Star Trek Online : A New and Unbroken Thread!

[Stormwaltz]

Stormwaltz, you seemed like a much happier person when you were playing LotRO instead of Cryptic games. 

Let me bend your ear about that no-opt-out, Hobbit present slot machine, and how recent LotRO zones have switched over to WoW's model of "you must complete all quests in area A before you can get any quests in area B."

[Rishathra]

Space is littered with scimitars.  Looks like it was a smashing success.  I was doing ISE last night and noticed two borg probes attacking shit and was confused until I realized it was the drones from the scimitar.  Pretty neat.

[Morat20]

Huh. I've been too busy and missed the event, sadly. Oh well!

[Stormwaltz]

It's running until August 15, but for some reason you only have until the 2nd to get the ship.

You panicked me, Morat. This event is so damn grindy, all I've gotten out of it is a pair of shorts (which I can't use, because the costume editor is throwing errors) and the exploration achievements.

[Sir T]

I haven't bothered with it, same as I didn't bother grinding for the Breen ship in the winter event. Anything that reguires me logging in constantly to get is a no no. I haven't really played in a couple of weeks as I'm taking a break. I did look in yesterday to check out if it was Scimitars online. Yep.

[Rishathra]

It may require logging in constantly, but it takes 3 minutes to do, so it's not like a horrible burden or anything.  That said, I'm only doing it with one character this time.  I got the Breen ship for all 7 alts last time and I'm still traumatized from it.

There's really not a whole bunch to do on Risa, but the map is beautiful and the superior jetpacks are worth it, even though they only work there.  The clothes suck, especially when you are surrounded by a bunch of npcs in various swimwear.  You basically get the equivalent of a burlap sack, and I'm not even really exaggerating there.  I have been grinding away on the statue hunts, but that's mainly to get eggs to convert to Nukara marks, which are a pain to get.  The pets themselves are nice, but buggy.  Half the time I bring them out, they just sit there and don't follow you.  I'm also stockpiling so I can afford the inevitable fleet decoration project.

Which reminds me, either tomorrow or Wednesday the mine will be operational, so Bat Quadrant can grab those reaaaally nice warp cores.

[Rishathra]

For those interested, Bat Quadrant now has warp cores and mining doffs.

[Special J]

I've been grinding for the ship since its a pretty quick quest.  Has anyone cashed in a Lobi crystal for Pearls?

Not sure about the other items, maybe just sell marks for quick cash.

My rerolled main is back to lvl 27 and I got Ambassador class ship from finishing the first long quest chain, though it seems I only have any luck with Science ships.

[Sir T]

The Ambassador you get for that is a good captains ship but is not the Vice admiral version. You have to get that from a star-base. Tier 3 I think, but probably wrong about that.

[Surlyboi]

They give you both. You just can't use one til VA.

[Rishathra]

I thought they stopped giving the RA level one after the anniversary event?

[Sir T]

They did. You only get the Captains version.

[Rishathra]

[Sir T]

I think the guy who created that was too optimistic.

[Rishathra]

Indeed.  I am under no illusion that my fleetmates will contribute dilithium to projects. 

[Stormwaltz]

In my small fleet, I think I'm the only one still kicking into anything. I'm currently trying to scrape together the final few science officers to finish our Tier II comm array, which I've so far done by myself, and spent a couple months unlocking by myself.

For me, dilithium is currently far less of a problem than officers. I don't have the EC resources to buy them at crazy AH prices, so they're trickling in from the SFHQ DOff missions at 2-5 every two days. EDIT: For reference, the Tier II array requires 80 Sci/Med Officers.

[Surlyboi]

Indeed.  I am under no illusion that my fleetmates will contribute dilithium to projects. 

I still do. I'm just tapped out at the moment.

[Sir T]

I'm not playing much so suddenly the fleet projects have ground to a halt in my fleet. Strange coincidence.

[Rishathra]

My statements should in no way be interpreted as a goad to members of Bat Quadrant to get their shit together.  In fact, I'm a little annoyed that so few purchases have been made from the fleet stores that I spent so much time stocking! 

It may take me a while to complete some projects because I need to earn more dilithium, but I'll get there.  That's not the problem.  We need fleet marks.  The upgrade projects for the mine require no dilithium, but they take it out of you in fleet marks.  I got wiped out just getting the place to Tier 1.  The Tier 2 mine upgrade is something like 17000 marks, and that's after 5000 marks to get one of the sub-facilities upgraded to Tier 2, which is after all the marks spent on xp and provisioning projects.  Sooo.. it might be a while before we see the Tier 2 mine.  Meanwhile though, UR warp cores are available, and they're pretty nice.

[Raknor]

Is dil just not that big of a deal to old vets?  I seem to be constantly out as a new player. The fleet I'm in had an embassy upgrade project that needed 1 million dil.  It sat there for a few days and then was filled entirely by one person that I've never even seen online before. 

[Rishathra]

Speaking for myself, I have ten alts.  Only half of them are characters I actually play or give a damn about.  The rest are logged in once a day to turn in contraband, run a few duty officer assignments that reward contraband, and do the academy daily.  That's 2500 dilithium minimum per character per day, spending maybe two minutes with each one.  My two klingon alts are able to gather enough quantities of contraband to supply themselves and everyone else.  You can use the dilithium exchange to transfer it between characters as well.

[Stormwaltz]

Speaking for myself, I have ten alts.  Only half of them are characters I actually play or give a damn about.  The rest are logged in once a day to turn in contraband, run a few duty officer assignments that reward contraband, and do the academy daily.  That's 2500 dilithium minimum per character per day, spending maybe two minutes with each one.

I do what Rishathra does, plus the three dailies on Nimbus (one of which is broken half the time), plus rescuing the Sh'mar in Eta Eridani, and mining dil when the bonus times line up with my personal life. That gets me 5-7k dil a day. I often end up "banking" my mining mission - accept it and sit on it until that bonus time is available. Since STO's daily timer starts counting when you accept a mission, you can accept it one day, then run it twice in a row the next and get 3k dil for it.

I only have one character, because I've never been an alt guy. If I had the patience to do this with multiple characters, I'd probably be a millionaire too.

[Special J]

Help out a n00b?  How does one run contraband for dilithium?

[Stormwaltz]

The mission is (Fed-side) is only available from security officers - one in the center of Earth Space Dock and one on the DS9 promenade outside the bank. The mission's called "Turn Over Confiscated Contraband" and requires one security officer and 5 Contraband. There's no chance to crit, so you can just dump a common/white trash DOff on it.

[Rishathra]

They've been giving out free stuff from the store this week, something different every day.  Monday was the DS9 uniform, Tuesday was the TOS dress uniform, and Wednesday was the Yellowstone/Tu'duj.  Today and tomorrow are supposed to be ship giveaways, so if anyone is interested, it might be worthwhile to log in for a few seconds and grab them.  One nice thing is that they count as actual store purchases, which means permanent account wide unlock.

I think the shuttle is still available for another hour or two, if anyone is near their computer.

[Stormwaltz]

Thanks for reminding me.

Sadly, I can't seem to connect to their login servers this morning. 

[Sir T]

Oh Hai, New lockbock.

http://sto.perfectworld.com/news/?p=957771

[Rishathra]

I'm definitely going to get some of the crescent weapons, just because I like the visuals.  I'll probably go for the Monbosh too, once the price comes down a bit.  The destroyer is nice, but I already have a bunch of nice destroyers.  I don't have a character I could use it on.  Everything else is meh.

[Surlyboi]

The romuborg destroyer is still the best ship I've flown in this game. Those goddamn crescent weapons are handy though.

[Rishathra]

So what makes the adapted destroyer special?  Honest question.  I have several lockbox destroyers already, like the temporal, and didn't see anything about the adapted one to make it stand out, other than that nice warp core.  Is the shrapnel torpedo that excellent?

[Surlyboi]

The core, the shrapnel torps, and the battle cloak. Combined, they're a solid package.

[Rishathra]

Battle cloak?  I thought the adapted stuff didn't have that?  Well, I can see why it's awesome then.

[Kitsune]

They don't, the Borgulan ships have neither singularities nor battle cloaks.  They still have cloaks, so you can still get a good alpha with them and if you idle long enough between fights to exit red alert you can re-cloak, but neither of them are warbirds.

They do look bitchin' cool, however.

I've been having a good time with my two warbirds, a T'Varo refit with the advanced cloak where I can use consoles and torps from cloak, and with a huge-ass plasma bomb attack that really lays waste to whatever it hits while I trollolololol away in cloak, and a Mogai with its shield-absorbing console paired with the plasmonic leech console where I just fly in and disco ball beams everywhere absorbing the hell out of everything's shields and power.

On the klank side, I took my marauding mule out in actual fights over the weekend to get to level 40 for the free carrier offer, and can say that sticking three double cannons on a BoP has to be one of the most fun things ever.  Click the rapid fire button, click the high yield torpedo button, uncloak, watch as the ship in front of me just melts when the shields collapse just in time for the torpedo barrage to hit.

[Stormwaltz]

So, my client stopped working tonight. It crashes before the character select screen comes up.

I tried verifying the files through the patcher, and uninstalling and reinstalling via Steam. Still crashes.

Anyone else seeing something like this?

[Sir T]

I've stopped playing largely because by client crashes constantly on changing maps. Like every 1 in 4 map changes. REALLY freaking annoying.