Star Trek Online : A New and Unbroken Thread!

[Pennilenko]

I don't play that much but my characters are all fleetless. Who do I talk to, to get invited so I can toss in a piddly effort every now and then when i get the bug to log in?

@Pennilenko is my @handle

[Rishathra]

@Rishathra

I'm not sure if you can do offline invites, but I'll give it a shot.  Otherwise, I'm on almost every evening, around 6pm central.

[Surlyboi]

I don't think I'm in, but I'll log in in the next day or so to join and move some stuff your way.

[Sir T]

@Rishathra

I'm not sure if you can do offline invites, but I'll give it a shot.  Otherwise, I'm on almost every evening, around 6pm central.

You can. You can even issue invites to your other offline characters.

[Rishathra]

Cool.  In that case, anyone who wants in give me your name@handle and I'll send the invites out.

[Lantyssa]

@Lantyssa;  I'll get to it one of these months.

[Rishathra]

I need a character name to invite them.

[Lantyssa]

Kylantha, I think.

[Rishathra]

Tried to invite you, but it came back as invalid name.

[Riggswolfe]

Nice. Looks like I need to log in and see what I can do to help. :) How do we get to the starbase and such?

[Rishathra]

Nice. Looks like I need to log in and see what I can do to help. :) How do we get to the starbase and such?

It's in the Eta Eridani block.  Also, the transwarp gate is up so you can go there via the transwarp menu.  To contribute to a project, use the lower right button on the minimap.

[Sir T]

If you have over 100000 on one of the DOFF experience point tracks you can convert them to fleetmarks as well with a console beside the Officer of the watch, which starts a special doff mission.

[Rishathra]

Yeah, that's mainly how I've been getting projects done.

So, my original plan was to level the shipyard to rank 2, which will give us enough xp to level the starbase to rank 2.  However, after looking at what the rank 2 shipyard unlocks, (fleet star cruiser, fleet recon sci vessel, fleet escort and escort refit), I was thinking, meh.  Instead, we could go for the rank 2 communications array, which would still unlock the tier 2 starbase, and also the tier 2 transwarp gate.  So unless anyone is actually interested in any of those ships, three out of four of them requiring either $20 or 80 million energy credits, I'm going to go the science route.

Also, for those interested in contributing resources, here. http://www.stowiki.org/List_of_starbase_projects
The big projects will be the upgrades to Shipyard, Communications Array, Industrial Fabricator, and Starbase to rank 2.  So anything you see for those would be greatly appreciated.  The thing I'm worried the most about is the Uncommon astrometrics scientists needed for the transwarp gate, so if you grab any, please hold on to them.  For general advancement purposes, fleet marks, fleet marks, fleet marks.  Also dilithium if you have any to spare, otherwise I think I can cover it for the most part.

[Sir T]

Don't forget you can use Kling doffs for fed projects as well, and Vice versa. And you can turn blues into grees now as well if you are stuck.

I'll see if I have any green Astromentric scis I can send you.

[Morat20]

So I joined up. Plan to try playing tomorrow, once I sort out my home network. (All my shares are being bitches and refusing to, you know, see each other and whatnot.)

Either I already had a Cryptic account (I don't think so and trying to reset my password met with complete failure) or someone else uses "morat20" which is just weird. :)

It's currently patching up. I assume it's not one giant-ass server like EVE, so where is everyone?

[Pennilenko]

So I joined up. Plan to try playing tomorrow, once I sort out my home network. (All my shares are being bitches and refusing to, you know, see each other and whatnot.)

Either I already had a Cryptic account (I don't think so and trying to reset my password met with complete failure) or someone else uses "morat20" which is just weird. :)

It's currently patching up. I assume it's not one giant-ass server like EVE, so where is everyone?

It is one server.

[Malakili]

Its one server, the zones are just heavily instanced if I recall correctly.  It'll be easy to meet up with people.

[Morat20]

It is one server.

Well, I guess I shall get a starship tommorow and run into stuff. And phaser things.

[Sir T]

Just remember that the first ship you get is complete and total ass. It can at least equip dual cannons, a rarity in a fed cruiser.

If you let me/us know what your ingame name is I'll craft and send you some equipment to get you going.

[Rishathra]

Yeah, let us know.  I'll send you some care packages.

[Morat20]

Will do.

FYI, is there anything in the store I should consider buying? I don't plan to spend actual money anytime soon, I'm just curious how the microtrans model is actually working.

Only MMORPG I played with one was City of Heroes, and the allure of costume pieces was...difficult to resist. Especially for my Robot Mastermind.

[koro]

There are one or two uniform sets I really really like (the Jupiter set is probably my favorite), and maybe a ship for when you hit 50.

Everything else I'd avoid like the plague.

[Morat20]

I just got through the tutorial. I am...still somewhat confused. However, I'll get it sooner or later. I am an engineer of some sort. I had mines. I blew up Borg.

Then I docked at Spacedock and the loading screen has been sitting there for...some time. Finally loaded. I have to figure out loot and leveling up I think now. The third dimension makes things interesting, but not sure I like the keyboard layout.

Just futzed with my level. There's this "select ability" drop-down with things like "beam setting" and "uppercut" that I don't know what it does. :)

[Sir T]

Ok. Prepare to be more confused as I explain the skill system.

Basically you have to look for the skills that give you the ability to train your Bridge officers (companions) powers. Those are different for each  of the three classes. YOu can see whether it does if you right click on each of the skills. Also there are diminishing returns as you put points into a skill. For your first character I would not put more than 6 points into any of the skills, as the increase after 6 is marginal.

Now the op part is space skillsa dn the bottom is gorund skills. Yes theres a lot more space skills than ground :)

Personally I have the max of ground skills for most of my characters

This is an engineering build I did for one of my characters that's more space focused and energy beam focused, but generally I have more balanced builds than this. You can use this skill planner to play around with builds to see what will work

http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/?build=CardassianGalor_1756

For contrast here is my carrier pilot (science)

http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/?build=AtroxCarrier_1756

[Rishathra]

A thing to keep in mind in regards to investing in skills:  Very few of them are worth maxing out.  You actually get 52% of the maximum bonus just three points in, and 85% or so six points in.  You get enough skill points over your career to put three or six points in to pretty much everything if you so choose, and it won't gimp you like it might in other games.  So don't be afraid to throw three points in to anything that sounds good to you to see if you like it.  Except for subsystem repair, that one is garbage.  Also be wary of investing too much in certain science skills, those are only really good for science captains, or if you are planning on flying a science ship.

If the drop down you mentioned is the one I'm thinking of, basically when you select an ability from the list, it will highlight on the sheet which skills affect that ability.

Earth Space Dock will occasionally take forever to load.  If it takes more than 10-15 seconds, I usually just ctrl-alt-del STO and restart the game, it goes faster to reload the game than to wait.

One of the nice effects of the starbase system is that it caused the bottom to fall out of the dilithium/zpoint market, so it won't take long at all to convert dilithium to game cash, and you can buy costume packs to your heart's content without spending any real money and without having to do a huge amount of grinding for them.  When you hit LT 7 there are a couple of really easy daily missions you can do that will net you 1920 dilithium, and take all of two minutes to complete.

[5150]

there are a couple of really easy daily missions you can do that will net you 1920 dilithium, and take all of two minutes to complete.

Please share

[Sir T]

One of the daily defera missions. "Rescue the captives" if you are a fed. YOu fly over to the breen patrol, ask for something else, look for other options, analyse risks, fire the pulse, press transport captives, warp out. 480 Dil in your hand. It dosen't work for klingons though, you have to fight them.

The other one involves the "Investigate officer reports" Daily mission. There are some fabricated missions which are really easy and fast, and literally will get you 1100 dil very quickly. I'm not just going to tell you what the missions are, but a couple of obvious text searches in the community authored missions should pick them up

If you have a kling alt, do marauder Doff missions. Best places are Regulus and the Cardassian sectors. The reason is that you get sackloads of contraband, which you can share between your characters and get 2000 dil for 5 from security officers on stations and the great hall.

Then theres other ones, like doff missions you get in the nebula sectors. If you are a kling, the Forced labour ones gives you 350 for 3 or 4 of the prisoners you get from all those marauder missions. The feds can sell off civilians to the "Federation border" missions for 500 a pop, as can the klings.

Really having a klingon alt just to hoover up dil is a good investment, even if you don't do anything else with it.

[MisterNoisy]

All this talk has me wanting to log in again, tho it's been long enough that I'm going to be noobing it up in level-capped toons/ships, (the last time I logged in was to respec and dork around a bit after the F2P conversion).  Goals like helping people level (I love the level-matching in this game) and contributing to a fleet might make the game a bit 'stickier' for me this time, so if you guys want a hand, shoot me an invite at Strelaar@misternoisy (Sci VA).  I'll have to look up my Tac VA toon's name after I log in - I sorta rushed that character through to cap once I found out about the F2P changes to lock in the good ships/loot.

[Rishathra]

Really having a klingon alt just to hoover up dil is a good investment, even if you don't do anything else with it.

This.

Also, the Defera one is quick yes, but requires some travel.  The other one I was thinking of was the Academy lore question.  Go to stowiki.org/lore for the answer.  Then beam up to Earth Space Dock and do the Investigate Officer Reports.  Search for 'cybear8' or 'quickie.'  Select the three missions.  Activate a panel outside the transporter room.  Done.  I have more than one mule alt who made max level just from doing those missions and the datachip mission right next to the lore mission, once a day.

I'll shoot you an invite to Bat Quadrant, MisterNoisy.  Anyone else who would like one, Name@account.

[Morat20]

Right now I'm just trying to think up amusing names for my starship. The USS Jefferson seems to easy.

Finally got home -- probably won't have time to really get into it until this weekend, but it's...engaging enough that I want to at least sort out how it works. :)

[Morat20]

I ran my first mission. I came back with...stuff. I equipped some stuff. (Armor, some better shields, a tactical console...can't seem to sell my old shields though). I also have...common minerals? Blood wine? Some other stuff that has no actual price or seeming use.

I also got an Andorian engineering officer, which is nice. I got to make him an Ensign. Why that was open I have no idea. (Maybe because it was a lower rank than me?). I still have no cash, insofar as I'm not sure what's worth selling yet and it's not like my inventory is full.

I still can't figure out how to switch uniforms, or off duty uniforms. I suck at ground combat -- I am correct in thinking the green bar is my health and the white is my shields? I got confused for a moment and thought I was almost dying.

Should I bring my officers on away missions, or stick with red-shirts? Currently I'm playing on 'normal'. (I like difficulty sliders!).

So far it seems warp in, engage mook ships, board/land, engage as away mission, beam back, engage more mooks. Pick up loot and scan.

The scanning mini-game took a few tries to work out. I didn't realize it was timed -- thought it was 'number of moves'. Which is how I got ore and alien artifacts that I have no idea what they're for. :)

Also, which ID do I give? My character name or my ID? (not the login one, the other one. I had to pick two). I haven't even tried grouping or using chat. Heck, I'm still trying to figure out the HUD and how to get rid of the stupid "Talk to so-and-so" boxes when I don't want to see them.

And I have to keep looking up how to hit the quest logs.

[Sir T]

The alien gubbins are used to craft stuff and for some Doff Missions and starbase construction. Crafting got hit with the nerf bat a while back, in that it now costs Dilithium to do so few people do it anymore apart from specific items they want.

There 2 ways to sell stuff. Well 3. The first is to discard it, which gives the least credits. The next is at a vendor (bartenders are great for this curiously) and finally the exchange to sell it to players.

Just discard the standard shields you got. Right click on them and hit discard.

Its a good idea to bring your bridge officers along. They have powers they can throw into the battle, and you can give them gear.

You swap uniforms at a tailor. If you want the off duty uniforms click on the drop down menu on the top right hand side and select them.

[apocrypha]

FYI, is there anything in the store I should consider buying? I don't plan to spend actual money anytime soon, I'm just curious how the microtrans model is actually working.

If you find at any point that you are amassing Energy Credits in any decent amount (over a few million) then consider buying the EC cap upgrade. As a silver player you can't have more than 10 million, the upgrade raises it to 1 billion.

If you have EC come in that puts you over the cap you simply lose the extra. Friend of mine lost a few million when he sold some stuff on the exchange that took him over the limit.

[Morat20]

Thanks. :)

I feel like I'm frustratingly slow picking this up, but I've been playing single player console games for a few years (other than the occasional rerun of WoW and EVE) and I'm getting maybe 30 or 45 minutes at a time to try it.

I feel vaguely annoyed that your armor covers your uniform. I've still got too much City of Heroes in me -- I went to some effort to get that uniform right, darnit! Admittedly my crew is more rag-tag band of mercs so far -- no one has the same uniform. :)

I'm finding the transitions between gun-mode and regular mode on away missions annoying --- I get stuck creeping along, gun out at times. And crouching and the zoom mode is nice, but the whole cover thing isn't working so hot. Cover based shooters have me expecting to be able to lean out and fire, instead I'm just..in cover recharging my shields.

The mix-and-match starship customizer is nice, can't wait to have more than three options.

[Sir T]

Almost everyone gets rid of the Armour graphics. you can do that on your status screen by clicking the eye icon next to where you equip your armour. Same for your team.

I'm not sure what you mean by gun modes. are you using the FPS style. I never use that myself. I prefer rolling dice to my lousy shooting :)