Uh oh, I may have broken down and actually reinstalled this. I may still not play due to how much has changed, but we'll see.
Quick question though, is there a reason why the KDF and Fed fleets haven't merged into an armada? or are those more trouble than they are worth? or just a matter of fleet admirals all gone?
Edit: NVM I see the House of M'rch joined into a KDF armada
Fed and KDF fleets cant be in the same armadas currently due to technical reasons that the devs insist will be fixed "season after next." Likely the same reason that Romulans still have to permanently commit to one side or the other, despite the story explanation for that being moot now that the Khitomer Accords are back in effect.
Note: "Season after next" is Cryptic's version of Blizzard's "soon" or Valve's "when it's ready," and basically means "Probably not while you still care."
Hevach on
0
SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
Cobell, just a heads up that the skill system is totally (well in interface terms mostly) changing on Tuesday, bear that in mind when relearning the ropes! During the transition we'll get automatically reset, and get an additional respec token on top, which might be enough to be going on with. If you want to, you can play around on the test server to get a feel for how things will move/test specs without fear. You can find details on how to copy your character(s) to Tribble here
I'll spend my time seeing about actual gameplay and if I can get into the many new missions, reputations, and crafting that have been added.
What's end-game itemization like now? Is rep gear still the end-all-be-all? Like it used to be all about getting like stf (or other rep gear) and fleet gear.
Oh good, the next lockbox is Nazis. Like, literally.
0
SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
Rep gear is still pretty good, but there a lot of free sets from episode playthroughs that are competitive as well now, including weapon sets. Fleet gear has somewhat fallen by the wayside and most of the raw power in items comes from upgrading their mark and rarity (which also provides the main Dil sink these days).
Mark upgrading isn't that prohibitive, and gives most of the upgrade oomph. Each mk upgrade gives a chance at a quality upgrade, and once you get to max mk the chance grows until eventually you get it one way or another. So quality upgrading can take quite a while, but it also gives the samller benefit for it.
Reputations aren't quite as "required" as they used to be. You're limited to 4 space passives, 4 ground passives, and 4 active powers (upgradeable to 5 each through the science lab fleet holding), instead of getting 2 of each passive and the active from every reputation all the time. So there's a lot more room to shop around for what you actually want.
They've only recently broken the old "loop" through Romulan/Sphere/Delta content to hit all the reputations for their daily bonuses, the newest one is centered over in Cardassian space, so reputation progress is still fairly smooth. Season 11.5 isn't adding a new reputation, so the Terran queue stuff will stay active for a while, so you can hit them while doing the loop.
Crafting is a very long (but also trivially cheap if you stick to the research projects at the bottom of the list). It goes to level 20, but the last unlocks are at 15 and the stuff you'll probably use the most is at 10, and 10 is a pretty easy grind in it once you unlock a few project slots.
Admiralty is great - completely self contained and hands-off. It takes a lot more forethought to set up your deploys than with doffs (you'll never have enough ships to just churn admiralty all day, requirements are cumulative and not per-slot, and don't actually have to be filled - filling them guarantees success and overfilling them cranks up critical chance, but you can send a Delta Flyer off alone to attempt a mission that a Voth Citadel probably can't handle even if you sent the Assimilated Enterprise-E and Harry Fucking Kim with it). It can be fiddly, and if you don't like doffing it's doffing but with ships and you can't just let Elisa Flores make all the decisions. But it's still great because of the next point:
Specializations are basically additional skill trees once you finish the regular one, you get to set two, but only get the top half of the second. So like reputations, you don't need to fill what you don't actually want to use. If your ground strategy is heavily based on constructs or science powers, the whole Commando tree can go suck a dick, for example. Specializations were hell on earth prior to S11 because it takes 150k exp per point, you can't respec (because there's no cap on points, you can fill every node of every spec, so all mistakes are temporary), and a typical elite mission will only net you about 10k, a full rack of doff assignments will be lucky to give you 20k. However, a full set of admiralty deploys can easily get you 50k+, and the repeatable chain in the Fed campaign gives several spec points every time you finish it, completely skipping the exp bar.
Thanks for the info all. Now it's time for me to agonize over what ship(s) if any I want to try.
0
SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
I've been eyeballing the Federation flagship bundle pretty hard lately. Some lovely spacebarbie, great layouts and even good traits and usable consoles. Hopefully I can get enough dil-zen together to make a decent dent by the time the (almost certain but not confirmed ofc) summer sale rolls around.
I really need to pay more attention to the development of STO, an entirely new skill system shouldn't sneak up on me from one day to the next like that.
I really need to pay more attention to the development of STO, an entirely new skill system shouldn't sneak up on me from one day to the next like that.
I'm finally getting into the swing of space again, so a quick question on ground kits. Is there any reason to keep the old pre-modular ones?
The last kits I have are a mix of super old mk xii fleet ones and some random mk x's for fun. Should I just replace these with abilities I want with any random mk x+ kit I find/buy now?
Cobell on
0
SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
Nope. At least if there is, I've not encountered it.
I know at least a few of the fleet ones can be traded in for equivalent versions of the new kits, might be worth checking with the vendor you originally got the kit from, save you from wasting credits on a lower mark kit.
The new kits can stack all the slots with max-rank abilities and come with stat bonuses. Plus, they allow you to equip a handful of modified kit modules from FE's, reps, and lockboxes. For example, there's a tactical module called Active Immunity Grenade, which is basically a photon grenade but leaves a patch on the ground that inflicts a DOT on anyone who got missed in the explosion.
0
SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
edited April 2016
If anyone is interested and not been following the news tickers there are a few things worth paying attention to this weekend.
First up is an Upgrade Weekend, all upgrade kits (apart from some mission reward ones) apply double tech points, which makes things cheaper and also more efficient for upgrading rarity.
Next is a 20% off ship sale, as far as I can tell, everything is 20%, including the new T6 flagships.
Lastly the ship sale is being accompanied by a 15% zen sale, which is a first I think? There's a few restrictions on what counts for the bonus, but they are listed here It says Steam wallet counts, but I have heard conflicting things in the past, I'll be able to confirm when I get round to trying it later. *update* Steam Wallet does get the 15% bonus.
Are key bind load files still a thing that works? I haven't been able to get any game bindings loaded via a file to work. Note the same commands will work just fine if I manually cut/paste and bind them in-game.
It's definitely the right directory as I've tried a few tests of save bindings and my load file is in the same directory.
0
SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
The 50th anniversary of Star Trek is here, and I couldn’t be more excited to announce our contribution to the celebration: Agents of Yesterday, the third full expansion to Star Trek Online!
Agents of Yesterday will allow players to create a new captain in Star Trek: The Original Series era and will set them on an adventure featuring classic story lines, locations, celebrities, and era-appropriate starships. In 2269, the year following the third season of the original series, the player will adventure with Walter Koenig, reprising his role of Chekov, and Chris Doohan, filling in for his father as Scotty. There is a new threat to the security of the Federation, and they are invading with hopes of overwhelming the past to destroy our future.
In addition to the ability to create a brand new Star Trek: The Original Series Starfleet captain, we will be introducing a new episode arc for players of every faction, the Temporal Initiative Resistance Reputation, a Temporal Operative Primary Specialization along with brand new Bridge Officer powers. Players who create their captains during the first six weeks of launch will also be able to participate in the new Temporal Agent Recruitment system for bonus personal and account-wide rewards, a new iteration of the popular Delta Recruitment system that released a year ago. This release is packed with content to keep you engaged in the classic Star Trek: The Original Series era - and beyond.
There isn’t a better way to continue to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Star Trek: The Original Series than by creating a Starfleet captain and engaging in some amazing adventures in that classic period.
This is only the first of many blog posts with detailed information on everything that’s shipping with Agents of Yesterday, so stay tuned and I’ll see you in game!
Ok, that ship pack is sexy. The T6 versions of the TOS line have a very Enterprise-J-but-not-insanely-huge look to them. I saw the leak earlier today and was wondering if T5 TOS styled ships meant T5U TOS ships, but sounds like the whole TOS thing is a separate... uh... thing? I guess?
By the sounds of it, TOS era is going to be a fourth faction, not an extension on the existing Fed faction. Existing Feds get the same stuff Klingons and Romulans get, the new mission arc, reputation, and specialization.
I'm still not sure how all this is going to work with the Kingons and Romulans though, seems like they are being a bit sidelined.
Oh this is glorious!
As a side note, I hope that maybe they follow this up with the same kind of treatment for the TMP era. The connie refit is my absolute favorite ship in anything ever made.
DarkMecha on
Steam Profile | My Art | NID: DarkMecha (SW-4787-9571-8977) | PSN: DarkMecha
Thinking about it, that ship line looks a lot like the way they did the Romulan line - with a different class at each rank and then a run of retrofits at the top.
I'm wondering if this is how it works:
So, TOS characters are clearly a "fourth faction" (maybe not in the same sense of the current three, but wording does say that they have to be created as TOS characters separate from modern ones, suggesting a faction-like implementation) and are suggested to be temporal agents. This isn't an internal prequel so much as a parallel thread in the current time travel storyline.
So my theory:
TOS characters aren't segregated, 2269 is effectively a new quadrant where the TOS faction has their faction campaign. Those T6 ships are their future-tech ships for when they join the endgame.
Meanwhile, that 2269 sector block would presumably be the main setting for that new all-factions episode arc - a return trip for TOS and a first major foray for other factions (though we did go there briefly in the Dividian arc).
If true, this suggests that existing Fed characters aren't getting *any* of those ships, they're all for the new TOS faction.
Their release timing kind of throws a wrench in speculation, too. First, season 11.5 comes out not a the usual mid-season release (January/February around the anniversary), but at the usual major season release time. Now the expansion is coming in the summer, normally a mid-season update window with a major season update in October/November just before the Winter event.
Hevach on
0
SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
Probably the UI backend as well, since the UI's responsiveness has always been an issue.
Hevach on
+2
SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
Yeah the lighting changes are specifically mentioned as coming. Those UI backend tweaks are sorely needed as well though, hearing all your fans crank up when you open the doff menu is a bit disconcerting.
Early dev blogs for the expansion seem to confirm my theory on the TOS faction - it's being called the Temporal Faction and only starts in the 23rd Century, their storyline takes them "from the 23rd Century to the 28th Century to 2410."
They've subtly let slip that the Tribble test is limited to gold/lifetime accounts, just like Legacy of Romulus.
Part of me wonders if you'd even want to. STO is the most spell-heavy MMOs I've played, and I played affliction and demonology as a warlock in WotLK. It seems to me like the limitations of console input would heavily inform build decisions.
Ok, STO may be pulling the most hilarious retcon ever. So, remember in Enterprise, when Archer went forward in time and Daniels showed him the Battle of Procyon V from a random deck on the Enterprise-J? Nerds have obsessed ever since that the battle was being fought by 23rd and 24th Century ships and the Dauntless, which was never actually a Starfleet ship. Writers said that Starships are built to last and because even hull strength is a product of energy production a successful hull design can last forever, and the Dauntless was an effective design for transwarp travel so Starfleet adopted its hull shape. The real reason was Enterprise had dick for an effects budget and they blew five episodes worth of it every time Daniels opened his fancy hololaptop.
Well, part of the expansion's content is a Procyon V queue mission, where players will be taking (among others) the exact same ships seen, up to and including the Dautless, to take part in the battle.
Part of me wonders if you'd even want to. STO is the most spell-heavy MMOs I've played, and I played affliction and demonology as a warlock in WotLK. It seems to me like the limitations of console input would heavily inform build decisions.
For me I'd hope they'd simplify space combat so you don't have a bunch of spammy buttons, but I can almost imagine they'll just require you to have a Keyboard plugged in.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
No shipwank pictures yet, but the next lockbox is called "Kelvin Timeline Lockbox" and contains "Kelvin Timeline" ships for plus what a lot of people (including the people on the leak subreddit) are reading as a cross-faction ship, but which I believe is actually for the TOS faction.
It's not entirely clear what's going on here, but "Kelvin Timeline" would seem to refer to the new movies, since the destruction of the Kelvin is supposed to mark the split point of the timelines.
The rumor (emphasis: This is a rumor, not a leak):
Klingon "Kelvin Timeline D4x Bird-of-Prey" is the "Klingon Warbird" from the 2009 film.
Romulan "Kelvin Timeline T'laru Intel Carrier Warbird" is the Narada (it has a mining laser emitter), possibly pre-Borgification
"Kelvin Timeline Heavy Command Cruiser" is either the USS Kelvin or the JJprise for either the 2409-Fed faction or the new TOS-Fed faction (I suspect TOS).
"Kelvin Timeline Intel Dreadnought Cruiser" is the USS Vengeance - this is the one people seem to think is cross-faction, but I believe this one goes to the other Fed faction. 2409 if I'm right about the KTHCC.
Anyway, what makes this interesting is that Cryptic's rights have never extended to the new universe before - they got some limited use of material from the Countdown comics to reconcile their 2409 timeline with the reboot, but nothing from the films themselves.
Now, they might be pulling a licensing cheatcode like they did with the Tal'Shiar lockbox - none of the ships are actually from the movies, just vaguely reminiscent of the styles, and they're vague enough about where they come from that everybody KNOWS where they came just the same (like the nanopulse totally-not-lightsabers). Or they could have a cut a one-time cross promotion deal with Paramount to help build up the hype train for Beyond and the new series. Or, just maybe (and I'm not sure this is a good thing*) Paramount got their head out of their ass and realized that they're not doing that great of a job licensing their property.
*-There's a lot of crap in the new movies, but there's also a lot of crap in the series and the old movies, and Cryptic has done a remarkable job of redeeming a few of the turds (Harry Motherfucking Kim single handedly upstaged all the good characters of Voyager and Neelix and is still my favorite voiced character in the game). They've also done a good job of smearing some of the turds around, and as much as I love the Lasersaurus Rex the Voth are still kinda dumb whenever they stop shooting and open their mouths.
Hevach on
0
SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
I look forward to the vocal base of people blaming the "Tide of Shitty JJTrek" on "Dumbing down for the Console audience" and how it's all "not real Trek*"
*Real Trek (tm) varies by user and seems to be "what I want and fuck anyone else's idea of what's balanced and entertaining"
Still, if it pans out it seems like a sensible idea for Paramount at least.
So I dropped the $15 to try out AoY on Tribble, and... I'm actually kind of impressed.
All the 23rd Century missions have a slight film grain effect that some people are bothered by but which I kind of like - even back-in-time missions like the Devidian missions have this added. I like it, but some players complain about headaches, but I think that may be the lighting engine changes - right now lighting kind of flickers from dim to intense with camera moves kind of like Skyrim but with STO's existing overintense effects, and it's now always pleasant.
The tutorial for the TOS faction is unique in that you don't come into command tragically like the other three factions.
A mission goes sideways, but you and the crew pull it off with the help of the Enterprise. Things go so well the captain is promoted to admiral, the first officer gets his own command and a shiny new ship, and you're given command of the old ship. Celebrations all around, and may I note that Captain Garrett's office isn't adjacent to the bridge, but across the hall from the ship's bar, clearly this motherfucker knows how to celebrate.
The TOS faction's home sector is basically a forth quadrant. Right now there's no connection between it and 2410 and it's sparse for mission doors, but it covers a 3x3 block of Beta Quadrant sectors bounded on the top by Teneebia and Vendor and on the bottom by Orion and Japori. The galaxy map is a more colorful stylized fare, but it still has the same cartography in the actual view.
Gorn, Klingons, and Feds now have full-range TOS ground and space units with show appropriate weapons and costumes. When a TOS Gorn throws a rock at you, it bounces off hilariously because it's clearly made of rubber just like the Taurean spears. I haven't met Romuans yet, so I can't tell you about them, but judging from the mission hookups on the map they'll probably show up.
The TOS campaign starts out cheesy as fuck - giant monsters that are clearly guys on stilts with bad makeup throwing giant spears that I shit you not wobble like they're made of foam rubber, animations that are so perfectly mistimed or just stretched out that half second longer than they need to be that it has to be intentional. It initially felt sloppy and unfinished, which seemed weird with how well integrated many other things were, these missions didn't feel like Cryptic's usual "half done" content.
Pretty early on, though, you start dealing with Nakhul temporal incursions, and it becomes very clear that somebody involved has a giant raging nerdboner for Trials and Tribbleations, because even though in-timeline stuff retains the TOS-style wacky hijinx, you more and more are outside that engaging in more serious events with darker themes overlayed on this background of 1960's WTF. In-timeline events keep the weird production "errors" like mistimed or overdone animations while incursion related events lose this and fall into STO's more familiar style, making it feel even more like everything is being done on purpose.
An example of the film grain effect, as well as a look at the starter ship (Utility Cruiser). Also, yes, that is a TOSified Negh'var, the D9 Battlecruiser.
It's still not entirely clear how the fourth faction is actually getting integrated into the game - Cryptic's given incompatible answers in different interviews, in one case saying that TOS-Feds have their own tier 1-5 ships but share a T6 ship pool with 2409-Feds, in another saying TOS-Feds have an entirely separate ship pool with a couple shared ships like the TOS Connie as a premium tier 1 ship, and either way leaves open how they tie into fleets and the endgame. However, with the missions on Tribble so far, I'm enjoying it. Lots of room to screw things up at a systems level, but the single player content is going to be enjoyable at least.
Edit: Romulans do have TOSified ships, with the T'liss as their frigate. Just like in the show, they have their own version of the Klingon D7 as their cruiser.
I look forward to the vocal base of people blaming the "Tide of Shitty JJTrek" on "Dumbing down for the Console audience" and how it's all "not real Trek*"
*Real Trek (tm) varies by user and seems to be "what I want and fuck anyone else's idea of what's balanced and entertaining"
Still, if it pans out it seems like a sensible idea for Paramount at least.
I don't mind abit of JJ Trek stuff getting added to STO for fun, but personally I do not consider it real Star Trek. (Real Trek for me means nearly anything Star Trek that JJ Abrams has nothing to do with.) I watched the first JJ Trek movie and absolutely hated every minute of it. I refuse to watch anything else associated with it.
That said I don't think it'd be fair to say that the game is being dumbed down for consoles or something because of that. I mean it's the same game right, just on consoles? I'm sure they can make the controls work fine somehow. A Realm Reborn did controller based MMO gameplay quite well, so well that when I played it I preferred a controller even though I was on PC.
DarkMecha on
Steam Profile | My Art | NID: DarkMecha (SW-4787-9571-8977) | PSN: DarkMecha
The previews of the console UI are promising - there's some kind of "keybind" system where you can still set up a bunch of things to fire by mashing a single button, and everything else is off some kind of radial menu with four things immediately ready at any given time.
If they were thrown in the same map with a PC player they'd get their asses kicked, but they won't be, and STO's skill cap is pretty low, you can bring the hardest content in the game to farm status and still have room to tripple your performance.
As for JJ Trek... Right now, it looks like it's just shipwank (and that's assuming this isn't just a lot of wink-wink nudge-nudge like the Tal'Shiar lockbox's fake Narada). All the upcomming content is revolving around Enterprise (despite the TOS setting, it's heavily wrapped up in the Temporal Cold War) with the next big bad being the Sphere Builders.
But, if STO does enter that field in story terms, it's not automatically bad. They've dug some of their best stories out of Star Trek's worst material.
+1
SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
Personally I think it'd be neat if there was an option down the line to swap to the controller scheme if you wanted to on PC. (As a toggle) Pew pewing on a big TV would be neat and I don't own a console/wouldn't want to see my account unlocks go up in smoke.
If it works for Marvel Heroes, there *should* be a way to have a toggle implemented, but given the almost mythical state of Crypic's spaghetti code, who knows.
Posts
Quick question though, is there a reason why the KDF and Fed fleets haven't merged into an armada? or are those more trouble than they are worth? or just a matter of fleet admirals all gone?
Edit: NVM I see the House of M'rch joined into a KDF armada
Note: "Season after next" is Cryptic's version of Blizzard's "soon" or Valve's "when it's ready," and basically means "Probably not while you still care."
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
What's end-game itemization like now? Is rep gear still the end-all-be-all? Like it used to be all about getting like stf (or other rep gear) and fleet gear.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
Reputations aren't quite as "required" as they used to be. You're limited to 4 space passives, 4 ground passives, and 4 active powers (upgradeable to 5 each through the science lab fleet holding), instead of getting 2 of each passive and the active from every reputation all the time. So there's a lot more room to shop around for what you actually want.
They've only recently broken the old "loop" through Romulan/Sphere/Delta content to hit all the reputations for their daily bonuses, the newest one is centered over in Cardassian space, so reputation progress is still fairly smooth. Season 11.5 isn't adding a new reputation, so the Terran queue stuff will stay active for a while, so you can hit them while doing the loop.
Crafting is a very long (but also trivially cheap if you stick to the research projects at the bottom of the list). It goes to level 20, but the last unlocks are at 15 and the stuff you'll probably use the most is at 10, and 10 is a pretty easy grind in it once you unlock a few project slots.
Admiralty is great - completely self contained and hands-off. It takes a lot more forethought to set up your deploys than with doffs (you'll never have enough ships to just churn admiralty all day, requirements are cumulative and not per-slot, and don't actually have to be filled - filling them guarantees success and overfilling them cranks up critical chance, but you can send a Delta Flyer off alone to attempt a mission that a Voth Citadel probably can't handle even if you sent the Assimilated Enterprise-E and Harry Fucking Kim with it). It can be fiddly, and if you don't like doffing it's doffing but with ships and you can't just let Elisa Flores make all the decisions. But it's still great because of the next point:
Specializations are basically additional skill trees once you finish the regular one, you get to set two, but only get the top half of the second. So like reputations, you don't need to fill what you don't actually want to use. If your ground strategy is heavily based on constructs or science powers, the whole Commando tree can go suck a dick, for example. Specializations were hell on earth prior to S11 because it takes 150k exp per point, you can't respec (because there's no cap on points, you can fill every node of every spec, so all mistakes are temporary), and a typical elite mission will only net you about 10k, a full rack of doff assignments will be lucky to give you 20k. However, a full set of admiralty deploys can easily get you 50k+, and the repeatable chain in the Fed campaign gives several spec points every time you finish it, completely skipping the exp bar.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
lol, glad I wasnt the only one
The last kits I have are a mix of super old mk xii fleet ones and some random mk x's for fun. Should I just replace these with abilities I want with any random mk x+ kit I find/buy now?
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
Super late edit: I was able to exchange my existing Romulan ground kits for a new one.
First up is an Upgrade Weekend, all upgrade kits (apart from some mission reward ones) apply double tech points, which makes things cheaper and also more efficient for upgrading rarity.
Next is a 20% off ship sale, as far as I can tell, everything is 20%, including the new T6 flagships.
Lastly the ship sale is being accompanied by a 15% zen sale, which is a first I think? There's a few restrictions on what counts for the bonus, but they are listed here It says Steam wallet counts, but I have heard conflicting things in the past, I'll be able to confirm when I get round to trying it later. *update* Steam Wallet does get the 15% bonus.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
It's definitely the right directory as I've tried a few tests of save bindings and my load file is in the same directory.
My reaction is a solid eehhhhhhhhh but I am really not a big fan of the original series, prefer the movies.
There's also another one of those huge (and expensive) packs similar to the Delta and Romulan ones with themed ships and so on
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/game-pack/detail/918-temporal-special-agent-pack
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
and I'm glad they took this opportunity to put a bonaventure class in
I probably will pick that one up at some point
http://imgur.com/a/igCsq
I'm still not sure how all this is going to work with the Kingons and Romulans though, seems like they are being a bit sidelined.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
Oh this is glorious!
As a side note, I hope that maybe they follow this up with the same kind of treatment for the TMP era. The connie refit is my absolute favorite ship in anything ever made.
The new ships look awesome though!
I'm wondering if this is how it works:
So my theory:
TOS characters aren't segregated, 2269 is effectively a new quadrant where the TOS faction has their faction campaign. Those T6 ships are their future-tech ships for when they join the endgame.
Meanwhile, that 2269 sector block would presumably be the main setting for that new all-factions episode arc - a return trip for TOS and a first major foray for other factions (though we did go there briefly in the Dividian arc).
If true, this suggests that existing Fed characters aren't getting *any* of those ships, they're all for the new TOS faction.
Their release timing kind of throws a wrench in speculation, too. First, season 11.5 comes out not a the usual mid-season release (January/February around the anniversary), but at the usual major season release time. Now the expansion is coming in the summer, normally a mid-season update window with a major season update in October/November just before the Winter event.
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9956413-star-trek-online-coming-to-xbox-one-and-ps4
(Blogpost indicates some of the engine work will transfer back to the PC version, no detail beyond that regarding things like controller support)
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
Probably the UI backend as well, since the UI's responsiveness has always been an issue.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
They've subtly let slip that the Tribble test is limited to gold/lifetime accounts, just like Legacy of Romulus.
I wonder if they'll let you move your PC account stuff to your console of choice? I doubt it, but it would be nice.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Well, part of the expansion's content is a Procyon V queue mission, where players will be taking (among others) the exact same ships seen, up to and including the Dautless, to take part in the battle.
For me I'd hope they'd simplify space combat so you don't have a bunch of spammy buttons, but I can almost imagine they'll just require you to have a Keyboard plugged in.
pleasepaypreacher.net
It's not entirely clear what's going on here, but "Kelvin Timeline" would seem to refer to the new movies, since the destruction of the Kelvin is supposed to mark the split point of the timelines.
The rumor (emphasis: This is a rumor, not a leak):
Romulan "Kelvin Timeline T'laru Intel Carrier Warbird" is the Narada (it has a mining laser emitter), possibly pre-Borgification
"Kelvin Timeline Heavy Command Cruiser" is either the USS Kelvin or the JJprise for either the 2409-Fed faction or the new TOS-Fed faction (I suspect TOS).
"Kelvin Timeline Intel Dreadnought Cruiser" is the USS Vengeance - this is the one people seem to think is cross-faction, but I believe this one goes to the other Fed faction. 2409 if I'm right about the KTHCC.
Anyway, what makes this interesting is that Cryptic's rights have never extended to the new universe before - they got some limited use of material from the Countdown comics to reconcile their 2409 timeline with the reboot, but nothing from the films themselves.
Now, they might be pulling a licensing cheatcode like they did with the Tal'Shiar lockbox - none of the ships are actually from the movies, just vaguely reminiscent of the styles, and they're vague enough about where they come from that everybody KNOWS where they came just the same (like the nanopulse totally-not-lightsabers). Or they could have a cut a one-time cross promotion deal with Paramount to help build up the hype train for Beyond and the new series. Or, just maybe (and I'm not sure this is a good thing*) Paramount got their head out of their ass and realized that they're not doing that great of a job licensing their property.
*-There's a lot of crap in the new movies, but there's also a lot of crap in the series and the old movies, and Cryptic has done a remarkable job of redeeming a few of the turds (Harry Motherfucking Kim single handedly upstaged all the good characters of Voyager and Neelix and is still my favorite voiced character in the game). They've also done a good job of smearing some of the turds around, and as much as I love the Lasersaurus Rex the Voth are still kinda dumb whenever they stop shooting and open their mouths.
*Real Trek (tm) varies by user and seems to be "what I want and fuck anyone else's idea of what's balanced and entertaining"
Still, if it pans out it seems like a sensible idea for Paramount at least.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
All the 23rd Century missions have a slight film grain effect that some people are bothered by but which I kind of like - even back-in-time missions like the Devidian missions have this added. I like it, but some players complain about headaches, but I think that may be the lighting engine changes - right now lighting kind of flickers from dim to intense with camera moves kind of like Skyrim but with STO's existing overintense effects, and it's now always pleasant.
The tutorial for the TOS faction is unique in that you don't come into command tragically like the other three factions.
The TOS faction's home sector is basically a forth quadrant. Right now there's no connection between it and 2410 and it's sparse for mission doors, but it covers a 3x3 block of Beta Quadrant sectors bounded on the top by Teneebia and Vendor and on the bottom by Orion and Japori. The galaxy map is a more colorful stylized fare, but it still has the same cartography in the actual view.
Gorn, Klingons, and Feds now have full-range TOS ground and space units with show appropriate weapons and costumes. When a TOS Gorn throws a rock at you, it bounces off hilariously because it's clearly made of rubber just like the Taurean spears. I haven't met Romuans yet, so I can't tell you about them, but judging from the mission hookups on the map they'll probably show up.
The TOS campaign starts out cheesy as fuck - giant monsters that are clearly guys on stilts with bad makeup throwing giant spears that I shit you not wobble like they're made of foam rubber, animations that are so perfectly mistimed or just stretched out that half second longer than they need to be that it has to be intentional. It initially felt sloppy and unfinished, which seemed weird with how well integrated many other things were, these missions didn't feel like Cryptic's usual "half done" content.
Pretty early on, though, you start dealing with Nakhul temporal incursions, and it becomes very clear that somebody involved has a giant raging nerdboner for Trials and Tribbleations, because even though in-timeline stuff retains the TOS-style wacky hijinx, you more and more are outside that engaging in more serious events with darker themes overlayed on this background of 1960's WTF. In-timeline events keep the weird production "errors" like mistimed or overdone animations while incursion related events lose this and fall into STO's more familiar style, making it feel even more like everything is being done on purpose.
An example of the film grain effect, as well as a look at the starter ship (Utility Cruiser). Also, yes, that is a TOSified Negh'var, the D9 Battlecruiser.
It's still not entirely clear how the fourth faction is actually getting integrated into the game - Cryptic's given incompatible answers in different interviews, in one case saying that TOS-Feds have their own tier 1-5 ships but share a T6 ship pool with 2409-Feds, in another saying TOS-Feds have an entirely separate ship pool with a couple shared ships like the TOS Connie as a premium tier 1 ship, and either way leaves open how they tie into fleets and the endgame. However, with the missions on Tribble so far, I'm enjoying it. Lots of room to screw things up at a systems level, but the single player content is going to be enjoyable at least.
Edit: Romulans do have TOSified ships, with the T'liss as their frigate. Just like in the show, they have their own version of the Klingon D7 as their cruiser.
I don't mind abit of JJ Trek stuff getting added to STO for fun, but personally I do not consider it real Star Trek. (Real Trek for me means nearly anything Star Trek that JJ Abrams has nothing to do with.) I watched the first JJ Trek movie and absolutely hated every minute of it. I refuse to watch anything else associated with it.
That said I don't think it'd be fair to say that the game is being dumbed down for consoles or something because of that. I mean it's the same game right, just on consoles? I'm sure they can make the controls work fine somehow. A Realm Reborn did controller based MMO gameplay quite well, so well that when I played it I preferred a controller even though I was on PC.
The previews of the console UI are promising - there's some kind of "keybind" system where you can still set up a bunch of things to fire by mashing a single button, and everything else is off some kind of radial menu with four things immediately ready at any given time.
If they were thrown in the same map with a PC player they'd get their asses kicked, but they won't be, and STO's skill cap is pretty low, you can bring the hardest content in the game to farm status and still have room to tripple your performance.
As for JJ Trek... Right now, it looks like it's just shipwank (and that's assuming this isn't just a lot of wink-wink nudge-nudge like the Tal'Shiar lockbox's fake Narada). All the upcomming content is revolving around Enterprise (despite the TOS setting, it's heavily wrapped up in the Temporal Cold War) with the next big bad being the Sphere Builders.
But, if STO does enter that field in story terms, it's not automatically bad. They've dug some of their best stories out of Star Trek's worst material.
If it works for Marvel Heroes, there *should* be a way to have a toggle implemented, but given the almost mythical state of Crypic's spaghetti code, who knows.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO