Star Trek Online Discussion Thread (now free to play!)

While playing through Fluid Dynamics with my Klingon character I scanned an anomalous reading from some data samples and after I did the mini game and claimed my samples a green drop appeared in front of me which gave me 480 dilithium ore.

 

It's a rarity; I've had it happen the grand total of once on my Starfleet main.

 

I don't think it's specific to a region, I picked up a 480 dilithium in the Delta Volanis Cluster one time.

 

Add me to the fleet please? Cobalt Frost@USSChallenger I don't play much but would like to get more involved.

 

It looks like my 4 year old graphics card is dying, its been crashing repeatedly. I'm so out of touch with graphics card these days, and since I'm mostly playing STO what would be a good replacement card?

 

What exactly does "mostly" mean? Is sto the most graphics-intensive game you play? If so, my card, though somewhat older, plays the game like it wasn't even there, even though my CPU is hardly fit to run a toaster. It's discontinued, so that should tell you how old it is. But the HD 7000 series is right cheap, and should be able to handle just about anything STO throws at them.

 

I have an ASUS GeForce 210 1GB. It's an economic card at $35 on Amazon. It allows me to see rain/snow in STO. If I was going to buy a new card though, I'd look for something with 2GBs.

 

Alright here's the details. my GPU is a 4-year old XFX GeForce GTS 250 which only runs 3 graphically intensive apps - STO, second life and recently skyrim. In the past, it had the tendency to black out the screen for a few seconds before recovering and windows will report that "Nvidia Windows Mode Kernel Driver has stopped and has successfully recovered". This only happened once every few months so I didn't really bother with it. After I installed skyrim, the black outs became more much common, to the point now where it will black out a minute or two after launching skyrim. Now, it has even blacked out even when I am not playing any games.

I thought it was a overheating issue so I started carefully monitoring the GPU temperature. The GPU has been consistently staying at 67 degrees celsius at idle and tops out at 85 degrees when playing STO. In contrast, my cpu can get up to 99 degrees running at full load (I also use my computer for a lot of compute-intensive math/large matrix operations and stuff). The gpu fan does not go beyond 65% speed so overheating doesn't seem to be the problem.

Yesterday, I upgraded from old 2011 drivers to the latest Nvidia drivers (320.something) and the same blacking out is still happening. So right now, I don't know what to think or what the real issue is.

 

What advantages are there to getting a lifetime membership vs. subbing for a month or two? Are the veteran perks worth it over the gold perks? I can get a lot of zen for two or three hundred dollars. I can (and have) read the list myself, but I know a couple of you are LTS people, and can tell me what you really think.

 

Honestly, I'd pass at this point. When there was a monthly fee, it made a ton of sense, and even early in the F2P era, you could rationalize that you get a bunch of stuff, and it's still a young game, etc.

Not that it's dying, but game has been around a while. How much would you pay in Zen and a month or two of subbing vice what the LTS costs? How long do you have to keep playing to make it a break even scenario?

If there's a big LTS sale, maybe, but not sure it's worth it anymore...

 

/\ What Scout said. /\ Having a LTS is a comfortable feeling - you play when you want/can. If you're going to buy, wait until they are on sale for $199.

 

All LTS will bring you really is 400 Zen a month, that's about it really, most of the other perks are worthless and not really worth spending all that money to get at now the game is FTP.

What you can only get with a LTS.

• Playable Federation, Romulan, or Klingon Liberated Borg character(s)
• Unique costume piece: lifetime badge
• Player title: Career Officer
• Blue forum title: Career Officer
• 400 zen a month
• 2 additional character slots (available in C-Store for 625 )
• Access to the Captain's Table (available for 400 day veterans)

Paying for a gold for say one month nets you a few those perks..

• 2 additional character slots (available in C-Store for 625 )
• Access to the Captain's Table (available for 400 day veterans)
• 400 zen a month.

So unless you really need that borg charactor, and can't live without having your name in blue on the STO forums, gold for a month will net you 400 zen, 2 extra slots, which will stay open even when you stop the sub, and you can run around the desolate and deserted Captains table for a month.


The minute it went FTP everybody became i lifetime sub anyway in a round about way.

 

Let me offer a different point of view.

LTS is useful if you find yourself playing STO semi-regularly. Getting instant access to all the veteran rewards is amazing. Especially helpful are the additional bridge officer slots, ship slots, respec tokens. It means I can upgrade my characters, shps and bridge officers without having to spend zen buying additional slots. The VA ship token and Veteran Starship means I get access to a decent (not best) level 50 ship. Individually, it does not seem like much but it is 3000+ zen PER CHARACTER that you don't have to spend. I have 9 characters, so that's a saving of 27000 zen. This alone is already covers the cost of LTS.

And I believe the monthly stipend is 500 zen? Either way, the zen savings above plus the stipend means I don't have stress about not having enough dilithium or zen to get what I want. I can stop playing for a few months and come back with enough zen for a new ship.

 

On the other hand, if you just mentally had $300 set aside to go buy whatever you wanted, wouldn't you get everything you needed plus have money left?

If you play long enough, and have enough characters, you will eventually come out ahead, but the math says it takes a couple years to break even. They had it all crunched out on the forum somewhere...

Buy a one-month sub, and you get a bunch of the extra character/ship/bank slots. Pay for a few respecs and extra ship/bank slots. Buy half a dozen $20 ships. You're still up a couple hundred dollars. So the extra money comes over having more characters to get the unlocks for, the Veteran rewards, and the zen over time.

 

Wait till the LTS goes on sale at $199. Its well over a year ago when I did the calculation so I have forgotten the exact figure, but if I remember it correctly it takes somewhere around 1.5 years to break even.

 

It really depends on how much of an altoholic you are. With just a couple of of characters you sub a month and powerlevel your characters to 50 to get them the most practical benefits. It's important to be subbed when the character rises up in rank to get all promotion perks.

Alternatively you can try to find an old retail copy on a dustlayered shelf somewhere.
That gives you 30 days Gold for free, some exclusive Bonus items and an easy reinstall if you need One.

 

I had considered getting the Lifetime, but didn't realize it ever went on sale.

How often do they do that?

 

once or twice a year at most. usually at slow times to drag people back in the game shortly before another major update...

Good chance they might have one within the next couple of months.

 

Awesome, thanks!

 

No promises, though.

Oh, and a reminder to all, upcoming friday is a Friday, 13th.

That means their special horror minisode will be available again to claim a special doff and accolade.