Star Trek Online : A New and Unbroken Thread!

[Tyrnan]

So I'm giving this game a shot.  Haven't done much other than taking a scientist through the tutorial.  Seems fun enough that be playing at least little while.  Logged once I got to Earth.

I know with a free account I'm limited on my resepcs.  Is there a skill in the early going I should be focusing on?  What about crew?

I'm willing to spend few bucks in the store.  Anything there that are "must haves"?

As Sir T said, putting 6 points into most skills is a fairly safe bet.  However, even on my Science captains I usually don't put anything in the sci skills above commander as I never really use the skills they buff and disables aren't that prevalent in PvE.  If you plan on PvPing however they could be worthwhile.  Other than that just focus on weapon skills, things like hull repair, shield systems, warp core potential etc.  You'll be able to have 6 in most skills by the time you hit the level cap.

If you reckon you'll play enough to hit 50 inside a month (and it's not really hard, leveling in STO is quick) then I still think subbing for the month is worth it.  You'll get extra inventory, bank and bridge officer slots as you rank up which while not essential, are nice to have.  More importantly though you'll get a free respec token at each rank which can come in very handy when you're new to the game and want to experiment with different builds.  The skill planner at stoacademy is quite handy too.

[Sir T]

Is the Horta pet reusable? I thought it was like a few of the others where you'd get, say, 20 of them and then you're done.

Yep, it stays for a minute and has a 4 minute cooldown but its totally reusable.

[Special J]

Cool, thanks for tips.  Just at level 3 as I took my time figuring stuff out.  Still on the starter Miranda-class ship but I've got my bridge positions filled with basic crew you get as mission rewards.  I may consider the one month sub thing.

Let me make sure I've got the Memory Alpha stuff right: scan anomaly, get bits, distill to blue prints, make stuff. Right?

Lockboxes: It's pretty much going to cost me either $1.20 or a shit ton of space bucks to open one?

[Sir T]

Pretty much. Everyone hates Lock boxes but they make Perfect world money

[Stormwaltz]

The best thing to do with lockboxes is stick a full stack in the bank, wait until that variety's been gone a while, and then sell them to rubes on the AH.

[Simond]

Romulan engine room: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stVJ7Ld9LP0
"Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see".

e: fixed.

[Stormwaltz]

I don't think that's the video you meant to link. :)

EDIT: Yeah, totally. And that intermittent cicada-like noise doesn't help. That is not something I'd like to work near. Federation engines explode, like physics intended. Romulan engines you have to worry about opening a hole to another reality...

[Special J]

So if I buy an Officer candidate, there are a bunch that I can pick the race, and there is a "Unknown" candidate.  I assume that's a random race with a chance at something harder to find?

[Merusk]

No, it's a race that you can use a bunch of custom heads to create weird-looking aliens the way you want, vs one of the preset races.

[Special J]

I've been promoted and I get a choice of ships. So from what I see from stats:

Cruiser: Tank
Escort: DPS
Science: Hybrid

Was going to go science for versatility, but being a Science officer plus having two more, should I worry about the lack of Engineering & Tactical abilities.  Or should just not sweat it until higher levels?

[Tyrnan]

The leveling content in the game really isn't very difficult (apart from some of the ground missions against the Breen where bosses will 1-shot your entire away team with that stupid cold cone attack, even on normal difficulty ) and people have gone from 1 to 50 in a shuttle.

Having said that if you want fast, easy leveling just jump in an escort and throw some dual heavy cannons with turrets on it and the supporting tac skills like rapid fire and scatter volley and away you go.  Science ships used to be a lot of fun but the science skills got nerfed pretty hard so they're not as effective as they used to be.  They can still be fun to fly since they feel more Trek-y than the escorts and are much more nimble than cruisers.  The lower level cruisers may not be too bad to fly but as you go up in rank the turn rate gets lower to the point where I personally found them frustrating (this was quite a while ago but I don't see any evidence that they've changed significantly since).  From what I've read, the change to RCS consoles that is currently in testing on Tribble helps them in this regard so they might see a bit of a resurgence when that launches.

But honestly, you're not going to be in that ship for very long so just pick what you think sounds fun to you.  If you're really unsure, you can always copy your character over to Tribble and try them out over there without it costing you anything.

[Raknor]

I just recently leveled to 50 for the first time and I can tell you, if you want to level fast, skip the episodes and just fly to every planet on a map and if a patrol pops up. Do it. They are very simple and rarely do they involve ground combat. It seemed like every episode I ran involved some sort of ground combat that really slowed my progress. At 50 the episodes give much better rewards anyways.

At level 40 save your ship token and go buy one of the many "mirror" vessels off the Exchange. I think I picked up the mirror patrol escort for 60k and I've been using it ever since. I also purchased a mirror science and cruiser which ran me under 250k total for all 3. That way you can test them out and see which you want to spend your token on at 50.

If ground combat is something you like, then bring along 2 engineers and train them in both turret skills at the bridge officer trainer. Turrets seem to be a lot less stupid than your crew and four additional guns makes a huge difference. When I started, I was unaware you could train your away team for very little EC and it makes things so much easier. Once I made the turret twins and my science guy into a healer, ground combat was more of a sprint that only slowed down because the turret abilities were on cool down. Although I still find ground combat clunky as shit and avoid it at if at all possible.

[Surlyboi]

Hit me up for a free mirror ship or two. I'm sure I've still got a few from popped lockboxen.

[Rishathra]

I try to keep several in the fleet bank as well, if anyone needs one.

[Reg]

I've recently decided to return to STO with the advent of the new expansion.  I signed in last night on my level 24 science guy and found myself totally confused. Skill points, duty officers, even how to drive my ship are all gone from my memory.  Is there any kind of guide to refresh my memory or should I just start a new character from scratch and go through the tutorial?  I've been gone for ages and ages so I'm thinking the new character might be the way to go at least until I relearn the fundamentals.

[Special J]

Thanks, going to go with Science ship anyways, since they do seem more 'Star Trek-y' and looks like I'll get annoyed by the Cruiser turn rate.

Not racing to 50 so I plan going through the episodes.

[Sir T]

Reg, you can take a look at here, though some of the info is out of date

http://sto.gamepedia.com/Guide:_Basics

http://sto.gamepedia.com/Guide:_FAQ

[Merusk]

Thanks, going to go with Science ship anyways, since they do seem more 'Star Trek-y' and looks like I'll get annoyed by the Cruiser turn rate.

Not racing to 50 so I plan going through the episodes.

Cruiser turn rate isn't a problem if you're the right captain for it, which is the Engineer. You buff your shields, always take the highest shield upgrade from missions and become tankasaurusrex.  Toss in an engineer crewman with emergency power to shields and you'll have to worry about very few enemies.

You always need to make sure to have 270d phaser banks instead of other weapons, though, so you can bring the bulk of your firepower to bear at all angles since everything in the universe will outfly you. 

Well, that or learn to fight in reverse like I did so I could bring my torpedoes to bear. But that looks silly.

[Sir T]

Its actually 250 degrees.

[Father mike]

Having a cruiser (and not an escorted)  for the Fed arc where you're fighting Romulans was easier for me. Trying to kill those torpedoes with forward arc weapons was an exercise in frustration.

[Stormwaltz]

Trying to kill those torpedoes with forward arc weapons was an exercise in frustration.

Yeah, I think when dealing with those, Beam Arrays or Dual Beams with a "Fire at Will" Tac Officer are the best solution.

[Sir T]

Its an open beta weekend this week. Everyone can now sample romulans on Tribble, the test server

[Kitsune]

Trying to kill those torpedoes with forward arc weapons was an exercise in frustration.

Yeah, I think when dealing with those, Beam Arrays or Dual Beams with a "Fire at Will" Tac Officer are the best solution.

I have cannons on the front of my Vesta, beams on the back.  All it takes is a slight turn to bring the beams to bear for shooting down incoming projectiles and applying the science ship debuffs to enemies, and I'd be doing that turn in any event to get more distance to line up my next firing run with the cannons.

[Surlyboi]

This. I run and gun with escorts almost exclusively now and the cannon front/beam back combo rarely lets me down.

[Morat20]

Huh, can't seem to figure out where to join the new Crystalline Catastrophe thingy. Not in my PvE queue.

Edited to add: It seems it's because the event is over. Which is weird, because you can still queue it in the event reputation system thingy. Which I have. And now can't finish. WTF?

Now gotta figure out how to remove that frin ny kust,

[Riggswolfe]

I played a bit of Legacy of Romulus this weekend in the open beta. Holy shit! The rest of the game seems so much less interesting now that I've played that. And the ship interiors? 10000000X cooler than Federaton and Klingon interiors.

[Hoax]

KDF to 50, de-rainbowed my guns for the first time but only to cheapcheap Tachyeon XI blues.

Things to do:
-Get the two bridge officer space traits (Leadership and Efficient)
-Doff for the XII field generators I need
-Get purple space doffs for active space duty
-Get boff that can train a boff with Tyken's Rift
-Get Borg stuff because imba (not sure how this works yet, STFs probably)
-Farm Dilithium to get Zen to get the Zen ships that come with engineering consoles that grant an additonal cooldown   PWE
-EC farm to buy better and better sets of weapons/tac consoles

[kildorn]

They've done a really good job with LoR so far from what I've seen. My only minor complaint is that there's two ships per tier (one free, one zen), which seems kind of skimpy. And knowing PWE any future ships to fill the gaping holes in playstyle will be zen only.

[Morat20]

Derainbow guns?

[kildorn]

Derainbow guns?

I think he's talking about switching to all one damage type so you can stack damage mods.

[Morat20]

Ah. Hmm, not exactly there yet myself. I did spend some fleet credits and upgun my current ship. (Mark XII phaser beam arrays and Mark XII photon torps -- my consoles aren't exactly top-end yet, though).

Unpacked my Breen ship -- don't have one that can mount cannons and had the slot open. :)

[Sir T]

The Breen ship is actually very good, especially given its price (free)

There server had been very unstable of late. But the LOR Open beta has been a rousing success by any measure. When I logged on to check something Saturday afternoon my time there was a queue of 1020 waiting to get in, and that number kept increasing. from what I hear, its been like that all weekend.

[Soln]

Is there a way to stick to space missions?  I really don't enjoy the ground ones. 

[Sir T]

If you are talking about story missions, no. they always have a mix of space and ground, with the odd one bieng totally space or totally ground.

If you are talking levelling purposes, then there are patrol missions for the federation that are pretty much all space. Just fly up to a planer and when a box pops up "patrol Blah" click on it. You can only do them once per character which is a shame, there's a LOT of good fun content in them. I must suggest that on the forums actually.

Also there is the "mirror" event, which is basiclly a big fight around a starbase. it comes up in the pve queue when the mirror event is on.

And the Red alerts give good XP as well, of course. Join the REDALERT channel to get people reporting where they are popping up, though its not as active as it once was. And of course there is the space fleet actions in the PVE queue.

[Stormwaltz]

I half-assedly live blogged three hours in LoR on Facebook tonight. You can view it here. EDIT: There are story spoilers for the tutorial and first mission.

I routinely nuke all my public posts, so it won't be there past Monday 5/13.