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[Star Trek Online] Hop on my deck. Now Free to Play!
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You can set the camera to always chase the ship (or not) in one of the options tabs.
Check the different camera options in the menu. There should be one to auto rotate the camera to the direction of travel. It's been a long time since I've messed with them though. Free camera is pretty convenient for keeping up with your surroundings.
If not you'll get used to the angles of where your ship is going just based on its direction pretty quick.
I think CBS doesn't care at all about new, original ships. They care about ships that we've seen in the actual shows and movies. And when they care about something, it comes with bureaucracy and approval processes. This may have something to do with what they do and do not own and whose IP is whose. Whatever, all the fan base knows is what they want and that Cryptic should make it happen and when it doesn't happen in a timely manner, you get very long threads.
This gets reversed in open PVP places like Ker'rat, where the advantage of bringing a full team of carriers or raiders to a match just slows the Federation ships down more often then not, since they're forced to play the ships as they were originally intended---Gank ships. I'm assuming that since Gozer is taking over and has a hard-on for hardcore ultra-generic EQ/WoW gameplay, that that bit of balance for the Fed's will be going down the shitter in the coming months, though.
On that note, I checked out the Fed carrier and compared its stats to the Vo'Quv, which is the closest mirror of it in game for the moment. It seems pretty good. It loses 1000 crew members but has better shield stats, and has all of the inherents of the Vo'Quv. Which means it comes with a +10 to aux power on top of the + shield power and the inherent boost over the Vo'Quv's shield modifier. And it has sub-system targeting just like a science ship and the Vo'Quv does, too.
Assuming the fighters it comes with aren't completely shitty (A possibility, since they say they're going to start selling small craft in the C-Store.), this means it is in every way, shape, and form, better then the science ships in game at the moment. There is quite literally no reason to run a science vessel except for liking the look of it, since carriers on both sides do everything better.
Only thing I can't compare is the impulse modifier. Which is apparently hidden in the in game shop. I'm assuming since the logic of the game is that "smaller ship=weaker hull", it should be more maneuverable than a Vo'Quv. If someone could confirm that that would be great.
Edit: Also, the Vo'Quv has like 42K hull, while the Fed ship has about 40.5K.
The new fighters look nice.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
Steam, Planetside 2
Phaser lance is a decent gimmick, but i never find it to be a game changer or anything.
they said it would still fire, but be more of a space shot gun then a spear.
What about it is? Looks like the Fed carrier trades a bit of crew for more shield defenses. Which are what really count in terms of ship defenses in this game.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
It's a pittance, though.
If you lose your shields at the end game you're pretty much fucked either way, unless you're running at normal difficulty.
Given how they completely fucked the Defiant's usefulness by giving it raider-like stats without an in combat cloak, I can't help but think there's some horrible hitch here they're not telling us about. Like the fighters only allow one wing out a time compared to the To'Duj's two fighter wings. Or they have crap weaponry loadouts.
Okay. That's ingenious.
Edit: Discovered the catch. The default fighter ship doesn't have a torpedo launcher. It drains aux power instead and can cloak. However they've put blue tier (IE: Much better.) ships up for sale on the market for dilithium. Including Peregrines, and all the shuttle types. Can't really tell "how" they're better then the green versions yet, though. Need to investigate a bit.
Edit: Might as well use this space anyways.
So here's what I found out about the new space pets. They completely redid the system for small deployable craft. Normal craft are available in all types for both factions for energy credits. The exception is the Catian carrier pet type, and the special hangar pets for some KDF C-Store ships. These, you need to own the ships to buy their normal and advanced versions.
To give you an idea how awesome some of these blue tier pets look:
That bolded part just screams "There is no kill, like overkill!" if you know how fighters work. You can deploy three wings per usage. With a max of 12 fighters in the field at a time. Current fighters appear to use micro photon torpedoes. Not so much the new ones. Unless the damage was scaled down for their quantums, then this is a huge efficiency boost for fighters.
Also, there's several new ship types for the Federation only.
There's fighters, which are agile but easily killed. People know how they work already.
Then there's shuttles. Which appear to be a middle ground between fighters and runabouts. There's only one shuttle type up that I see so far. A Type 10 Shuttle. Which is basically the crap small craft ship you get if you can't afford to make/obtain a better small craft when piloting one in-game. The Type 10 looks absolutely shitty. It has only a phaser array. No real gear or abilities to it that I can see from the displayed stats. Its advanced version is pretty much the same. Curiously, it costs the same as the rest.
Then, there's runabouts. They claim to be the hardest to kill, but have less maneuverability. However, their advanced versions have some neat effects.
I'll post a few here:
You can only deploy 2 runabouts in a wing and have two wings out per slotted ship type in your hangar, like the rest of the ships.
Then there's a shield repair drone you can buy. The normal one has "weak hull" listed as a trait of it. The blue version has "reinforced hull" as its trait.
Edit: Just checked my in game To'Duj fighters. They have disruptor pulse cannons, and micro photon torpedoes. So i'm assuming that the advanced versions are incredibly awesome. I think I saw that To'Duj fighters come with a turret equipped, in fact. Also, better torpedoes.
and while the Runabouts probably have more hp then the fighters/shuttles, I doubt they will be anything close to the 31k hp or whatever the BoP has
I made a quick messy compare for the Green/blue for the Fed side carrier pets. (Someone can do the KDF? my print screen button is busted lol)
The Dill store Fighters are 30,250 dill in cost each they bind on pickup.
(this is about 100 c-store points in value)
On the test server, the Fed fighters bind on pickup, but they forgot to update the KDF ones to match (and on live server you can mail the white ones to your fed toon already which will turn green)
so there's a chance they will change that when the patch goes live on thursday, making the the KDF ships bind on pickup like the fed ones (to stop fed players from getting them to use) so if you mailed them to yourself in advance, a chance we can use KDF ones on Fed ships (which will just drive KDF players up the wall)
Steam, Planetside 2
Doing this right now. Also noticed that the Kar'fi frigates are not bind on pickup at the moment, so if you own the Kar'Fi, you can transfer them to your Fed toons on the off chance they open it up to all carrier types.
If this actually works i'm going to give my ship one of each phaser type and full BoP's (I don't have the Kar'Fi. Though you can buy the ships off of the exchange.) in every hangar slot.
Assuming they don't make them faction specific, I shall name my illustrious NX class carrier ship the: "U.S.S. Taste the Ragebow".
Depends. I use a Kar'fi, in pve you can use all pets. The dps ranking (with the old pets) is To'Duj->Fer'Jai Frigate->S'Kul Fighters.
The S'Kul Fighters are doing kamikaze runs, the Frigate should outdmg the fighters but suffer from the bad pet AI with the dual cannons so the do worse dmg.
For the elite stf missions vs. the tactical cub the power siphon drones are excellent. In PvP only the Frigates are useful, because a FAW would kill the fighters.......
Overall the dmg from the pets is not that hot. My dps parser shows in a stf fight the add ~10-15% overall dmg.
From the blue (store) pets the new pets should do ~5% more dmg............
Assuming you mean the carrier and ship update, and not the possibility of smuggling ships cross faction, then yes, it's very good actually.
Assuming these new advanced ships are not scaled down from their effectiveness to be around the current ships effectiveness (Essentially creating a dilithium sink for carrier pilots, in that case.), then all carrier pilots are getting a huge efficiency buff for only 30K per ship.
The current fighters for the KDF, for example, use disruptor pulse cannons and micro photon torpedoes. The advanced version is some kind of mass murdering monster that comes equipped with a rapid fire set of cannons, a turret, and quantum torpedoes. Which given the nature of fighter strike groups, is like giving a rapid firing nuclear missile launcher to every fighter, drone, and bomber in the U.S Naval Fleet in terms of what sort of comparative firepower they can output.
This gets scaled up even further with Peregrine fighters. Which seem to frontload a simply terrifying amount of firepower into the advanced version. They have pulse cannons, actual escort style cannons on top of that, and quantum torpedoes. Apparently these things were the ships they were fielding in DS9, only with the era advancements applied to them. Since they made a big deal of the Federation getting the idea from THE SISKO to slap a bunch of guns on a small ship in that show.
And it should be noted that the initial attack run on a carrier is, if done properly, basically the fighters lining up and dropping every munition they have in a straight line on one facing. Given that carriers (And even this new Fed one.) can be turned into a sort of Battlestar/offensive command ship, this means that a carrier built off of stripping shield facings with turrets and creative power set ups can pretty much wreak bloody havoc now. And they were already pretty terrifying before since there's nothing stopping you from just respawning your current fighters to target a specific facing quickly and easily. Never mind the huge damage boost they potentially have.
Then you have the new ship types.
Runabouts are basically light gunboats that can deploy powers while fighting. And the new changes to Orion ships means you can quite literally play a pirate now, since Slavers can actually steal commodities and EC from ships. Doubly so if you use the advanced version. Previously, Slavers were shit all useless compared to the glory that was a To'Duj fighter swarm opening up on something with a dozen torpedoes and cannons. Now there's actually a use for them. Though the (insanely powerful looking) firepower To'Duj's have is making them look pretty appealing too.
Likewise, the advanced version of the Catian fighter may not have the sheer outward firepower of the Peregrines, but they'd be great for using with a long range strike craft build built around supporting other ships. There's no rule when assigning targets for your ships to launch long range strikes on, that says you have to do it within 10KM of your ship. So you can launch the fighters, hit a mask energy to go invisible, then give them attack or escort orders (For another ship.). Then watch a player panic as 12 armed fighters come out of stealth, disable their aux power and ability to turn, and completely lock the ship down until they're killed.
Even more notably, the system they've made seems to hint at the capacity to vastly expand the deployable craft system. Since now they can start looking at adding in proper usable shuttle bays for every applicable Fed ship.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
Not only does PS get nerfed, but GW gets a buff.
PS was already shunned by most end-gamers as a less-useful Sci skill than GW, but this might put the last nail in the coffin.
Gonna start saving for my respec token now, methinks.
"Yes, there are plans to introduce Federation flight deck duty officers through several different means. There are also new alternate flight deck officer active roster abilities already in the pipeline.
Neither of these, however, will come out with the new carrier, but at some point after."
May 3-9: Devidians - Ophidian Cane
May 10-16: Remans - Reman BO
May 17-23: The 2800 - Shard Of Possibilities
May 24-30: Breen - Breen BO
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
It really killed my flow to have to finish an episode, then do some fleet events or hope borg invaded my sector before I could get to the next one.
Behance Portfolio I Amazonian I PSN- Subtle_Ties | 3DS: 3840-5210-2008 (Subtle)
We hit a "patrol" mission the other day, just randomly trying things to get the XP needed for his next level...one of those where you just travel to a random system, blow up a few ships, and you're done. If I remember right, the XP was about the same as a standard story mission. I don't know if it was just that one and we happened to find it or if they're all like that. But if they are, that's how we're going to be filling in the gaps, because it was pretty easy (really everything is easy when you're working with another player).
Steam, Planetside 2
Granted its no where as bad as having to grind dse's uphill both ways in the snow like during release
I don't think the bonuses actually give xp, but rather they give you extra XP when you earn some by killing things. Not sure if they apply to mission rewards.
Keep an eye out for the Mirror universe events, they give a shit load of exp and you can do several each time it comes on.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
pretty sure the Akira was supposed to launch peregrines as well