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

I was getting lag and rubber banding a lot too. Wasn't so bad this afternoon, though.

 

About effing time. With all the random one-off awards (pets, ships, unique weapons) that can't be reclaimed if dropped, bank was really getting tight. Wish they'd have a separate area for tribbles so you could leave them without eating the food stuffs, but it's a start.

With the rapidly growing number of ship and ground set pieces, I just had to dump a bunch of stuff, and was still getting close to full again...

 

So fans of the Galaxy-X are getting a little treat. The ship gains a slightly better boff seating with a universal ensign instead of a tac ensign, saucer separation, a hangar bay, a set bonus if you use cloak and antimatter spread.
Also a fleet version with better hull, shields and a 10 console slot at T4 shipyard.

The Galaxy Retrofit can separate now without coming to a dead stop and the saucer keeps it's customized look.
no other much needed improvements, though.

There will be a bundle available for 4000 zen that includes the T4 Venture class refit, the T5 Retrofit and the Galaxy-X. Owning the bundle includes a free unlock for the not very accurate galaxy bridge pack that is already available in the store.

If you already own any of the ships included, you can't buy the bundle.

 

I've just returned to playing STO since a long time ago.

I noticed that we can now play as Romulans. I'm kind of disappointed that the story arc isn't about the Empire but instead of a non-canon Republic. Is it fun to play as a Romulan or should I just switch over now?

 

Yes it is. It is the best story arc in the game IMO.
It is sort of the logical conclusion to what happened with the empire.
You basically play for those Romulans who are not interested in galactic politics and just want to live their life undisturbed but are forced onto the galactic stage and then ally with a faction led by some of the Unification movement.

 

I'm finding the Romulan storyline a lot more interesting than the Federation, so far.

 

Like I said a couple of months ago, they needed time to re-engineer the database schema to better handle the amount of storage space needed for our characters.

Looks like they finally spent the time needed to get rid of all our non-active ships, which each had the equivalent of about 20 item slots, and replaced them with a simpler and less database intensive ship loadouts system. This freed up a huge amount of database storage, which allowed them to give us the much needed boost in inventory and bank slots.

 

Thanks. I've continued on and it seems like its getting better and better.

I have another two questions:

1) Will I still be able to compete in PvE and PVP as a Science class player? I thought it was the most interesting, but I hear Tactical and Engineers are the only classes worth playing.

2) As a Romulan I will have to choose the Federation or the Klingon Empire. Does the story change at all between these choices? Are there certain benefits? Consequences? etc.

Thanks.

 

Every class is worth playing.

For PvE content, it really doesn't matter what ship or what class you are playing as the game is designed so any ship/class combo will work equally well. What matters more is the gear you put on the ship and the bridge officer abilities you select.

For PvP, what matters much more is teamwork rather than ship type or player class. In fact, science classes offers much more than other classes in PvP as they have many more ways of disabling opponent ships.

Having said that, Science Officers are a little harder to play than Tactical or Engineering Officers. The main reason is because most science powers are non-complimentary so you have to read carefully and pick carefully or end up gimping your ship. Most Tactical/Engineering officers can just completely ignore most science abilities except for Hazard Emitters and Transfer Shield Strength for hull and shield heals.

There is no change in the story as it is centered around New Romulus regardless if you choose Fed or KDF.

The only benefit is that you get access to Fed/KDF specific ships, special consoles and uniforms. In general, I find that Romulan ships are better suited for Romulan players anyway, so the access to Fed/KDF ships doesn't really matter too much unless you want a specific faction-locked universal console.

For myself, the primary consideration is ease of access to fleet equipment. Fleets offer some of the best equipment in-game. And there are many more well established Fed player fleets than KDF player fleets. So it is a little easier to obtain fleet equipment if you are a Fed-aligned Romulan.

 

Wow, have you guys seen the shitstorm over the so called Galaxy Reboot?

And Cryptic is silent.

Anyone think they are reconsidering their half assed repackaging of sameoldsameold?

 

Sounds about right, pretty standard really. Nothing they had done to it so far was going to encourage me to take it out of long term storage, or make me less annoyed about the $20 i spent on a ship they made fairly worthless immediately anyway...

Next up would be the Defiant/Sao Paulo, although I don't feel as bad seeing that it was a stipend purchase vice real money. ALMOST useful, although the quad phasers being stuck as ONLY phasers makes it kinda crappy. If they were selectable to other energy types, maybe. And cloak does nothing special, and they've never gotten around to fixing the cloaking bug from BETA where interacting with anything (including talking to your BOFFS) decloaks you...

 

Thank you very much for that detailed answer.

I'm quite the STO noob. So pardon my ignorance.

But what would the Galaxy Reboot mean and why won't people like it?

 

For the longest time the galaxy class and variants like the 3 nacelle dreadnaught from All Good Things have been treated like the redhaired stepchild of STO ships in an ever changing game full of powercreep.
The ship is great at tanking, but tanking is nearly useless without also being able to to straight damage or science tricks to draw aggro from enemies and it takes 3 times as long to get things done.
Plus there were some minor issues with the saucer separation mechanic.

Now Cryptic had made a reboot bundle out of the existing Galaxy class ships, but didn't go nearly far enough to make them worthwhile and useful ships. The only reason to get one is nostalgia, really.

 

I was reading the threads on the official forum yesterday, and wow, was that incendiary! It really was a half-measure with the changes they made. How do they people at Cryptic not know at this point how their players will react? And why on earth would they not take advantage of the fact that people want to play the ships that they love as Trek fans? There would be so much money to be made if they would just make certain ships reasonably competitive.

 

I know I'm looking forward to getting a Galaxy class ship soon. Thinking about getting a gold account for a couple of months, as I was trying to play before - but was having problems with moving around.

 

This Galaxy shitstorm is more the result of players not understanding or not wanting to understand Cryptic's ship design philosophy. As far as Cryptic is concerned, the Federation ships are well rounded compared to KDF and Romulan ships, which are much more tuned for attacking. This means fed cruisers are always engineering focused tanks. Therefore the Galaxy class is always going to be a tanking cruiser. How many times have we seen a Galaxy class Captain use the ship to physically block attackers? That is the Galaxy's role and it is in line with Trek canon.

The Galaxy Dreadnought is still just a tanking cruiser with slight modifications for a little extra punch. Cryptic added a hanger bay because there is the canon event of the Galaxy class USS Odyssey fielding 3 Runabouts against the Jem'Hadar in DS9's The Search.

Demanding for Cryptic to turn the Galaxy class and it's variant into high damage dps monster is just plain unreasonable.

 

No one wants a ship that is akin to the Scimitar.
People just want a reason to fly the Galaxy in a DPS game.
They could either change the Galaxy class for that or change the game to make a pure tank useful.
Something tells me, the game won't change either.
Plus the ship's engineering ensign is totally redundant as it is.
You can't put a power in there, that isn't totally gimped by a shared cool down.
The Galaxy-R should have gotten the universal ensign the X got where a universal is far less useful, because almost everyone will put another tac in there anyway.
And now that they have the tech to change playmode when your ship transforms including changing boff stations, the battle section should become something akin to a beam boat destroyer when separated and not just a still teethless but slightly faster tank with less hull.
Also would it kill them to give carrier commands to the saucer?

That would have been a good reboot of the ship where you have it as the pure tank it is now with a bit of multirole ability it should have and being a better at DPS if the situation demands it.
It would never be a DPS monster like the scimitar or even just the Avenger, but a decent ship that can actually contribute instead just being there and hope something shoots at her so it looks like she did her job as a tank.

The special console she got is totally backwards, too.
Antimatter spread was designed to keep enemies from shooting you. What? Getting shot is about the only thing she is good at!
Granted, this console comes from the vanilla T4, but it shows how week thought out the game design is....

 

You don't need to convince me. You need to convince Cryptic.

And if you want to convince them, you will need to come up with well reasoned, logical causes as to why the Galaxy need to be changed.

All I can tell you is that as far as Cryptic is concerned, all Fed Cruisers must have:
- Commander Engineering Station
- around +10% more hull
- around 1.0 shield mod
- mostly have 4 fore and 4 aft weapons
And these basics cannot be changed unless Cryptic changes the Galaxy's classification from Cruiser to something else, like Battlecruiser.

Beyond that, the eight "tier 5" cruisers each have different secondary roles based on their Lt. Cmdr station.

Lt. Cmdr Tactical
Avenger
Sovereign
Excelsior

Lt. Cmdr Science
Ambassador

Lt. Cmdr Engineer
Star Cruiser
Stargazer
Galaxy/Galaxy Dreadnaught

Lt. Cmdr Universal
Star Odyssey
Operations Odyssey
Science Odyssey
Tactical Odyssey

There are already 3 Tactical Lt. Cmdr cruisers so I don't think it would be easy to convince Cryptic to change the Galaxy to be a 4th Tactical Lt. Cmdr cruiser.

So what is left is the ship's tertiary roles, and that is governed by limited use special abilities such as hangers and universal consoles. Cryptic is already giving the Galaxy and the Dreadnaught a hanger bay which adds around 3,000 dps (with elite scorpions). The Dreadnaught also gains saucer separation which adds around 500 dps.

The only thing left that can be changed to add more dps is to replace the Anti-Matter Spread Console with another universal console. But as you know, universal consoles have a long cooldown time so regardless of which offensive ability gets changed, it will not add much dps.

 

Er... no.

Just the dreadnaught.
The Galaxy-R get's zilch. the only change to that ship is the improved Saucer Sep animation which doesn't dead stop your ship anymore like before and allows continued firing during the procedure.

Edit:

A perfect set up for a Galaxy-R for me would be this:

Rank:




Tier:
5

Type:
Cruiser

Hull:
40,000

Standard Shields:
5,225 (Mk X)

Shield Modifier:
1

Weapons:
4 4

Crew:
1,000

Bridge Officers:


Device Slots:
4

Consoles:
2 4 3

Turn Rate:
7
Impulse Modifier:
0.15

Inertia rating:
25

Bonus Power:
+5 all power levels

Cost:
2,500

Abilities:
Saucer Separation
Strategic Maneuvering
Shield Frequency Modulation
Weapon System Efficiency
Attract Fire


When the Saucer separates the Stats of the Ship change to this:

Rank:




Tier:
5

Type:
Cruiser

Hull:
35,000

Standard Shields:
5,000 (Mk X)

Shield Modifier:
1

Weapons:
4 4 (no Dual Cannons, Battlesection Destroyer stays a beamboat or uses single cannons)


Crew:
700

Bridge Officers:


Device Slots:
4

Consoles:
3 4 2

Turn Rate:
10
Impulse Modifier:
0.15

Inertia rating:
25

Bonus Power:
+10 Weapons
+5 Shields
+5 Engines


Cost:
2,500

Abilities:
Saucer Separation
Strategic Maneuvering
Weapon System Efficiency

 

I kind of buy what intrinsical is saying about Cryptic's perceived role for the Galaxy, and cruisers in general, but I think that argument starts to fall apart when you have escorts that can tank all the content in the game.

The Galaxy-R will still be a completely inadequate vessel. If ever there should be a true Starfleet multi-mission style ship, the Galaxy would fit the bill. We saw it do a little of everything in Trek.