I wonder if they're planning a move away from loot box "grand prize" ships and towards lobi-bought "extra premium" ships, since that would be easier to retool if a country or two outright bans loot boxes, and in the immediate term reduces the compulsive buying of hundreds of keys to chase 0.5% drops.
That makes sense. "Look! You get guaranteed progress in every box! It's nice and legal now, yes?"
I guess it also gives them the ability to be able to sprinkle in new ships and consoles here and there without needing to create an entirely new lockbox or shoehorning them into the Infinity/RnD packs.
I'm pretty sure this was the guide I used when I started out. It's a few years old but seems to still be accurate.
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SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
The only thing I think is missing from the guide (as they are more recent additions) is the new flavours of Fed Captain with the TOS and Discovery starts. These are essentially different tutorials (storywise) that drop you into the main game after a certain point, more or less in line with the other starts. Of note is that picking one of these changes things like the transporter and tricorder animations/sounds, and that can't be altered back to the default, so you might feel a little odd having a gold sparkle beam out (or love it). I've not played the Discovery version but I did really enjoy the TOS tutorial, it's very authentic, down to a film grain filter and iirc different combat music.
The Dominion start is much different as you start close to max level and it's designed for folk who are already familiar with the post 50 mechanics, you get a load of rep points, specialisation stuff and so on that would be overwhelming as a new player imo.
The discovery tutorial is a reskin of the standard Fed one, with a Cleave-class in place of the Negh'var and a different Denobulan captain. The Borg attack on Vega is a Klingon attack on... I think that might also have been Vega, because fuck Vega for some reason.
The thing it gets right is the different graphic style, like TOS uses. You also see it in the little slivers of Kelvin-timeline content, where there's a saturation filter over everything and lensflare everywhere. And when objects from different time periods or universes overlap, it goes full Trials and Tribbleations and nobody acknowledges that Klingons change their entire skull structure every 20-30 years. It's awesome and sometimes hilarious in the single player missions, but can get a little overwhelming in multiplayer with just how much mismatched nonsense can be going on.
The discovery tutorial is a reskin of the standard Fed one, with a Cleave-class in place of the Negh'var and a different Denobulan captain. The Borg attack on Vega is a Klingon attack on... I think that might also have been Vega, because fuck Vega for some reason.
The thing it gets right is the different graphic style, like TOS uses. You also see it in the little slivers of Kelvin-timeline content, where there's a saturation filter over everything and lensflare everywhere. And when objects from different time periods or universes overlap, it goes full Trials and Tribbleations and nobody acknowledges that Klingons change their entire skull structure every 20-30 years. It's awesome and sometimes hilarious in the single player missions, but can get a little overwhelming in multiplayer with just how much mismatched nonsense can be going on.
Mismatched nonsense is the best part of this game.
I once had an escort with all cannons firing different flavor of energy (used the 360' turrets in the back), might have had the Breen mine field torpedo, don't remember. She was pretty much the definition of sub-optimal, but I never got tired of launching a skittles barrage across space.
And hey, if half my crew were futuristic space monsters and the other half were wearing vintage TOS uniforms while carrying heavy weapons that should have been mounted on the outside of starship...
Mismatched nonsense is fun.
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SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
Meanwhile I'm moderately grumped by the fact that the phaser beam version of the gamma rep set is the right colour on normal fire but purple in special fire modes and it stands out like a sore thumb.
Ignore the fact that those same attacks also shoot lightning bolts occasionally
Are you talking about the MACO Battle Rifle? Might be a settings issue eating part of the effect but not all of it, I get an effect kind of like a Ghostbusters proton pack, with layers in orange and blue, a beam at the core and lightning around it.
Tried my best to get a screenshot, after a few tries I'm surprised how much happens in that effect for how short it is. The core beam shifts from white to orange, there's a wide orange aura for part of it, and the lightning goes from deep red to almost white. Somebody spent way too much time animating this weapon (but granted when it came out there were only about three or four unique ground weapons in the game).
Hevach on
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SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
Nah it's the space set omni beam, it's a nice proper orange on normal fire, but with Overload or FAW it's purple which is kind of stands out. It's a very minor gripe but still irks me a little
Ah, different set. I don't have that one. Gone through a few omni beams, but they like to steal my overload charges from my beam banks, so the only one that I stick with is the Borg cutting beam, since it doesn't use firing mode powers.
New charity pack up on Groupees. Somerville & Batlh (aka Magic Schoolbus) for $10. Great trait for SCIENCE! even if you don't want the ships themselves
New cutscene from the upcoming Kilingon tutorial revamp. Some pretty good work.
Edit: won't play embedded for me, but worth the clickthrough. Video includes a B'rel getting reverse-Rikered by a Galaxy and probably the best done cutscene battle the game's had.
Damn, that is some GOOD looking camera work and animation.
Peril over Pahvo is so mind-numbingly boring that I've started messing around with it and discovered a few things. Today, I equipped the Tethered Non-Baryonic Asteroid trait (from Discovery rep, I think?) and managed to drag a dreadnought + a few friends half way across the map with it where they promptly sat there for the rest of the time wondering WTF just happened. Totally worth it.
The "level" bar is only the first leveling system. The last level loops forever grinding points for a system with an effective cap of... I lost count a while ago but it's well north of 200 now. Then you've got commendations, fronts, tours of duty, tracks, reputations, holdings, facilities, endeavors, masteries, gear levels, gear tiers, and gear mods.
It’s Memorial Day Weekend, and that means our players in the US get an extra day to just stay home. What’s that? We’re all staying home anyway? Well, maybe we can sweeten the pot with a sale for you this weekend, how does that sound? From 5/21 @ 8am PT – 5/26 @ 10am PT, we’ll have two major sales going on in the C-store:
All items in Mudd’s Market, including the new Mudd’s Stealing Time Bundle, will be 50% off!
All Ships and Ship Bundles will be 20% off!
And that’s not all, Captains. There may be another, more secret sale happening this weekend, so keep an eye on startrekonline.com!
I have enough saved up to grab a T6 on sale but I don't know what else to buy and that concerns me greatly.
5/28 to 6/4 special event: all the red alerts active, any mark choice, and no cool down (already a crazy good event for leveling/marks/dilithium). In addition, 5 day grind for a specialization point and an ultimate tech upgrade (the ones that instantly max out an item's quality and level).
I get the sneaky tricks behind these daily "engagement" events, but still, for a short series of super easy missions, an ultimate tech upgrade is a huge reward.
Just finished the current event and the KIDD drone is pretty neat. It's I think the first always-out combat pet. Normally it doesn't do much. It has something like a full auto phaser, a shield drain, shield heal, and mines that it'll randomly use a few times a fight. When you activate it it splits into three pets (tac/sci/eng) and goes ham. Doesn't share a cooldown with device based pets like horta or Voth dinos or other kit pets like the last event reward or the TOS drones.
I recently started playing again and got my main up to 65, but currently in a small fleet of 2-4 with firends and finding its super hard to level up. Is the Fed fleet here pretty active as I didn't see any info on the first page about it other than the name. Thanks!
I just got finished binge watching Discovery over the weekend thanks to a free month long preview.
I'm curious, is the Section 31 drone carrier playable in the game? Or the smaller Section 31 ships? Not sure if they ever named them in the series beyond that.
The drone ship thing is playable...sort of. Like most ships anymore it's locked behind gambling boxes, so you either need VERY good luck with your keys or 500m-2b credits to buy one from The Exchange.
New ship, Kobayashi Maru-class for Federation, Tong'Duj-class for Klingons. Scale with level but stops at tier 4.
This is the reward for the next part of the big grind event, so it's free (probably why it stops at tier 4). No console or trait or any takeaway really, just a mediocre tier 4 ship with mismatched stats (weapons and turn rate of a tier 4 escort, console layout of a tier 3 science vessel, bridge layout of a tier 4 raider with a missing station). It's admiralty card is more interesting than the ship ever will be. Gold quality tier 4 with ok stats (47/13/30) and short turnaround, but +20 all stats per ship.
ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
I somehow got sucked back into this game. I played very early on and quit because life got crazy.
And now I'm back. Everything is confusing! I started a Romulan Captain. I'm at level 24 or so after a couple days.
First thing I'm really confused about. Do I not need to promote my bridge officers anymore? I thought I had to promote them in order to have access to their 2nd-4th abilities, but I've got a civilian on a lieutenant console and have access to their second ability... What is the point of promoting my bridge officers?
I've got so many more questions but I can't find a quick answer online.
Yeah, promotions are for training now, ground skills are open right out of the gate which makes Boffs way more powerful. I think space powers still need promotions?
Not letting me edit for some reason, but also, boffs don't forget the old skill when they learn a new one anymore. In the Stations screen you can freely change their powers to any they've previously learned, which greatly reduces the need to build a ridiculously large senior staff.
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ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
Yeah, promotions are for training now, ground skills are open right out of the gate which makes Boffs way more powerful. I think space powers still need promotions?
Space powers was what I was talking about. Promotions aren't needed for space powers anymore either.
ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
edited June 2020
Romulan ships are so fun. I picked up Ar'klif Tactical Warbird as my level 30 free ship since it looked to be much more maneuverable than the other ship.
I've been focusing on cannons (with one torpedo) in the front and using turrets in the aft. My number two is on a tactical console with cannons rapid fire III and my second tac console has an officer with cannons rapid fire I.
It is beautiful to come out of cloak, hit rapid fire III and watch literally anything I've targeted nearly instantly die in a literal hail of cannon shots. I then swap to the next target and do it again, then back to cloak and wait a few second and repeat.
Feels so good to finally be able to put together a build. Everything before this just felt kind of patched together with duct tape and glue based on whatever I'd looted. The setup I've got now isn't super put together, but I can't wait to hit endgame and start really building a ship and strategy.
Posts
I guess it also gives them the ability to be able to sprinkle in new ships and consoles here and there without needing to create an entirely new lockbox or shoehorning them into the Infinity/RnD packs.
Huge missed opportunity not including a set of five identical holographic bridge officers of different specializations.
The implants are already available and the dual rifles were a reward from Measure of Morality, so the ensemble is complete.
Are there any decent, up to date guide(s) you fine folks would recommend?
I'm pretty sure this was the guide I used when I started out. It's a few years old but seems to still be accurate.
The Dominion start is much different as you start close to max level and it's designed for folk who are already familiar with the post 50 mechanics, you get a load of rep points, specialisation stuff and so on that would be overwhelming as a new player imo.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
The thing it gets right is the different graphic style, like TOS uses. You also see it in the little slivers of Kelvin-timeline content, where there's a saturation filter over everything and lensflare everywhere. And when objects from different time periods or universes overlap, it goes full Trials and Tribbleations and nobody acknowledges that Klingons change their entire skull structure every 20-30 years. It's awesome and sometimes hilarious in the single player missions, but can get a little overwhelming in multiplayer with just how much mismatched nonsense can be going on.
Mismatched nonsense is the best part of this game.
I once had an escort with all cannons firing different flavor of energy (used the 360' turrets in the back), might have had the Breen mine field torpedo, don't remember. She was pretty much the definition of sub-optimal, but I never got tired of launching a skittles barrage across space.
And hey, if half my crew were futuristic space monsters and the other half were wearing vintage TOS uniforms while carrying heavy weapons that should have been mounted on the outside of starship...
Mismatched nonsense is fun.
Ignore the fact that those same attacks also shoot lightning bolts occasionally
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
Tried my best to get a screenshot, after a few tries I'm surprised how much happens in that effect for how short it is. The core beam shifts from white to orange, there's a wide orange aura for part of it, and the lightning goes from deep red to almost white. Somebody spent way too much time animating this weapon (but granted when it came out there were only about three or four unique ground weapons in the game).
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/11430823
I main a Science admiral in STO on Xbox and play with some buds in a Neverwinter clan on PS4, so the Dragonborn pack on it is a $40 discount.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
New cutscene from the upcoming Kilingon tutorial revamp. Some pretty good work.
Edit: won't play embedded for me, but worth the clickthrough. Video includes a B'rel getting reverse-Rikered by a Galaxy and probably the best done cutscene battle the game's had.
Peril over Pahvo is so mind-numbingly boring that I've started messing around with it and discovered a few things. Today, I equipped the Tethered Non-Baryonic Asteroid trait (from Discovery rep, I think?) and managed to drag a dreadnought + a few friends half way across the map with it where they promptly sat there for the rest of the time wondering WTF just happened. Totally worth it.
Took until...what am I...59? to happen. Also holy crap leveling is fast, I haven't even really been able to play much.
It's Progress Quest in playable form.
I have enough saved up to grab a T6 on sale but I don't know what else to buy and that concerns me greatly.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
I was hoping it would be a Lobi sale but I guess they had one of those fairly recently.
I get the sneaky tricks behind these daily "engagement" events, but still, for a short series of super easy missions, an ultimate tech upgrade is a huge reward.
Events that don't require you to wait around for minutes at a time until the next phase begins. What a concept!
I'm curious, is the Section 31 drone carrier playable in the game? Or the smaller Section 31 ships? Not sure if they ever named them in the series beyond that.
This is the reward for the next part of the big grind event, so it's free (probably why it stops at tier 4). No console or trait or any takeaway really, just a mediocre tier 4 ship with mismatched stats (weapons and turn rate of a tier 4 escort, console layout of a tier 3 science vessel, bridge layout of a tier 4 raider with a missing station). It's admiralty card is more interesting than the ship ever will be. Gold quality tier 4 with ok stats (47/13/30) and short turnaround, but +20 all stats per ship.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
The uniform has access to a set of much brighter colours than the Odyssey sets and actually looks pretty good imo
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
And now I'm back. Everything is confusing! I started a Romulan Captain. I'm at level 24 or so after a couple days.
First thing I'm really confused about. Do I not need to promote my bridge officers anymore? I thought I had to promote them in order to have access to their 2nd-4th abilities, but I've got a civilian on a lieutenant console and have access to their second ability... What is the point of promoting my bridge officers?
I've got so many more questions but I can't find a quick answer online.
Space powers was what I was talking about. Promotions aren't needed for space powers anymore either.
I've been focusing on cannons (with one torpedo) in the front and using turrets in the aft. My number two is on a tactical console with cannons rapid fire III and my second tac console has an officer with cannons rapid fire I.
It is beautiful to come out of cloak, hit rapid fire III and watch literally anything I've targeted nearly instantly die in a literal hail of cannon shots. I then swap to the next target and do it again, then back to cloak and wait a few second and repeat.
Feels so good to finally be able to put together a build. Everything before this just felt kind of patched together with duct tape and glue based on whatever I'd looted. The setup I've got now isn't super put together, but I can't wait to hit endgame and start really building a ship and strategy.