Star Trek Online: Here We Go Again!

[Kitsune]

Aegis is definitely spiffy, I mean to equip all of it the moment I ding 41.  I'll still be a little sad when I reach admiral and give up the Reman shield for it, though.  Having my ship look like this adds a real coolness factor to things.

[Merusk]

There is nothing cool about Voyager.

Nothing!

 

[Simond]

Quick reminder: Voyager could have been written by Ronald D. Moore but he showed up to one staff meeting, realised that it was going to be terrible, and quit.
Then he found a lapsed sci-fi license and made "How I would have run Voyager" instead.

[Sir T]

There is nothing cool about Voyager.

Nothing!

 

Don't say that. You'll upset the changeling that was masquerading as Janeway's hair.

By the way, I take back all criticism I made of the Nebula. The thing is a beast.

[Shatter]

Seven was pretty hot, rest of Voyager sucked

[Rishathra]

One thing I've learned is to always install Reman shields on every ship.

[Kitsune]

I sort of regret throwing my useless Miranda away at this point; I'm a little curious about how it would look with the Reman paint job.  Add plasma beams for matching color and you've got a flying glowstick rave machine.  And even though I never liked Voyager as a show, I still like the ship's appearance.

[5150]

Anyway, I just got a nebula class, and I have to say I don't like the slow turning on it. Lovely looking ship though, wish they had gone with that for the Enterprise D.

Do you mean the Nebula @ Commander? Because you can't get the Ent D (Galaxy) until Captain, so did you mean the Ent B (Excelsior) or are you talking about Admiral level Nebula?

Oh, and quick warning to anyone like me who was tempted to put down real cash for the alternate Captain science ship, its special torpedo ability apparently only works for photons.  So for the 90% of everyone who uses quantums, it's useless.  I don't know if that's going to be amended in a later patch or is 'working as intended'.

I've been using the Breen set & Transphasic torps from Lt Cmd 1. Must confess I haven't tried quantums yet but I bet I cant find a levelling quantum launcher like I can with the transphasic cluster?

I was disapointed to note that all the new c-store ships fancy modules (and the Cmd level Nebula & Excelsior after F2P) are only usable on the same class of ship (Crusier/Science/Escort), pre-existing C-store ships (original Enterprise, Oberth & NX class - yes the grappler is becoming a module) I believe are still universal after F2P (I hope so because I stick the levelling blue phasers on everything I fly!)

[Sir T]

Commander level Nebula.

[5150]

Apparently the F2P launch date is Jan 17 2012

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/121/1211970p1.html

[Simond]

After SWTOR?

[MahrinSkel]

One month after, just long enough for the commitment to pay for it to pop up and try to get anybody that didn't like it enough (remember that's been 75% of the last few AAA launches).  It's either at least a month before, or waiting at least that long.  A major AAA launch will suck the oxygen out of the room inside that window.

--Dave

[Stormwaltz]

But the current Tribble build gets patched to the servers "somewhere in the range of December 1 to December 8."

http://www.startrekonline.com/node/2683

So crafting dies a month from now.

[ghost]

There was crafting?

[UnSub]

After SWTOR?

There will be life after SWOR.

[Mrbloodworth]

Boo, seems that buddy key ran out. I thought it was unlimited. 

[Kitsune]

I hit RA yesterday and can finally equip the aegis set after having been sitting on them for a few weeks, am now flying around space in a mobile rave platform.  I'm waiting for the borg to show up so I can test the stuff in combat and see how much of a difference it makes.  Thanks again to Rish for having gone to the trouble of making the set!

[5150]

I hit RA yesterday and can finally equip the aegis set after having been sitting on them for a few weeks, am now flying around space in a mobile rave platform.  I'm waiting for the borg to show up so I can test the stuff in combat and see how much of a difference it makes.  Thanks again to Rish for having gone to the trouble of making the set!

If you are talking about the Borg sector invasion I predict you will still die/respawn/die/respawn/etc

[jakonovski]

After SWTOR?

A great idea, seeing as how that's around the time when the free first month ends.

[01101010]

I hit RA yesterday and can finally equip the aegis set after having been sitting on them for a few weeks, am now flying around space in a mobile rave platform.  I'm waiting for the borg to show up so I can test the stuff in combat and see how much of a difference it makes.  Thanks again to Rish for having gone to the trouble of making the set!

Welcome to the world of Tron.

[Kitsune]

I hit RA yesterday and can finally equip the aegis set after having been sitting on them for a few weeks, am now flying around space in a mobile rave platform.  I'm waiting for the borg to show up so I can test the stuff in combat and see how much of a difference it makes.  Thanks again to Rish for having gone to the trouble of making the set!

If you are talking about the Borg sector invasion I predict you will still die/respawn/die/respawn/etc

Actually, I didn't die once on the invasion I played yesterday.  I was very very pleased at how well my recon science ship performed and though I was too busy to keep a close eye on my buffs, I'm suspecting the aegis shield resist boosts were responsible for at least some of that.  Between Miracle Worker, Transfer Shield Power, Emergency Power to Shields, and Hazard Emitters, I have a fair little ton of survivability boosting power.  Which I sort of need, given that when I run in and drop a black hole in the middle of a pile of ships they all start shooting me for some strange reason.

I can also fit a little baby tactical ensign in the new ship.  The current tac officer already has high yield torp 1 and 2, so I decided to try out fire beams at will.  It looks spiffy to fire off, though I'm not very sure how much actual damage it does.

[jakonovski]

I burned out on Skyrim and decided to finally use my retail key I got from some random Steam sale. Holy fuck but this game is sooo much better than during beta. My super sexy Na'vi ripoff captain is a total badass killing Borg left and right.

[Surlyboi]

I hit RA yesterday and can finally equip the aegis set after having been sitting on them for a few weeks, am now flying around space in a mobile rave platform.  I'm waiting for the borg to show up so I can test the stuff in combat and see how much of a difference it makes.  Thanks again to Rish for having gone to the trouble of making the set!

If you are talking about the Borg sector invasion I predict you will still die/respawn/die/respawn/etc

Actually, I didn't die once on the invasion I played yesterday.  I was very very pleased at how well my recon science ship performed and though I was too busy to keep a close eye on my buffs, I'm suspecting the aegis shield resist boosts were responsible for at least some of that.  Between Miracle Worker, Transfer Shield Power, Emergency Power to Shields, and Hazard Emitters, I have a fair little ton of survivability boosting power.  Which I sort of need, given that when I run in and drop a black hole in the middle of a pile of ships they all start shooting me for some strange reason.

I can also fit a little baby tactical ensign in the new ship.  The current tac officer already has high yield torp 1 and 2, so I decided to try out fire beams at will.  It looks spiffy to fire off, though I'm not very sure how much actual damage it does.

Fire at will is great against swarming enemies like Romulan and Klingon birds of Prey and those pesky slow high-yield plasma torpedoes.

[Sir T]

New Patch in today. I'm still downloading but new features seems to include New Borg ground combat Invasions and the new skill set is in, along with a new mission interface.

http://www.startrekonline.com/season_five

Really enjoying this game. Mind you I ground like a maniac to get a char to VA before this update. I HATE the Voyager design as its Voyager, but the horrible thing is that the VA science ship is absolutely fantastic to fly. With a halfway decent setup and its Ablative shield ability its practically unkillable. It breaks my heart though, as its fucking Voyager. Arrgh.

[Hawkbit]

I'm actually considering picking this up soon to tinker with before it goes F2P.  I mildly enjoyed the beta but didn't have time to commit (nor did I feel it warranted a $50 box purchase).  I'm hearing lots of good things about how much it has been cleaned up since beta.

[Sir T]

I'd pick it up. The early parts are crappy becasue you have a crap ship, but you get 500 C-Store points to start with, so you can buy an Obereth class starter ship for 240 points since this patch, which makes a HUGE difference as the Obereth is a far better ship to run around in at the start (it does not have the turning circle of a drunk whale for a start). The space combat is fun, and I've gotten used to the ground combat and its better now that I halfway know what I'm doing, and it makes a nice change from the space combat. Its a good game, basically

[Sir T]

Ok I've downloaded the patch.

Initial Impressions are fairly positive. The new skill system has been revamped as everyone knew would happen, but my vice admiral ran out of points so theres plenty of room for specialization and uniqueness. A lot of the specialist skills are gone, you not specialize in energy weapons, rather then phasers or disruptors, for example. I've just run around DS9, but theres clear icons on the minimap showing where all the serrvices are. You can select one of your skills from a drop down list, and the 3 skills that affect that skill are highlighted.

Interesting new thing... the Dilithium exchange. Basically people can offer c-store points on this for "Dilithium", and you can sell Dialithium for cstore points.. Much like eve its allowing people to pay for ingame cash in a roundabout way by trading an ingame currency for things that you pay the company for. You can also Buy Dilithium for Its probably the first new point of the F2P coming down the line.

Of course I have no idea so far on how to get dilithium or what its used for...

[Stormwaltz]

Of course I have no idea so far on how to get dilithium or what its used for...

You get dilithium by doing all the things that used to earn obscure sub-currencies, like exploration marks and merits. As far as I can determine, dilithium is solely used to trade for Cryptic Points. But the value of dilithium is not fixed - it's run like an auction house, with players placing bids to buy X currency for Y amount.

You gain Dilithium ore by completing daily tasks such as star cluster exploration, PVP, certain Duty Officer assignments, special events, or daily story missions.

Also of note: Everyone gets a free ship in December. The Fed one is TOS Enterprise. The Klingon one is something that start with a Q.

And: Reduced cost block subs are available. Lifetime sub is now available for $200 ($100 off). I'm still unsure how much benefit there is to subscribing over F2P'ing it up, though. I suspect not as much as in LotRO.

[Hawkbit]

As a new character, which of the 'class' types is best to start: Tactical, Science, Engineering?  I'm leaning toward Engineering by description, but I have no context of what it really is without having played.

[Kitsune]

Engineering is the class of having lots of self-healing abilities to make you as hard to kill as possible.  It's typically paired with cruisers, as they're the big and tough ships so a good engineer captain can make them hard to crack.  I on the other hand can't stand how hard they are to maneuver, so my engineering ass is parked firmly in the captain's seat on a science ship and I'm perfectly happy with it.

[Stormwaltz]

The simplest to play is probably Tactical. You're a glass cannon rocketing around in a fast, maneuverable ship that mounts most of its guns forward.

Personally, I quite enjoy Science. You're a buff/debuff mage with shield tank abilities. I like doing cool, weird things (spawn a swarm of holographic ships! dump a snaring DoT singularity on his ass!), but you're not going to have the DPS of a Tactical or the survivability of an Engineer.

[cironian]

BTW, Q is hanging out at ESD again. In case you didn't get invited to TOR and would like to do some double-speed levelling over the weekend.

[Surlyboi]

The first VA I leveled was an engineer, but I used mostly tactical ships. Tac + engineering skills ups your survivability by a lot.

[Sir T]

I played around a bit with Dilithium last night. As far as I have discovered so far you use it in 3 ways.

(1) to trade for c-store points. Of course that raises the question of why you would want it so...

(2) At Memory alpha you can trade Dilkithium for "Unidentified Substances" The cheaper of which is 10 Silithium, and the More expensive of which is 1000 per unit. You need these for crafting.

(3) Trade for
(a) Green abd blue gear
(b) Trade for your new commander, captain and Rear admiral ship

Heres the snag. The prices are outragious. For instance, it coasts 40000 Dil for a commander ship, 80,000 for a captians, and a whopping 120,000 for your rear admiral ship. As for the VA ships, get thee to the C-Store, varlet. I dont know if you get a free one when you level, it still says you do on the rank track, but if you do that wont last very long. The Prices for the gear vary but start off in the thousands and wind up from between 15 to 20k

So, how do you get this precious commodity. Well Those exploration missions for a start. There s a once a day "Explore" Mission that lets you get 1480 ( These numbers are approxomate, I forgot to note this down last night) dil for exploring one of the exploration areas.  Similarly, 1 of the "aid the Defeir" Missions gains you 1480, and the 2 quicker onces gians you 480 each. Thats once A day. The "rapair the satilites" gaines you 480 Dil. If you send your officers off to do missions you gain 5 dil per succesful mission, unless its a critical success which gives you 50. I dont know if you can get it from STF or fleet missions yet.

So thats 4400 dil if you git all the above once a day, ignoring the missions aspect. But hey even if you manage to game the system somehow, you are only allowed refine 8000 per day anyway. Of I corgot that Vice Admirals can get an excta explore the Btran Cluster mission which youc can cu concurrently by exploring the Btran cluster anyway which nets you an extra 1480, but will only be avalible once you hit VA

So you want to get a commander ship, such as the stargaser class cruiser, you have to do all the daily missions above for 9 and a bit days straight to get it. A Captain ship, such as Voyager or the Enterprise D? 18.2 days. And good luck getting your soverign which will take you 27.3 whole days of doing those missions to get it, and thats if you dont use your dilithium for anything else. Oh you want to buy gear as well? Good luck with that.

Or you can trade C-Store points for Dilithium. I wonder if the guy who thought this up was named Ben Dover.

Now like I said I could be missing out on other missions to get it, but even if you max your daily allowance it will still take respectivly 5, 10 and 15 days grinding to get those ships.

What fun!

[Stormwaltz]

On a lighter note, just last night I discovered I can have multiple starship pets out at once. I had a TOS shuttle, a Delta Flyer, and a Gikli milling around behind me.