Star Trek Online: Here We Go Again!

[cironian]

So, I am mildly amused by this so far, even if the starter ship sucks. A lot.

Also, I mistakenly hired another Tactical Officer, when I should have had him teach someone something - my first TacOff seems just better, and the other guy's first skill is (what looks to me to be) a useless AE Torpedo attack.

Also...how do I make Engineering Officers not useless? Seems my first one kind of sucks, but I didn't see a better alternative.

You know you can grab replacement skills for your officers at the earth starbase, right?

For Engineering tier 1, I think I used Power to Weapons (straight space-DPS buff) and as ground ability the -speed minefield (to keep those melee klingons off my back).

[Rishathra]

Also...how do I make Engineering Officers not useless? Seems my first one kind of sucks, but I didn't see a better alternative.

For space, Emergency Power to Shields and/or Engineering Team are always solid choices to start.  For ground, Phaser Turret I,II,III, and whatever the hell you want to throw into the Ensign slot.  Yeah, engineers seem pretty pointless to start, but once they are commander rank they can push out a frightening amount of damage.

[01101010]

Also...how do I make Engineering Officers not useless? Seems my first one kind of sucks, but I didn't see a better alternative.

For space, Emergency Power to Shields and/or Engineering Team are always solid choices to start.  For ground, Phaser Turret I,II,III, and whatever the hell you want to throw into the Ensign slot.  Yeah, engineers seem pretty pointless to start, but once they are commander rank they can push out a frightening amount of damage.

Ensign = engineering team 1, LC = Emer power to (whatever ship you are flying...[i.e., cruisers might be best with shields, escorts with weapons, science with AUX]), then pick and choose... eject warp core is great for ships that like to tail you, but I like the oscillate weapon frequency one. Also keep in mind you yourself can train like Boffs with your upgraded skills. As for ground... well who gives a shit about ground combat :D . But I took phaser turret, recharge personal shields, shield turret, and medical turret... though they all suck ass - but not as much as tactical Boff skills. Science officers seem to have some nice tricks though.

[Surlyboi]

Miracle worker has saved my ass more times than I care to mention. Engineering is worth it for that alone.

[01101010]

Miracle worker has saved my ass more times than I care to mention. Engineering is worth it for that alone.

Where and when do you get that? I saw it listed on the wiki, but never saw it available at the trainer.

[Der Helm]

I am mildly interested in giving this a look, since the digital deluxe edition is dirt cheap on steam right now. But since there is some cryptic disclaimer on the store page about a required credit card, do I need to give them one to activate my free month ? That would be a barrier of entry for me since I still don't own a single credit card. 

[01101010]

I think they do sadly. I can't recall, but I believe when I bought the $3.70 special on Steam I had to also sign up for a payment option - which I promptly killed immediately before I left the webpage.

[Spiff]

I bought it in a steam deal myself about a month back, but I could handle it all through my steam account (which doesn't have a credit card attached to it, I use paypal for that, which also doesn't have a credit card attached to it. Being European I'm naturally suspicious of credit  ).

So it should be ok.

[Strazos]

So I grinded very hard to get into an Escort, and...

Well, it's better. I kill stuff a lot more quickly, too. However, I wish I could find a place with example ship loadouts, just to see how off my thinking is. By example, my new Escort has 2 Dual Heavy Disruptor Cannons and a torpedo launcher up front, with a turret in the sole rear slot, but I have no idea how optimal this is.

But also...maybe it's me, but the game seems grindy as hell. Does it get better later? Am I doing something wrong?

[Merusk]

From the previous posts, what you're doing wrong is trying to min-max in a game that's best enjoyed casually.   Try doing what's fun, not what's "best" and see how that works out.

[Pennilenko]

It is grindy as hell. Another poster said that he got over that by turning the content into smaller episodic sessions. I followed this model of playing and it is working out very well for me. I just had to get out of my normal mmo jam through the content mode.

I dont have much more experience than you, i was told to use an EPS concole in my engineering slot on my escort to help manage energy flow better and it made a huge difference in available power and speed of power regen.

[01101010]

So I grinded very hard to get into an Escort, and...

Well, it's better. I kill stuff a lot more quickly, too. However, I wish I could find a place with example ship loadouts, just to see how off my thinking is. By example, my new Escort has 2 Dual Heavy Disruptor Cannons and a torpedo launcher up front, with a turret in the sole rear slot, but I have no idea how optimal this is.

But also...maybe it's me, but the game seems grindy as hell. Does it get better later? Am I doing something wrong?

For all the dmg output that an escort has, I never liked them. Cannons are sorta the bread and butter for it, but way to directional in that once you make your first pass, best to hit the engines and fly around for another and pray your shields hold out. I was always into cruisers, even the dumb-fuck looking 4 celled ones, but once I got into a battle cruiser, holy god the clouds parted.

As for your loadout, I have yet to really see much of anything that lists specific loadouts. It's much more about where you put your spec points (I assume you are dropping some points into cannons, and the next tier you can choose between phaser and disruptor to dump points into IIRC) and how much drain you are getting from unleashing everything. I assume you are in the tier 2 escort and only have 3 front, 1 back so you are rather limited...The turret is nice for steady dmg and low power draw, but you might be best with a beam back there or even mines - though I would slot a beam. If you are coming about and your front cannons are out of firing arc, a beam will fill in the gap and provide more bang and since you are not firing cannons anymore, you get the full dmg from the beam as you are drawing no power to weapons other than a lowly beam. As for the torp - on escorts, they are kind of situational as to get full dmg use out of them. If you can drop the shields and time the torp to the hull on the first pass, keep it. If not, maybe slot a beam there as well to get a constant source of dmg on the target as you are coming about. That said, get this and use it... at least till you can spec into quantum torps. It has a huge CD, but on an escort that is making passes, it is about perfect. The AoE blast and secondary blast are very nice if you are not going toe-to-toe.

This does not indicate any loadouts or the like, but does give some idea as to weapon power draw.

http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=162618

Given that most weapons in a certain tier are roughly the same dmg with different effects, I'd say go with what you want, esp at tier 2 when it doesn't really matter on weapon type.

And yeah, at times the game does seem grindly as fuck. That is why I took full advantage of the Q xp bonus two weekends ago and went from commander to RAU in a few days. This is mainly due to getting tier 4 ships which is where the game really starts feeling awesome. I started taking it as episodes and it seemed to feel a bit better... play one and walk away or cruise the forums for a bit and come back.

[Strazos]

Does it make sense at all to finish a bunch of quests, but blow the +XP item from the C-Store before actually hailing Starfleet to hand them in?

[Furiously]

Does it make sense at all to finish a bunch of quests, but blow the +XP item from the C-Store before actually hailing Starfleet to hand them in?

I'd say no... Unless you want to skip missions.

[5150]

Does it make sense at all to finish a bunch of quests, but blow the +XP item from the C-Store before actually hailing Starfleet to hand them in?

Short version: it probably only needs to be active when you hand a mission in (but you won't get a bonus to any xp earned during the mission)

Long version: It depends on how the c-store thing works (never bought it). The Q xp bonus (which is probably the same thing tbh) appears to grant a bonus to the xp earned rather than just increase the xp earned (so for example you'd earn 10xp _and then_ a 5xp bonus rather than earning a modified 15xp)

The reason this is important is that the mission rewards are detemined when you accept the mission rather than when you complete it.

To illustrate this, if you take one of the feature episode missions (where the rewards scale) before gaining a rank (not level) but complete it after you have gained the rank the reward will still be of the lower rank (and you'll then probably want to do the mission again).

During the Q bonus xp weekends I never needed to drop and re-request missions to get the increased xp it just worked.

[luckton]

I heard the "Miracle 2.0 3.0 4.0 f*** it, just give us another chance, please!" patch is going live today.  Maybe I'll give it another go.

[Stormwaltz]

Yep, patching now - new ground combat, integrated voice chat, more content for the long-neglected Klingons, improved Borg AI, and (for those who care) a redesigned RMT store interface. They've started selling additional inventory space - 12 slots per purchase, with a max of three.

http://www.startrekonline.com/season_four

Detailed release notes:

http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=222483

[01101010]

Nope...still not going to sub for the month... not...going...to...

Come on F2P

[Surlyboi]

Lifetime sub, so it's kinda F2P at this point for me anyway.

[Tannhauser]

Ok I resubbed.  Really want to check out ground combat, my Ferengi captain loves to mix it up on alien worlds.

[cironian]

The ground combat is just so much more fun now. My team blows away low-ranking groups before I even have time to put all my deployables up, so unless there are some stronger spawns mixed in I just join in the general shooting.

If stuff turns bad you faceplant really quick, but even thats better than the old way where you had to keep fighting a losing battle for a minute.

[01101010]

God damn it stop... I don't want to know THESE THINGS! 

[luckton]

God damn it stop... I don't want to know THESE THINGS! 

Eh, give 'em a week or two.  I'm sure they'll offer a comeback trial period for people they duped into buying at release.

[Tannhauser]

Ok having played a bit I find the game to be better but still buggy.  Ground combat is indeed improved and fun, but it's pretty fast.  Most of the time I rolled over groups but a few fights were tougher.  I know you can pause the game and issue commands but that's usually more trouble than it's worth.  Away team member pathing is still problematic;  my best combat person would NOT enter the final room for the big fight.  So I died and had to respawn at the start of the instance and run all the way back.  Not cool. 

I like how I can understand the guns and powers now and what they do.  I am sad my bat'lef does weak damage but maybe that's because I'm a Ferengi?  I don't know, I have the relevant skills maxxed.  I seem to have lost a lot of my exploit powers but I can still run up and disintergate you with my Furious Fists of Ferengenar!

There were other changes I was glad to see, like the option to turn off the space grid.  Space combat is still pretty solid and I like how the quest system is now.  If they had released the game like this, it would have probably been much more successful but hey hope you enjoyed those initial box sales!

It's worth $15 to check out the updates and new stuff, even if lack of polish is still present.

[Strazos]

So...still trying to slog through this. I'm about to hit 21 and get my (underwhelming) Heavy Escort.

The question at this point is - any suggestions on leveling faster? I've found that PvP actually gives good XP, but I'm about to level-out of the tier my friend is in, and will be sad to no longer be able to PvP with him.

Also, I dislike Battle Cloak.

[01101010]

Pray Q returns 

[Surlyboi]

So...still trying to slog through this. I'm about to hit 21 and get my (underwhelming) Heavy Escort.

The question at this point is - any suggestions on leveling faster? I've found that PvP actually gives good XP, but I'm about to level-out of the tier my friend is in, and will be sad to no longer be able to PvP with him.

Also, I dislike Battle Cloak.

Underwhelming? I loved my Akira class.

[Strazos]

Underwhelming in the sense that you only get another rear weapon slot - I Want Moar Cannons!

When PvPing recently, one Klingon was somehow absolutely MELTING my shields...no idea how, but it was nice to go back later after a shield switch (+DIS resist) and return the favor.

[Brolan]

Did they ever get ground combat to not suck?  Specifically did they ever do away with those hideously ugly generic bases?

[Surlyboi]

Nope. The bases are still generic and generally ugly, but the combat is a lot better.

I'm enjoying this shit out of this game again. Mostly because they've got admiral content now, but it's just markedly better than it was at launch.

[Furiously]

The Borg are really annoying in ground combat.

[Surlyboi]

The Borg are really annoying in ground combat.

Wait 'til you fight the Breen.

[Rishathra]

The Borg are really annoying in ground combat.

Did you remember to equip yourself and your team with remodulators?  Also, sniper rifles and/or pulsewave (shotgun) weapons=Borg are really retarded easy in ground combat.

Edit: Surlyboi, I imagine you're excited about this.

[Strazos]

I don't get it - Defiant with Dual-Heavy Cannons...

[Fordel]

That actually looks pretty sexy. Pew Pew ahoy!