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

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    HevachHevach Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    TalonSE wrote: »
    According to Memory-Alpha the wormhole aliens destroyed the Dominion fleet in 2373 in the 6th season ep Sacrifice of Angels. Dukat destroyed the wormhole at the end of that season although it was 2374 by that point.

    Hm... Memory Alpha does seem inconsistent on this. The wormhole article says 2373, but the Sacrifice of Angels article says 2374. The timeline also puts Operation Return in 2374.

    Too bad the series were never consistent about when the new year was. Sometimes it was the start of the season, sometimes it was the first February episode.

    The uncertainty either way is enough that it's definitely in the running for possible series 4 storylines. It also fits the Second Wave title... but so would a renewed Terran invasion, an Undine attack, or possibly even a Borg attack (if you call the invasion this month as the first wave).

    Hevach on
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    ShapeshifterShapeshifter Pants Optioanl Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Slot sale on in the c-store

    50%

    things like character slots etc.

    Shapeshifter on
    steam_sig.png
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    Just_Bri_ThanksJust_Bri_Thanks Seething with rage from a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited June 2011
    Hmm, costumes...

    Just_Bri_Thanks on
    ...and when you are done with that; take a folding
    chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
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    ShapeshifterShapeshifter Pants Optioanl Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Hmm, costumes...

    bought the 4 character slots myself, to good a deal.

    I would have bought ship slots/bo slots IF they were account wide and not just per toon :x

    Shapeshifter on
    steam_sig.png
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    Regina FongRegina Fong Allons-y, Alonso Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Hmm, costumes...

    bought the 4 character slots myself, to good a deal.

    I would have bought ship slots/bo slots IF they were account wide and not just per toon :x

    Maybe someday Cryptic will figure out that no one wants to pay real money for shit that is stuck on a particular character.

    Regina Fong on
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    JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    I figured out skill training and got a bunch of engineers with turrets.

    OK this is much easier now.

    Jasconius on
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    Hahnsoo1Hahnsoo1 Make Ready. We Hunt.Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Jasconius wrote: »
    I figured out skill training and got a bunch of engineers with turrets.

    OK this is much easier now.
    Welcome to the Dark Side, my friend. Hehe.

    Hahnsoo1 on
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    TOGSolidTOGSolid Drunk sailor Seattle, WashingtonRegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Le sigh, off to work I go for a week. I'm gonna miss my triple forward dual phaser cannon bank escort :3. I'm contemplating trying two DPCs and one torpedo launcher, but it's just so much fun watching that much raw cannon fire fill space up. All I'd really be gaining is one really solid burst damage hit, the dps would stay roughly the same, however that burst damage would be kinda handy for quick attack runs. Decisions decisions. All I know is that being an engineering captain in a glass cannon like an escort is hilarious good times.

    If you're curious, my stern weapon is a simple phaser bank. I want to make sure that I keep constant pressure on when my main cannons aren't on target.

    Now that I got skill training figured out, I'm slowly working towards getting my ground crew kitted out with turret spam. Granted, I'd have done this even if it wasn't ez mode. Once a Gallente drone whore, always a Gallente drone whore 8-).

    TOGSolid on
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    Iceman.USAFIceman.USAF Major East CoastRegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Your setup sounds exactly like mine. I've got some quantum torps in the 4th slot up front and a turret and beam in the back, helps a TON with fighters!

    Iceman.USAF on
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    ValaenaValaena Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    I can train your engineers in:
    - Shield Recharge 3
    - Emergency Power to Engines 3
    - Emergency Power to Shields 3
    - Emergency Power to Weapons 3
    - Phaser Turret 3
    - Directed Energy Modulation 3
    - Extend Shields 3

    Just let me know if any of you want one.

    Valaena on
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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    Hahnsoo1Hahnsoo1 Make Ready. We Hunt.Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    I'd use all turrets in the aft bank, personally. They use the same skills/bridge officers as Cannons, are very energy efficient (longer cooldown, low energy cost = less of a weapon energy hit), and hit 360 degrees. They complement pretty much anything but a Cruiser filled with beam arrays (which will only hit all weapons on the broadsides).

    I'd definitely go with one Torpedo rack in the front. With the energy savings from not firing another cannon, you won't be losing much DPS, and they obviously do much better damage against hulls. Every time a weapon fires and your weapon energy goes down, your next energy weapon shot will deal less damage.

    Hahnsoo1 on
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    Regina FongRegina Fong Allons-y, Alonso Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    For escorts I suggest a combination of turrets in the back, and a torp launcher, or just straight turrets. Unless you are running an escort beam boat (and while energy management is tricky on those, they are thoroughly effective). Forward facing I like double cannons, a dual beam array (so you can make use of beam overload to instantly nuke shields, as well as fire at will, which is inherently superior to cannon scatter volley when faced with a horde of little ships or mines) and a torp launcher.

    Regina Fong on
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    TOGSolidTOGSolid Drunk sailor Seattle, WashingtonRegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Hahnsoo1 wrote: »
    I'd definitely go with one Torpedo rack in the front. With the energy savings from not firing another cannon, you won't be losing much DPS, and they obviously do much better damage against hulls. Every time a weapon fires and your weapon energy goes down, your next energy weapon shot will deal less damage.

    I wasn't aware of this. Where can you see the energy levels fluctuate like that?

    TOGSolid on
    wWuzwvJ.png
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    Hahnsoo1Hahnsoo1 Make Ready. We Hunt.Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    TOGSolid wrote: »
    Hahnsoo1 wrote: »
    I'd definitely go with one Torpedo rack in the front. With the energy savings from not firing another cannon, you won't be losing much DPS, and they obviously do much better damage against hulls. Every time a weapon fires and your weapon energy goes down, your next energy weapon shot will deal less damage.

    I wasn't aware of this. Where can you see the energy levels fluctuate like that?
    You can directly see this on your Energy list. You know, the one that shows power going to Weapons/Shields/Engines/Aux? The numbers that go down to 5/5/100/5 when you are flying around on Full Impulse? When you start an attack with a beam or cannon weapon, you can see the number dip down at the beginning of the attack and quickly regenerate over time. With multiple beam weapons, this effect becomes more pronounced, although many times, your Bridge Officer abilities may counteract the power drain (Emergency Power to Weapons, for example). You do your base weapon damage at around 50 Energy, and do about double damage at 100 (I think it's linear, anyway). You can sequence your weapons to gain the most "efficient" damage over time (staggering the fire and the cooldowns of the weapons), but this is a huge pain in the ass when you are already juggling Bridge Officer abilities and trying to actually fly the ship, so most people just auto-fire everything in one volley.

    Hahnsoo1 on
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    TOGSolidTOGSolid Drunk sailor Seattle, WashingtonRegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Since I wasn't aware that mechanic even existed I hadn't paid too much attention to the energy readout during my attack runs since I was busy trying to maneuver my ship and all that fun stuff. That's a really slick mechanic and one I'll have to play with when I get back home.

    I have to say, ST:O's space combat is pretty damn impressive for being in a MMO. It's not full on Bridge Commander levels of awesome, but it's definitely Bridge Commander lite and it's got me hooked. I can't wait to get into the PVP arenas but hell, even just zooming around on patrols and what not is good fun. I also really enjoy the emphasis on managing your boffs instead of having your captain carry all of the abilities.

    Now just to patiently await the ground combat overhaul. If it ends up being as awesome as it sounds, ST:O is gonna easily hold my attention for a long, long time.
    I'd use all turrets in the aft bank, personally
    I was thinking of doing exactly this while I was eating breakfast this morning. Good to see I'm on the right track.

    TOGSolid on
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    ValaenaValaena Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Last I read an in depth explanation, the weapon power worked every point above 50 is +2% damage, below 50 is -2%

    Dunno if this is still how it works, but when you hover over a weapon or ability that's affected by power level, the tool tip automatically reflects your current power levels. So when you're hovering around ESD play with your power levels and check it out.

    Valaena on
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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    ShapeshifterShapeshifter Pants Optioanl Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    season 4 will be on tribble soon, probably monday? they had hoped to get it up late friday but didn't quite make it.

    Shapeshifter on
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    Regina FongRegina Fong Allons-y, Alonso Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Valaena wrote: »
    Last I read an in depth explanation, the weapon power worked every point above 50 is +2% damage, below 50 is -2%

    Dunno if this is still how it works, but when you hover over a weapon or ability that's affected by power level, the tool tip automatically reflects your current power levels. So when you're hovering around ESD play with your power levels and check it out.

    Based on what I've read on the forums, having more than 4 energy weapons firing at once starts to really lower your damage unless you take some fancy steps to manage your energy. The 5th energy weapon will lower your damage output, not raise it under some circumstances, and a 6th energy weapon will hurt your overall damage under most circumstances. This can be managed by using one or more dual beam arrays (will not fire at the same time as rear beams due to non-overlapping arcs) dual heavy cannons (long cool down period in between firing time) and turrets (lower energy penalty than beam weapons and cannons).

    But if you just throw 3 beam arrays on the front and 3 on the back of your ship and then open up with a broadside, even with weapon power set to 100, after the first round of shots your damage will go down, and after that your weapon power sinks below 50 and you are doing poop for damage.

    The bottom line is that with an admiral level ship where you have 6 or more weapon slots, you will want to devote some slots to torpedos or mines unless you have a special energy management set-up or have a plan to rotate emergency power to weapons, aux to battery, and weapon power devices whenever you are in a fight.

    Regina Fong on
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    Iceman.USAFIceman.USAF Major East CoastRegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    For an escort, I'm not seeing this being a problem. Even when I'm just letting autofire go absolutely nuts, I can hit Fire at Will and let the rear beams randomly fire and still not drop below ~70 or so. I think it's mostly a problem on cruisers, as you said.

    Iceman.USAF on
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    VoodooVVoodooV Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Really? Doesn't one of the loading screens specifically say that weapon power levels don't affect damage, just how many weapons you can fire at once?

    VoodooV on
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    Regina FongRegina Fong Allons-y, Alonso Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    VoodooV wrote: »
    Really? Doesn't one of the loading screens specifically say that weapon power levels don't affect damage, just how many weapons you can fire at once?

    If it does it's wrong.

    Weapon power level affects energy weapon damage, but does not have any bearing on projectile weapons.

    Regina Fong on
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    Regina FongRegina Fong Allons-y, Alonso Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    For an escort, I'm not seeing this being a problem. Even when I'm just letting autofire go absolutely nuts, I can hit Fire at Will and let the rear beams randomly fire and still not drop below ~70 or so. I think it's mostly a problem on cruisers, as you said.

    Fire at Will has it's own energy drain scheme, it's not nearly as punishing as firing them normally. When you have cannons or whatever trained on a forward target, and are only shooting from the back beams with FAW and not shooting them normally at your target as well, you are not getting the -10 power per beam penalty from the back beams.

    -edit-

    Of course, as far as escorts go the same caveat applies to back beams and forward cannons as does dual beam arrays and back beams: They don't fire at the same time because the arcs don't overlap, so they do not pose a serious energy management issue.

    Regina Fong on
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    HevachHevach Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    http://forums.startrekonline.com/showpost.php?p=3585298&postcount=1

    Season 4 is on tribble. Not the Doff system yet, but ground combat 2.0 is. Some of the changes are nice - on advanced and elite, enemies gain only a slight HP/shield boost, but change their power sets. Fighting Romulans, they only seemed to use thalaron weapons on advanced and up, but that could have been coincidence.

    Annoying, though, borg ground targets now require a consumable device to clear their adaptation, or you can find yourself being forced to pistol whip them to death.

    Hevach on
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    Regina FongRegina Fong Allons-y, Alonso Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Hevach wrote: »
    http://forums.startrekonline.com/showpost.php?p=3585298&postcount=1
    Annoying, though, borg ground targets now require a consumable device to clear their adaptation, or you can find yourself being forced to pistol whip them to death.


    Who the fuck thought that was a good idea?

    Regina Fong on
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    HevachHevach Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Hevach wrote: »
    http://forums.startrekonline.com/showpost.php?p=3585298&postcount=1
    Annoying, though, borg ground targets now require a consumable device to clear their adaptation, or you can find yourself being forced to pistol whip them to death.


    Who the fuck thought that was a good idea?

    Whoever it was I hope there's a special place in hell for them. I'm hoping they make it non-consumable, that alone would make it bearable.

    Though, on the bright side, the melee attack from energy weapons is actually a viable attack now. It does a hold combo, then while they're held automatically switches to an expose attack and when they're exposed automatically exploits. Rifles hit a bit weaker than real melee weapons this way.

    Also, there doesn't seem to be a huge benefit from having two identical weapons and cycling through them to get more secondary fire, you reset the spool up timer on assault weapons and pistols/rifles have cooldowns barely longer than the shared cooldown (and in some cases shorter), so I'm probably just going to have my anti-borg Bat'leth instead. Not sure if they made melee attacks auto-combo the way energy weapons do when you use their melee attack.

    Hevach on
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    Regina FongRegina Fong Allons-y, Alonso Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    It sounds like they are making it "better" by taking away a lot of the tricks people used to make it not-completely-insufferable.

    I don't really have much faith in this turning out well.

    Best case scenario is looking like ground combat still tedious and boring, and you have to learn new exploits to make it go quickly.

    -edit-

    And if they made the item non-consumable it would have a 10 minute cooldown, rendering it worthless. This is cryptic we're talking about.

    Regina Fong on
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    JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    This ground combat update makes it sound a lot like the Star Wars Galaxy revamp #20442341

    Actually it's already a fair bit like that. Adding in the shooter mode just seals the deal.

    Jasconius on
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    VoroVoro Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    And so ground combat will continue to suck. However:
    # Deep Space Encounters will no longer auto agro. Players have to choose to engage them.

    Space is looking much better.

    Voro on
    XBL GamerTag: Comrade Nexus
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    Iceman.USAFIceman.USAF Major East CoastRegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Voro wrote: »
    And so ground combat will continue to suck. However:
    # Deep Space Encounters will no longer auto agro. Players have to choose to engage them.

    Space is looking much better.

    Man that makes life a lot better. I can go get a drink/bathroom break/IM chat while traversing an entire sector without worrying about coming back to an exploded ship.

    Iceman.USAF on
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    HevachHevach Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Season 4 is now not on Tribble because apparently somebody melted the server.

    Anyway, there's a big difference between SWG and this: SWG had a popular system that at the time was one of the better MMO combat systems out there, STO had... Yeah.

    None of the old tricks are gone, actually - turret spam was even more OP because the turrets II and III were majorly improved. Support drones have support skills. Science got some pretty impressive buffs. Tactical boffs are still kind of lousy. They got improved to hell and back, but it was only enough to bring them in line with what the other two boffs USED to be, not with what they are now.

    Enemy health is down around accross the board except for captain level NPCs where they're up a bit (but it's also fixed so you can't get more than one captain in a single group). Enemy health on elite difficulty is down better than 50+%, and captain level NPCs are still down a bit. Player DPS is also up quite a bit. I was doing more damage with one sniper rifle than I could manage swapping back and forth before. This is actually to the point that the expose/exploit system is only really useful on captain level NPCs.

    They also fixed the scaling on NPC weapons. The dual pistol freight trains are gone and swordmasters are only really dangerous because of their health, they won't kill you through your shields in two hits.

    Hevach on
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    JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Doesn't sound like they removed the exploits.

    What it does sound like is that they made it so the exploits aren't truly required to even get through shit.

    Which is a positive in my book.

    I don't really want to have 57 turrets on the ground.

    Jasconius on
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    Regina FongRegina Fong Allons-y, Alonso Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Hevach wrote: »
    Season 4 is now not on Tribble because apparently somebody melted the server.

    Anyway, there's a big difference between SWG and this: SWG had a popular system that at the time was one of the better MMO combat systems out there, STO had... Yeah.

    None of the old tricks are gone, actually - turret spam was even more OP because the turrets II and III were majorly improved. Support drones have support skills. Science got some pretty impressive buffs. Tactical boffs are still kind of lousy. They got improved to hell and back, but it was only enough to bring them in line with what the other two boffs USED to be, not with what they are now.

    Enemy health is down around accross the board except for captain level NPCs where they're up a bit (but it's also fixed so you can't get more than one captain in a single group). Enemy health on elite difficulty is down better than 50+%, and captain level NPCs are still down a bit. Player DPS is also up quite a bit. I was doing more damage with one sniper rifle than I could manage swapping back and forth before. This is actually to the point that the expose/exploit system is only really useful on captain level NPCs.

    They also fixed the scaling on NPC weapons. The dual pistol freight trains are gone and swordmasters are only really dangerous because of their health, they won't kill you through your shields in two hits.

    I like the enemy health going down.

    It just takes too god damn long to drop a minion.

    Regina Fong on
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    Regina FongRegina Fong Allons-y, Alonso Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    What's the name of the channel to get into for the diplo farming? Someone told me before, I thought is was called "Accolades" but that appears to be a private channel.

    Regina Fong on
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    HevachHevach Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Jasconius wrote: »
    Doesn't sound like they removed the exploits.

    What it does sound like is that they made it so the exploits aren't truly required to even get through shit.

    Which is a positive in my book.

    I don't really want to have 57 turrets on the ground.

    I don't either, really. They're still the best damage output you can manage, but a tac-heavy away team actually becomes a defensive juggernaut with some of the new group buffs tactical got.

    Also, the shooter mode is... honestly a bit meh. RPG mode felt more right for everything except grenades and targeted AOEs like that earthquake power science has. But for those, shooter is much better. You can drop plasma fires in front of a group so they scatter (the AI knows enough not to sit in AOE, boffs will scatter from thalaron mines now), or in a doorway so they're forced to come through it (I noticed stronger enemies would actually wait out the fire rather than come through it, so you can use targeted AOE on a doorway to break up a difficult group).

    Hevach on
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    ArchonexArchonex No hard feelings, right? Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Jasconius wrote: »
    This ground combat update makes it sound a lot like the Star Wars Galaxy revamp #20442341

    Actually it's already a fair bit like that. Adding in the shooter mode just seals the deal.

    This is pretty obviously not the same deal. Having played SWG from release to the NGE, I'm not sure why it is you're complaining about it, in fact. Reading the patch notes, it appears that weapons now work more like FPS games with a RPG element to it.


    The NGE tried to achieve this, but ultimately half-assed it, not bothering to add in different weapon types having different functions, and turning the entire thing into a confusing mess.

    SWG's NGE still made you click constantly, crouching and going prone were largely useless (As opposed to here, it can actually be used for cover and isn't a bitch to execute.), and weaponry could generally be divided between "melee" and "ranged weaponry". That's it. Weaponry types like miniguns (Which charge up, Heavy style, and can sweep areas.) didn't, and still don't, exist.

    Going off the patch notes, they're pretty obviously assigning traits to weaponry, and are even diversifying the system so that certain modes of combat are better for certain weapons and meta-combat roles (See, miniguns being single target in RPG mode. Being able to sweep down areas in shooter mode.).


    On a side-note, a possible plus side of this is that it might actually make ground PVP not be a gigantic cluster-fuck of assholes exploiting the same overpowered three mission rewards, now that people can use tactics again and actually stack up on a door for cover, like they did in beta, without some asshat popping off a ton of unique rewards to wipe the team.


    Also, assuming that the borg nullification item is going to have a ten minute cooldown is just asinine and, as much as I hate to say it, bitching to bitch. We don't even know enough about it to comment on it yet. Though I can say that they're not going to kneecap the one way players have to fight a major end-game faction. There's incompetent, and then there's suicidal.

    They might make it a consumable. In which case I can see massive amounts of rage causing that to get changed in the immediate future, but that's it.

    Archonex on
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    Regina FongRegina Fong Allons-y, Alonso Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Uh, read the posts. They are consumables.

    Someone said "it would be nice if it were a re-usable" and I said that if it were, it would have a cripplingly long cooldown.

    :P

    Regina Fong on
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    TalonSETalonSE Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    What's with the title change? Are we going to start running a STF every Friday now? Because I'm all for that if we can get enough people together to do so.

    TalonSE on
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    ArchonexArchonex No hard feelings, right? Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Uh, read the posts. They are consumables.

    Someone said "it would be nice if it were a re-usable" and I said that if it were, it would have a cripplingly long cooldown.

    :P

    I'm going to withhold judgment about it until I see them.

    Keep in mind that according to past posts, the STO devs apparently see the Devidian Cane and Phase Field as "consumables", since they're placed in the same slot. Both of these items are actually essentially just equippable powers with a cooldown, in the same way that the (until recently, essentially easter egg) bonus devices exist in CO.

    Archonex on
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    Regina FongRegina Fong Allons-y, Alonso Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Archonex wrote: »
    Uh, read the posts. They are consumables.

    Someone said "it would be nice if it were a re-usable" and I said that if it were, it would have a cripplingly long cooldown.

    :P

    I'm going to withhold judgment about it until I see them.

    Keep in mind that according to past posts, the STO devs apparently see the Devidian Cane and Phase Field as "consumables", since they're placed in the same slot. Both of these items are actually essentially just equippable powers with a cooldown, in the same way that bonus devices exist in CO.

    No, this will be an actual consumable, that you can replicate apparently.

    Is it a big deal? Maybe, maybe not, I'll have to fight these new borg to say for sure. But is this a change that people were asking for? Absolutely not. Nowhere do I recall hearing people asking for borg ground missions to have new layers of combat difficulty.

    Regina Fong on
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    HevachHevach Registered User regular
    edited June 2011
    Yeah, it was right out of the replicator next to the hypos. I'm not entirely sure it's consumable, since I didn't get to try fighting borg, just Romulans, but it's cheap, so I'm guessing it is.

    On the one hand, simulating the borg adaptation better is nice, but yeah, it's not the way I would have wanted them to be beefed up on the ground. I can see a few alternatives to the consumable that keep the same power, though. They could make it a universal power that you're given when you accept the mission that gives you access to Gama Orionis, or keep the consumable and make the [Borg] modifier on ground weapons into an automatic cycle so if they go immune, the next hit will clear it.

    Hevach on
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