Star Trek: Online

And some combinations work better than others, depending on play style. A Tactical Captain in a Cruiser can do very well with beams, since he can pack (and power) so many of them. An Engineer in a Science ship can be a huge asset to a team, as Science boffs get all the best Shield heals and Engineers get the Hull heals.

A Science Captain in an Escort might be a stretch, but I'm sure somebody now is going to reply that they had great success with this combination.

 

Oh yeah. I'm a Tac in a cruiser and my beam weapons are powerful. Plus, I can survive a long time thanks to a high hull on a cruiser, which gives me really solid defense while my high powered offensive weapons tear into other ships.

 

so i played around with the demo yesterday and today. while i like most of what i experienced i just want to know, is there more than just running around killing things and blowing stuff up? i ran into some diplomat at space dock. i assume later you can escort ships, supplies and so on.

 

There is a small but growing body of "Diplomatic" missions, but yes, it's mostly a combat game, and when you escort things it usually means something's going to come try to destroy or steal them. If you mean the Ambassador in the area that looks like a lecture hall, an early mission involves transporting him somewhere, and things don't go as planned.

 

like i said, i liked the game. i guess i just feel its a little too combat heavy. i'm reading The Path to 2409 on the STO site and while its interesting and the back story has a lot of intrigue it just seems to come down as all space battles.

still, STO hasn't even been around for very long so i'll give it the benefit of the doubt. i'll end up buying it in a week or so most likely.

 

I tried out the game last night, picked it up via direct2drive and was downloaded and patched within 1 1/2 hours.

I'm still learning the interface. My only initial gripe is I'm surprised that there's only 2 character slots! Does this mean that when the Klingon side unlocks, I'll only be able to have 1 Federation character? They're harming their own business by the 2 character limitation.

Anyway, for now I've got it almost completely maxed out at 1920x1080 with x2 AA, and it's smooth sailing on the Radeon 5770. I've read there may be crash problems on away missions with dynamic lighting on 5xxx cards, but we'll see. The visuals are a real treat with it cranked up.

I had one good multiplayer moment in the intro, when you go to fight some Borg around the warp core. Another player and I were starting to get hosed by all the Borg when I discovered you could jump in between a barrier and the warp core, and come around the other side to where the CE is. We killed a lot of Borg, but they never stop coming, and apparently you're supposed to abandon the CE at this point.

So far overall it compares favorably with LOTRO, but is more varied with the bridge crew & ship.

 

Is the excelsior model one you need to buy or is it standard?

 

Bottom line - yes it's combat heavy; (it's honestly the staple of the majority of MMOs).

But as stated they currently have some episode diplomatic missions and 8 new 'open story' diplomatic missions that are actually more than just 'click and read' - and they plan to continue expanding that. There are also two mini games (one for scanning anomolies); and you can actually play Dabo at DS9 for Gold Pressed Latinum (which can currently be used to buy holo-emitters that change the look of you ship - with more items coming to that 'store'; and a new Breen encounter mission on the Tribble Test server that has an option of using some of the GPL you may have acquired.)

Also, I think the box is now $20.00 or so, and comes with 30 days gametime; so honestly, it's not all that expensive if you give the retail a shot, and find it's too much combat for you. The other nice thing is that development of the game will continue, and in 6 months or a year later, if you see they've added something that piques your interest, you can come back, sub for a month and pickup with whatever characters you had right where you left off.

 

The T3 (STIII: TSFS) Excelsior is available for player Energy Credits in game. The T5 refit RA/VA1 version (ST:GEN/DS9 "Paradise Lost") Excelsior is a C-Store item for 1200CP (aka $13.00 U.S.)

 

When you unlock Klingons (at LT6); you'll also unlock another character slot on your account that can be used for another (either faction) character. So in the end, you'll have 3 character slots base.

 

^ I guess the limitation isn't that big a deal. If I reach a point where I've got 3 characters maxed out, and want to start another, I should probably delete the game and get some work done!

 

very logical. thanks for the input.

 

Made captain with my Klingon alt tonight, and I have to say:

There may be only a few klingon episodes so far, but boy, do they rock!
As if competing and winning in the Bat'leth tournament from Parallels wasn't enough, you also get to raid Utopia Planitia with a fleet of BoPs.
And then the Commander/Captain episodes...wow, just wow.
Storming Gre'thor? Getting to fight Molor and even Fek'lhr himself?
Khaless rewarding you with a Bat'leth forged in the image of the legendary Sword of Khaless, that even scales with your level?
Epic.

I shudder to think what else they've got in store for our favourite warriors.
I hear season three will be a polish of the game and includes fleshing out Klingon PvE-content?

 

^ That's what they're saying. It makes me want to logon to my Klingon alt and level him up a bit more.

 

Keep in mind the game stores a LOT more data for a character than most games. Most games, all you've got is your character and a few gear slots and talents, each of which is a single number in the character record.

An STO character has multiple customizable ships, each composed of half as much stored data as, say, a World of Warcraft character. Plus you've got a great deal of customization in the looks, and you've got up to a dozen bridge offices, each full of looks customization.

Rekhan once posted on the forums that three STO character records use up a total of about as much as 48 characters in most MMOs, and most cap you right around that point. So, if you want more than three character slots, they make you pay a little extra, so that everybody else doesn't have to pay more to cover the people who want more characters.

Extra slots are available in the C-Store. You can buy 2 for 500 points, or 4 for 850 points. That's a one-time charge of about $6.25 or $10.63. Not bad for a permanent upgrade.

 

Actually if you got the lifetime subscription during preorder you got two extra character slots and until September 7 it's 20% off on everything except the Excelsior retrofit so you can get character slots for less points.

 

true but wow have scores and scores of servers and your friends could be scattered all over the place. As Wow has been out for years it makes finding out new friends of yours play rather frustrating because if that happenes to you it costs money to switch servers. With the STO model you can play with anyone you want who also plays.

Hopefully as STO matures they will be able to raise the number of people per instance to Wow levels. In wow you almost never have more than 100 people in any one area and when you do (Ironforge I am looking at you) you get lagstorm

 

You also got the extra character slots if you did a 1-year subscription (like I did).

 

I went with the lifetime myself, now I only have to pay them if I want stuff from the C-store.

Also you get an extra character slot if your account is active for 300 days.

 

You guys have any suggestions for leveling faster? I am at LTCDR 10 and been there for a bit.