Star Trek: Online

Go to the planet. Beam down. There's an NPC in the middle of the complex who explains it all to you.

 

You actually have to get a mission from Admiral Quinn (he offers it after doing a cou[le of the early missions. It sends you to an NPC in the center of the ESD - and he gives you a sample to take to Memory Alpha. Once at Memory Alpha, you go speak to Lt. Romaine; and deposit the sample at a terminal to the front of where she's facing (in the corner to her right); and voila - Crafting is unlocked for that character and you can start using the anomoly samples you have picked up.

 

So, last night, my toon made it to Vice Admiral. I got him the Defiant retrofit to play around with, but, having commandeered a science ship ever since closed beta, fighting as an escort sure takes som time getting used to.
Seems you really have to fly an escort at least once in order to really appreciate the monstrous shields that science ships have.

 

Yes, but you also admire quickly how fast you destroy the OTHER guy's shields if you go cannon heavy in the front.
It's best if you fly an escort beginning with a Sabre as a LC.

 

did that early on, Noname, before there was crafting. Do I get all those items from the storage bank and deposit them in some Memory Alpha terminal? Right now I am RA UG 4 and fighting the Borg.

 

*Waits (im)patiently for the Excelsior class and the refit Excelsior class*

Wish they'd give the Tribble users a chance to test it.

 

Like I said, you go talk to Lt. Romaine, in the center of the Memory Alpha station. She tells you what to do.

 

yes finaly got to rear admiral lower got my hands on a sovvie

 

Been a bit of a landmark weekend, on three counts - in order of importance:

- Finally nailed the 'Trace Tracker' accolade, having found all those blasted rare particle samples. Anticlimactic, to say the least...

- Received my 'Fluidic Space Tribble' for participating in the Tribble test weekend - looks simultaneously cute and disturbing, which takes some doing.

- Most importantly, I earned my 100-day Veteran Rewards - 'Stalwart' title/accolade, plus the all-important 'All Good Things' combadge!

I've taken a few pics of my CO with his shiny new badge - will upload them to the 'Screenshots' thread in due course.

 

I hit LC last night. That last few hundred Skill Points where annoying.

I loaded up an all phaser banks load out to take advantage of my points in phasers and my Tactical Station. I might add in a quantum torpedo launcher if I loot one and try it out. Circle strafing with all banks firing is pretty awesome in my Connie!

Testing out different bridge officer powers. They are pretty much geared towards repairing my ship quickly and pumping up my phasers. I was able to take on 6 medium strength ships by myself! Now I just need to upgrade my stuff from all the Mark II.

 

I can't seem to get into it. I hadn't played it for a good 5 months or so and finally decided to again, got to Commander, but decided on starting up a new go with a Klingon and got to Lieutenant 4. Will probably get to LC tomorrow and see if I can do it a bit better this time around.

 

Only a few days in, and I love this game. Truth be told, this is my first MMO, and the content just blows me away. Nice nods to series and movies past, seeing the impact of certain things we've known and witnessed - I'm impressed.

 

I started a Klingon character (well, not really, since she is a joined Trill, but flies under KDF flag ), and yesterday, when I became a LC, I finally got my first Klingon story episode.
While I was impressed by the Klingon exploration missions, which seem more fresh and creative than the Federation ones already, "Bringing down the House" blew me away. It was leaps and bounds better scripted than most Federation missions, fast paced and took advantage of established backstory.
I dealt with an assasination attempt on House of Martok`s leader, won a batleth tournament (I got a trophy out of it which I had to display on my Ship for the crew, yes, actually part of the mission), and i even met godd ol`Worf. All in one mission.

If they keep this up, the Klingon faction will have finally become a valid choice even for non PvP players.

 

I recommend Reverse Shield Polarity - 15 seconds of nigh invincibility, especially at that rank. Just don't start using it as a crutch if you ever try PvP at higher ranks.

I also recommend a combo of emergency power to shields and transfer shield strength.

 

I loved the tournament part. In the background, you can hear bystanders sing famous klingon songs from the show.
And if I'm not mistaken, it's the same tournament that Worf won in Parallels.
The trophy looks just like the one from the episode.

 

Now I'm a LC and no new mission in sight. I hope there will be some more before I become a General. PvP is nice and well but can get boring after a while.

 

This is now it roughly breaks down at the moment:

2 Starting at Level 10 (Klingon House vs. House conflict)
2 at Level 20 (Klingon raid on Federation territory)
4 starting at Level 30 (Klingons vs. the Fek’ihri)

General rank, round about level 43, have access to the same missions that Starfleet Admirals get featuring the Borg/Undine/Iconian story arcs.

Also the weekly missions start coming out from next week, and they can be played by any faction and at any rank.

 

Felt like venting a bit of steam about my main gripe with STO:

At the end of the day, while there's a ton of different Trek-tastic stuff to choose from and use, it's all ultimately cosmetic - a veneer of 'Star Trek' on a generic sci-fi MMO. Granted, if you're a Trek veteran who wants to play things 'by the book' (like I do!), it's possible to stick to strictly canon (or as close as possible) powers, equipment and the like. But it does still feel that, in order for the game to truly feel like Star Trek, one has to ignore content, or find ways to 'get around' the default gameplay experience.

Case in point: in order to stand any chance of survival in ground combat, you have to bite the bullet and equip generic 'shields', 'body armour' and 'kits'. Granted, if you feel that the look of these isn't 'Star Trek' enough, there's an option to 'hide' them, but they're still THERE. You're just re-skinning your generic sci-fi soldier with a Star Trek costume.


This is my Lt. Commander as he appears in-game, with kits and armour 'hidden' (he's still wearing them, mind):






And here he is as he actually looks, with the 'hide from costume' option deactivated:






See my point? As I said, it's almost as if you have two choices: play the game normally, or play it in 'Star Trek mode'. That's like playing 'Halo' with white armour and only UNSC weapons, and 'pretending' that your're playing a 'Star Wars' game as a Stormtrooper.

Considering that this is meant to be a 'Star Trek' game, set in the classic 'Star Trek' universe, and continuing from where TNG/DS9/VOY and the TNG movies left off, it's somewhat depressing.

 

Is anybody else having a problem where you can't enter unexplored systems in the Delta Volanis Cluster without the load screen taking so long you time out.

 

I haven't played yet today, but there's a couple of things historically that have caused issues like that.

You can try defragging; that was often a cause of this in Cryptic's older games, but isn't usually the problem in CO and STO. You should give it a try though. Don't trust Windows saying the drive doesn't need defragging; that's based on total percentage of fragmentation, and doesn't give the whole picture if, say, one STO file is in 900 fragments.

Next thing to try is nettest, to make sure you're not having a network issue somewhere (not necessarily in your own network, but in one of the ones between you and Cryptic) causing you to time out.

http://files.champions-online.com/nettest.exe

If you're on Vista or Windows 7, don't forget to run it as admin.

If neither of those fixes it, my next recommendation would be the Tech Support forum on the STO website, if it's a problem with the game itself it's likely others will be reporting the same.

Good luck; sorry I can't be more help.