Star Trek Online : A New and Unbroken Thread!

[5150]

Advice

More advice

Thanks guys

[Rishathra]

Most loot is junk that you can sell off.  I'm often too lazy to even take it to a vendor and just discard it.  Now, Romulan Ale?  Hold on to that for sure.  It's going for around a million ec per bottle right now, because everyone's trying to install a bartender on their starbase.

Sir T is right about the data samples ("minerals").  Crafting got nerfed and around the same time several other changes hit (like scaled rewards for missions) that made much of the rewards of crafting obsolete.  The samples themselves are still worth selling on the exchange, because there are several starbase projects that need them.  The rare materials, traces, are also valuable, both for starbases and to make mark xii consoles - not crafting per se, just duty officer missions that reward items.

Missions themselves don't reward cash, so for the first part of the game you are going to be poor in that regard, but you don't need it at this point either.  Bridge officers are plentiful, and you will eventually have a roster, a candidate roster, and even your inventory packed with them.  If you are like many, including me, you will be attached to your first crew, and be reluctant to trade them in for better officers.  The good news is that the difference between common and very rare bridge officers is very small, and you aren't gimping yourself at all holding on to whoever you are attached to.

To switch uniforms, first go to a tailor (there's one on the Space Dock) and set up your off duty uniform.  Then you can switch back and forth by right clicking on your character portrait. 

Yes, green is health and white is shields.  Ground combat at this point is shoot until dead, so don't over think it.  If you start playing on Advanced or Elite (I wouldn't recommend it while leveling) you need to take some care, but normal is a faceroll.  Always bring your bridge officers on your away teams, even with basic equipment they are tougher and do more damage than red-shirts.  Pro-tip:  your bridge officers perform exactly one action every three seconds, whether that is use an ability or pull the trigger once on their weapon.  So ignore the dps stat and equip them with high damage per shot weapons.  If you see a weapon that lists damage as something like 30x4, that means it does 120 per shot.  So it seems counter intuitive, but miniguns and full auto rifles actually have the best damage per shot because of this.

The minigame basically gives you more minerals if you succeed.  If you fail, you still get stuff, just not as much.

So your name is Name@Handle.  I need the whole thing if you want a fleet invite, but just the Handle if you want friend requests or mail sent to you.  I will absolutely drown you in gear all the way to max level once you give the word.

Mission logs come up using the J key.

It sounds like you are switching between shooter mode and rpg mode.  Shooter mode can be fun to mess around with occasionally, but it is really just a clunky patch-in that lets you "aim" instead of just "tab to target."  Even if you really like shooter mechanics in games, I'd leave it alone.  The one solid use I can think of for it is it lets you throw grenades wherever you want instead of directly at your current target.  You toggle back and forth using B, so if you were doing it accidentally, that might explain your difficulty on the ground.

You can change your bridge officers' appearance at the tailor the same as you can yourself, and the changes are per officer, so you can make everyone look wildly different or super-regimented.

[Sir T]

You can also use FPS mode for stuff like casting orbital strike at the ground, which is good for triggering enemies the other side of a forcefield so that your Mortars can start killing them. Not that I would countenance the use of such a blatant exploit. 

[Rishathra]

Ooh, I never thought of that one.  Nice.

[Morat20]

Thanks! I'm iffy on asking for gear yet -- or accepting it. One thing I've found is that while basically zooming alts up by slapping top gear on them is great, I kinda like the to try it the 'designed way' the first time. (Unless said way is just retardedly hard).

Currently I've got it on "normal" difficulty and I think I'll switch to tab targetting. As I finished a space battle yesterday I realized why having a rear and front firing arc was nice. It allowed me to keep blasting at some bigger ship while turning a failing shield away.

Which, in retrospect, was surprisingly tactical. (Not in the "genius move" -- there's nothing more of a no-brainer than "take the hits on the strong side" -- but in the 'more than just standing there wailing away).

My character's name is Jayna -- not sure what the handle is (will have to look it up). Will be happy to do group stuff once I've had more than an hour in the game. :)

[Morat20]

Wait, lockboxes drop that I have to buy keys for? I'm thinking shenanigans on that one.

[koro]

Yeah, Cryptic loves their fuckin' lockboxes with random loot. Rubes Discerning players buy keys for them en masse to try and nab the rare drop ships they can have. If you haven't already, it's probably a good idea to go into your chat options and disable the pop-up that happens when someone wins a ship from one of the boxes. It doesn't happen nearly as much nowadays, but I can imagine that whenever Cryptic adds in a new box it'll be a madhouse of pop-up spam for a day or two.

[apocrypha]

If you do decide you fancy one of the lockbox ships then don't buy keys and open boxes.

Instead turn dilithium into Zen when the price is low (it drops to 150 dil/zen sometimes) and buy keys and then sell the keys on the exchange and buy the ship with Energy Credits.

Chance of a ship in a lockbox is approx = 1/220.
Master Keys x 10 = 1275 Zen
Master Key x 1 = 1.0 - 1.4m EC on the exchange.

Cost of ships on the exchange varies, but I picked up an Orb Weaver for 40m EC just after they announced the end of the Tholian Lockbox (price went up to 60m within the next hour) and I'd seen them as low as 34m prior to that. At 40m you'd need to sell roughly 5000 Zen worth of keys. To get a 50% chance of a ship from opening boxes you'd need to open 154 of them, or nearly 20,000 Zen.

Yeah, if you get very lucky opening boxes you can get a ship much cheaper, but the odds aren't in your favour.

Edit: Forgot to say, the exchange is buggy though. When searching for anything *always* select the Quality of the thing you're looking for. E.g if searching for Master Key then select Common rarity, if searching for Orb Weaver select Very Rare, etc. Otherwise loads of items simply don't show up and you will overpay/overprice. Also listing keys seems to be very flaky. Often they just don't show up on the exchange when you post them yourself. Don't worry, they are there, they just might take a few days to show up. There's no listing fee or % cut so you can always cancel and re-list at any time.

[Sir T]

That's not actually correct. What you have to do is select the category of the thing you want. For example with the orb weaver you would select the "reward Packs" category and then put "Orb" in the search box. If you are looking for keys select the keys category, for ship weapons select the ship weapons, etc.

I actually got the recluse carrier with ECs and bought a bunch of the other special stuff from the exchange as well. Didn't get my hands on the Orb Weaver yet though, dunno if I will bother.

[5150]

Just wanted to give you starbase owners a heads up about the special time limited projects.

If you find yourself unable to complete them within the time frame (unlikely for you guys I suspect) I appear to have discovered a bug where the queued one changes to the most recently released one when it becomes the active project.

I've petitioned but I fully expect the GM to tell me I'm shit out of luck on getting the missing one back despite the fact that I had it legitimately queued 

[Rishathra]

Yikes, good to know.  I've been dragging my feet on completing the latest one, even though I have the dilithium for it.

apocrypha is exactly right about the lockboxes.  DO NOT actually unlock them yourself.  You are much better off finding ways to make energy credits and just buying the things you want off of the exchange.  I got a recluse carrier and a d'kora just from selling mark 12 consoles.

I get that you may not want us to twink your characters, but if your hesitation is from inconveniencing us?  Don't worry.  I'm rich and I've been playing since beta.  It is trivially easy to equip you 1-50.

[apocrypha]

That's not actually correct. What you have to do is select the category of the thing you want. For example with the orb weaver you would select the "reward Packs" category and then put "Orb" in the search box. If you are looking for keys select the keys category, for ship weapons select the ship weapons, etc.

Just logged on and tested this and either method works. If you don't specify a category or a quality when you search then the exchange returns only partial results, mostly missing out lower priced items for some reason.

Being able to select the item quality is helpful when you don't know what category you want, e.g. I had no idea what category to find Powered Alien Artifact in.

[5150]

Yikes, good to know.  I've been dragging my feet on completing the latest one, even though I have the dilithium for it.

It's only an issue if you find yourself 2 projects behind the current one, if you're any further behind you'll lose projects simply because you won't be able to queue them anyway (not that queuing them has helped in this instance)

Our plan was to complete the active one and then queue the current one while we worked on the previous one, unfortunately when the queued one became active it changed into the current one and wiped the previous one out.

I fully expect this to happen on the other faction starbase shortly as well

As an aside, do we have any Cryptic/Perfect world devs here who I should point this bug out to?

[Morat20]

So what's the best thing to do with the three or four tholian lockboxes I acquired running some shapeshifting Vulcan mission? (Also, "survive until reinforcements arrive" sucks!) Sel them on the exchange?

I think I shot down that plasma ball of death like once.

I finally got another weapon..better torpedo launcher. I replaced my current one with it, but did consider replacing my rear phaser with the old torpedo launcher so my rear arc shoots missiles of death.

"Spacebar fires all phasers" was a useful tip to learn. I also worked out I can use the replicator to trash food for energy credits.

Picked up a tutorial memory alpha mission yesterday so I guess I get the crafting intro. :)

[Sir T]

Also, if you right click on your weapons on the weapons box they will turn green. That means that they are set to autofire. so if you hit the spacebar just once every weapon you have greened, including torps will begin firing on that target and keep firing as they cycle and the enemy comes into arc.

And I had to grin when read you complaining about not being able to shoot down the Undine Plasma. Just wait till you fight the Romulans and their rapid fire plasma torpedo launcher. Muhuhahaha!!

As for tholian boxes, you can toss them or keep them for 6 months till their value goes up. Selling them now will get you pennies as everyone has them.

[Morat20]

There is autofire? Seriously? That is useful information I did not previously have.

Ill toss the boxes into the bank with the crafting mats. :)

[apocrypha]

There's autofire on the ground too - it's in Options, Controls, down the bottom somewhere. My personal preference is "Toggle, change cancels" but have a play and see what you prefer.

[5150]

Does anyone know how you can sell unwanted bridge officers to reclaim their dilithium value?

You used to just be able to discard them but that no longer grants you the dilithium and the sell box is greyed out on the bridge officer vendor :-(

[Sir T]

I don't think you can. You can sell them on the exchange but frankly there isn't much point.

[Morat20]

How does one get dilithium, anyways? :)

I just finished the crafting tutorial. Apparently to gain experience I need to...craft. Something something kits or schematics plus the odds and ends I have from scanning. I suppose it's "bring all your mats after you've collected a pile and do it all in a lump" sort of thing.

[Sir T]

Essentially yes. everything youcraft gets you experiance, the more valuable the better, but to craft something you need a certain level of crafting experience. But frankly dont bother learning, I learned before free to play before it cost Dil to craft stuff. if you want to you can craft stuff up to the level you need dil to craft stuff to see what its like go ahead.

YOu get Dilithium from certain missions and from late game special task forces, and from doing Duty officer missions. YOu can get it from doing the "explore strange new worlds" missiona nd doing the explore delta Volanis Mission. You can also do red alerts against the Borg.

[apocrypha]

Good/easy ways to get Dilithium:

Officer Reports Daily mission - do 3 foundry missions (Fed search for "easy peasy", KDF search for "timebox").
Turn in Contraband DOFF mission - picked up from Security Officer NPCs on DS9/Earth Spacedock etc.
Daily Lore mission - from NPC on the academies. Answers here.
Satellite Repair Daily mission in Traelus system, Eta Eridani. Mission available in your mission log.
Deferi Dailies - after completing the Breen episodes. Mission log again.
Explore Strange New Worlds - B'Tran cluster (Vice Admiral) best option along with "Chart the B'Tran Cluster".
KDF only: Pi Canis "Path of the Warrior" dailies. Fast, fun & repeatable for lots of dil.

And Borg STFs give dil - 480 for normal, 1100 elite (I think) each time.

Lots of DOFF missions give very small amounts and a few give 100 or so, which can rise on crits.

[Morat20]

Hey, I got 1440 dilithium today for doing some exploration. :) I can apparently refine it, but into what I don't know. As of right now, I'm saving it. Not sure I have much to spend it on at level 6.

[Morat20]

Question: My bridge officers, who are all rank 1 (I guess I can't train them higher until I'm more than a Lt) -- what's the deal with their skills? They can only have one ground and space skill at a time?

I can swap them out at the training guy, or later somehow teaching them stuff myself, or by using a 'recruit' to train them? And can I have spare bridge officers stored somewhere, and swap them around? Or just four active at a time? Oh, and when you train them with a new skill -- what happens to the points you already have assigned to them?

I'm trying to sort out what I want my guys to know and do. heck, I'm still sorting out myself -- I'm an engineer. I just switched from mines to turrets for my kit, because hardly anyone gets close enough for mines. I might switch back though. it does make charging people regret it.

And apparently you can balance your ship's power output -- I didn't realize I was set for attack sucking up so much energy. Explains why I'm cutting through foes but having to work frantically to keep shields strong.

[Sir T]

Ok. You get dilithium ore but you can only refine 8000 of it a day to real dilithium. Its a hard marker to avoid people just grinding all the way up on one character.

The reason you can only have one set of skills on your guys right now is that you are still Leutenant and cant promote them. As you advance you will gain the ability to promote your guys up. So when you hit level 10 you can set them to use 2 skills at a tike and so on.

The mines (or enemy neutralisation) kit is the most destructive of the engineering kits in stfs. Run up to bad guy, Plant mines where they are standing watch explosion. You also gain the ability to plant a bomb and to nerf their damage and speed. They use kinetic damage so the Borg cant adapt to it, but ts one 50% damage through shields. Turrets are good for now though.

Power is complex, but as an engeneer you will gain the abilities to increase the base power in each section as you go up levels and cruisers gain +5 power in all depts. To read fully about power check out the stowiki section on power and what the effects are. right now you could probably afford to drop auxiliary to minimum and arrange the rest.

[Morat20]

Got Duty Officers...that's an interesting system. I just assigned all 20 of them as best I could, to short term (less than 6 hours) stuff. See how it works out.

Any tips? (Also made more Dilithium with some running around scanning thing that was ongoing when I hit the Academy to get my officers)

[Rishathra]

In regards to training bridge officer skills:

So, first you get a candidate.  These will show up on your candidate roster (hit K, right column) if you don't add them to your active roster, or if you don't have room to add them.  While they are candidates they are more easily movable.  You can mail them, or put them up on the exchange, or trade them.  Once they are active you can only trade them.  Another quality they have while they are candidates is to be able to train one of your active bridge officers in any skill they know.  This will consume the candidate.  This is only worthwhile if they have a rank three version of a skill, everything else they know you can get from the bridge officer trainer at ESD.  So whenever you get a new candidate, if you don't want to add them to your crew, and they don't have any rank 3 skills you want, it's pretty safe to delete them.  Once you make a candidate an active member of your crew, they can not be converted back into a candidate.  They can be traded or deleted, but not otherwise moved or stored.

If you get the trainer to give an officer a skill, it just costs energy credits.  Any time you train an officer, you overwrite the skill they knew before in that slot, and you lose any skill points you put into that skill.  This seems bad now, but as you progress in the game, you will eventually be swimming in expertise to train your officers with, to the point that you can switch skills out and train new ones to max level at will.  Gaining levels in certain skills unlocks the ability for you to train your officers in particular skills.  However, this only works within your area of expertise.  As an engineer, you will only be able to train your engineering officers.

Each of your officers can eventually know 4 ground and 4 space skills.  You can promote them each time you gain a full rank, every ten levels.  This will unlock one ground and one space skill.  Now, with ground skills, once you unlock a skill on an officer, they can use them all the time.  In space it works differently.  The station that you assign an officer needs to have a lieutenant slot in it in order for that officer to use their lieutenant level skill.  You can see how many slots your ship has by hitting K.

[Morat20]

So what's the best way to use the duty officer system? Or is it not a big deal? Seems like kinda of 'always on' generator of stuff. (money, experience, whatnot)

[Rishathra]

Yeah pretty much.  Just keep fiddling with it and you will learn what and what not to do.  You can devote a HUGE amount of time to it, but it is really meant to be something to do on the side while actively doing other things.  That said, it's good to always be putting as many of your officers as possible on as many missions as possible all the time.  Especially at the start, just start plugging doffs into any assignment you can do.  Also, check at the Academy every few days and pick up any recruitment assignments that aren't on cooldown, so you can grow your roster.  There are Vulcan, Andorian, and Tellarite personnel officers scattered around the map, and a generic personnel officer in the northern building, all of whom give out these assignments.

[Morat20]

Did not know there were assignments for that. I thought it was either purchase through the store or get allotments at certain levels. Thanks.

I've been enjoying myself today. Got to fight Borg in a group (two tries, one success one failure...I keep thinking having your ship exploded is a bigger deal than it is). Tried the PvE queue and got to fight two instances of Klingons and got some decent upgrades for my ship. Did some quests....I'm enjoying the game overall. The bigger PvE events are fun -- all those starships zooming around, phasers and torpedoes flying. Has the right feel.

For some reason, my entire bridge officer crew is female. Weird.

[apocrypha]

Yeah they've really got the feel of large space battles right I think. Great fun and often feels like total chaos :)

If you start to find yourself getting a bit deeper into the Duty Officer system then you may find this useful: http://bit.ly/DOFFS - it's a shared document listing what missions are currently available where. It's reliant on people sharing the info and editing the sheet, so it's not always 100% accurate, but if you start hunting down chains and rare assignments it can be very useful.

There's also an in-game channel, DOFFJOBS, that's a good source of info too. During US prime times it's full of unrelated chat so you may have to use the /ignore function judiciously ;)

For some reason, my entire bridge officer crew is female. Weird.

Oddly, female Boffs sell for more on the Exchange than equivalent male ones do...

[Morat20]

I'm now a Lt. Commander and have a new ship -- Science vessel. (Chosen entirely because 1) I like having lots and lots of shields and 2) I happened to have two science officers). It's survivabilty is suddenly much, much higher. :)

Is there a way to dismiss bridge officers and store them? I've got four active, one queued for hire or training, and seeing the ship with two science slots --- what would I have done if I'd gone with the ship with two tactical slots? Fired a science guy?

The large scale battles are chaotic and fun. It's got a bit of a City of Heroes feel -- it's not the group mechanics type feel of a WoW dungeon boss, it's more "That's a lot of enemies" and sticking close for mutual support as you fight through them.

It is fun when you've got four or five startships together and you're basically zooming around, wolf pack style, and slicing through foes. Seeing one big Borg (or mirror universe ship) with five or six different Federation vessels diving in and out around it, while another half dozen are ripping apart reinforcements, is fun.

My second Borg mission I got flattened when the Borg boss blew up. I was way the hell too close and I was in a Centaur. When it blew, it went through what was left of my shields and vaporized me. A mechanic I actually like -- big giant explosions should hurt if you're too close!

I got a duty officer as a reward for a duty missions -- took me forever to find him, because he was in my Brig due to a terminal case of being Klingon. That was surprising.

[Rishathra]

Once you have an active bridge officer, you can only delete them or trade them away.  I think once you hit rear admiral, you unlock one more active slot.  It's one of the few ways ftp really gimps you.  Before, you unlocked two slots each rank.

That LtC science ship is pretty fantastic.  It completely outclasses the cruiser at that level.  In fact, for leveling purposes, I'd avoid using cruisers until you hit admiral.

[Morat20]

The duty officer game is..interesting. I now have five passengers -- all civilians with no skills (no bartender or anything) that I can't seem to assign. Weird.

There's a lot there that could be explained a bit better.

[Sir T]

I agree with you on that one.

The passengers are effectivly components that can be assigned to special colony missions. Like "deport citizens to federation/klingon borders" and suchlike.