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

[Rocketeer]

Solo players - By joining a fleet, you can benefit from the experience of other players. It also makes it easier to find someone to help you complete a mission. Belonging to a fleet also provides benefits in banking and crafting.

Timelord - Good message and timely too. Just a couple of issues to consider:
1) I recommend that purple items only occupy one or two repositories of the fleet bank. Some good players get greedy when they see purple. The majority of the bank should be blue items which are very useful.
2) Some fleets have experienced problems with the influx of f2p players. Not saying that all are bad. Like anything else you'll get the good with the bad. You just loosened up the bank permissions. Just make sure that we don't get cleaned out.
3) Perhaps sometime after the anniversary party, I can run some events. Especially the Defari Invasions. (I'm still looking for that goliath werewolf Borg.) I love shooting the Borg. Sometimes I get all Dirty Harry on them. I could also do any of the Featured Episodes.

[Timelord_Victorious]

Rocketeer wrote:

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2) Some fleets have experienced problems with the influx of f2p players. Not saying that all are bad. Like anything else you'll get the good with the bad. You just loosened up the bank permissions. Just make sure that we don't get cleaned out.

That's why I never ever will post a single TrekBBS is recruiting message into zone chat....

This site will remain the main source for new members with the extension of friends... either from real life or long time game friends.

That alone should already do something to keep bad apples out.

You can never be 100% sure in an online environment of course and we have to hit a middle ground somewhere between security and accessibility to keep the community attractive.

[intrinsical]

Just fyi, I just hit max crafting level last night and right now I have a bank full of raw materials so if you guys need anything I can probably craft it for you.

[Trek]

Just a note to add, that I'm cleaning up the Bank on a regular basis at the moment and trying to ensure that there is as much variety in the items as possible.

I think I'm also going to see if I can get some low level equipment into it, which would be useful for those with a lower level toon.

As for a CE run - I'm up for that and Zylah should have the perfect setup for Timelord's plan.

Also to note: Tomorrow night's fleet event for the Odyssey-class is around the same time as the commissioning ceremony. See you at space dock!

[Timelord_Victorious]

Trek wrote:

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Just a note to add, that I'm cleaning up the Bank on a regular basis at the moment and trying to ensure that there is as much variety in the items as possible.

I think I'm also going to see if I can get some low level equipment into it, which would be useful for those with a lower level toon.

As for a CE run - I'm up for that and Zylah should have the perfect setup for Timelord's plan.

We discovered a major flaw in that plan yesterday.

Whith season 5 the CE mission is no longer accessible on a whim.
Talking to the CE contact in sector space just opens up the queue window.
And on top of that, the whole thing is an event now similar to he Deferi Invasion. Only it doesn't show up on the calender. Not on the overview for teh month anyway. So in order to do this mission you have to be able to muster a team with just 24 hours notice and I am not really sure you can even open a private instance...
The queue window sugessted you need 4 full teams to start the damn thing!

Trek: while variety is good for endgame stuff, leveling stuff should be limited to the most useful proven items... beam arrays, quantums, cannons, covariant shields.

[Rocketeer]

Trek,

I think you're doing a swell job on the bank. However, I don't think we should stock for anything below Cmdr level. If a Lt or Lcdr fleet member needs something they just ask one of the officers. I'm willing to give equipment or boffs (within reason) to a Lt or Lcdr that would be much better than the Fed starter pack.

[Rocketeer]

I think they adjusted xp during the patch last night. Before the patch, Kaylee was a Lt 4 and needed 894 points to make Lt 5. After the patch, she was Lt 5 and only needed 495 points to make Lt 6. Took her through Stop the Signal and got enough points that she's just shy of Lt 8.

Upgraded weapons and consoles and dove into one of the Deepspace Encounters with the Klingons to test it out. There was two other Lts already there. Blew away a few Klingons and a VA appeared in a Dreadnought Cruiser. He preceded to scarf every loot drop. His ship was faster than ours so he zipped back and forth as the Lt's engaged the Klingons. What a loser... I mean I accomplished my goal of testing the ship, but it would have been nice to pick up a weapons battery or something. It was mildly irrating for me and I'm sure it was extremely frustrating for the new players.

Too bad that we don't have a button for Kick this jackass out of my instance.

[Timelord_Victorious]

Rocketeer wrote:

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I think they adjusted xp during the patch last night. Before the patch, Kaylee was a Lt 4 and needed 894 points to make Lt 5. After the patch, she was Lt 5 and only needed 495 points to make Lt 6. Took her through Stop the Signal and got enough points that she's just shy of Lt 8.

Upgraded weapons and consoles and dove into one of the Deepspace Encounters with the Klingons to test it out. There was two other Lts already there. Blew away a few Klingons and a VA appeared in a Dreadnought Cruiser. He preceded to scarf every loot drop. His ship was faster than ours so he zipped back and forth as the Lt's engaged the Klingons. What a loser... I mean I accomplished my goal of testing the ship, but it would have been nice to pick up a weapons battery or something. It was mildly irrating for me and I'm sure it was extremely frustrating for the new players.

Too bad that we don't have a button for Kick this jackass out of my instance.

I hear you. Though this is merely a mild annoyance compared to real griefing.
I regret by now to be on PvP servers in TOR.
What passes as open world PvP there amounts to level 50 players spawn camping lower levels and killing them, meaning one shotting them, repeatably. And each death comes with a death penalty that forces you to wait longer and longer before you can get back up or spawn at the next hub instead.
The sad thing, it gains you nothing to kill someone in open PvP. So it's just them being pure assholes.

Loot stealing I can at least understand to a degree.

[CorporalClegg]

Rocketeer wrote:

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JRS,

I upgraded my video to 1GB of DDR3 RAM and it increased my enjoyment of the game immensely.

I bet. I've never been much of a graphics guy, but there's definitely that extra immersion factor that the bigger X-plozions bring to a game like this.

The nice thing is that it still manages to look great without needing a lot of cpu/gpu muscle. I can run the game at max on my lap-top with little or no issues.

There are MMOs that I've tried that came out around the same time that I have to run lower settings just to play.

In STO, Vulcans don't make good science officers.

Not really sure how Cryptic managed to screw this one up. I guess they figured the narrator wouldn't have made a good science officer. He is a politician after all.

OTOH I wonder just how much the race characteristics really play into the game mechanic. Seems to me the only people they should really make a difference to are min/maxers and RPers.

One of my daughter's characters is a Vulcan sci/doctor. She's intergrated that character into some of her projects at school.

Interesting. Did she write an RP story about her or something?

Trek,
I think you're doing a swell job on the bank. However, I don't think we should stock for anything below Cmdr level. If a Lt or Lcdr fleet member needs something they just ask one of the officers. I'm willing to give equipment or boffs (within reason) to a Lt or Lcdr that would be much better than the Fed starter pack.

I peaked in there for the first time Monday morning and was surprised at how organized it was. In my experience guild banks tend to be a bit ... messy.

There was a few purples in there that a started salivating over, but I hate taking stuff without asking and besides I'm close to dinging Commander so they likely wouldn't get a lot of use.

I'm starting to wonder about Boffs though. It's not that I don't like the ones I have--I've become quite attached to them. It's just that every single one is either Trill or Andorian. I'm starting to think my captain (Trill) is a bit of a bigot.

[syberghost]

CorporalClegg wrote:

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Not really sure how Cryptic managed to screw this one up. I guess they figured the narrator wouldn't have made a good science officer. He is a politician after all.

In 28 seasons of Star Trek TV series and 11 movies, we've seen exactly *ONE* science officer who was both Vulcan and clearly demonstrated to be competent, and he was half-human. Who says they messed up?

[CorporalClegg]

^
I know you meant to say "two."

[Herkimer Jitty]

There's three.

-Spock (TOS)
-T'pol (ENT)
-Puddle of Bubbling Inside-Out Flesh On The Transport Pad (TMP)

[syberghost]

Herkimer Jitty wrote:

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There's three.

-Spock (TOS)

Yes.

-T'pol (ENT)

Not demonstrated as being a very good science officer, couldn't get along with her crew unless she was engaging in an inappropriate relationship with the crewmember in question. I'd have rather had Chekov if I had to choose. (yes I know Chekov wasn't born yet.)

-Puddle of Bubbling Inside-Out Flesh On The Transport Pad (TMP)

Really? What, exactly, did he do that demonstrated his competence? His entire onscreen resume is summed up in two words: "died messily".

[Scout101]

Rocketeer wrote:

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2) Some fleets have experienced problems with the influx of f2p players. Not saying that all are bad. Like anything else you'll get the good with the bad. You just loosened up the bank permissions. Just make sure that we don't get cleaned out.

Shouldn't be a problem, any fleet that cleaned out is stupid and frankly, deserves it. They make it very easy to set levels of access to the bank, and if you don't use them, your fault.

We are pretty well set, the lower ranks are very limited, the mid ranks are limited to the blue tabs, and the higher-ups even have limits on the purple tab, excepting our fleet admiral and whatnot. Not only limits which tabs you can get, but how many things you can take in a day, so with both of those in place, you can only screw yourself over. Either didn't set any limits for the stuff worth stealing, or promoted randoms way too far, too fast, and got it that way. Outside of Timelord, the quartermaster, and maybe 1-2 others, no one COULD clean us out. think the worst that could happen is we lose a handful of blue items.

see all kinds of angsty threads in the STO forum, but what action should STO take? They gave you the ability to protect it, you chose not to. All the 'thief' did is use the bank at the permission level you allowed them to. If it's set for any fleet member to take up to 100 items, can't get upset if 100 items are taken. Idiots...

[Bird of Prey]

So tomorrow marks the start of new items and content. The 2 year anniversary celebration starts, with a new reward for each of the 4 days you participate, plus you can do a mission to get the new Fed/KDF ships. Then the new FE begins the following Saturday (Feb 11), which should run for 5 missions. At long last, new content is almost here !!

I was also reading the latest Tribble release notes, and they are making some great changes, including increasing the drop rate of the rare STF drops.