[Star Trek Online] Hop on my deck. Now Free to Play!

Jasconius

The Nebula is a weird ship. She flies like a steakhouse, but handles like a... no actually she handles like a steakhouse.

The ship is a Cruiser in every way except it is missing an aft weapon port and in exchange you get subsystem targeting and a universal ensign slot (which I just happened to use an Engineer with).

It's pretty fun, but I definitely adore pure science vessels. I like shield tanking. It is unnerving when you spent two weeks with omgbbq shields and the you get a big hulking ship but your shields go down almost immediately. I'm not used to hull tanking.

The Nebula does have the most crew of any ship at CM, but I am not sure how truly important that is.

GaryO

so whats the deal with this "Borg Invasion" people are talking about. obviously at Admiral you ge tto Gamma Orionis and deal with the Borg there and I guess they're adding that consumable for when the borg adapt to weapons (Isn't that what the Elite Tactical Drones do now?) and you can just bust out a bat'leth and ruin their day anyway?. Are they adding more Borg levels? Changing STFs?
Maybe make it a big event like when the Beta ended and just have borg everywhere. Or A Borg Fleet action like Starbase 24 where they invading a planet and you have to stop them.
anyone know anything?

timspork's ghost

Did they make this game just look better since I last played it? The textures seem sharper and the color seems more vibrant. It might be my new monitor though. Did the new version of diplomatic orders. I thought it was funny that the outside of my shuttle was a little one but the inside was a runabout. But then I was busy at the time freaking out because I was inside a runabout.

Need to redress my Officers. Everyone is running around in TOS stuff from when that bridge came out. I really wish they'd make a new version of the Galaxy bridge that is scaled better like the Constitution bridge. Going to put my guys in TNG uniforms again just because I like those.

Hevach

The borg invasion is a lead-in to some post-season 4 non feature content that'll involve the Gorn homeworld and some other locations, and also a preview of how they're making DSEs not suck. The invasion itself will be a new kind of deep space encounter that will attack systems and can be engaged from sector space. Not quite on the scale of the beta event, in that if you avoid the DSEs you won't have them spawning on you in social zones and so forth, but it sounds like they want it to be fairly epic. Stahl mentioned on Priority One that as the rest of this story arc is revealed at/after S4, it'll lead to a cease fire in the war. Not that that means much with Klingons involved, even when we were allies, they managed to shoot down our flagship.


Timspork: They haven't changed graphics directly, but they've been doing back end stuff almost every build under a generic heading in the patch notes. I've noticed I can turn graphics up a bit more than I could a couple months ago, and I think that has something to do with it.

I hope they do start doing some model and texture passes - some really weird things happen when models drop to the lower polygon forms at range. I noticed the towers in Cutting the Cord get weird bulges on the peaks that look for all the world like giant green penises.

timspork's ghost

Hevach wrote: »

The borg invasion is a lead-in to some post-season 4 non feature content that'll involve the Gorn homeworld and some other locations, and also a preview of how they're making DSEs not suck. The invasion itself will be a new kind of deep space encounter that will attack systems and can be engaged from sector space. Not quite on the scale of the beta event, in that if you avoid the DSEs you won't have them spawning on you in social zones and so forth, but it sounds like they want it to be fairly epic. Stahl mentioned on Priority One that as the rest of this story arc is revealed at/after S4, it'll lead to a cease fire in the war. Not that that means much with Klingons involved, even when we were allies, they managed to shoot down our flagship.


Timspork: They haven't changed graphics directly, but they've been doing back end stuff almost every build under a generic heading in the patch notes. I've noticed I can turn graphics up a bit more than I could a couple months ago, and I think that has something to do with it.

I hope they do start doing some model and texture passes - some really weird things happen when models drop to the lower polygon forms at range. I noticed the towers in Cutting the Cord get weird bulges on the peaks that look for all the world like giant green penises.

I really really wish they'd up the res a lot on the ship textures. I hate the jagged hull panels my ships have. Of course I'd be even happier if they would make hull specific textures so all that jaggedness and distortion of the same four textures would be gone forever, but that would obviously require a lot of work.

Regina Fong

Hevach wrote: »

I hope they do start doing some model and texture passes - some really weird things happen when models drop to the lower polygon forms at range. I noticed the towers in Cutting the Cord get weird bulges on the peaks that look for all the world like giant green penises.

Insert vasectomy joke here.

Jasconius

Does the difficulty really ramp up once you hit Commander?

I just died in space (outside of a fleet action) for the first time since like... level 2.

Maybe my gear is just really out of date (some of it is).

My consoles and deflector in particular are pretty ancient.

timspork's ghost

Okay, the redone Doomsday mission is pretty sweet.

Hahnsoo1

Jasconius wrote: »

Does the difficulty really ramp up once you hit Commander?

I just died in space (outside of a fleet action) for the first time since like... level 2.

Maybe my gear is just really out of date (some of it is).

My consoles and deflector in particular are pretty ancient.

The thing that I noticed when I first hit Commander was that Escorts had a bit more punch. I could take out the Bird of Prey/Frigate class ships like they were made of paper. The Battleship/Cruiser fights took a while and some shield management, and usually they had some nasty trick like disabling your targeting systems or some invulnerability shield that was temporary, but they also go down pretty easily because they don't turn very quickly. The Escorts, though, could often strip my shields down to nothing in a couple of seconds if I don't pre-buff before opening my first volley. They could rarely sustain this kind of firepower (after the initial volley, they kind of putter around and don't deal the same evil burst again).

Mind you, I was using the Advanced Heavy Cruiser (Excelsior class), so it's a tough little ship with a purple Regen Shield Mark VI (Regx2). I found Reverse Shield Polarity to be quite a good counter to the Escort initial burst, but until then, those battles really were a bit touch and go.

Regina Fong

Jasconius wrote: »

Does the difficulty really ramp up once you hit Commander?

I just died in space (outside of a fleet action) for the first time since like... level 2.

Maybe my gear is just really out of date (some of it is).

My consoles and deflector in particular are pretty ancient.

Did you equip the gear I sent you, and get those new phaser banks from "Everything Old is New Again"?

Also, upgrade your Breen gear to Mk VI stuff. If you do that you literally should not be having any issues with space combat.

We're basically the same level, and I think we're using pretty similar gear.

What bridge officer skills are you using?

My set up currently is: Tac Lt slot has High Yield Torp I, and Beam Fire at Will II
Eng Lt has Emergency Power to Shields I, and Engineering Team II
Sci LTCDR has Hazard Emitters I, Transfer Shield Strength II, and Feedback Pulse II
Ens Sci has Science Team I

As you see, this is a very defensive set-up. I literally never have to use Science Team or Engineering Team. I pop Emergency Power to Shields whenever it comes up, and if the fight looks to be long I'll pop Transfer Shield Strength somewhere in the middle of the fight for hefty shield regen. Hazard Emitters is completely sufficient to keep my hull strength topped off. I use FAW and HYT whenever they are off cooldown. I'll delay firing a HYT salvo if I think I'll be able to hit a low or empty shield facing soon, but otherwise I just let them rip. Stuff dies fast, I am never threatened. I use the Breen energy siphon power, but I generally don't ever even remember to bother with Feedback Pulse. If I'm facing a ship that I know buffs itself at the start of a fight I will hit it with Subnucleonic Beam first thing. If I want something to die especially quick I use Sensor Scan on it. If I'm dealing with a large ship that has tractor beams I will target their Aux Power but otherwise I don't even bother with subsystem targeting. If it's little ships with tractor beams (like the Breen) I just wait for them to all tractor me then hit FAW and laugh.

-edit-

Also, which space battle did you die in? Was it the final battle of Night of the Comet? That one is easy to die in at any level if you get carried away shooting the comet and don't stop to clear out klink spawns.

Hahnsoo1

Wow, that Bridge Officer setup is remarkably similar to mine, except I have EPtW at II, Engineering Team at I, Reverse Shield Polarity in there somewhere instead of Feedback Pulse, and I think a Tacyon Beam (yeah, it sucks. I know.). It's on a Cruiser so it's 2 Engineers instead of 2 Science Officers, but there's a lot of overlap there. Everything is basically Shields and Weapon Power/Damage Boost, with an Engineering Team as a backup Hull repair.

On my old Science vessel, I regularly used the Target Shield Subsystem. It rarely does the catastrophic shield failure, but it typically takes the shield energy down a few notches, which gravely hurts their regen rate. It's basically "free", so why not?

Regina Fong

Hahnsoo1 wrote: »

Wow, that Bridge Officer setup is remarkably similar to mine, except I have EPtW at II, Engineering Team at I, Reverse Shield Polarity in there somewhere instead of Feedback Pulse, and I think a Tacyon Beam (yeah, it sucks. I know.). It's on a Cruiser so it's 2 Engineers instead of 2 Science Officers, but there's a lot of overlap there. Everything is basically Shields and Weapon Power/Damage Boost, with an Engineering Team as a backup Hull repair.

On my old Science vessel, I regularly used the Target Shield Subsystem. It rarely does the catastrophic shield failure, but it typically takes the shield energy down a few notches, which gravely hurts their regen rate. It's basically "free", so why not?

I think I overstated how much I forget to use target subsystems. The only time I use it as a matter of course is against big battleships that I know have tractor beams (getting tractored at close range by a large vessel is very painful) because I find it often stops them from using it, or it's short and/or weak enough that it is less of a thing.

However, I have been known to target engines on a ship when I've melted down a single shield facing and have a juicy position on that facing, and I have been known to target shields right before I fire a torp volley, and I've been known to target weapons before I get in close on a large ship. I just don't do these things often enough to call it strategy.

-edit-

It's also not completely free, as it shares a global cooldown with FAW and HYT, which I use every 30 seconds each already, so subsystem targeting is a last consideration for me.

Jasconius

I died in the initial space battle of Skirmish, and rather quickly... I charged in before the NPC ally's.

My BOFF's are

LT Tac with the same skills as yours
LT Eng with Power to Weapons and the beam modulation skill (beam shield penetration)
LtCm Sci with: jam sensors, scramble sensors, gravity well
E Eng w/ some sort of shield boost, might be emergency shields

My shields in general just feel too low. Three light craft with cannons can take my fore shield down right on the initial contact, which never happened when I was an LtCm.

I feel like my toolbox for regaining my shields is fine (especially since I am an engineer myself), it's just that the low cap equates to rapid significant hull damage which I am not built to recover from.

Regina Fong

Jasconius wrote: »

I died in the initial space battle of Skirmish, and rather quickly... I charged in before the NPC ally's.

My BOFF's are

LT Tac with the same skills as yours
LT Eng with Power to Weapons and the beam modulation skill (beam shield penetration)
LtCm Sci with: jam sensors, scramble sensors, gravity well
E Eng w/ some sort of shield boost, might be emergency shields

My shields in general just feel too low. Three light craft with cannons can take my fore shield down right on the initial contact, which never happened when I was an LtCm.

I feel like my toolbox for regaining my shields is fine (especially since I am an engineer myself), it's just that the low cap equates to rapid significant hull damage which I am not built to recover from.

Oh, that fight. I go to the right first and find that the npc ships engage at around the same time I do. Try not to draw all the aggro first thing.

-edit-

Your skills: That's a very offensive set up. Make sure you have a decent Aux power level or those sci powers are going to be pretty underwhelming. Since you lack a lot of the redundant defensive powers that most low level Science captains tend to favor, you should enter those large engagements (like Skirmish) with caution. You simply cannot tank with your skill set-up. I doubt you'll ever have a problem with a normal single player spawn (and Skirmish isn't a normal single player spawn, you have 3 ally ships in that fight, two of which are cruisers) so I wouldn't worry about trying to switch skills around just yet, but just keep in mind that you cannot tank, and any fight in which you pull too much aggro is probably going to be a Ramming Speed/Abandon Ship training run.

Shapeshifter

GaryO wrote: »

Hevach wrote: »

Regina Fong wrote: »

That might actually make the crystalline entity doable.

Man, I was in a group that had it down. 5%, everything under control... then some random chucklefuck zones in, hits evasive maneuvers, and ploughs through the middle of the fight with scatter volley firing. Boom, CE heals back up into phase 2 and all hope is lost.

Not sure if the CE would be soloable even with the level turned down, but at the very least, a prepared and organized fleet with a private instance would easily be able to manage it. It's not a difficult fight, just long, unintuitive, and requires everybody on board. Pretty much a raid boss from any MMO at heart. Exactly the sort of thing they should have implemented as an STF, not a fleet action.

I managed the CE once about a year ago when their was lots of people trying to do it. It was quite tedious and full of people spamming the chat window with conflicting ideas about what to do and yelling at people to stop doing what they were doing. I think by the time the CE went down I had about 30 shards following me and the other 3 or 4 kiters each, while everyone else stood to one side and peppered it with lots and lots of phasers
We were lucky because there were two guys who appeared to be equipped with nothing but mines that were setting up the worlds biggest minefield and trying to get shards to run into it. There was a lot of yelling at them to stop laying mines everywhere as it made kiting the shards a right pain!

last time I was able to do CE was when ramming speed would take a large chunk of it's hp off.

3-4 ships would line up ram it, it would be dead or close to dead.

Hevach

I remember that. Ramming speed was so messed up around launch, players were using it as their opening attack, not for desperation.

It can still do a ton of damage on the CE, since it doesn't have any shields (I took over 1 million damage off of it with ramming speed and self destruct in my star cruiser some time back), but things have to be going kind of bad for it to work and just trying will probably mean lots of fragment healing.

If fleet action private queues go live as described in the S4 patch notes, I'm definitely making a solo kill on CE my pet project. It'll be epic up there with my 20 minute one on one with a tactical cube.

Evigilant

Reading over what season 4 is supposed to bring, these are probably my favorites:

The power tray in space now has a fourth mode which provides a 3 row block of power slots plus the existing bridge officer powers tray at the same time.

Waypoint/Node improvements have been made for sector space auto travel.

Deep Space Encounters will no longer auto agro. Players have to choose to engage them.

Regina Fong

Yeah, having DSEs not auto-aggro will make it so you can set yourself headed somewhere and grab a soda, and come back to find yourself at location, and not exploding in a random DSE that's still 2 minutes away from your destination.

korodullin

The new ground combat rebalance is pretty much the greatest most fun thing.

That is all.

timspork's ghost

Is it up again?

Hevach

Yep, and here I am still stuck in shipping purgatory as my newegg order spends another day sitting in Illinois not being delivered...

I'm *this* close to blowing my next paycheck and just buying a new damn computer, seriously.

timspork's ghost

Patching now!

Nakatomi2010

I logged in and poked around. Looks nice and fun. Not sure how my video card is going to handle it though. There's some option in the video settings called Postprocessing that got enabled some how, made everything look like crap till I turned it off.

Shooter mode looks interesting, but I kept getting this "Nopossiblemaps" error.

Looks like some radical changes, take some getting used to, but I'm going to wait for a test weekend before trying again.

timspork's ghost

Yeah guys die really fast to my away team now. Battles went from being a minute or two to being seconds.

Also are there any tweaks in space combat? I did Stranded in Space to test and my Prometheus just tore everything part in a fraction of a second and they were all equally ranked to me.

Regina Fong

I hope not, space combat was already pretty well paced. It does not need to go faster.

Hevach

They made item rarity increase DPS instead of just adding modifiers. So purples to 15% more damage than greens.

On one hand, I think it's a good change to itemization, but on the other, it's a HUGE step in the power creep, and space enemies weren't rebalanced around it the way ground ones were.

Regina Fong

Oh wow, that is pretty crazy. Especially considering that with episode replay there's simply no reason to not have at least blues in every slot.

Evigilant

The ground combat change alone has made me resubscribe so I can test it out. The money would've gone towards DNF, but I decide to wait a bit on that.

So, expect to see me around space again, getting my pew-pew laser on.

Delta Assault

Is there an option to turn off the dumb Tips that keep popping up?

And uh... the loading screens. They keep requiring me to press a key.

timspork's ghost

Hevach wrote: »

They made item rarity increase DPS instead of just adding modifiers. So purples to 15% more damage than greens.

On one hand, I think it's a good change to itemization, but on the other, it's a HUGE step in the power creep, and space enemies weren't rebalanced around it the way ground ones were.

That would explain it. My ship has all purple weapons. Also something weird, when the Prometheus fired forward torpedoes, the torpedo launched out the rear of the ship and zoomed around to the front.

Shapeshifter

shooter mode is interesting but I can't see myself using it very often (or at all)

TOGSolid

Regina Fong wrote: »

Oh wow, that is pretty crazy. Especially considering that with episode replay there's simply no reason to not have at least blues in every slot.

With the Episode replay I keep hearing about, does that mean the Season episodes? I was thinking of checking them out when I got home (Lt. Cmdr 1 atm). Should I just wait to do them or are they a great way to get XP?

Regina Fong

TOGSolid wrote: »

Regina Fong wrote: »

Oh wow, that is pretty crazy. Especially considering that with episode replay there's simply no reason to not have at least blues in every slot.

With the Episode replay I keep hearing about, does that mean the Season episodes? I was thinking of checking them out when I got home (Lt. Cmdr 1 atm). Should I just wait to do them or are they a great way to get XP?

You can replay many of the normal missions now, and all the episodes. Normal missions have level locked item rewards, so it might be worthwhile to replay it a couple times if the reward is some body armor or something, but generally not so much. Episode item rewards scale to your current level, and some of them even change as you get higher (different damage types and so forth) so it is worth it to play them again at each rank if you liked the item you got the first time. The Breen episodes have a Shield/Deflector/Engine that is good, and will serve you well up until the Aegis set at Rear Admiral. The Devedian episodes have some good personal shields and boff weapons, and one of the missions has rare phaser banks which saves you from buying or crafting energy weapons all the way up until end game as long as you aren't super picky about energy types.

The newest episode doesn't have exceptional rewards, I honestly play through it once and never replay it after that.

-edit- I guess I'll replay The Vault when I run out of Scorpion Fighters, but with 50 charges and space combat not being that hard, it's unlikely I'll use it up any time soon.

Hevach

Remastered episodes have some scaling rewards. The Har'peng torpedoes from Doomsday Machine scale to your rank. For some reason the original shields you get from it are always mk II, though.

Also, looks like you forgot to mention, but you can access mission replay from your ready room, just off your bridge. Unless you have the TOS interior, in which case the briefing room is on the crew deck.

Regina Fong

The Har'peng torpedos are crap though. Just sayin'

Valaena

Holy shit. I just played the new ground on Tribble. Wow. Combat is furious now. I love it. And finally have bolt rifles! It's what I've been wanting since forever. I love how fights seem to last maaaaaaybe 10 seconds. And instead of never losing my shields I go down to half health every fight. But, oh. What's that, you're already dead Mr. Klingon. Tough luck, that.

I guess the gist of what I'm saying is, holy poop I am so looking forward to season 4. Im not too keen on doable stacking the boffs tray though. Any way to reverse that?

timspork's ghost

I also like how my support drone looks like the AI minning robots in that TNG episode.

Regina Fong

Exocomps!

Hevach

Regina Fong wrote: »

The Har'peng torpedos are crap though. Just sayin'

They're actually not... thanks to a bug. Under some circumstances, removing the radiation debuff doesn't work. You'll wipe the icon, but not only does it keep counting down, when it goes off, if the splash damage hits any other targets, it also hits you an extra time. So if it goes off and you have 2 ships nearby, you actually get hit three times and both of them get hit once.

This is supposed to be fixed this week, though. With that fixed, yeah, they're shit.

korodullin

So is it possible for an Engineer captain in an Assault Cruiser to have an actual decent damage-dealing setup? I heard that nowadays, end-game cruiser captains are relegated to healers, which I was kind of mortified to hear.