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Coaan wrote:Just the two of us at the moment...hoping to expand on that though

What the hell, count me in; I've got a tac commander who I can join with. What's your @ for the game?

Free demo? Maybe I try?


No...no, you link.

Molyneux wrote:

Coaan wrote:Just the two of us at the moment...hoping to expand on that though

What the hell, count me in; I've got a tac commander who I can join with. What's your @ for the game?

@Mithaw

I made Vice Admiral with my primary character (Tactical) today. Got the Defiant retrofit, but I'm going to stick to flying my Advanced Escort. Now to get emblems and make more EPICS, er, "very rare" items.

MUST HAVE ZE PURPLEZ.

(Consider this a result of already having more purples in three weeks of STO than I got with about 11 culmative months of WoW).

Oh, user name is @stgjr, if anyone wants to friend.

Man, Q is a dick.
Not Q, I mean, Q.

Molyneux wrote:Man, Q is a dick.
Not Q, I mean, Q.

He is an amazingly colossal dick, isn't he? I wish Spoiler had been there to give him a good tongue-lashing.


There's got to be Q who aren't dicks. It's a shame the only ones I can think of were murdered because they liked to cheat in their little "living a normal life" experiment.

Seriously, Q are dicks.

I have a couple characters on STO that I mess around with, I'll drop you a line if your still looking for more fleet members. Think my tactical was a captain and my engineer a commander.

So.... anyone check out the new Earth Spacedock?

Steve wrote:So.... anyone check out the new Earth Spacedock?

Go tell Q to go away. It's funny.

Steve wrote:So.... anyone check out the new Earth Spacedock?

Aagh...the server was down all day yesterday, and today I'm busy!
I've got to get on sometime tonight.

*Keep* telling him to go away and get a accolade, so there you go.

It's a nice change, as is the external one. I tried flying in the door and, logically enough, teleported inside. A nice touch, I thought.

Vanas wrote:*Keep* telling him to go away and get a accolade, so there you go.

It's a nice change, as is the external one. I tried flying in the door and, logically enough, teleported inside. A nice touch, I thought.

I spotted Q dancing in the fountain, but...where can you actually talk to him?

Q is in Club 47. Note that the doors are on the sides; the middle is a window. I made that mistake the first time.

Whelp, depsite being ulgier than sin, the Fleet Escorts are pretty decent ships. Biggest difference I can see is the shorter length of the ship in relation to it's center of turning means you can get the forward armament on target a little faster. Having a second engineer bridge officer and a third engineer console makes for a little more survivability and manuevability for the consoles I'm using. Good stuff, just wish it didn't look like an Ork got a hold of a frisbee.

Mr. Coffee wrote:Whelp, depsite being ulgier than sin, the Fleet Escorts are pretty decent ships. Biggest difference I can see is the shorter length of the ship in relation to it's center of turning means you can get the forward armament on target a little faster. Having a second engineer bridge officer and a third engineer console makes for a little more survivability and manuevability for the consoles I'm using. Good stuff, just wish it didn't look like an Ork got a hold of a frisbee.

Have you tried the Hermes or Maelstrom (hurrah, C-store-only parts...) skins? I thought the Maelstrom looked much better than the other fleet escort designs.

I kitbashed together one in the shipyard that's starting to grow on me. Thing looks like someone strapped nacelles to a muscle car, and with some of the shiney bits I've been getting beating up the borg or trolling the B'tran cluster it's turning into a hell of a ship. Two engineering deck officers beats the hell out of two science officers for damn sure. Now it's just a matter of making that final push up to vice admiral so I can get the Defiant refit.

Mr. Coffee wrote:I kitbashed together one in the shipyard that's starting to grow on me. Thing looks like someone strapped nacelles to a muscle car, and with some of the shiney bits I've been getting beating up the borg or trolling the B'tran cluster it's turning into a hell of a ship. Two engineering deck officers beats the hell out of two science officers for damn sure. Now it's just a matter of making that final push up to vice admiral so I can get the Defiant refit.

Defiant isnt really worth it.

Fleet Escort has more flexibility and survivability due to the extra engineering console and officer.

Defiant gets an extra ensign tac - rather since the skills will share a global cooldown with the ones higher up.
Tac team - Shares cooldown with Engineering and Science so its really useless
Beam Overload - If you use beams then fair enough but most Escorts run full cannons and it requires you to spend skillpoints into beams if you want them to be decent.
Fire at will - Requires beams again but barely does any damage. At best you can use it for point defence. Using it against NPCs however is likely to get you killed when they all react to you
High yield torpedo - Running II or III is rather common
Torpedo Spread - same deal as fire at will

The Defiant also sacrifices a console slot for the cloak - which is ultimately useless in PVE. You get the initial ambush attack but after that your back to regular fighting minus the assets the other tactical ships have.

PVP - Defiant is better, turns faster but as a glass cannon it goes down rather quickly and cloak detection screws the stealth advantage.

I tried all three of the Escorts and eventually stuck with the Fleet myself. Defiant was fun for looks but ultimately inferior in performance. Advanced Escort can provide a bit of utility either through Jam Sensors or Hazard Emitters.

PREDATOR490 wrote:

Mr. Coffee wrote:I kitbashed together one in the shipyard that's starting to grow on me. Thing looks like someone strapped nacelles to a muscle car, and with some of the shiney bits I've been getting beating up the borg or trolling the B'tran cluster it's turning into a hell of a ship. Two engineering deck officers beats the hell out of two science officers for damn sure. Now it's just a matter of making that final push up to vice admiral so I can get the Defiant refit.

Defiant isnt really worth it.

Fleet Escort has more flexibility and survivability due to the extra engineering console and officer.

Defiant gets an extra ensign tac - rather since the skills will share a global cooldown with the ones higher up.
Tac team - Shares cooldown with Engineering and Science so its really useless
Beam Overload - If you use beams then fair enough but most Escorts run full cannons and it requires you to spend skillpoints into beams if you want them to be decent.
Fire at will - Requires beams again but barely does any damage. At best you can use it for point defence. Using it against NPCs however is likely to get you killed when they all react to you
High yield torpedo - Running II or III is rather common
Torpedo Spread - same deal as fire at will

The Defiant also sacrifices a console slot for the cloak - which is ultimately useless in PVE. You get the initial ambush attack but after that your back to regular fighting minus the assets the other tactical ships have.

PVP - Defiant is better, turns faster but as a glass cannon it goes down rather quickly and cloak detection screws the stealth advantage.

I tried all three of the Escorts and eventually stuck with the Fleet myself. Defiant was fun for looks but ultimately inferior in performance. Advanced Escort can provide a bit of utility either through Jam Sensors or Hazard Emitters.

That's...actually good to know. I've been looking forward to getting a Maelstrom (or kitbash), and I hate knowing that I'll have to ditch a great-looking ship in favor of a more powerful (but ugly) craft when I hit a higher rank. I've gotta put in some time on my tac officer...

After messing around with pretty much everything, I find myself coming back to the Fleet Escort the most. I don't dislike its looks too badly, but that's probably because I've got the Maelstom pieces that give it a decent looking saucer for one.
The Defiant refit is... functional. It's not going to detract much in PvE so long as you're not silly.

Presently I'm on a bit of a Cruiser binge but I'm still pining for my Fleet Escort.

In theory the Fleet Escort is meant to be the Cruiser / Tac hybrid which gives its better survivability.
The Advanced Escort is meant to be the Science / Tac hybrid which is really poor version of Crowd Control.

The Defiant... is supposed to be a pure tactical beast which was introduced late to party. As such the skills for Tac officers dont mix too well.

It has been suggested new skills may appear or be rearranged. The easiest option would be to take the shared cool down of the away teams.

My Defiant fit was:

Tactical
Cannon Rapid Fire III
Attack Pattern Omega II
Cannon Scatter Volley II
Attack Pattern Delta
Torpedo High Yield II
Torpedo High Yield I
Torpedo Spread I
Tactical Team I

Engineering
Power to Shields II
Engineering team

Science
Hazard Emitters II
Science Team

Since Tactical team shares a cool down with Science / Engineering. I rarely used it but it does provide a small increase in damage + gets rid of tactical debuffs.

My Fleet Escort:

Cannon Rapid Fire III
Attack Pattern Omega II
Cannon Scatter Volley II
Attack Pattern Delta
Torpedo High Yield II
Torpedo High Yield I
Torpedo Spread I

Engineering
Power to Shields II
Power to Weapons I
Engineering team I

Science
Hazard Emitters II
Science Team I

Essentially the same apart from having an extra console to boost my shield recharge having more crew to increase passive repair and the ability to overpower my weapons briefly. The alternative is to go Power to Engines as a means of improving your speed / turn rate.

Advanced Escort

Cannon Rapid Fire III
Attack Pattern Omega II
Cannon Scatter Volley II
Attack Pattern Delta
Torpedo High Yield II
Torpedo High Yield I
Torpedo Spread I

Engineering
Power to Shields II
Engineering team I

Science
Target Shield Subsystem II
Hazard Emitters I
Science Team I

This requires beams to work for the subsystem targeting but it can be brutally effective.
Fit your ship with Polarons which have a natural proc chance of draining the targets power, subsystem II can drain more I believe with the chance to take the system completely offline.
Result = target shields either fail from the skill itself or the power drains to 0 dropping the shields again.
Against most npcs it drops their shields rapidly, against players it probably wont work so quickly.

The differences arent that major so if you want to play a certain ship your free to do so without hurting yourself much.

Took me an age to download the 5.5 gigs of demo for this damn game. Finally got it done, and! 3.5 gigs of patch to download... grrr...
Looking forward too it though :p

barnest2 wrote:Took me an age to download the 5.5 gigs of demo for this damn game. Finally got it done, and! 3.5 gigs of patch to download... grrr...
Looking forward too it though :p

Looking forward to seeing you on!
Even more than other MMOs, STO is definitely a team-friendly game - if for nothing else than how goddamn pretty it is to see a dozen ships all blowing the hell out of a Borg cube at once.

It does sound fun. I don't know how long it'll be till I can subscribe though

barnest2 wrote:It does sound fun. I don't know how long it'll be till I can subscribe though

I'm in the same boat, demo only for now. My Cryptic account is the same name as my SDN one (so it'd be @rogueice in the format you had?) if anyone is around Earth Spacedock, since that's where I'm limited with the demo AFAIK.

Still, there is quite a bit to see and do there, as well as just randomly flying about Earth space. Of course if there's any little mini-quests I can do without leaving (I've already found Q in Club 47, so aside from him) I'd appreciate knowing.

So a couple questions:

If I download the full version, do I need to uninstall the demo or will it go over it?

Also, I use an Xbox360 controller for this, and the buttons are good. But there's unused buttons I'd like to map to stuff (like sprinting, interaction, and so forth). Is there a way to do this? I couldn't find one.

It might be another couple weeks until I can pay for the full version, and I think I'll limit to just one month subscription to check things out and go from there. But for now, as I'm stuck at Earth Spacedock and just flying around Sector Space, I'm having some fun.

Damn, missed the edit window.

I would like to say it's pretty bullshit I have to spend 30 energy credits to put on that Lieutenant rank I earned from the tutorial. 30 energy credits I don't have.