Should I try out Star Trek Online?

[mr friendly guy]

I have a few problems with the server with graphics and logging off because it disconnected. Not sure if the rest of the problems are related to this, but I notice

a. killed enemies still appear as red for around a second after I killed them giving my the impression there are still enemies to kill
b. The 3 D aspect than a feature - sometimes it doesn't even tell me where to go in space, ie no obvious green circle on the map screen, and even when it does, I can't find the target, presumably because its quite under or above my location that I can't even see it.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah. Basically, when they went from sector space to quadrant space, they increased the distances between stars without increasing either the draw distance or the sensitivity of your ability to tell when things are above or below you.

This is kind of a kick in the shorts for those of us who actually like NOT using the autopilot to go everywhere.

[mr friendly guy]

I can use the maps autopilot to go from sector to sector, what I mean is that within a sector it tells you to do x, but sometimes the green circle isn't there or even if it is nothing happens. For example it says rendez vous with this ship, and I can't find it even when I am smack bam in the middle of the green circle. Good thing I didn't fork out cash for virtual goods.

[Highlord Laan]

Well, after hitting 50 with my current, non-delta engineer, I've bought a Guardian Cruiser for the hell of it.

Even outfitted with green mk10s, the thing is a goddamed BEAST. Yeah, it handles like an iron pig, but it has so much armor and shield strength that it doesn't matter. I love it, so much better than my Avenger.

[Simon_Jester]

I can use the maps autopilot to go from sector to sector, what I mean is that within a sector it tells you to do x, but sometimes the green circle isn't there or even if it is nothing happens. For example it says rendez vous with this ship, and I can't find it even when I am smack bam in the middle of the green circle. Good thing I didn't fork out cash for virtual goods.

Normally there's an arrow beside the green circle that points up if you're well below the target and down if you're above it.

There may be a few exceptions to this rule; at that point it's just the game designers occasionally getting a script wrong.

[mr friendly guy]

I can use the maps autopilot to go from sector to sector, what I mean is that within a sector it tells you to do x, but sometimes the green circle isn't there or even if it is nothing happens. For example it says rendez vous with this ship, and I can't find it even when I am smack bam in the middle of the green circle. Good thing I didn't fork out cash for virtual goods.

Normally there's an arrow beside the green circle that points up if you're well below the target and down if you're above it.

There may be a few exceptions to this rule; at that point it's just the game designers occasionally getting a script wrong.

I pretty much given up on that Foundry quest, and am just using the fact its uncompleted to grind by going back there. I am not going to spend more time trying to find this point. Hopefully the main quests won't be so problematic. Hoping to get back to them after I grind enough to give myself a tier 3 ship.

[Lord Revan]

I can use the maps autopilot to go from sector to sector, what I mean is that within a sector it tells you to do x, but sometimes the green circle isn't there or even if it is nothing happens. For example it says rendez vous with this ship, and I can't find it even when I am smack bam in the middle of the green circle. Good thing I didn't fork out cash for virtual goods.

Normally there's an arrow beside the green circle that points up if you're well below the target and down if you're above it.

There may be a few exceptions to this rule; at that point it's just the game designers occasionally getting a script wrong.

I pretty much given up on that Foundry quest, and am just using the fact its uncompleted to grind by going back there. I am not going to spend more time trying to find this point. Hopefully the main quests won't be so problematic. Hoping to get back to them after I grind enough to give myself a tier 3 ship.

stuff the foundry is user made so it's for the most part not made by professionals so there's a lot more minor issues.

[Elheru Aran]

I pretty much given up on that Foundry quest, and am just using the fact its uncompleted to grind by going back there. I am not going to spend more time trying to find this point. Hopefully the main quests won't be so problematic. Hoping to get back to them after I grind enough to give myself a tier 3 ship.

stuff the foundry is user made so it's for the most part not made by professionals so there's a lot more minor issues.

Yeah, Foundry stuff can be fun but for the most part, since it's not really going to do much for you other than a few drops and some minor XP, it's better (IMO) to play through the game and only faff around with Foundry when you aren't concerned with leveling up. But that is one thing I do enjoy about STO, it's pretty player-friendly; if you want to just spend your time with Foundry missions, you can. If you want to just play PvP or PvE, you can. Popping Klingons is your thing? There's battle zones here and there in the Alpha Quadrant, just pick one and drop in. If you want to just grind dilithium by zooming around between dilithium-farming spots every day to buy Zen so you can pick up a nice starship, go for it. It's got a lot of options, and that's nice.

As for your navigational problems... if that's in a Foundry quest, then, yeah, that's gonna happen every now and then. Write a message to whomever created the quest, drop it, and move along. If the maker re-ups it with the bug fixed, pick it back up.

[mr friendly guy]

I notice deliberately replaying old missions on a higher rank gives me better gear even if the grind is less. I am not sure if the enemies get more powerful on replaying, because I can't remember if my Miranda class struggled against the Orion pirates. Now with my tier 3 ship I am not exactly a reaper, but I win easy enough.

[White Haven]

If you're appropriately geared for your level, there really aren't normal-mode missions that aren't fairly easy, even at-level. This is less true on the ground, but definitely in space. As for difficulty scaling; yes, levels of enemies scale, but low-level missions are still balanced around the expectation that you have a very small number of weapon systems on your ship, no matter what level you and they are. In other words, if you went in with just a two or three phasers equipped, the experience would probably be more or less as you remember it, but with the full armament of a ship with more slots to play with as well as a ship that probably has more tactical slots to apply multipliers to them... yeah, shit's going to die really, really fast.

A heavy cruiser going into one of the really early missions is literally two Mirandas bolted together in terms of weapon slots and tactical console slots. If you want something approaching a challenge, you're going to want to punch your mission difficulty up. Just remember that ground combat doesn't have that sort of slot proliferation, so if you get your ass kicked dirtside you may have to back out and dial it back again.

[Simon_Jester]

Also note that while enemies scale with level (sort of), the way this scaling works is mainly that their hit points increase. So they may not pack as much punch at high level relative to the durability of your ship.

Plus, the scaling appears to be a "stairstep" function- the enemies may have X hit points if you come by at 23rd level or whatever, then suddenly acquire 2X hit points at 24th level. You could be benefiting from that.

[Lord Revan]

the scaling doesn't how take into account better gear so an enemy that had decent amount of HPs for level 1-10 when most of your gear was greens or even whites might seem easy at level 40 when you got mostly greens and blues maybe even a purple or 2

[mr friendly guy]

How do rare items like Vaadwaur polaron emitters (which I have) or spiral disruptor waves compared to the regular version, say phaser cannons of equivalent rank?

[Highlord Laan]

Polaron weapons have a nasty side effect in that they drain subsystems of power as they do damage. So not only are you hurting the targets HP pool, you damaging it ability to fight back, resists damage, move and even repair damage done. Pairing Polaron weapons with Phasers, which have a percent chance of flat out knocking subsystems down, is a nasty pairing, but takes some specialized builds to pull off. Those builds tend to favor science captains and science vessels with a lot of attention paid to particle effects and such.

At the moment, the current game meta favors beam arrays for broadsiding (even for fast and mobile ships) with plasma and antiproton beams leading the pack. Plasma is great for anyone stacking enhancements for particle/exotic damage, since plasma beams have a pretty potent DoT effect after a successful hit, while Antiproton weapons have a flat bonus to accuracy and an inherent %10 shield penetration value.

Do not mix cannons and beams. Ever.

The same meta applies to projectile weapons at them moment. Transphasic torpedoes have been favored since day one for their shield penetration while stacking +Crit modifiers. Right now though, plasma torps are king of the hill, since they too provide a really nasty DoT that is improved with +particle/exotic damage buffs via consoles and skills. If you see a T5U Nova running around, be afriad. Since if the player has built it right, nothing less than a pair of dreadnoughts will stop him. And even then he may pull it off anyway.

The United Federation of Planets: Killing you with science!

[Lord Revan]

How do rare items like Vaadwaur polaron emitters (which I have) or spiral disruptor waves compared to the regular version, say phaser cannons of equivalent rank?

in case you meant the weapons with special titles for example "radiant" AP weapons that extra title just means that there's special modfier unique to that weapon type, so radiant anti-proton beam array would be an anti-proton beam array with an inherrent "+10% crit severity and change to get additional HP" modfier on it. same is true for every special weapons with unique names.

[mr friendly guy]

Can any ship get a hangar and load it with fighters, or just special ships?

[Lord Revan]

Can any ship get a hangar and load it with fighters, or just special ships?

only a handful of ships come with a hangar and thus can use fighters (and as far as I know only 1 of those ships in still avaible and free) so just special ships.

[White Haven]

Fed-side, carriers are quite...I wouldn't say rare any longer, because there are a number of them, but they're difficult to get your hands on. With the caveat that most of them are available on the Exchange for way, WAY more credits than a starting player has, it really boils down to spending RL money in one of a number of ways, and many of them are only one-squadron baby-carriers, not full two-hangar jobs. Even more rare, ESPECIALLY fed-side, are carriers that can launch full-on frigates, which have the benefit of being vastly more resistant to collateral sodomy.

[Lord Revan]

Fed-side, carriers are quite...I wouldn't say rare any longer, because there are a number of them, but they're difficult to get your hands on. With the caveat that most of them are available on the Exchange for way, WAY more credits than a starting player has, it really boils down to spending RL money in one of a number of ways, and many of them are only one-squadron baby-carriers, not full two-hangar jobs. Even more rare, ESPECIALLY fed-side, are carriers that can launch full-on frigates, which have the benefit of being vastly more resistant to collateral sodomy.

carrier of any type seem to be at about 100-300 million EC so for a starting player that means a crap ton of grind or a favor from a friend.

[mr friendly guy]

The same meta applies to projectile weapons at them moment.

You mean don't mix beams with projectile weapons or cannons with projectile weapons?

I kind of use mainly beams, but do have a slot for a quantum torpedo because I am afraid of draining too much energy if my ship utilises too many beam weapons.

I am currently playing a science based captain (what do you expect with a character named Sheldon Cooper) but seem to favour cruisers rather than science vessels. Just not feeling too confident with fancy builds since its my first time. I am thinking of building around beams, and using repeated mission quests to get scaled up items. Currently have my Tier 3 ship (which I admitted I paid with for ZEN so it is somewhat better than the free cruiser) and I am hoping to tough it out until I become a vice admiral since I am apparently several levels higher than what is the minimum recommended for my current quest.

Then once I can get a tier 5 ship, use my free option to get a mirror universe tier 5 cruiser (thank you drop boxes).

Fed-side, carriers are quite...I wouldn't say rare any longer, because there are a number of them, but they're difficult to get your hands on. With the caveat that most of them are available on the Exchange for way, WAY more credits than a starting player has, it really boils down to spending RL money in one of a number of ways, and many of them are only one-squadron baby-carriers, not full two-hangar jobs. Even more rare, ESPECIALLY fed-side, are carriers that can launch full-on frigates, which have the benefit of being vastly more resistant to collateral sodomy.

You mean you can't buy them with ZEN, or trade ZEN for dilithium and then buy them.

[White Haven]

Well, anything from a lockbox or the Lobi store can be listed on the Exchange, so any of those ships have the 'or else just spend a boatload of credits' additional prospect. As for pure Zen ships (or dilithium for Zen), there are a bunch of half-deck carriers (Armitage, Vesta variants, command battlecruisers, just off the cuff), but I don't think any full carriers.

[Lord Revan]

Well, anything from a lockbox or the Lobi store can be listed on the Exchange, so any of those ships have the 'or else just spend a boatload of credits' additional prospect. As for pure Zen ships (or dilithium for Zen), there are a bunch of half-deck carriers (Armitage, Vesta variants, command battlecruisers, just off the cuff), but I don't think any full carriers.

Atrox? I'm pretty sure that's Zen ship (though not sure if you can upgrade that one or is just a Tier 5), that's for UPF side that is Klinks have a Klingon and at least 1 Orion carrier.

Best carriers atm are the Xindi ones I think but those are all Lobi so the most relible way to get those is get the bigger wallet with 1000 Zen then grind enough EC to buy a starsystem or 2 (about 150-300 Million EC depending on supply and demand, maybe even more then 300 000 000 EC, though certain less then 10 000 000 000 EC).

[Highlord Laan]

Sorry, I'm posting from my phone.

I meant shield pen and DoT effects are currently leading for both energy and projectile weapons. Antiptoton and Plasma foe E-wweapons, Transphasic and Plasma for torpedoes.

[White Haven]

Well, anything from a lockbox or the Lobi store can be listed on the Exchange, so any of those ships have the 'or else just spend a boatload of credits' additional prospect. As for pure Zen ships (or dilithium for Zen), there are a bunch of half-deck carriers (Armitage, Vesta variants, command battlecruisers, just off the cuff), but I don't think any full carriers.

Atrox? I'm pretty sure that's Zen ship (though not sure if you can upgrade that one or is just a Tier 5), that's for UPF side that is Klinks have a Klingon and at least 1 Orion carrier.

Best carriers atm are the Xindi ones I think but those are all Lobi so the most relible way to get those is get the bigger wallet with 1000 Zen then grind enough EC to buy a starsystem or 2 (about 150-300 Million EC depending on supply and demand, maybe even more then 300 000 000 EC, though certain less then 10 000 000 000 EC).

You are indeed correct, and I am brain-farty as all hell for forgetting the Atrox given that I happen to own one. It's not a fantastic carrier, but it is a really, really tough one.

[Simon_Jester]

I am currently playing a science based captain (what do you expect with a character named Sheldon Cooper) but seem to favour cruisers rather than science vessels. Just not feeling too confident with fancy builds since its my first time. I am thinking of building around beams, and using repeated mission quests to get scaled up items. Currently have my Tier 3 ship (which I admitted I paid with for ZEN so it is somewhat better than the free cruiser) and I am hoping to tough it out until I become a vice admiral since I am apparently several levels higher than what is the minimum recommended for my current quest.

Do yourself a favor: actually DO pick up the free Tier 4 ship. If you're shopping for cruisers, the free Tier 4 Galaxy-class is strictly superior to the $10 Excelsior-class in literally every way, EXCEPT that it has an inferior rate of turn.

Also, seriously consider a science vessel. The science vessels' secondary deflector dish can translate into several hundred points of damage per second inflicted on enemy ships through use of your science abilities. Also, you actually HAVE science abilities, in that your science bridge officers will get to use their Lieutenant Commander and Commander-level abilities. On a cruiser they never will.

Science vessels don't have the sheer brute durability of cruisers (as much because they lack the engineering console slots to have extra-double-plus armor plate as anything else), but they DO have excellent shielding.

When you get to Tier 5 do whatever you want, but seriously consider picking up a ship that can be upgraded to T5U, if possible- because the current generation of endgame content isn't really very well balanced for ships that are equal or only slightly superior to a free Sovereign-class or Luna-class.