how do i get the next level of ship? Don't you qualify for new stuff every 10 levels? (or wait is it 51 and not 50? ugh it is isn't it)
After 50 you have three options really (well, four, but using the same ship you got at 40 as-is probably will not work that well) either use a ship upgrade token (700z, 4 for 2k, also on exchange) to upgrade a current ship to "tier 5 upgrade" status, where it gains an extra console slot and some other stuff. (This works for all ships of that class across your account) Or buy a tier 6 ship for 3k zen. T6 ships have the same console count as t5u ones, but also get a starship trait that can be unlocked and used on any other ship. Finally, lockbox ships like the Wells, Jem'hadar ships etc get a free upgrade to t5u. I don't know how this works with the mirror universe ships, but my gut says that they are exempt from the free upgrade?
All of these options give you a ship that sort of levels up as you go, gaining bonuses to things like shield strength, some inbuilt resists etc.
Of note are upgraded fleet ships, which apply the upgrade to all ships of that class and gain an extra console slot (for a total of 11) but remain a per-character non-reclaimable unlock the same as normal fleet ships are. (So you pay to upgrade the fleet tactical escort, it will always get upgraded to T5U across your account, but you would need to buy it on each character and it would need to re-purchase the ship, but not the upgrade if dismissed)
It's kinda hella complicated but the short version is that your can buy a token to upgrade what you are flying now, or buy a brand new boat if you want to.
Something to add above: The ships you get for free at level 40 are NOT eligible for the 700z upgrade token. Neither are ships from the fleet shipyard that don't require fleet modules or lockbox ships that aren't 10 consoles (except for the Kazon raider, which is eligible). Only ships that already had a paywall to get them can upgrade to tier 6: Everything off the fleet store and all 10 console ships from lockboxes or fleets.
If you're still flying the free level 40 ship, you'd have to get the fleet version and upgrade that, and since those ships also aren't eligible for the 1-module discount, that's the full 4 fleet modules.
Upgraded ships don't really gain that much compared to the tier 4 to 5 transition. A lot of hull and one console, but no shields, and no weapons. Especially with the second nerf to normal/advanced coming, the upgrade will be really optional as a free player. The paywall is still really shitty, though.
how do i get the next level of ship? Don't you qualify for new stuff every 10 levels? (or wait is it 51 and not 50? ugh it is isn't it)
No they short you that last ship to encourage you to spend zen and buy one. You have several options at this point. You can grind dilithium in game to exchange for zen to buy a c-store ship. It's time consuming but if you have several characters to grind on it's doable(albeit tedious) or you can plunk down some cash to buy the zen.
The summer/winter events have ships you can grind for. The winter event is coming up next month and will have several ships to choose from. Generally you grind out 25?ish days of dailies for an event token of some sort(for the winter event it's glossy photos of Q). Under your reputation tab there will be an entry for Events and you can start a project there using the event tokens. If you have multiple characters you want the ship for(or multiple ships you're going for) they made it easier to do that. Only 1 character has to do the full 25 dailies for a particular ship. After you've completed it once to unlock it you can obtain that ship on a second character by doing just 1 daily. If you have multiple characters then you can have them all working towards different event ships to unlock them so the others can claim theirs on the cheap.
There are also fleet ships that you can buy if you're in a Fleet with an upgraded Starbase. They cost fleet credits plus fleet modules(which cost zen or you can buy them off the exchange for energy credits).
C-store ships are account wide unlocks. Fleet ships are per character unlocks. There are some instances where you can get a discount on Fleet ships(like if you purchased the c-store version already).
There are also lockboxes in game that have a small chance to reward a ship. The keys to open them cost zen or you can buy them off the exchange for energy credits OR you can simply buy a lockbox ship itself for energy credits off the exchange. There's always a variety of them for sale. They're expensive though.
The new content patch introduced Tier 6 ships on the c-store. C-store and Fleet T5 ships can be upgraded to T5-U. They get some extra stats and stuff but are still a step below T6. The upgrades generally cost a token(which costs zen) but if you upgrade a ship once that unlocks the upgrade for that ship across your account. For example, you buy an Odyssey off the c-store. It's now unlocked and any of your Fed characters can claim one. You buy an upgrade token and upgrade it. All your other characters can now upgrade their Odyssey for free. Same thing with upgrading Fleet ships I believe. Once one character unlocks the upgrade on a particular ship all your others will be able to upgrade if they have that same ship. Event ships get a free upgrade. Lockbox ships don't seem to be upgradeable.
I expect Fleet T6 ships will be coming at some point soonish and going forward they're probably going to keep adding T6 ships.
Boffs = bridge officers. Doffs = duty officers. The duty officer system is a kind of mini-game within STO. There are a variety of ways to collect doffs(exchange, c-store, doff missions that reward more doffs, the academy personnel officer has missions for more doffs, some of the events have doffs you can buy, etc. It's kinda like Pokemon in that regard. Gotta collect 'em all. Why do you care about doffs? It's good exp and skill points for one. Some of the missions reward dilithium, R&D materials, etc. It's easy enough to get into but there's a lot of depth to the system. The missions that are available are somewhat random and change over time and/or based on location. As others mentioned there's another use for doffs. Under your Doff tab there's a thing for Active Space and Active Ground and you can assign some of your doffs to these slots(up to 5 for each). The reason for this? Each of the doffs have special abilities. Like there's a ground doff that has a chance to beam in additional security guys when your tactical character uses his security escort ability or there's a doff that has a chance to beam in additional turret when your Engineer summons one. Some of the ways in which these abilities interact can be game changers.
R&D: the new crafting system. Apparently the best way to get started once you've got some crafting mats is to pick one of the research lines, scroll to the bottom for the 20 hour research project, and do that. And keep doing it every time it's available for awhile. As you progress you'll unlock more research slots so you can have multiple R&D projects running at once. Eventually you get to make useful things. I guess after a certain point the R&D starts costing dilithium to progress or make anything? And some of the rare components can only be obtained from doing advanced STF's. I dunno. I haven't gotten that far with it yet.
Also, if you have questions about a particular ship or you're curious to know if it's worth buying feel free to ask here.
Short version: spend a lot of time grinding out dilithium, shell out some cash, or wait for a special event that has ships to grind for(that may or may not have one you like).
HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
ahah wow that's sucky, back at launch you definitely got it for free, looking into it now you only get it for free if you have a 600 day vet reward, sadly my account only ever got to 400 day before I realized i should stop paying for something I wasn't using.
so as part of a promo I have a 5U token but that means I still need to buy a ship. I don't mind throwing cryptic a few bucks so I can buy some zen but I have NO IDEA what to buy. I'm a tactical captain that tends to use cruisers an dturn them into heavy phaser boats (lots of broadsiding) with like 1 photon at the front. That's how I run my sovereign and it's pretty fun.
Any advice on what to do? I've been part of the PA fleet since it started, does that mean I can get fleet ships, whatever that means? Are they better? I don't get why this advanced ship stuff is so freaking complicated compared to the rest of the game
(oh also I somehow have i think a decent amount of dilithium, should I just sell that for zen?)
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SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
If ye like cruisers, I can recommend the Assault Crusier Refit, if you want something that is upgradeable, you would be able to drop your current build straight into it and go from there. It also comes with a torpedo that has a 180 degree firing arc which can be used on other ships. That said, the ACR is 2500 zen and the full t6 Guardian class is 3k so that might be an option. You could also look at the Fleet Advanced Heavy Cruiser Retrofit which comes to 2500 zen as well (5 modules, but modules are usually obtainable for 6-10m EC on the exchange). Fleet doesn't currently have access to the fleet version of the Assault cruiser, but eh that'll come along at some point.
For reference, I am currently in a Guardian class, which I bought for dilithium. I'm very happy with it, really like having a gravity well on top of the standard cruiser package, plus the couple of boff intel powers are quite nice.
HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
Ya i was looking at the assault cruiser refit, what happens to it when I apply the 5U token to it? I can't really figure out how different the 5U assault cruiser is from that Tier 6 Guardian dealey
I do like the new squid cruiser tier 6 (the eclipse), if I wasn't flying my phantom I'd definitely be rocking that. Its OOOHHHH SHIIIII button of stealing and damaging all ships around it is aces.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Rapid Repairs: Regenerates X.X Hull (1,5% of your current max) every 10 seconds in Space. Twice this is regenerated out of combat
Enhanced Hull Plating: +10 All Energy Damage Resistance Rating +10 Radiation Damage Resistance Rating
Armored Hull: +10% Hull Hitpoints
Desperate Repairs (Starship Trait)
So engineering or sci consoles vs the Guardian, does not get the Desperate repairs trait at mastery 5 (doesn't get anything at mastery 5). Also retains the original bridge officer layout so doesn't get the Lt Engineering/Intel hybrid seat that the Guardian has. Guardian also trades the LtCom Engineering for an LtCom science (ie the Sci and Engineering seating is swapped in the same way as the consoles are).
Guardian has .5 less turn rate as well, but coming from the AC refit I have not noticed this at all.
Afaik, using an upgrade token on a cstore ship just patches that ship to the upgrade version permanently, so any others you claim would just be U ships from that point.
SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
Of course then there is the Eclipse intel cruiser which is a bit more aggressive in terms of boff layout and mastery, but a bit squishier. (And can use all the other hull materials to make it look less..well...Tron)
I like the intelligence hulls, and if you own the other intelligence ships you can swap the nacelles independent of each other (so top and bottom on the eclipse). Which I like because while I love the avengers set up, I absolutely loathe its extremely limited customization options.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I like the intelligence hulls, and if you own the other intelligence ships you can swap the nacelles independent of each other (so top and bottom on the eclipse). Which I like because while I love the avengers set up, I absolutely loathe its extremely limited customization options.
Oh man...that sounds so sweet. Sort of like the Vestas I guess, but on 3 totally different ships?
Yeah I hope I'm explaining that properly. So like the eclipse, phantom, and scryer (I think thats the science ship?) all have unique nacelles, and all of them once you have them can swap to the others nacelles (personally on my phantom I have the eclipses nacelles for a very thing low profile). Since the eclipse has double nacelles (top and bottom stargazer style) you can change the top nacelles and bottom nacelles to be different from each other, so like have scryer up top and phantom on the bottom.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
oh god I only understand like half of everything people are saying. There are so many Tier 5 and 6 ships. At this point I think I need to Ignore the fleet stuff (cause oh god fleet marks? or whatever else?!) and just try to figure out what I need.
I've been mostly soloing so I need a lot of hitpoints it seems like and I'm sorta bad at managing all teh billion different abilities me and my crew have so ya just kinda sitting there and tanking with tons of phasers broadsiding people is my tactic heh
Tier 5:
So it seems like these are my Tier 5 options (and I'll stick the Upgrade token I have on whatever I buy)
Assault Cruiser Refit (ie Fancier Sovereign which I have now)
Odyssey Tactical Cruiser
Avenger Battle Cruiser
Dreadnought Cruiser
Now it seems to me that the Odyssey Tactical Cruiser has the most HP and Shields, has a nice spread of Consoles, and has a ok spread of Bridge Officers BUT nobody seems to be recommending it. (and I guess the Token does something, I'm unsure what going from 5 to 5U actually adds!)
Am I missing something?
Tier 6:
Eclipse Intel Cruiser
Guardian Cruiser
As suggested I think the Guardian fits my playstyle more but I'm not sure I want to spend the extra zen right now.
Actually, again unless i'm missing something, the Odyssey Tactical and the Guardian seem to have surprisingly similar stats. One thing I don't get is that the Tier 6 shisp seem to level with you from 50 to 60 and get better, do the 5U ships do that as well?
. One thing I don't get is that the Tier 6 ships seem to level with you from 50 to 60 and get better, do the 5U ships do that as well?
Sorry for all the questions guys
Ach it's all good, quite fun to throw this ball around occasionally.
The ship-levelling thing is what the Starship Mastery is, all T5U and T6 ships work their way through series of levels independent of their Captain, with a passive perk at each one. So in the case of the Guardian say (or more or less all the t5u cruisers) you get :
One thing that the Tier 6 ships get that rocks are intelligence officers bridge positions. They have some pretty damn nice skills like a generic energy weapon increase (slower firing but harder hitting so for like a single target cannon barrage you can pop it and not have to worry about power levels) or a pseudo cloak that lowers your threat and I believe gives you the +cloak damage bonus's.
On top of the t-6's all having the intelligence gathering debuff, that when you work with other intelligence ships can really decimate enemies (you have to tack a 15 stack of the debuff on an enemy ship between intelligence ships, once you do that all the int ships can dump a nasty debuff on the enemy like lowered damage resistance, weapons power or I believe engines).
And each tier 6 has a special console. The phantom gets a super powered phaser lance that either does more damage when an int debuff is applied or instantly lets you apply a debuff. The eclipse has an aoe shield strip/damage to all targets that super powers its own shields. I forget what the other 3 get.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
edited November 2014
lol I feel like all the answers to my questions just bring more questions, this game was not so complicated 3 years ago!
I think I'll stick with the 5U idea just so I don't need to pay as much (and I suppose I already have the upgrade token), if I find I really really get back into the game I can always get a 6 in the future.
So it sort sounds like I should just get the tier 5 version of the ship I already have (sovereign) and then apply the token to it. Is that dumb? Man I assumed once I hit 50 I'd get some huge monstrosity of a ship that I see people flying around!
Upgrading is a good idea if you like the look and feel of a ship. Though one difference between 5-u's and the 6's, the 6's get an aditional trait that can be generally applied to your character after you complete it (so finishing the phantom grants you a trait you can slot up on your general character) I believe only the Tier 6's have this.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Actually, again unless i'm missing something, the Odyssey Tactical and the Guardian seem to have surprisingly similar stats. One thing I don't get is that the Tier 6 ships seem to level with you from 50 to 60 and get better, do the 5U ships do that as well?
Sorry for all the questions guys
Not to worry!
Okay, first thing's first. Just remember that the hitchhiker's guide the galaxy offers pertinent advice for this situation. That advice being "Don't Panic."
Here's some quick facts about the two ship types presented in point form for ease of digestion (preferably with french fries):
- Both the T5U and T6 ships level with you from 50 to 60. Both ship types gain hull/shield points and unlock bonuses as you level them up.
- The difference between the two, is that T5U ships have 4 bonuses to unlock via levelling, and Tier 6 ships have 4 and a fifth bonus which is a trait. These traits/bonuses can be seen under the "mastery" tab on a ship's character sheet.
- Once you've unlocked the trait on a tier 6 ship, you can choose to slot it into your character traits (which can be seen under the "traits" tab on your character sheet), and use it on any ship you own.
- Currently, only Tier 6 ships are able to use intelligence bridge officers and their skills.
- To offset the fact that T6 ships get more traits and intelligence officers, T5U ships get more hull/shield points when they level up.
I've been mostly soloing so I need a lot of hitpoints it seems like and I'm sorta bad at managing all teh billion different abilities me and my crew have so ya just kinda sitting there and tanking with tons of phasers broadsiding people is my tactic heh
Out of curiosity, what kind of officer is your character? (ie. science officer, tactical, or engineer?). That will have some effect in terms of how you approach a given combat. Also, be aware that you can set a given weapon on your ship to autofire by ctrl + right clicking on the icon for that weapon on your hotbar. I find it helps me free up a bit of my focus for managing ability usage and ship positioning, rather than constantly keeping an eye on weapon firing cycles.
If you're running a beam boat, some abilities I'd highly recommend slotting are:
- emergency power to shields (for shield healing)
- engineering team (for hull healing)
- polarize hull (used to counter tractor beams and teleports)
- hazard emitters (extremely useful - used to counter alot of debuffs and DoT effects that enemies use)
- tactical team (used to eliminate hostile boarding parties, also buffs your damage and auto-distributes your shields)
- beam overload (pretty much the current 'must have' beam skill - buffs your damage for a single shot AND guarantees that it'll be a critical hit. Equip weapons/consoles with high critical severity bonuses and this ability will positively wreck anything it hits.
- beam fire at will (useful but somewhat situational. Great for dealing with groups of trash enemies, or environments with alot of mines/targetable torpedoes)
- If you're an engineer make sure you keep the ability "miracle worker" slotted and make sure you have the "grace under fire" trait slotted in your character sheet. It will significantly improve your ability to survive enemy fire.
The above skills are just my suggestions of course. Ultimately you should use whatever you feel works for you, but personally speaking I find I cycle through all those abilities on a regular basis in any combat.
At this point I think I need to Ignore the fleet stuff (cause oh god fleet marks? or whatever else?!) and just try to figure out what I need.
That's probably a good idea. Fleet equipment is very powerful but also stupidly expensive. So I'd recommend saving up dilithium and fleet credits while you experiment with your playstyle, until you find a setup that works well for you. If/when you do decide to purchase fleet equipment, the things I'd recommend getting first are fleet warp/singularity cores or fleet tactical consoles. The fleet tactical consoles especially, while expensive are stupidly powerful when it comes to really turning your enemies into unrecognizable collections of molecules.
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HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
Just to quickly answer your question I'm a Tactical Officer but like I'm sure i can respec or retrain or whatever, I have power choices I made basically back at launch.
HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
I guess that makes sense, I know at level 50 the guy was all YOU CAN GO SEE SO AND SO TO RESPEC but I wasn't really sure what that meant. Maybe I still should so that my skills are distributed in things that make more sense?
Ya i was looking at the assault cruiser refit, what happens to it when I apply the 5U token to it? I can't really figure out how different the 5U assault cruiser is from that Tier 6 Guardian dealey
The assault cruiser would gain another console slot and some extra stats. It wouldn't have the mastery trait thingies or an Intel boff slot.
HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
Any thoughts on the Avenger Battle Cruiser as opposed to continuing with the next level of Sovereign? It seems kinda neat, has a 5U version, and I think would fit a Tactical captain alright.
Any thoughts on the Avenger Battle Cruiser as opposed to continuing with the next level of Sovereign? It seems kinda neat, has a 5U version, and I think would fit a Tactical captain alright.
I like the avenger, its a good ship with a lot of forward gun ports, and if you have it, it can mount a cloaking device.
Only real issue with it for me is the cosmetic. It only has two options pylons up or pylons down, fins or no fins. So if you like having a bit of a frankenship, it doesn't give you a lot of play around.
Preacher on
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
Man oh man, so many choices. The Avenger seems to corner a bit faster than the Assault Cruiser Refit which could be neat, but it doens't have that crazy super wide photon cannon and comes with a cloak slot i'll never use
Personally, I quite like the avenger. The extra turn rate is great especially if you're broadsiding using beams, and its console/weapon setup is perfect for someone who wants to put out alot of firepower and isn't concerned with using alot of science related control abilities. It's a little light in the hull point department for a cruiser, but its stronger shield rating and turn rate make up for that. I would agree that it's very well suited for a tactical captain.
In terms of playing as a tactical captain, your strength is pretty much going to be in putting out positively gross amounts of damage to a target. Sadly, survivability won't be your strong point. To use a fantasy MMO analogy, you could think of yourself as the "rogue" class of STO. Hard hitting but a bit of a glass cannon. Not to say, you can't set yourself up to be extremely survivable - just that you'll have to work at it a bit more than an engineer or a science officer (mostly by gearing your ship for survivability)
As the saying goes "your best defense is a good offense" and that is very true for a tactical captain. You probably don't want to try and aggro groups of enemies in group play. Instead, use beam overload to target single targets and eliminate them quickly. Attack pattern alpha (only accessible by tactical captains) will let you shred enemies quite efficiently, so be sure to have some training in attack patterns. In terms of weaponry and consoles, I recommend focusing on weapons and gear that give you critical severity. Since beam overload automatically critically hits you really don't have to worry as much about critical hit, or raw damage. Once you get your critical severity into the 150% or higher range, you'll find you start to 1 shot lesser enemies, and significantly tear into bosses.
If you're committed to using beams, you'll probably want to make sure you get a set of energy weapon duty officers - specifically the ones that reduce cooldown on beam weapon bridge officer abilities, or if you're running an auxillury to battery setup you'll want technician duty officers to reduce all your bridge officer cooldowns. Ideally, you want to try and get your beam abilities as close to the global cooldown limit as you can (I believe about 15 seconds if memory serves correctly).
Be careful not to buy Zen through the Steam Wallet for a while, everybody. Because of Cryptic's new fraud detection system, this can result in your entire Steam account being banned. Good ol' Cryptic, always keeping it fresh.
Oh, and they took down the Mirror Event because the Advanced version was accidentally giving 7200 dilithium instead of 720.
Be careful not to buy Zen through the Steam Wallet for a while, everybody. Because of Cryptic's new fraud detection system, this can result in your entire Steam account being banned. Good ol' Cryptic, always keeping it fresh.
Oh, and they took down the Mirror Event because the Advanced version was accidentally giving 7200 dilithium instead of 720.
They took it down for like an hour when I signed on at 5pm it was back.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
aaand ended up going with the Avenger and then applying my 5U token to it, worked no problem. I don't know why but at the last moment I decided I wanted to do something different, plus as a tactical captain it seemed to fit my captain better.
With that said I'm sure my skills and bridge officers are all wrong for it. Not really sure how to go about fixing that problem or what to equip in the universal slot. Complications!
There was a couple dev posts on that steam thing. PWE didn't detect anything. Steam reported to them that the Steam account had used several cards that came back stolen or had later chargebacks. They didn't ban his STO account because the card he used for them wasn't one of them.
There are a lot of people getting false alert's and having their lockbox keys account bound, bug this guy dodged that. I cant say for sure his steam ban wasn't a mistake but even if it was, it wasn't related to his PWE purchase.
Hevach on
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HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
edited November 2014
Managed to log in real quick this morning and get the details of what I'm running
Didn't have a ton of time before work so hopefully the details I jotted down are enough for you guys to help me with on any recommendations or what have you. Most of this is based on what I was running with my sovereign and what I've just encountered or had access to so far (or a couple things from teh fleet bank back when I first got my sovereign a year or two? ago
Fore Weapons:
4x Phaser Beam Array X [Dmg] (Uncommon)
Quantum Torpedo Launcher X [Acc] (Uncommon) Aft Weapons: 3x Phaser Beam Array X [Dmg] (Uncommon) Deflector: Positron Array VIII [PrtG] [SIF] (Rare) Impulse: Jem'Hadar Combat Impulse X (Very Rare) Warp: Field Stabilizing Core XI [Coi] [SSS] (Uncommon) Shields: Covariant Array XI [Cap] [Reg] (Rare) Engineering:
Transwarp Computer Universal
+22.9 Starship War Core
Impulse Capacitance Cell Universal
+151.5 Flight Speed
-90.9% Flight Turn
+150% Defense
SIF Generator X (Very Rare)
EPS Flow Regulator X (Uncommon)
Ablative Hull Armor IX (Uncommon) Science: Shield Emitter Amplifier X (Rare) Tactical:
Variable Auto-Targeting Armament Universal
Zero Point Quantum Chamber X (Very Rare)
2x Phaser Relay X (Uncommon)
I basically think I need help with the various Consoles since the only thing I think I for sure work with this setup are the 2 Phaser Relays and the Zero Point Quantum Chamber.
Also right now this is a beam boat but the thing can support Dual Cannons so I mean I can change it if that makes sense.
Oh also my Tactical Captain just has whatever skills I've been slowly picking since the game launched in 2010, I've never gone back and really made sure I did everything right so I should probably respec, these are my stats:
Any advice you guys might have would be great (also I guess I have very low funds for somebody who managed to get to 50, probably due to the start and stop way I've played this game since launch, only have 139k Energy Credits and 19k Dilithium)
I may be completely out of date, but the last I read it was a bit of a waste of allocated stat points to max things out like that. Usually you can fill up through 6 bars and be good to go.
At some point one of my crew was the victim of an unfortunate transporter malfunction and was turned into a duplicate of my chief engineer. Or maybe he was eaten by pod people. Could have been pod people. Anyways, I thought the problem would eventually correct itself but pod person engineer has remained a steadfast part of the crew. I thought ok what's the worst that could happen?
/sigh
These things happen when you're out exploring the galaxy. Fortunately my chief engineer got things sorted out and my captain was soon back to normal. Pod person duplicate is still stuck looking like my chief engineer on the login screen though. Sucks to be him.
Right then. So yesterday we had another transporter malfunction that left my captain looking like my chief engineer(in game this time), albeit a little shorter, a bit more slender, and uh, left the uniform a little tight across the chest. Awkward. Apparently I was so traumatized by the incident I forgot to take a screenshot this time.
I need to have someone who is NOT my chief engineer perform a level 3 diagnostic on the transporters. :?
I haven't had anything like that, but I do have an annoying bug that in game cutscenes my captain reverts to a uniform/look I haven't used since shortly after I was playing the game.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I may be completely out of date, but the last I read it was a bit of a waste of allocated stat points to max things out like that. Usually you can fill up through 6 bars and be good to go.
Usually, but with weapons it's usually 9/9 or gtfo since the game is so heavily ruled by DPS right now.
Also, if you're not a science heavy build, you can just hit a point where you're not using anything else and have points left over to go ahead and max stuff.
I maxed my intel escort this morning, now its time to take the USS Ichabod out of dry dock and give those rapscallions what for with antiproton beam barrages!
I'm almost thinking of my moving my borg set to it for the assimilated tractor beam tearing shit up.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Posts
After 50 you have three options really (well, four, but using the same ship you got at 40 as-is probably will not work that well) either use a ship upgrade token (700z, 4 for 2k, also on exchange) to upgrade a current ship to "tier 5 upgrade" status, where it gains an extra console slot and some other stuff. (This works for all ships of that class across your account) Or buy a tier 6 ship for 3k zen. T6 ships have the same console count as t5u ones, but also get a starship trait that can be unlocked and used on any other ship. Finally, lockbox ships like the Wells, Jem'hadar ships etc get a free upgrade to t5u. I don't know how this works with the mirror universe ships, but my gut says that they are exempt from the free upgrade?
All of these options give you a ship that sort of levels up as you go, gaining bonuses to things like shield strength, some inbuilt resists etc.
Of note are upgraded fleet ships, which apply the upgrade to all ships of that class and gain an extra console slot (for a total of 11) but remain a per-character non-reclaimable unlock the same as normal fleet ships are. (So you pay to upgrade the fleet tactical escort, it will always get upgraded to T5U across your account, but you would need to buy it on each character and it would need to re-purchase the ship, but not the upgrade if dismissed)
It's kinda hella complicated but the short version is that your can buy a token to upgrade what you are flying now, or buy a brand new boat if you want to.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
If you're still flying the free level 40 ship, you'd have to get the fleet version and upgrade that, and since those ships also aren't eligible for the 1-module discount, that's the full 4 fleet modules.
Upgraded ships don't really gain that much compared to the tier 4 to 5 transition. A lot of hull and one console, but no shields, and no weapons. Especially with the second nerf to normal/advanced coming, the upgrade will be really optional as a free player. The paywall is still really shitty, though.
No they short you that last ship to encourage you to spend zen and buy one. You have several options at this point. You can grind dilithium in game to exchange for zen to buy a c-store ship. It's time consuming but if you have several characters to grind on it's doable(albeit tedious) or you can plunk down some cash to buy the zen.
The summer/winter events have ships you can grind for. The winter event is coming up next month and will have several ships to choose from. Generally you grind out 25?ish days of dailies for an event token of some sort(for the winter event it's glossy photos of Q). Under your reputation tab there will be an entry for Events and you can start a project there using the event tokens. If you have multiple characters you want the ship for(or multiple ships you're going for) they made it easier to do that. Only 1 character has to do the full 25 dailies for a particular ship. After you've completed it once to unlock it you can obtain that ship on a second character by doing just 1 daily. If you have multiple characters then you can have them all working towards different event ships to unlock them so the others can claim theirs on the cheap.
There are also fleet ships that you can buy if you're in a Fleet with an upgraded Starbase. They cost fleet credits plus fleet modules(which cost zen or you can buy them off the exchange for energy credits).
C-store ships are account wide unlocks. Fleet ships are per character unlocks. There are some instances where you can get a discount on Fleet ships(like if you purchased the c-store version already).
There are also lockboxes in game that have a small chance to reward a ship. The keys to open them cost zen or you can buy them off the exchange for energy credits OR you can simply buy a lockbox ship itself for energy credits off the exchange. There's always a variety of them for sale. They're expensive though.
The new content patch introduced Tier 6 ships on the c-store. C-store and Fleet T5 ships can be upgraded to T5-U. They get some extra stats and stuff but are still a step below T6. The upgrades generally cost a token(which costs zen) but if you upgrade a ship once that unlocks the upgrade for that ship across your account. For example, you buy an Odyssey off the c-store. It's now unlocked and any of your Fed characters can claim one. You buy an upgrade token and upgrade it. All your other characters can now upgrade their Odyssey for free. Same thing with upgrading Fleet ships I believe. Once one character unlocks the upgrade on a particular ship all your others will be able to upgrade if they have that same ship. Event ships get a free upgrade. Lockbox ships don't seem to be upgradeable.
I expect Fleet T6 ships will be coming at some point soonish and going forward they're probably going to keep adding T6 ships.
Boffs = bridge officers. Doffs = duty officers. The duty officer system is a kind of mini-game within STO. There are a variety of ways to collect doffs(exchange, c-store, doff missions that reward more doffs, the academy personnel officer has missions for more doffs, some of the events have doffs you can buy, etc. It's kinda like Pokemon in that regard. Gotta collect 'em all. Why do you care about doffs? It's good exp and skill points for one. Some of the missions reward dilithium, R&D materials, etc. It's easy enough to get into but there's a lot of depth to the system. The missions that are available are somewhat random and change over time and/or based on location. As others mentioned there's another use for doffs. Under your Doff tab there's a thing for Active Space and Active Ground and you can assign some of your doffs to these slots(up to 5 for each). The reason for this? Each of the doffs have special abilities. Like there's a ground doff that has a chance to beam in additional security guys when your tactical character uses his security escort ability or there's a doff that has a chance to beam in additional turret when your Engineer summons one. Some of the ways in which these abilities interact can be game changers.
R&D: the new crafting system. Apparently the best way to get started once you've got some crafting mats is to pick one of the research lines, scroll to the bottom for the 20 hour research project, and do that. And keep doing it every time it's available for awhile. As you progress you'll unlock more research slots so you can have multiple R&D projects running at once. Eventually you get to make useful things. I guess after a certain point the R&D starts costing dilithium to progress or make anything? And some of the rare components can only be obtained from doing advanced STF's. I dunno. I haven't gotten that far with it yet.
Also, if you have questions about a particular ship or you're curious to know if it's worth buying feel free to ask here.
Short version: spend a lot of time grinding out dilithium, shell out some cash, or wait for a special event that has ships to grind for(that may or may not have one you like).
so as part of a promo I have a 5U token but that means I still need to buy a ship. I don't mind throwing cryptic a few bucks so I can buy some zen but I have NO IDEA what to buy. I'm a tactical captain that tends to use cruisers an dturn them into heavy phaser boats (lots of broadsiding) with like 1 photon at the front. That's how I run my sovereign and it's pretty fun.
Any advice on what to do? I've been part of the PA fleet since it started, does that mean I can get fleet ships, whatever that means? Are they better? I don't get why this advanced ship stuff is so freaking complicated compared to the rest of the game
(oh also I somehow have i think a decent amount of dilithium, should I just sell that for zen?)
For reference, I am currently in a Guardian class, which I bought for dilithium. I'm very happy with it, really like having a gravity well on top of the standard cruiser package, plus the couple of boff intel powers are quite nice.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
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Regent Assault Cruiser Refit: 5 Eng, 2 Sci, 3 Tac
Starship Mastery :
Absorptive Hull Plating: +10 Physical Damage Resistance Rating +10 Kinect Damage Resistance Rating
Rapid Repairs: Regenerates X.X Hull (1,5% of your current max) every 10 seconds in Space. Twice this is regenerated out of combat
Enhanced Hull Plating: +10 All Energy Damage Resistance Rating +10 Radiation Damage Resistance Rating
Armored Hull: +10% Hull Hitpoints
Guardian Cruiser 4 Eng, 3 Sci, 3 Tac
Starship Mastery :
Absorptive Hull Plating: +10 Physical Damage Resistance Rating +10 Kinect Damage Resistance Rating
Rapid Repairs: Regenerates X.X Hull (1,5% of your current max) every 10 seconds in Space. Twice this is regenerated out of combat
Enhanced Hull Plating: +10 All Energy Damage Resistance Rating +10 Radiation Damage Resistance Rating
Armored Hull: +10% Hull Hitpoints
Desperate Repairs (Starship Trait)
So engineering or sci consoles vs the Guardian, does not get the Desperate repairs trait at mastery 5 (doesn't get anything at mastery 5). Also retains the original bridge officer layout so doesn't get the Lt Engineering/Intel hybrid seat that the Guardian has. Guardian also trades the LtCom Engineering for an LtCom science (ie the Sci and Engineering seating is swapped in the same way as the consoles are).
Guardian has .5 less turn rate as well, but coming from the AC refit I have not noticed this at all.
Afaik, using an upgrade token on a cstore ship just patches that ship to the upgrade version permanently, so any others you claim would just be U ships from that point.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
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Oh man...that sounds so sweet. Sort of like the Vestas I guess, but on 3 totally different ships?
Gimme my Thunderchild nacelles on my Guardian!
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
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I've been mostly soloing so I need a lot of hitpoints it seems like and I'm sorta bad at managing all teh billion different abilities me and my crew have so ya just kinda sitting there and tanking with tons of phasers broadsiding people is my tactic heh
Tier 5:
So it seems like these are my Tier 5 options (and I'll stick the Upgrade token I have on whatever I buy)
Assault Cruiser Refit (ie Fancier Sovereign which I have now)
Odyssey Tactical Cruiser
Avenger Battle Cruiser
Dreadnought Cruiser
Now it seems to me that the Odyssey Tactical Cruiser has the most HP and Shields, has a nice spread of Consoles, and has a ok spread of Bridge Officers BUT nobody seems to be recommending it. (and I guess the Token does something, I'm unsure what going from 5 to 5U actually adds!)
Am I missing something?
Tier 6:
Eclipse Intel Cruiser
Guardian Cruiser
As suggested I think the Guardian fits my playstyle more but I'm not sure I want to spend the extra zen right now.
Actually, again unless i'm missing something, the Odyssey Tactical and the Guardian seem to have surprisingly similar stats. One thing I don't get is that the Tier 6 shisp seem to level with you from 50 to 60 and get better, do the 5U ships do that as well?
Sorry for all the questions guys
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Ach it's all good, quite fun to throw this ball around occasionally.
The ship-levelling thing is what the Starship Mastery is, all T5U and T6 ships work their way through series of levels independent of their Captain, with a passive perk at each one. So in the case of the Guardian say (or more or less all the t5u cruisers) you get :
lvl1)Absorptive Hull Plating: +10 Physical Damage Resistance Rating +10 Kinect Damage Resistance Rating
lvl2)Rapid Repairs: Regenerates X.X Hull (1,5% of your current max) every 10 seconds in Space. Twice this is regenerated out of combat
lvl3)Enhanced Hull Plating: +10 All Energy Damage Resistance Rating +10 Radiation Damage Resistance Rating
lvl4)Armored Hull: +10% Hull Hitpoints
lvl5)For T6 ships, a starship trait that can be slotted to your character on the traits screen.
The Eclipse is a bit different, it gets a Battlecruiser mastery:
Absorptive Plating (+Physical and Kinetic Damage Resistance)
Enhanced Weapon Banks (+Crit Severity)
Enhanced Plating (+Energy and Radiation Damage Resistance)
Armored Hull (+Maximum HP)
Battle Ready (Starship Trait)
(I think the Avenger class gets this bar the "Battle Ready" trait as well)
Additionally, T5U and T6 ships also get a scaled hull hp and shields as you level to 60, whereas non-upgraded ships don't.
The Odyssey tac cruiser is not particularly well regarded, it's a bit slow and the Sci one is apparently much better as it gets sensor analysis.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
On top of the t-6's all having the intelligence gathering debuff, that when you work with other intelligence ships can really decimate enemies (you have to tack a 15 stack of the debuff on an enemy ship between intelligence ships, once you do that all the int ships can dump a nasty debuff on the enemy like lowered damage resistance, weapons power or I believe engines).
And each tier 6 has a special console. The phantom gets a super powered phaser lance that either does more damage when an int debuff is applied or instantly lets you apply a debuff. The eclipse has an aoe shield strip/damage to all targets that super powers its own shields. I forget what the other 3 get.
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I think I'll stick with the 5U idea just so I don't need to pay as much (and I suppose I already have the upgrade token), if I find I really really get back into the game I can always get a 6 in the future.
So it sort sounds like I should just get the tier 5 version of the ship I already have (sovereign) and then apply the token to it. Is that dumb? Man I assumed once I hit 50 I'd get some huge monstrosity of a ship that I see people flying around!
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Not to worry!
Okay, first thing's first. Just remember that the hitchhiker's guide the galaxy offers pertinent advice for this situation. That advice being "Don't Panic."
Here's some quick facts about the two ship types presented in point form for ease of digestion (preferably with french fries):
- Both the T5U and T6 ships level with you from 50 to 60. Both ship types gain hull/shield points and unlock bonuses as you level them up.
- The difference between the two, is that T5U ships have 4 bonuses to unlock via levelling, and Tier 6 ships have 4 and a fifth bonus which is a trait. These traits/bonuses can be seen under the "mastery" tab on a ship's character sheet.
- Once you've unlocked the trait on a tier 6 ship, you can choose to slot it into your character traits (which can be seen under the "traits" tab on your character sheet), and use it on any ship you own.
- Currently, only Tier 6 ships are able to use intelligence bridge officers and their skills.
- To offset the fact that T6 ships get more traits and intelligence officers, T5U ships get more hull/shield points when they level up.
Out of curiosity, what kind of officer is your character? (ie. science officer, tactical, or engineer?). That will have some effect in terms of how you approach a given combat. Also, be aware that you can set a given weapon on your ship to autofire by ctrl + right clicking on the icon for that weapon on your hotbar. I find it helps me free up a bit of my focus for managing ability usage and ship positioning, rather than constantly keeping an eye on weapon firing cycles.
If you're running a beam boat, some abilities I'd highly recommend slotting are:
- emergency power to shields (for shield healing)
- engineering team (for hull healing)
- polarize hull (used to counter tractor beams and teleports)
- hazard emitters (extremely useful - used to counter alot of debuffs and DoT effects that enemies use)
- tactical team (used to eliminate hostile boarding parties, also buffs your damage and auto-distributes your shields)
- beam overload (pretty much the current 'must have' beam skill - buffs your damage for a single shot AND guarantees that it'll be a critical hit. Equip weapons/consoles with high critical severity bonuses and this ability will positively wreck anything it hits.
- beam fire at will (useful but somewhat situational. Great for dealing with groups of trash enemies, or environments with alot of mines/targetable torpedoes)
- If you're an engineer make sure you keep the ability "miracle worker" slotted and make sure you have the "grace under fire" trait slotted in your character sheet. It will significantly improve your ability to survive enemy fire.
The above skills are just my suggestions of course. Ultimately you should use whatever you feel works for you, but personally speaking I find I cycle through all those abilities on a regular basis in any combat.
That's probably a good idea. Fleet equipment is very powerful but also stupidly expensive. So I'd recommend saving up dilithium and fleet credits while you experiment with your playstyle, until you find a setup that works well for you. If/when you do decide to purchase fleet equipment, the things I'd recommend getting first are fleet warp/singularity cores or fleet tactical consoles. The fleet tactical consoles especially, while expensive are stupidly powerful when it comes to really turning your enemies into unrecognizable collections of molecules.
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This is the generic build I used on my Engineering captain. I don't know how good/bad it is but it works for me.
http://skillplanner.stoacademy.com/?build=genericengineeringbuild_0
The assault cruiser would gain another console slot and some extra stats. It wouldn't have the mastery trait thingies or an Intel boff slot.
I like the avenger, its a good ship with a lot of forward gun ports, and if you have it, it can mount a cloaking device.
Only real issue with it for me is the cosmetic. It only has two options pylons up or pylons down, fins or no fins. So if you like having a bit of a frankenship, it doesn't give you a lot of play around.
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In terms of playing as a tactical captain, your strength is pretty much going to be in putting out positively gross amounts of damage to a target. Sadly, survivability won't be your strong point. To use a fantasy MMO analogy, you could think of yourself as the "rogue" class of STO. Hard hitting but a bit of a glass cannon. Not to say, you can't set yourself up to be extremely survivable - just that you'll have to work at it a bit more than an engineer or a science officer (mostly by gearing your ship for survivability)
As the saying goes "your best defense is a good offense" and that is very true for a tactical captain. You probably don't want to try and aggro groups of enemies in group play. Instead, use beam overload to target single targets and eliminate them quickly. Attack pattern alpha (only accessible by tactical captains) will let you shred enemies quite efficiently, so be sure to have some training in attack patterns. In terms of weaponry and consoles, I recommend focusing on weapons and gear that give you critical severity. Since beam overload automatically critically hits you really don't have to worry as much about critical hit, or raw damage. Once you get your critical severity into the 150% or higher range, you'll find you start to 1 shot lesser enemies, and significantly tear into bosses.
If you're committed to using beams, you'll probably want to make sure you get a set of energy weapon duty officers - specifically the ones that reduce cooldown on beam weapon bridge officer abilities, or if you're running an auxillury to battery setup you'll want technician duty officers to reduce all your bridge officer cooldowns. Ideally, you want to try and get your beam abilities as close to the global cooldown limit as you can (I believe about 15 seconds if memory serves correctly).
Oh, and they took down the Mirror Event because the Advanced version was accidentally giving 7200 dilithium instead of 720.
They took it down for like an hour when I signed on at 5pm it was back.
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With that said I'm sure my skills and bridge officers are all wrong for it. Not really sure how to go about fixing that problem or what to equip in the universal slot. Complications!
There are a lot of people getting false alert's and having their lockbox keys account bound, bug this guy dodged that. I cant say for sure his steam ban wasn't a mistake but even if it was, it wasn't related to his PWE purchase.
Didn't have a ton of time before work so hopefully the details I jotted down are enough for you guys to help me with on any recommendations or what have you. Most of this is based on what I was running with my sovereign and what I've just encountered or had access to so far (or a couple things from teh fleet bank back when I first got my sovereign a year or two? ago
Fore Weapons:
4x Phaser Beam Array X [Dmg] (Uncommon)
Quantum Torpedo Launcher X [Acc] (Uncommon)
Aft Weapons: 3x Phaser Beam Array X [Dmg] (Uncommon)
Deflector: Positron Array VIII [PrtG] [SIF] (Rare)
Impulse: Jem'Hadar Combat Impulse X (Very Rare)
Warp: Field Stabilizing Core XI [Coi] [SSS] (Uncommon)
Shields: Covariant Array XI [Cap] [Reg] (Rare)
Engineering:
Transwarp Computer Universal
- +22.9 Starship War Core
Impulse Capacitance Cell Universal- +151.5 Flight Speed
- -90.9% Flight Turn
- +150% Defense
SIF Generator X (Very Rare)EPS Flow Regulator X (Uncommon)
Ablative Hull Armor IX (Uncommon)
Science: Shield Emitter Amplifier X (Rare)
Tactical:
Variable Auto-Targeting Armament Universal
Zero Point Quantum Chamber X (Very Rare)
2x Phaser Relay X (Uncommon)
I basically think I need help with the various Consoles since the only thing I think I for sure work with this setup are the 2 Phaser Relays and the Zero Point Quantum Chamber.
Also right now this is a beam boat but the thing can support Dual Cannons so I mean I can change it if that makes sense.
Oh also my Tactical Captain just has whatever skills I've been slowly picking since the game launched in 2010, I've never gone back and really made sure I did everything right so I should probably respec, these are my stats:
Any advice you guys might have would be great
/sigh
These things happen when you're out exploring the galaxy. Fortunately my chief engineer got things sorted out and my captain was soon back to normal. Pod person duplicate is still stuck looking like my chief engineer on the login screen though. Sucks to be him.
Right then. So yesterday we had another transporter malfunction that left my captain looking like my chief engineer(in game this time), albeit a little shorter, a bit more slender, and uh, left the uniform a little tight across the chest. Awkward. Apparently I was so traumatized by the incident I forgot to take a screenshot this time.
I need to have someone who is NOT my chief engineer perform a level 3 diagnostic on the transporters. :?
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Usually, but with weapons it's usually 9/9 or gtfo since the game is so heavily ruled by DPS right now.
Also, if you're not a science heavy build, you can just hit a point where you're not using anything else and have points left over to go ahead and max stuff.
I'm almost thinking of my moving my borg set to it for the assimilated tractor beam tearing shit up.
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Also I have 1 out of the 3 jem hadar dealies on my ship, is it worth redoing that machine and getting the other 2 for the complete set?