do have Phoenix upgrade tokens left over but nothing to uprade except ground gear for my BOFFS, converting will mean buying and upgrading spire consoles and rep items.

For the synergistic set, I presume you had the prototype dreadnought and the NX-refit? I always found the NX replica having stats on par with the pilot escorts pretty hilarious!

I'm in two minds with what they've done with the account bank, adding a sort feature kind of makes up for the linking of it to the character bank and messing up my carefully arranged layout.

[mr friendly guy]

If you have all the consoles in the Allied Dogfighters Set, you can (temporarily) boost phaser/plasma/disruptor damage even further. I hated flying the lethean pilot escorts on my Klingon toons because they were so unbelievably ugly.

Did you mean the [urlhttps://sto.gamepedia.com/Console_-_Universal_-_Plasma_Wave]Plasma Wave[/url]? I noticed the Na'kuhl set offers an additional 15% plasma damage as a set bonus, though none of the ships can fully exploit it- the raider doesn't have enough forward weapons and the battlecruiser only has 3 tac consoles.

Thinking about it I could possibly convert one of my Romulan toons to plasma, though that would be expensive- I have a full set of both plasma beams and cannons so whichever my main toon doesn't use I can send across. I do have Phoenix upgrade tokens left over but nothing to uprade except ground gear for my BOFFS, converting will mean buying and upgrading spire consoles and rep items.

For the synergistic set, I presume you had the prototype dreadnought and the NX-refit? I always found the NX replica having stats on par with the pilot escorts pretty hilarious!

I'm in two minds with what they've done with the account bank, adding a sort feature kind of makes up for the linking of it to the character bank and messing up my carefully arranged layout.

Yep, I am using the universal plasma wave. I do have all the allied dogfighters set, but I think the extra slots would be better used for other plasma boosting consoles. And yep, I got the prototype dreadnought and NX refit for my primary toon. He has pretty much close to 80 starship traits, and I have the options of getting more with the Dominion ships and the other two Andorian fighters, but I don't particularly like their traits.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I assume you're using a Na'kuhl starship, because the Plasma Discharge Array can only be equipped on one- did you go with the raider or the battlecruiser?

There are two Plasma discharge arrays, one for the Na'khul ship and another for any other ship, but that only gives 20% boost to plasma. I am using that one, equipping it on an Andorian pilot ship. I am finding gateway trap isn't quite as useful as I hoped. The next option is to slip it out and replace it with one of the sensor modifications set, and change a cannon for one of those weapons from the set. This gives a boost of 25% plasma. I can afford the lobi to buy the set, but I am thinking of waiting for the next lobi sale. Frankly I ran out of phoenix price upgrades, so am in no rush.

If you have all the consoles in the Allied Dogfighters Set, you can (temporarily) boost phaser/plasma/disruptor damage even further. I hated flying the lethean pilot escorts on my Klingon toons because they were so unbelievably ugly.

Did you mean the Plasma Wave? I noticed the Na'kuhl set offers an additional 15% plasma damage as a set bonus, though none of the ships can fully exploit it- the raider doesn't have enough forward weapons and the battlecruiser only has 3 tac consoles.

Thinking about it I could possibly convert one of my Romulan toons to plasma, though that would be expensive- I have a full set of both plasma beams and cannons so whichever my main toon doesn't use I can send across. I do have Phoenix upgrade tokens left over but nothing to uprade except ground gear for my BOFFS, converting will mean buying and upgrading spire consoles and rep items.

For the synergistic set, I presume you had the prototype dreadnought and the NX-refit? I always found the NX replica having stats on par with the pilot escorts pretty hilarious!

I'm in two minds with what they've done with the account bank, adding a sort feature kind of makes up for the linking of it to the character bank and messing up my carefully arranged layout.

Can't believe I messed up that link, I've done dozens of them in the past. Dil:Zen has spiked again, at one point it was over 420:1. It's still hovering around the 400-mark. It always seems to happen after I put some Zen up for sale and I end up losing out- I'm down to my last 2,500 Zen- only a Phoenix event could bring the levels back down to what they were.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Well they finally added Discovery marks as an option from multiple-choice packages, so each toon is trading in any birds/monkeys they have more than one of each of. I'll trade the rest in the last week of the event, all I'm doing right now is kicking off disco rep projects on all my characters. This is why I've saved up most of the tradeables I've got until now, the ones I did trade in before were for gamma since that wasn't added to Risa until this year.

[Lord Revan]

Well they finally added Discovery marks as an option from multiple-choice packages, so each toon is trading in any birds/monkeys they have more than one of each of. I'll trade the rest in the last week of the event, all I'm doing right now is kicking off disco rep projects on all my characters. This is why I've saved up most of the tradeables I've got until now, the ones I did trade in before were for gamma since that wasn't added to Risa until this year.

I found that disco ground set is nice for taking out the Borg, though that could just my enjoyment of punching them in the face after all the times they've adapted to my energy weapons.