Star Trek Online: Here We Go Again!

[Mrbloodworth]

Sir-t Whats the price for the C-store points or whatever?

[Sir T]

Well its a voluntary exchange sothe prices are set by players, and its new so it hasnt settled down yet, and to be honest I havent been keeping an eye on it at all, but when I looked a couple of days ago it was 450 to 500 dil per Cstore point. Concidering that would mean you would need around half a million Dil to get the 1200 C-Store points to get your vice admiral ship if you didn't want to pay a tenner for it, I cant see that level bieng maintained.

I've heard a lot of rumours of course, and the most persistent one is that "gold members" (Ie subscribers) will still get their free ship on level change, so take that for what you will.

Aside from the Dilithium nonsense the patch is actualy pretty good with some nice features introduced, and the Klingon experiance appears to have been improved.

[cironian]

I';ve heard a lot of rumours of course, and the most persistent one is that"gold members" (Ie subscribers) will still get their free ship on level change, so take that for what you will.

I can confirm that's the case for the Rear Admiral ship. I just went through the promotion and got a free Star Cruiser out of it, just like before the update. So I guess subscribers will still get one ship on each tier for free, except for the VA refit ship, which is for cash points only.

[Kitsune]

No, I just hit the second RA tier and got precisely shit for it instead of the ship.

[cironian]

No, I just hit the second RA tier and got precisely shit for it instead of the ship.

I was talking about RA, lower half. I guess they don't give one for upper half because there is no new ship tier there.

[MahrinSkel]

stuff

Sir T, I am not normally a spelling or grammar nazi, and certainly I can let my fingers slip up on occasion.  But please, *please* start using Chrome or Firefox with the spellcheck turned on.  That was awful.

--Dave

[Sir T]

I WAS using Firefox with the spelcheck turned on. You should have seen it BEFORE I went through it :D

[Stormwaltz]

In a "what the hell" moment, I did a Borg Red Alert Mission last night.

The boss was a Borgified V'Ger. 

[Surlyboi]

Yeah, the game has been subtly tying V'Ger to the borg.

[Kitsune]

That's been a fan theory for years now, that the species that modified Voyager into V'Ger was a much younger Borg before they went all assimilation-crazy.

[Tyrnan]

Shatner even co-wrote a book that linked the two 

[jakonovski]

Patrol missions don't seem to be working anymore, I was able to complete the one I had but not turn it in. Someone said they've been removed on purpose and the bug is that they forgot to remove in-progress patrols from your quest log. I wonder if that's true.

[5150]

I';ve heard a lot of rumours of course, and the most persistent one is that"gold members" (Ie subscribers) will still get their free ship on level change, so take that for what you will.

I can confirm that's the case for the Rear Admiral ship. I just went through the promotion and got a free Star Cruiser out of it, just like before the update. So I guess subscribers will still get one ship on each tier for free, except for the VA refit ship, which is for cash points only.

You still get one at Captain as well - although the introduction of the dilithium costs at this point has annoyed me as I was planning to get more than 1 of the captain ships on my characters, easy enough to do with energy credits, bloody crippling in dilithium (I dont think any of my characters currently has more than the daily limit (8k) in total! and the captain ships are 80K dilithium each :-(

The promotion spiel [at captain] says you are getting a discount token but then underneath says gold accounts get a free ship (so either hit Admiral before F2P launches or you will need to either sub up before you ding or swallow the dilithium costs)

You obviously wont get a free ship at the final tier because the ships there have always been C-store only.

[Sir T]

Thats not true though. I thought so as well, but I ground up to VA before the S5 patch and I got my VA ship for free.

Patrol missions don't seem to be working anymore, I was able to complete the one I had but not turn it in. Someone said they've been removed on purpose and the bug is that they forgot to remove in-progress patrols from your quest log. I wonder if that's true.

Yeah I noticed they were gone from my Quest log yesterday as well. If they are pulling them then thats a lot of content they are nixing and replacing it with fresh air.

[5150]

Thats not true though. I thought so as well, but I ground up to VA before the S5 patch and I got my VA ship for free.

Patrol missions don't seem to be working anymore, I was able to complete the one I had but not turn it in. Someone said they've been removed on purpose and the bug is that they forgot to remove in-progress patrols from your quest log. I wonder if that's true.

Yeah I noticed they were gone from my Quest log yesterday as well. If they are pulling them then thats a lot of content they are nixing and replacing it with fresh air.

You got a VA C-store ship for free?

My understanding was that patrol missions were now going to scale by level, is it just not a case of accepting the mission again or are they missing from the available section too?

[Rishathra]

VA ship tokens are now vet rewards.  You no longer get them through normal gameplay.

The patrol missions weren't removed, they just changed the way you acquire them.  Instead of a mission that gives you 3-5 systems to patrol, you automatically receive a mission for a single system when you enter that system.  If you have patrol missions in your log, they still work too.  You just have to turn in the single system missions and it will update the 'wrapper' mission.

[Sir T]

Thats not true though. I thought so as well, but I ground up to VA before the S5 patch and I got my VA ship for free

You got a VA C-store ship for free?

Yep I got the long range science retrofit ship for nothing. I got a VA ship token to spend when I dinged VA.

[Kitsune]

I hit VA over the weekend and received a middle finger for free, so working as intended! 

[Sir T]

Ok. Working a Klingon and a Tactical up from Scratch to see the changes.

Essentially the grind in levelling from the low levels has been eliminated. You play missions in sequence and until about commander level every mission means a new level. Snag is thqt leaves you sod all time to save up the omgwtf amounts of Dilithium to get your new ships. I can see people sticking with their commander ships till admiral, but the snag is you would probably die horribly   Of course there are more opportunities to generate Dilithium at admiral level.

Their "season 5" is a little bit of a con. There is precisely zero new content. Instead the three endgame missions have been split into ground and space missions, and they have a ground invasion event that happens three times a week at irregular intervals. You can join these missions from anywhere via a queue system, and they are quite fun. They you collect tags that allow you to buy purples and New set Items (two for Ground and space)

On the Kling side you start at commander level, and you now have a set of missions to go through rather than simply constantly blowing up Fed and Rommie ships to level. Frankly the Klingons are annoying as hell to me, and the words "repressed homosexuality" keeps running through my head at the god awful manly man dialogue. That said the ships are impressive and a different kind of ship to fly...

Speaking of ships, Crypric are running an event where you can buy a holiday box which if you open it gives you random crap. One of the things you can win is a Jem'hidar attack ship, which is alright. It has decent hull and is very maneuverale, and has a couple of universal bridge officer slots so its pretty customizable.

For the record the stats are

Minimum Rank: Rear Admiral/Brigadier General
Crew: 50
Weapons: 4 Fore, 3 Aft
Device Slots: 2
Bridge Officer Stations: 1 Lieutenant Commander Tactical; 1 Commander Tactical; 1 Ensign Engineering; 2 Lieutenant Universal
Console Upgrades: 4 Tactical; 4 Engineering; 1 Science
Base Turn Rate: 20 degrees per second
Impulse Modifier: 0.22
Hull Strength: 33,000
+10 Power to Weapons, +5 Power to Engines
Can Load Cannons

By Comparison, here's the Defiant

Minimum Rank: Vice Admiral
Crew: 50
Weapons: 4 Fore, 3 Aft
Device Slots: 2
Bridge Officer Stations: 1 Commander Tactical; 1 Lt. Commander Tactical; 1 Ensign Tactical; 1 Lieutenant Engineering; 1 Lieutenant Science
Console Upgrades: 3 Engineering, 2 Science, 4 Tactical
Base Turn Rate: 17 degrees per second
Impulse Modifier: 0.20
Hull Strength: 30,000
+15 Power to Weapons
Cloaking Device

Well you have no idea the storm that erupted about this bloody ship. Everyone wanted it. People were openly talking about spending hundreds of dollars on holiday boxes to get it. One guy has been said to have spent 5 thousand dollars. Earth space dock was filled with conversations on how many boxes they had opened and how they are only going to open just a few more. Of course people to justify this people are saying it is the ultimate PVP ship. How they know this when hardly anyone has them is beyond me. Some people have worked out your chances of winning this thing is around 0.05% to 0.07%.

Cryptic have made an absolute fortune on this. For the record I bought a whole one of these boxes, and that was out of curiosity. But I have been running the race game they have to win stuff every day. The scarf I bought with the Christmass stuff is pretty nice :D

[Surlyboi]

Yeah, I was kinda stumped at all the people going apeshit over the Jem'Hadar ship too, but hey.

As for the season 5 bait and switch, yeah I bought it for a while, long enough to get a bunch of tokens for the Strikeforce Omega gear, only to realize you had to do all the elite stuff to get the new look gear and well, fuck that.

[5150]

I was reading last night (unconfirmed) that certain STO podcast sites staff (plural) were given the Jem ship for free thus adding to the rage.

I've been running the race on 7 toons everyday since it lauched (well 5 since it launched and another 2 shortly thereafter) and I've had yet to see a red box. I've had maybe 5 blue boxes in total so far which have not contained anything that impressed me (dont get me wrong it's always a rare, just never something I find myself wanting/needing to use - always seems to be a ship weapon inappropriate to my ship or a ground weapon that isn't any better than what I already have). Since one of the things you can get out of a red box is [just] a blue box I'm not breaking my neck to waste points on red boxes from the c-store.

I've read reports of people getting the Jem ship after about 30 box's from the c-store but another forum account where the guy spent $80 without getting one (not sure how many boxes that equates to).

It's difficult to see this as anything other than a cash grab without knowing if the number of Jem ships handed out is capped and what the chances of getting each type of box from the race as well as the chance for each type of reward from the red box.

There would have been more acceptable ways to control the use (notice I didn't say distribution) of the 'continuity breaking ship' (one of the devs justifications for the distribution method). It reminds me of first rates from PotBS all over again!

I'd like one obviously (actually the one thing I'd like to see is the interior since I dont think thats been posted yet) but I doubt I'd fly it as I tend to avoid escorts (despite owning Defiant at captain and planning on getting the VA version when the stipend grows enough).

It does concern me that, despite the forum wailing, the sheer number of people who sank loads of cash into red boxes will ensure random c-store loot is definately in STO's future :-(

Anyway thanks mainly to duty officers I have 4 toons who are now all max level (actually 1 is still 2 levels off but I predict will get there by the end of the week) despite only 1 being captain and 3 being commander when the patch hit and only actively playing one of them. My sons brand new toon is now Mid Lt Cmd despite having only done 2 missions and the odd borg invasion.

While this is all well and good I am now finding myself lacking in appropriately leveled kit (the only plus point to not getting red boxes from the race), but it has saved me wanting to buy any lower Admiral level c-store ships (was planning to get the nebula and excelsior) and the move to [large quantities of] dilitium for the normal ships has stopped by buying more ship slots for any addition ones at captain or lower admiral I may have wanted so Cryptic have done themselves out of a few c-store sales with this patch......

[Rishathra]

If you need appropriately leveled kit, feel free to send a message to @Rishathra telling me what you need.

They added a diminutive, green skinned Ferengi standing outside a hut on the race map.  He's giving away bat'leths and lirpas with plasma blades that glow and hum when you attack with them.  He also speaks in an unusual cadence, reversing word orders and such.  When I first heard about it I thought people were joking, but nope, they actually did it.

[Sir T]

I've read reports of people getting the Jem ship after about 30 box's from the c-store but another forum account where the guy spent $80 without getting one (not sure how many boxes that equates to).

About 80, more or less. Sheer madness either way. It is really hard to describe how desperate people were for this ship.

It does concern me that, despite the forum wailing, the sheer number of people who sank loads of cash into red boxes will ensure random c-store loot is definately in STO's future :-(

Agreed, sadly.

[Lantyssa]

Doesn't that basically equate to gambling?

[Malakili]

Doesn't that basically equate to gambling?

No more than buying packs of magic cards or whatever.

[Surlyboi]

If you need appropriately leveled kit, feel free to send a message to @Rishathra telling me what you need.

They added a diminutive, green skinned Ferengi standing outside a hut on the race map.  He's giving away bat'leths and lirpas with plasma blades that glow and hum when you attack with them.  He also speaks in an unusual cadence, reversing word orders and such.  When I first heard about it I thought people were joking, but nope, they actually did it.

SWTOR tribute?

[Sir T]

Yup he's there. I actually never clocked the reference till I read this thread. I guess thats also why they didn't include a glowing sword in there, even though they have swords in the game. Too close to copyright

[SurfD]

Doesn't that basically equate to gambling?

According to South Korea, probably yes.

[5150]

F2P apparently goes live today for lapsed accounts.

[Minvaren]

This thread's "last read" is still borked, and I got the email about the F2P about 30 minutes ago.

The email says that the official start still isn't until the 17th, though.

[Sir T]

Early Access for F2P

We are pleased to announce that the doors are opening a little early for Star Trek Online free-to-play for a limited set of people.

Starting tomorrow (Thursday, January 5th), anyone with a lapsed subscription to Star Trek Online will be able to log into the game and play as a Silver member. This means that any account that has in the past subscribed to the game, even if only for the initial month, can come back and play for free!

For those of you not familiar with the difference between Gold (subscriber) and Silver (non-subscriber) membership, you can refer to the features matrix. The most important fact is that previous subscribers can jump right in and play their existing characters with no extra steps and no loss of anything they previously gained for their characters.

Early access is our way of thanking the many loyal customers who sat in the Captain’s chair during the past two years. Free-to-play opens for the general public in less than two weeks, on 17-01 (January 17th).

Welcome back!

Stephen D’Angelo
Executive Producer
Star Trek Online

[Simond]

Time for a new (not bugged) thread?

[UnSub]

That's a good idea. I'd do it, but haven't yet started on the F2P version of STO.

[Rishathra]

Took a random screenshot the other day and it actually turned out pretty good.

[Simond]

Is that a lightbatleth?